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Melancholy and Parapraxis: Rewriting History in Benjamin and Kafka

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Melancholy and Parapraxis: Rewriting History in Benjamin and Kafka 0HODQFKRO\DQG3DUDSUD[LV5HZULWLQJ+LVWRU\LQ%HQMDPLQ DQG.DIND :LOOLDP6$OOHQ MLN, Volume 123, Number 5, December 2008 (Comparative Literature Issue), pp. 1068-1087 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/mln.0.0067 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/summary/v123/123.5.allen.html Access provided by University of Florida Libraries (28 Feb 2015 15:35 GMT) Melancholy and Parapraxis: Rewriting History in Benjamin and Kafka ❦ William S. Allen I. Parable Walter Benjamin’s 1934 essay on Franz Kafka is guided throughout by the diversions of various parables: from Kafka himself, from Jewish and Chinese folklore, and perhaps most significantly, by the story on Potemkin taken from Aleksandr Pushkin that opens the essay. These parables operate in a manner akin to that of the mosaic of quotations that Benjamin pursued in the Trauerspiel study and The Arcades Project, which attempt to allow the work to develop autonomously and contin- gently through the differential effects that each new citation provides, thus enabling the scholar to uncover previously overlooked aspects of the work by enabling it to reveal itself anew. The motivation for this programme lies in the hermeneutic difficulties of bringing out the truth of a particular work, that is, in the problem of interpretation. And the fact that Benjamin responds to Kafka’s work by following Kafka’s own inclination towards parable is significant, for it not only recognises Kafka’s pre-eminent significance as a writer; interpreter of texts but in doing so also brings out the peculiar status of the parable as a means of interpretation. As the term implies, the parable is that which lies alongside [para] the main text, and so its place as an interpretive tool is constrained by the fact that its own existence as a text to be interpreted may lead to a digression in which we are drawn away from the main text and into a parabolic discussion, turning from one diversion to another. This aspect of the parable is what appealed to Kafka, insofar as the parable suspends its own significance as a tool by refusing to be interpreted MLN 123 (2008): 1068–1087 © 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press M L N 1069 unambiguously: any clues that it offers are also held in question by the fact that in offering them it also diverts the reader into further questions, perhaps unrelated to the initial question. Thus the relation of the parable to the main text becomes unclear: which is now the master text and which is the tool? What is the relation between the two, which we as readers are now suspended within? These queries are phrased and rephrased by Benjamin in his essay as he attempts to draw out the heart of Kafka’s concerns as a writer. For my own purposes, the strand of this discussion that I will focus on is that which centres on the relation of writing to history, and the particular temporal turning that Kafka and Benjamin seek to bring out in this relation. The ambiguity of the parable as an interpretive tool is conveyed by Benjamin in the way that he uses two particular tales to bookend his essay: the story by Pushkin that opens the essay and the Jewish folktale that appears at the beginning of the last section, for the fact that these are both stories taken from outside Kafka’s work indicates part of Benjamin’s method of approaching Kafka by translating his concerns into a parallel context. Firstly, then, is Pushkin, whose own life carries some of the hallmarks of Kafka’s unhappy existence as an outsider, and the story of Potemkin and Shuvalkin; although this is well known, its details must be stressed, for it is in these details that Benjamin finds a way of reading alongside Kafka. Prince Grigori Potemkin was chief of the Russian army and the most powerful statesman in the court of Catherine the Great, and the only one of her lovers who had managed to retain his position after losing her affections. However, he was of a deeply melancholic disposition, and when this mood took him he was inconsolable and would brook no disturbances. As Pushkin’s story relates, on one such occasion Potemkin’s depression proved deeper than usual. Days turned to weeks, and still he would not return to the court. The imperial councillors became more and more agitated as the days passed: official documents were mounting up that required his signature, and the empress was becoming angered by the delay. Struggling to know what to do, the councillors were one day discussing the problem when a lowly official by the name of Shuvalkin passed by and asked if he might be given the chance to try and obtain the prince’s