Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke by Hideo Nakazawa (review)

Following up on recent scholarship discussing Franz Kafka's literary relationship to China, Hideo Nakazawa's recent monograph Kafka und Buber: Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer und seine Satellitenwerke makes new waves by bringing Martin Buber into dialogue with the celebrated Austro-Hungarian author on this topic. The objective of this work, according to Nakazawa, is "in eigenen Werken von Kafka die Figuren zu ermitteln, die auf Buber hinzudeuten scheinen […] wie Kafka dort einige Lieblingswörter Bubers verwertete: Verantwortung, Einheit, Blut, entzweien, usw" (5). Nakazawa chooses these words in particular and employs a textual analysis that compares the usages of these words within several of Buber's works, namely Mein Weg zum Chassidismus, Der Jude und sein Judentum, and various articles published by himself and others under his editorship with Der Jude, among other works, and Kafka's "Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer" along with its "satellite-works." These texts include "Eine kaiserliche Botschaft," "Ein altes Blatt" (grouped together with "Beim Bau" in this book as Die Chinesische Mauer), "Die Gruftwächter," "Kastengeist," "Der Nachbar," "Schakale und Araber," "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie," "Die Abweisung," "Zur Frage der Gesetze," and "Die Stadwappen." Without otherwise explicitly stating this, Nakazawa argues broadly that reading Kafka alongside the Viennese cultural Zionist reveals how Kafka's writings on China show us his nuanced understanding and opinion of Jewish nationalism.

The first chapter of the book explains the intellectual origins of Buber's cultural Zionism to set up how Buber's positions on Jewish identity inform Kafka's works in the subsequent chapters. Nakazawa illustrates here how Buber's cultural Zionism differs from Theodor Herzl's political Zionism and how Buber's understanding of Zionism is steeped in religious Hasidism. In the second and third chapters, Nakazawa examines "den Mauerbau und die geheimnisvolle Führerschaftim Kontext von Kafkas Auseinandersetzung mit dem Buberschen Zionismus" (70) present in Die Chinesische Mauer. Although the comparative similarities between the presence of terms like Verantwortung, Einheit, und Blut in the works of both Buber and Kafka make a compelling case for revealing Kafka's position on Zionism vis-à-vis Buber, Nakazawa also keenly shows how Kafka differs from and even criticizes Buber. As Nakazawa notes, Kafka "glaubt, dass auch der Kulturzionismus unter der Führung Buber [die] Kernfrage [of Zionism] noch nicht genügend beantworte" (26), adding that "Kafkas Sicht auf den Zionismus […] ziemlich kritisch und skeptisch ist" (35). One tremendous reason for Kafka's skepticism of Zionism in any form emerges from the political and cultural uncertainties of the Great War and the crumbling of the Habsburg Empire as well as the ushering in of unknown nationalisms to replace the Empire.

The issue of metaphor and Empire in Die Chinesische Mauer follows through into his fourth chapter, where he attempts to distill the symbolic relationship between China and Jewishness. Keen to argue against any claim that Kafka's writings on China could actually be about China, Nakazawa claims, "Meines Erachtens ist das Kaisertum eine ausgezeichnete Metapher, die Kafka einfiel, um das Problem des Judentums zu untersuchen und zu beschreiben" (85). Rather than giving the reader a firm, conclusive reading, however (and perhaps in truer fashion to Kafka's style of writing), the author spends much of this chapter giving us possible readings that range from textually fitting Duden's definitions of Kaisertum and Judentum, inasmuch as those definitions line up with one another in Kafka's writings on China, to interpreting those writings through an article written in Der Jude. These readings, following through in the subsequent chapters that treat the remaining works by Kafka, demonstrate the degree to which Kafka ultimately sides (or does not side) with Buber's view of Zionism mediated through religious Hasidism. These readings are especially significant to "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie" and "Schakale und Araber," as both were initially published in Der Jude under Buber's editorship. The reader learns from this book that these two stories were selected...