On Language as Such and on the Language of Man

Born into a wealthy business family in Berlin, the critical theorist Walter Benjamin went into exile in 1932 during the turmoil preceding the Nazi seizure of power. He committed suicide in 1940 while trying to escape from France, via Spain, to Portugal, where he hoped to sail to the United States. His essays on aesthetic theory, especially “The Task of the Translator” (1923) and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), became foundational texts in university humanities departments in the late twentieth century.