Tel Aviv University

The Lester & Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities

School of Philosophy

WORDS, NOT AS WORDS

Critique of Language, Ideology and Identity in

the Work of Karl Kraus

THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by

Gal Hertz

SUBMITTED TO THE SENATE OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

November 2013
This work was carried out under the supervision of

Prof. Yossef Schwartz

Dr. Daniel Dor

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction.......1

I. Krauss Vienna Revised..........2

II. What we talk about when we talk about Language.............4
III. Was wir umbringen? The Method and Structure of the Current Study......7

Chapter 1 From Public Persona to Literary Figure...........11

I. Kraus Reading Benjamin Reading Kraus..........12

II. Literary Independence as Critical Position........22
III. The Interpellative Power of the Press, and Satirical Immunization.......26
IV. From Identity-Discourse to Literary Persona.........29
V. Identity and Mimesis: The Spiegelmentsch........32

Chapter 2 Language as Impasse........38

I. Against the Representational Paradigm.40

II. Social Crisis as Linguistic Crisis: Krauss Media Critique..44
III. Media Critique as Critique of Mimesis...48
IV. Sprachgestaltung: Krauss Alternative View of Language........................53
V. Passive Creativity.58
VI. The Words Two Bodies: From Wortgestalt to Citationality..64

Chapter 3 Citation and Text...........68

I. Citing as Inciting.68
II. The Soldier and the Song of the Lark.72
III. Omission of Quotation Marks.78
IV. Kraus hat alles vorausgewusst (Kraus knew everything in advance)........87
V. Creation of the New Order By Quote - Conclusion..93

Chapter 4 The Techno-Romantic Adventure and Theater Degree Zero............95

I. The Vacuum of the Age.96

II. Language Degree Zero.....104
III. Zero Degree in The Last of Days of Mankind..115
IV. Conclusion...............................................................................................136
Chapter 5 Poetry as Mediumatic Shift: The Theater of Reading139

I. The Theater der Dichtung as Anti-Medium.140

II. The Experience of Sound.150
III. Poetry as Theatricality: The Acoustics of the Rhyme......158
IV. The Subject of Reading....162

Conclusion An Epigone in the House of Language....169

I. Nestroys Strophes and the Morality of Satire..171

II. An Epigone Krauss Literary Figure..178

Bibliography.......184

Abstract (in Hebrew) .........198

 Abbreviations

Works by Karl Kraus

CM = Die Chinesische Mauer (Mnchen: Albert Langen, 1910 Neuauflage Paderborn:

Salzwasser Verlag, 2012).

D = Dramen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989).

S = Karl Kraus, Die Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987).

TD = Karl Kraus, Theater der Dichtung - Nestroy (Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp, 1992).

Secondary Literature

Barthes, WDZ = Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero (New York: Hill and Wang,
1968).

Benjamin, SW Vol.2 = Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Vol.2 (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1996).

Benjamin, GS, Bd. 2 = Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 2 (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977).

Canetti, CW = Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words, (New York: Seabury Press,
1979).

Fuld, WB = Werner Fuld, Walter Benjamin zwischen den Sthlen: Eine Biographie
(Mnchen: Hanser, 1979).

Grimstad, MP = Kari Grimstad, Masks of the Prophet The Theatrical world of Karl
Kraus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).

Hill, RI = Hill, Radical Indecision (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010).

Isava, WKV = Isava, Wittgenstein, Kraus, and Valry (New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 2002).

Reitter, AJ = Paul Reitter, The Anti Journalist, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008).
Ribeiro, ME = Ribeiro, Karl Kraus und Shakespeare. Die Macht des Epigonen, in: Joseph
Strelka (ed.), Karl Kraus: Diener der Sprache Meister des Ethos, (Tbingen: Francke
Verlag, 1990).

Timms, AS = Edward Timms, The Apocalyptic Satirist (New Haven / London: Yale
University Press, 1986).

Timms, Karl Kraus AS Vol. 2 = Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist, Vol. 2:
The Post-War Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika (New Haven / London: Yale University
Press, 2005).
 Introduction
I have first come to know Karl Kraus in a roundabout way, via the figure of
Israeli literary and cultural critic Baruch Kurzweil, to whom I dedicated my MA
thesis.1 For Kurzweil, Kraus was a model both for an idea of what one can call
total critique, as well as for the public role of the critic, who is able to stand up
against the conventions of his day. This view did not refer only to Krauss
attentiveness to language, or his uncompromising, vehement satirical style, but
mainly to his unique understanding of language and literature as fundamental
aspects of human existence: an engagement with literature that could provide a
critical perceptive on society. Krauss achievement was the creation of a unique
critical standpoint: one that transgresses discursive and normative boundaries,
thereby not only opening up options for political and aesthetic critique, but also
forming a new form of morality. This was a form of critique that set out not only
against certain literary styles and media forms, but against the epoch in which
these emerged, along with the very concept of history by which that epoch
understands itself. As a doctoral student in Frankfurt, Kurzweils proposal to
write a PhD on Karl Kraus was denied (interestingly enough by the very same
professor who rejected Walter Benjamins Habilitation study, The Origin of the
German Tragic Drama). The current project can perhaps be regarded as an
attempt to fulfill this unwritten deed, of presenting Kraus precisely as such a
model of public social critic, indeed, as engaged in a lifelong critical project, one
that, although rooted and immersed in the context of fin de sicle Vienna,
nevertheless transgresses his time and place.

1
In addition to Kurzweil, Kraus was an important figure for other Jewish-German immigrants to
Palestine, who were instrumental in forming its academic and intellectual life, including Werner
Kraft, Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, and others. In this sense, one
can say Kraus was an influential backstage figure in Israeli literary and cultural criticism. This
point, which I hope to elaborate in the future, is unfortunately beyond the scope of the current
study.

1
 I. Krauss Vienna Revised

In their groundbreaking Wittgensteins Vienna, Alan Janik and Stephen Toulmin

put together a comprehensive historical framework from the stories and ideas of
some of the most intriguing figures of Vienna 1900, situating them within the
unique intellectual climate of the time.2 The study gained status of obligatory
reading not only for those interested in understanding the backdrop of
Wittgensteins thought, but for anyone interested in studying Viennas history and
culture in general, as well as any of its other protagonists. But in spite of its
indisputably crucial contribution, the attempt to account for the Viennese
intelligentsia as a special local development, which had to do with the particular
circumstances of the Habsburg Monarchy and the unique nature of its
remarkable milieu, is problematic. Although the authors define Vienna as a
city of paradoxes, the framework they offer leaves unclear how these paradoxes
came about, or how the different intellectual projects they survey were a series of
attempts to somehow settle them. Why was modernism experienced as a crisis in
the first place? Where did the erotic and gender tensions typical of that period
emerge from? How did language come to be identified as a crucial element of
social life and as a subject for philosophical examination, skepsis and literary
experimentation? Not only are these questions largely left unanswered, but also,
when it comes to our protagonist Kraus, and to what the authors rightly refer to as
his critique of language, the account falls short of providing convincing
explanations. Here is a brief demonstration of the limitations of such an account,
with respect to Krauss critique of the press: To Kraus, the authors write, the
feuilleton destroyed both the objectivity of the situation described and the creative
fantasy of the writer, since, while distorting the news as facts, it prevented the
writer from coming to terms with the depths of his own personality by demanding
a response to a ready-made situation.3 The feuilleton, however, is not supposed
to report news in the first place, therefore, Krauss critique is not concerned so
much with the distortion of facts, but rather with the way phrases and clichs take

2
Allan Janik / Stephan Toulmin, Wittgensteins Vienna (New York: Touchstone, 1972).
3
Ibid., p.79.

2
the place of any possibility for expressive and creative writing, on behalf of
economical and political interests that shape press coverage. The fantasy
(Phantasie) Kraus refers to, namely the readers imaginative and mental
capabilities, are destroyed not because of the distortion of reality but the
reification of language itself that takes place in the media.

Interestingly, in the revised study published by Allen Janik twenty-eight years

later, Kraus, who is defined in the first book as the most Viennese of Viennese
writers,4 is now turned into an anti-Viennese,5 and the affiliation between his
critique of language and that of Wittgenstein is now associated not with the early
Wittgensteins Tractatus but with the late Wittgenstein of Philosophical
Investigations.6 In both cases, however, it seems that the appraisal of Kraus is
based not on considerations of a theory of language but on what the authors call
circumstantial evidence. Moreover, the authors fail to relate the growing sense
of discontent behind Krauss work to the social and economic changes of the
period, and the rise of new media forms and institutions. Although the story of the
revised 2001 study becomes that of Viennese critical modernism, once again,
other than a general description of hypocrisy and corruption, it is not at all clear
what is wrong with modernism itself, and how such critique aims to come to
terms with its mechanisms. Krauss Vienna, I argue, needs be framed differently,
and in relation to a broader historical context, one that involves his reaction and
affiliation to Berlin Modernity, as well as other technological and economic
changes in European culture, which amount to a crisis that culminated in the First
World War. An attempt to understand Krauss critical project should thus go
beyond not only the geographical boundaries of Vienna, but also the
methodological boundaries of the history of ideas, addressing the question of
historical context and the process by which it is constantly rewritten and revised.

4
Allan Janik / Stephan Toulmin, Wittgensteins Vienna (New York: Touchstone, 1972), p.67.
5
Allan Janik, Wittgensteins Vienna Revised (New Jersey: New Brunswick, 2001), p.2.
6
Janik states this clearly when he writes: So the present story, unlike the one Toulmin and I told
a quarter of a century ago, will bear principally on Wittgensteins later philosophy. Ibid., p.186.

3
 II. What we talk about when we talk about Language

Ein jeder, weil er spricht, glaubt auch ber die Sprache sprechen zu knnen7 [A
preson, because he can speak, also believes he can talk about language]. These
words from Goethe open Krauss essay collection The Language (Die Sprache).
This aphorism stresses the difference between talking through language and
talking about language, which is a crucial distinction that is not as trivial as it may
appear. The first option regards language as the tool by which one can talk about
the world. From this perspective, a critique of language means evaluating the
validity and quality of the account of the world certain utterances provide, and
aims to improve or perfect the tool that is language. This is the option the quote
seems to reject. The second option argues that what demands an account is
precisely the different ways language is used, circulated and processed. Krauss
project has to do with this second option, and is dedicated to finding new
alternatives for talking about language, and creating within it a critical position. In
order to be able to understand this form of critique, as the quote suggests, one
needs to give up the false impression that one understands what language is. The
many difficulties one faces in reading Kraus have to do precisely with this notion,
and with its resistance to this nave understanding of language and what Kraus
calls the will to understand (verstehen wollen) that is at its basis. What Krauss
critical-pedagogic language-teachings (Sprachlehren), as he calls them in his
book, aim for is to cause the reader to unlearn this nave picture, in order to
make room for an alternative relation and engagement with language. Even those
who are fluent in German (perhaps especially them) should address Krauss
writing as if written in a foreign language. This sense of estrangement and doubt
has to do with the practice of citation, so central for Kraus: it is meant neither to
decorate Krauss essays nor to grant authority in order to legitimate his writing,
but rather to create tension and displacement, as will be analyzed at length in this
work. In this study I claim that Krauss conception of language is best understood
as a response to an impasse: a deep sense of crisis that underscores his entire

7
Karl Kraus, Die Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), p.7.

4
critical project and satirical writing. As I will show, this crisis of language has to
do not with the concept of false representation or with a contamination of speech
through lack of grammar or inadequate writing style, but with the new relations
created between language and subjectivity, formed and circulated mainly by the
media: the ways language constructs social identities, constitutes ideological
mechanisms, frames political and economic interests, and affects peoples minds
and emotions. This social function is based on a language that does not refer to
anything outside itself, but operates through a self-referential mechanism. An
adequate relation to language requires taking the social context into account, the
ability to sense or identify the unsaid, together with sensitivity to different forms
of gaps and short-circuits between semantic significance and experience.

A theoretical framework that suggests, in many aspects, a similar typology to the

one diagnosed by Kraus is provided by Daniel Dors theory of language. The
theory argues for the existence of a fundamental and unavoidable gap between
language and experience,8 and regards language as essentially a socially-
constructed communication technology that constantly aims to bridge or
negotiate this gap. Dor offers not only a reconstruction of the origins of human
language, but also an alternative account of the ways language functions vis--vis
constitutive impasse:

In order to understand language [what is required] is neither the Kantian dictum

(which gave birth to the cognitive sciences) that all human experiences comply
with a universal interpretative scheme, nor the neo-Kantian conviction that
members of different cultures experience the world in different ways, but rather
that each individual, each of us, lives in a private, experiential world which is
different from that of the others, and is inaccessible to them. This is a
foundational fact about our cognitive nature, and it is the foundational obstacle to
communication which language, as a social invention, set out to circumvent.9

This starting point suggests several claims. First, that language is not a medium
that enables one to express ideas of thoughts, but a social technology that aims to
translate these in a way that makes them transmittable by negotiating the

8
Daniel Dor, Language and Experience: A General Theory of Language as a Communication
Technology (in print).
9
Ibid., p.24.

