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alte1

SELECTE

VOLUMI

1 935-1

Translatec

Howard~

Edited bJ Michael

THE BELKNAP

Cambridge, Ma

alter

SELECTED WRITINGS

VOLUME 3

1935-1938

Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, and Others -

Edited by Howard Eiland and

Michael W. Jennings

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2006

This work is a translation of selections from Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Unter Mit­wirkung van Theodor W. Adorno und Gershom Scholem, herausgegeben van Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhiiuser, copyright© 1972, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1985, 1989 by Suhrkamp Verlag. Some of the pieces in this volume were previously published in English, as follows: "Brecht's Threepenny Novel" and "Theological-Political Fragment" appeared in Walter Benjamin, Reflec­tions, English translation copyright© 1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Published by ar­rangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. "The Storyteller" appeared in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, English translation copyright© 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovan­ovich, Inc. "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century" appeared in Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, English translation copyright© 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Frontispiece: Walter Benjamin, 1937. Photo by Gisele Freund. Copyright© Gisele Freund I Agence Nina Beskow.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. [Selections. English. 2002] Selected writings I Walter Benjamin; edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith

p. cm. "This work is a translation of selections from Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften .. . copyright 1972 ... by Suhrkamp Verlag"-T.p. verso. Includes index. Contents: v. 1. 1913-1926.-v. 2. 1927-1934.-v. 3. 1935-1938 ISBN 0-674-94585-9 (v. 1: alk. paper) ISBN 0-674-94586-7 (v. 2: alk. paper) ISBN 0-674-00896-0 (v. 3: alk. paper) ISBN 0-674-01076-0 (v. 4: alk. paper) ISBN 0-674-01355-7 (v. 1: pbk.) ISBN 0-674-01588-6 (v. 2, pt. 1: pbk) ISBN 0-674-01746-3 (v. 2, pt. 2: pbk) ISBN 0-674-01981-4 (v. 3: pbk) I. Jennings, Michael William. II. Title. PT2603.E455A26 1996 833' .91209-dc20 96-23027

Designed by Gwen Nefsky Frankfeldt

C ontents

PARIS OLD AND NEW,

Brecht's Threepenny Novel

Johann Jakob Bachofen 11

Conversation above the Cori

Paris, the Capital of the Nin

Exchange with Theodor W.

Nineteenth Century" so Problems in the Sociology o

The Formula in Which the D

Rastelli's Story 96

ART IN A TECHNOLOO

The Work of Art in the Age

Second Version 101

A Different Utopian Will ll

The Significance of Beautiful

The Signatures of the Age 1

Theory of Distraction 141

The Storyteller: Observatiorn

German Men and Women: fl.

Review of Brod's Franz Kafka

Max Brod, Franz Kafka: Eine Biographie-Erinnerungen und Dokumente [Franz Kafka: A Biography-Recollections and Documents) (Prague: Verlag Heinrich Mercy Sohn, 1937), 288 pages.

• This book displays a fundamental contradiction between the author's thesis and his attitude. The latter is liable to discredit the former to some extent­to say nothing of the misgivings it arouses more generally. The thesis is that Kafka found himself on the path of holiness. 1 The biographer's attitude is one of perfect bonhomie; lack of distance from its subject is its chief charac­teristic.

That such an attitude could lead to this view of the subject deprives the book of authority from the outset. How it does so is illustrated, for exam­ple, by the locution-"our Franz" (p. 127 [German edition only])-with which Kafka is presented to the reader in a photo. Intimacy with saints has a special signature within religious history-that of Pietism. Brod as a biog­rapher displays the Pietist's ostentatious intimacy-in other words, the most impious attitude imaginable.

This flaw in the work's economy is reinforced by habits the author may have picked up in his professional activity. At any rate, it is hardly possible to overlook the marks of journalistic slovenliness, evident in the very for­mulation of his thesis: "The category of holiness ... is the only suitable cat­egory under which Kafka's life and work can be viewed" (65 [49)). Is it necessary to point out that holiness is an order belonging to life, and can never encompass creative work?2 Or that, outside a traditional religious context, to describe something as partaking "of holiness" is just a bellettris­tic flourish?

318 · 1938 (Part I)

Brod lacks any sense of the pragmatic rigor demanded of a first biogra­phy of Kafka. "We knew nothing of first-class hotels, yet were heedlessly gay" (128 [103]). A striking absence of tact, of all feeling for thresholds,and distances, allows feuilletonistic cliches to enter a text whose subject calls for a measure of dignity. This is not so much the reason for Brod's lack of any deep understanding of Kafka's life as it is evidence of it. Brod's inability to do justice to the subject itself becomes particularly distasteful when he deals with Kafka's famous testamentary instructions prescribing the destruction of his posthumous papers (242 [198]).3 This, if anywhere, would have been the place to review fundamental aspects of Kafka's life. (Kafka was clearly unwilling to take responsibility before posterity for a body of work whose greatness he nevertheless recognized.)

