Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter provides a picture of what being a Jew in Franz Kafka's Prague was actually like and discloses some of the complicated ways in which three cultures — German, Czech, and Jewish — ...
More
This chapter provides a picture of what being a Jew in Franz Kafka's Prague was actually like and discloses some of the complicated ways in which three cultures — German, Czech, and Jewish — interpenetrated in Kafka's upbringing. It also suggests how Kafka's exploration of Jewish culture was related to his breakthrough into major literary achievement with Das Urteil, the story he wrote at a single sitting on the night of September 22–3, 1912. The Jews of Prague were a small group: in 1900 they numbered 26,342. Though some had Czech as their native language, the majority spoke German and probably formed between a third and a half of the city's German-speaking community. This chapter shows the close connection between Kafka's exploration of Judaism and the beginning of his career as a major writer. He drew extensively and intricately on two cultures, the German culture in which he was brought up and the specifically Jewish culture which he encountered most memorably in the Yiddish theatre, to produce a story which is a synthesis of both.Less
This chapter provides a picture of what being a Jew in Franz Kafka's Prague was actually like and discloses some of the complicated ways in which three cultures — German, Czech, and Jewish — interpenetrated in Kafka's upbringing. It also suggests how Kafka's exploration of Jewish culture was related to his breakthrough into major literary achievement with Das Urteil, the story he wrote at a single sitting on the night of September 22–3, 1912. The Jews of Prague were a small group: in 1900 they numbered 26,342. Though some had Czech as their native language, the majority spoke German and probably formed between a third and a half of the city's German-speaking community. This chapter shows the close connection between Kafka's exploration of Judaism and the beginning of his career as a major writer. He drew extensively and intricately on two cultures, the German culture in which he was brought up and the specifically Jewish culture which he encountered most memorably in the Yiddish theatre, to produce a story which is a synthesis of both.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
By 1900, the population of Prague was approaching 400,000 and it was encircled by spreading working-class suburbs. Franz Kafka was worried by many of the effects of technology, but he was also ...
More
By 1900, the population of Prague was approaching 400,000 and it was encircled by spreading working-class suburbs. Franz Kafka was worried by many of the effects of technology, but he was also fascinated by its latest developments. Among these were the cinema and the aeroplane. It would seem beyond doubt that the presentation of the world's most advanced industrial and technological society, by a method between realism and fantasy, was a major part of Kafka's project. America is not just the setting but the theme of the novel, though not its only theme: we know that Kafka's title for his book was Der Verschollene, placing the focus on Karl Rossmann. The moral and psychological themes surrounding Rossmann are familiar from Das Urteil and Die Verwandlung, the other stories Kafka wrote in the autumn of 1912. The single most important source for Kafka's critical view of America was the account by the journalist Arthur Holitscher of his travels in the United States and Canada. Religion, too, seems to be more characteristic of Europe than of America.Less
By 1900, the population of Prague was approaching 400,000 and it was encircled by spreading working-class suburbs. Franz Kafka was worried by many of the effects of technology, but he was also fascinated by its latest developments. Among these were the cinema and the aeroplane. It would seem beyond doubt that the presentation of the world's most advanced industrial and technological society, by a method between realism and fantasy, was a major part of Kafka's project. America is not just the setting but the theme of the novel, though not its only theme: we know that Kafka's title for his book was Der Verschollene, placing the focus on Karl Rossmann. The moral and psychological themes surrounding Rossmann are familiar from Das Urteil and Die Verwandlung, the other stories Kafka wrote in the autumn of 1912. The single most important source for Kafka's critical view of America was the account by the journalist Arthur Holitscher of his travels in the United States and Canada. Religion, too, seems to be more characteristic of Europe than of America.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
World War I broke out when Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Two days earlier, Kafka returned to Prague. Kafka's fantasy of joining the army draws attention to his fascination with ...
