Monologue Overgrown: Revising the world with speech in Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard by Paul Joseph Buchholz This thesis/dissertation document has been electronically approved by the following individuals: Schwarz,Anette (Chairperson) Gilgen,Peter (Minor Member) McBride,Patrizia C. (Minor Member) MONOLOGUE OVERGROWN: REVISING THE WORLD WITH SPEECH IN FRANZ KAFKA, ROBERT WALSER AND THOMAS BERNHARD A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Paul Joseph Buchholz August 2010 © 2010 Paul Joseph Buchholz MONOLOGUE OVERGROWN: REVISING THE WORLD WITH SPEECH IN FRANZ KAFKA, ROBERT WALSER AND THOMAS BERNHARD Paul Joseph Buchholz, Ph. D. Cornell University 2010 My dissertation focuses on unstable, chronically unpublished prose texts by three key 20th century prose writers, quasi-novelistic texts whose material instability indicates a deep discomfort with the establishment of narrative authority qua narrative violence. I argue that Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard, radically refunctionalized the device of interpolated “character monologue,” turning characters' speech from a narrative function, into a site where a text can be rewritten from within. In the Bildungsroman tradition, extended oral interpolations serve as an engine for the expansion and exposition of the plotted work, deepening the epic narrative world and exhaustively presenting a perspective that will be incorporated into biographical trajectory. I locate an estrangement of this practice: moments when oral monologues of fictional interlocutors “overgrow,” becoming an interventionary force that doubles, disrupts and re-frames the narrative discourse out of which it first sprouted. In showing how the labor of ‘world-making’ is split and spread across different competing layers of these texts, my dissertation contributes to the study of the narrative phenomenon of metalepsis. Chapter One examines the determinations and contestations of social ties occurring across the many mutually embedded monologues in Kafka's early novella Beschreibung eines Kampfes. Chapter Two examines Walser’s Räuber-Roman, focusing on the translation of affects into social hierarchies, a process brought to light in protagonist’s monologic declarations of sovereignty. Chapter Three examines the parasitic takeover and revision of a young proletarian protagonist’s biography by an elderly paternal “mad genius” figure, in an early, unpublished novel by Thomas Bernhard. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Paul Buchholz received a BA in German Literature from the University of Wisconsin in 2005, having also studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany, and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. From 2005 to 2010, Paul studied German literature at Cornell University, receiving his MA in 2008 and his PhD in 2010. In September 2010, Paul began teaching in the German department at New York University as an Assistant Professor / Faculty Fellow. iii for Adriana iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is a segment of an ongoing dialogue with the many friends and scholars who have taught and encouraged me over the past five years. My gratitude extends far and wide, and likely beyond the list of names provided here. First and foremost I thank my advisor at Cornell, Anette Schwarz, who supported my initial speculations on my research topic and guided their further development into a full-length study. I thank the other members of my advising committee Patrizia McBride and Peter Gilgen, for indispensable advising and inspiring questions. I would also like to thank other members of the German Studies community at Cornell, in particular Diana Reese and Leslie Adelson. The input and teaching of Peter Hohendahl, David Bathrick, Art Groos and Geoff Waite has brought to my attention a wide array of concerns that have increased the sensitivity of my readings. Amongst my graduate colleagues at Cornell, I would like to thank Carl Gelderloos and Paul Flaig for precise and fascinating feedback. Beyond Cornell, I would like to thank Peter Sprengel at the Free University in Berlin, and Sabine Gross at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for additional input during my academic travels from the US to Europe. The Department of German at the University of Michigan also showed incredible hospitality during my time as a visiting research student in Ann Arbor, and for this I would like to thank Johannes von Moltke, Kersten Barndt, Michael André and Simon Walsh. Special thanks are due to Bernhard Judex and Martin Huber at the Thomas Bernhard archive in Gmunden, Austria; without their practical and intellectual insistence this dissertation never would have happened. Reto Sorg at the Robert Walser center in Bern, Switzerland, was also a generous conversation partner who helped refine my ideas about Robert Walser during my research trip. v In the never-ending process of writing an discovery, my friendship with Ethan Schowalter-Hay and correspondences with Patrick Dewitt provided boundless inspiration, as they continually returned me to basic questions about the craft of writing. I would also like to thank my parents for their support and encouragement from the beginning of my undergraduate study, into the pursuit of the PhD at Cornell. Most of all, I would like to thank Adriana Chira, the love of my life, for the unending conversations that continue to shape my thoughts on literature, and for always brightening my world. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch.......................................................................................iii Dedication......................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements.........................................................................................v Table of Contents..........................................................................................vii Preface........................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1. Fenced in: Monologue and Metalepsis in Franz Kafka’s Description of a Struggle........1 Chapter 2. Dislodged from Debt: Monologue an Authority in Robert Walser’s Robber-novel.........................104 Chapter 3. Urwaldgleich: Thomas Bernhard’s Poetics of Overgrowth in the Unpublished Leichtlebig novel............................................................170 Bibliography...................................................................................................255 vii PREFACE If the object of study in this dissertation is extended, or excessively over- extended monologues of fictional characters, then an initial question that arises is: what norm is appealed to in the designation of excess? To what extent is my analysis a subjectively inflected study about the “intolerable length” or “impatience-causing” moments in novels and novellas? One could reformulate such questions by pointing out that intolerance or impatience with the interminability of certain passages are not necessarily exclusively the external, emotional side-effects of a reader’s individualized experience of reading. Such feelings can be anticipated, acknowledged, and thus also engendered, by the practices of narrative discourse. An example: a curious act of self- justification, possibly even a muted apology, suddenly punctuates the narrative of Christoph Martin Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon, the exemplary, inaugural German Bildungsroman of the 18th century.1 The narrator of Agathon, before proceeding into the unabridged transcription of a lengthy “strange speech,” indirectly addresses his readers and implies that gratitude is owed to him for his exhaustive labor of quotation: Sobald also das Frühstück genommen, und die beschämte Cyane abgetreten war, fing er nach einem kleinen Vorbereitungs-Gespräch, den merkwürdigen Diskurs an, durch dessen vollständige Mitteilung wir desto mehr Dank zu verdienen hoffen, da wir von Kennern versichert worden, daß der geheime Verstand desselben den buchstäblichen an Wichtigkeit noch weit übertreffe, und der wahre und unfehlbare Proceß, den Stein der Weisen zu finden, darin verborgen liege. As soon as they’d had breakfast and the ashamed Cyane had gone, he began after a short preparatory conversation the strange discourse, for whose complete impartation we hope to earn that much more gratitude, since we have been assured by those in the know that the secret sense of it still far exceeds in importance the literal sense, and that the true and unerring process of finding 1 Editions of Wieland’s novel appeared between 1766 and 1794. viii the philosopher’s stone lies hidden therein. (72; emphasis PJB). In initiating an unusually––strangely––long interpolation by the sophist Hippias, the apologia of Wieland’s narrator cogently defines––in a quietly disciplinary manner––the categories that provide cohesion for the novelistic narrative. The forward movement of the novel is part of a partnership between the narrative wir (the dignified, plural title for the narrator-function) and the unnamed reader, who is a function of this passage insofar as they are the ones who would give thanks. These readers are gently indebted to the transcribing we for mediating special knowledge of both (a) the transcribed discourse in its literal form and (b) the hidden, unidentified experts who know the hidden meaning of this transcription. The reader should recognize and show gratitude for the labor