This question has been extensively discussed since Kafka's death; it of­fered a fitting point to pause for thought. That, however, would have en­tailed some self-reflection on the biographer's part. Kafka presumably had to entrust his literary remains to someone who would not comply with his last request. And neither the testator nor the biographer would be damaged by such a view of the matter. But this view presupposes an ability to grasp the tensions which riddled Kafka's life.

That Brod lacks this ability is demonstrated by the passages in which he sets out to elucidate Kafka's work and writing style. These are never more than dilettantish sallies. The peculiarity of Kafka's nature anp writing is cer­tainly not, as Brod asserts, merely "apparent"; nor does one throw light on Kafka's writings by stating that they are "nothing but true" (68 [52]). Such pronouncements on Kafka's work are apt to render Brod's interpretation of his Weltanschauung problematic from the outset. When Brod states that Kafka's vision was perhaps consistent with Buber's (241 [198]), this re­quires us to seek the butterfly in the net over which it flies, casting its flutter­ing shadow.4 The "specifically Jewish-realist interpretation" (229 [187]) of Das Schloss [The Castle] suppresses the repugnant and horrible features that characterize the upper world for Kafka, in favor of an edifying reading which a Zionist above all is going to find suspect.

At times this complacency, so inappropriate to its subject, betrays itself even to the least rigorous reader. Only Brod could have illustrated the multi­layered problematic of symbol and allegory that he considers important in interpreting Kafka by referring to the "steadfast Tin Soldier"-a figure that constitutes a valid symbol, he argues, because it not only "expresses ... an infinite number of other things," but also "touches us through the personal story of the tin soldier himself, in all its detail" (237 [194]).5 One wonders how the Star of David would appear in the light of such a symbol theory.

An inkling of the weakness of his own interpretation of Kafka makes Brod sensitive toward interpretations by others. His peremptory dismissal of the Surrealists' interest in Kafka (which was by no means foolish), and of

Werner Kraft's sometimes i1 pieces, makes an unpleasant i on Kafka. "One could go 01 doubtedly do so), but necessa tone of the parenthesis grates hear-from someone with ti terms of holiness-that "Kaf sufferings" contribute more t< ical interpretations" (213 [17 for everything that Brod finds choanalysis no less than dia Kafka's style with the "sham I

ing only of the transparent Balzac's work and from his gr

None of this stems from I< Brod fails to acknowledge ti [Gelassenheit]. There is no on win over with a moderate opi1 effect. It exceeds the bounds <

Kafka and in the familiarity 1

prefigured in the novel that , have included quotations from biography. The author admits could see this novel-Zauberr violation of his duty to the dt everything else .... Nobody re course much more comprehern kept his friend and mentor Soc who lived and thought with hi1 every dialogue he wrote after S

There is little chance that Br, definitive biographies of write Buchner, and Bachthold's Kelle a friendship which probably is

Written June 1938; unpublished in] 529. Translated by Edmund Jephcot

Notes

1. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: Ei1 (Prague: Verlag Heinrich Mere

Review of Brod's Franz Kafka · 319

Werner Kraft's sometimes important interpretations of the short prose pieces, makes an unpleasant impression.6 He also devalues future literature on Kafka. "One could go on explaining and explaining (people will un­doubtedly do so), but necessarily without coming to an end" (69 [53]). The tone of the parenthesis grates on the ear. Certainly, one would prefer not to hear-from someone with the temerity to offer a depiction of Kafka in terms of holiness-that "Kafka's many private, incidental deficiencies and sufferings" contribute more to an understanding of his work than "theolog­ical interpretations" (213 [174]). The same sort of dismissive tactic is used for everything that Brod finds irksome in his association with Kafka-psy­choanalysis no less than dialectical theology. It allows him to contrast Kafka's style with the "sham exactitude" of Balzac (69 [52]). 7 (He is think­ing only of the transparent rodomontades which are inseparable from Balzac's work and from his greatness.)

None of this stems from Kafka's own way of thinking. Far too often, Brod fails to acknowledge that author's special composure and serenity [Gelassenheit]. There is no one, said Joseph de Maistre,8 whom one cannot win over with a moderate opinion. Brod's book does not have this winning effect. It exceeds the bounds of moderation both in the homage it pays to Kafka and in the familiarity with which it treats him. Both are doubtless prefigured in the novel that was based on his friendship with Kafka. To have included quotations from it is not the least of the misjudgments in this biography. The author admits to being surprised that impartial obtervers could see this nove1-Zauberreich der Liebe [The Kingdom of Love]-as a violation of his duty to the deceased. 9 "This was misunderstood, just like everything else ... . Nobody remembered that Plato, in a similar, though of course much more comprehensive way, defied death and throughout his life kept his friend and mentor Socrates alive and functioning-as a companion who lived and thought with him-by making him the protagonist of almost every dialogue he wrote after Socrates' death" (82 [64]).

