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Although Kafka took an interest in anarchism, associating with anarchist organisations in Prague from 1910 to 1912, he was not himself an “anarchist author”. Indeed, his writings should not be narrowly misconstrued as a given political doctrine. However, one can discern the underlying connections between, on the one hand, his dislike of authority, his libertarian bend and his sympathies for anarchism, and his writings on the other. These excerpts shine a privileged light on what one could describe as the “internal scenery” of Kafka's oeuvre.
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ABSTRACT There is a narrow thread in the vast literature on Kafka which pertains to Kafka's knowledge of philosophy, and more precisely to Kafka's use in his fictional writings of some of the main ideas of Franz Brentano. Kafka attended courses in philosophy at the Charles University given by Brentano's students Anton Marty and Christian von Ehrenfels, and was for several years a member of a discussion-group organized by orthodox adherents of the Brentanian philosophy in Prague. The present essay summarizes what is known about Kafka's relations to the Brentanist movement. It draws on Brentanian ideas on the evidence of inner perception, on oblique consciousness, on active introspection, on correct and incorrect judgment, and on consciousness as a species of inner tribunal, in order to throw light on central features of Kafka's writings, including stylistic features. Special attention is directed towards Die Verwandlung and Der Prozess , and a reading of the latter is offered according to which the trial of Joseph K. occurs entirely within the mind of K. himself.
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AbstractDer Proceß in Yiddish, or the Importance of being Humorous — The article argues for a "humorous" Franz Kafka rather than a kajkaesque one and criticizes the "Kafka myth" which cristallized after WWII and emphasized foremost Kafka's existential anguish. Even before the war Max Brod as well as Walter Benjamin recognized the humorous dimension in Kafka's texts, much of which lies in word plays and gesture; otherwise, the humour in Kafka was largely ignored, especially after WWII. The focus in this article is on English, German and Yiddish cultural contexts and ideologies which have determined different readings/ translations of Kafka's texts. In particular, the article compares the pre-war English translation of Der Proceß by Edwin and Willa Muir, which contributes to the "Kafka myth," with a post-war Yiddish translation by Melech Ravitch, which highlights the novel's humorous qualities. Not only does the Yiddish translation place Kafka's novel within a culturally specific literary genre and suggest an alternate "Jewish" reading of the text; by drawing on both the English translation and the German original, Ravitch also "corrects" the anguish laden "Kafka myth" and constitutes a challenge to the rather humourless genre of the kafkaesque so widespread still in contemporary English and German speaking cultures.
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Alexander Vialatte (1901-1971) translated almost all of Kafka's works into French, and was also an influential Kafka scholar; his various readings of the opus form the basis for major orientations in current criticism. During the same period, Vialatte was also writing his own works, which are largely independant of those of Kafka. While the analogies between the works of these two authors are often vague — a troubling oddness, an obsession with classification, feelings of guilt without misdeed — and although direct borrowings are scarce, it is nonetheless possible to discover affinities between Vialatte and Kafka in La dame du Job and Le fidèle berger, novels of secrets and rules, in La maison du joueur de flûte, a Kafkaesque parbole, and in Les fruits du Congo, a novel published in 1951. In examining these novels, one may better understand the nature of the enigmatic “ false idea that is crucial to me ” of which Vialatte spoke when discussing how his personal reading of Kafka contributed to his own literary creations.