Abstract
The purpose of the article is to discuss the perception of Kafka's The Castle (Das Schloss, 1922) in the novels The Peaches Killers (Die Pfirsichtöter, 1972) by Alfred Kolleritsch, Among the Bieresch (Bei den Bieresch, 1979) by Klaus Hoffer and Into the Castle (Ins Schloss, 2004) by Marianne Gruber. The reference to the writers and their works is no coincidence; preference is given to the artists whose creative manner reflects the most fashionable trends in Western European literary process - from avant-garde to postmodernism. The authors of the article deliberately arrange the analysed works in chronological order to follow the stages in the development of German postmodernism which originates from modernist literature. The universal Kafkaesque discourse suggests the existence of direct and inverse connections between the author and the reader, the extra-textual tradition and reality. The article focuses on the narrative strategies of Austrian avant-garde (Kolleritsch), analyses postmodern discourse (Hoffer, Gruber) in the Austrian literature of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, reveals signs of typological similarity between the novels by Kafka, Kolleritsch, Hoffer, and Gruber, which seems productive for understanding the influence of modernist literature on the development of the postmodern paradigm in the German-language literary space. Austrian literature, to a greater extent, is fraught with the search for new forms of self-expression rather than with the artistic “overcoming the past” - the awareness of collective guilt. It brought to the forefront the authors in whose works the age of change was reflected. Literary avant-garde has been replaced by authors who skillfully “play” with the previous culture and establish a dialogue with the present. The comparative methodology is to reveal the perception of "Kafkaesque discourse" in modern Austrian literature and to draw conclusions about the ways authors treat ontological questions.
Highlights
Kafka‘s phenomenon (Franz Kafka, 1883-1924) has been the subject of numerous studies; even a special term Kafkaesque has come into use for designating the artistic world created by the writer
Kafkaesque discourse as a cross-cutting motive reveals itself in the novels of Kolleritsch, Hoffer, and Gruber, each of which suggests numerous allusions to the castle as a kind of hierarchical system in which the relationships of representatives of various social classes – “demos” and “okhlos” are laid
The Peaches Killers by Kolleritsch (Kolleritsch, 2003), Among the Bieresch by Hoffer (Hoffer, 2017) and Into the Castle by Gruber (Gruber, 2004a), which marked the change of cultural paradigms, allow discovering the originality of the authors‘ intention in creating a typological picture of the "new reality", preserving and continuing the traditions of Austrian literature
Summary
Kafka‘s phenomenon (Franz Kafka, 1883-1924) has been the subject of numerous studies; even a special term Kafkaesque has come into use for designating the artistic world created by the writer. Literary creativity is always based on a specific artistic model, the features of which are determined by the universal laws of the text as a means of information communication on the one hand, and on the other hand, by following certain national or foreign traditions and by artistic preferences of the author who creates a personal discourse. In this sense, the discourse is a broader concept than the text because it includes all the stages of creating a literary work: from the author's idea of establishing relationships with the reader (Bozhkova et al, 2019)
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