There is little chance that Brod's Kafka will find a place among the great, definitive biographies of writers, alongside Schwab's Holderlin, Franzos' Buchner, and Bachthold's Keller.10 It is all the more striking as testimony to a friendship which probably is not the least of the riddles in Kafka's life.

Written June 1938; unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften, III, 526-529. Translated by Edmund Jephcott.

Notes

1. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: Eine Biographie-Erinnerungen und Dokumente (Prague: Verlag Heinrich Mercy Sohn, 1937), p. 65; in English, Franz Kafka:

320 · 1938 (Part I)

A Biography, trans. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1963), p. 49. Subsequent references to this translation appear in the text in parentheses, following references to the German edition. Benjamin's review was originally written as part of a letter of June 12, 1938, to Gershom Scholem, translated in this volume. Franz Kafka (1883-1924), born in Prague of Jewish parentage, was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. He studied law at the University of Prague and later worked for an insurance company. He published only a handful of stories during his lifetime, including "Das Urteil" (The Judgment; 1913), "Die Verwandlung" (The Metamorphosis; 1915), and "In der Strafkolonie" (In the Penal Colony; 1919). His novels were published posthumously as Der Prozess (The Trial; 1925), Das Schloss (The Cas­tle, 1926), and Amerika (1927). Max Brod (1884-1968), likewise born in Prague of Jewish parents, was the author of fiction, lyric poetry, a play, and works on pacifism and Zionism. He came to know Kafka as a student in 1902-1903, and remained a devoted friend to the end of Kafka's life, afterward editing his major works.

2. "Das Schaffen": Benjamin distinguishes schaffen and schopfen. The former com­bines aspects of labor and creativity and is a properly human activity, while the latter designates pure creation associated with the divine. Compare Benjamin's essay "Goethe's Elective Affinities," in Volume 1 of this edition.

3. In his Postscript to the first edition of Der Prozess (1925), Brod quotes two notes written to him by Kafka and found among the latter's papers after his death. Brod judges the shorter of the two notes to be the later: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries. manuscripts, let­ters ... , sketches, and so on, to be burned unread; also, all writings and sketches which you or others may possess; and ask those others for them in my name. Let­ters which they do not want to hand over to you they should at least promise faithfully to burn themselves. Yours, Franz Kafka." (The Trial, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir, with additional materials trans. E. M. Butler [New York: Schocken, 1968], pp. 265-266.) In his Postscript, Brod explains his reasons for not comply­ing with his friend's request. The most important are: he had already told Kafka in conversation that he would never destroy his manuscripts; during the last year of Kafka's life, when he finally cut his ties to his family in Prague and moved to Berlin to live with Dora Dymant, his existence took on an unforeseen turn for the better "which did away with his self-hatred and nihilism" (268); the great liter­ary value of the unpublished work in itself justifies its publication. In the biogra­phy of Kafka, Brod repeats his point that the indications of his friend's renewed interest in life, after he had met Dora Dymant in the summer of 1923, gave him the courage to regard Kafka's written instructions, concerning his posthumous papers, as no longer valid (198).

4. Martin Buber (1878-1965), German-Jewish religious philosopher, was editor of the Zionist weekly Die Welt (1901) and founder and editor of D er Jude (1916-1924). In 1938, he emigrated to Palestine, where he became professor of social philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His philosophy of encounter, or "dialogue," is developed in such works as Daniel (1913), Reden uber das Judentum (Talks on Judaism; 1923), and !ch und Du (I and Thou; 1923). In comparing Kafka to Buber, Brod quotes from Buber's 1936 book Die Frage an

den Einzelnen (The Questi~ the great bondage, and onlJ children of God .... On thi of salvation forged, for it · leads to the infinite" (198) .

5. Hans Christian Andersen ( Fairy Tales, published at int as "The Tin Soldier," "TH Shoes," and "The Snow Q

6. Werner Kraft (1896-1991), Benjamin's; he emigrated t in journals and newspapen Kafka: Durchdringung und

7. Honore de Balzac (1799-18 ceived the plan of presentinE society under the general tit 184 2; published posthumom

8. Joseph Marie de Maistre ( man of letters, was an op~ Among his works are Les S Dialogues; 1821) and Exam figures in Benjamin's Passag

9. See Max Brod, Zauberreich a Kingdom of Love, trans. Eri ter Richard Garta is a portra1

10. Gustav Schwab (1792-1850) and anthologies of German I phy of Holderlin, which int In Georg Buchners Werke Works and Manuscript Rema (1848-1904) established the derive. His biography Ober Bachthold (1818-1897), Swi the author of the first biogra (3 vols.; 1894-1897).

