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[This essay has been published in the Journal of Kafka Society in America , vol. 33-34, 2010: 19-29.]

Anna Glazova

Sublimity of Justice in Kleist and Kafka

On January 4, 1911 Max Brod notes in his diary: "Kafka erzählt, daß er seinen

Schwestern Kleist vorliest. Sie weinen. 'Das sind jetzt meine besten Leistungen' [Kafka

tells me that he reads Kleist to his sisters. They cry. 'This is now my greatest

achievement.']"1 About a fortnight earlier Kafka writes in a postcard to Brod: "Kleist

bläst in mich wie in eine alte Schweinsblase [Kleist blows into me as if into an old pork

bladder"] (Kafka 1975, 87).2 Inflated pork bladders (called Saublooddere) are known as

the tools of buffoons. The buffoon strikes a pork bladder against the ground to scare

people with its strange, hollow rattle. The inflated bladder is also the symbolic attribute

of the buffoon because the word "buffoon" derives from the verb "to puff," "to inflate."

Kafka thus says that his reading of Kleist makes him feel inflated and that this reading is

a buffoonery of sorts. He further says, "eine alte Schweinsblase," it is an old bladder. The

characteristic that singles out an old pork bladder is its being not entirely hermetically

sealed. It is precisely this characteristic – old – that allows Kafka to establish a relation to

Kleist as a reader and writer in debt to his reading. Kafka, as it were, picks up in his

writing this old-fashioned gear, a buffoon's pork bladder, which he finds in Kleist's prose.

In German, to be not entirely hermetic, not completely airtight, would read as "nicht ganz

dicht sein," which is an expression for being not quite sane, schwachsinnig or being

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literally ein Narr, a madman but also a buffoon. What Kafka perceives as buffoonery is

perhaps that there is a certain opening through which Kleist's narration, as it were, enters

Kafka's own prose as through a weak spot or a hole in the inflated pork bladder. Kleist's

prose is what Kafka perceives as an influence that is strangely immediate, like a breath

blowing into his own body.

Continuation – and the dialectics of the new and old on which any continuation

necessarily relies – are themes that underlie the narrative in "Michael Kohlhaas," Kafka's

favorite among Kleist's stories. The account of Michael Kohlhaas's troubles with the law

– the plotline familiar to any reader of Kafka's novel, "The Trial"3 – begins with a

question that motivates all the following events. On his way abroad, hoping for a

profitable journey, Michael Kohlhaas encounters an unexpected impediment. The new

landowner has erected a toll bar where there used to be a free pathway. Seeing the toll

bar, Kohlhaas wonders: "Was gibt's hier Neues?" [What's new here?]4 just to discover

that there are further complications, since not only a toll fee but also a license is now

required. The chain of unfortunate events that leads to the fall of Kohlhaas's house and

his own becoming a robber and murderer starts from this occurrence. "Was gibt's hier

Neues?" is the recurrent phrase which announces trouble throughout the story. Kohlhaas

asks this question twice in regard to the toll bar and the license (Kleist 13; 15), and the

steward of Junker von Tronka, at whose castle Kohlhaas's horses are abused and grow old

within just a few days, asks the same question in return when Kohlhaas is outraged to

find how exhausted they have become in his absence (Kleist 23). The same phrase,

however, announces his recollection of better times. As Kohlhaas discovers the toll bar,

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he remembers that the former owner once built a stone dam because Kohlhaas's horse

broke a leg on this very same path. The announcement of the bad news brings with it the

memory of prior good times. And indeed, the whole narrative of "Michael Kohlhaas"

follows the same logic: the worse the situation becomes, the better the former times seem.

The destitution of Michael Kohlhaas makes him appear as what he is – someone who is

exceptionally passionate in questions of justice – only in retrospect. In other words, the

story progresses in reverse. Something is taken from the hero so that the initial state of

fullness and happiness is emphasized ever more sharply with every step down to

misfortune. Kohlhaas can rise to become a sublime character only in contrast to his

former self, for were he not righteous to begin with, he would be just a common criminal

of the same kind as his adversaries in the story. It is no wonder that the only character

who appears unshakably righteous in the story is Martin Luther, whose righteousness is

in balance with the Scripture, whose mediator he becomes as its translator. Luther's

renewal of the religion leads to a disastrous war, as the new translation separates

Germany into proponents of the old and the new Christianity. Kohlhaas does not seek to

find justice in a new religion; but he does seek divine justice because no human, lawful

recompense can satisfy his "Rechtgefühl" ["righteousness" but also in the sense of a "gut

feeling" for what is right.] Thus, if Luther is the mediator of the sublime power of the

Holy Writ, Kohlhaas becomes a sublime tragic hero of the Reformation precisely because

he cannot master the news. His sense of justice relies on his absolute dependence on his

