Harry Zohn Books

Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of the most original, critical and analytical minds of this century. Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an illuminating discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his thesis on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and prefaces them with a substantial, admirably informed introduction that presents Benjamin's personality and intellectual development, as well as his work and his life in dark times. Reflections the companion volume to this book, is also available as a Schocken paperback.Unpacking My Library, 1931The Task of the Translator, 1913The Storyteller, 1936Franz Kafka, 1934Some Reflections on Kafka, 1938What Is Epic Theater?, 1939On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, 1939The Image of Proust, 1929The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936Theses on the Philosophy of History, written 1940, pub. 1950

Selected poems and prose by Austria's most controversial satirists of the interwar years

This collection of essays and translations reflects the Viennese-born author-translator's Austrian-Jewish heritage as well as representing his broad involvement as a cultural mediator between his native and adopted countries. The essays - on Herzl, Zweig, Kraus, Kafka, Werfel, Waldinger, Csokor, Trakl, and the winegarden songs of Vienna - highlight the great Jewish contribution to Austrian culture, and they are supplemented and illuminated by the short prose of Zweig, Herzl, Beer-Hofmann, Polgar, Buber, and others.

An analysis of the relationship between the great Viennese writer Karl Kraus and his literary critics.Karl Kraus (1874-1936) is widely regarded as one of the most talented and influential satirists of the twentieth century. He was an enormously productive writer of poetry, critical essays, and aphorisms, and spent the bulk of hislife in Vienna. The key to his work is his love of language, and his disdain for those who abuse it. To him, language was the moral criterion and accreditation for a writer. He set about to provide an imperishable profile of his age from the very perishable materials of newspaper reports. Kraus is famous as editor of the satirical journal Die Fackel (The Torch), and as author of the immense play, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Daysof Humanity, 1918-19). This is the first attempt to analyze the most significant literary criticism on the works of Karl Kraus, an undertaking that reveals even more about the literary establishment in Vienna than about the greatwriter.

One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly - and what the troubling social and political implications of this are. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are

Traces the history of the Jewish community in Vienna, assesses the extent of Austrian anti-Semitism, and explains why the Jews were so fond of pre-World War I Vienna