Holdings Information
Bibliographic Record Display
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Author/Creator:Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940, author.
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Uniform Title:[Moskauer Tagebuch. English]
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Title:Moscow diary / Walter Benjamin ; edited by Gary Smith ; translated by Richard Sieburth.
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ISBN:067458743X
9780674587434
0674587448
9780674587441
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Published/Created:Cambridge, Mass. ; London, England : Harvard University Press, 1986.
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Physical Description:150 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
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Yale Holdings
Holdings Record Display
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Local Notes:BEIN 2018 5833: Number line: "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" on title page verso indicates 1st printing. Paperbound. From the library of Samuel R. Delany.
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Notes:Translation of: Moskauer Tagebuch.
Text in English; translated from the original German.
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Summary:The life of the German-Jewish literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is a veritable allegory of the life of letters in the twentieth century. Benjamin's intellectual odyssey culminated in his death by suicide on the Franco-Spanish border, pursued by the Nazis, but long before he had traveled to the Soviet Union. His stunning account of that journey is unique among Benjamin's writings for the frank, merciless way he struggles with his motives and conscience. Perhaps the primary reason for his trip was his affection for Asja Lacis, a Latvian Bolshevik whom he had first met in Capri in 1924 and who would remain an important intellectual and erotic influence on him throughout the twenties and thirties. Asja Lacis resided in Moscow, eking out a living as a journalist, and Benjamin's diary is, on one level, the account of his masochistic love affair with this elusive--and rather unsympathetic--object of desire. On another level, it is the story of a failed romance with the Russian Revolution; for Benjamin had journeyed to Russia not only to inform himself firsthand about Soviet society, but also to arrive at an eventual decision about joining the Communist Party. Benjamin's diary paints the dilemma of a writer seduced by the promises of the Revolution yet unwilling to blinker himself to its human and institutional failings.
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Other formats:Also issued online.
- Format:Book
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BibliographyIncludes bibliographical references and index.
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Subjects:Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Diaries.
Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Travel--Russia (Federation)--Moscow.
Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Political and social views.
Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940
Authors, German--20th century--Biography.
Authors, German.
Political and social views.
Social conditions
Travel.
Moscow (Russia)--Description and travel.
Moscow (Russia)--Social conditions.
Russia (Federation)--Moscow.
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Subjects (Local Yale):Delany, Samuel R.--Ownership.
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Genre/Form:Biographies.
Diaries.
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Also listed under:Smith, Gary, 1954- editor.
Sieburth, Richard, translator.
Samuel R. Delany Library (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library). Reading Library.
United States--Massachusetts--Cambridge.
Link to this page: https://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/444497