More
World War I broke out when Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Two days earlier, Kafka returned to Prague. Kafka's fantasy of joining the army draws attention to his fascination with great leaders, particularly Napoleon Bonaparte. Even when Napoleon is not explicitly invoked, Kafka likes describing his own life in terms of military imagery. The responsibility for defending society against primitive forces is the theme of Ein altes Blatt, which Kafka wrote in March 1917. Kafka's fiction is pervaded by a pessimistic interpretation of history as a process of decline. Martin Buber had been a staunch proponent of Zionism since 1898 and had nourished the current interest in mysticism by publishing an anthology of mystical testimonies, Ekstatische Konfessionen. He addressed the Bar Kochba three times in 1909 and 1910; in his early twenties, he temporarily dropped his Zionist activities and spent four years in an intensive study of Hasidism. In Ein Landarzt, Kafka drew on Western and Hasidic sources to express the responsibility which had fallen to ill-equipped individuals in an age of religious decline.Less
World War I broke out when Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Two days earlier, Kafka returned to Prague. Kafka's fantasy of joining the army draws attention to his fascination with great leaders, particularly Napoleon Bonaparte. Even when Napoleon is not explicitly invoked, Kafka likes describing his own life in terms of military imagery. The responsibility for defending society against primitive forces is the theme of Ein altes Blatt, which Kafka wrote in March 1917. Kafka's fiction is pervaded by a pessimistic interpretation of history as a process of decline. Martin Buber had been a staunch proponent of Zionism since 1898 and had nourished the current interest in mysticism by publishing an anthology of mystical testimonies, Ekstatische Konfessionen. He addressed the Bar Kochba three times in 1909 and 1910; in his early twenties, he temporarily dropped his Zionist activities and spent four years in an intensive study of Hasidism. In Ein Landarzt, Kafka drew on Western and Hasidic sources to express the responsibility which had fallen to ill-equipped individuals in an age of religious decline.
Neil Cornwell
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074097
- eISBN:
- 9781781700969
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074097.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter explores Franz Kafka, who has been universally considered as a staple of absurdism. It observes that there are a number of absurdists, proto-absurdists and supposed absurdists who seem ...
More
This chapter explores Franz Kafka, who has been universally considered as a staple of absurdism. It observes that there are a number of absurdists, proto-absurdists and supposed absurdists who seem to have been at the head of the anticipation, promotion and reinvigoration of the spirit of Kafka. The chapter then studies Kafka's relations with, and influence on, other writers, ending with a section on the concept of ‘bureaucratic fantastic’, as personified in Kafka's works. It notes that Kafka was an exponent not only of stories and novels, but also of fragments, diaries, aphorisms and letters.Less
This chapter explores Franz Kafka, who has been universally considered as a staple of absurdism. It observes that there are a number of absurdists, proto-absurdists and supposed absurdists who seem to have been at the head of the anticipation, promotion and reinvigoration of the spirit of Kafka. The chapter then studies Kafka's relations with, and influence on, other writers, ending with a section on the concept of ‘bureaucratic fantastic’, as personified in Kafka's works. It notes that Kafka was an exponent not only of stories and novels, but also of fragments, diaries, aphorisms and letters.
W. J. Dodd
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195134681
- eISBN:
- 9780199848652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134681.003.0030
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews ...
More
A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews and Jewishness in turn-of-the-century Europe. The book is not a reading of Kafka's oeuvre as such but rather “a small attempt to see what is unobscured or only partially masked” in Kafka's fictions as they engage and reflect three overlapping and influential contemporary discourses that defined Jewishness: race, gender and disease.Less
A review of the book, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient by Sander Gilman is presented. In this book, Gilman seeks to place Franz Kafka's life and work in the context of prevailing notions about Jews and Jewishness in turn-of-the-century Europe. The book is not a reading of Kafka's oeuvre as such but rather “a small attempt to see what is unobscured or only partially masked” in Kafka's fictions as they engage and reflect three overlapping and influential contemporary discourses that defined Jewishness: race, gender and disease.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Early on the morning of August 13, 1917, Franz Kafka woke up and found himself spitting blood. It was a haemorrhage, the first sign of what was diagnosed a few weeks later as pulmonary tuberculosis. ...
