#2nd lit

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Erik Butler, Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732-1933

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The encounter between the doctor and the boy necessitates the exposure of the body. By revealing his body, the sick person transfers ownership of it to the doctor. This act of exposure symbolizes both submission to authority and the transfer of responsibility. If the doctor refuses to take responsibility for the exposed body that he sees with his own eyes, this refusal becomes a form of failure. ... On one hand, nakedness signifies the identity of the patient, who must expose himself; on the other, it embodies “bare life” (“la vita nuda”) in the sense of Giorgio Agamben. The useless doctor, condemned by society as a Homo Sacer, becomes a victim whose killing would not be considered a crime. Even schoolchildren in the choir—symbols of innocence and naivety—and teachers, representing enlightenment, join in the unjust mass judgment. They chant loudly, “Strip him, then he will heal, /And if he does not heal, then kill him!” (172). The country doctor’s existence is reduced to a mere social function. If he fails to fulfill it, he loses his right to exist and ceases to be a politically protected being (bios). ... Within the enclosed space of illness, the patient finally gains the freedom to speak. Lying beside the doctor, the boy confesses to him—this is the third time he speaks with the doctor—that he never expected anything from him. It seems that the boy is aware of what transpired at the doctor’s home before his visit. This alludes to the doctor’s earlier failure toward Rosa and foreshadows his impending failure with both the patient and his family. As a fellow patient, the boy even accuses the doctor of having taken his “deathbed” (“Sterbebett”) for himself. The doctor expresses his frustration at being condemned as ill by a lay family despite his medical authority. At the same time, he attempts to explain to the boy the true nature of his “illness”. The boy does not believe that he is truly sick, as he considers his wound a natural and aesthetic feature of his identity: “I was born with a beautiful wound; that was my only endowment”. (173) However, the doctor disagrees, stating that the boy’s mistake lies in his “lack of overview” (“kein Überblick”). For the individual, the wound may seem like an intrinsic part of his identity, but for society as a collective entity with shared interests, it represents a deviation. What appears natural to the individual is defined by society as “illness”. In the end, the doctor reassures the boy, stating that the wound is not “so evil” (“so Übel”).

Liu Dongyao, Poetization of Illness: A Study of German-language Literature in the 20th Century

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When it comes to the country seeming Kafkaesque, there has been more consistency. There are always novelties to how exactly Chinese facts can bring Kafka’s fiction to mind. But a fitting tale with which to end this essay is about Yan Lianke winning an award. In 2014, the judges in Prague gave him the Kafka Prize. They chose him mainly to honour novels he had written that could not be published in China, which made it a different sort of award than the Chinese prizes he won early in his career for books that did not get censored. This fact did not stop the official media from using his win as an occasion for boasting. It was a cause for celebration, they said, that a Chinese writer was being celebrated in the Czech Republic. Yan was only the second Asian writer ever to get it, some stories in the Communist Party media stressed, noting that the only previous author from the continent to get the award had been the globally renowned Japanese author Murakami (who was also popular in China). In a fully Orwellian setting, publishing fiction that raised red flags among the censors might have landed Yan in prison and made him an unperson. In Kafkaesque China, when there was something that he did that could be seen as bringing honour to the nation, the official press could brag away. In doing so, they just had to handle one part of the story in a special way. In some reports, there is a passing and euphemistically phrased mention of Yan’s later works occasionally leading to him getting ‘caught up in controversies’. In other reports, though, the authors just ignore this troubling detail. These leave Chinese readers with the impression that there have never been any problems with Yan publishing his books in his homeland.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, "Kafka goes to China"

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The passion with which Kafka engaged with Kleist's work has been documented several times. For example, on February 9/10, 1913, Kafka himself wrote to Felice Bauer that he was unable to write the previous night because it was "too late for Michael Kohlhaas". He also promises to read her his favorite Kleist, which he confesses that he has already read out loud ten times. He comments on his reading by saying "this is a story I read with the genuine fear of God, it surprises me more than anything. It if it weren't for the weaker, somewhat coarsely written ending, it would be perfect, that utterly perfect thing that I claim doesn't exist". On December 11, 1913, Kafka even gave a public reading of the beginning of Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas in the Prague Toynbee Hall. However, he is rather critical of his performance, noting that it was "Totally and utterly botched. Poorly selected, poorly presented, senselessly swimming about the text. An exemplary audience... read in a wild, terrible, careless, and incomprehensible manner. And by the afternoon I was trembling so much from my eagerness to read that I could hardly keep my mouth shut". Kafka as well as his friends, his sisters, and Dora Diamant all noted that his desire to read Kleist and share it out loud was insatiable. Kleist's work must have had an intoxicating effect on him, on par with one of Klopstock's odes on Schiller. However, this effect seems to be somewhat limited when it came to Kleist's letters, fragments, and short stories. It must be noted that Kafka never mentions any of Kleist's plays. Was he not so preoccupied with them? Did they not appeal to him, or was he simply too absorbed by the prose works?