"Rechtgefühl," the natural overpowering feeling of justice: "sein Rechtgefühl [glich]

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einer Goldwaage [his feeling of justice was as delicate as a goldsmith's scales" (Kleist 24-

25; Constantine 213).5

In this light, the newly erected toll bar, which interrupts his business trip, acquires

a symbolic meaning at the moment when Kohlhaas asks his fatal question, "was gibt's

hier Neues?" Any new law creates for Kohlhaas a disturbance of his righteous feeling and

provokes in him the unfortunate desire for a restitution of the old conditions. The

misfortune for Michael Kohlhaas begins precisely where his former fortune lay: the

horses. He is not only a righteous man but also a successful merchant, someone who is

good in "Handel und Wandel" [trade and exchange] (Kleist 15) and whose house can thus

serve as an exemplary model for what is good and proper. The news which marks the

onset of bad fortune first strikes his property – the horses – rather than himself. It is quite

remarkable in this context that Kleist uses as many words for "a horse" as the German

language would allow him: from die Stute to der Rappe. These Rappen, which stand for

Kohlhaas's good fortune as a Roßhändler and which Kohlhaas leaves behind in the hands

of the wrongdoers, take the first blast of misfortune upon themselves. Having gone to

Dresden to obtain the required license, Kohlhaas no longer finds upon his return the same

Rappen; he finds a couple of Mähren, the shadows of their former selves. This bad news

is the origin of Kohlhaas's drama in which he appears as a sublime character fighting for

justice but also as ein Narr, who is ready to sacrifice all that he has for a couple of work

horses.6 This incommensurability forms the core of the story. The scales of justice, as it

were, measure here the sublimity against the buffoonery of the situation, and the fate of

the horses symbolizes the fate of justice. The horses' splendor is highest when they stand,

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still gorgeous Rappen, in the middle of the wrongdoers' pigsty, utterly out of place. This

laughable news – that horses stand in the pigsty – is perhaps the most sublime moment in

this story of destitution. The comic effect which borders on the sublime is even further

inflated in the depiction of the event by Kohlhaas's faithful groom, Herse, who compares

the horses with geese as they stand in the sty with their heads poking through the roof.

Later on, the horses are sold to a pig or perhaps a sheep dealer, someone whose business

has nothing to do with horses. It is this tragedy of being out of place that the horses

symbolize in the story, and their being out of place produces perhaps an even greater

effect than Kohlhaas's indignation when he says that he'd rather be a dog than a man in a

country where he can find no justice (Kleist 53).

This balancing on the border between the sublime and the comical is the source of

Kafka's half-transfixed, half-obscene remark that Kleist blows into him as in an old pork

bladder. Seven years after reading "Michael Kohlhaas" to his sisters, in 1918, Kafka

writes a story, "Ein Landarzt," where the sublime misfortune and the ridiculousness of

being out of place return from the pigsty.7 Kleist's old horses make a new appearance in

this story to raise the injustice to a higher order. In the story, the country doctor answers a

call from a patient and faces a great misfortune on his journey to the bedside of a dying

boy. Just like the hero of Kleist's story, he is haunted by a recurrent question which

signals the onset of bad news: "was tue ich hier?" [What am I doing here?]8 Like

Kohlhaas, the country doctor finds himself in a situation where his good judgment fails

him in the face of unexpected trouble. And, like in "Michael Kohlhaas," the trouble

begins with a couple of horses. If in Kleist's story the horses were brought to the pigsty

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due to unlawful negligence on the part of the wrongdoers, the horses that will bring the

country doctor to his unfortunate destination and destiny come forth from the pigsty as if

by divine intervention. Indeed, towards the end of the story the horses are called

"unirdisch," unearthly in their sudden appearance as if from nowhere.

Yet this sudden appearance in Kafka's story is perhaps not as immediate as the

country doctor believes, if we consider that Kafka is referring to Kleist and to the horses

standing in the pigsty in "Michael Kohlhaas." With this quotation from Kleist, Kafka

creates a gap in his narrative through which the old horses from Kleist's story appear

again as something completely new. He takes the horses from Kleist much like the

wrongdoers from Kohlhaas in Kleist's story. This fateful conflation of narratives is unjust

to the hero of the story from the beginning. The news that there are a couple of gorgeous

horses standing in the pigsty reveals itself as old news, if one considers that the story

continues here from a pigsty once described in a completely different narrative. This

opening in the text which gapes like a hole in an old pig bladder – or a wound in one's

body – makes Kafka's story into a narrative which necessarily fails to achieve a certain

sense of completion and satisfaction even before this failure is thematized. The horses do

not belong to the country doctor because they come from a different story, and this is the

tragic circumstance which cannot be made good, "es ist niemals gutzumachen," to quote

the story's last words (Kafka 2002, 261). Precisely this statement is that which Kohlhaas

cannot accept – until he finds satisfaction in the appearance of the divine justice in the

form of a prophecy (Kleist 130-142), which works as a "deus ex machina" and completes

the story with an ending that leaves the insatiable Kohlhaas finally satisfied. Kafka

