When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (review)

Abstract

When Kafka Says We: Uncommon in German-Jewish Literature, by Vivian Liska. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 239 pp. $29.95. Surely, there are plenty of books about Franz Kafka. So, why yet another book on Kafka? Vivian Liska's study isn't actually a book on Kafka. Instead, this is a remarkable piece not only shedding new light on complex relationship with Judaism, but, more importantly, providing a frame to consider some of most significant German-Jewish writing during twentieth century by Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, Else Lasker-Schuler, Ilse Aichinger, Robert Schindel, Robert Menasse, and Doron Rabinovici. Taking question, What do I have in common with Jews?, as starting point and centerpiece for her analyses, Vivian Liska delivers careful close readings of selected texts that all explore relationship of their writers with their respective social, ethnic, and religious communities, Jewish and otherwise. After a short but illuminating introduction, book is divided into five parts.Kafka's sets up frame, while also commenting on role of Yiddish in work and re-examining complex relationship with women.Revisiting Common Ground explores Theodor Herzl's and Else Lasker-Schuler's religious roots, and to what (limited and/or differing) extent religion and religious thought informed their writings. The next chapter provides perhaps least surprising combination in Communities of Fate, where poetry of Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs is revisited. However, Liska here delivers fascinating interpretations of some of Celans and Sachs's lesser known or earlier poetry, introducing readers to incredibly moving lines that delineate Celans kinship with community of dead, and Sachs's relationship with Israel. Part Four, Contentious Commemorations, yields most intriguing blend of German Gruppe 47 poetry and Aichinger's role in it, silence over Holocaust, and Austrian-Jewish writings. This chapter, in a nutshell, delivers a precise and chilling account of how German and Austrian silence over Holocaust affects German-Jewish writing to this day. The final part, Kafka's Companions, returns to Kafka , and here previous chapters' groupings are once again re-arranged to provide interesting illuminations of connections between Celan and Kafka, and between Aichinger and Kafka, to end with the gap between Hannah Arendt and Kafka, an ending that shows how Liska also, when appropriate, resists overdrawing connections. I was at first suspicious of a book that so clearly approaches its subject matter via writers' biographies, statements, and diary entries, rather than primarily focusing on texts themselves. Since writers' claims are often ambiguous, intentionally or not, this approach could lead to a problematic blurring of boundaries between lived experiences and (fictional or poetic) texts. …