More
Early on the morning of August 13, 1917, Franz Kafka woke up and found himself spitting blood. It was a haemorrhage, the first sign of what was diagnosed a few weeks later as pulmonary tuberculosis. His employers granted him extended sick-leave, and on September 12 he left Prague for the village of Zürau (now Siřem) in north-western Bohemia. He stayed there until April the following year, except for a brief visit to Prague at the end of October and a longer one over the Christmas and New Year period. The immediate effect of tuberculosis was to make Kafka feel healthier. Tuberculosis gave Kafka the sharp break with his earlier life that he had hoped conscription would provide. Kafka's aphorisms have generally been neglected by his critics, or, at best, treated as marginal glosses on his fiction. Kafka's aphorisms are related to traditions of Jewish thought.Less
Early on the morning of August 13, 1917, Franz Kafka woke up and found himself spitting blood. It was a haemorrhage, the first sign of what was diagnosed a few weeks later as pulmonary tuberculosis. His employers granted him extended sick-leave, and on September 12 he left Prague for the village of Zürau (now Siřem) in north-western Bohemia. He stayed there until April the following year, except for a brief visit to Prague at the end of October and a longer one over the Christmas and New Year period. The immediate effect of tuberculosis was to make Kafka feel healthier. Tuberculosis gave Kafka the sharp break with his earlier life that he had hoped conscription would provide. Kafka's aphorisms have generally been neglected by his critics, or, at best, treated as marginal glosses on his fiction. Kafka's aphorisms are related to traditions of Jewish thought.
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604128
- eISBN:
- 9780191729362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604128.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Exotic topographies in Kafka’s works do not present experienced places, but rather imagined ones, the features of which often significantly differ from any real or actual space. The fictionalization ...
More
Exotic topographies in Kafka’s works do not present experienced places, but rather imagined ones, the features of which often significantly differ from any real or actual space. The fictionalization of space in Kafka’s writings, it is argued, offers neither an existential void as Adorno argues, nor a metaphor for political sites of domination as post-colonialist theorists claim, but instead a means of liberating the imagination from the confines of the actual and everyday world. Vastness, distance, and undetermined spaces, associated with China, Russia, and America in Kafka’s fiction, serve to configure spaces of ‘elsewhere’ where radically new forms of being, experience, intimacy, and imagination are possible. This chapter examines major short stories and novels from Kafka’s oeuvre, as well as miniature prose works, in order to present a novel interpretation of the meaning of space and the exotic in Kafka’s writings.Less
Exotic topographies in Kafka’s works do not present experienced places, but rather imagined ones, the features of which often significantly differ from any real or actual space. The fictionalization of space in Kafka’s writings, it is argued, offers neither an existential void as Adorno argues, nor a metaphor for political sites of domination as post-colonialist theorists claim, but instead a means of liberating the imagination from the confines of the actual and everyday world. Vastness, distance, and undetermined spaces, associated with China, Russia, and America in Kafka’s fiction, serve to configure spaces of ‘elsewhere’ where radically new forms of being, experience, intimacy, and imagination are possible. This chapter examines major short stories and novels from Kafka’s oeuvre, as well as miniature prose works, in order to present a novel interpretation of the meaning of space and the exotic in Kafka’s writings.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, ...
More
Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, since Kafka regarded cognition not as a goal but as a starting point. Kafka's aim was to confront the world of falsehood, denounced in the Zürau aphorisms, by opposing to it a fictional world which, just because it is fictional, rises above the deceits of the physical world and approaches the truth. The spirit of responsibility in which Kafka began work on Das Schloβ is attested by several diary entries from this period in which he speaks of the task facing him. What has saved Kafka's writings from becoming totally hermetic is Zionism. His knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish, especially Hasidic, traditions supplied him with a set of cultural allusions which he worked into Das Schloβ. This chapter examines the four main components of Kafka's Das Schloβ: land-surveyor, castle, officials, and women.Less
Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, since Kafka regarded cognition not as a goal but as a starting point. Kafka's aim was to confront the world of falsehood, denounced in the Zürau aphorisms, by opposing to it a fictional world which, just because it is fictional, rises above the deceits of the physical world and approaches the truth. The spirit of responsibility in which Kafka began work on Das Schloβ is attested by several diary entries from this period in which he speaks of the task facing him. What has saved Kafka's writings from becoming totally hermetic is Zionism. His knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish, especially Hasidic, traditions supplied him with a set of cultural allusions which he worked into Das Schloβ. This chapter examines the four main components of Kafka's Das Schloβ: land-surveyor, castle, officials, and women.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Der Prozeβ is the most familiar and the most controversial of Franz Kafka's novels. It is the one best known to the reading public, and its opening incident, the unexplained arrest ...