5
constitutive gaps between language and experience as well as between different
subjective experiences. Second, that there is always a tension between what is
said and the experiential level (the unsaid), which cannot be verbally expressed,
but may be expressed through gestures, intonation and other non-verbal means.
Third, that language does not refer to the external world or to the inner world of
experience, but rather, reference is achieved not by language, but by speakers.
Speakers use language, as a tool, to refer their listeners, through language, to
experiences of the world.10 Language mediates between the different experiences
of its speakers, creating what Dor defines as the symbolic landscape, which is a
common ground for communication. Forth, the relation between reality and this
language-constructed world are only possible through the recognition of
mutually-identifiable experiences. The real world is only reflected into the
symbolic landscape through the negotiated prism of social consensus.11 Hence,
the words used for these experiences are always foreign to them, operating not by
similarity or identification but rather by a social symbolic framework that
maintains and regulates this gap. Thus, in an almost Lacanian formulation, Dor
claims that the end result is a negotiation in which experiential complexity is
sacrificed for the construction of common ground.12 Fifth, from this perspective,
a crisis of languagesuch as the one faced by Kraushas to do not with the gap
itself (which is unavoidable), but with the collapse of a particular symbolic
landscape, as a result of the failure of social institutions that regulate and
legitimate it. This provides a fruitful perspective for interpreting one of the classic
literary manifestations of this crisis, namely Hofmannsthals Lord Chandoss
Letter, as well as to theorize what Hermann Bruch defined as the vacuum of
Viennas political and cultural life13. This also implies that any such crisis is
historically context-dependent: it involves traumatic experiences that result in a
failure of those social-symbolic mechanisms for maintaining a certain bridging of
experiential gaps.

10
Daniel Dor, Language and Experience (in print), p.32.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
See: Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit (Mnchen: Piper, 1964).

6
The last point I would like to make in relation to Dors theory is related to
thinking about language beyond the semantic field. According to the Saussurean
distinction, signs are double-sided, consisting of a semantic signifier and a
signified, which is the object they refer to. Dor argues for what he calls the third
nature of signs, which involves the experience and context under which they are
used or associated with. On the one hand, this idea is mean to point to the
problems that the representational logic of the Saussurean view is unable to
explain. It also allows for the inclusion of poetry and literature within the same
theoretical framework of language, without reducing these to mere mimetic forms
(a kind of language about language, so to speak). On the other hand, it also
stresses the social dimension of this negotiative nature of language, which
implies the constitutive possibility of such negotiation being manipulative and
dis-informative. My attempt here is to apply the experiential blind spot identified
by Dor, as well as his concept of contextuality and reference, in order to shed new
light on Krauss view of language, and how it frames his work not as an
apocalyptic negation of his society in the name of the purity of language or
originality of style, but rather as a project that insists on maintaining a critical
position vis--vis the constitutive gaps of language.

III. Was wir umbringen? The Method and Structure of the Current Study

Reading the vast secondary literature on Kraus, it is difficult to determine what

his critical agenda is all about. He is sometimes portrayed as a prophet
condemning the corruption and hypocrisy of his day: an uncompromised critic
who rejects and opposes almost any position whether political, literary or cultural.
His Die Fackel and other writings are often portrayed as a chronicle of, to
paraphrase Spengler, the decline of the West, expressing the tension between
destructive rage, despair, and nostalgia. These attempts to read Kraus as a
humanist critic fail to address the most important message of his critique: namely
that in the reality of the twentieth century, such a humanist position is no longer
possible. If humanism is based on the ability for moral judgment and the option to

7
evaluate events and decisions, then this is exactly what the masses on the eve of
the First World War shouting Serbia must die! (Serbien muss sterbien!),
thoughtlessly citing headlines and journalistic reports, and exciting themselves
with empty symbols of a heroic past and unfounded dreams of a glorious future,
are no longer capable of. At the same time, far from adopting an elitist position,
Krauss aim is not to condemn those who cannot hear or understand anymore, as
he repeatedly states, but rather to create the conditions of possibility for an
alternative use of language that could provide a different kind of reading, listening
and consequently being. This alternative is related to Krauss critique of the
language of the media, and his attempt to create an alternative experience through
poetry and theater. From this perspective I argue that some of the paradoxes in the
understanding of Krauss critique can be solved. Kraus researchers who consider
him as a humanist fighting against the falsity of the press struggle to explain why
he focuses his attack on the feuilleton rather than on the news (focusing on the
medias form rather than its content). They also fail to explain the logic behind his
public readings of classical theater plays as what I regard a critical performance
aimed at generating a different kind of relation to language. This failure stems
from the wrong idea that the focus of Krauss critique is the content of press
reports, with their anti-representational, distortive effect, or the hypocritical,
manipulative attitude and interest-laden position of reporters, media-moguls,
politicians, generals, businessmen, intellectuals, and so oninstead of regarding
these as symptoms of an epistemic-social crisis, which is simultaneously a crisis
of language, experience, and subsequently of individuality.

Krauss oeuvre is vast to an extent that cannot possibly be covered in a single

work. At the heart of this study are what I regard as Krauss two central, critical
enterprisesDie Fackel, which begins in 1899, and the later Theater der
Dichtung, circa 1921. The historical event of the First World War serves here as
the crucial moment, through which the common rationale of these two most
clearly comes to the fore. It is the historical juncture at which both the crisis and
Krauss response to it reach their apex. The first two chapters set the scene and
frame of Krauss critical project as well as his views on identity, literature and

8
language. Chapter One, From Public Persona to Literary Figure, analyzes the
relations between language and identity, focusing on the modern pressures of
modernity, their effect on the concept of identity, and how this is in turn reflected
in the language of the press, and in new poetic and literary genres. It suggests
viewing Krauss work as a project that aims to open up a form of individual
independence captured by the metaphor of the epigone. In the second chapter
Language as Impasse, I discuss what I define as the representative paradigm
in the understanding of Krauss project in the secondary literature. I then explain
Krauss concept of Sprachgestaltung (linguistic shaping and creating),
analyzing some of the central ideas in his understanding of poetic language,
which serves as a model for a non-representational concept of the functioning of
language in general. The third chapter, Citation and Context, focuses on
Krauss constitutive practice of citationality. It examines its various applications
in Krauss satirical style, especially in his critique of the press, tracing the way
this practice is perfected during the War period. The forth chapter, The Techno-
Romantic Adventure and Theater Degree Zero, is dedicated to Krauss magnum
opus, the play The Last Days of Mankind. It begins with an analysis of the
experience of political and social vacuum circa 1914. I then take a detour
through Roland Barthes concept of Writing Degree Zero, which serves here as
a framework for understanding the literary strategies employed by Kraus in his
play. These are understood as a series of attempts to address the sense of crisis
stemming from the problem of expressing the aforementioned experience of the
gap between language and experience. The fifth chapter, Poetry as Mediatic
Shift: The Theater of Reading, deals with the literary consequences of this crisis
in the post-war era, turning to Krauss second significant enterprise, the Theater
der Dichtung. Following his notion of the sounds of deeds, the chapter focuses
on the tension between written and spoken word in Krauss performances, as well
as between the printed and acoustic aspects of language. The chapter ends with
the question of origin as a link between this view of language and the question of
subjectivity presented in the first chapteraspects that will be brought together in
the concluding chapter.

9
As many Kraus scholars note, writing on Kraus is a challenge. It is not so much
because of the complexity and scope of his work, his sophisticated, sometimes
enigmatic style, or the constant demand his reading places on the reader to
reconstruct the historical and social context in which it operates. It has to do with
another kind of difficulty, namely the allusiveness of the subject-matter itself. It
seems that Kraus escapes every attempt to capture or conceptualize his image and
frame his project. One gets the feeling, to paraphrase one of his known aphorisms,
that the closer you look at him, the further hes looking away. This difficulty, I
suggest, is not something that one needs to overcome, but rather should serve as a
key, a starting point for studying Kraus. In other words, the problematic features
of his workhis contradictions, the different and ever-changing masks he puts
on, his resignation from any clear identity and definition, as well as his insistence
on what can be understood as negation and rejectionshould be perceived not as
what prevents one from exploring the real author and the true meaning of his
work, but as their most important and essential aspect. In this study I will try to
demonstrate how to work through these hermeneutic failures and impasses, in
order to provide an analysis of the problem of Krauss self-reflection, and to
reveal the significance and function of this ambiguity. This, in turn, will serve as a
key for understanding his life-project of linguistic and moral critique. Kraus was
neither a philosopher nor a theoretician. In fact, it is not far-fetched to conjecture
he would have found such a genre of writing anathema. Nevertheless, what I aim
to provide here, through a close reading of Krauss texts, is an account of what I
take to be his overarching, consistent, and indeed deeply theoretical views on
language, identity, and moral critique. This prism, I argue, allows situating Kraus
not as a talented satirist of his time, but as a radical critic of modernity, who
touched upon the fundamental questions and challenges unleashed by that era,
which haunt the human condition ever since.

10
 Chapter 1
From Public Persona to Literary Figure
In his poem Confession (Bekenntnis) Krauss states14:

Ich bin nur einer von den Epigonen,

die in dem alten Haus der Sprache wohnen.

I am only one of the epigones,

who live in the old house of language.

What does it mean to live in the old house of language, and in what sense does
this count as a confession? A double move is taking place here. On the one
hand, Kraus declares his intimate relation to language: it is what defines his
existence language, and it is only in language that he can live as in a home
although, as the poem continues, we realize this home is about to break down. On
the other hand, Kraus declares himself to be nothing more than one of the
epigones living in language: he himself is only a successor who embodies certain
literary charactersin the case of the current poem, that of Oedipus, about to
carry out revenge on Thebes in the name of language. This epigones confession
is delivered as a poem, his truth is literary. In order to speak of himself, he enacts
a figure. It is not Karl Kraus the person who uses language or even lives in it as in
a home, but someone who is defined and operates as a literary figure. Kraus is
here suggesting that we view his persona in the context of his concept of
language. And this concept of language, which, as will be developed in
subsequent chapters, stands at the center of his critical-literary project, is linked to
and dependent upon his attempt to frame a different concept of subjectivity: one
that can be defined as a transformation (Verwandlung)similar to the one
expressed in Confessionfrom Kraus as persona to Kraus as a literary figure.
Thus, any attempt to deal with Krauss critical project must provide an account of

14
Kraus, Worte in Versen II, Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), p.93.

11
the ways it redefines its author, as part of redefining the relation between
language and subjectivity, in a way that allows us to think of the person beyond a
discourse of identity. This chapter explores these relations between Kraus the
critic and his position vis--vis his society through his problematization of such
identity discoursesone that goes through the question of self-reflection, together
with what can be titled the impossible portrait. The starting point will be an
evaluation of Benjamins attempt to generate a textual portrait of Kraus. This will
be followed by a discussion of the notion of independence in Krauss career and
life, as part of his act of founding his newspaper, Die Fackel. Section III presents
Krauss campaign against the press as a project of the critique of identity and
ideological institutions, while the final section will touch upon the question of
literary reflection and mimicry, through Krauss polemic with Franz Werfel.

I. Kraus Reading Benjamin Reading Kraus

Walter Benjamins essay Karl Kraus from 1931 exemplifies an awareness of

these difficulties in writing about Kraus. While attempting to create a literary
portrait, Benjamin avoided definitions or identifications by creating a kind of
Krausian Sprche und Widersprche (speeches and contradictions). In this three-
part intellectual portrait, Benjamin used three figures: the cosmic men, the demon
and the monster, all of which are non-human, transgressive and undetermined.
They are defined not so much by what they are but rather by what they negate,
overcome and problematize. The essay is a kind of montage, a patchwork of
quotes and metaphors that does not provide a complete or unified image. As
Benjamin wrote, Kraus does not conform to any system; it is exactly this
unsystematic-system that he endeavors to expose and reproduce both in the
content of the essay as well as in its form, a kind of demonic essay in which we
find not answers but more puzzling questions and troubling concepts that are
placed next to one another without resolution. It is not the man behind the mask
that Benjamin closely examines but the mask itself:

Kraus, wenn er vortrgt, spricht nicht Offenbach oder Nestroy: sie sprechen aus
ihm heraus. Und dann und wann nur fllt ein atemraubender, halb stumpfer, halb

12
 glnzender Kupplerblick in die Masse vor ihm, ldt sie zu der verwnschten
Hochzeit mit den Larven, in denen sie sich selber nicht erkennt, und nimmt zum
letzten Male sich das bse Vorrecht der Zweideutigkeit.15 (My Emphasis)

[Kraus, when he gives his public readings, doesn't talk Offenbach or Nestory:
they talk through him. And only from time to time falls a breath, casting a half
blurry half shiny gaze of a pimp at the public in front of him, inviting it to the
cursed wedding with the masks, with which he cannot recognize himself, and
takes the evil privilege of double-meaning for the last time.]

