Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst by Marcel Krings

Abstract

Reviewed by: Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst by Marcel Krings Ruth V. Gross Marcel Krings, Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022. 497 pp. Taking up the same idea as in his earlier book Franz Kafka: Der "Landarzt"-Zyklus: Freiheit-Schrift-Judentum (2017) of reading various texts written within a specific time period as a unit, Marcel Krings focuses in this volume on Kafka's late writings, starting with the "Er" aphorisms from 1920 and progressing through his last period of creativity before his death in 1924. The amount of research and innovative thought that has gone into this volume is breathtaking. Krings is an excellent scholar, and his extensive readings provide the basis for his overarching perspective of Kafka's oeuvre as circling around two main themes—freedom and Judaism. His approach is, however, both the strength and the weakness of this volume. I will explain my ambivalence below. In his first chapter, Krings lays out his thesis: to read Kafka's individual texts without the context of the larger oeuvre, in Krings's opinion, is to miss that Kafka's works have an underlying unity—that it is incorrect to think of his works as open-ended. Krings believes that the theme of death that was already prevalent in the earlier Landarzt volume takes on far greater intensity in Kafka's later work. The idea of wanting to leave this world behind clearly permeates the late stories like "Investigations of a Dog," "Josephine," and "The Hunger Artist." Furthermore, Krings sees Kafka's literary project as messianic, since his interest is in a new Judaism that reveals the decline of true religion as practiced by the assimilated Jews, whom he imagines, for example, as dogs or mice. Kafka's new Judaism does away with concrete images and obscures the referent. Therefore, so much of the late writing is in the form of parable whose point is to critique any kind of earthbound religion. [End Page 116] The rest of Krings's book presents close readings of the late texts, including the "Er" aphorisms, a collection of various pieces called Das Konvolut 1920, Das "Hungerkünstler"-Heft, and finally, Der "Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus, to support his thesis of a unified thematic. Each successive reading alludes to other scholarly interpretations of the work but then settles in to explain the particular text in light of the two main themes Krings understands to be omnipresent in Kafka's works. He dismisses any kind of biographical or philological approach as missing Kafka's true meaning. As an example, I would like to focus on his reading of "Ein Kommentar (Gib's Auf)": a short text that I personally always begin with when I teach Kafka to students. Because the text is short and easily understood at the literal level, it is ideal for presenting to students the open-ended, multidirectional Kafka that makes his works so fascinating, puzzling, and ultimately enjoyable to read and re-read. Krings is, of course, familiar with the reading so brilliantly laid out and explained by Heinz Politzer in his seminal work from 1962 on Kafka and paradox, but Krings contends that Politzer's reading of this text as a paradox is untenable, if not totally misleading. According to Krings, readers should instead be asking themselves about "Kafkas Diagnose über den Zustand des zeitgenössischen Judentums" (336). To my mind, this is not an obvious query that occurs to the reader when confronted with Kafka's short text. Over the years, it has been read many ways, and it is often interesting to compare readings, but Krings's view suggests there can be no correct reading other than his own. This is a position I, as a Kafka scholar, find very troubling. That is not to say that Krings's reading is wrong—it is viable and it fits well into his overall discussion. But to me, it is simply another way of reading the text—to Krings, it seems, it would be the only way. That is what makes this volume so...