Review of Brod's Franz Kafka · 321

den Einzelnen (The Question for the Individual): "Marriage ... carries us into the great bondage, and only as bondsmen can we enter into the freedom of the children of God .... On this danger [of remaining tied to the finite] is our hope of salvation forged, for it is only over the finite fulfilled that our human path leads to the infinite" (198).

5. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Danish author, is best known for his Fairy Tales, published at intervals from 1835 to 1872. These include such tales as "The Tin Soldier," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Tinder Box," "The Red Shoes," and "The Snow Queen."

6. Werner Kraft (1896-1991), German essayist, poet, and novelist, was a friend of Benjamin's; he emigrated to Palestine in 1933. His essays on Kafka, published in journals and newspapers from the 1930s forward, are collected in Franz Kafka: Durchdringung und Geheimnis (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968).

7. Honore de Balzac ( 1799-1850), the founder of the realist novel in France, con­ceived the plan of presenting a comprehensive picture of contemporary French society under the general title La Comedie Humaine (first series published in 1842; published posthumously in 47 volumes).

8. Joseph Marie de Maistre (1753-1821), French philosopher, statesman, and man of letters, was an opponent of the French Revolution and its results. Among his works are Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg (The Saint-Petersburg Dialogues; 1821) and Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon (published 1836). He figures in Benjamin's Passagen-Werk (Arcades Project).

9. See Max Brod, Zauberreich der Liebe (Berlin: P. Zsolnay, 1928); in English, The Kingdom of Love, trans. Eric Sutton (London: M. Secker, 1930). Brod's charac-ter Richard Garta is a portrait of Kafka. ~

10. Gustav Schwab (1792-1850), German writer, published a life of Schiller (1840) and anthologies of German prose and lyric poetry, in addition to his biogra­phy of Holderlin, which introduced his edition of Holderlin's poems (1843). In Georg Biichners Werke und handschriftlicher Nachlass (Georg Bi.ichner's Works and Manuscript Remains; 1879), the German writer Karl Emil Franzos (1848-1904) established the text from which all later editions of Bi.ichner derive. His biography Uber Georg Buchner was published in 1901. Jacob Biichthold (1818-1897), Swiss literary historian and a professor at Zurich, is the author of the first biography of Gottfried Keller, Gottfried Kellers Leben (3 vols.; 1894-1897).

L etter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka

Paris; June 12, 1938

Dear Gerhard, As you requested, I am writing at some length to give you my views o~

Brod's Kafka. You'll find some of my own reflections on Kalka at the en~. You should know from the outset that this letter will be concerned with

only this subject, which means so much to both of us. To make up for this, I'll send news about myself in the next few days.

Brod's book displays a fundamental contradiction between the author's thesis and his attitude. The latter is liable to discredit the former to some ex­tent-to say nothing of the misgivings it arouses more generally. The thesis is that Kafka found himself on the path of holiness (p. 49). The biographer's attitude is one of perfect bonhomie; lack of distance from its subject is its chief characteristic.

That such an attitude could lead to this view of the subject deprives the book of authority from the outset. How it does so is illustrated, for exam­ple, by the locution-"our Franz" (p. 127, German editio_n on~y)-with which Kafka is presented to the reader in photos. Intimacy with samts_ has a special signature within religious history-that of Pietism. Brod as a biogra­pher displays the Pietist's ostentatious intimacy-in other words, the most impious attitude imaginable. .

This flaw in the work's economy is reinforced by habits the author may have picked up in his professional activity. At any rate, it is hardly possible to overlook the marks of journalistic slovenliness, evident in the very for­mulation of his thesis: "The category of holiness ... is the only suitable cat-

egory under which Kafka's li£ sary to point out that holines encompass creative work?2 0 to describe something as p, flourish?

Brod lacks any sense of the phy of Kafka. "We knew no gay" (p. 103). A striking ab distances, allows feuilletonist a measure of dignity. This is deep understanding of Kafka do justice to the subject itself\ with Kafka 's famous testame1 of his posthumous papers. Th review fundamental aspects o take responsibility before pos nevertheless recognized.)

This question has been ext fered a fitting point to pause tailed some self-reflection on to entrust his literary remains last request. And neither the te by such a view of the matter. J

the tensions which riddled Ka · That Brod lacks this ability

sets out to elucidate Kafka's than dilettantish sallies. The pe tainly not, as Brod asserts, me Kafka's writings by stating th pronouncements on Kafka's w his Weltanschauung problema Kafka's vision was perhaps co to seek the butterfly in the shadow.3 The "specifically Je Schloss [The Castle] suppress characterize the upper world which a Zionist above all is gol

At times this complacency, s even to the least rigorous reade1 layered problematic of symbol interpreting Kafka by referring constitutes a valid symbol, he a

Letter to Gershom Scheiern · 323

egory under which Kafka's life and work can be viewed" (p. 49). Is it neces­sary to point out that holiness is an order belonging to life, and can never encompass creative work?2 Or that, outside a traditional religious context, to describe something as partaking "of holiness" is just a bellettristic flourish?

