“This Nothing of a Voice”: Kafka’s Josefine Narrative as a Modern Reflection on Revelation and Language
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Bernhard Greiner
Abstract
In reference to the paradoxical classification of art in Kafka’s Josefine story, religious aspects of the artist’s performances and their effect on the audience are scrutinized. The leading question is to what extent it evokes an allusion to the primal scene of divine revelation, following Stéphane Mosès’ commentary in his readings of the Bible. Josefine’s singing with a “nothing of a voice”, reduced to “the slightest of nullities”, the zero-point of signification, nevertheless affects an experience of presence and community that touches the listeners’ entire being. From the perspective of the artist, her song recitals are manifestations of supreme art of which she claims a soteriological significance in respect of her audience who belongs in Kafka’s portrayal obviously to the Jewish people. Around such a tension between maximal restraint of an utterance (the voice onset of the aleph of the word anokhi/I) and all-encompassing meaning (the name of God and all Commandments whose acceptance is constitutive for the Jewish people) circle the theological exegeses of the Sinai-scene (esp. Ex. 20,1) in the tradition of Rashi and Maimonides, in modernity e.g. of Gershom Scholem in dispute with Walter Benjamin on Kafka. It will be shown that the depicted paradoxes of Josefine’s art performances unfold the mentioned tension as an original literary reflection on revelation and language under the conditions of modernity.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Stéphane Mosès and the Invention of German Jewish Modernity
- Stéphane Mosès after the Holocaust
- Stéphane Mosès’ Angels
- Stéphane Mosès’ Hope
- Stéphane Mosès – Le Passeur Among the Ruins
- A German-Jewish Existence: Stéphane Mosès and the Establishment of German Literature Studies at the Hebrew University
- Widerruf: “Revocation” – On Hans Mayer and Stéphane Mosès
- Narrentum and Being-Jewish: Kafka and Benjamin
- “This Nothing of a Voice”: Kafka’s Josefine Narrative as a Modern Reflection on Revelation and Language
- H’arut: A Jewish Reading of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony
- Other Contributions
- Diskurse protestantischer Hebraisten der Frühen Neuzeit über jüdische Kommunikationsformeln
- Addendum: Scholem on Meeting Gordin in Paris in 1946
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Special Section: Stéphane Mosès and the Invention of German Jewish Modernity
- Stéphane Mosès after the Holocaust
- Stéphane Mosès’ Angels
- Stéphane Mosès’ Hope
- Stéphane Mosès – Le Passeur Among the Ruins
- A German-Jewish Existence: Stéphane Mosès and the Establishment of German Literature Studies at the Hebrew University
- Widerruf: “Revocation” – On Hans Mayer and Stéphane Mosès
- Narrentum and Being-Jewish: Kafka and Benjamin
- “This Nothing of a Voice”: Kafka’s Josefine Narrative as a Modern Reflection on Revelation and Language
- H’arut: A Jewish Reading of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony
- Other Contributions
- Diskurse protestantischer Hebraisten der Frühen Neuzeit über jüdische Kommunikationsformeln
- Addendum: Scholem on Meeting Gordin in Paris in 1946
