An ersatz Kabbalah: the dialogue between Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin on hope and failure in Kafka
Creators: name: Weinberg, Steven
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2023

description: My dissertation, entitled An Ersatz Kabbalah: The Dialogue between Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin on Hope and Failure in Kafka’s Literature, examines the respective theories of Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin on the literature of Franz Kafka. To do so, I analyze their exchange of letters in the years 1934 and 1938 while also evaluating the works each thinker published on Kafka, with special attention given to the tenth of Scholem’s “Zehn unhistorische Sätze über Kabbalah” and to Benjamin’s essay “Franz Kafka: Zur zehnten Wiederkehr seines Todestages.” I propose that Scholem’s reading of Kafka is based upon and intertwined with the kabbalistic notion of the “Zimzum.” This kabbalistic idea holds that Jewish history is dialectical, oscillating between periods in which God’s presence is manifest and palpable and those in which this presence is hidden and “absent.” For Scholem, Kafka’s literary world is defined by an entirely nadired Zimzum and is thereby one in which God and Jewish law are absent but in which the drive to find and recover them remains. Scholem also viewed this nadired Zimzum in Kafka as a sign of hope for the future of Judaism and for the eventual return of palpable divinity to the world. Regarding Benjamin, I focus on how his theory of Kafka evolved over the course of the 1930s. The connection he drew between Kafka’s literature and Judaism centered more on the literary component of Judaism and less, in contrast to Scholem, on its theological dimension. Benjamin, I argue, ultimately concluded that Kafka’s literature imitates the storytelling of Jewish scripture but seemingly without “purpose.” Whereas the stories of Jewish scripture, also known as the Aggada, serve the purpose of explaining Jewish theology, Kafka’s stories exist purely for their own sake and thereby have neither Truth nor Wisdom to impart. Moreover, Benjamin’s conviction that Kafka “failed” was based on the inability of these stories to impart anything meaningful. I next apply the theories of Scholem and Benjamin to Kafka’s texts themselves by reading them through the lens of irony. Both Scholem and Benjamin offer ironic readings of Kafka; Scholem’s argument that the absence of God in Kafka is an indication of God’s eventual return is ironic, and so too is Benjamin’s argument that Kafka’s literature endeavors to impart neither Truth nor Wisdom (the traditional “mainstays” of literature). My ironic readings of Kafka’s texts thereby allow for Benjamin’s irony to be distinguished from Scholem’s. Whereas Scholem’s ironic conclusions on Kafka are serious in nature, Benjamin’s may ultimately be characterized as comic. I argue that Kafka’s Der Process is built upon three specific situational ironies and that when these three ironies are considered, Benjamin’s theory of Kafka appears to be more apropos than does Scholem’s. These ironies ultimately unveil the “purposelessness” of Josef K.’s quest to be judged innocent by the court; this dynamic in Der Process more closely aligns with Benjamin’s Kafka, whose literature only conveyed the “impression” of meaning, than with Scholem’s Kafka, whose literature grandiosely heralded God’s return. Finally, I read Kafka’s short stories “Erstes Leid” and “Ein Hungerkünstler” as a single unit and view them as a philosophical commentary on ironic art. My reading of this “story duo” postulates that art which has only “nothing” to proclaim will become “sickened” and unsustainable art—much in accordance with Benjamin’s contention that Kafka’s literature depicted tradition falling ill [Erkrankung der Tradition]. Scholem’s later research on kabbalistic theories of the Torah as literature is then employed to demonstrate that Kafka’s stories sought the same aesthetical transcendence unique to the Torah but that they, in their proclamation (through irony) of nothingness rather than God, failed to move beyond the boundaries [Grenzen] of manmade—and therefore “unholy”—art.