Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from thepowers of darkness. So wrote <strong>Walter Benjamin</strong> in January 1940. Not long... » 

Every line we succeed in publishing today...is a victory wrested from thepowers of darkness. So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not longafterward he himself would fall prey to those powers a victim of suicidefollowing a failed attempt to flee the Nazis. However insistently the idea ofcatastrophe hangs over Benjamins writings in the final years of his life thevictories wrested in this period nonetheless constitute some of the mostremarkable twentiethcentury analyses of the emergence of modern society. Thisvolume ranges from studies of Baudelaire Brecht and the historian CarlJochmann to appraisals of photography film and poetry. At their core is thequestion of how art can survive and thrive in a tumultuous time. Here we seeBenjamin laying out an ethic for the critic and artist a subdued butresilient heroism. The entire collection is eloquent testimony to theindomitable spirit of humanity under siege. «