cooperation. Increasingly desperate, the councillors saw no reason to refuse, so they passed the pile of documents over to Shuvalkin who calmly strode off through the council chambers, through the main doors to the prince’s rooms, and then finally, without pausing, into Potemkin’s private study. Potemkin sat on the edge of his bed, dishevelled and chewing his 1070 WILLIAM S. ALLEN nails, but Shuvalkin approached him, took a pen from his desk, dipped it in ink, and placed it into the prince’s hand. Potemkin looked up at the young official blankly and then back at the papers, and then one after another he signed them. Triumphant, Shuvalkin returned and presented the pile of signed documents to the councillors, who frantically went through them. Then they stopped and looked round at the young official, and something in their faces showed that the praise that he had been expecting would not be forthcoming. “What is it?” he asked, and they returned the documents to him wordlessly. Looking through them now for the first time, Shuvalkin saw his own name at the bottom of each page. “This story is like a herald, storming two hundred years ahead of Kafka’s work. The enigma that beclouds it [sich in ihr wölkt] is Kafka’s.”1 Thus Benjamin states directly after relating this tale and straightaway we are presented by the dimensions and focus of the subsequent discussion: the relation of the parable to time and the “enigma that beclouds it.” Indeed it is an enigma, for even now “two hundred years” have not yet passed since Pushkin penned this story; is this simply a mistake on Benjamin’s part, or a point of hyperbole? Or is it perhaps a hint of the strange relation that writing bears with history? Before attempting an interpretation of this story, which Benjamin calmly assimilates to Kafka’s world (Shuvalkin “is Kafka’s K.”) in a manner that only makes it less clear, I will move on to the second of the two parables that I want to focus on: the Jewish folktale that opens the final section of the essay GS( 2.2: 410; SW 2: 795). In doing so, I wish to make my own parabolic reading by passing directly over the body of the essay to take in its outer movements, the curves of its trajectory, as these will draw out more strongly the strange relation of writing and history that I have just mentioned, which is itself the focus of this second parable. A group of men were sitting together in their local inn one Sabbath evening when their discussion turned to what they would each wish for, should they have the chance. One man said that he would wish for wealth, another said a son-in-law, and another a new carpentry bench. When they had each spoken they noticed a beggar they had not seen before who was sitting silently on a bench in the corner, and they asked him what he would wish for. With much hesitation he replied: “I wish that I was a powerful king who reigned over a large domain, then one night whilst I was asleep the castle would be attacked by my enemies, by dawn they would have defeated the guards and reached my bedroom chambers, thereupon I would be forced to rush M L N 1071 from the castle in just my shirt and flee across country, travelling all through the day until I came to this inn.” Surprised, the men asked him what he would have gained by this wish, and the beggar said: “A shirt” (GS 2.2: 433; SW 2: 812). Aside from the traditional comic conventions, there is a powerful critique of redemption and transcendence here, and more obscurely, a strange relation of time is sketched out in which the beggar wishes for something that appears to very closely resemble what may already have happened. More precisely, the standard timeframe of wish-fulfilment is usually based on a transformed future, but the beggar has turned this transformation back onto the past, such that the present moment becomes the point at which the wish is fulfilled, by virtue of the fact that the past has been rewritten, thereby disavowing any intention towards what might be and focusing instead on what might have been. In doing so, the redemptive aspect of the wish is turned directly back onto the present, which is transformed in only the very slightest of ways, thereby rewriting its transcendent aspect as something much more sober and mundane: rather than escaping from life by way of the fulfilled wish, the beggar simply returns more fully to himself. It is as if nothing has happened and yet everything has changed, which for Maurice Blanchot is the definition of the disaster.2 Returning to Shuvalkin we can now see the profound ambiguity in the relation that the young official finds with the prince, for in placing Shuvalkin’s name at the bottom of the official documents, Potemkin has simultaneously raised him up to the highest state of office and cast him down into the lowest disgrace.
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