A new translation of philosopher Walter Benjamin's work as it pertains to his famous essay, "The Storyteller," this collection includes short stories, book reviews, parables, and as a selection of writings by other authors who had an influence on Benjamin's work.
Introduction
THE STORYTELLER ESSAYS
Introduction
Johann Peter Hebel
The Crisis of the Novel: On Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz
Mulberry Omelet
The Lisbon Earthquake
Oskar Maria Graf as Storyteller
On Proverbs
The Handkerchief
Storytelling and Healing
Reading Novels
The Art of Storytelling
By the Fire
Experience and Poverty
The Storyteller
ESSAYS BY OTHERS
Silence and Mirror by Ernst Bloch
The Giant’s Toy as Legend by Ernst Bloch
The Embroidery of Marie Monnier by Paul Valéry
From Theory of the Novel by Georg Lukács
On Sadness by Michel de Montaigne
From Histories by Herodotus
From The Treasure Chest of the Rhenish Family-Friend
by Johann Peter Hebel
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a philosopher, cultural critic, and
essayist. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Benjamin influenced
many of his contemporaries, including Bertolt Brecht, Gershom
Scholem, and Theodor Adorno. Benjamin's best-known essays include
"The Task of the Translator," "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction," and "Theses on the Philosophy of
History." In 1940, he committed suicide in Portbou, on the
French-Spanish border, when his attempt to escape Nazi forces was
thwarted.
Samuel Titan is an editor and translator based in Brazil. He
teaches comparative literature at the University of S o Paulo.
Tess Lewis has translated works from the French and German,
including books by Peter Handke, Anselm Kiefer, Philippe Jaccottet,
and Christine Angot. Her awards include the 2017 PEN Translation
Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. She serves as the co-chair of
the PEN Translation Committee and is an advisory editor for The
Hudson Review.
"[T]he newly published collection The Storyteller Essays,
translated by Tess Lewis and edited by Samuel Titan, marks a unique
achievement. . . . It provides a brief intellectual history of an
essay and revivifies it" —Clint Williamson, Full Stop
“[B]ecause it is delivered without panic, quietly, in
graceful sentences, from within the culture of books and
criticism, it is hard at first to accept the implications of
what Benjamin is saying. You suspect he is being
bombastic in order for him to come back later and tell you
what modern literature’s saving grace is, but the moment of
redemption does not arrive. . .
. Reading such claims over eighty years later, we
might be reminded that every generation foresees a crisis
and the end of the world as we know it. It is also
possible that Benjamin had his eyes wide open at
the beginning of our era and proved able to observe its
salient features.”—Philip Ó Ceallaigh, The Stinging
Fly
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