More
Der Prozeβ is the most familiar and the most controversial of Franz Kafka's novels. It is the one best known to the reading public, and its opening incident, the unexplained arrest of Josef K., is fixed in many people's minds as the quintessence of the ‘Kafkaesque’. This chapter examines an older interpretation of Der Prozeβ, Ingeborg Henel's magisterial article of 1963. It contends that Der Prozeβ belongs to a genre of which the greatest exemplar is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and which may be called the metaphysical (or religious) crime novel. If Crime and Punishment represents in part an accommodation of the Gothic novel to the norms of verisimilitude, Kafka undoes Dostoyevsky's work by reintroducing elements of Gothic fantasy at the expense of plausibility. Another tendency in the interpretation of Der Prozeβ has been to see it as a prophecy of totalitarian didatorships in general and of Nazism in particular. Kafka is similarly concerned with a character entangled in deception.Less
Der Prozeβ is the most familiar and the most controversial of Franz Kafka's novels. It is the one best known to the reading public, and its opening incident, the unexplained arrest of Josef K., is fixed in many people's minds as the quintessence of the ‘Kafkaesque’. This chapter examines an older interpretation of Der Prozeβ, Ingeborg Henel's magisterial article of 1963. It contends that Der Prozeβ belongs to a genre of which the greatest exemplar is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and which may be called the metaphysical (or religious) crime novel. If Crime and Punishment represents in part an accommodation of the Gothic novel to the norms of verisimilitude, Kafka undoes Dostoyevsky's work by reintroducing elements of Gothic fantasy at the expense of plausibility. Another tendency in the interpretation of Der Prozeβ has been to see it as a prophecy of totalitarian didatorships in general and of Nazism in particular. Kafka is similarly concerned with a character entangled in deception.
Dimitris Vardoulakis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232987
- eISBN:
- 9780823235698
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823232987.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This chapter argues that staging by theatricality is crucial for an understanding of the Doppelgänger. Walter Benjamin's work on Franz Kafka is structured by the opposition ...
More
This chapter argues that staging by theatricality is crucial for an understanding of the Doppelgänger. Walter Benjamin's work on Franz Kafka is structured by the opposition between life and work. Benjamin argues that there are three kinds of theater in Kafka's essay on the subject: the world theater, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and a theater characterized by what Benjamin calls the “lost gesture”. The second section of the chapter addresses the distinction between the world theater and the nature theater. The third section examines the “lost gesture”. The final section shows that alongside Kafka's Doppelgänger, the critic himself—Benjamin—must also respond to the Doppelgänger.Less
This chapter argues that staging by theatricality is crucial for an understanding of the Doppelgänger. Walter Benjamin's work on Franz Kafka is structured by the opposition between life and work. Benjamin argues that there are three kinds of theater in Kafka's essay on the subject: the world theater, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and a theater characterized by what Benjamin calls the “lost gesture”. The second section of the chapter addresses the distinction between the world theater and the nature theater. The third section examines the “lost gesture”. The final section shows that alongside Kafka's Doppelgänger, the critic himself—Benjamin—must also respond to the Doppelgänger.
T. J. Reed
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264232
- eISBN:
- 9780191734243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264232.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, ...
More
Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, the tendency to chance upon what they need without actually looking for it or even knowing it was there. As with candidates for promotion to General, there is sense in Napoleon's question ‘Is he lucky?’. A chance encounter gave Pasley's work a new and unexpected direction; indeed, it turned what would always have been intellectually distinguished into something unquestionably central, and directed his meticulous mind to the most basic literary issues.Less
Malcolm Pasley achieved a unique authority as a British scholar in a major area of German literary scholarship, the work of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Good scholars are often blessed with serendipity, the tendency to chance upon what they need without actually looking for it or even knowing it was there. As with candidates for promotion to General, there is sense in Napoleon's question ‘Is he lucky?’. A chance encounter gave Pasley's work a new and unexpected direction; indeed, it turned what would always have been intellectually distinguished into something unquestionably central, and directed his meticulous mind to the most basic literary issues.
Yeasemin Yildiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823241309
- eISBN:
- 9780823241347
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823241309.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their ...
