Kafka and the Dialect of Minor Literature (original) (raw)

Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts: Studies in Language and Literature

Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts: Studies in Language and Literature, 2016

Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s “overwrote” his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafka’s multiple backgrounds, in Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts Marek Nekula focuses on Kafka’s Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafka’s bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writer’s “organic” language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafka’s education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka “read” his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and non-fictional texts.

Kafka for the Twenty-First Century . Ed. by S tanley C orngold and R uth V. G ross . Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY : Camden House . 2011 . 286 pp. £50 . ISBN 978-1-5711-3854-5

Austrian Studies, 2013

Reviews | 155 ty work? Answer: In complicated ways. Cousins of converts remained Jewish; people celebrated Jewish and Christian holidays (or no holidays at all); some repudiated Richard Wagner because of his anti-Semitism but others still loved Wagner's music-the Gallias were enthusiastic "Wagnerianer. " How doomed was turn-of-the-century Vienna? Answer: Not very doomed at all, at least from the Gallia's perspective. Th ey lived, eventually, on Wohllebengasse, "Good Living Street," and until 1914, at least for people like the Gallias, Vienna was prosperous and successful. How tight was Vienna's circle of artists and patrons? Answer: Amazingly tight. Everyone knew everyone and despite well-known feuds, everyone, it seemed, was involved in everyone else's lives, and among the handful of people at the very center of this artist-patron circle were Bonyhady's great-grandparents, Moriz and Hermine Gallia. While Good Living Street provides a panoptical view of fi n de siècle Vienna, its real focus is personal. Th is personal concern is especially touching in Bonyhady's account of the life of his grandmother, Gretl. A constant diarist, Gretl directed that her diaries be destroyed aft er her death, and most were, but enough survived to permit Bohnyady to reconstruct Gretl's feuds with her siblings, a broken engagement, and her unhappy marriage. Aft er 1938, Gretl's and Annelore's stories tell of fl ight and exile, of creating new identities and inescapable nostalgia for the olden days. Engagingly writt en and quickly paced, Good Living Street is one of those extraordinary books that you can't put down, that feed your brain, that touch your heart. For anyone interested in Vienna, from the expert to the innocently curious, Good Living Street is a delight.

Franz Kafka. Un frammento giovanile sull'estetica. Unpublished by Franz Kafka. Ungedrucktes von Franz Kafka

MATERIALI DI ESTETICA. TERZA SERIE N. 4.2 2017, 2017

This is the first translation of Brod’s text which was originally published on the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” on 22.10.1965. This edition, compared with the one in “The Prague Circle” (1966), also presents a new translation of Kafka’s only known aesthetical fragment of 1906 upon the experience of beauty and novelty, two elements which play a salient role in the whole of his narrative. Brod’s suggestions as well as Kafka’s counterarguments encompass the process of knowledge thus developing peculiar points of view upon subjectivity and creative processes. German-Jewish Cultural Studies and Philosophy; German Literature; Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism; Intermediality and Intertextuality are here to be reckoned with KEY-WORDS Franz Kafka – Max Brod – Aesthetical Pleasure – Beauty – Novelty - Narratives – “psicologico” instead of “physiologisch” – Representational Processes - Body as Involved in Writing Strategies Aesthetics – Fiction – Creative Processes – Beauty – Novelty – Arguments vs Counterarguments; Intermediality; Intertextuality; Max Brod – Franz Kafka