Brod lacks any sense of the pragmatic rigor demanded of a first biogra­phy of Kafka. "We knew nothing of first-class hotels, yet were heedlessly gay" (p. 103). A striking absence of tact, of all feeling for thresholds and distances, allows feuilletonistic cliches to enter a text whose subject calls for a measure of dignity. This is not so much the reason for Brod's lack of any deep understanding of Kafka's life as it is evidence of it. Brod's inability to do justice to the subject itself becomes particularly distasteful when he deals with Kafka's famous testamentary instructions prescribing the destruction of his posthumous papers. This, if anywhere, would have been the place to review fundamental aspects of Kafka's life. (Kafka was clearly unwilling to take responsibility before posterity for a body of work whose greatness he nevertheless recognized.)

This question has been extensively discussed since Kafka 's death; it of­fered a fitting point to pause for thought. That, however, would have en­tailed some self-reflection on the biographer's part. Kafka presumably had to entrust his literary remains to someone who would not comply with his last request. And neither the testator nor the biographer would be damaged by such a view of the matter. But this view presupposes an ability t& grasp the tensions which riddled Kafka's life.

That Brod lacks this ability is demonstrated by the passages in which he sets out to elucidate Kafka's work and writing style. These are never more than dilettantish sallies. The peculiarity of Kafka's nature and writing is cer­tainly not, as Brod asserts, merely "apparent"; nor does one throw light on Kafka's writings by stating that they are "nothing but true" (p. 52). Such pronouncements on Kafka's work are apt to render Brod's interpretation of his Weltanschauung problematic from the outset. When Brod states that Kafka's vision was perhaps consistent with Buber's ,p. 198), this requires us to seek the butterfly in the net over which it flies, casting its fluttering shadow.3 The "specifically Jewish-realist interpretation" (p. 187) of Das Schloss [The Castle] suppresses the repugnant and horrible features that characterize the upper world for Kafka, in favor of an edifying reading which a Zionist above all is going to find suspect.

At times this complacency, so inappropriate to its subject, betrays itself even to the least rigorous reader. Only Brod could have illustrated the multi­layered problematic of symbol and allegory that he considers important in interpreting Kafka by referring to the "steadfast Tin Soldier"-a figure that constitutes a valid symbol, he argues, because it not only "expresses ... an

Letter to Gershom Scheiern · 323

egory under which Kafka's life and work can be viewed" (p. 49). Is it neces­sary to point out that holiness is an order belonging to life, and can never encompass creative work?2 Or that, outside a traditional religious context, to describe something as partaking "of holiness" is just a bellettristic flourish?

Brod lacks any sense of the pragmatic rigor demanded of a first biogra­phy of Kafka. "We knew nothing of first-class hotels, yet were heedlessly gay" (p. 103 ). A striking absence of tact, of all feeling for thresholds and distances, allows feuilletonistic cliches to enter a text whose subject calls for a measure of dignity. This is not so much the reason for Brod's lack of any deep understanding of Kafka 's life as it is evidence of it. Brod's inability to do justice to the subject itself becomes particularly distasteful when he deals with Kafka 's famous testamentary instructions prescribing the destruction of his posthumous papers. This, if anywhere, would have been the place to review fundamental aspects of Kafka's life. (Kafka was clearly unwilling to take responsibility before posterity for a body of work whose greatness he nevertheless recognized.)

This question has been extensively discussed since Kafka's death; it of­fered a fitting point to pause for thought. That, however, would have en­tailed some self-reflection on the biographer's part. Kafka presumably had to entrust his literary remains to someone who would not comply with his last request. And neither the testator nor the biographer would be damaged by such a view of the matter. But this view presupposes an ability to grasp the tensions which riddled Kafka's life.

That Brod lacks this ability is demonstrated by the passages in which he sets out to elucidate Kafka's work and writing style. These are never more than dilettantish sallies. The peculiarity of Kafka's nature and writing is cer­tainly not, as Brod asserts, merely "apparent"; nor does one throw light on Kafka's writings by stating that they are "nothing but true" (p. 52). Such pronouncements on Kafka 's work are apt to render Brod's interpretation of his Weltanschauung problematic from the outset. When Brod states that Kafka's vision was perhaps consistent with Buber's ,p. 198), this requires us to seek the butterfly in the net over which it flies, casting its fluttering shadow.3 The "specifically Jewish-realist interpretation" (p. 187) of Das Schloss [The Castle] suppresses the repugnant and horrible features that characterize the upper world for Kafka, in favor of an edifying reading which a Zionist above all is going to find suspect.