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revises this ending by writing a story in which no restitution is thinkable,9 since the

tragicomical injustice of the situation of the country doctor lies in his knowledge that the

horses do not belong to his world but also in his lack of knowledge that they are old

news. The country doctor has no control over this team of horses because it is taken from

a different story. Through this quotation from Kleist, Kafka splits the narrative in a

gesture which is more radical than any description of an individual tragedy of being out

of place.10

The appearance of the horses brings a second order of language into Kafka's

story: the horses with the demonic groom accompanying them belong to a different

linguistic realm. While the groom's command, "munter!" brings the horses to a gallop at a

speed that appears unimaginable to the doctor, the same command spoken by the doctor

only slows their pace. The doctor's new horses are new only because they are displaced –

they belong neither to the doctor nor, in some sense, to the story itself. The second order

of language – the entrance of the storytelling onto its own stage in the guise of the

"unearthly" horses – is perceived by the doctor as divine action. The country doctor thus

is elevated to an ambivalent figure on the border between the two orders, the divine and

the earthly.11 At the bedside of the dying boy, he bewails his own fate as a replacement

for the doctor of souls: "Den alten Glauben haben sie verloren; der Pfarrer sitzt zu Hause

und zerzupft die Meßgewänder; aber der Arzt soll alles leisten mit seiner zarten

chirurgischen Hand" [They have lost the old faith. The priest sits at home and tears his

vestments to pieces, one after the other. But the doctor is supposed to achieve everything

with his delicate surgeon’s hand.] (Kafka 2002, 259). The doctor's duty which brings him

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to this house reveals itself as not quite of a medicinal nature and, further, as more than

humanly possible. This second nature is also hinted at in the chanting words of a

children's choir, which the doctor hears as he lies down next to the sick boy responding to

the demands of the boy's relatives: "Entkleidet ihn, so wird er heilen" [Strip his clothes

off, then he’ll heal us]12 (Kafka 2002, 259). The doctor is expected to be a mythical healer

who by his unearthly powers can save the dying boy. No less is expected from him than

the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead. A divine power is indeed at stake in

the story but this power is not the doctor's and precisely this is the tragedy of this

unfortunate figure. An "unearthly" power brings forth the horses from the pigsty in his

own house as well as the violent groom who assaults the servant girl, Rosa. Her name

reappears in the story when the deadly wound of the dying boy is discovered. This

immense pink – rosa – wound which is described in epic detail and which is

unimaginable in a living body is the disease which the doctor is supposed to heal. Rosa,

the servant girl's name, returns in the story in the characterization of the wound after the

doctor lies down at the patient's side. Perhaps he only finds the wound upon the second

examination precisely because it only appears there as an effect of his presence. He, as it

were, infects the boy with the word "Rosa" that becomes the pink, "rosa" wound. The

doctor's thoughts about his servant, whom he left at home exposed to the violence of the

groom, re-enters the story in the shape of the irreparable injury. This violent power of

naming which brings about "rosa" is, however, not given to the doctor directly, he has no

control over this power, even if it haunts him, and it is this terrible news that renders him

not so much a healer as a curse-bringer. The tragedy in Kafka's story is that there is a

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radical split between the speaker and an all-powerful language which – just like the

"unearthly" horses – is out of control. When Kafka takes a team of horses from Kleist so

that they can provide him with a vehicle for this higher order of language in his story, his

violent gesture expresses itself in the violence of naming. What fascinates Kafka in

Kleist's story is precisely this presence of a power of language which is not reducible to

the earthly realm:

Das ["Michael Kohlhaas"] ist eine Geschichte, die ich mit wirklicher Gottesfurcht lese, ein Staunen faßt mich über das andere, wäre nicht der schwächere, teilweise grob hinuntergeschriebene Schluß, es wäre etwas Vollkommenes, jenes Vollkommene, von dem ich gern behaupte, daß es nicht existiert. (Ich meine nämlich, selbst jedes höchste Literaturwerk hat ein Schwänzchen der Menschlichkeit, welches, wenn man will und ein Auge dafür hat, leicht zu zappeln anfängt und die Erhabenheit und Gottähnlichkeit des Ganzen stört.) (Kafka 1999: 84)

[Michael Kohlhaas is a story which I read with genuine fear of God, it astonishes me again and again, and were it not for the weaker, somewhat rough ending, it would be something perfect, that very perfect work which, as I like to insist, doesn't exist. (What I mean is that even the highest literary work has a little tail of humanity, and if one knows how to look, this tail starts to wiggle slightly and disrupts the sublimity and divinity of the whole.)]

