Two Sabbath Stories in Walter Benjamin’s Kafka Essay: Wishing on a Constellation of Three Stars
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2039-9251/18557Abstract
This essay examines the two stories about or related to the Sabbath which Walter Benjamin included in his essay commemorating the tenth anniversary of Kafka’s death. Both are pastiches of Hasidic stories, apparently written by Benjamin himself. The first is based on a legend about a princess who prepares a festive meal for her fiancé on Friday evening, as the Sabbath begins; and the second is about the Jews in a Hasidic village who have assembled on Saturday evening, as the Sabbath is about to end, telling their wishes to each other. These stories, the essay suggests, are not only important for assessing Benjamin’s reading of Kafka’s oeuvre, but must at the same time also be seen as an expression of Benjamin’s own, gradually developing understanding of the Messianic dimensions of his own philosophy of history.
References
Agamben, G., Language and History in Benjamin, in “Differentia: Review of Italian Thought”, 2, 1988, pp. 169-183.
Austin, J.L., How to Do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1962.
Benjamin, W., The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, ed. by Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, New York 1989.
Benjamin, W., The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940, ed. by Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994.
Benjamin, W., The Arcades Project, transl. by H. Eiland, K. McLaughlin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1999.
Benjamin, W., Franz Kafka: Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, in Id., Selected Writings, Vol. 2 (1927-1934), transl. by R. Livingstone, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1999, pp. 494-500.
Benjamin, W., The Good Writer, in Id., Selected Writings, Vol. 2 (1927-1934), transl. by R. Livingstone, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1999, pp. 723-727.
Benjamin, W., Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death, in Id., Selected Writings, Vol. 2 (1927-1934), transl. by Harry Zohn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1999, pp. 794-818.
Benjamin, W., Berlin Childhood around 1900, in Id., Selected Writings, Vol. 3, ed. by transl. by H. Eiland, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2002, pp. 344-413.
Benjamin, W., On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, transl. by H. Zohn, in Selected Writings, Vol. 4, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2003, pp. 313-355
Benjamin, W., On the Concept of History, in Id., Selected Writings, Vol. 4, transl. by H. Zohn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2006, pp. 389-400
Benjamin, W., Origin of the German Trauerspiel, transl. by H. Eiland, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2019.
Gellman, U., Stories, in M. Wodzinski (ed. by), Studying Hasidism: Sources, Methods, Perspectives, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (N.J.) 2019, pp. 60-74.
Hasan-Rokem G., Magid S., Folk Narratives in M. Wodzinski (ed. by), Studying Hasidism: Sources, Methods, Perspectives, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (N.J.) 2019, pp. 127-143.
Liska, V., Benjamin and Agamben on Kafka, Judaism and the Law, expanded version of “Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper comes a man...”: Kafka, Narrative, and the Law, in “Naharaim”, 6/2, 2013, pp. 175-94; posted on Academia.edu:
https://www.academia.edu/29020766/Benjamin_and_Agamben_on_Kafka_Judaism_and_the_Law
Rokem, F., Before the Hebrew Notebook: Kafka’s Words and Gestures in Translation, in A. Eshel, R. Selig (ed. by), The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange, De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2018, pp. 177-195.
Rugg, L.H., Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1997.
Shahar, G., Kafka’s Messages, in “Performance Research”, 26/5, 2022, pp. 34-38.
Sussman, H., The Herald: A Reading of Walter Benjamin's Kafka Study, “Diacritics”, 7/1, 1977, pp. 42-54.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The authors who publish in Itinera are required to accept the following conditions:
1. The authors retain the rights on their paper and lincese the journal the right of first publication. The paper is also licensed under a Creative Commons License, which allows others to share it, by indicating intellectual authorship and its first publication in Itinera.
2. Authors may adhere to other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the paper (ex. deposit it in an institutional archive or publish it in a monograph), provided that its first publication in Itinera is indicated.
3. Authors can disseminate their paper online (ex. in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, since this can lead to productive exchanges and increase quotations of the published work (See “The Effect of Open Access”).