At times this complacency, so inappropriate to its subject, betrays itself even to the least rigorous reader. Only Brod could have illustrated the multi­layered problematic of symbol and allegory that he considers important in interpreting Kafka by referring to the "steadfast Tin Soldier"-a figure that constitutes a valid symbol, he argues, because it not only "expresses ... an

324 · 1938 (Part I)

infinite number of other things," but also "touches us through the personal story of the tin soldier himself, in all its detail" (p. 194).4 One wonders how the Star of David would appear in the light of such a symbol theory.

An inkling of the weakness of his own interpretation of Kafka makes Brod sensitive toward interpretations by others. His peremptory dismissal of the Surrealists' interest in Kafka (which was by no means foolish), and of Werner Kraft's sometimes important interpretations of the short prose pieces, makes an unpleasant impression.5 He also devalues future literature on Kafka. "One could go on explaining and explaining (people will un­doubtedly do so), but necessarily without coming to an end" (p. 53). The tone of the parenthesis grates on the ear. Certainly, one would prefer not to hear-from someone with the temerity to offer a ·depiction of Kafka in terms of holiness-that "Kafka's many private, incidental deficiencies and sufferings" contribute more to an understanding of his work than "theolog­ical interpretations" (p. 174). The same sort of dismissive tactic is used for everything that Brod finds irksome in his association with Kafka-psycho­analysis no less than dialectical theology. It allows him to contrast Kafka's style with the "sham exactitude" of Balzac (p. 52). (He is thinking only of the transparent rodomontades which are inseparable from Balzac's work and from his greatness.)

None of this stems from Kafka's own way of thinking. Far too often, Brod fails to acknowledge that author's special composure and serenity. There is no one, said Joseph de Maistre,6 whom one cannof win over with a moderate opinion. Brod's book does not have this winning effect. It exceeds the bounds of moderation both in the homage it pays to Kafka and in the familiarity with which it treats him. Both are doubtless prefigured in the novel that was based on his friendship with Kafka.7 To have included quo­tations from it is not the least of the misjudgments in this biography. The author admits to being surprised that impartial observers could see this novel as a violation of his duty to the deceased. "This was misunderstood, just like everything else ... . Nobody remembered that Plato, in a similar, though of course much more comprehensive way, defied Death and throughout his life kept his friend and mentor Socrates alive and function­ing-as a companion who lived and thought with him-by making him the protagonist of almost every dialogue he wrote after Socrates' death" (p. 64).

There is little chance that Brod's Kafka will find a place among the great, definitive biographies of writers, alongside Schwab's Holderlin and Bachthold's Keller. It is all the more striking as testimony to a friendship which probably is not the least of the riddles in Kafka's life.

You can see from what I have said, dear Gerhard, why a discussion of Brod's biography would not be suited to presenting my own image of Kafka, even in a polemical way. It remains to be seen whether I shall be able

to sketch my own image of I give you a different view, m ·

Kafka's work is an ellips the one hand, by mystical ei tradition) and, on the oth dweller. When I speak of mean various things. First o state, confronted by an unfa tions are controlled by agen selves, not to mention the one level of meaning in the But by "modern city-dwell physicists. When you read t

of the Physical World, it's al

I am standing on the thresho ness. In the first place I must of fourteen pounds on every ing on a plank travelling at a second too early or too Jal while hanging from a round of aether blowing at no one terstice of my body. The pla stepping on a swarm of flies. one of the flies hits me and g· upwards by another fly; and remain about steady; but if u boosted too violently up to I

tion of the laws of Nature, 8 camel to pass through the e through a door. And whethe1 be wiser that he should conse wait till all the difficulties in

I know of no passage i Kafka-gestus to the same deg Kafka's prose pieces with jus says not a little about Kafka ble" sentences would be at done, that an enormous tens and his mystical experiences, ally and in the precise sense world of experience comes I

could not have happened, within the tradition itself (l'l

Letter to Gershom Scholem · 325

to sketch my own image of him in the following notes. At any rate, they will give you a different view, more or less independent of my earlier reflections.

Kafka's work is an ellipse; its widely spaced focal points are defined, on the one hand, by mystical experience (which is, above all, the experience of tradition) and, on the other hand, by the experience of the modern city­dweller. When I speak of "the experience of the modern city-dweller," I mean various things. First of all, I'm talking about the citizen of the modern state, confronted by an unfathomable bureaucratic apparatus whose opera­tions are controlled by agencies obscure even to the executive bodies them­selves, not to mention the people affected by them. (It is well known that one level of meaning in the novels, especially in The Trial, is located here.) But by "modern city-dweller" I also mean the contemporary of modern physicists. When you read the following passage from Eddington's Nature of the Physical World, it's almost as if you're listening to Kafka.

