Franz Kafka is known for his great modernist prose, his penetrating vision of the human condition, and his absurdist sense of humor. But did you know he was also an avid language learner? Over the course of his adult life, Kafka studied both Yiddish and Hebrew. Focusing on the latter, the presenter shares one of Kafka's Hebrew notebooks, which has only recently become available to researchers at the Israeli National Library in Jerusalem. The reasons for its long years of disappearance are interesting in themselves, and the speaker explains them. Most of the talk, however, will be devoted to thinking about the Hebrew notebook as an object, an archival document, and a biographic resource. Some of the questions the presenter addresses are: how are the materials in the notebook connected to Kafka's literary writing? What does it teach us about his relation to Judaism and to Zionism? What is the relationship between language pedagogy and aesthetics?
In-Person