BOOK REVI EW

The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala, and the Modern Spiritual
Revival. By June O. Leavitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 212 pp.
Hardback, 40.
June O. Leavitts study, The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala, and the
Modern Spiritual Revival (2012), throws a ashlight over the socio-cultural milieu of
Prague in Kafkas life and work as it emerges from both personal correspondences and
diary entries. Intent on demonstrating a possible experiential, biographical link be-
tween Kafkas literary output and mystical experiences, Leavitt goes to examine vari-
ous possible frameworks that could have presented themselves to Kafka. Explorative in
nature, her readings range over a large corpus of text, rooted in reective reference to
the historical sources we have of Kafkas life and work in diaries, letters and acquaint-
ances, inviting not only a multitude of possible avenues for further research, but
producing a vivid picture of the Modern Spiritual Revival in Prague in its course.
The book is premised on an observation from Kafkas diary that when writing,
from time to time, he admits to suffering from some form of altered states of con-
sciousness that he titled clairvoyance which compromised his writing. Seeking help on
this issue, he set up a meeting with Dr Steiner, the head of the German branch of the
Theosophical Society. From this meeting onwards, chronicled on 28 March 1911,
Leavitts narrative accumulates traces of occult, theosophical, cabalistic as well as
masonic inuences and interactions that could be read as foundations to the way in
which Kafka presents his narratives. With a consciously broad set-up, focussed on the
wealth of expression in the climate of the Spiritual Revival movement, Leavitt hopes
to characterise the mystical nuances pervading Kafkas texts outside of mainstream
cultural paradigms, as well as pointing up directions for closer analysis of the various
aspects her study indicates.
Thus, when Leavitt states: I hypothesize that the clairvoyance Kafka mentioned
was in fact a mystical state of consciousness that could be known only through ex-
perience. It is therefore reasonable to adopt the concept of experiential to discuss
Kafkas type of mysticism (4), this hypothesis may very well offer a necessary and
signicant shift in emphasis on interpreting Kafka. However, Leavitt leaves a rigorous
assessment of the experiential in light of Kafkas literary prose to be pondered by critics
to come. What this means to a literary or artistic engagement is yet to be discerned.
Certainly, Leavitt feels that this aspect has been undervalued by literary criticism at this
stage, paying too little attention to the cultural milieu that shaped the experiences
present and represented in the text (cf. 14). Her concern rests with providing some
contextual groundwork for establishing Kafkas conception of the mystical. She does
so by tracing possible allusions and indications of Kafkas personal reections on
mystical experiences from his diary narratives and bringing these into conversation
with occult ideologies as well as Christian and occult redactions of cabala. While I nd
Leavitts criticism of literary studies alleged lack of historical-critical and rigorous
Literature & Theology, 2014, pp. 12
Literature & Theology # The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press 2014; all rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
Literature and Theology Advance Access published March 14, 2014

a
t

B
i
b
l
i
o
t
e
c
a

C
e
n
t
r
a
l
a

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
a
r
a

d
i
n

C
l
u
j
-
N
a
p
o
c
a

o
n

M
a
r
c
h

2
8
,

2
0
1
4
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
l
i
t
t
h
e
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m

cultural analysis out of place, there is a less obvious point to her dismissal. Leavitt
approaches Kafka from a theoretical position (and in reference to hypothetical sources,
cf. 75) on mystical experience that eschews the primacy of normative discourses and
ideological frameworks characteristic of Kafka reception (cp. Freud and Jewish
Cabala). Applied to highly idiosyncratic texts, considering Kafkas texts along the
lines of more indirect cultural and religious inuences may lend a different vitality
to interpretive stratications; the exemplary readings interspersed throughout the
book certainly serve to showcase highly imaginative interpretations. In this sense
Leavitt offers an interesting point of departure for re-examining the premises espoused
by Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature: Components of
Expression (1985): a minor or revolutionary literature begins by speaking and only
sees and conceives afterward (I do not see the word at all, I invent it) (New Literary
History 16 (1985) 591), giving more associative and creative free-play to the text and
the depths of its cultural milieu.
The study proceeds from a discussion of Kafkas negative experience with clair-
voyance that caused him to initiate contact with Dr Steiner. Extrapolating the sig-
nicance of this negative evaluation within the context of Theosophical thought
Leavitt draws out other frameworks for mystical experience, particularly William
Jamess work (1902). Leavitts readings contrast a mainline, Judeo-Christian religious
perspective of Kafkas cabalistic references with possible alternative frameworks avail-
able to Kafka in occult ideology. Thus emerge various aspects of mystical experience,
according to the differing frames of reference, that are treated in analysis: namely the
signicance of sound and the role of out-of-body experiences, meditative techniques
in visualisations, dreams and the eschatological perspectives on reincarnation, inter-
sected respectively by illustrative interpretations of texts from Kafkas diaries, dream-
sequences and a selection of stories, ranging from Description of a Struggle, The
Bucket Rider, Investigations of a Dog to The Trial.
With its numerous pointers to questions for further research, a breadth of references
across the literature and historical connections between Theosophical thought, occult
practices and cabalistic philosophies, June O. Leavitt provides a highlight tour through
Kafkas life with its gravitational centre in Prague drawn up around the meeting,
pivotal to Leavitts argument, of Kafkas introduction to Dr. Steiner. She offers the
interested public an engaging and innovative view on a notoriously oblique author
and his texts, the literary critic a line of attack on the question of minor literature, and
traces a number of philosophical and ideological trajectories in the life of mystical
experience as she sees it expressed in Kafkas writings that beg for further
differentiation.
KATJA NEUMANN
University of Stirling doi:10.1093/litthe/fru015
2 of 2 BOOK REVIEW

a
t

B
i
b
l
i
o
t
e
c
a

C
e
n
t
r
a
l
a

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
a
r
a

d
i
n

C
l
u
j
-
N
a
p
o
c
a

o
n

M
a
r
c
h

2
8
,

2
0
1
4
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
l
i
t
t
h
e
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m