Abstract

COHEN, Esther. Walter Benjamin and literary criticism. Acta poét [online]. 2009, vol.30, n.2, pp.135-150. ISSN 2448-735X.

In a letter to Gershom Scholem of January 20, 1930, Walter Benjamin confessed to his ever friend: "the purpose I have proposed to myself has not been fully completed, but I am finally getting closer to it. The purpose is to be considered as the best critic of German literature. The problem is that literary criticism is no longer considered as a serious genre in Germany [...] criticism must be recreated as a genre". That genre alluded by Benjamin will imply, all over his work, a direct relationship with philosophy and with the concept of "reflection" in both literary and philosophical meaning. Early in his work on German Romanticism, the philosopher-critic explores this link, in a particular way, in the work of Schlegel. Even though benjaminian thought has founded echoes in philosophers and theoreticians of art, photography or film, his most intimate claim, that of becoming the best literary critic in Germany, has remained in the shadows. Here we will try to rescue from the shadows that desire of the German thinker.

Keywords : Walter Benjamin; critics; romanticism.

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