STUDIEN ZUR DEUTSCHEN LITERATUR Band 9l Herausgegeben von Wilfried Barner, Richard Brinkmann und Conrad Wiedemann Richard T. Gray Constructive Destruction Kafka's Aphorisms: Literary Tradition and Literary Transformation Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1987 CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Gray, Richard T.: Constructive destruction : Kafka's aphorisms : literary tradition and literary transfor- mation / Richard T. Gray. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1987. (Studien zur deutschen Literatur ; Bd. 91) NE:GT ISBN 3-484-18091-9 ISSN 0081-7236 © Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1987 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus photomechanisch zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany. Satz und Druck: Laupp & Göbel, Tübingen Einband: Heinrich Koch, Tübingen Table of Contents Introduction 1 CHAPTER ONE: History, Tradition, and Structure of the Aphorism 21 I. The History of the Aphorism 24 II. The German and French Models of Aphoristic Expression . . .. 36 III. The Text-Internal Dialectic of the Aphorism 46 IV. Aphorism and Hermeneutics: The Text-External Dialectic 52 V. Aphorism and Linguistic Scepticism 60 CHAPTER Two: Aphorism and Aphorists in Turn-of-the-Century Austria 64 I. Aphorism and Zeitgeist 65 II. From Impression to Epiphany: The Aphorism in the Austrian Jahrhundertwende 85 A) Ambivalence Toward the Form of the Aphorism 87 B) The Aphorism of Impression 90 C) The Aphorism of Epiphany 93 III. Aphorism and Sprachkrise in Turn-of-the-Century Austria . .. 98 A) Aphorism and Spracbkritik 99 B) Mzudmer's Kritik der Sprache 101 C) Hofmannsthal's Chandos 103 D) Musil: Essayism and Aphoristics 109 E) Karl Kraus: Aphorism and Critique of Sprachgebrauch 112 F) Wittgenstein's Tractatus 116 CHAPTER THREE: Kafka: Aphoristic Text and Aphoristic Context 119 I. Kafka and Turn-of-the-Century Austria 121 II. Kafka's Inclination Toward Aphoristic Utterances 124 III. Kafka and "Aphoristics" 134 A) The Conflict of Individual and Universal 135 B) Aphorism and the Fragmentary 149 C) Dynamism and Perspectivism 154 D) Kafka's Conceptual Patterns 159 IV. Kafka's Aphorisms and the Crisis of Communication 163 CHAPTER FOUR: Kafka and his Aphoristic Precursors 172 I. Aphorism and Autobiography: Self-Observation and Self-Projection 174 II. Pascal and Kierkegaard: Scepticism and Critical Method 190 III. Aphorism and Polemics: Karl Kraus 203 CHAPTER FIVE: Kafka's Aphorisms: Intratext and Intertext 210 I. Compositional History and Compositional Strategies of Kafka's Aphorisms 216 II. Form and Structure of Kafka's Aphorisms 233 A) Lexical Features 236 B) Metaphor 244 C) Syntactic Elements 252 D) Logical Structures 253 CHAPTER Six: Aphorism and Met-Aphorism: The Relationship of Aphorism and Parable in Kafka's (Euvre 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 293 VI "Sentenzen-Leser. - Die schlechtesten Leser von Senten- zen sind die Freunde ihres Urhebers, im Falle sie beflis- sen sind, aus dem Allgemeinen wieder auf das Beson- dere zurückzuraten, dem die Sentenz ihren Ursprung verdankt: denn durch diese Topfguckerei machen sie die ganze Mühe des Autors zunichte, so daß sie nun ver- dientermaßen anstatt einer philosophischen Stimmung und Belehrung besten- oder schlimmstenfalls nichts als die Befriedigung der gemeinen Neugierde zum Gewinn erhalten." Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches Introduction Franz Kafka the aphorist has undergone a radically different critical reception than either Franz Kafka the novelist/storyteller or Franz Kafka the artistic personality. While Kafka's novels and stories have become the standard "acid-test" by which innovative interpretive methodologies must measure their efficacy, Kafka's aphorisms have been greatly ignored, or treated as mere adjuncts to his letters and diaries, and thus as reflexes indicative prima- rily of trends in his life, and only secondarily of transformations in his art and poetics.1 It is remarkable, in fact, that in spite of the geometrical progression with which secondary literature on Kafka's art and life has appeared, as recently as 1980 one critic could remark that Kafka's aphorisms have re- mained terra incognita.2 However, while the aphorisms have only infre- quently been treated as texts meriting in and of themselves careful literary- critical analysis, even a cursory glance at most scholarly investigations of Kafka's work betrays the fundamental role these texts have played in the evolution and support of critical opinions on Kafka. Not uncommonly Kaf- ka's aphoristic pronouncements become points of departure for the interpre- tation of his works as a whole; and almost without exception the aphorisms serve as interpretive instruments by means of which critics of diverse ideological and methodological persuasions demonstrate the "authenticity" of specific interpretations of any and all