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Violent Modernists: the Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature

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Violent Modernists: the Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature Violent Modernists Violent Modernists The Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature Kai Evers northwestern university press evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2013 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2013. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Evers, Kai. Violent modernists : the aesthetics of destruction in twentieth-century German literature / Kai Evers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8101-2930-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. German fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Violence in litera- ture. 3. Modernism (Literature)—Germany. I. Title. PT772.E93 2013 833'.9109—dc23 2013008755 Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons At- tribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. In all cases attribution should include the following information: Evers, Kai. Violent Modernists: The Aesthetics of Destruction in Twentieth-Century German Literature. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2013. For permissions beyond the scope of this license, visit http://www.nupress.north- western.edu/ An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of librar- ies working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowl- edgeunlatched.org. Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction xi Chapter 1 Modernity, Modernism, and Violence 3 Chapter 2 Causing Violence: Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless and the Path to an Antireductionist Theory of Violence 39 Chapter 3 War, Violence, and the Malleable Self: Robert Musil’s Postwar Critique of Violence in The Man Without Qualities 75 Chapter 4 Kafka’s Poetics of the Knife: On Violence, Truth, and Ambivalence in In the Penal Colony 117 Chapter 5 Chemical Warfare and Destructive Satires: Canetti and Benjamin’s Search for the Murderous Substance of Satire 156 Conclusion 209 Notes 213 Bibliography 235 Index 253 Acknowledgments This book took far too long to complete, which is perhaps as it should be. Not remembering to thank someone who had a direct influence on this study will be an unfortunate consequence of such an extended period of writing. Therefore I will acknowledge here my gratitude first of all to this unnamed friend and colleague and hope that not too many individuals will realize that I am speaking of them right now. Next I thank friends, colleagues, and students, many of them from three institutions in particular: Duke University, Middlebury College, and the University of California, Irvine. The following helped in many con- versations to keep the work on this study interesting and stimulating and their generosity of thought has prevented many mistakes from making it onto these pages: Katja Altpeter-Jones, Anke Biendarra, Janelle Blan- kenship, Robert Buch, Sibylle Fischer, Michael Geisler, Robert Gibson, Roman Graf, Erin Hourigan, Fredric Jameson, Kristen Kramer, Lisa Lee, Glenn Levine, John Lyon, Bob Möller, Alberto Moreiras, Michael Mor- ton, Simona Moti, Kamakshi Murti, Jane Newman, David Pan, Thomas Pfau, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Thomas Saine, Rebecca Schuman, Sumie Song, Mark Southern, Daniel Villanueva, Katrin Völkner, and Ingeborg Walther. Particular thanks belong to Henry L. Carrigan Jr. at Northwestern University Press. I could not ask for a better editor. Special thanks go to project editor Gianna Mosser. It is a true pleasure to express my gratitude to five scholars and men- tors without whose continued encouragement and support this book would not have been written: Gail Hart, Julia Hell, Ruth Klüger, James Rolleston, and John Smith. I have no doubt that those parts of the follow- ing chapters that make good sense owe this quality to their advice. For the rest of the book I take all responsibility. This book is dedicated to the patience and love of my family and to no one more than Laura Barnebey and Theo Barnebey Evers. vii Abbreviations A Elias Canetti. Auto-da-Fé. Translated by C. W. Wedgewood. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984. BF Franz Kafka. Briefe an Felice. Edited by Erich Heller and Jür- gen Born. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1967. BM Franz Kafka. Briefe an Milena. Expanded Edition. Edited by Jürgen Born and Michael Müller. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986. Br Robert Musil. Briefe 1901–1942. Edited by Adolf Frisé. Rein- bek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981. D Franz Kafka. The Diaries 1910–1923. Edited by Max Brod. Translated by Joseph Kresh and Martin Greenberg. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. ERK Robert Musil. Essays und Reden, Kritik. Edited by Adolf Frisé. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978. KKAS Franz Kafka. Amtliche Schriften. Edited by Klaus Hermsdorf and Benno Wagner. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004. KKBr I Franz Kafka. Briefe 1900–1912. Edited by Hans-Georg Koch. