Reflections : essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (1978 original; edició 1978)

We can
remark in passing that there is no better starting point for thought than laughter. In particular, thought usually has a
better chance when one is shaken by laughter than when one’s mind is shaken and upset. The only extravagance of
the epic theatre is its amount of laughter.

This is a much more disparate collection than Illuminations. Surely this is to be expected The isfting and editing. The indecision. Reflections' opening section A Berlin Chronicle is a cartographic autobiography. It is a spatial narrative in the weirdest sense. There is a disorientation present. I also liked the Conversations With Brecht and the Author as Producer though my attentions waned upon approaching the lengthy piece on Karl Kraus. The concluding fragments appear rich with insight but frankly I was spent by that time. ( )

I think the best essays are in _Illuminations_. Still, this collection has such gems as "Critique of Violence" and "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century." ( )

There are certain essays in here ("Critique of Violence," for example) that are solid fives. Demetz's introduction, with some modification/caveats, and whether for good or ill, pinpoints a large part of what draws me to Benjamin: "his philosophy, sustained by utter loneliness, rather than by the concerns of the masses, particularly attracts those intellectuals who restlessly search for a better world and yet shy away from the grubbbier commitments of a practical kind." ( )

his is much tougher than Illuminations. Especially "Critique of Violence" about the establishment of law. Especially the essays that evolve to the messiah.

"I tell myself it had to be in Paris, where the walls and quays, the places to pause, the collections and the rubbish, the railings and the squares, the arcades and the kiosks, teach a language so singular that our relations to people attain, in the solitude accompanying us in our immersion in that world of things, the depths of a sleep in which the dream image waits to show the people their true faces. I wish to write of this afternoon because it made so apparent what kind of regimen cities keep over imagination, and why the city, where people make the most ruthless demands on one another, and where appointments and telephone calls, sessions and visits, flirtations and the struggle for existence grant the individual not a single moment of contemplation, indemnifies itself in memory, and why the veil it has covertly woven out of our lives shows the images of people less than those of the sites of our encounters with others or ourselves."