The perfection of the story itself is a power that, for Kafka, is divine, and the sublimity of

the characters depends on the power of narration. What Kafka perceives as "ein

Schwänzchen der Menschlichkeit" [a little tail of humanity] in Kleist's story is perhaps

the measure in which Kohlhaas enjoys justice, when he receives his restitution for the

horses, even if there is a divine intervention into the course of the narrative. Kohlhaas, in

the end, finds just as much justice as humanly possible, whereas the country doctor in

Kafka's story finds himself in a situation which is inhumanly unjust. The sublimity of

Kafka's story expresses itself in the absolute incommensurability of the doctor's duty and

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his fate governed by the "unearthly" horses. The balance for which Kohlhaas strives is

not thinkable in Kafka, for the whole world of the story, and not merely the doctor's

estate, would have to be redeemed. The language of naming, however, is – like the horses

and unlike the paradisal language – out of sync with the narration. "Rosa" and "rosa"

[wound] originate in a hybrid language, just as the doctor's "new" horses have an "old"

origin.

The news that the country doctor discovers along with the "unearthly" horses in

his own pigsty is that he is old. He becomes as ancient at the bedside of the dying boy as

to be comparable with a mythical healer of ancient times – Chiron perhaps or a Christian

saint who can heal by touch – but lacking any healing power other than that contained in

this very comparison. This weak unearthly power comes from outside the story and its

weakness is due to being mediated. The new is not entirely new, and Kafka borrows

precisely this news from Kohlhaas's irrational desire to get back his old horses –

irrational, because the horses have grown old in the meantime. Kafka inherits this

temporality from Kleist. As the country doctor stands out of place but also out of time, he

is bound to the team of horses which he cannot control because they are not his own.

Kleist's Rappen, having become the new uncontrollable horses of the country doctor,

make the country doctor out of place not only in his own house but in the narrative itself.

Kafka "transports" the horses at the moment in Kleist's story when they appear

both tragic and comic. When the heads of Kohlhaas's horses poke from the roof of the sty

at Tronka's, this impropriety takes in the narration the form of an improper analogy:

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horses appear as geese. Kafka takes this rhetorical ruse from Kleist and compares the

horses with an unlike animal – a camel:

zwei Pferde, mächtige flankenstarke Tiere schoben sich hintereinander, die Beine eng am Leib, die wohlgeformten Köpfe wie Kamele senkend, nur durch die Kraft der Wendungen ihres Rumpfes aus dem Türloch, das sie restlos ausfüllten (Kafka 2002, 253).

This initial appearance of the horses indicates that he "steals" Kohlhaas's horses precisely

at the moment when they still are his old horses, since later they will become rapidly old,

abused by the violators. Through the hole in the roof in Kleist's story the horses are taken

by Kafka's narration into a hole in the doctor's sty. Forced to arrive from a pigsty in

Kafka's story, they – who have looked like geese in Kohlhaas – appear transformed as

camels. This confusion in the animal order is raised to sublimity at the turning point in

the story, when the doctor "fulfills" his duty in the sickbed and the horses "supervise" his

medical judgment:

... unbeherrschbare Pferde ..., die jetzt die Riemen irgendwie gelockert haben; die Fenster, ich weiß nicht wie, von außen aufstoßen; jedes durch ein Fenster den Kopf stecken und, unbeirrt durch den Aufschrei der Familie, den Kranken betrachten.

and further:

ach, jetzt wiehern beide Pferde; der Lärm soll wohl, höhern Orts angeordnet, die Untersuchung erleichtern – und nun finde ich: ja, der Junge ist krank (Kafka 2002, 256-258).

When the horses open the windows, as if they had human skills and could handle a tool,

they, in this respect, cease to be animals and enter the order of Kafka's many hybrid

creatures, half-animal, half-human.13 Their closest relative is perhaps Bucephalus,

Alexander's horse, who exercises law as "the new lawyer," "der neue Advokat," in the

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title story of Ein Landarzt. At the moment, however, when the doctor hears a call from "a

higher order" in the horses' neigh ("höhern Orts angeordnet"), their hybridity is no longer

tragic-comical; it becomes demidivine and sublime. The noise (Lärm) announces – like

thunder in Greek tragedies – the stroke of fate, which decides over the outcome of the

medical examination for the doctor as well as for his patient. This tragic fate, however,

affects the narration as much as its heroes. The noise revealse that the force of narration

is uncontrollable, like the horses; the doctor, exposed to the horses' power, wounds the

boy with the name "Rosa." The country doctor's fate reflects Kafka's own uncontrollable

obsession with "Michael Kohlhaas," Kleist's story about an obsession with justice. As