of Kafka's narratives. Ultimately, however, one wonders whether these aphoristic texts, which make up such a 1 See Hartmut Binder, Motiv und Gestaltung bei Frank , Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 37 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1966), p. 85; henceforth-cited as MuG. 2 Claude David, "Die Geschichte Abrahams: Zu Kafkas Auseinandersetzung mit Kierkegaard," Bild und Gedanke: Festschrift für Gerhan Baumann zum 60. Ge- burtstag, ed. Günter Schnitzler, et al. (Munich: Fink, 1980), p. 80. l small portion of Kafka's ceuvre, have not been accorded an interpretive weight incommensurate with their actual significance. This is the central problem which this study seeks to clarify. It attempts to define the position of Kafka's aphoristic writings in relation to his life and works, as well as in the context of the history of the aphorism as literary genre. Compared with the body of aphorisms produced by such writers as Lichtenberg, Nietzsche, or Karl Kraus, Kafka's aphoristic production ap- pears exceedingly small: we possess only two aphoristic collections by Kaf- ka, the so-called "Betrachtungen über Sünde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahren Weg," and the group of reflections entitled "Er." Taken together these collections include only about 150 texts. It is possible, of course, to recognize and isolate aphoristic remarks in Kafka's letters, diaries, and - to a more limited extent - in his novels and stories. Still, even after these sources have been examined, Kafka's aphoristic production remains slight. Despite this scant quantity of aphorisms, Kafka is generally recognized as one of the significant aphorists in modern German literature, on occasion even ac- claimed as one of the greatest German aphorists,3 and he is consistently represented in anthological collections of aphorisms.4 Certainly, Kafka is known as an author of outstanding quality, not as one of extensive quantity, and this is true for his aphorisms as well as for his narrative works. Upon initial reflection one is surprised to find that an author prized for such expansive narratives as Der Verschollene, Der Prozeß, and Das Schloß would be recognized simultaneously as a prominent aphorist. In fact, J. P. Stern alleges, with certain justification, that the impulse toward the creation of aphorisms stands in diametrical opposition to the drive toward narrative exposition.5 On the surface, at least, the apodictic force and well- defined structure of Kafka's aphorisms contrast markedly with the con- scious, mysterious subjectivity and infinitely expandable structure of the novels; yet, as we shall see, even in this respect Kafka's aphorisms can ultimately be connected with his fragmentary narratives. Indeed, characteris- tic of Kafka's innovative narrative technique is an internal tension arising from the desire for conclusiveness and apodictic certainty on the one hand, This is the opinion of Eudo C. Mason, "The Aphorism," The Romantic Period in Germany, ed. Siegbert Prawer (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), p. 229. Most recently aphorisms by Kafka appeared in the anthology Deutsche Aphoris- men, ed. Gerhard Fieguth, Reclam Universalbibliothek, 9889 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978); Kafka is also represented in the anthology Jüdische Aphorismen aus zwei Jahrtausenden, ed. Egon Zeitlin (Frankfurt: Ner-Tamid-Verlag, 1963), in which, surprisingly, Karl Kraus, the most prolific modern Jewish-German aphorist, is absent. J.P.Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 192-3. and, on the other, a labyrinthine openness and inconclusiveness which inces- santly frustrates this drive for closure. Thus the commonly accepted contrast between a sterile, legalistic, or bureaucratic style of language and the fantas- tic, nightmarish, and often wildly imaginative narrated events can be as- cribed to the creation of a linguistic structure, aphoristic in its precision and laconism, which is constantly ruptured by "realities" it cannot contain. Viewed in this manner, the spiraling process by which Kafka's narratives typically develop (without going anywhere) appears as the persistent inter- ruption of structural attempts at "aphoristic" closure.6 As our discussion of the nature of aphoristic expression will elucidate, precisely this undermining of its own persuasive structure and logic is constitutive of the aphorism as genre. In German literary history the marriage of aphoristic and novelistic form has proven quite fruitful on different levels. Goethe, for example, included aphoristic collections in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre and in Die Wahlver- wandtschaften. Moreover, aphoristic utterances are frequently integrated in an almost imperceptible way into the narrative discourse of the novel. Com- monly, as for example in Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg, the