Kraus is not just playing Offenbach or Nestroy, he becomes their personification,

and still he is able to maintain himself through this cursed unification. This makes
him the perfect medium, but not pure or divine but rather an earthly pimp16. The
visual split (half blurry, half shiny) corresponds to Krauss acoustic doubling
effect. They produce what Benjamin calls demonic self-reflection, one which,
as every vampire-fan knows, is impossible. Aware of this paradox, Benjamin used
metaphors and images, some from Kraus and some of his own, changing them
like costumes or masks in a text that resembles a carnival or masquerade. Each of
these masks-metaphors captures something of Kraus for a moment and then, like
the angels of the Midrash that Benjamin cites, vanishes. This figure of Kraus,
which cannot be directly gazed at or captured, which problematizes any form of
representation, this literary, non-reflected monster is turned into what Benjamin
calls Angelus Novus: a medium, the messenger of old etchings. It is impossible to
write on Kraus in a way in which he will be represented. The task is to write or to
create a portrait that denies any form of identification and recognition, which is
precisely what Benjamin accomplishes. This success was noted by non other than
Kraus himself, who wrote, in reaction to Benjamins essay:

Ich hatte dieser Arbeit, die sicherlich gut gemeint und wohl auch gut gedacht ist,
im wesentlichen nur entnehmen knnen, da sie von mir handelt, da der Autor
manches von mir zu wissen scheint, was mir bisher unbekannt war, obschon ich

15
Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 2. (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977), p.357.
16
Pimp and prostitute are not just metaphors, but relate to Kraus's campaign against the
criminalization of prostitution and his sympathy to the less fortunate populations, and to his
frequent metaphoric use in them in relation to bourgeois hypocrisy. Kraus used both the pimp and
the prostitute as positive symbols of the bourgeoisie corruption and hypocrisy.

13
 es auch jetzt noch nicht klar erkenne, und ich kann blo der Hoffnung Ausdruck
geben, da sie die andern Leser besser verstanden haben als ich. (Vielleicht ist es
Psycho-analyse). (F. 852-856, p.27) [My emphasis]

[I was able to conclude from this essay, one which is surly well intended and also
well conceived, in essence only that it has to do with me, that the author seems to
know something about me that for me was unknown, although I do not myself
yet quite recognize what it is, and I can only wish that other readers will
understand it better than I. (Maybe this is psychoanalysis).]

The efforts seemed to pay off: Kraus was not able to recognize himself in the
Benjaminian portrait. Surprisingly, Benjamin failed to understand Krauss
compliment, and instead felt betrayed and insulted. Disappointed and outraged he
wrote to Gershom Scholem that he will never write on Kraus again (a promise he
wouldnt keep). Expecting Krauss praise or approval, Benjamin read Krauss
response as rejection and dismissal. Although Benjamins achievement was based
on his ability to avoid identification and create a portrait that estranges its subject,
he could not resist the need for Krauss supportive response. It is fair to assume
that it is not Krauss self-reflection but Benjamins own need for recognition that
determined his attitude. This is one of the crucial differences in their approaches
and positions: an expression of their different takes on literary authority
(Instanz)17.

Scholars who dealt with this issue viewed Krauss reaction to Benjamin either as
critical or detached; others viewed it as apologetic and defensive18. However, as
Leo Lensing suggested19, those who know Kraus would find it hard to believe that
he would simply leave such an essay with few polite but dismissive words.
Krauss reputation is that of a cruel and uncompromising critic, one who doesnt

17
In 1930, while working on the Kraus essay, Benjamin wrote to Scholem about his decision to
become a literary critic and about the fears and complications of such a position: (The difficulties
lies in that in Germany for more than fifty years literary criticism has not been considered a
serious genre. To make oneself a place in criticism means, actually, recreating it as a genre. See:
Werner Fuld, Walter Benjamin zwischen den Sthlen: Eine Biographie (Mnchen: Hanser, 1979),
p.209-210. hier stimmt was mit dem Zitat nicht, konnte aber nicht nachschauen
18
See: Alexander Gelley, Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin on Kraus, in: Journal of
Literature and the History of Ideas Volume 5, Number 1 (Pennsylvania: 2007), p.23-24 / Paul
Reitter, The Anti Journalist, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.173 / Werner Fuld,
Ibid.
19
Leo Lensing, Letter to the Editors Karl Kraus and Walter Benjamin (New York: The New
York Review of Books, 4.12.2008).

14
hold back, especially when it concerns him personally. Lensing therefore reads
Krauss words as a positive reaction. Christian Schulte20 continues this path and
points to Krauss remark in the following edition of Die Fackel: Er [Benjamin]
hat mich keineswegs enttuscht (F.857-863, 120) [He (Benjamin) didnt in any
way disappoint me]. Werner Fuld suggests21 that Krauss response was
defensiveBenjamins essay was so revealing he had to distance himself.
Krauss expression I was able to conclude only in essence that it has to do with
me can support such a reading. First, it is an obvious understatement, seeing as
the essay clearly deals with Kraus and his work. Second, because Kraus uses the
verb entnehmen, which can mean to conclude, but also to withdraw or to
remove. To follow Fulds line of thought, the sentence can be read: since it has so
much to do with me, I had to withdraw from praising or accepting it. As important
these remarks are, I suggest going further in thinking about Krauss inability of
self-recognition, analyzing his words in the context of his view on portraits and
self-images in general. The first example is Krauss response to his painted
portrait, created by his friend the painter Oskar Kokoschkaa portrait Kraus
praised as Meisterwerk, and kept on the wall of his study:

Kokoschka hat ein Portrt von mir gemacht. Schon mglich, da mich die nicht
erkennen werden, die mich kennen. Aber sicher werden mich die erkennen, die
mich nicht kennen. (F.300, 25)

[Kokoschka made a portrait of me. Quite possibly those who know me won't
recognize me. But certainly those who don't know me will recognize me.]

On a different occasion, Kraus commented on Kokoschkas art works that

Kokoschka malt unhnlich. Man hat keines seiner Portrts erkannt, aber
smtliche Originale22 [Kokoschka paints unsimilar. One cannot recognize his
portraits, but all of them are originals]. It is this unsimilarity that makes
Kokoschkas portraits into Meisterwerke. Again, the key issue here is recognition
(erkennen). In a sense, Kraus was responding to Benjamin with a self-reference, a

20
Chritian Schulte, Ursprung ist das Ziel (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2003), p.35.
21
Werner Fuld, WB (Mnchen: Hanser, 1979).
22
Marbacher Katalog Nr. 52 (Marbach: 1999), p.188.

15
self-quote, which Benjamin perhaps should have identified. It is not the portrait as
reflection but as creation that matters to Kraus, as yet another example indicates:

Diesem Portrait gegenber gewinne ich meine Selbstachtung wieder. Es macht

mir mein Verhngnis begreiflich. Alles wird so natrlich, so selbstverstndlich,
so sonnenklar, was wir erlebt haben. Wer sich diesen blhenden, schwellenden
Lippen, diesen groen unschuldsvollen Kinderaugen, diesem rosigweien
strotzenden Krper gegenber in seiner brgerlichen Stellung sicher fhlt, der
werfe den ersten Stein auf uns! (F 142: 15)

[Looking on this portrait I regain my self-respect. It makes my fate

comprehensible to me. Everything we have endured gets clear as day. Let him
who feels secure in his middle-class position when he sees these blossoming
pouting lips, these child-eyes, big and innocent, this rose-white body abounding
in life, let him cast the first stone at us!].

This quote from Die Fackel is taken from Wedekinds Pandoras Box, the play
that Kraus endorsed and staged for private production in 1905, at a time when the
public production of the play was forbidden. Theres a lot to be said about the
relations between Kraus, Wedekind, and the heroine Lulu, but at this point I will
limit myself to these brief remarks. The quote is from Alva, one of the
protagonists of the play, when he gazes at Lulus portrait. He is a young
tormented poet with whom Kraus felt most associated.23 The portrait itself plays a
central role in the play. It is not only that through its making the painter fall in
love with Lulu, but also the fact that, from the moment her portrait is painted, her
entanglements begin until her inevitable tragic death. The plot develops around
the unintended consequences of this painting. Alvas words express another point
which is of importance for understanding the importance of portraits for Kraus,
namely that the portrait affects him in a very profound way. In the portrait Alva
sees something of himself: he gains his self-esteem, feels passionate and potent;
he grasps something through his gaze on the portrait that tells him something
about himself and his life beyond his brgerliche existence. What makes Lulu
into a femme fatale is not her passionate lips or eyes: it is their representation that

23
Nike Wagner, Geist und Geschlecht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), p.183. See also:
Karl Kraus / Frank Wedekind, Briefwechsel 1903 bis 1917, (Wrzburg: Knighausen & Neuman,
2008), p.310-311.

16
turns them into such irresistible objects of sexual desire.24 The last remark has to
do with the theatricality of the entire scene, which should not be underestimated
here. It is not only that the Alva quote Kraus cites is taken from a play, or that the
portrait in question is itself the portrait of a figure in a play, but also the fact that
the relationship between the observer and the artwork is formed in such a way that
triggers an existential experience. A portrait is not simply a picture hanging from
a wall but a Mene tekel: an encoded writing on the wall.25 It is a unique form of
stonethrowing, an emotional provocation and memory-work. A powerful
experience that is at the same time an acting, a play; it is not reality but a mask, an
image. It is the theatricality of the portrait that this quote not only demonstrates
but also performs.26 This provides an insight into the way Kraus relates to the
question of representation and self-fashioning. As this example shows, to create,
for Kraus, means always to re-create, to repeat, translate or perform.

It is important in this context to note that Krauss reaction to Benjamin came not
after the first publication of the essay in the Frankfurter Zeitung, where it was
originally printed, but after the second publication in the Kroll Opera journal, the
Nachdruck. I am quoting Kraus at length, since it is the details and phrases that
are relevant to what follows:

"Der Nachdruck im Programmheft zu ,Perichole nun betrifft eine Wrdigung,

die meinen Vortrag von ,Pariser Leben, der angeblich von wilden Gebrden des
Marktschreiers begleitet war, mit abgrndigem Feuilletonismus behandelt und in
der dargestellt wird, wie dort, ,wo diese wetterwendische Stimme laut wird, die
Blitze der Lichtreklamen und der Donner der Metro durch das Paris der

24
In the scene Lulu is actually standing in front of him but Alva is completely taken by the
portrait.
25
Dem durch keine Parteibrille getrbten Blick muss doppelt deutlich sich das Mene
Tekel zeigen, welches druend in unserer durch Altarkerzen verstrkten Finsternis zuweilen
aufleuchtet. (F 1: 2). Kraus is less interested in the obscurity of writing, but rather in its political
and ideological frameworks. For him the point is to bring back the mystery and shadows. In the
same logic Kraus explains in this first issue of Die Fackel , that the torch is not about bringing
light, but to express the darkness of Vienna.
26
It is worth mentioning that Krauss apartment was full of portraits. Almost all the images on the
walls of his study are actually portraits of himself, of his lovers or of people he respected. Its
apparent, that most of those works exhibit theatrical images, gestures and postures. A portrait can
be considered not as what presents a person's figure, but rather as a manifestation of the theatrical
aspect of her / his personality.

17
Omnibusse und Gastlammen fahren, und das Werk ,verwandelt sich in einen
Vorhang, den ich beiseitereie, um den Blick ins Innere meines
Schreckenskabinetts frei zu geben: [Absatz] ,Da stehen sie: Schober, Kerr und
die andern Nummern, nicht mehr die Feinde, sondern Raritten usw. [Absatz]
Diese Stelle war mir verstndlich; ich habe mich nur, als ich den Aufsatz in der
Frankfurter Zeitung las, gewundert, da man einen Mann wie Bekessy, dessen
Verlust das ist, was ich fr mein engeres Vaterland so schmerzlich empfinde, in
einem Atem mit Schober und Kerr nennen kann. Diesem belstand hat nun ein
Funktionr der Krolloper [ ... ] teilweise abgeholfen, indem der Satz, der das
Inventar meines Schreckenskabinetts bezeichnet und der entschieden eine Lnge
enthlt, im Programmheft nunmehr wie folgt lautet: [Absatz] ,Da stehen sie:
Schober, Bekessy und die andern Nummern usw. [Absatz] Wie man auf den
ersten Blick merkt, ist eine der Nummern und zwar gerade die zugkrftigste
abhanden gekommen, was, wenn es Kastan widerfahren wre, ganz gewi zu
einer Anzeige wider unbekannte Tter gefhrt htte. Man wird mir glauben, da
sowohl der Setzer wie ich an dieser Entfernung, oder sagen wir an dieser
Streichung, die sich aus theaterpraktischen Grnden als notwendig erwiesen hat,
unschuldig sind. Ich habe die Aufnahme des Essays weder angeordnet noch
berwacht und das Recht auf Reklamierung der Wachsfigur steht in diesem Falle
leider nicht dem Inhaber des Schreckenskabinetts zu, sondern nur dessen
Schilderer, der wohl auf Vollstndigkeit Wert legen und fr sich die Autorrechte
geltend machen wird, die man dem Urheber des deutschen Textes der ,Perichole
verkrzen wollte. (Ibid)

The reprint of the program of Perichole specifically applies to one appreciation

which deals with my lecture of Paris Life, supposedly accompanied by the wild
gestures of a pitchman, with abyssal feuilletonism and shows how in a place
where such capricious voice is rising, the flashes of neon signs and the thunder of
the Mtro are running through Paris of omnibuses and gas flames and the
creation turns into a curtain, which I rip aside to clear the sight inside my horror
cabinet: There they stand, Schober, Kerr and the other numbers, no longer
enemies but curiosities. This point was to me too perspicuous; not only have I,
when reading the article in the Franfurter Zeitung, been wondering that a man
like Bekessy, whose loss is what I regard as painful for my own fatherland, could
be mentioned in one breath with someone like Schober and Kerr. This mischief
has been remedied in parts by a functionary of Kroll opera, as the sentence,
which designates the inventory of my horror cabinet and which decidedly
contains a certain length, in the program now goes as follows: There they stand,
Schober, Bekessy and the other numbers etc. As you can see at a first glance, one
of the numbers, namely the most appealing one, got lost, which if it had befallen
Kasten, would have led to file charges against unknown delinquents. You will
believe me that both the compositor and me are not the ones to be blamed for the
distance, say the abatement, which seemed necessary for reasons of theatrical
practice. I neither imposed nor supervise the inclusion of the essay and in this
case reclaiming rights for the wax figure are not entitled to the inhabitant of the
horror cabinet, but only to its delineator who will well appreciate integrity and
claim for himself author rights, which were supposed to be abbreviated to the
author of the German text of Perichole.

