Le Procès de Kafka est une oeuvre, qui, en tant que telle, peut donner lieu à une multiplicité de lectures : pourquoi vouloir en réduire la portée ? S'il est possible de s'éloigner à peine des ...interprétations déjà existantes du Procès, nous espérons le faire en nous appuyant principalement sur la tradition juive, et sur les interrogations philosophiques qu'elle soulève. Nous tenterons de l'interpréter au regard du droit hébraïque. L'auteur énonce alors d'emblée son hypothèse centrale : oui, le Joseph K. du Procès est coupable, mais sa faute ne précède pas le procès. Le procès est comme un acte performatif : la faute se constitue avec lui. Pour Joseph K., le procès était à la fois l'occasion de sa faute et celle de sa rédemption. Aussi, ce n'est pas parce que Joseph. K est coupable qu'il a un procès, c'est bien plutôt parce qu'il a un procès qu'il va devenir coupable.
Na fotografiji: Dare Valič (Stric Albert) in Aleš Valič (Preiskovalni sodnik), Nataša Barbar Gračner (Leni), Branko Šturbej (Josef K.) v Procesu v režiji Janusza Kice.
In her article, "Agency and Political Engagement in Gide and Barrault's Post-war Theatrical Adaptation of Kafka's The Trial" Yevgenya Strakovsky considers the political themes of André Gide and ...Jean-Louis Barrault's Le Procès (The Trial, 1947), the first theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka's Der Prozess (The Trial, 1914). Strakovsky demonstrates that Le Procès, written and staged in the immediate aftermath of World War II, levels a critique against the passive complicity of citizens in unjust persecution in both its script and its staging. The paper also considers the elements of Kafka's prose that lend themselves to a socially engaged adaptation, and demonstrates that the Gide-Barrault production perpetuates a call to action that is present in Kafka's novel formally and thematically. Strakovsky concludes by suggesting that political adaptations of Kafka's The Trial provide a vital discursive space to examine the nature of, and need for, postmodern agency.
La Lettre au père de Franz Kafka est un document clinique tout à fait singulier, voire exceptionnel à plus d’un titre, tant du point de vue de la littérature que de celui de l’orientation subjective ...de son auteur. Cette orientation se dévoile ici et contribue à nous faire entrevoir l’intrication du troumatisme dans une nécessité d’écriture, nécessité mêlant avec férocité les dimensions du comique et du tragique afin de soutenir ce qui apparaît comme l’horizon du pire lorsque le père fait ravage. Cette nécessité d’écrire apparaît comme un traitement singulier de la honte et de la hantise qui marque irrémédiablement la vie de l’auteur. L’analyse de ces écrits dans cette perspective peut permettre au clinicien un repérage différentiel des concepts de trauma et de ravage.
This dissertation examines the figure of the hand in Kafka’s literary, professional and personal writings and ties that figure to the contemporary contexts of (1) industrial labor, (2) the ...statistical, depersonalized perspective on the subject and its body in the modern social and insurance state, and (3) the exacerbation of these conditions during World War One. I show that hands occur in Kafka’s oeuvre wherever the subject’s identity, agency, and physical integrity is under negotiation. The first chapter analyzes Kafka’s novel Der Verschollene. It links the figure of the hand with the contexts of manual labor and industrial work practices, especially Taylorism, and shows that hands emerge when there is a tension between the worker viewed as an individual and the worker as part of the larger machinery of production. The second chapter describes Kafka’s professional background and his responsibilities at the Bohemian Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute, thereby providing the biographical context for Kafka’s use of the hand trope. It traces the origins of social accident insurance and its inherent tension between two opposing views on the subject—the subject as impersonal part of a collective versus the subject as an individual. The chapter then provides a close reading of one of Kafka’s office writings, an illustrated report about how to prevent work accidents and in particular hand injuries. This text reveals that, even in the professional context, Kafka uses the hand as a metonymy of the threatened body, both of the worker and of its administrator. The third chapter examines the novel Der Proceß as an illustration of the abstract and anonymous worldview dominant in the insurance state, which threatens not only the blue-collar worker but also the white collar employee. Hands appear as random and arbitrary signs of an incomprehensible court system and are at the same time used by the protagonist to establish connections to the court and “grasp” his situation. In addition, the hand represents the writing and creating hand; by connecting the dimension of writing with the figure of the hand as primary political trope in Der Proceß, Kafka shows that the private and public are inseparable. The fourth chapter shows how the short but paradigmatic text “Meine zwei Hände begannen einen Kampf” draws together themes of blue-collar manual labor, white-collar responsibility and authorship by imagining a violent battle between the narrator’s left and right hand, a display of violence that should be read in the context of World War One. In his position at the insurance institute, Kafka was responsible for wounded veterans and traces of his work with amputations and prosthetics show clearly in his later texts. The dissertation will conclude with a brief analysis of “Ein Bericht Für eine Akademie” to show that the hand is the quintessentially human body part that encapsulates the violence and crises that the modern subject has to undergo in order to be a member of (human) society.
Franz Kafka is among the most significant 20th century voices to examine the absurdity and terror posed for the individual by what his contemporary Max Weber termed 'the iron cage' of society. In ...this book, Mark E. Blum examines Kafka's three novels, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle in their exploration of how community is formed or eroded in the interpersonal relations of its protagonists. Critical literature has recognized Kafka's ability to narrate the gestural moment of alienation or communion. This 'social discourse' was augmented, however, by a dimension virtually no commentator has recognized-Kafka's conversation with past and present authors. Kafka encoded authors and their texts representing every century of the evolution of modernism and its societal problems, from Bunyan and DeFoe, through Pope and Lessing, to Fontane and Thomas Mann. The inter-textual conversation Kafka conducted can enable us to appreciate the profound human problem of realizing community within society.
This is a penetrative and perceptive comparison of two of the most discussed novels of the twentieth century. Beginning with Camus' own appraisal of Kafka's work, the study convincingly analyzes the ...authors' fictive creations. Rhein is particularly intrigued by the function of time in the two authors' works, as well as their use of irony and the existentialist themes evident in their characters' pursuits. Through this exploration of theme and narrative devices, the author reveals these works as a reflection of the intellectual climate of twentieth century Europe.
Před 50 lety, ve dnech 27.-28. května 1963, se v liblickém zámku konala konference o díle Franze Kafky. Šlo o význačnou událost, jež měla dosah nejen vědecký, nýbrž také kulturně-politický. Náběhy k ...pozitivnějšímu vnímání Kafkova díla zaznamenáváme již v druhé polovině 50. let, kdy vychází studie Ivana Dubského a Mojmíra Hrbka O Franzi Kafkovi (Nový život 1957, č. 4, s. 415-435). Rok nato se objevuje román Proces v překladu Pavla Eisnera a studie Pavla Reimana Společenská problematika v Kafkových románech (Nová mysl, č. 1, 1958, s. 52-63).
Roman Kanda.