Kafkas Zeichnungen by Friederike Fellner

Reviewed by: Kafkas Zeichnungen by Friederike Fellner Helga W. Kraft Friederike Fellner, Kafkas Zeichnungen. Paderborn: Fink, 2014, 320 pp. Six cartoon-like sketches by Franz Kafka are well-known. They are drawn minimally in thick black lines and probably depict his novel’s protagonists, the Ks. The Fischer Verlag placed them on the cover of some of their paperback editions. These sketches exude significant meaning. One of them visualizes the utter abjection of a male figure, who is resting his head face down on a table. In her book Kafkas Zeichnungen, Friederike Fellner searches for possible meanings of Kafka’s drawings. The scholar discovered approximately forty-four of such depictions, including some scribbles, and it is surprising that these yielded sufficient material for a voluminous book of more than three hundred pages. The publication is based on Fellner’s dissertation, which explores the significance of each and every line in Kafka’s writings—literary and personal—that might be construed as a drawing. Fellner pulls together the considerable but dispersed research that already exists on this topic and offers a comprehensive view on the significance of Kafka’s doodles. Yet, nothing is really new. Her study attempts to convince the reader that Kafka’s drawings are just as important as his writings, because they supplement his literary work with perceptions that are either difficult or impossible to express in words or because they present a first visual impetus for finding wriThen articulation through such preliminary drawn notions. For every drawn line Fellner meticulously scrutinizes every possible context, connection, and meaning in order to deepen the understanding of Kafka’s literary and personal writings. She argues that in the last analysis autobiographical writings and literary texts cannot be distinguished from one another. In her analysis she of en second-guesses Kafka’s intentions regarding his sketches. She writes: “Dass das Schreiben des Prager Schriftstellers von seiner Rahmung—dem Zusammenspiel von Instrumentalität, bzw. Technologie, Gestik und der Semantik des Schreibens—abhängig ist, reflektieren auch seine Zeichnungen” (121). For instance, to reveal oppressive societal practices, Kafka draws a figure counter-acting the German expression “Kopf hoch” (chin up). Here, the visual creation of K. lowers his chin toward his chest (“Kopf runter”) in opposition to the positive metaphor in the German language. As Fellner sees it, here Kafka changes language into an image in order to achieve an emotional effect by using a negative source from which he draws his artistic strength. Fellner refers to Janouch’s recollections when she points out that Kafka [End Page 150] was quite conscious of his special motivation to draw: “Mein Herumzeichnen isThein sich ständig wiederholender und misslingender Versuch primitiver Magie” (13). If Janouch’s recollection is correct it could mean that Kafka attempts to conjure up a hidden reality by visualizing notions where words fail. Yet—as the quotation indicates—it is an ironic remark, since Kafka considers even these doodles as “failing attempts.” Are they? Fellner does not think so, and she presents her arguments by organizing her observations in three categories designated as follows: 1. Land vermessen: Ästhetische Positionierungen, 2. Den Bau beobachten: Thematisierungen und Formationen des Schreibens, and 3. Kanäle öffnen: Figurationen von Existenzen. She discerns that first, some of the drawings are carriers and impetus to negotiate roles within Kafka’s writings. Second, in his letters they become media of communication, and thirdly, they mighThexpress the “magic” lying in the possibility that doodling could enable him to eventually turn a feeling into words, or at least to transport it into a lived experience. Since the drawings connect Kafka to the visual arts, their importance of this cultural sphere to him is amply examined in part one of Fellner’s study. Here his early interest and active study of the arts are fully documented, and Max Brod’s strong influence is shown in detail. Kafka’s closeness to the expressionistic painters is evident, but Fellner agrees with Sudaka-Benazeraf that Kafka cannot really be called an expressionist in the narrow sense (87). The study further emphasizes that Kafka not only drew images but also inserted verbal visualizations of art into his writings. For instance, the the portrait of the

Art · Art history · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Nothing · Franz Kafka Literary Studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · Memory, History, Trauma, Identity · Philosophy