18
Kraus noted that, in this reprint of Benjamins piece, the name of Alfred Kerr,27
one of his rivals, was omitted from the list of evil figures that inhabit what
Benjamin called Krauss Schreckenskabinett. In his response to this Nachdruck
incident Kraus encourages Benjamin to use his right as an author to demand that
this deletion of Kerr be corrected. Benjamin indeed made this correction in the
journals next issue, under the title Berichtigung (Correction). Kraus reprinted
this correction in Die Fackel under Ein aufgemachter Strich (An Un-done
Deletion, F 857-863: 119-120). This involvement of Kraus with Benjamins texts
seems to contradict the idea that he completely dismissed the latter, demonstrating
Krauss familiarity with the essay and its different editions. Yet it is not what
Benjamin wrote that triggered Kraus to react, but rather the editors deletion
(Streichung) and the question of the authors right (Autorrechte) that provoked
him. He did not question or affirm Benjamins ideas from an authoritative
position but pledged Benjamin to place himself as an author(ity), making him
responsible not only for his publication, but also for its subsequent re-production
(Nachdruck) and to its dangers.

As Benjamin describes it, this Schreckenskabinett somehow transforms Krauss

villain figures into a collection of outdated, rare items or prehistoric idols. They
are not deleted but preserved as exhibits. By asking to bring Kerrs name back
into the list, Kraus plays along with Benjamin, calling him to safe-keep this
valuable collection. In a way, though, Kraus too made a kind of deletion. In his
response to the reprint he quoted the sentences that appeared prior to the deletion
of Kerrs name, but did not continue on to the next sentence after this list of
rivals, namely the sentence I quoted above, that explains the Schreckenskabinett
as a prop for demonic self-reflection. Read in this context, the very concept of
the Schreckenskabinettan obvious reference to the 1920 film Das Cabinet des
Dr. Caligarinot only suggests a doubling but also questions the idea of an
inner-self that can no longer be determined. Instead of coherent self-reflection,
27
The case of Kerr is relevant, since it relates to Krauss image. Kerr wrote on Kraus, that he was
tiny and Talmudic, and that his language was a mixture of German and Yiddish. It is
paradigmatic that those, who accuse Kraus for being a self-hating Jew, attach anti-Semite
stereotypes to their accusations. See the further discussion on Spiegelmensch.

19
one can grasp only traces and residues manifested in textual gestures such as
deletions (Streichung) and reprints (Nachdruck).

But still it can be argued that there is a negative tone in Krauss response to
Benjamin. He refers to the essays style as abyssal feuilletonisn, which may
still be viewed with ambivalence.28 However, he then notes in brackets (maybe it
is psychoanalysis). Krauss resentment to psychoanalysis is well known. In 1910
Fritz Wittles,29 a former friend and contributor to Die Fackel, presented to the
psychoanalytic society a psychoanalytical profile of Kraus which he named
Fackel Neurosis. After arguing that Krauss anger towards the press is based on
his oedipal complex, he claimed that Kraus had sexualized the newspaper and
created his own phallic style, namely the aphorism. The profile was simplistic and
malicious, and immediately rejected by Freud. Krauss response to Wittles and to
psychoanalysis in general was aggressive. It is clear, then, that Kraus knew well
that Benjamins essay was not psychoanalytic in this sense, and it is doubtful that
he would have remained so peaceful and polite in case it was. Why, then, does
Kraus mention psychoanalysis (albeit in parenthesis) in this context? It may help
to look at his image as public-reader through the testimony of another Kraus-fan
who attended his readings and appreciated his unique style. In his memories on
Krauss performances, Elias Canetti wrote: Thanks to [Kraus] I began to
understand that each individual has a linguistic figure [sprachliche Gestalt]
whereby he is differentiated from all others.30 Canetti's words are not far from
Benjamins ideas, stating that Krauss mimetic method had to do with literary
figures. They both notice that it is the dialectic aspect of Krauss readings that
allows him to present himself through the voices and figures of others. In his
28
Lensing explains: the phrase abyssal feuilletonism (mit abgrndigem Feuilletonismus in
original) certainly doesnt mean abysmal feuilletonism, The adjective abgrndig mostly
carries ambivalent connotations; Kraus also employs it in the sense of profound, in order to
compliment Benjamin. In any case, he is not describing the entire essay with this phrase, but rather
a passage, that characterizes one of his famous one-man performances of Offenbachs operettas.
See Leo Lensing, Letter to the Editors - Karl Kraus and Walter Benjamin, in: The New York
Review of Books (New York: 4.12.2008).
29
On Fritz Wittles relations with Kraus and his Fackel Neurosis paper see: Thomas Szasz, Anti
Freud (New York: Syracuse University press, 1990), p.31-38.
30
Elias Canetti, Karl Kraus: Schule des Wiederstands. In das Gewissen der Worte (Mnchen:
Hasner, 1975), p.39-49. I used Alexander Gelleys translation, Ibid, p.24.

20
essay Benjamin shows not only how Kraus as a reader uses mimicry in order to
create these literary figures, but also notices the fact that Krauss use of quotes
contains such a figural aspect as well. Thus, for example, Krauss frequent citing
of Shakespeare, more specifically his Timon of Athens, is not simply him using
Shakespeares words, but using Timon as a figure through which to condemn
Viennese society. In Timons feast-scene the food turns into stones that he then
throws at the Athenians31and in Krauss readings he becomes a Timon
throwing words at his audience.32 However, the idea of linguistic figure33, as well
as Krauss term Wortgestalt, suggests that it is not inner truth that matters here,
but the ability to create and recreate speech forms that rejects the principal of
identification and instead works through complex network of associations and
references, that are themselves subjugated to doubt and change. Hence, when
Benjamin writes on Krauss use of Timon (the sentence following the one I have
quoted), Hier kommt nun erst das wahre Antlitz, vielmehr die wahre Maske des
Satirikers zum Vorschein. Es ist die Maske Timons, des Menschenfeindes [Only
now appears the satirist real face, or better the satirist true mask. The mask of
Timon, the people's enemy], he seems to identify the linguistic figure with Kraus
himself, emphasizing this by doubling the word true. This is not
psychoanalysis, but a writing that knows something about Kraus, and aspires to
identify his real mask. Benjamin was very perceptive in pointing out that,
through quoting, something of the satirist reveals itself. However, at this point he
seems to forget that what is revealed is not the satirists true self but his
linguistic figure. Here we finally reach the crucial point I will only be able to
develop fully in the next chapters: Kraus used Timon as a model for linguistic
figuration in general, and not as a tool for his own self-fashioning. His use of
Timon thus has to do with the function of the medium, and not with any form of

31
Timon of Athens was part of Krauss first theatrical public reading and it took place in Vienna
on the 5.2.1912.
32
This beautiful example stems from Antonio Ribeiro, whose important analysis on quotations in
general and the importance of Shakespeare I will discuss in length in chapter three. See: Ribeiro,
Karl Kraus und Shakespeare. Die Macht des Epigonen, in: Joseph Strelka (ed.), Karl Kraus:
Diener der Sprache Meister des Ethos, (Tbingen: Francke Verlag, 1990), p.237-265.
33
Following Krauss famous poem Bekenntnis [confession], that I quoted in the beginning of
the chapter, one can think about the term Epigone as related to the concept of Sprachliche Gestalt.

21
truth (accept for the truth of the medium itself). My suggestion is, that against this
kind of possible false identification, as might be suggested by Benjamins essay
(regardless of whether or not this is what he had in mind), Krauss parenthetical
note on psychoanalysis aims to create this critical distinction. Benjamins essay is
not about Kraus the person but about Krauss literary figure.

This tension is also evident in the literary level - the opening sentence of Krauss
response to Benjamins essay begins and ends with an Ich (exactly the opposite of
Benjamins reluctance of using this mode of speech). But the sentence itself, as
well as Krauss writing in general, is constituted by many different voices and
various points of view. In his reading of Benjamin, Kraus focused on the issues of
self-reflection and authority, and challenged Benjamin to be even more radical: to
write on Kraus without identifying with or stabilizing his image, while at the same
time positing Benjamin himself as a writer who uses his authority against attempts
to edit or modify his work, and thus able to free himself from the need for
external affirmation and approval. For Kraus, these aspects are linked and
dependant on each other, forming a literary and critical independence, as will now
be examined.34

II. Literary Independence as Critical Position

Krauss two major early works, Die Demolierte Literatur (1897) and Eine Krone
fr Zion (1898), can be read as his refusal to identify himself with two of the most
reasonable options for someone like him to belong to and affiliate himself with in
Vienna of those days. As a young talented writer he could have found his place
among the circle of young Vienna, a group of writers and artists gathered around
Hermann Baar that included Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler and
others. The publication of Die Demolierte Literatur, which mocks and criticizes
the groups pretentious style and hypocrisy, shows that this was not an option for
him. Another possibility, the Zionist movement, was in many ways the Jewish

34
Another way of thinking of the authority issue between Kraus and Benjamin relates to
Benjamins need for approval of his work by Kraus and Krauss refusal to perform as such.

22
avant-garde of the time, and could have also provided an option for a young
radical and engaged Jew, who wanted to find his place outside the mainstream.
Kraus, however, did not only criticize the Zionistss means but also had no
sympathy for their cause. He took them by the word (Beim Wort nehmen),
demonstrating the gap between their empty speech and forms of action, and
exposing their latent and allegedly paradoxical affinities with the anti-Semites.
Both those groups, Young Vienna and the Zionists, served for Kraus as what he
wished to be separated from and act against. Through his enthusiastic rejection of
these identities he developed his own independent satirical writing style that
became a kind of substitute for all ready-made ideological options.

Krauss biography describes other cases of such resignation. Between 1892 and
1898 he studied law and philosophy at the University of Vienna, but refused to
take the certification tests, thereby renouncing his future as lawyer. This is usually
explained by his ambition to become an actor that ended in traumatic failure,
when the opening night of his first performance turned out to be a complete
disaster. This, however, is a suggestion I would like to question. I find it difficult
to believe that Kraus abandoned his lifes dream, the thing that motivated him to
quit his studies and risk his career, simply because of one public humiliation.
Kraus was not someone who depended on the opinion of others for determining
his future. Furthermore, as many accounts show, it is clear that Kraus had a
natural and undeniable gift for acting. My assumption is that his relation to being
a professional actor is similar to his attitude towards all the other potential forms
of self-fashioning. He rejected all definitions and roles, but in a way also
internalized something of them: he did not became a lawyer, yet defined himself
as public prosecutor (Anklger), making extensive use of his legal training in his
writings, struggles and debates; he never became an actor, yet devoted much of
his career to the theater, or better said, theater was part of everything he did; he
rejected mainstream journalist, but positioned himself as an anti-journalist.35

35
I am using Paul Reitters definition here, see: Paul Reitter, AJ, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2008).

23
The most dramatic moment took place when Kraus was offered the position of
feuilleton editor for the popular Viennese journal Neue Freie Presse. This was
one of the most prestigious positions in the Viennese press of the time, and could
have been a great achievement for a young, unemployed, up-and-coming satirist.
Kraus, however, not only rejected the offer fiercely, but also turned the
interpellative power of a journalistic position into a self-constitutive moment
marking his newly-won independence (Unabhngigkeit), which he declared in the
first edition of Die Fackel. This independence had to do with his position as a
critic who dismissed himself from any political or ideological commitment. As
Edward Timms writes: His mission as satirist was to attack ideological thinking
in all its forms, not merely those he happened to dislike.36 This is an important
point. Kraus did not seek to create his own ideological paper, but rather to create a
space that would never be entirely determined by any particular ideology, always
able to maintain some distance vis--vis it. This is a point he insisted on when
describing Nestory as being confusingly uncommitted (verwirrend
gesinnungslos) (F 349-50, 17). It is important to note that ideology in all its
forms, as Timms puts it, also means the formation of identities. But although
Timms convincingly shows how Kraus used Die Fackel to attack ideological
conventions and institutions, he does not go on to make the link between Krauss
constant struggle against ideologies and what he calls Krauss identity crisis,
i.e. his being a serial-rejecter of identities. At the same time, he reshapes the class
definitions as well as those of a writer, a journalist and an actor, which turn into
parts of his own image. In a different context Timms remarks: The Jewish
population of Vienna experienced the crisis of identity in its most acute form.
Indeed, Krauss self-definition as satirist [] must be seen as response to this
dilemma.37 What moved Kraus was not the ways in which political powers and
commercial institutions limited the freedom of the press (a concept he despised),
but the ideological nature of the language of the press itself, along with that of

36
Edward Timms, The Apocalyptic Satirist (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986),
p.36.
37
Timms, Ibid., p.13. The often cited example of Hofmannstahls Chandos Brief shows how
identity crisis may look. Kraus may share Chandos feelings concerning language, but instead of
crisis he creates his project Die Fackel , which will address this challenge.

