[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...