Kleist "blows" into Kafka, so does "Kohlhaas" blow into the wound pierced through his

text by quotation. Kafka, in his almost limitless admiration of "Kohlhaas" remembers,

however, that he has been fooled (the fitting German expression would be "zum Narren

gemacht") by the narration, for no human work of art can claim the status of the divine

language. Thus, Kafka who says that "jedes höchste Literaturwerk ein Schwänzchen der

Menschlichkeit [hat,] welches, wenn man will und ein Auge dafür hat, leicht zu zappeln

anfängt und die Erhabenheit und Gottähnlichkeit des Ganzen stört" (cf. above), derives

the sublimity of his own narration from a "human" source – from Kleist's story, so that he

can fool the country doctor and, with him, his rational, modern world which relies on

medicine rather than divine powers. The "almighty" narration reveals "ein Schwänzchen

Menschlichkeit" just as the magic horses from the doctor's sty reveal their hybridity only

briefly, when they peep with half-human curiosity into the sick chamber, as if the narrator

needed them to see the scene with his own eyes. Tainted by something human, however,

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the horses become truly inhuman14 harbingers of fate, for they seem to posses the power

no rhetorical figure of the sublime in works of human imagination has claimed before

them: the power to be, at the same time, humorous.15

The inhuman injustice of the doctor's situation lies in the fact that the horses are

borrowed from another time and another narrative. As a quotation, they disturb the time

of the narration into which they are now placed. If Kohlhaas is the hero of his time, the

doctor in Kafka's story is the hero for whom the time went completely wrong. What is

shared by the two stories, however, is the figure of the team of horses which represent the

injustice of the situation. It is not the horses who pull the vehicle of Kohlhaas's fate but it

is they who become the vehicle of a narrative about justice, in which Kohlhaas appears as

a passionate rather than a righteous figure. In Kafka's story, the question of justice stands

besides the narration. Whose fault is it that the horses appear from the pigsty in the

country doctor's house and bring him to his fate? Who is to be blamed for the fact that the

boy cannot be healed? It is first in Kafka's story that the horses banned to the pigsty in

"Michael Kohlhaas" become truly out of place and, with them, the question of justice, a

question which exceeds the human realm. In "Michael Kohlhaas," the hero receives

retribution for the injustice that occurred to him and, in his turn, pays for the injustice of

his own actions. In Kafka's story, the injustice is simply the state of affairs and none of

the hero's actions can bring about justice.

The image of the two horses as a symbol of justice shared by the two stories is

itself an old trope. In a famous allegory in his Phaedrus, Plato compares justice to a

charioteer and rational and irrational passions to a pair of horses pulling the chariot (Plato

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111-114).16 The reasonable and righteous charioteer knows how to control the horses so

that justice can prevail. In Plato's allegory, the two horses represent the two sides of a

passionate nature. The white horse stands for righteous passions, while the black horse

depicts the lowly appetites. The just person follows his judgment which rules over his

passions and thus acquires the balance necessary for a stable ride on his chariot. It is

precisely such a balance – another symbol of justice – that is thematized both in Kleist

and in Kafka. Kleist describes his hero as a man who has a feeling for righteousness, "das

Rechtgefühl," which he compares with golden scales (Kleist 13). Kohlhaas's passion for

justice is what brings him to commit crimes for the sake of justice. Thus, the sense of

righteousness is put into question in the story. If one can do too much on the path to

justice, is this passion not of a lowly kind and thus just an appetite? Kleist writes:

Kohlhaas "[hat] in einer Tugend ausgeschweift [Kohlhaas overindulged in one virtue]"

(ibid.), namely, in the virtue of righteousness, but is this a real virtue if it allows for

excess?17 The story depicts not so much the balance of good judgment in a single

individual as the imbalance that righteousness – das Rechtgefühl – can produce in the

world.

The pair of horses in Kafka's story does not only make the doctor – who is clearly

incapable of controlling them – lose his balance. Everything goes awry with their

appearance: the doctor and his house are ruined in one fell swoop without even a

substantial narration of this destruction. The very notion of balance is blown away in this

story of an absurd injustice which breaks out from nowhere, or, to be more precise, from

the pigsty. If Kleist depicts the imbalance produced by the hero's passion for measuring

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the justice or injustice of things, Kafka concerns himself with the imbalance that is prior

to any such measurement. If Plato relies on the stability of the judgment – which, for him,

is inherent in human nature – Kafka tells a story in which the language of story-telling

opposes the hero's attempts to do what is right. The experience of a mode of story-telling

that betrays the hero and makes the speaker lose his balance is what is so new about

Kafka's story. And yet precisely this news is old because no story-telling is possible

where there is not a reading beforehand. It is this dialectics that Kafka describes when he

says, "Kleist blows into me as into an old pork bladder." The narration, as it were, has its

own passions which, like the horses in the pigsty, are hidden from the author. "One

doesn’t know what one has stored in one’s own house," – says the doctor's servant, Rosa,

when she sees the horses emerge. These words may as well be said to express the surprise

which the allusions to Kleist produce in Kafka's story.