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999. KKBr II Franz Kafka. Briefe 1900–1912. Edited by Hans-Georg Koch. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001. KKDzL Franz Kafka. Drucke zu Lebzeiten. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Georg Koch, and Gergard Neumann. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999. KKNSF I Franz Kafka. Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente I. Ed- ited by Malcom Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1993. KKNSF II Franz Kafka. Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II. Edited by Jost Schillemeit. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992. ix x Abbreviations KKT Franz Kafka. Tagebücher. Edited by Hans-Georg Koch, Mi- chael Müller, and Malcom Pasley. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1990. L Franz Kafka. Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors. Trans- lated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. LF Franz Kafka. Letters to Felice. Edited by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born. Translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duck- worth. New York: Schocken Books, 1973. LM Franz Kafka. Letters to Milena. Edited by Willy Haas. Trans- lated by Tania and James Stern. New York: Schocken Books, 1953. M Franz Kafka. Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Translated with an introduction by Michael Hofmann. New York: Pen- guin Books, 2007. MoE Robert Musil. Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Edited by Ad- olf Frisé. 2 vols. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981. MwQ Robert Musil. The Man Without Qualities. Translated by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1995. PS Robert Musil. Precision and Soul. Translated by Burton Pike and David S. Luft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. PuS Robert Musil. Prosa und Stücke. Kleine Prosa, Aporismen, Autobiographisches. Edited by Adolf Frisé. Reinbek: Ro- wohlt, 1978. T Robert Musil. Tagebücher. Edited by Adolf Frisé. 2 vols. Rein bek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983. VZ Robert Musil. Prosa und Stücke. Kleine Prosa, Aporismen, Autobiographisches. Edited by Adolf Frisé. Reinbek bei Ham- burg: Rowohlt, 1978. YT Robert Musil. The Confusions of Young Törless. Translated by Shaun Whiteside. New York: Penguin, 2001. Introduction From Homer to Dante and Tolstoy to Cormac McCarthy, detailed de- scriptions of war, murder, and punishment are at the center of the most revered works of Western literature. Few topics could claim a literary tradition as long and continuous as the representation of physical vio- lence. Few topics remain more controversial. Does the human capacity for violence and destruction pose a greater or smaller risk today than ever before? Two recent studies by renowned scholars in their respective fields take the long view of human history and come to diametrically op- posed conclusions. The experimental psychologist Steven Pinker (2011) presents statistics and scientific evidence to support his thesis that human history is a history of the decline of violence. The sociologist Robert Bel- lah fails to see such progress in human evolution, and arrives at the fol- lowing risk assessment: Of course we may well blow each other up with atomic weapons before we wipe out all species of life, including our own, by more gradual means. [. .] If there is one primary practical intent in a work like this that deals with the broadest sweep of biological and cultural evolution, it is that the hour is late: it is imperative that humans wake up to what is happening and take the necessarily dra- matic steps that are so clearly needed but also at present so clearly ignored by the powers of this earth. (2011, 602) Not surprisingly, the question of whether and how violence and de- struction should be represented stands at the core of literary controversies as well. This is particularly true for German modernism, for the most demanding literary texts written at the time and place when and where much of the twentieth-century mass violence originated.1 When W. G. Sebald questioned Döblin’s standing as one of Europe’s great modern- ists, he accused the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz and Wallenstein of exhibiting fascist tendencies in his recurrent depictions of violence (1980, 160). When Karl Heinz Bohrer sought to establish Ernst Jünger as one of the few truly modernist writers, he based his argument on Jünger’s xi xii Introduction portrayals of shock and terror (1978). Helmut Lethen applauds the au- thors of the militant avant-garde during the 1920s for their ability to confront directly the violent historical changes of their time. In the same breath, he mocks the supposedly more fragile modernist writers for their inability to bear a closer look at violence. Lethen mentions in particular Hofmann sthal, Mann, and Musil, and claims that German and Austrian modernists could “endure the process of historical acceleration only from a healthy distance” (2002, 6). What then is the relationship between violence and modernism, ex- cept contentious? Two highly influential responses to this question have been given.
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