24
other institutions that constituted and forged identities. For Kraus, ideology and
identity are inextricably linked, both constituted by a certain mysterious power"
(Geheimnisvolle Macht) of language. Furthermore, ideological identities,
according to Kraus, are linguistically performed (with this language operating on
several different levels, as we shall see). Such performances, when analyzed, not
only lose their seductive power, but also reveal themselves to be deceiving and
corrupting.38 Independence thus means the refusal to submit to ideological speech,
the unmasking of the ideological nature of various identity-games, and a
disavowal of any such potential affiliations and identification. It should be noted
however, that one of Krauss preferred strategies for performing such refusal and
unmasking was to play with these forms and conventions, part of which meant he
had no problem contradicting himself, by creating different kinds of hybrid-
identities that were themselves subject to constant modification.39

Building on Timmss analysis, I would like to suggest that Krauss critique of

ideological identity-formations can also benefit greatly from viewing it through
Louis Althussers theory of ideology. Althusser explains the relationship between
ideology and identity as an interpellation process: one whereby individuals
recognize themselves as subjects through their position as addressees of the call of
some ideological institution, usually through one of its representative agents.
Althussers paradigmatic example is of a person walking down the street,
suddenly hearing a police officer calling out Hey, you there! Hearing this, the
individual turns around, and by this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree
physical conversion, he becomes a subject.40 In the act of acknowledging that he
is addressed, the individual recognizes his identity as a subject. As Cindy Nguyen

38
At the end of the article, Kraus makes summery of these fallacies: Mangel an Talent, verfrhte
Abgeklrtheit, [] falsche Dative, Monocle und heimliche Nerven Alles muss mit. [Lack of
talent, ensnare serenity, false use of dative, monocle and heavenly nerves - everything together].
This is again, an issue of self-fashioning that replaces content and artistic value. Kraus observes
not only the misuse of language, but also the gestures, the dress codes and the accessories that in
work here in order to create the pose. See: Kraus, Die Demolierte Literatur (Steinbach / Gieen:
Anabas, 1985), p.36.
39
Nike Wagner suggested that Kraus was a literary bisexual and showed how through his
relation to language he deconstructs Weiningers definitions.
40
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York / London: Monthly
Review Press, 1971), p.174.

25
emphasizes,41 this position has a double meaning, according to Althusser, as the
subject is both recognized by the law and subjugated to the law. By pointing to
this double process, Althusser shows how subjects are continually constituted by
what he calls Ideological State Apparatuses, such as the family, educational
institutions, and the media, including literature, radio and television. Ideological
power lies not in the content but in the act of reading or listening; in the subjective
position made possible by assuming (willingly or unwillingly) the position of
addressee. Following this line of thought, I suggest that Krauss critical position
of independence relies on a problematization of this interpellative process,
through the constant rejection of interpellative calls, by refusing to occupy their
addressee position. A paradigmatic example of this is the way Kraus, rather than
turning his head in response to the call of the police as in Althussers example,
would call upon Viennas chief of police (one of the figures of his
Schreckenskabinett) to resign.

III. The Interpellative Power of the Press, and Satirical Immunization

Krauss work is often read as a sharp and witty critique that unmasks political and
commercial interests, functioning as an indictment against the wrong or falsifying
use of grammar, spurious metaphoric speech, exaggerated use of symbolism, and
other aspects of linguistic corruption, which is inherently a form of social and
cultural corruption. The concept of interpellation, however, goes further,
suggesting that Kraus operated not only as a media critic attempting to change
various public discourses from within. His critique aimed to challenge the
ideological function of these discourses themselves, by deconstructing the various
forms of identity they were promoting, and the ideological-interpellative
mechanisms by which they tried to do so. In other words, according to this
reading, what Timms refers to as the apocalyptic nature of Krauss satire is to
be understood not only as a prophetic position, but as an effort to transgress

41
Cindy Nguyen, Interpellation, Theories of Media Keywords Glossary (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 2004).

26
existing ideological-identitarian-discursive constructions throughas we shall
develop in the next chaptersa different relation to language as such.

The following example serves to illustrate the way media-critique, the critique of
interpellation processes, and Krauss apocalyptic attitude, diagnosed by Timms,
work together:

Freundlicher Leser! Der du noch immer die Zeitung fr ein von geheimnisvoller
Macht Erschaffenes, aus pythischem Munde Weisheit Kndendes, beim
Morgenkaffee pltzlich Daliegendes hltst, der du vom Offenbarungsschauer
dich angeweht und der Ewigkeit nher fhlst, wenn Lwy oder Mller im Wir-
Ton leitartikeln besinne dich, dass all dein Respect nur der Namenlosigkeit
gilt, [] Und whnst du, der Unbekannte, der dir Meinungen eingibt, sei ein
anderer als der, so da gleich daneben Regenschirme, Feigenkaffee und magische
Wunder offeriert? Werde misstrauisch, und einer von Druckerschwrze fast
schon zerfressenen Cultur winkt die Errettung. Lasse den Zeitungsmenschen als
Nachrichtenbringer und commerciellen Vermittler sich ausleben, aber peitsche
ihm den frechen Wahn aus, dass er von einer Kanzel herab zu versammeltem
Volke spreche und berufen sei, geistigen Werthen die Sanction zu ertheilen.
Nimm das gedruckte Wort nicht ehrfrchtig fr bare Mnze! Denn deine
Heiligen haben zuvor fr das gedruckte Wort baare Mnze genommen. (F.98,4)

[Kind Reader! You, who still considers the journal to be something created by
magical force, announcing wisdom from some oracular mouth, suddenly lying
there with your morning coffee, you who, when Lwy or Mller compose articles
in the tone of We, feel drifted by the sight of revelation and closer to eternity
consider that all your respect applies only to namelessness And do you falsely
suppose that the stranger who supplies you with opinions would be someone else
than the one who offers umbrellas, fig coffee and magical wonders? Be
suspicious. Only then does rescue beckon from the printers ink of a nearly
eroded culture. Allow the newspaper-person to act out as a bringer of news and
as a commercial agent, but whip away from him the bold illusion that he
could speak condescendingly towards the assembled masses and was called to
impose sanctions to mental values. Do not reverently take the printed word at
face value! For your saints have taken the printed word at face value before.]42

42
Notes on to the translation: 1. Meinungen eingibt the literal tr. would be: the one who
inserts you opinions. 2. Speak condescendingly (orig: von der Kanzel herab) Kanzel is a
place in a church, in a synagogue or in a mosque, the place from where someone preaches. Von
der Kanzel herab reden refers to a patronizing or disrespectful speech-act. So there are two
indirect references: The sacral aspect (in the speech act of the writer) and the willingness of the
people (dem versammelten Volke) to embrace the sacral (patronizing) speech. In the last
sentence the sacral element occurs again as an allegory to the willingness to believe in the holy
script (Deine Heiligen...). I thank Hanno Hauenstein for those advices.

27
The thing to note here is that Kraus is not simply warning against the
manipulative nature of the press. What takes place every morning with the
reading of the newspaper has to do with a some powerful mystical experience.
There is thus primarily a need to secularize (for lack of a better word) the act of
newspaper-reading, to reconstruct its hidden context and thereby expose the fact
that it has nothing to do with holy words but with the writing of Lwy or Mller.
The second point to note is that Krauss emphasis is not on what the paper reports,
nor on the fact it is often (if not always) used merely as a platform for promoting
commercial interests, but on the way it addresses its readers. The power of the
newspaper lies not so much in the content it delivers, or in the fact this content
can be completely false, but on its ability to say We, namely its interpellative
power.

Irina Djassemy43 reads the former passage as demonstrating how, instead of

reporting, the press creates an alternative universe. Through its authoritative
speech the newspaper is able to surrogates real life events, becoming, as Kraus
put it during the outbreak of the First World War, not the messenger but the
event. Although Djassemy emphasizes how the ideological is made to sound as
if it is objective and general (the voice of the We), she does not go on to explain
how the press actually affects and transforms the reader. This is a point Kraus is
very explicit about. The first person plural of the press is not simply anonymous
or objective, but has a magical constitutive power, which Kraus expresses
through the terms Geheimnisvolle Macht, pythischem Munde (a reference to the
Oracle of Delphi), Offenbarungsschauer, and Ewigkeit. What Kraus notices is
that, by reading the paper, the reader becomes part of something greater (We),
and that through this process some self-awareness and judgment is lost. This
process involves some degree of mystical excess, albeit one that has to do not
with spirituality but with what I suggest calling a spiritualized materiality.
Against this transformation, Krauss satire theatrically reconstructs the scene of

43
Irina Djassemy, Productivgehalt kritischer Zerstrerarbeit (Wrzburg: Knigshausen &
Neuman, 2002), p.231-232.

28
reading, shifting between the trivial morning routine and a condensed rhythm of
theological metaphors, thereby providing a mirror-image of the entire process.

It should be emphasized that the independence-position Kraus is striving for is not

a given, but the product of a consistent effort of satirical-doubling. To believe
evil [newspapers] makes evil worse, Kraus wrotein 1900, proclaiming the press a
cultural danger people need to be immunized against.44 This Immunisierung is
based on a different relation to language and media: a critical position that makes
reading subject to constant estrangement and doubt. It is directed against the
magical quality of interpellative processes, resisting their ideological call, and
generating an ability to withstand their mechanisms of desire. Again, what it aims
to protect against is not a specific kind of bad (falsifying, distorting) journalism,
but the press as such, this dark magic (Schwarze Magie) that plays a dangerous
role in the social life of turn-of-the-century Vienna.

IV. From Identity-Discourse to Literary Persona

This immunization process as refusal to the interpellative process, takes us back

to the question of identity. Timms writes: There is an inextricable link between
literary persona and existential identity. Krauss satire during the final years of the
Habsburg Empire is not merely an attempt to answer the question quo Vadis
Austria? It is a sustained attempt to forge his identity.45 However, when trying
to follow this path in a chapter titled The Paradox of the True Mask, Timms
runs into a paradox. He dismisses psychoanalytic attempts to explain the relations
between Krauss style and his personality, using historic sources instead. The
problem is that the historic reports on Kraus as a person are nothing like his
literary figure, and do not reconcile with his misanthropic image. In contrast to
what Timms suggests, it seems that Krauss existential identity has nothing to do
with his literary persona. As a Krausian, Timms knows that literary style and
personality are linked, but as an historian he cannot confirm this, even in regard to

44
F 56: 12.
45
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.165.

29
Kraus himself. The point is that Kraus rejected all sorts of identifications, viewing
them as discursive options that he took upon himself in order to negate or disrupt.
This would have resulted in an identity crisis, if only Kraus had indeed
succumbed to those identities. By rejecting them, he was able to create his own
private Austria,46 which, at least up to 1933 and the Third Reich, was a space
where he could practice and perform his independence. Kraus took identity by
the words, turning it from a constitutive interpellative process back into a word-
game and literary re-creation. His writings contrived a sophisticated mechanism
that dismantled identities and ideologies back into words and literary style, sounds
and effects. What is so unique about Kraus is that for him identity was not the
desired solution but the problem. Identity crisis was thus not something he tried to
overcome, but that which he considered an integral part of the possibility to create
and produce through language. The charming, friendly, warm-hearted person
Timms finds in various reports does not contradict Krauss literary persona, but
rather exemplifies those non-ideological aspects of his personality (friendships,
daily dealings with associates, his tendency to help people in need) that he simply
did not seek to reject or disprove of. The same goes for the beautiful distinction
Werner Kraft draws between Krauss polemics and his literary work when
discussing Kraus as a poet.47

Timms is absolutely correct that one of the principles of Krauss critique is the
congruence between literary persona and literary style. This point is demonstrated
by Joseph Quack,48 using the following example of Wedekinds use of language
in his play Pandoras Box, which Kraus praised as: Eine Sprache, die die
verblffendste Verbindung von Charakteristik und aphoristischer Erhhung
darstellt. Jedes Wort zugleich der Figur und ihrem Gedanken, ihrer Bestimmung

46
I paraphrase the title of Eric Santners book My Own Private Germany (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996). Yet it should be mentioned, that this idea also appears in Alfred
Pfabigans introduction. See: Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus. Eine politische Biographie (Wien:
Europaverlag, 1976).
47
Werner Kraft, Beitrge zum Verstndnis seines Werkes (Salzburg: Otto Mller Verlag, 1956),
p.239-284.
48
Joseph Quack, Bemerkungen zum Sprachverstndnis von Karl Kraus, (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag,
1976), p.74.

