Notes
N o t e s introduction 1. Franz Kafka, “The Building of the Temple” (Der Tempelbau), in Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes in German and English (New York: Schocken Books, 1946), 46– 47, Franz Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente, ed. Jost Schillemeit, Franz Kafka: Schriften Tagebücher Briefe, Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Jürgen Born, Gerhard Neumann , Malcolm Pasley, and Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt: S. Fischer 1992), 2:107–8. 2. See Michel Dentan, Humour et Création Littéraire dans L’Oeuvre de Kafka (Paris: Libraire Minard, 1961), 14. Kafka’s narrative “oscille entre le sérieux et le non-sérieux,” as Dentan observes. 3. Gershom Scholem, “Satz 10, Zehn unhistorische Sätze über Kabbala,” in David Biale, “Gershom Scholem’s Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on Kabbalah: Text and Commentary ,” Modern Judaism 5, no. 1 (1985): 88. 4. See Franz Kafka, diary entry, November 1, 1911, in Franz Kafka: The Diaries 1910– 1923, ed. Max Brod (1948; New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 98–99; Franz Kafka, Tageb ücher, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller, and Malcolm Pasley, Schriften Tagebücher Briefe, Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Jürgen Born, Gerhard Neumann, Malcolm Pasley, and Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1990), 1:215: “Heute Geschichte des Judentums von Graetz gierig und glücklich zu lessen angefangen. Weil mein Verlangen danach das Lesen weit überholt hatte, war es mir zuerst fremder, als ich dachte, und ich mußte hie und da einhalten, um durch Ruhe mein Judentum sich sammeln zu lassen.” 5. Kafka, “Report to an Academy,” in Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, foreword by John Updike (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 251, Franz Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten, ed. Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch, and Gerhard Neumann, Schriften Tagebücher Briefe Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Jürgen Born, Gerhard Neumann, Malcolm Pasley, and Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1994), 1:300–301. 6. On Brod’s reaction to Red Peter’s significance in Zionist terms, see Iris Bruce, Kafka and Cultural Zionism: Dates in Palestine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 130ff. On Maimonides’ aid to the “heimlichen Juden” (secret Jews of Africa), see Heinrich Graetz, Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden in drei Bänden (Berlin and Vienna: Benjamin Harz Verlag, 1923), 2:463–65. Kafka’s possession of Graetz is documented in Jürgen Born, Kafka’s Bibliothek: Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1990). On the necessarily transnational and multiple “varieté” of this Jewish and African figure as “cryptically insoluble” and permanently open to interpretation, see Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 194. 7. Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks, ed. Max Brod, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins (Cambridge: Exact Change, 1991), 23, Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften, 2:48. 8. “I Was a Visitor among the Dead,” in Franz Kafka, Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins (New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 230–32, Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften, 2:227–30. 9. In this formulation I have been influenced by Ruth V. Gross, “Of Mice and Women: Reflections on a Discourse,” in Franz Kafka (1883–1924): His Craft and Thought, ed. Roman Struc and J. C. Yardley (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986), 117–40. For an excellent account of the way Kafka’s multilinguistic situation and his deessentialized notions of gender support one another, see Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, “Kafka and Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, ed. Julian Preece (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002), 169–86. 10. The “French” master of the underworld in Kafka’s story evokes the Count of Clermont-Tonnerre, who famously declared in the French national assembly on December 23, 1789: “The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals.” See Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 2nd ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 115. On Kafka’s style as his method of incorporating the “power of the adversary,” see Theodor Adorno, “Notes on Kafka,” in Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), 270. 11. Franz Kafka, “Einleitungsvortrag Über Jargon,” February 1912, in Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente, ed. Malcolm Pasley, 1:189: “Der Jargon ist die jüngste europäische Sprache,” English translation in Kafka, Dearest Father, 382. 12. See Felix Weltsch, Religion und Humor im Leben und Werk Franz Kafkas (BerlinGrunewald : F. A...
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