Kafka Verstehen: Text + Deutung by Gerhard Oberlin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kafka Verstehen: Text + Deutung by Gerhard Oberlin Andrew B. B. Hamilton Gerhard Oberlin, Kafka Verstehen: Text + Deutung. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2021. 284 pp. Who among us is not excited at the promise of the title? Kafka Verstehen is the first entry in the series Text + Deutung by Gerhard Oberlin. (Subsequent entries so far take on Kleist and Rilke.) The volume contains a selection of Kafka's texts, each piece of prose followed by a short essay of commentary and explanation, as well as a longer essay by way of introduction. The selection of texts includes some of Kafka's most important stories: the collections Betrachtung and Ein Landarzt as well as three longer stories: "Das Urteil," "Die Verwandlung," and "In der Strafkolonie." Understanding Kafka is no easy feat, and teaching Kafka entails a host of complications; any volume that offers a path forward is welcome. A selection of texts, gathered in one volume and supplemented by explanatory material, is immediately appealing for the teacher—I cannot be the only one—who has seen students struck dumb by Kafka, intrigued and curious, but simply unable to find a point of entry. Yet this is not that book, and it is not entirely clear what the author seeks to add to the literature on Kafka, a body long since known to be, as W. G. Sebald put it, "hypertrophic." What Oberlin writes in the introduction and in the commentaries seems to struggle to conceive of its audience. It is neither the kind of factual and contextual information readers find in student editions from Suhrkamp or Reclam nor an invitation to consider less trodden points of view, as might be welcome for readers already familiar with the biographical and interpretive basics—books like Dietrich Krusche's Kafka und Kafka-Deutung or Roberto Calasso's K. come to mind in this category. Nor is it a purely scholarly treatment, offering well-developed readings together with the texts they discuss. [End Page 85] The lack of clarity in purpose pervades the whole volume, and the reader will not make it far before the realization sets in that this will be no aid in understanding Kafka. Oberlin all but admits as much in the introduction, which does the reader no favors by relishing in complicating its own premise. "Da es um Verstehen geht, wäre zunächst zu fragen, was das eigentlich ist" (9), Oberlin writes at the outset. It may be conceptually sound to begin in such a reflective mode, but I would venture that a reader who picks up a book called Kafka Verstehen already has a pretty clear sense of what it would mean to understand Kafka and hopes for help from this book. Instead, that same paragraph builds to this supremely unhelpful conclusion: "Verstehen heißt letztlich sich selbst verstehen, und gelegentlich scheint bei Weitem nichts schwieriger als das" (9). The oracle at Delphi couldn't have put it better. Having gotten that out of the way, the introduction picks up steam fast, beginning with a short treatment of Kafka's infamous deathbed directive, then proceeding to a catalogue of complex ideas. "Alle Kommentare sind als Anregungen zum Verstehen, als Denkanstöße gesetzt," we read (8). And the impetuses for thought come hard and fast: the categories of "mythology," "alienation," and "reality," hints at psychoanalytical treatments of the author, metaphysical questions, comparisons to Wittgenstein, hermeneutic circles, the boundaries of language, the figure of the clown—the list goes on, each an invitation to a framework for understanding Kafka, rather than a tool for actual understanding. The question that never goes away amidst all this is: doesn't Kafka himself already give us plenty of Denkanstöße? What value is added by these open-ended invitations? Here are some examples of what this uncertainty about audience looks like. In the opening pages, Oberlin promises to use "eine Sprache, die man auch ohne Vor- und Fachwissen versteht" (8). This pronouncement is followed by remarkably many phrases in Latin and Greek, often without translation, throughout the book. Each story is followed by a treatment that resembles the introduction, but with particular attention to what the text in question called to mind...