Collected letters 4. letters 1931-1934

When Walter Benjamin attempted to end his life in Nice in July 1932, shortly after his 40th birthday, he was confronted not only with the failure of his attempts to lead a scholarly existence but also with the increasing jeopardy of his earnings from writing for radio and press. Following the "deep fatigue" he described, from which he managed to escape once more, he began working on "Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert" in the financially supported seclusion of Poveromo, thanks to a collaboration with Wilhelm Speyer. In late autumn of that year, he returned to Berlin. In mid-March, Benjamin left Germany for good and traveled to Paris, from where he went to Ibiza for five months at the beginning of April. Even from the Balearic island, Benjamin took every conceivable step to give his future existence in Paris a minimum of continuity. In Paris, he met with Brecht and Grete Steffin and was able to greet Elisabeth Hauptmann. Alfred Kurella established contacts with the newspaper "Monde," where Benjamin hoped to publish an essay on "the Seine Prefect Haussmann." This project, like others that Benjamin pursued tenaciously, fell through. Within the city of Paris, Benjamin found refuge in the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he continued his material collection for the Passagen-Werk despite all adversities and even outlined a scheme for the book titled "Paris, Capitale du XIXe siècle" in the spring of 1934. The work on his Kafka essay, which was completed in June but only partially published in December, and which Benjamin at times regarded as the culmination of his essayistic production, delayed his departure to Svendborg to see Brecht. Benjamin, who loved the concept of "attitude," managed to maintain his own amidst the challenges and oppositions that might have tempted others to heroic stylization.