On the Interpretation of Benjamin by György Lukács

In my paper I analyse the (intellectual) relationship between Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin. The essay is divided into two parts; in the first part, I will review the Benjamin-correspondence, looking specifically at the parts relating to Lukács. Through this, I try to explore the different ways in which the person of Lukács and the thought of his works appear in Benjamin’s letters, and the picture of Lukács that can be drawn from these. In the second part of the paper, I will show, through an analysis of two of Lukács’s essays (Die weltanschaulichen Grundlagen des Avantgardismus and Allegorie und Symbol), how Lukács uses and applies Benjamin’s concept of allegory in his argument, especially in the Origin of the German Trauerspiel (Trauerspiel-Buch). I argue that although the Lukács texts under examination were written in the “mature Marxist” period, the ideas of the early, non-Marxist, but rather in the intellectual history, Drama Book (Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama) are strongly and conceptually dominant in texts already written in an openly Marxist manner.