Introduction to the Combined Edition, by Paul A. Kottman
Volume 1
Translator's Preface, by Shierry Weber Nicholsen
Editorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf Tiedemann
This section is expanded Part I
1. The Essay as Form
2. On Epic Naiveté
3. The Position of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel
4. On Lyric Poetry and Society
5. In Memory of Eichendorff
6. Heine the Wound
7. Looking Back on Surrealism
8. Punctuation Marks
9. The Artist as Deputy
This section is expanded Part II
10. On the Final Scene of Faust
11. Reading Balzac
12. Valéry's Deviations
13. Short Commentaries on Proust
14. Words from Abroad
15. Ernst Bloch's Spuren
16. Extorted Reconciliation: On Georg Lukács' Realism in Our Time
17. Trying to Understand Endgame
This section is expanded Volume 2
Translator's Preface, by Shierry Weber Nicholsen
Editorial Remarks from the German Edition, by Rolf Tiedemann
This section is expanded Part III
18. Titles: Paraphrases on Lessing
19. Toward a Portrait of Thomas Mann
20. Bibliographical Musings
21. On an Imaginary Feuilleton
22. Morals and Criminality: On the Eleventh Volume of the Works of Karl Kraus
23. The Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer
24. Commitment
25. Presuppositions: On the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms
26. Parataxis: On Hölderlin's Late Poetry
This section is expanded Part IV
27. On the Classicism of Goethe's Iphigenie
28. On Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop: A Lecture
29. Stefan George
30. Charmed Language: On the Poetry of Rudolf Borchardt
31. The Handle, the Pot, and Early Experience: Ui, haww' ich gesacht
32. Introduction to Benjamin's Schriften
33. Benjamin the Letter Writer
34. An Open Letter to Rolf Hochhuth
35. Is Art Lighthearted?