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Kafka's Travels Kafka’s Travels Kafka’s Travels Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing John Zilcosky palgrave macmillan KAFKA’S TRAVELS Copyright © John Zilcosky, 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,N.Y.10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-6767-1 ISBN 978-1-137-07637-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-07637-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zilcosky, John. Kafka’s travels : exoticism, colonialism, and the traffic of writing / John Zilcosky. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-23281-8 1. Kafka, Franz, 1883–1924—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Kafka, Franz, 1883–1924—Journeys. I. Title. PT2621.A26 Z36 2002 833’.912—dc21 2002029082 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre, Inc. First edition: February 2003 10987654321 To my parents and the memory of Charles Bernheimer Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Ilustrations xi Note on Abbreviations and Translations xv Introduction Kafka’s Travels? 1 Chapter One Transcending the Exotic: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and Kafka’s Early Travel Novel, Richard and Samuel 19 Chapter Two The “America” Novel: Learning How to Get Lost 41 Chapter Three Traveling at Home: The Trial and the Exotic Heimat 71 Chapter Four Savage Travel: Sadism and Masochism in Kafka’s Penal Colony 103 Chapter Five Of Sugar Barons and Land Surveyors: Colonial Visions in Schaffstein’s Little Green Books and The Castle 123 Chapter Six The Traffic of Writing: Technologies of Intercourse in the Letters to Milena 153 Chapter Seven Travel, Death, and the Exotic Voyage Home: “The Hunter Gracchus” 175 Epilogue Kafka’s Final Journey 191 Notes 201 Works Cited 263 Index 281 Plates follow Chapter Four Acknowledgements t gives me great pleasure to acknowledge all the people who helped me over the years of researching and writing this book. First and most Iimportantly,I remember the late Charles Bernheimer, who helped me to conceive this project eight years ago and offered me an enduring model of intellectual generosity. I also thank Mark Anderson, who read through the entire manuscript with great care and first encouraged me to publish it, and Frank Trommler, who gave me important historical advice and stood by my side when I really needed him. Others who have read all or part of this manuscript (in its various drafts), presenting often lively criti- cism, include: David Clark, Rebecca Comay, Stanley Corngold, Ned Fox, Gerald Gillespie, Rolf Goebel, John Noyes, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Jim Re- tallack, Charity Scribner, Fred Seliger, Peter Stallybrass, Klaus Wagenbach, Silke Weineck, Liliane Weissberg, and David Wellbery. I also thank Steve Statler for the mellow pleasures of an old friendship, and for offering— after he read through the penultimate draft—the invaluable perspective of a non-academic Kafka aficionado. For research grants in Germany, I am grateful to the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD, the Comparative Liter- ature and Literary Theory Program at the University of Pennsylvania (es- pecially its benevolent and savvy administrator, Joanne Dubil), the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Connaught Fund at the University of Toronto. The librarians at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (especially Dr. Gisela Herdt), and the University of Toronto (especially Perry Hall) greatly facil- itated my research. Gabi Gottwald and Sólveig Arnarsdóttir provided homes away from home in Berlin. For the opportunity to present drafts of my work as public lectures, I thank the Humanities Center and the Ger- man Department at Williams College (Helga Druxes, Bruce Kieffer, and Gail Newman), and the University of Toronto’s Joint Initiative in German and European Studies. My “mentor”at the University of Toronto, Janet Pa- terson, generously helped me find my way in a new university.My research assistants Hang-Sun Kim and Christine Koch assisted in preparing the x Kafka’s Travels manuscript for publication; they devoted long hours and extraordinary care and diligence to rendering the book presentable and bibliographically accurate. Finally, I am grateful to my father, who offered me, at a crucial moment, his wisdom on completing long and ostensibly unfinishable pro- jects, and to my mother, who taught me how to tell stories (and listen to them). And I thank Rebecca Wittmann, whose critical yet kind eye ac- companied me through the final phases of writing and re-writing, and who always seemed to know exactly how much to help. She even promised to go traveling with me when it was all over. Earlier versions of chapters five, six, and the epilogue appeared, respec- tively, in A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, ed. James Rolleston (Rochester, NY, 2002), German Life and Letters 52 (July 1999), and Alpha- bet City 8 (2002). Permission to reprint is here gratefully acknowledged. List of Illustrations 1. Kafka on a trip, site unknown. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 2. Kafka (on the right) in Northern Italy, with Max Brod’s brother Otto. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 3. Riva del Garda (on Lake Garda), where Kafka spent his September 1909 vacation with Max and Otto Brod. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 4. “Hotel & Pension Riva” (in the middle, background) in Riva del Garda, where Kafka and the Brod brothers stayed. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 5. Kafka on vacation, probably in Riva del Garda (man on right is unknown). Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 6. Pages from the parallel diaries that Max Brod (left) and Kafka (right) kept during their summer 1911 travels through central and western Europe. Archiv Hartmut Binder, Ditzingen. 7. Photographs from the 1909 air show in Brescia as well as the first lines of Kafka’s article, “Die Aeroplane in Brescia.” Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 8. The Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre. Archiv Hartmut Binder, Ditzingen. 9. Clock tower in Brescia. Stereoscopic image that was also in the Emperor’s Panorama that Kafka viewed in Friedland. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 10. Kafka as a child:“There is a childhood photograph of Kafka, a rarely touching portrayal of the ‘poor, xii Kafka’s Travels brief childhood’” (Walter Benjamin). Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 11. A map of central Europe, from the 1910 Baedeker’s Austria-Hungary: Handbook for Travelers owned by Kafka. Karl Baedeker, Österreich-Ungarn (nebst Cetinje Belgrad Bukarest): Handbuch für Reisende (Leipzig, 1910). 12. The Métro station Père Lachaise. Archiv Hartmut Binder, Ditzingen. 13. View of Broadway from above; originally printed in Arthur Holitscher’s Amerika:Today and Tomorrow. Arthur Holitscher, Amerika: heute und morgen (Berlin, 1912). 14. Parisian prostitutes. Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris. 15. Photograph of lynching—ironically subtitled “An Idyll in Oklahama [sic]” by Arthur Holitscher in his critical travelogue about America. Holitscher, Amerika: heute und morgen. 16. Title page of the 1910 Baedeker’s Austria-Hungary: A Handbook for Travelers, which Kafka owned; it announces 143 maps and plans, as well as two panoramas and six floor plans. Baedeker, Österreich-Ungarn. 17. Cover of The Sugar Baron (volume 54 of Schaffstein’s Little Green Books), the book that, according to Kafka,“affects me so deeply that I feel it is about myself.” Oskar Weber, Der Zuckerbaron (Cologne, 1914). 18. Sketch from The Sugar Baron, accompanying the narrator’s description of shooting of ape, who, after falling,“sat exactly like a man with his back against the trunk” and “looked at me almost reproachfully with big, dark eyes.” Weber, Der Zuckerbaron. 19. Cover of In the Hinterlands of German East Africa (volume 3 of Schaffstein’s Little Green Books). Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg, Im Hinterlande von Deutsch-Ostafrika (Cologne, 1910). 20. Sketch from In the Hinterlands of German East Africa accompanying the narrator’s description of a lion List of Illustrations xiii maiming an African. Mecklenburg, Im Hinterlande von Deutsch-Ostafrika. 21. Sketch from In the Hinterlands of German East Africa, featuring the narrator/protagonist looking out over the edge of a promontory. Mecklenburg, Im Hinterlande von Deutsch-Ostafrika. 22. Passport photo of Milena Jesenská. Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 23. Czech and Austrian stamps of the kind Kafka exchanged with Milena Jesenská, (Legionnaire stamps, a special delivery stamp, Austrian stamps overprinted as Czech stamps, a 10-heller stamp overprinted as a special delivery stamp, stamps worth 10 h, 25 h, 50 h, as well as one-crown and two-crown stamps). Websites of The Society for Czechoslovak Philately, Inc. (www.czechoslovakphilately.com/education/ collecting/transition.html) and of Evert Klaseboer (http://home.planet.nl/~klase024) 24. Cover of With the Xinqú Indians (volume 20 of Schaffstein’s Little Green Books), which Kafka gave to Klara Thein in 1913. Karl von den Steinen, Bei den Indianern am Schingu (Cologne, 1912). 25. The last photograph of Kafka (1923/24). Archiv Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin. 26. Diagram of an early-twentieth-century Leichenwagen (corpse car). “Eisenbahnwagen für Leichenbeförderung,” Eisenbahntechnische Zeitschrift 11 (1905): 223–27. 27. Coffin being loaded into a Leichenwagen. “Eisenbahnwagen für Leichenbeförderung.” 28. “Death chamber” in a Leichenwagen. “Eisenbahnwagen für Leichenbeförderung.” Note on Abbreviations and Translations I use the following abbreviations to refer to Kafka’s works. Whenever I have found it necessary to emend the standard translations, I note this par- enthetically.
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