More
This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their mother tongue were highly contested, as a point of departure. To this end, it analyzes nineteenth-century German discourses on Jews and language with particular attention to Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. Drawing on the work of German scholars Stephan Braese and Andreas Gotzmann, as well as on Jacques Derrida's book Monolingualism of the Other, the chapter further distinguishes between strategies of appropriation and depropriation as divergent responses to this linguistic dispossession. From this vantage point, it approaches Franz Kafka's writings on Yiddish in his diaries, his letters, and in his 1912 “Speech on the Yiddish Language.” A section on the history of attitudes toward Yiddish in German-speaking lands, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, explains the stakes of Kafka's interest in this language. Although Kafka never considered writing in Yiddish, this chapter reveals that his writings about that language productively altered his relationship to German and allowed him to express the uncanniness of his “mother tongue.” It is also argued that French played a key mediating role in this negotiation.Less
This chapter discusses the force and the inner contradictions of the monolingual paradigm by taking the situation of early-twentieth-century German-language Jews, whose claims to German as their mother tongue were highly contested, as a point of departure. To this end, it analyzes nineteenth-century German discourses on Jews and language with particular attention to Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. Drawing on the work of German scholars Stephan Braese and Andreas Gotzmann, as well as on Jacques Derrida's book Monolingualism of the Other, the chapter further distinguishes between strategies of appropriation and depropriation as divergent responses to this linguistic dispossession. From this vantage point, it approaches Franz Kafka's writings on Yiddish in his diaries, his letters, and in his 1912 “Speech on the Yiddish Language.” A section on the history of attitudes toward Yiddish in German-speaking lands, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, explains the stakes of Kafka's interest in this language. Although Kafka never considered writing in Yiddish, this chapter reveals that his writings about that language productively altered his relationship to German and allowed him to express the uncanniness of his “mother tongue.” It is also argued that French played a key mediating role in this negotiation.
Neil Cornwell
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074097
- eISBN:
- 9781781700969
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074097.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book offers a comprehensive account of the absurd in prose fiction. As well as providing a basis for courses on absurdist literature (whether in fiction or in drama), it offers a broadly based ...
More
This book offers a comprehensive account of the absurd in prose fiction. As well as providing a basis for courses on absurdist literature (whether in fiction or in drama), it offers a broadly based philosophical background. Sections covering theoretical approaches and an overview of the historical literary antecedents to the ‘modern’ absurd introduce the largely twentieth-century core chapters. In addition to discussing a variety of literary movements (from Surrealism to the Russian OBERIU), the book offers detailed case studies of four prominent exponents of the absurd: Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Daniil Kharms and Flann O'Brien. There is also wide discussion of other English-language and European contributors to the phenomenon of the absurd.Less
This book offers a comprehensive account of the absurd in prose fiction. As well as providing a basis for courses on absurdist literature (whether in fiction or in drama), it offers a broadly based philosophical background. Sections covering theoretical approaches and an overview of the historical literary antecedents to the ‘modern’ absurd introduce the largely twentieth-century core chapters. In addition to discussing a variety of literary movements (from Surrealism to the Russian OBERIU), the book offers detailed case studies of four prominent exponents of the absurd: Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Daniil Kharms and Flann O'Brien. There is also wide discussion of other English-language and European contributors to the phenomenon of the absurd.
Scott Spector
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219090
- eISBN:
- 9780520929777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219090.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no ...
More
This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no correspondence, in the sense of perfect resonance or unison, among the varied encounters with the question of translation of Prague Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. It does not even seem as though Otto Pick, Rudolf Fuchs, Max Brod, and Franz Kafka set out anything like a common goal or interest as they engaged with the figure of translation, and yet, in striking contrast to the Czechs and the Bohemian Germans, they were irresistibly drawn to such an engagement. The translation project was certainly significant in European cultural history for its effects, but its impetus was never an ideology of “pluralism.” Pluralism, it has been noted, has a liberal face but remains a hegemonic device to absorb and control difference.Less
This chapter talks about the surveyed landscape of culture produced by German-speaking Prague Jews and the keen interest in translations from Czech to German that stands out. There is no correspondence, in the sense of perfect resonance or unison, among the varied encounters with the question of translation of Prague Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. It does not even seem as though Otto Pick, Rudolf Fuchs, Max Brod, and Franz Kafka set out anything like a common goal or interest as they engaged with the figure of translation, and yet, in striking contrast to the Czechs and the Bohemian Germans, they were irresistibly drawn to such an engagement. The translation project was certainly significant in European cultural history for its effects, but its impetus was never an ideology of “pluralism.” Pluralism, it has been noted, has a liberal face but remains a hegemonic device to absorb and control difference.
