Death Writes

Franz Kafka, Tubercular Soundscapes, and the Place of Literature

Bibliographic Data

ID4071141
AuthorsStefani Engelstein (0000-0003-3726-9444, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume52
Issue1
Pages31-55
Publication date2025-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/0094033x-11503161
OpenAlexW4407947203
LanguageEN
References cited29

Analyzing previously unexplored medical records of Franz Kafka, this article reveals the significance of tubercular lung sounds-internal yet inaudible to the patient-for his penultimate story, "The Burrow." Modern audio recordings of the sounds described for Kafka's lungs are included. The asymmetrical access to sound is transformed in "The Burrow" into a narrative technique for exploring the relationship between the incommensurable positionalities of fictional and authorial worlds. Created as an external eavesdropper on its author's breathing, the burrowing animal protagonist responds to the sound not only with anxiety but also with an expanded imaginative capacity, inventing in turn a creator god in its own image-a portrait of the author as a great beast. The text thus becomes a reflection on the legacy an author leaves behind, one that refuses presence in favor of strange representation. The involuted structure and the temporal paradox that result allow the text to mark proleptically the death of its own author. Drawing on sound studies, medical humanities, and text-immanent critique, this article traces the unequal access to the sound of the author's breath by author, narrator, and, ultimately, reader as a series of encounters and provocations that transform capacities and faculties and perturb time and space

Art · Literature · Sound (geography) · Soundscape · Franz Kafka Literary Studies · Geology · History · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy

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