! ! ! ! Reading Kafka in Prague: The Reception of Franz Kafka between the East and the West during the Cold War Veronika Tuckerova Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © 2012 Veronika Tuckerova All rights reserved ! Abstract Reading Kafka in Prague: The Reception of Franz Kafka between the East and the West during the Cold War Veronika Tuckerova This dissertation explores the transmission, reception, and appropriation of Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, against the background of the contemporary international readings of Kafka, especially in West Germany. The first chapter examines Paul Eisner’s translation of the Trial in the context of his influential triple “ghetto theory” and from the perspective of his contemporary translation discourse as well as recent translation theories. The second chapter focuses on the reception of Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka, and the reasons why this controversial text was welcomed in the West and dismissed in the East as a forgery. The chapter uses new archival discoveries about Janouch and discusses questions of witness and testimony. The role of “witness” took an ominous turn in the case of Eduard Goldstücker, who is the focus of the third chapter. Goldstücker was tried in the Slánsk! show trials in the early 1950s and forced to testify against Slánsk!. The chapter explores how Goldstücker attempted to come to terms with his past through reading of Kafka. The secret police files that were kept on him provide new insights on Goldstücker’s published texts, public persona, and the Liblice Conference that succeeded in rehabilitating Kafka in 1963. The last chapter examines the samizdat publications of Kafka’s works. This chapter spans the 1960s to the 1980s underground culture and examines the appropriation by Ivan Jirous of the “ghetto” topos and Kafka for the Czech Underground. ! I address the following topics: the status of witness as a legitimization of an “authentic” reading, censorship, the interplay between politics and literature, and the construction of authorship.! Table of Contents Introduction: Reading Kafka in Prague 1 Chapter I: Translator’s Visibility: Pavel Eisner’s Translation of The Trial 18 Chapter II: A Controversial Testimony: Gustav Janouch’s Gespräche mit Kafka 79 Chapter III: Kafka as a Secular Prophet? Eduard Goldstücker and the 1963 Conference in Liblice (The Trial) 137 Chapter IV: Kafka in Czech Samizdat 221 Conclusion 257 Bibliography 266 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! "! Credits and Acknowledgments I wish to thank my dissertation advisers Andreas Huyssen and Mark Anderson for encouraging me to pursue research about the reception of Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia, for their trust, and comments. Veronika Ambros was an excellent host during my short stay at the University of Toronto in the Spring 2006; I wish to thank her for engaging discussions, which initiated the topic of the readings of Kafka in Czechoslovakia. The following people shared with me generously their memories and insights: Petr Brod, Josef !ermák, Peter Demetz, Ivan Dubsk", Ivan Martin Jirous (+2011), Alexej Kusák, Ji#ina $iklová, Peter F. Neumeyer, Josef $kvoreck" (+2012), Magda $ev%íková, Jan $ulc, Jind#ich Toman, and Paul Wilson. I thank Ji#í Gruntorád of Libri Prohibiti in Prague for his assistance during my research at their samizdat collections, and the staff at the Národní archiv (National Archive), Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví in Prague, and Archiv bezpe%nostních slo&ek Ministerstva vnitra (Archive of the Security Forces of the Ministry of Interior) in Prague. My research was supported by a Faculty Fellowship from Columbia University (2005- 2011) and by a DAAD fellowship (2008-2009). I thank Professor Hans Dieter Zimmermann for inviting me to be a Fellow at the Technische Universität in Berlin. Professor Joseph Vogl from Humboldt Universität generously discussed with me the further contexts of my research. During my research stay in Prague, I enjoyed the opportunity to teach at New York University’s Prague campus a class on “Kafka and his Contexts.” The course enabled me to read Kafka’s works anew; during our walks with students, I also learned to appreciate Kafka’s Prague. I thank Ji#í Pehe, Thea Favaloro, and Magdaléna Platzová for this invitation. I presented chapters of my dissertation at various conferences and speaker series, including the German research colloquium at Queen’s University, Belfast (2007), the CUTG at the University of Nottingham (2008), the conference “Kafka und Macht, 1963- 1968-2008” in Liblice (2008); at OSA Archivum in Budapest (Beyond Cold War ! ""! Linearities: Entangled Histories and Interactive Ideas, 2009), the speaker