30
angepasst: Gesprchswendung und Motto. (LL, 15) [A language that presents
astonishing relations between characters and an elevated aphoristic (style). Every
word, together with the character and its thoughts, fits its cause: dialogue-phrases
and motto] As Quack emphasizes, in the play, the identities of the different
characters are explicitly constructed and deconstructed through a series of textual
performances and interactions, revealing the fact that identities are not the
expression of an inner truth but a performance that is essentially a series of textual
gestures (e.g. citation, repetition, style and toneelements that will be further
discussed in subsequent chapters). It is in this sense that, for Kraus, the play
served as a paradigm of social critique.

The counterpart to this understanding of identity has to do with the nature of

linguistic utterances. According to this understanding of linguistic performance,
an utterance does not depended on nor is it an expression of the speakers
thoughts or intentions, which he tries to put into words, but on the awareness that
every thought or intention is already linguistically constructed, and thus always
subjected to certain discursive constraints on the one hand, and open to re-
inscription on the other. Wedekinds Pandora is praised because it allows such a
subversive linguistic performancewhich is also the reason the production was
banned by the authorities. As Kraus noted in 1903 with respect to Wedekinds
Erdgeist (the first part of what would later, together with Pandoras Box, become
Lulu), most critics failed to understand die polygame Frauennatur (F. 142, 17)
[The polygamous nature of the woman] presented in the play.49 The character
Lulu is able to transgress feminine gender definitions through her linguistic
performancesthereby challenging widespread notions of sexuality and
femininity, like those promoted by Otto Weininger. The polygamous nature of the
woman thus corresponds to the polygamous nature of linguistic performance in
general (providing an experience similar to the one Alva reports while looking at
Lulus portrait). These aspects will be further analyzed in the next chapter, which
deals with Krauss ideas on linguistic performance and practices. The point I wish

49
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.69.

31
to make here is that identity and self-reflection are themselves textual/linguistic
gestures, and that it is this realization that also opens the way to challenge them
which is precisely the function of theater and art, or, more broadly, the literary
function as such. This point if formulated throughout Krauss works, expressed,
for example, in the following aphorism: Ein Agitator ergreift das Wort, der
Knstler wird von Wort ergreifen. (A. 120) [An agitator captures words, an artist
is captured by them]

V. Identity and Mimesis: The Spiegelmensch

Das Kunstwerk sei eine Spiegelung, aber die echte Kritik vermge als die
Spiegelung jener Spiegelung eben mehr. (F. 622-631, 50)

[The artwork is a reflection, but the real critique is able to reflect on every
reflection. The work of art is a reflection, but real critique as the reflection of
reflection can do more.]

Quack rightly points out that the relation between identity and literary style
reaches a dramatic climax with Krauss critique of Franz Werfel. This relates to
another question of identity, namely the Jewish question, which emerges in
Krauss and Wefels polemic surrounding the theme of identity and mimesis,
exemplified by the figure of the mirror man (Spiegelmensch). The relation
between Krauss identity, self-fashioning and Judaism is a subject of many
debates and researches dating from Krauss time until the present day. In 1899
Kraus renounced his allegiance to Judaism, and in 1911, accompanied by his
close friend Adolf Loss, converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1923 he went on to
renounce the Church, following what he considered to be a blasphemy: Max
Reinhardts production of Hofmannsthals Das Salzburger Groe Welttheater,
which was performed in a catholic church, the Kollegienkirche, in Salzburg.50
Timms finds in these transitions evidence for Krauss identity crisis. The fact
that Kraus kept his baptism silent is, in Timmss view an expression of a division
of the self.51 The lightness of these transitions, the lack of any evidence of

50
See: Kari Grimstad, Masks of the Prophet The Theatrical world of Karl Kraus (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1982), p.195.
51
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.246.

32
religious conviction on Krauss part, and the fact that these transition did not seem
to have an effect on his career or style, suggest that the term identity crisis
might be an overstatement here. Krauss reason for leaving the Church, although
it may have been just an excuse, suggests that the conversion itself had little to do
with Christianity in the first place. Kraus explained that he left Judaism in order
not to be associated with literary merchants (Literaturhndler) such as
Reinhardt, or Hofmannsthal, whose presence he ended up re-encountering in the
Catholic Church. For Kraus, religious identities are like any other form of
identity: it is performance that is at issue here, and it is performance that creates,
changes and determines identities, rather than the other way around.52

In this context, Timms provides the following quote from Kierkegaard:

If it is an illusion that all are Christians and that if there is anything to be done
about it, it must be done indirectly, not by one who vociferously proclaims
himself an extraordinary Christian, but the one who, better instructed, is ready to
declare that he is not Christian at all.53

Kraus disclosed his baptism to the public when he renounced the Catholic
Church. He declared that he is no longer a Christian, but not in the sense that
Kierkegaard meant, i.e. as a reformatory figure who aims to improve the Church.
In a sense he followed and radicalized Kierkegaards concept when he did not
declare his Christianity back in 1911, but only upon his renunciation in 1921.
Kraus was interested in the impasse of identity: an identity that is based not on
what it endorses but on what it rejects. Christianity for Kraus was not important
for its own sake, but rather provided him with an option to distance himself, and
to distinguish his position from figures such as Reinhardt and Hoffmannstahl.
Judaism as well as Christianity served him for positioning himself as someone
who is never at home in any given social position or category. This, however, by

52
Kraus attacks the combination of religious, aesthetic and business-guided interests, which he
expressed through the double meaning of the word Messe, which is both a market and religious
ritual. (F. 601-607, 3); taken from Grimstad, MP (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982),
p.195. Krauss satirical word-game allows him to expose the corruption of social institutions.
53
Sren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as An Author (New York: Princeton
University Press, 1962), p.24. See also: Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press,
1986), p.246.

33
no means suggests that this was not a serious or notable issue for him. As I tried
to show, since the early stages of his career, Kraus was engaged in performing his
independence, which in turn constituted his critical position. His conversions
should thus not be regarded as the result or expression of an identity crisis or
division of the self, nor an expression of Kraus being a self-hating Jew or a
disloyal Christian. As the Spiegelmensch exchange with Werfel makes clear,
Kraus was perfecting his mimetic ability to reflect and double, constantly
speaking not through language but about language, thereby creating a mirror
image that estranges and problematizes every speech, be it that of the Church or
the military, the Feuilleton style or Jewish jargon.

Spiegelmensch was a play, a magical trilogy, written by Franz Werfel in 1920,

and was performed in Leipzig and Vienna that year. The theme of the play is the
struggle for salvation of Thamal, a young writer who wishes to release himself
from his false self that undermines his creativity. In one of the scenes, while
looking at the mirror, he breaks it in despair, following the sudden appearance of
the Spiegelmensch, his demonic double. The plot, as well as many of the lines in
the play, is taken directly from Goethes Faust. What can be seen as an inner
struggle of the poets soul between true and authentic creation and false mimicry
and reflection, becomes a dramatic moment of divorce when the Spiegelmensch
proclaims that he is a protagonist in his own right. He proclaims that he will find
his own magazine: What should it be called?, he deliberates out loud, The
candle butt? No! The Torch [Die Fackel]? Yes! The poets demonic double turns
out not to be a double at all, certainly not an internal split, but as an external, rival
writer. This, in turn, offers a problematic solution to the drama, since it is no
longer about the poets inner struggle. The use of the name of Krauss publication
leaves no room for doubt: Werfels Spiegelmensch is Kraus. The play reveals
itself as an expression of their personal rivalry, or as an acute case of what Harold
Bloom defined as anxiety of influence. Timms notes a discrepancy between the
development of the plot, which indicates the young poet (Werfels) success in
freeing himself from the demonic power of the Spiegelmensch, and its linguistic

34
form, which completely relies on Krauss style. In this sense, Timms concludes,
the play is self-defeating. Kraus, however, understood it as a provocation. He
retaliated through his own theatrical work, published in 1921: Literatur oder Man
wird doch da sehn [Literature, or, We Shall See], which he labeled a magical
operetta. In the play Kraus uses Werfels Spiegelmensch character in order to
create a mirror image of Werfel and his milieu. If Werfels intention was to
ridicule Kraus as a mirror writer rather than original writer, namely as someone
who can only mimic other writers (imitating, citing, satirizing, and so on), Kraus
seized the opportunity to put a mirror in front of Werfel and the expressionists, as
well as their colleagues in the press. This, in turn, served as a demonstration of the
act of mirroring and can indeed serve as a basis for original creation. Not only is
Werfels mirroring exposed as superficial: his quest for authenticity (through the
rejection of the option of mirroring altogether, to cast away the curse of the
Spiegelmensch) is revealed to be self-defeating. Mirroring, Kraus argues and
performs through his works, is inescapably at the heart of every linguistic
expression and every identity-formation. The challenge then becomes not how to
get rid of the mirror and the Spiegelmensch, but how to turn them into the starting
point for artistic creation and the negotiation of identities.

In his play Kraus stages not only Werfels clique, but also Krauss own image as
Spiegelmensch, showing his mastery in creating comic reflections. The play
revolves around the young Johann Wolfgang (obvious reference to Goethe), a
young poet who dreams to be as talented and gifted as the great poet Werfel,
together with his family, and mainly the relations between Johann and his father.
The protagonists artistic pretentions are mixed with different ideological and
religious convictions, all of which are aimed at the same goal, being linguistic
performances for the sake of social status and impression. Through this character,
Krauss mirror-play exposes Werfels eclectic style, flaws, and inconsistencies,
indicating that the problem is not the haunting figure of the Spiegelmensch/Kraus,
but the lack of integrity and character of the young Johann/Werfel.

35
Timmss reading insists that the key for understanding this debate is the
emancipation of Jewish identity: Literatur suggests that Mirror Man/Kraus has
achieved this self-transformation, while Johann Wolfgang/Werfel and his clique
are trapped in the Jargon of the Jewish milieu.54 However, I have already stated
that Kraus was not trying to achieve a self-transformation that would allow him to
feel at home as an assimilated Jew while mocking those Jews who retained a
mentality of foreigners (Werfel). Indeed, how can the Mirror Man, whose position
Kraus endorses in his response to Werfel, express the attitude of being an
emancipated Jew, when its essential features are the same as those of the
stereotypical Jew, dating back to Wagner: an identity-less and mimetic character?
Paul Reitter provides a productive interpretation along this linealbeit one I
ultimately find to be problematic as well. Reitter demonstrates how questions of
creativity and authenticity were linked to the social position of Jewish
intellectuals in the German-speaking world. The Mirror Man, according to his
reading, has to do with anti-Semite stereotypes that saw Jews as uncreative people
who attempted to assimilate and take part in the modernism project through
mimicry and imitation. Using Kafkas famous letter to Max Brod regarding
Krauss play, Reitter argues that the themes of Literatur are symptoms of a
generational gap in Jewish society: the crisis of tradition and the paradoxical
situation of Jewish intellectuals, who stood on the border between two cultures,
unable to free themselves from this split. Reitter writes:

Krauss mimetic hang together with his difficult Jewish question [] My hope
is that considering certain (neglected) affinities between Kraus and Kafka will
help situate Krauss anti Journalism, or rather resituate it within the world of
German-Jewish modernism.55

Reitter is indeed correct in pointing out that the debate between Kraus and Werfel
revolves around questions of mimicry, self-reflection and identity-discourse.
However, he fails analyze the difference between their contradicting mimetic
strategies. It seems that Litertur serves him only as a backdrop for what he does

54
Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist, Vol. 2: The Post-War Crisis and the Rise of
the Swastika (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.244.
55
Paul Reitter, AJ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.111.

36
analyze at length, namely Kafkas letter. He also completely overlooks the
complex history of the relation between Kraus and Werfel, a problematic story
that is present in different ways in both their plays. Krauss polemic against
Werfel has both private and public aspects.56 His main claim against Werfel is
that the latter exemplifies the split between word and essence (Wort und Wesen):
He lacks integrity, and his style, with or without use of Jewish Jargon, is an
eclectic and unoriginal pretence. This long polemic also had to do with Werfels
role in the Military Propaganda Office during the War, his short-lived enthusiastic
Catholicism, as well as his flirt with Communism and other affiliations, which
kept on changing through the years. His eclectic style is most evident in the play
Spiegelmensch, which is based on quotations, insinuations and allusions to
Goethe, Schiller, and Ibsen, among others, as well as to Kraus himself. The
Mauscheln, that Jewish jargon that Werfel insists on avoiding in his
Spiegelmensch, plays an important role in Krauss Literatur, although not because
Kraus feels himself to be a German-speaking Jew, nor in order to expose Werfels
Jewish background. Rather, Jewish jargon operates as an element of difference
that announces itself even when Johann Wolfgang tries to imitate Goethes Faust.
Mauscheln is one among several strategies Kraus adopts in order to generate
difference and problematization, making him a special kind of Spiegelmensch
himself. As Kafka wrote: Niemand mauschelt wie Kraus [No one speaks Jewish
jargon like Kraus]. With Kraus every reflection ends up either with paradox or
with satirical doubling. Maybe he really was, as he states in his famous poem
Confession (Bekenntniss), an epigone who lived in the house of language, and
who could only be described though his own satirical language. The impasses and
failures in capturing Krauss image and the ways he cannot be defined by any
identity-discourse can perhaps provide a different option. This is what the
following chapters will aim to do.