characters of a novel carry on discussions studded with aphoristic statements. At the same time, characters often provide moralistic resumes of their situations in the form of aphoristic-didactic observations. In addition, the narrator of a tale is frequently in a position to supply aphoristic commentaries on the narrated events.7 Significantly, however, Kafka's narratives display none of these traditional patterns of integration between aphoristic and novelistic im- pulses. Hence one is tempted to view Kafka's narratives as distinctly non- aphoristic, since one of their fundamental characteristics is the technical im- possibility of distanced commentaries on the narrated events by either characters or narrator.8 Whereas aphoristic reflections occur in traditional narratives in order to aid in the characterization of individuals or situations, in Kafka's narratives such observations are smothered in the morass of un- certain speculation which dominates the narrative. The unitary perspective common to Kafka's narratives banishes any reflective commentary on the The relationship of aphoristic and narrative tendencies in Kafka's literature will be dealt with in chapter six. The role of the "omniscient" narrator in much of the literature of realism is one of aphoristic commentator. Friedrich Beissner, Der Erzähler Franz Kafka: Ein Vortrag (Stuttgart: Kohlham- mer, 1952) and Martin Waiser, Beschreibung einer Form: Versuch über Franz Kafka, Ullstein Taschenbuch, Nr.2878 (1951; rpt. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1972), esp. p. 35, provided the earliest analyses of Kafka's narrative style and its effects; see also Dietrich Krusche, Kafka und Kafka-Deutung: Die problematisierte Interak- tion, Kritische Information, 5 (Munich: Fink, 1974), p. 29. part of the narrator with regard to the narrated events; in addition, the subjective isolation of each of Kafka's characters prevents them from attain- ing distanced perspectives either on themselves or on the fictional events, effectively preventing them from voicing any but the most myopic com- mentaries. Yet on a structural level, Kafka's fiction displays traits analogous to those of aphoristic expression; and altered application of the possibilities of aphoristic expression in his novels is one symptom of Kafka's attempt to problematize the naive objectivity of traditional fictional patterns inhering both in the text itself and in the interactional structures with its readers.9 Any investigation of. Kafka's aphoristic texts must overcome a number of initial hurdles. The first and most debilitating of these is the absence of a reliable edition of these texts. While Max Brod's edition of Kafka's works, appropriately termed by one critic a "Werkausgabe mit Schlagseite,"10 has hampered the critical examination of all of Kafka's works, Brod's edition is even more deceptive where the aphoristic texts are concerned. The appear- ance of the historical-critical edition of Kafka's works should finally put some of these problems to rest, but at this writing the volume containing Kafka's aphorisms has not yet been published." The very nature of the aphoristic text is responsible for its sensitivity to minor alterations. Apho- risms are textual types which display an uncommon stylistic density and which depend heavily on subtle internal-referential potentials of language. In this sense aphoristic expression perhaps merely represents a concentrated model of all "literary" language, in which every individual element is func- tionally connected with the textual whole. Hence in the instance of minia- ture, compact texts such as aphorisms, variants in a single word, or even in punctuation, can radically alter the significance of the entire text. Franz Mautner, for example, writes of the extraordinary sensitivity of the aphoris- tic text: "Keine zweite Gattung ist so empfindlich gegen die Störung ihres inneren Gleichgewichts wie diese, deren Wesen beinahe die labile Teilhabe On the interaction of text and reader see Wolfgang Iser, Der implizite Leser (Mu- nich: Fink, 1972); on Kafka's innovative strategies for altering the reading patterns of his public, see Russell Berman, "Producing the Reader: Kafka and the Moder- nist Organization of Reception," Newsletter of the Kafka Society of America, 6, no. 1&2 (June & December, 1982), pp. 14-18. Dieter Hasselblatt, Zauber und Logik: Eine Kafka Studie (Cologne: Verlag Wis- senschaft und Politik, 1964), p. 9. While necessity demands that I cite from Brod's currently available edition of the aphorisms, I will describe in some detail the errors in his edition and the various changes that these texts went through in Kafka's own process of composition or revision. I an indebted to Professor Jürgen Born and to Hans-Gerd Koch for permitting me access to the Kafka manuscripts in the "Forschungsstelle für Prager Deutsche Literatur" at the Gesamthochschule Wuppertal.