Elizabeth Boa
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158196
- eISBN:
- 9780191673283
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158196.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Much has been discussed of Franz Kafka; his unorthodox narrative style and his depiction of surreal and foreboding situations, which have enchanted the existentialist reader throughout history. ...
More
Much has been discussed of Franz Kafka; his unorthodox narrative style and his depiction of surreal and foreboding situations, which have enchanted the existentialist reader throughout history. Despite the countless literary and psychological analyses dedicated to his work, the matter of perception is largely static. Most analysis of his works has been dedicated to understanding the protagonist. This chapter, however, states that the analysis should be towards the reader themself, as perception is as important as understanding the social struggles and inner conflicts the protagonist has with himself and the society around them. It summarizes the topics in the succeeding chapters; namely Kafka's literary masterpieces and their relationship to topics such as existentialism, feminism, and the underlying erotic tones that dominated the literary sphere during his time.Less
Much has been discussed of Franz Kafka; his unorthodox narrative style and his depiction of surreal and foreboding situations, which have enchanted the existentialist reader throughout history. Despite the countless literary and psychological analyses dedicated to his work, the matter of perception is largely static. Most analysis of his works has been dedicated to understanding the protagonist. This chapter, however, states that the analysis should be towards the reader themself, as perception is as important as understanding the social struggles and inner conflicts the protagonist has with himself and the society around them. It summarizes the topics in the succeeding chapters; namely Kafka's literary masterpieces and their relationship to topics such as existentialism, feminism, and the underlying erotic tones that dominated the literary sphere during his time.
Sharon Cameron
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226413907
- eISBN:
- 9780226414232
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226414232.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This essay focuses on the interiors and exteriors in Kafka’s writing—regions that cannot be penetrated, integrated, or escaped. The estrangement of such spaces is then replicated in another register ...
More
This essay focuses on the interiors and exteriors in Kafka’s writing—regions that cannot be penetrated, integrated, or escaped. The estrangement of such spaces is then replicated in another register by Kafka’s animal stories and by his letters to Milena in which animal designates the experience of being unrecognizable to oneself in any system of classification, of feeling so alienated from community that one experiences oneself as residing outside its realm, while not encountering one’s kind among the members of any other species. “Animal” signifies a state of alienation that exists metaphysically prior to social arrangements in the nature of being itself. The essay suggests an analogy between Nancy’s idea of the sublime which reaches beyond imaginative and aesthetic enclosures and Kafka’s transgression of the taxonomies that would classify the creatures in his stories.Less
This essay focuses on the interiors and exteriors in Kafka’s writing—regions that cannot be penetrated, integrated, or escaped. The estrangement of such spaces is then replicated in another register by Kafka’s animal stories and by his letters to Milena in which animal designates the experience of being unrecognizable to oneself in any system of classification, of feeling so alienated from community that one experiences oneself as residing outside its realm, while not encountering one’s kind among the members of any other species. “Animal” signifies a state of alienation that exists metaphysically prior to social arrangements in the nature of being itself. The essay suggests an analogy between Nancy’s idea of the sublime which reaches beyond imaginative and aesthetic enclosures and Kafka’s transgression of the taxonomies that would classify the creatures in his stories.
Scott Spector
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219090
- eISBN:
- 9780520929777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219090.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which ...
More
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.Less
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.
John T. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157528
- eISBN:
- 9781400846474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157528.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers one of Kafka's last stories, Der Bau (The Burrow, 1923–24). In the story, the tiny, foraging animal knows all too well that the protection of his day-to-day life demands ...