56
See: Christian Wagenknecht / Eva Eillms, Karl Kraus Franz Werfel: Eine Dokumentation
(Gttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011).

37
 Chapter 2
Language as Impasse
Mit dem Zweifel, der der beste Lehrmeister ist, wre schon viel gewonnen:
manches bliebe ungesprochen. (p.8)

[With doubt, which is the best teacher, much would be gained: some things
would remain unsaid.]

In the Introduction I suggested a reading of Kraus that focuses on impasses,

namely on the resistance to representation and interpretation that characterizes his
work. Instead of classifying Kraus in one category or another, which seems to be
impossible, I suggested making this resistance to categorization (which often
takes the form of an explicit refusal) into an object of study and reflection.
Accordingly, in the next two chapters I will examine Krauss views on language,
his Sprachkritik, not as an attempt to provide a proper or corrected form of
language, but as a radical problematization of various linguistic practices, and an
attempt to provide an alternative to them. This problematization will be
demonstrated with respect to Krauss idea and practice of citationality in chapter
three, and the relation between language, violence and war in chapter four, which
introduces the notion of the zero degree of language (focusing on Die Letzten
Tage der Menschheit as an example). The present chapter will focus on Krauss
concept of the poetic creativity of language, and provide the foundations for these
later discussions. I shall argue this is neither a concept of pure or accurate
language, nor a method for stabilizing meaning or improving communication, nor
simply an idea of artistic style in language, but the marker of a critical project and
a moral campaign, which makes essential use of such elements as ambiguity,
uncertainty, suspension of meaning, and self-contradiction.57

It might be argued that the attempt to present Krauss entire body of work under
the idea of a comprehensive and radical critique of languagean idea that will be
developed here through the notion of impasseis misguided. Throughout his
work, Kraus is regularly preoccupied with such aspects of language as grammar
and linguistic structure, devoting significant attention to wrong word selections
and their absurd or manipulative usage, to condemning enigmatic speech forms,
and ridiculing what he regarded as superficial stylistics. Yet such a repertoire of
techniques and discursive strategies, it might be argued, does not amount to a

57
Krauss work consists not only of his texts; it also includes such mediatic elements as
typography, acoustics, musicality and visual effects. I use the overarching term project in order
to be able to refer to all of those simultaneously.

38
wholesale critique of language as such. Following this line, Krausian satire and
critique of the press, as radical as they may be, are usually viewed under one of
two overarching approaches: either as an attempt to restore conservative
tendencies, or as a nave and idealistic effort. If theres an impasse here, it has to
do with Krauss own utopia, rather than with language itself. Against such
readings, this chapter will demonstrate that Krauss critique is to be understood as
stemming neither from the concerns and objections of a conservative nor those of
an idealist thinker. Krauss view of language not only rejects its false or
corrupting uses, but also challenges its basic communicative and interpellative
functions. Moreover, Krauss critique of language is tightly related to social and
ideological critique, both of which have to do with a crisis of signification.58 Such
critique, I shall argue, is not aimed at recreating a lost unity or restoring a state
of harmony, but at the realization of a genuine crisis and the exposure of a
fundamental abyss, manifested in the motto of Krauss essay on language, Die
Sprache: Abgrnde dort sehen zu lehren, wo Gemeinpltze sinddas wre die
pdagogische Aufgabe... [To learn to see abysses in commonplacesthat would
be the pedagogic mission]. The task of the critic, as I shall argue in what follows,
is to expose the abyss that lurks within social institutions, relations and practices
by bringing their language to an impasse.

This chapter begins by reviewing the way Krauss view of language was
interpreted and understood within what I call the paradigm of representation,
demonstrating the limitations, shortcomings and blind spots of this paradigm. The
reason I find this discussion to be important is that, although some scholars have
indeed criticized and dismissed this paradigm, they have not provided an
alternative to it. In order to suggest such an alternative, I subsequently turn to
secondary literature that deals with various forms of performativity, analyzing
these ideas in relation to Krauss concept of language as creation and shaping.
In the last section I offer a discussion of Krauss Wortgestalt, arguing that what he
is striving for (or ultimately ends up with) is not a self-defeating or esoteric
language but a mode of moral critique and resistance.

58
In his study on Hofmannsthal, Hermann Broch defined the relations between the political, social
and literary spheres of 1900 Vienna through the term vacuum. In relation to language he writes:
Hence language discursive language alone becomes inadequate and interpretable. This is
demonstrated by the famous example of Lord Chandos Letter. See: Hermann Broch, Hugo von
Hofmannsthal and His Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.109.

39
 I. Against the Representational Paradigm

Many early Kraus scholars understood his view of language as deriving from a
romantic or rather platonic conception. Their assumption was that Kraus believed
in an omnipotent conception of language that determines social and political
realitya view shared by other language critics and intellectuals of his time.59
Krauss view of language was thus regarded as mystical, fanatic, apocalyptic, and
even as a form of idolatry. 60 These interpretations highlight Krauss emphasis on
the relations between Wort and Wesen, understood as a signification process, and
his insistence on correct grammar and the accurate use of words, expressions,
phrases and sentencesan insistence interpreted as aiming for linguistic purity,
which relies on the idea that, if something is grammatically wrong, it must also be
morally defective. This means that language by itself is perceived as a reliable
mediator, which has the ability to produce a valid account of experience as well as
to assure moral conductas long as it is correctly used. From this point of view,
Krauss life-project is regarded as a critical rewriting, through linguistic
correction, of social life at his time.

Other scholars have noticed the problematic aspects of such an approach. Reading
Krauss reflections on language, they noted his emphasis on active interpretation
and the role of the imagination in the production of meaning. However, they still
attached Krauss concept of language to the idea of adequate representation. For
example:

To say that imagination, or the sensibility, of a man is coextensive with his

morality is very much like saying that his language is coextensive with his
experience. These two assertions encompass Krauss entire work, and both are
open to the same logical and existential objections.61

A shift in the interpretation of Krauss work occurred in the mid-1980s when, in

light of the rise of post-structuralism, a number of researchers reexamined his
concept of language and paid more attention to its complexity. Both Krauss
theoretical concept of language, as well as his unique linguistic praxis
corresponded with his concept of Sprachliche Zweifel.62 In this new light, Kraus
was described as a conceptualist, naturalist, rationalist and sometimes
affiliated, albeit with some reservation, with Wittgenstein or Benjamin. An
example for such linkage is provided by Jay F. Bodine, who writes that Krauss

59
One prominent example is Stefan George and his circle. See: Werner Kraft, Stefan George
(Mnchen: edition text + kritik, 1980).
60
To name just a few: Leopold Liegler, Caroline Kohn, Burkhard Mller, Hans Weigel, Wilma
Abeles Iggers, Jens Malte Fischer, Franz Mauthner or Thomas Szasz.
61
J. P. Stern, Krauss Vision of Language (Modern Language Review, 1966), p.83.
62
As Werner Kraft argues, linguistic doubt plays an important role in Krauss thoughts on
language. For him it is not just philosophical skepticism, but an attribute of language itself.

40
critique of language and literature is ultimately a type of verification procedure; it
checks for the truth content of an expression in social context.63 Another
example is Michael Rogerss reading, which argues that Kraus developed a
symbolic language that had to do with events and emotions and does not simply
represent reality. Reality is thus discovered through a process of value-
judgment.64 Although no longer a nave concept of representation based on the
relation between word and object, this line of interpretation insists that language
maintains its ability to represent, and thereby also maintains and guarantees a
certain social state of affairs or status quo. Immoral conduct is then regarded as
the consequence of a gap opened up when language as a social mechanism
hinders and replaces, rather than promotes and supports, forms of individuality.

Despite this paradigm shift, the basic interpretative assumptions remain identical.
Namely, first, that Kraus regards language as a medium that is based on
representation (whether this representation relies on a model of signification or a
more elaborate semantic process). Second, Krausian critique is directed at false or
distorted contents that are expressed through language, or at the questionable
personality of the speaker/author (Heine, Harden, Werfel, Kerr and so on). More
precisely, Kraus is seen as criticizing various forms of the corruption of language,
which takes place when the latter is harnessed to the distortion of content rather
than its truthful delivery, or to the promotion of narrow personal ambitions. Third,
Krauss critique occurs at the hermeneutic and stylistic levels of both the works
he is criticizing as well as his own works. Other aspects, including performative
aspects, acoustic aspects, his critique of images, and the use of typefaces, page
layouts and other similar elements are excluded from this context. And fourth,
Kraus did not present an explicit theory of language: his works present a series of
critical acts, rather than some comprehensive critical theory of language in
general.

The presentation of Kraus as a language purist65 and as the high priest of the
German language is strongly echoed in some of his own expressions, as well as

63
Jay F Bodine, Karl Kraus, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Post-structural Paradigms of Textual
Understanding, in: Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 22 (Bowling Green / Houston: 1989), p.152.
Bodine notices the importance of the social context, but since he is committed to the concept of
language as representation, he again ends up with a dichotomy of true / false. The point to be
discussed in the third section of this chapter dealing with social context is crucial to explain
the performative function of language.
64
Michael Rogers, Karl Kraus and the Creation of a Symbolic Language, in: Karl Kraus in Neuer
Sicht (Mnchen: Text+Kritik, 1986), p.32 ff. I agree with Rogerss preliminary insight about a
different logic that underlines Krauss view on Language. However, while Rogers argues for a
symbolic system that could provide and stabilize meaning, Kraus, as I try to show, was interested
in criticizing and destabilizing such uses in the context of a symbolic crisis.
65
Against the idea of purity of language Timms writes: Here again, the focus on words implies a
critique of ideologies. Kraus was aware that the proposals for pure German had xenophobic

41
in the impression made by his texts, along with his readings and theatrical
performances. This was, in a way, the role Kraus wished for himself. However,
when this view itself becomes an interpretation of Krauss work, compelling as it
may be, it leads to an irresolvable inconsistency between his admiration for
language on the one hand and the skepticism that characterizes his satire on the
other. The emphasis on adequate representation seems to bring Krauss concept of
language to an intellectual impasse. Seen through such a prism, he indeed appears
as a reactionary publicist who, instead of taking part in the radical rethinking of
the complex relations between language and society offered by such
contemporary modernists as Freud, Kafka or Benjamin, campaigned instead for a
conservative concept of language while condemning those who betrayed it.
Although, as mentioned, several researchers have doubted or rejected such a
view,66 they failed to provide an alternative and comprehensive interpretation of
Krauss relation to language. The focus in Kraus studies merely shifted from
problems of language, representation and media to historical and contextual
questions, including such themes such as Krauss satiric style in relation to other
words of his age, his theatrical works, his relation to psychoanalysis, his
problematic Jewish identity and his position in the diverse intellectual and
artistic debates of his time. For example, discussing Krauss attitude towards
journalism, Robert Lilienfeld writes that it was not the institution itself he
[Kraus] attacked, but rather the attitudes it tended to generate: the use of thought,
language and imaginary for some other purpose than the expression of truth.67
Krauss critique of journalism is already framed here as directed against its
tendency for false representation. Language remains the only and absolute
source of correct representation, of truth, a mechanism for perfect expression
(when used correctly), which, through this capacity, can function as the guarantor
of moral conduct, a culture of justice, a decent society and politics, etc.

But one cannot but wonder: if Kraus was concerned with representation, why did
he choose to direct his attack of the media at the format of the feuilleton rather
than the news, and to do so while himself creating his own kind-of feuilleton (Die
Fackel)? Why did he see a need to resort to so many wordplays and complicated,
twisted forms of writing in order to deliver this message, instead of opting for a
more direct form of representation that would allegedly cut through those

overtones. Edward Timms, Karl Kraus AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press,
2005), p.149.
66
I have already mentioned Werner Kraft in this context. A rejection of an idea of language as
representation can be found in Helmut Artnzen, Edward Timms, and more recent studies like those
by Paul Reitter and Irina Djassemy. In the following I will analyze two other scholars who
developed a reading of Krauss creative language: Josef Quack and Louis Miguel Isava.
67
Robert Lilienfeld, Reflections on Karl Kraus, in: Nation, 296 (New York: 17/18. April 1973),
p.572.

42
linguistic forms that distort rather than preserve truth? Why did he pay so much
attention to style rather than content, and did so even when the style in question
was grammatically flawless? How can we account for such seemingly enigmatic
statements by him like the press is the event?68 More specifically, if, according
to Kraus, our very notion of reality is always already shaped by the press, and
events cannot simply be detached from the way they are represented and covered
by the media, what meaning can there be to the idea of exposing reality as such?
These questions, I argue, cannot be answered within the representation paradigm
of Kraus-scholars.

