{"title":"Preface: German Quarterly Special Issue on Form","authors":"Hester Baer, Karin Schutjer","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12496","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intertextuelle Verhandlungen. Zur Kafka-Rezeption in der afrikanischen Literatur","authors":"Nadjib Sadikou","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12483","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In einem Brief an Oskar Pollak vom 27.01.1904 wirft Kafka folgende Frage auf: „Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch?“ Ein Buch, so Kafka, müsse die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns (<i>Briefe</i> 36). Eine solche kafkaeske Wahrnehmung der Literatur als „Faustschlag“ lässt sich in der Entstehung der afrikanischen Literatur dokumentieren: Aimé Césaire, neben Léopold Sédar Senghor und Gontrand Damas, Mitbegründer der in den 1930er Jahren in Paris entstandenen kulturphilosophischen und literarischen Emanzipationsbewegung „Négritude“, verstand Literatur als „arme miraculeuse“ (Césaire 31), als wundervolle Waffe, durch welche die damalige Schwarze Elite in Frankreich ihre von der französischen Politik abgewerteten kulturellen Identitäten aufwerten konnte. Vor allem Césaire und Senghor waren darauf bedacht, auf der Grundlage einer perfekten und profunden Kenntnis der französischen Sprache die „kolonialen Mythen“ anzuprangern (Riesz X). Bücher zu verfassen war bei den Schwarzen Eliten der Königsweg, den französischen Institutionen und Behörden die Vielfalt Schwarzer Kulturen zu zeigen. Künstlerische Beziehungen und Querbezüge zu Kafka lassen sich obendrein durch intertextuelle Elemente in vielen westafrikanischen Werken belegen. Leo Kreutzer hat am Beispiel von Kafkas Novelle <i>Die Verwandlung</i> und der Erzählung <i>L'os</i> des senegalesischen Schriftstellers Birago Diop demonstriert, „wie sich die Wahrnehmung literarischer Texte aus zwei kulturell sehr unterschiedlichen Kontexten durch die Inszenierung von ‚regards croisés‘ und durch eine interkulturell ‚doppelblickende Lektüre‘ zwischen ihnen erweitern kann“ (Kreutzer 60–61).</p><p>Am Beispiel des Romans <i>Le regard du Roi</i> (<i>Der Blick des Königs</i>) des guineischen Schriftstellers Camara Laye (1928-1980) möchte ich einige intertextuelle Bezüge bzw. Aspekte der „Absorption und Transformation“ (Kristeva 347) von Kafkas Roman <i>Das Schloß</i> aufzeigen. Camara Laye ist deswegen für die frankophone afrikanische Literatur relevant, weil seine Romane als unverzichtbare Werke der afrikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur eingestuft werden können. Bereits das von Laye ausgewählte Epigraph für den Roman <i>Le regard du roi</i>, nämlich „[…] Le Seigneur passera dans le couloir regardera le prisonnier et dira: - Celui-ci, il ne faut pas l´enfermer à nouveau: il vient à moi“ (Laye, <i>Le regard</i> 3) ist ein Zitat von Kafka: „während des Transportes werde zufällig der Herr durch den Gang kommen, den Gefangenen ansehen und sagen: ‚Diesen sollt ihr nicht wieder einsperren. Er kommt zu mir‘“ (Kafka, <i>Hochzeitsvorbereitungen</i> 81). In Anlehnung an Gérard Genettes Kategorien der Intertextualität könnte man Camara Layes Epigraph als „Paratext“ auffassen (Genette 11). Ähnlich wie in <i>Das Schloß</i>, in dem das ganze Streben des Protagonisten K. darauf gerichtet ist, sich dem Schloss zu nähern und Zugang zur Schloss-Welt zu e","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"536-539"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gequ.12483","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142860244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Sociality of Form: Camillo Sitte's Urban Morphologies","authors":"Margareta Ingrid Christian","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12485","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines a text by a lesser-known figure of fin-de-siècle Vienna, Camillo Sitte's <i>Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen</i> (1889), tracing the relationship between urban form and social structure in Sitte's treatise. It identifies the key points of this relationship in terms of <i>causality</i>: the form of public spaces can determine the form of social life; <i>surrogacy</i>: the throngs of the places’ inanimate inhabitants, the statues and monuments, are placeholders for the missing human gatherings; and finally <i>displacement</i>: the thick sociality of community life is transferred onto a heightened relationality with urban forms. Sitte's text sublimates the social; it diffuses abstract social structures—density, relationality, connection—onto the spatial morphologies of the city. Ultimately, this diffusion results in a capacious yet weakened model of sociality.</p>","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"490-505"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gequ.12485","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142859926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Meter Against Essentialism","authors":"Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12484","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent scholarship on poetic materiality has found itself caught between celebration of the way rhythm might link language and the body, on the one hand, and critiques of the way such a link can lead and has led to various types of essentialism, on the other. Rhythm has a long history of activating essentialist tropes of primitivism and savagery, which in turn see certain groups (children, women, the “insane,” or racialized others) as fully determined by sensory language and bodily rhythm. In the face of this history and its afterlives, I argue for meter as a resource to help readers and scholars of poetry identify and critique essentializing approaches while upholding at least the possibility of claims for the affective and somatic efficacy of poetic language.