More
This chapter considers one of Kafka's last stories, Der Bau (The Burrow, 1923–24). In the story, the tiny, foraging animal knows all too well that the protection of his day-to-day life demands constant awareness. Although he has completed the construction of what appears to be an impenetrable, inviolable refuge, he realizes that he can “scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquility.” In brief, Kafka's creature is terrified, and it is this terror that motivates all his cares. From the very opening sentence of Der Bau, Kafka immediately, albeit lightly, alludes to the necessary imperfection that riddles but also constitutes every security project: “Ich habe den Bau eingerichet und er scheint wohlgelungen” (I have constructed the burrow and it appears quite successful). Needless to say, what merely appears to be secure can never be entirely foolproof; and, in fact, for the remainder of Kafka's story, the subterranean creature wrestles with gnawing doubts and troubling concerns.Less
This chapter considers one of Kafka's last stories, Der Bau (The Burrow, 1923–24). In the story, the tiny, foraging animal knows all too well that the protection of his day-to-day life demands constant awareness. Although he has completed the construction of what appears to be an impenetrable, inviolable refuge, he realizes that he can “scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquility.” In brief, Kafka's creature is terrified, and it is this terror that motivates all his cares. From the very opening sentence of Der Bau, Kafka immediately, albeit lightly, alludes to the necessary imperfection that riddles but also constitutes every security project: “Ich habe den Bau eingerichet und er scheint wohlgelungen” (I have constructed the burrow and it appears quite successful). Needless to say, what merely appears to be secure can never be entirely foolproof; and, in fact, for the remainder of Kafka's story, the subterranean creature wrestles with gnawing doubts and troubling concerns.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Franz Kafka wrote Das Urteil, his first major work of literature, in a single night in the autumn of 1912. It was for him a breakthrough, and closely connected with it was the awakening of his ...
More
Franz Kafka wrote Das Urteil, his first major work of literature, in a single night in the autumn of 1912. It was for him a breakthrough, and closely connected with it was the awakening of his interest in Jewish culture. This is a general study of Kafka, which explores the literary and historical context of his writings, and links them with his emergent sense of Jewish identity. What is emphasized throughout is Kafka's concern with contemporary society — his distrust of its secular, humanitarian ideals — and his desire for a new kind of community, based on religion.Less
Franz Kafka wrote Das Urteil, his first major work of literature, in a single night in the autumn of 1912. It was for him a breakthrough, and closely connected with it was the awakening of his interest in Jewish culture. This is a general study of Kafka, which explores the literary and historical context of his writings, and links them with his emergent sense of Jewish identity. What is emphasized throughout is Kafka's concern with contemporary society — his distrust of its secular, humanitarian ideals — and his desire for a new kind of community, based on religion.
Alfred Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226795409
- eISBN:
- 9780226795416
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226795416.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter explores Franz Kafka's complex relation to Czech literature in terms of his ambivalent nostalgia for his father's maternal language and culture, and his skeptical alienation from all ...
More
This chapter explores Franz Kafka's complex relation to Czech literature in terms of his ambivalent nostalgia for his father's maternal language and culture, and his skeptical alienation from all constructions of identity. This paradoxical movement between belonging and disavowal is manifested in Kafka's transformation of key works of Czech literature from the redemptive articulation of the writer's role as the conscience of the national collective to an antiredemptive reinvention of the writer as a universal figure liberated from all forms of ethnic and religious affiliation. A corollary of Kafka's need for anonymity is the gradual effacement of Prague as a recognizable setting of his stories and novels. Only by erasing all topographical references to the city of his birth could Kafka achieve his desired goal as the universal chronicler of modern urban life. The chapter also examines the equally complex and ambivalent reception of Kafka's works in postwar Czech literature.Less
This chapter explores Franz Kafka's complex relation to Czech literature in terms of his ambivalent nostalgia for his father's maternal language and culture, and his skeptical alienation from all constructions of identity. This paradoxical movement between belonging and disavowal is manifested in Kafka's transformation of key works of Czech literature from the redemptive articulation of the writer's role as the conscience of the national collective to an antiredemptive reinvention of the writer as a universal figure liberated from all forms of ethnic and religious affiliation. A corollary of Kafka's need for anonymity is the gradual effacement of Prague as a recognizable setting of his stories and novels. Only by erasing all topographical references to the city of his birth could Kafka achieve his desired goal as the universal chronicler of modern urban life. The chapter also examines the equally complex and ambivalent reception of Kafka's works in postwar Czech literature.