~

Allusions to texts from different literary epochs are not uncommon for Kafka's

short fiction. These quotations of traditional texts are the object of study in Stéphane

Mosès's "Franz Kafka: 'Silence of the Sirens.'" Mosès shows that Kafka's story, beyond

reconstructing the initial myth in a transformed, modern form, presents the reader with

two conflicting interpretations of the new hero's actions. The ancient simplicity of the

mythical powers, Mosès points out, has grown in modernity into an intricate pattern of

relations, in which the myth itself has the choice to exercise or not to exercise its powers

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on humans. The new Odysseus must, thus, make himself deaf to the silence of the sirens

just as much as to their singing. As we know, he accomplishes his heroic task of escaping

them in Kafka's story as he does in Homer's epic but in our times we cannot be entirely

sure how this can be done. The story, according to Mosès, provides two contrasting

interpretations and leads seamlessly from the first to the second despite the obvious

irreconcilable conflict between the two: either this new Odysseus is as naïve as the

ancient hero; or, alternatively, he is the most cunning of pretenders and succeeds by

means of mimesis, i.e. by imitation of the hero's blind faith in the omnipotence of myth.

Mosès emphasizes the co-dependence of the tale and interpretation in the modern world.

The core of Mosès's reading is, thus, his insight that the modern hero translates the power

of myth into the power of interpretation: no-one, not even the narrator, can decide about

the means with which the hero accomplishes his deed. This undecidability is the

transformed force of the heroic myth as it persists in modernity.18

The reference to "Michael Kohlhaas" in "Ein Landarzt" is, in contrast to the story

analyzed by Mosès, not explicit. Thus, the reader's situation is somewhat different, since

the lack of direct quotation makes us – along with the country doctor – wonder about the

origin of the horses. If one knows about Kafka's obsession with Kleist, one can identify

the source of this allusion but even this insight is plausible rather than certain. The

uncertainty of the horses' origin in "Ein Landarzt" resembles the uncertainties of the

researcher in "Forschungen eines Hundes" ("Investigations of a Dog") because the

enigma of their origin is mediated through a veiled third party, unlike the absolute and

unquestionable power inherited by "Das Schweigen der Sirenen" from the Greek myth. In

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"Forschungen," the reader is allowed to understand that the enigma of the dogs' existence

is the fact that they cannot see humans. The investigations of the dog, for example, stay

futile, when he tries to account for the fact that there exist flying dogs, for he cannot see

that these tiny "flying" lapdogs are carried by people. The story clearly draws a parallel

between the dogs' blindness to the existence of humans and the humans' inability to prove

the existence of the divine on the ground of senses alone. The interplay of sublimity and

humor in this analogy is similar to Kafka's response to "Ein Schwänzchen Menschlichkeit

[a little tail of humanity]" in Kleist's sublime story. We know that the dogs in

"Forschungen" are ignorant of humans but this still leaves undecided whether this proves

or disproves the existence of a divine order above the human existence. For "Ein

Landartzt," the veiled "higher order" of existence is "Michael Kohlhaas," of which the

country doctor has no knowledge; this, however, leaves it undecided whether there may

exist a higher order above this ironic "higher order" of narration.

Precisely this obscurity about the origin of the horses leaves room for the

possibility of a higher, fateful justice. Kafka is disappointed with the ending of "Michael

Kohlhaas," because Kohlhaas decides to accept the ultimate human justice after he,

finally, satiates his "Rechtgefühl" with a piece of paper containing a mysterious

prophecy. This is the telos of the story and there can be no doubts that Kohlhaas's

satisfaction with this judgment is complete. In "Ein Landarzt," the outcome of the story is

Kafka's judgment about Kohlhaas's initial question, namely: how to render injustice

undone? The country doctor mediates Kafka's judgment: "es ist niemals gutzumachen."

The horses will never be the same and the injustice can be amended by no judgment,

18

whatever the source of the fateful blow. While Kafka's Odysseus outsmarts his fate with

his knowledge of the art of interpretation, his country doctor knows that interpretations

won't protect against the power of naming which is invulnerable to interpretations. Being

exposed to this power is sublime.

19

Works cited.

Bernheimer, Charles. "Kafka's 'Ein Landarzt:' The Poetics of Nachträglichkeit," Journal

of the Kafka Society of America, 1987, Vol. 1, 4-9.

Engelstein, Stefani. "The Open Wound of Beauty," Germanic Review 81.4, 2006, 340-

359.

