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The Uses of Kafka

The Uses of Kafka
Litujeme, ale tato diskuse byla uzavřena a již do ní nelze vkládat nové příspěvky.
Děkujeme za pochopení.
Brian, thanks for the
Brian, thanks for the comments. I said that the Czech Republic wasn''t a valid home for the archives for the same reason that the Ukraine isn''t seen as a logical repository of all Schulz''s work, though he lived there his whole life (I''m not talking about just the murals). There are an ample number of Czech cultural artefacts that can''t leave the country because they are considered part of the country''s heritage, which is based around an ethnic group that, until the war and the expulsions afterward, co-existed with other ethnic groups in the same country. That Kafka was secular doesn''t seem to change the fact of which of the three main ethnic groups in Prague he belonged to - Czech, German and Jewish. Whether that means Israel has the same right to preserve his manuscripts that the Czech Republic or Germany take with their own heritage is, admittedly, more problematic, but not I think at all because of religious observance. Of course there will always be a lot of ambiguity, so not mentioning Schulz being from Poland is absurd - yet it wouldn''t be necessary to mention that an ethnically Polish writer chose to write in Polish, whereas with Schulz that question wasn''t so clear cut.
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Brian R. Banks

6. 3. 2011 20:13
kafka & schulz
Mr.Stein''s article is interesting but overlooks a fundamental point that the Israeli''s ignore too. As my Muse & Messiah: The Life, Imagination & Legacy of Bruno Schulz (Inkermen Press 2006) points out, Kafka & Schulz were OUTSIDE their ancestral religion because they did not participate in them, they were secularised. Kafka could not spell the Hebrew for circumciser, and did not attend a synagogue in adulthood until his last year. They did not eat kosher, and Schulz seems not have had a bar mitvah while he also publicly stated in the local newspaper that he no longer considered himself of the faith. So what does being Jewish apply to? A designate that was by no means a ''community'' before the war anyway but subject to bitter dispute. Both writers spoke AUSTRIAN German (as under the Habsburg Empire) not German, that is the point of Kafka''s discussions with his lovers. Yad Vashem Museum displays Schulz as a ''Jewish artist'' with no mention of Poland, that is the absurdity. And why, Sir, is Prague an invalid home for the archive? Even allowing for its ignoring of him until a tourist attraction, Kafka lived there most of his life. It has more validity than for say Rilke, who disliked it. The Czechs and Slovaks recognised a country called Bohemia. The problem is that Institutes (and now states join the greedy Klondike trail) think they have a monopoly on artistic heritage; they do not. Cultural spaces during biography hold and retain that right, it overrides sordid bickering at least.best wishes Brian R. Banks    
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