Early Selected Works of Lukács

Author: (Hungarian) Lukács / Zhang Liang / Wu Yongli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: The Soul and Form and Theory of the Novel are two representative works of Lukács in his early years. The former is a collection of essays written under the influence of Georg Simmel's "aesthetic sociology," which was praised by Lucien Goldman as a precursor to modern existentialism for its profound portrayal of the tragic nature of human existence in the modern era. The latter is a critical work on the novel completed under the guidance of Max Weber's typological method, which conducted groundbreaking and innovative research on the essence of the novel and the types of its forms, earning it the title of "the most important publication of the spiritual science movement among contemporaries." Although Lukács repeatedly called for people to forget and criticize these two early works in his later years, they played a significant role in the intellectual history of Germany after the 1920s, greatly influencing the development of the thought of Western Marxist theorists such as Bloch, Benjamin, and Adorno. This collection includes the full text of Theory of the Novel, three closely related essays from The Soul and Form, and six important letters between Lukács and Paul Ernst and Weber during the period of writing Theory of the Novel. These documents are of great significance for understanding Lukács's early thought and its historical impact.