Galius, Andreas. Passion of the Sign, Revolution and Language in Kant, Goethe and

Kleist, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.

Goldstein, Bluma. "Franz Kafka's 'Ein Landarzt': A Study in Failure," Deutsche

Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 42, 1968: 746-759.

Grandin, John. Kafka's Prussian Advocate: A Study of the influence of Heinrich von

Kleist on Franz Kafka, Columbia: Camden House, 1987.

Hamacher, Werner. "The Gesture in the Name," Premises, trans. Peter Fenves,

Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996: 294-337.

Hammer, Stephanie B. The S ublime C rime: F ascination, F ailure, and F orm in L iterature

of the Enlightenment, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.

Hinderer, Walter. "'Kleist bläst in mich, wie in eine alte Schweinsblase'. Anmerkungen zu

einer komplizierten Verwandschaft," Franz Kafka und die Weltliteratur, ed. Manfred

Engel and Dieter Lamping, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006: 66-82.

Jacobs, Carol. Uncontainable Romanticism: Shelley, Brontë, Kleist, Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins UP, 1989.

Kafka, Franz. Briefe 1 902-1924 , ed. Max Brod, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1975.

---. Briefe 1913-1914, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1999.

20

---. "A Country Doctor," Complete Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir, New York:

Schocken Books, 1972.

---. "Ein Landarzt," Schriften, Tagebücher. Kritische Ausgabe. Drucke zu Lebzeiten,

Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2002.

von Kleist, Heinrich. "Michael Kohlhaas," Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Frankfurt am

Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1990.

---. Selected Writings, trans. David Constantine, London: J. M. Dent, 1997.

Liebrand, Claudia. "Kafkas Kleist. Schweinsblasen, zerbrochene Krüge und verschleppte

Prozesse," in Textverkehr, ed. Caludia Liebrand & Franziska Schößler, Würzburg:

Königshausen & Neumann, 2004: 73 -100.

Longinus. On the Sublime, Ancient Literary Criticism, ed. Andrew Russell and Michael

Winterbottom, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972: 462-503.

MenninghausDisgust : the theory and history of a strong sensation

By Winfried Menninghaus Mosès, Stéphane. "Franz Kafka: 'Das Schweigen der Sirenen,'" Spuren der Schrift,

Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum 1987: 52-72.

---. "Franz Kafka: 'Silence of the Sirens,'" The Denver Quarterly, 1976, vol. 11, no. 2: 62-

78.

Plato. Phaedrus, Dialogues of Plato, trans. B. Jowett, Oxford: Clarendon P, 1953.

Shahar, Galili. "Fragments and Wounded Bodies: Kafka after Kleist," German Quarterly,

2007, vol. 80, no. 4: 449-467.

21

Sussman, Henry. "Kleist's 'Michael Kohlhaas' and Postmodernity, with some thoughts on

Franz Kafka," Journal of the Kafka Society in America, 1994, vol.2, 39-47.

Tobias, Rochelle. "A Doctor's Odyssey: Sickness and Health in Kafka's 'Ein Landarzt,'"

Germanic Review 75.2, 2000: 120-131.

Vogl, Joseph. Ort der Gewalt. Kafkas literarische Ethik. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,

1990.

