[Aidevah]

It's not at all surprising since Benjamin's tract was notoriously impenetrable, even to his original examiners, which resulted in his habilitation being rejected. Not to mention that the Origins of the German Trauerspiel only received an english translation in the 70s (and also in the past few years, as your link shows). I would expect someone of uncommon erudition to have read and understood that book, so it's not surprising that the author of the article doesn't mention it. Teaching Benjamin to the HN crowd is like teaching algebraic topology to MFA students, I applaud your effort but I don't think it will have much effect.

Melancholy was quite fashionable in early 17th century England, and many songs of John Dowland were heavily melancholic. This wasn't mentioned in the article, but since it is an extract from a longer book, maybe it appears elsewhere in the book.

[aaroninsf]

All true, yet, I had a whole seminar on it (in English) last century, so, not entirely impenetrable! Few in the class were bilingual but did try to keep the original text up and my instructor was a passionate student and gave us enough context (and a lot of parallel reading) that it did not seem any harder than other opaque "continental" texts I read around the same time, e.g. Bakhtin on dialogism, Habermas, etc.

Looking for a relevant reference definitely confirms your point, I was surprised to find it remains relatively obscure. A tragedy in its own right!

Should have mentioned he's the author of the vastly more widely known The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction which justly has had a recurring turn in the spotlight in recent decades...