title: Early Writings (1910-1917)
author:  Walter Benjamin 
description: This is a valuable addition to the available work in English of one of the seminal Jewish critical thinkers of the 20th century, author of the massive Arcades Project. The mostly lambent translations by editor Eiland and others&mdash;with notes that sometimes exceed in length the juvenilia itself&mdash;help place Benjamin's later work within the context of his early preoccupations. In fact, a term like juvenilia does many of these largely polished short works a disservice. Benjamin's central preoccupation, as he moved from the University of Freiberg in 1912 to the University of Berlin, is with the youth movement of his time fighting to broaden their education beyond vocational and professional training. There are few frills within these pages. Reform is in, as is a modernist lyricism, even in Benjamin's high school verse. But Benjamin mostly works in a handful of prose forms, including Socratic or allegorical dialogue. His subjects range from romanticism to "Experience" as viewed by youth, from a rambling but fascinating meditation on "Metaphysics of Youth" to the problematic corrupter-of-youth, Socrates, and on to Balzac and Dostoyevski. (May)
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  Correspondence of 
  
  I aris, 1927. Photo credit: Suhrkamp Verlouj, Frankfurt. 
  
  The Correspondence of 
  Walter Benjamin 
  1910-1940 
  Edited and Annotated by 
  Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno 
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  TRENT UNIVERSITY 
  CTERBOROUGH. ONTARIO 
  Translated by 
  Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson 
  The University of Chicago Press 
  Chicago and London 
  
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  Walter Benjamin was born in Berlin in 1892. He studied philosophy 
  and theology in Berlin and Switzerland, and lived in various places in 
  Europe including several years in Paris. He was a regular contributor to 
  magazines and literary sections of newspapers. His numerous works 
  include The Origin of German Tragedy, ‘The Task of the Translator,” 
  and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In 
  1940, while fleeing the Gestapo at the Franco-Spanish border, he took 
  his own life. 
  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 
  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 
  © 1994 by The University o