1 All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 2 Walter Hinderer offers a careful report of textual evidence in Kafka's letters and diaries which reveals Kafka's affectionate relationship to Kleist's writings. Claudia Liebrand conducts a close reading of this sentence, "Kleist blows into me as if into an old pork bladder," analyzing its sexual undertones in light of Freudian theory, its blasphemous tone from the perspective of Judaism, and its allusions to aesthetics, in particular the Greek myth of Apollo's competition with Marsyas. The latter context is important for my study, since I focus on Kafka's conscious superposition of the sublime with the obscene. Liebrand expresses this thought in her recognition that Kafka's "pork bladder" is the vessel of sublime inspiration and, simultaneously, of bodily excretions. Kafka's reception of Kleist, thus, combines "Göttliches" with "Tierisches" (the divine with the beastly, Liebrand 76).3 John Grandin explores possible links to Kleist in Kafka's "The Trial" in his book, "Kafka's Prussian Advocate: A Study of the influence of Heinrich von Kleist on Franz Kafka." 4 I have consulted David Constantine's translation (Kleist 1997) but modified translations significantly.5 My thoughts on Kohlhaas's search for divine justice have been largely influenced by a seminar on violence (Gewalt) and law conducted by Peter Fenves at Northwestern University in spring 2009. 6Sublimity of crime in "Michael Kohlhaas" is discussed in detail by Stephanie B. Hammer. The comic element, however, is not a part of her discussion.7 A number of commentators have discussed "Ein Landarzt" as a story of displacement. Charles Bernheimer, for example, analyses the story in light of the psychoanalytic notion of Nachträglichkeit and comments on the temporality of the doctor's belatedness. Henry Sussman suggests that Kafka's "Ein Landarzt" borrows the suddenness of the dramatic turns inherent in "Michael Kohlhaas". Interestingly, both commentators describe the protagonist's displacement in temporal rather than spatial terms.8 Rochelle Tobias comments on the doctor's perplexity in the face of this question, which, as she points out, is striking if one considers the doctor's initial certainty that he has an important duty to fulfill. 9 Joseph Vogl notices that the economy of Kafka's narration in "Ein Landarzt" is propelled by the essential lack of satisfaction that results in the continuous escalation of desire. Vogl is invested in a critique of capitalist hierarchies but his insight can be also help to understand Kafka's appropriation of Kohlhaas's insatiable desire for justice. While Kohlhaas can be satisfied only by the divine intervention, the blindness of the divine intervention in the country doctor's world reveals the essential lack of causal relationship between one's actions and justice. 10 In her recent study, Stefani Engelstein analyses the wound of the country doctor's patient as a symbol standing for the openness of the narration itself. Galili Shahir, similarly, sees the wound as an allegorical representation of traumatic writing, which is further expressed in Kafka's fragmentary style. In Shahir's view, Kafka inherits fragment as a stylistic means from Kleist. 11 Bluma Goldstein - who recognizes that that there is a certain divine power at stake in "Ein Landarzt"- compares Kafka's country doctor with the Zaddiks of Hassidic legends but simultaneously states that he fails to become such a Zaddik. 12 Trans. in Kafka 1972: 22413 Werner Hamacher notes that Kafka's prose is, like the hybrid creatures appearing in it, a "monstrum," as Hamacher calls it after Walter Benjamin. The indecidability between mysticism and rationality results in a hybrid language, which, for Hamacher, possesses the power of naming. Hamacher doesn't interpret "Ein Landarzt" explicitly but one could say that the "gesture in the name" presents itself in this story as the monstrosity of the transference of the name Rosa, which appears as a hybrid of a virgin maidservant and a boy's lethal wound. 14 Gerhard Kurz writes that Kafka's narratives reveal a common pattern: they present the reader with the task to revert what has been inverted. The reader's reflection, thus, must undo narratives which have been deliberately turned over. If Kurz's insight can be applied to Kafka's phrase "ein Schwänzchen Menschheit," the reader's task is to reconstruct the idea that only sublimity (Erhabenheit) allows humans to feel like humans rather than animals. 15 In fact, with this gesture Kafka suspends the rule of classic rhetoric according to which hypsos (the sublime) must stay strictly separate from its counterpart bathos. Curiously, one of the examples Longinus cites in his treatise on the sublime is the Phaeton's ride with Helios's uncontrollable team of horses (Longinus 15.4)16 Winfried Menninghaus, too, points at the possible significance of Plato's myth as a possible source for Kafka. Menninghaus is, however, interested in the horses as representation of sexual desire rather than desire for justice (Meninghaus 326-327).17 Carol Jacobs interprets Kohlhaas's insatiable desire for justice as his passion for rebellion (Jacobs 148-149). For Andreas Galius, the rebellion is not only the theme but, furthermore, the narrative force of Kleist's story.18 In his recent study of disgust in literature as a suppressed "other" of the modern aesthetics, Winfried Menninghaus offers a reading of "Ein Landarzt," in which he views this story as a reversal of the psychoanalytic interpretation incorporated, as he concludes, into the narration by the author himself. In this respect, Menninghaus seems to be in agreement with Mosès: he locates the source of the narrative power in Kafka's fiction in the prevalence of interpretation built into the narrative and working from beneath its surface. Further, Menninghaus, like Mosès, emphasizes the conflict between mythical forces and

the modern mind of the "hero": The 'hero's' complete lack of control over the horses from the beginning on does not fit in with their status as magical helpers"; here, Mennighaus point out that the country doctor is an unlikely hero, as the old mythical powers, translated into modernity, are unmanageable. He adds, however, an unmediated reference to an old myth: "the 'unearthly horses' of this carriage [of the sun], as Phaeton's divine father Phoebus Apollo has urgently warned, prove altogether too much for the boy's powers. The uncontrolled chariot exposes the whole earth to a scorching, and Phaeton himself is fatally burned by a lightning bolt. In an exact reversal of these thermal aspects, the country doctor's team of horses is associated with an epochal frost" (Mennighaus 326-327). In this respect, Mennighaus, unlike Mosès who stays entirely in the present, lets his analysis be transported back into the times of Greek myths: the country doctor appears as the tragic hero Phaeton. Menninghaus, thus, sees the tragedy of the country doctor in the inability to face the suppressed powers of the myth, rather than in the necessity to suppress the truth for the sake of interpretation, like Kafka's Prometheus in Mosès's sudy.