</p>","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"455-471"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gequ.12484","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142860148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Benjamins Kafka: Im Zwielicht der Betrachtung","authors":"Anette Schwarz","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12478","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"526-528"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Uniform Fantasies: Soldiers, Sex, and Queer Emancipation in Imperial Germany By Jeffrey Schneider, University of Toronto Press. 2023. pp. 344. $42.95 (paperback) $42.95 (e-book and pdf)","authors":"Lynne Tatlock","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12491","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"557-559"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imprints in the cosmic background radiation: Franz Kafka and the multiverse","authors":"Kata Gellen","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12486","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"547-550"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"German Literature as a Transnational Field of Production: 1848–1919 By Lynne Tatlock and Kurt Beals (Eds.), Camden House. 2023. pp. 336. $120 (hardcover), $29.95 (ebook).","authors":"Daniel DiMassa","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12492","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"567-569"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory By Eric L. Santner, University of Chicago Press. 2022. pp. 256. $75.00 (hardcover), $25.00 (paperback), $24.99 (ebook)","authors":"Britton Edelen","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12495","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"573-575"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Amorous politics","authors":"John Zilcosky","doi":"10.1111/gequ.12488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/gequ.12488","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Was Kafka a political resister? His early biographer, Klaus Wagenbach, called him a socialist. Theodor Adorno saw defiance in Kafka's “autonome” art (135). Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari cited Kafka's stubborn bachelordom as a politics of flight. Steven Soderbergh imagined an anarchic, violent freedom fighter in <i>Kafka</i>. But might the poet from Prague be offering us another, universally relevant form of resistance? One closer to all of us, hiding in plain sight? Yes, I say: the politics of radical love. It simmers throughout Kafka's texts and explodes powerfully in his last attempt at a novel, his magnum opus, <i>Das Schloß</i>.</p><p>The protagonist, K., meets Frieda, who has a striking look (<i>Blick</i>) in her eye (<i>Schloß</i> 60). This look reveals her readiness for a great struggle. Despite knowing her for less than an hour, K. tells her that they will struggle together. They will become an unusual couple refusing to conform to the expectations of the world. Only by joining forces can they gain the necessary strength: “Die Widerstände der Welt sind groß, sie werden größer mit den größeren Zielen und es ist keine Schande sich die Hilfe selbst eines kleinen einflußlosen aber ebenso kämpfenden Mannes zu sichern” (63–64).</p><p>The parallels are unmistakable between “Frieda” and “Felice”: Felice Bauer, to whom Kafka was twice engaged. With Felice, he had the only satisfying sexual experience in his life, while they were staying in adjoining hotel rooms. He was overcome by her <i>Blick</i>: “Jetzt aber sah ich den Blick des Vertrauens einer Frau und konnte mich nicht verschließen,” and “schön der Blick ihrer besänftigten Augen, das Sichöffnen frauenhafter Tiefe” (<i>Briefe 1914–17</i> 173; <i>Tagebücher</i> 795). Just as K. will take the castle by storm with Frieda, Kafka now plans to establish an intimate, radical household with Felice. He will leave Prague for her hometown of Berlin, where they will sleep in separate rooms with an adjoining door, just as in that magical hotel (<i>Briefe 1914–17</i> 173).</p><p>Neither Kafka's nor K.’s relationship works out, but that subtracts nothing from their potential. The psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg argued that some couples develop a “private morality” that allows them to resist convention (175). Although coupling itself is conventional, amorous pairs are the unit most capable of defying established beliefs, Kernberg insists. Couples are stronger than individuals yet small enough to avoid groupthink. Their independence threatens unstructured groups like political parties or, in Kafka's novel, the village cliques. In a line that Kafka struck through in his draft, K. tells Frieda that her stunning gaze (<i>Blick</i>) belongs to her but also to something larger than her: “Es ist ein Blick, der gewissermassen noch gar nicht Ihnen gehört und doch ihnen mehr” (<i>Schloß: Apparatband</i> 182). A couple of pages later, K. and Frieda conjoin in lovemaking that feels like a shared ethics: they experien","PeriodicalId":54057,"journal":{"name":"GERMAN QUARTERLY","volume":"97 4","pages":"554-556"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gequ.12488","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}