Walter Hinderer, Vom Gesetz des Widerspruchs: Über Heinrich von Kleist (trans. me)

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Nicholas Murray, Kafka

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Max Brod took on the discourse surrounding interfaith marriages in his 1922 novel Franzi, Or A Second-Rank Love, albeit without taking the input of Zionist women into account. His literary contribution takes on a rather erotic connotation, for example in a comparison the protagonist makes between his Christian and Jewish lovers: ... This quote captures the Zionist discourse surrounding Jewish femininity in a nutshell. Interestingly enough, it revolves around a Christian-Jewish antagonism, rather than the usual East-West. Self-sacrifice and total devotion are named as fundamental female virtues, with distinct erotic undertones. While the Christian woman is presented here as a role model - obviously characterized as a prostitute and an eroticized "Other" - with demands that women follow their feelings relentlessly and throw caution to the wind, breaking away from bourgeoisie norms. However, Brod was personally familiar with the fact that women who did so were sentenced to a life at the margins of society. The passage is riddled with accusations towards the archetype of the superficial, materialistic "Jewish Austrian Princess" (translator's note: this part was in English in the original) that Herzl already criticized (and himself constructed). Brod's first-person narrator does not ask that women devote themselves to the Zionist project, but rather demands unconditional access to the bodies of Jewish women (The paradox, where women who embrace this concept can no longer be considered respectable marriage candidates, is left unmentioned by Brod). That this sexual in/availability is proposed as a guarantee for a "Jewish future" is Brod's literary (self)-affirmation that sexuality is one of the wonders of this world and "the purest form of God's grace" - motherhood is of course a factor, but men's sexual desire stands at the forefront.

Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, "Jüdinnen" - Literarische Weiblichkeitsentwürfe im 20. Jahrhundert

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“hey max I met this guy at the hospital he’s so tall and handsome and dreamy lying in bed in his nightshirt. anyways he’s looking for a job do you have any connections”

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The same set of problems returns in an almost obsessive fashion in the Diaries. In a 1911 entry, Franz goes so far as to speak of his "hatred" of Hermann (Kafka), who not only covered him with reproaches but also insulted his friends Max Brod - whom he calls "a crazy hothead" (meschuggener ritoch) and Isaac Löwy - whom he compares to a dog that brings fleas into the house. The confrontation with paternal authority will be a permanent dimension of his identity, as is evidenced by the following late entry on December 2, 1921, which appears to condense in a remarkable way the writer's family "battleground": "This thought lately, that as a little child I had been defeated by my father and because of ambition have never been able to quit the battlefield all these years despite the perpetual defeats I suffer". This conflict is not only psychological and oedipal; it has a larger historical context: on the one hand, the cultural politics of the Austro-Hungarian empire - the Kakania described so well by Musil- that appears to cement into the same authoritarian paternalism all the representatives of power, from the Kaiser himself to the pater familias, passing through the heads of ministeries, prefects, and other directors of establishments; and on the other, a whole generation of young Jewish intellectuals born at the end of the nineteenth century, attracted to a romantic vision of the world, and passionately aspiring to a life dedicated to art, culture, or revolution. They would radically break with the generation of their bourgeois parents, who were merchants, industrialists, or bankers, moderate liberal or assimilated Germans. But in Franz's case the conflict is exacerbated by Hermann's authoritarianism and his hostility to his son's literary activities. For him, there is a clear connection between the "limitless power" of the father, the despotic authority of the "raging patriarch" (Adorno's term), and tyranny as a political system. In the "Letter to My Father" he remarks that both follow the same logic: "You became for me that puzzle which belongs to all tyrants: the law lay in your person and not in your wisdom." And commenting on his father's brutal, unjust, and arbitrary behavior toward the employees of the family business, he writes: "The place upset me - it reminded me of my relationship with you...therefore I belonged essentially to the worker's party." Such are the deeply personal roots of his affinity with the Prague libertarian socialists, and of the anti-authoritarian sensibility of his novels and short stories.

Michael Löwy, Franz Kafka: Subversive Dreamer