单行道

by Walter Benjamin

《单行道》主要内容：听到本雅明的死讯后，他的挚友布莱希特说：“这是希特勒给德国文学界造成的第一个真正损失，”当时本雅明并没有什么名气，有布莱希特那种哀痛感的人寥寥无几。
今天，本雅明已在知识界被广泛阅读。他的著作涉及文学评论、语言学、哲学、历史等诸多领域。——本雅明是一位独特的思想家。
《单行道》是一本很难归入某一类别的书。所收数十篇文章大多短小精悍，文笔诡异，奇思异想中闪动着智慧的灵光。这种断片式的文风可追溯到尼采、施莱格尔、拉罗什福科，直至古希腊罗马时代的作者。
这是一部品位极高的、经过升华的哲理文字，是作者对他那个时代的哲学、文学、政治和社会等许多领域现实问题思考的结晶。“单行道”是一个譬喻。之所以叫“单行道”，阿多尔诺在他编选的《本雅明文集》的导言中曾回答了这个问题：“他的哲学兴趣针对的完全不是无历史的存在，而恰恰是在时间上最确定的、不可逆转的事物。因此题目叫做‘单行道’。”
《单行道》中含有格言、笔记和杂感等各种形式。它的语言晦涩，寓意深邃，往往令人反复咀嚼思之再三仍不得要领。当然，作者有时也幽默得让你捧腹；有时也一目了然，让你兴趣倍增；有时也勾起你的童年回忆，让你感慨不已。《单行道》虽然篇幅不大，却要求你拿出高度的耐心和全部智力才能发掘出文字的底蕴。插入语和副句的巧妙运用，把原始森林般的德语语法发展得淋漓尽致，常常见首不见尾，让你一人林中就迷失方向。不过，当你努力走出来以后，他会给你一份特别的喜悦。而引语、外来语和各种典故，则“像路边的强盗，他们全副武装地突然出现并抢走悠闲者的信念”，给读者和译者设置了重重障碍。

149 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2006

About the author

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.

Reviews

[Ray Mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

利用大学课堂时间看的书，有点晦涩的必读书。没想到他已经过世了。