From the Jewish theater

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From the Jewish theater there is a prose fragment by Franz Kafka , which was written in 1917 and is reproduced in the legacy writings and fragments.

It contains memoirs of his friend Jizchak Löwy , written down by Kafka , who ran a Jewish theater that was stationed in Prague for a few months and in which mainly Yiddish was spoken. Löwy is not related to Kafka's relatives of the same name of maternal origin.

Emergence

This piece from the posthumous writings was written in the summer of 1917 when Kafka happened to meet his friend Löwy again in Budapest. They cultivated a close friendship in 1911 and 1912, as can be seen in Kafka's diaries.

These are records in the context of the so-called bundle , the present one referred to as the bundle “From the Jewish Theater”.

The fragment cannot be found in all commercially available Kafka editions, but is mentioned by current biographers and publications (see Peter-André Alt "Kafka The Eternal Son", Reiner Stach "Kafka The Years of Decisions", website The Kafka Project by Mauro Nervi, which contains the text).

content

The prose piece does not want to present objective facts, but rather personal experience and experience. Lowy talks about his growing up in Warsaw in a family in which the theater as trefe was. Only on Purim , a joyful Jewish holiday, did a cousin dress up and play a “merry trader Jew” . Eight-year-old Löwy was completely charmed by it and decided to do the same as his cousin when he was older. He later learned that there was a theater in a splendid building in Warsaw that played every evening and not just on Purim. When he raised this in his family, he was yelled at: a Jewish child shouldn't know anything about the theater, that wasn't allowed; the theater is only for God and a forbidden and sinful thing.

But it doesn't leave him alone. At the age of 14 he secretly visits the big theater. The opera Die Huguenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer will be given. Löwy knows many melodies from it, because he and his classmates have sung them in the Talmud school for a long time. He is now often a secret guest in the theater, where he also sees Friedrich Schiller's robbers . In order to be dressed appropriately, he buys a new collar and cuffs every evening, which he throws on the way home in the Vistula.

Then he learns that there is also a Jewish theater. At first he does not dare to visit it, his parents could easily have found out about it. But it doesn't leave him alone. Even on his first visit, he feels very comfortable there as a young man with his "long kaftan" among loosely dressed people who speak Yiddish loudly. He experienced a funny drama with singing and dancing, partly German, partly Yiddish spoken. He likes it better "than the opera, the dramatic theater and the operetta put together" , because it contained everything "drama, tragedy, song, comedy" . It was clear to him that he wanted to become a Jewish actor. The next day there is a conversation with the father in the presence of the mother. Both are deeply saddened that he was seen in the Jewish theater. The father complains that this would take Yitzchak “far, very far” . And Yitzchak finally affirmed that the father was right.

Form and text analysis

The prose piece introduces the name of the protagonist Jizchak Löwy, whose theater life Kafka describes.

The first paragraph is a kind of prologue that explains what this fragment does not want to accomplish, namely the rendering of sober facts about the Jewish theater. At the same time, reference is made to a wound that is no longer discussed in detail in the following text and its necessary remedy in connection with this theater.

This first paragraph is kept in an impersonal narrative style and, in contrast to the rest of the piece, which deals with Löwy's concrete memories of his youth in the first person, seems to be a direct statement by Kafka. The mention of hidden wounds, illness and the search for a cure brings to mind what happened in the story A Country Doctor . In the remainder of the present fragment, that is, in the statement that can clearly be attributed to Löwy, the idea of ​​the wound and the need for healing in connection with the Jewish theater no longer occurs.

Rather, the fragment speaks of Löwy's great enthusiasm for theater in general and Jewish theater in particular, despite all family resistance. Löwy interprets the father's last sentence, which was intended as a threat and fear, in his favor. Because later he actually got around the world with the Jewish theater, and in Kafka and its surroundings he found intellectual friends and spectators to whom he would otherwise never have had access.

Löwy's account of his almost compulsive approach to acting is interspersed with Yiddish terms. See meet - not kosher, chaser - pig, cheder - room, Klaus - Talmud school, Kasche - porridge (here: something is brewing).

Biographical references

In the autumn of 1911, Kafka saw the first performances of the Jewish theater under the direction of Löwy and was immediately touched by the vitality, the expressive gestures, the mixture of song, dance and drama.

The Jewish theater has its roots in Eastern Europe. The most famous playwrights of this genre are Abraham Goldfaden and Jakob Gordin .

Kafka quickly found access to the theater group around Löwy and provided some organizational support to them. The actresses Klug and Tschissik exerted erotic attractions on him. Löwy himself became a friend with whom he dealt daily, to the chagrin of his father. The father's comment on this friendship was: "Anyone who goes to bed with dogs gets up with bedbugs." Years later, Kafka broached this derogatory saying in his letter to his father .

Quote

  • 1. Para. (Kafka): Only after recognizing the disease can a cure be found and possibly the true Jewish theater created.
  • Löwy: I didn't sleep all night because of the excitement, my heart told me that I too should one day serve Jewish art in the temple, become a Jewish actor.

output

  • Malcom Pasley (Ed.): Legacy writings and fragments. I. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, ISBN 3-596-15700-5 , pp. 217-224.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alt p. 236.
  2. ↑ Franz Kafka Diaries, pp. 57–379.
  3. ↑ Posthumous Writings and Fragments I Appendix, Contents, p. 2.
  4. ↑ Franz Kafka Diaries, pp. 79ff.
  5. ↑ Alt p. 229
  6. ↑ Stach 50/51

Web links