series at Spole!nost Franze Kafky in Prague (2009), the conference “Kafka und Prag” at Goethe Institut in Prague (2010), the Czech Workshop at Columbia University (2011), and the ICLS Colloquium at Columbia University (2011). I greatly benefitted from comments at these diverse occasions. A version of the second chapter was printed as the Afterword in the first Czech edition of Conversations with Kafka. I thank the publisher Viktor Stoilov and the editor Jan $ulc, for entrusting me with writing it, and to Marek Nekula for his useful comments. Finally, I wish to thank my family and friends in Prague and in New York. I especially thank Avi for discussing the topic with me in the early stages of my writing, during our walks along the Irish Sea, and to my mother for creating a special bond with my daughter Sophia, born during chapter two, in the first year of her life in Prague. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! """! !" " Introduction: Reading Kafka in Prague This dissertation explores the transmission, reception, and appropriation of Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, against the background of the contemporary international readings of Kafka, especially in West Germany. I focus on four pivotal figures in the transmission and reception of the author in Czechoslovakia: Kafka’s Prague contemporary, the essayist and translator Paul Eisner (1889-1958), the controversial author of Conversations with Kafka, Gustav Janouch (1903-1968), the former scholar and diplomat and key figure of the conference on Kafka in Liblice, Eduard Goldstücker (1923-2000), and Ivan Martin Jirous (b. 1944), the main figure of the 1970s-1980s Czech underground, who produced samizdat, typescript copies of Kafka’s, in the early 1960s, a time when Kafka’s works were not widely available. I use the term Cold War in the title, though I use Communism more frequently, because in the Czech context, the word Communism was much more prevalent. Cold War (studená válka) was reserved for official propaganda in the media; the term emphasizes the international, East-West conflict. (Blaive 2009) I use the term Cold War intentionally to allow some distance from the Czech context, and introduce a broader, European and trans-Atlantic perspective that allows seeing the reception of Kafka in Czechoslovakia as part of a broader discourse. In line with contemporary writing about Cold War culture, I emphasize exchange and communication " " #" " rather than the impenetrability of the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain was more porous than is usually assumed. (Ackermann, 2000) The study of the reception of Kafka under Communism has “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions. The vertical dimension is that of coming to terms with the past, the Stalinist past in Czechoslovakia. The Liblice Conference and 1960s debates over politics and literary interpretation were about the immediate past. Horizontally, I follow the international debate among the Eastern Bloc countries, and the debate between them and the politically defined “West,” most notably West Germany, France, and Austria. The study of the reception of Kafka in Czechoslovakia under Communism reveals the disjointedness of the narratives in Czechoslovakia and the “West”.1 The existing critical narrative told by Western scholars accentuates moments such as the 1963 Liblice Conference on Kafka, when Kafka was cautiously brought into the public realm at the beginning of liberalization. Moments such as this one correspond to the political developments in the country; the official reception of Kafka was possible during the brief periods of liberalization. The Liblice conference is valued as the key event in introducing Kafka to Eastern Europe. A fascinating picture emerges; it is striking that an author – or, more precisely a construction of an author and the body of his work – could play such a significant role in the cultural politics of the late 1950s and the early 1960s. The Kafka debate stood for the debate about Modernism, and the debate about Modernism stood for a much larger political and cultural conflict about change, reform, and liberalization in post-Stalinist """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 1 Terms “West” and “East” have been contested, as they simplify the more complex relationships and delineations. Czechs consider themselves to be Central Europeans. I nevertheless use the Cold War terms West and East as they capture the assumptions, characteristics, projections and tensions between the two blocs. " " $" " Eastern Europe, the thawing of the status quo. Kafka is often understood as the shibboleth of cultural de-Stalinization in Eastern Europe. (French, 1982, Bathrick, 1995) In the case of Liblice, the Western liberal