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated busi­ness. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of land­ing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun-a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this while hanging from a round planet head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every in­terstice of my body. The plank has no solidity of substance. To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip through? No, if I make rte venture one of the flies hits me and gives a boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly; and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain about steady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or be boosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, not a viola­tion of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence .... Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door, it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved. 8

I know of no passage in 'literature which displays the characteristic Kafka-gestus to the same degree. One could easily juxtapose sentences from Kafka's prose pieces with just about any point in this physical aporia; and it says not a little about Kafka's work that many of his most "incomprehensi­ble" sentences would be at home here. So that if one states, as I have just done, that an enormous tension exists between such experiences in Kafka and his mystical experiences, one has stated only a half-truth. What is actu­ally and in the precise sense crazy9 about Kafka is that this absolutely new world of experience comes to him by way of the mystical tradition. This could not have happened, of course, without devastating occurrences within the tradition itself (I'll come to them in a moment). The long and the

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short of it is that an individual (here, Franz Kafka) who is confronted with the reality that presents itself as ours-theoretically in modern physics and in practice by military technology-would clearly have to fall back on noth­ing less than the powers of this tradition. I would say that this reality is now almost beyond the individual's capacity to experience, and that Kafka's world, often so serene and pervaded by angels, is the exact complement of his age, which is preparing to do away with considerable segments of this planet's population. In all likelihood, the public experience corresponding to this private one of Kafka 's will be available to the masses only on the oc­casion of their extermination.

Kafka lives in a complementary world. (In this, he has close affinities with Klee, whose work is just as intrinsically isolated in painting as Kafka's is in literature.) 1° Kafka was aware of the complement, but not of what sur­rounded him. If, one might say, he was aware of what was to come but not what exists today, then he was aware of it essentially as the individual on whom it impinges. Kafka's gestures of horror are well served by the glorious field for play [Spielraum] of which the catastrophe will know nothing. The sole basis for his experience was the tradition to which he wholeheartedly subscribed. He was not far-sighted, and had no "visionary gift." Kafka lis­tened attentively to tradition-and he who strains to listen does not see.

This listening requires great effort because only indistinct messages reach the listener. There is no doctrine to be learned, no knowledge to be pre­served. What are caught flitting by are snatches of things nJ t meant for any ear. This points to one of the rigorously negative aspects of Kafka's work. (This negative side is doubtless far richer in potential than the positive.) Kafka's work represents a sickening of tradition. Wisdom has sometimes been defined as the epic side of truth. 11 Wisdom is thus characterized as an attribute of tradition; it is truth in its haggadic consistency.

This consistency of truth has been lost. Kafka was by no means the first to be confronted with this realization. Many had come to terms with it in their own way-dinging to truth, or what they believed to be truth, and, heavyhearted or not, renouncing its transmissibility. Kafka's genius lay in the fact that he tried something altogether new: he gave up truth so that he could hold on to its transmissibility, the haggadic element. His works are by nature parables. But their poverty and their beauty consist in their need to be more than parables. They don't simply lie down at the feet of doctrine, the way Haggadah lies down at the feet of Halakhah.12 Having crouched down, they unexpectedly cuff doctrine with a weighty paw.

That is why, in Kafka, there is no longer any talk of wisdom. Only the products of its decomposition are left. There are two of these. First is rumor of the true things (a kind of whispered theological newspaper about the dis­reputable and the obsolete). The other product of this diathesis is folly, which, though it has entirely squandered the content of wisdom, retains the

unruffled complaisance tha Kafka's favorites, from Do mals. (For him, to be an a form and human wisdom o gentleman who finds himsel rinsing out his glass.) Of th' must be a fool; and, second, certainty is whether such h works only for angels (see I that are given something t So, as Kafka says, there is This statement truly contai serenity.

I'm quite content to let yo Kafka, since you will be ab! points developed in my essa I now like least about that e justice to the figure of Ka should never lose sight of o stances of this failure are ma sure of ultimate failure, the as if in a dream. Nothing is Kafka insists on his failure. a question mark he chose to

This closes the circle for t heartfelt greetings.

Yours, Walter

Written June 1938. Gesammelte

Notes

1. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: (Prague: Verlag Heinrich Me lish edition, Franz Kafka: A ard Winston, 2nd ed. (New a Czech-born German-Jewi• through on Kafka's instructi and went on to edit Kafka's of Kafka had a major influ public.

2. "Das Schaffen": Benjamin

Letter to Gershom Scheiern · 327

unruffled complaisance that rumor utterly lacks. Folly is the essence of Kafka's favorites, from Don Quixote through the assistants 13 to the ani­mals. (For him, to be an animal doubtless means having forgone human form and human wisdom out of a kind of shame. The way a distinguished gentleman who finds himself in a cheap tavern refrains, out of shame, from rinsing out his glass.) Of this much, Kafka was sure: first, that to help, one must be a fool; and, second, that only a fool's help is real help. The only un­certainty is whether such help can still work for human beings. Perhaps it works only for angels (see p. 171 [ of Brod's biography], about the angels that are given something to do)-and they could do without it anyway. So, as Kafka says, there is an infinite amount of hope-only not for us. This statement truly contains Kafka's hope. It is the source of his radiant serenity.

