Operation Literatur: Zur Interdependenz von literarischem Diskurs und Schmerzdiskurs im “Prager Kreis” im Kontext der Moderne by Sandy Scheffler (review)

Operation Literatur’s lengthy introduction (82 pages) serves several purposes. Citing various sources, the concepts of pain and pain discourse are discussed, particularly their significance at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. Six exemplary literary works (the “Textkorpus”) to be analyzed against this background are introduced, and the literary category they represent, the “Prager Kreis,” is defined, or at least the history of its different definitions and variously identified members is traced. Before turning to specific discussions of the selected works by Prague authors from the 1902–1928 period, author Sandy Scheffler discusses common features of the Prager Kreis. Its members were sons of assimilated Jews struggling to find their identity in the modern world and focused on religious and philosophical concepts. She comments, “Die den Protagonisten auferlegte willentliche Entscheidung für Gut oder Böse ist eine Handlungsdeterminante, die Fragen nach dem Sinn des Schmerzes und nach der Schuld für Leiden stellt” (18).

Scheffler notes that “Schmerz” is a main theme of literature. On its expression in discourse, she states, “Schmerzäußerung ist also literarische Schmerzverarbeitung” (10). Pain, often a determining factor or turning point for literary protagonists and a force driving plots forward, is understood as “eine Empfindung, die den ganzen Körper in seiner seelischen und physischen Qualität betrifft” (13). Here and elsewhere, Scheffler refers to Freud’s psychoanalytic theories and the ideas of Nietzsche. Other relevant features of the period are the development of anesthesia and drugs to combat pain and the cultural-literary emergence of hypersensitivity, decadence, asceticism, and suicide.

First analyzed is “In der Strafkolonie” (1919) by Franz Kafka. This well-known story features a European explorer invited to witness an execution on a tropical penal colony, performed by a machine that not only administers pain and death but, unseen by the victim, symbolically inscribes the law violated on his back. When the explorer voices disapproval, the local commandant frees the condemned man, accepts his own guilt, and submits himself to the machine. The machine flies apart, he is killed with the words “Be Just” inscribed on his back. The story demonstrates the destructive potential of pain and the melding of “Schmerzdiskurs” and “ästhetischer Schriftdiskurs.”

An execution machine is also featured in a play set in the French Revolution, Doktor Guillotin (1924) by Ludwig Winder. Here, the inventor of the device bearing his name aims at swift death involving little or no pain. Kafka’s machine represents an out-of-date system of martyrdom, Guillotin’s progressive humanitarianism. However, the machine becomes an obsession that undoes Guillotin’s marriage and ultimately destroys him. The story contains a protest against modern mechanization and the message that only human beings, not machines, can make wise decisions about mercy, justice, and punishment.

Also by Winder is Die Reitpeitsche (1928), a novel highlighting a main subject of Expressionism, conflict between father and son. The title refers to an instrument of pain, a riding crop used by the protagonist’s father when he misbehaved as a cadet, a practice that traumatized the vulnerable young man. He overcomes this pain, exacerbated by effects of World War I, through his will to life and aspiration toward a higher plane of development, as described by Nietzsche. By contrast, pain is a destructive force for his father, mired in an outdated, bourgeois system of rigid rules, and himself haunted by the riding crop incident. The father turns his judgmental scruples against himself and ultimately commits suicide.

Suicide also concludes the novel Das ganze Sein ist flammend Leid (1902) by Gustav Meyrink. Its protagonist, Jürgen, is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. He learns that the guilty party is his own brother. He is released but remains depressed and inwardly unfree, continuing to brood over his guilt and fate. Scheffler cites Kant’s distinction between negative freedom, that is, freedom from something, and the...