In existographies, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) (PL:2K±) was a German literary critic noted, in human chemistry, for his 1921 essay “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”, first published by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Neue Deutsche Beitrage (1924/25), wherein he digs in to some of the meat and criticism of German polymath Johann Goethe’s 1809 physical chemistry based novella Elective Affinities (see: Goethe timeline). [1]
American Goethean scholar Astrida Tantillo, in her 2001 book Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the Critics, describes Benjamin as “by far the most influential critic of Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften in the twentieth century.” [2]
References
1. Benjamin, Walter. (1921). “Goethe’s Elective Affinities” (scribd), first published by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Neue Deutsche Beitrage (1924/25); in: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926 (Elective Affinities, pgs. 297-360). Harvard University Press, 1996.
2. Tantillo, Astrida, O. (2001). Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the Critics (§3: Walter Benjamin and New Critical Approaches, pgs. 99-144). New York: Camden House.
Further reading
● Benjamin, Walter, Bullock, Marcus P., Jennings, Michael W., Eiland, Howard, Smith, Gary, and Livingstone, Rodney. (1999). Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1937 (elective affinities, 8+ pgs). Harvard University Press.
External links
● Walter Benjamin – Wikipedia.