I'm quite content to let you have this dangerously foreshortened sketch of Kafka, since you will be able to make it clearer by drawing on the various points developed in my essay on Kafka for the]udische Rundschau. 14 What I now like least about that essay is its underlying apologetic stance. To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity, and in its peculiar beauty, one should never lose sight of one thing: it is the figure of a failure. The circum­stances of this failure are manifold. Perhaps one might say that once he was sure of ultimate failure, then everything on the way to it succeeded for him as if in a dream. Nothing is more remarkable than the fervor with which Kafka insists on his failure. His friendship with Brod is, for me, ~st seen as a question mark he chose to inscribe in the margin of his days.

This closes the circle for today. All that remains is to place at its center my heartfelt greetings.

Yours, Walter

Written June 1938. Gesammelte Briefe VI, 105-114. Translated by Edmund Jephcott.

Notes

1. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: Eine Biographie-Erinnerungen und Dokumente (Prague: Verlag Heinrich Mercy Sohn, 1937). The page references are to the Eng­lish edition, Franz Kafka: A Biography, trans. G. Humphreys Roberts and Rich­ard Winston, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1963). Max Brod (1884-1968) was a Czech-born German-Jewish novelist and essayist. Brod refused to follow through on Kafka's instructions to burn his unpublished works after his death, and went on to edit Kafka's major works. His religiously oriented interpretations of Kafka had a major influence on Kafka's initial reception by critics and the public.

2. "Das Schaffen": Benjamin distinguishes schaffen and schopfen. The former

328 · 1938 (Part I)

combines aspects of labor and creativity and is a properly human activity, while the latter designates pure creation associated with the divine. Compare Benjamin's essay "Goethe's Elective Affinities," in Volume 1 of this edition.

3. Martin Buber (1878-1965), German-Jewish religious philosopher and biblical translator, taught social philosophy, first at the university in Frankfurt am Main, and then, after his emigration in 1938, at the Hebrew University, Jerusa­lem. Buber is best known for his emphasis on the dialogical nature of human re­ligious experience; his major work, !ch und Du (I and Thou) appeared in 1923. Benjamin was in contact with Buber in the late teens and throughout the 1920s; despite lasting and deep-seated reservations, he maintained a respect for the older writer.

4. A reference to Hans Christian A.ndersen's well-known fairy tale. 5. Werner Kraft (1896-1996), German-Jewish author and librarian, wrote impor­

tant early essays on Kafka and on Karl Kraus. A friend of Benjamin's since their s'rudent days in Berlin, they parted ways in 1937: each claimed to have rediscov­ered Carl Gustav Jochmann's "The Regression of Poetry" (forthcoming in Vol­ume 4 of this edition). Kraft was dismissed from his post at the state library in Hannover in 1933 and, after ten months in Paris, emigrated to Palestine in 1934.

6. Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), Savoyard writer and diplomat, is best known for his attacks on revolution, enlightenment, and reformation. His writings ex­erted a deep influence on French royalists and ultramontane Catholics.

7. The novel in question is Brod's Zauberreich der Liebe (Berlin: Zsolnay, 1928). In English: The Kingdom of Love, trans. Eric Sutton (London: M. Secker, 1930), *

8. A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 342. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944), English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician, introduced the theory of relativity to an English-language audience.

9. The word toll means both "mad" or "crazy" and, colloquially, "great." 10. Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss painter, was associated with Der Blaue Reiter, the

group of expressionist painters around Wassily Kandinsky. Klee was a Master in the painting workshop at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931. Benjamin alludes here to the theory of complementarity in quantum physics, as developed by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the early 1920s. Confronted by the contradic­tions resulting from the attempt to describe atomic events in the terms of classi­cal physics, this theory states that the interpretation of matter as particles is complementary to its interpretation as waves, just as knowledge of an electron's position is complementary to knowledge of its velocity or momentum; both views are necessary for understanding atomic phenomena, though they are mu­tually exclusive. See Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), pp. 43, 49, and passim.

11. The definition is Benjamin's own. See the end of section IV of "The Storyteller," in this volume.

12. Haggadah is the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt, together with a series of commentaries that form a religious philosophy of history. Halakha is the tra-

dition of laws and ordinan life.

13. On the "assistants," a grot Benjamin's essay "Franz ume 2: 1927-1934 (Cam 798-799 (trans. Harry Zo

14. See Volume 2, pp. 794-81

Letter to Gershom Scholem · 329

dition of laws and ordinances regulating Jewish religious observance and daily life.

13. On the "assistants, " a group of characters running through Kafka's fiction, see Benjamin's essay "Franz Kafka" (1934), in Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol­ume 2: 1927-1934 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 798-799 (trans. Harry Zohn).

14. See Volume 2, pp. 794-818, of this edition.