A ladies' breviary

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Ein Damenbrevier is a review by Franz Kafka of Franz Blei's book of stories Die Puderquaste. A ladies' breviary , published in 1909.

publication

A ladies' breviary is one of the texts that appeared during Kafka's lifetime. This review was printed in the Herwarth Walden magazine, Der neue Weg, published by the Cooperative of German Stage Members on February 6, 1909.

content

In this short text, which is a book review of Franz Blei's short story book Die Puderquaste. Representing a ladies' breviary , Franz Kafka succeeds in imitating the author's style with subtle irony. At the beginning Kafka uses the positive image of a swimmer, a motif that recurs both in the life of Kafka, who was an enthusiastic swimmer, and in his writings. See, albeit in a more negative form, the end of The Judgment or Kafka's idea of ​​the great swimmer as he addressed it in the fragment The Great Swimmer .

Franz Blei was at that time editor of the literary magazine Hyperion , 1908 in the March consideration had appeared as the first published text Kafka.

Kafka published a second book review of Felix Sternheim's novel der Jugend .

Quote

  • “When you let yourself breathe a sigh of relief into the world, like a swimmer in the river from the high scaffolding, immediately and later sometimes confused by counter-thrusts like a dear child, but always floating with beautiful waves to the side into the air in the distance, then you like how In this book, aimlessly with a secret goal, direct your gaze over the water that carries you and that you can drink and that has become limitless for the head resting on its surface. "

reception

“ '... a short review ... with fine irony, hidden behind a lyrical style that avoids any conceptual analysis, he registers the snobbish, flavourful attitude that Blei has given the collection.' "

- Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. 2005, p. 239.

““ Even his (Kafka's) text on Blei's powder puff is less of a review than a dense sequence of reading animated pictorial associations that seem to propagate according to their own laws, which are characteristic of his early style. On the other hand, the reader learns next to nothing about the content of the reviewed book - apart from the fact that it is supposed to be a 'confessional mirror'. " "

- Reiner Stach: Is that Kafka? 99 finds. P. 115.

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: Prints during his lifetime . Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 381-383.

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: A ladies' guide  - sources and full texts

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Facsimiles of Kafka prints during his lifetime (magazines and newspapers). on: textkritik.de
  2. ↑ Reiner Stach : Kafka - The years of knowledge . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5 , p. 402.
  3. ↑ A novel of youth. on: kafka.org