This paradigm is also apparent in those studies of Kraus that pay more attention to
the theatricality and performativity of his language, such as that of Kari
Grimstad.69 Although Grimstad carefully examines Krauss theatricality, its main
features are left unexplained. Why is theater, as a medium, so important to Kraus?
Why does he reject theatrical realism? What is the function of the frequent use of
quotations in his plays? Why does he reject many modern forms of performance,
focusing almost solely on the actors voice? How to explain the fact that he
regarded his public readings of the works of Shakespeare and Nestroy (his
Theater der Dichtung) as a form of critical resistance to the First World War and
to the tragic postwar situation? How is such a reading supposed to provide an
alternative to the corruption of language caused by the press, according to Kraus?
Since these questions were left unanswered, the option that Krauss concept of
theater might be related to his critique of the press is completely left out. In order
to address these questions, one has to look at language not as a field of harmony
but of tension; not as paradise but as an abyss. In both these examples
journalism and the theaterwhat most studies leave out is the function of the
medium itself (the newspaper or theater show). It is not what these media succeed
or fail to represent, but rather their function as media that is so central to Kraus.

In his 1931 essay Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin writes: The newspaper is an
instrument of power. It can derive its value only form the character of the power it
serves; not only in what it represents, but also in what it does, it is the expression
of this power.70 The power of the newspaper is that of high capitalism, and
Benjamin is here sensitive to the connection between new economic structures
and means of representation. In other words, if the media represents anything, it

68
In Kraus words: Ist die Presse ein Bote? Nein: das Ereignis [Is the press the messenger? No:
the event.] (F 404-408), 1914.
69
See: Kari Grimstad, MP (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).
70
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Vol.2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p.440.
In this context it should be noted that Kraus is hardly present in contemporary discussions of
Critical Theory. However, because of the growing interest in Walter Benjamin, there exist some
relevant studies, although their viewpoint is usually that of Benjamins thought.

43
is capitalismnamely the form or system of power it is itself part ofrather than
the truth.71 It functions and shapes society through this power-structure and is
therefore inherently politicized. Public opinion is thus something that is
generated by the presswhich also becomes the only place, Kraus notes, where
opinion is made publicand this constitutes a shift from the private to the public,
from the unique to the general, from word to event, from origin to replica.
Language in the capitalist world becomes the reified/reifying language of the
press. Along with these changes, the critical focus on language is also shifted:
from the critique of representation to that of the mechanism of production, from
content to relations between content and form, from the medium as messenger to
the medium as agent of social and political power. It will thus be useful to return
to Benjamins text when trying to reconstruct Krauss concept of language
beyond the idea of adequate representation.72 Krauss words quoted above, to
learn to recognize the abyss in the commonplaces, can thus be understood, first,
as learning to recognize the public sphere as an already-politicized zone; and
second, as learning to recognize language not as the answer to the atrocities of
modernism but as an abyss that should trigger critical doubt about modernism. In
the following sections, I will follow Benjamin in reading Kraus as addressing the
crisis modernism, and the way they understand it to be inherently a crisis of
language.

II. Social Crisis as Linguistic Crisis: Krauss Media Critique

In his book Karl Kraus und die Presse (1974) Helmut Arntzen suggests that
future Kraus scholars read Die Fackel as a historical document that dissolves
obvious connections and illuminates unsuspected ones. Building up on this
thought, I would suggest reading Krauss paper as a chronology of social crisis,
enhanced by the rise of new forms of technology and media, and in which
Habsburg Vienna serves as a case study, the forerunner of a global process. Using
his claim that the newspaper is the event as a starting point, Krauss work can
be read as media-history. By that I do not mean that Kraus was a historian of the
media, but that he both realized and practiced the fact that history itself is
produced and shaped by the new forms of media. Kraus was challenging the
obvious history by exposing the ways it is connected to processes of social
change and to the rise of new forms of economic and political power. Kraus is not
a historian or theorist, but an author who expresses his critique and observation

71
It is surprising that, although Kraus is considered a media critic, he was hardly studied from this
angle. In fact, Kraus is mostly ignored by media scholars.

44
not only through his articles and witty aphorisms, but also in linguistic
formations, poems and plays. His satire as well as linguistic style and choice of
genre are reactions and responses, modes of resistance aimed at unmaking the
effects that the crisis he diagnosed which was first and foremost a media crisis
had on subjectivity and to form (or per-form) a critical stand point via this
process. The literary context of his era allows us to place Krauss work in relation
to the anti-mimetic poetic style of his time,73 and to point to the relation between
poetic style and social and political critique. By understating the nature of the
social crisis and its relation to language diagnosed by Kraus, we can point to the
specific aspects or media critique his anti-mimetic style wished to address. In
other words, when Kraus says the newspaper is the event, this has a double
meaning. First, event in the sense of a media production: in order to sell
newspapers, the press must create events. And second, the linguistic style of
newspapers that is deployed in order to turn occurrences into events.

Here is a famous example of Krauss critique of the language of the press in

relation to the First World War:

In dieser groen Zeit, die ich noch gekannt habe, wie sie so klein war; die wieder
klein werden wird, wenn ihr dazu noch Zeit bleibt; und die wir, weil im Bereich
organischen Wachstums derlei Verwandlung nicht mglich ist, lieber als eine
dicke Zeit und wahrlich auch schwere Zeit ansprechen wollen; in dieser Zeit, in
der eben das geschieht, was man sich nicht vorstellen konnte, und in der
geschehen mu, was man sich nicht mehr vorstellen kann, und knnte man es, es
geschhe nicht ; in dieser ernsten Zeit, die sich zu Tode gelacht hat vor der
Mglichkeit, da sie ernst werden knnte; von ihrer Tragik berrascht, nach
Zerstreuung langt, und sich selbst auf frischer Tat ertappend, nach Worten sucht;
in dieser lauten Zeit, die da drhnt von der schauerlichen Symphonie der Taten,
die Berichte hervorbringen, und der Berichte, welche Taten verschulden: in
dieser da mgen Sie von mir kein eigenes Wort erwarten. Keines auer diesem,
das eben noch Schweigen vor Mideutung bewahrt.(F. 404,1)

In these great times, which I knew when they were small, which will again be
small if they still have time, and which because, in the field of organic growth,
such transformations are not possible, we prefer to address as fat times and truly
as also hard times; in these times when precisely what is happening could not be
imagined, and when what must happen could no longer be imagined, and if it
could it would not happen; in these grave times that have laughed themselves to
death at the possibility of growing serious, and overtaken by their own tragedy,
long for destruction, and then, catching themselves in the act, seek words; in
these loud times booming with the fearful symphony of deeds, that engender
reports, and of reports that bear the blame for deeds; in these speakable times,

73
The term Anti-mimetic is taken from David Trotter (see note 20). In some of the discussions
on Kraus the authors used the term mimesis as dialectic between reality and literary representation
and style. My choice here is meant to emphasize the rejection of the realism and the otherness
Kraus interested in creating

45
 you can expect no word from me. None except this, which just preserves silence
from misinterpretation.74

The paragraph is taken from Krauss first public lecture after the break of war in
November 1914. Kraus is playing on the press clich, In These Great Times,
which relates to the greatness and glory of war, celebrating and idealizing it as a
desirable event. This phrase does not provide any information about the times or
insights about the war, but is rather a discursive act that defines the war as an
outstanding historical event by portraying it as great. In his satirical piece,
Kraus is not bluntly contradicting or dismissing the phrase, but rather pushes the
metaphor forward until its logic becomes absurd: applying physical dimensions to
time, starting with great or big (groen), which then becomes small (klein), then
fat (dicke), and finally heavy (schwere). The point is not that the phrase is simply
a false or literary-deformed description of reality, but that it is part of an
epistemologicallinguistic crisis. It is part of a whole language or genre of phrases
(in the media, in politics, and in other discourses), in which reality cannot be
grasped and perceived, and that prevents its judgment or evaluation. Such
catchphrases do not simply distort representation, but also their addressees mind.
They form a language that has a completely new (non)logic, with statements like
war is great or war for peace (examples referred to in The Last Days of
Mankind), which generate an emotional effect marked by a false sense of
familiarity and identification: a language that functions as an ideological
apparatus and an interpellative mechanism. The result is a gap between this
language of phrases and metaphors (booming reports and symphony of
deeds) and the experience such a language distorts. Kraus is turning the phrases
metaphor about times into an account of the relations between language,
imagination, experience, and actions. In his satire the metaphor returns, only this
time in order to point to the function of the speech-act in which it appears, to its
inability to say anything. This re-use of the metaphor thus becomes a call for
silence, one that Benjamin, in his Kraus essay, referred to as a reversed silence:
a silence that is itself a speech-act in the face of a language crisis.

Again, it should be noted that the point is not to represent the world. Kraus is not
correcting grammar or checking correlation between signifiers and signified. His
exposure of the false representation of the press is not meant to provide a better
and more valid one, but to demonstrate the existence of a more comprehensive
crisis of language, of which the press is a symptom, and to call for a different
relation to it through a form of critical awareness. Krauss satire exposes language

74
Translated: Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: SW Vol.2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1996),
p.435.

46
not as false representation, but as a semantic field with different aims.75 His effort
is not to generate new representations, but to play in the same field, in order to
create alternative options and different effects. His understanding of language as
an open space for word-games allows him to identify the semantic weaknesses of
his opponent, exposing them through his counter word-games. His emphasis on
linguistic forms, expressions, and grammatical perfectness is designed to create a
different linguistic effect on the reader. Such techniques allow us to question one
form of language use, and to form sense and meaning through a different kind of
relation to the text that is being (critically, satirically) read. Kraus is not
decorating language but exposes its mechanism, and in so doing introduces doubt:
generating an alienation that stresses the gap between language and the
experience of the reader, thereby placing the latter in an active position of
judgment.

The following passage presents a more general reflection by Kraus on the nature
of the press:

Was ist sie [die Presse]? Ein Bote nur? Einer, der uns auch mit seiner Meinung
belstigt? Durch seine Eindrcke peinigt? Uns mit der Tatsache gleich die
Vorstellung mitbringt? Durch seine Details ber Einzelheiten von Meldungen
ber Stimmungen oder durch seine Wahrnehmungen ber Beobachtungen von
Einzelheiten ber Details und durch seine fortwhrenden Wiederholungen von all
dem uns bis aufs Blut qult? (F. 404, 8)

What is it [the press]? Only a messenger? One that bothers us with its opinion?
That torments us through its impressions? That brings us the facts together with
their presentation? Through its details about pieces of information about the
public mood, or through its perceptions of observations of details of
particularities, and through constant repetitions of all that tortures us?

Kraus emphasizes that the press is not a messenger and its action is not a
representation of events. In fact, it disrupts and prevents people from perceiving
their reality and evaluating it. It overwhelms readers with details that are
processed and manipulated until there remains no valid distinction between facts
and opinions, between the events the press is presenting and its forms of
presentation. By this continued flood of fragmented speech and repetition, the
reader is confronted with messages he cannot process: a stream of disinformation
that builds up to a torture. The problem with the press is not that it fails to
represent events or that it manipulates them, but by the way it operates as a
mechanism that subordinates language to misfortune76: it covers its senseless

75
This is the differentiation between language as communication and language as shaping and
creating reality, as I will show in the following section of this chapter.
76
In original: Subordination der Sprache vor dem Unglck. See: Kraus, In dieser groen Zeit,
in: Ausgewhlte Werke 2 (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1971), p.9.

47
fragments of information with images and symbols, juxtaposing different items so
that a completely different view of things is created in the readers mind. Gaps
and question marks are covered over by an excess of speech, and lack of
substanceby repetitions and clichs. The interpellative logic of the press is not a
matter of what it reports, but of a mechanism that generates subjectivity based on
compliance, on becoming the addressee of an ideological call: one that results
(somewhat differently than in Althussers account) from a tension between the
form of this ideological call and its content or message that cannot be understood.
Krauss satirical operation exposes the emptiness of the journalistic language by
imitating its repetitious and circular style. Instead of talking about events, Kraus
criticizes the ways they become events, concentrating on social and political
mechanisms that together with the media create a crisis and linguistic impasse. As
I show in chapter 4, Krauss World War play The Last Days of Mankind is a
collection of examples that are meant to simulate this interpellative process, and
perhaps provide an alternative to it. This, however, gives rise to the following
question: under these circumstances, when language itself is at an impasse, is
literature still possible? How could satire and poetry function as social critique
under such an impasse?

III. Media Critique as Critique of Mimesis

To address this challenge, one has to examine Krauss distinction between a

mimetic and anti-mimetic use of language. In order to do that, I need to turn to a
brief excurse to the question of the relation between literature and identity in
modernism, against the background of the modern crisis of identity, in the face of
the pressures of mass culture, the commercialization of society, industrialization
of labor, and so on. David Trotter examines how early twentieth century poetic
styles were a response to these pressures of professionalization, constituting
different forms of rejection of mimesis. Trotter claims that these anti-mimetic
poetic style were an anxious means of responding to the new commercial
paradigm governing the cultural production of value.77 Following Peter
Nichollss Men of 191478, Trotter emphasizes the political aspects of mimesis, and
its effects on autonomy and subjectivity in the sense that the experience of life is
only possible by others. He demonstrates the problem of mimesis via its

77
See: David Trotter, Paranoid Modernism Literary Experiment, Psychosis, and the
Professionalization of English Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Trotter focuses on
English Literature, but the examples of the Austrian and German literature of this period
(Hofmannsthal, Rilke and many others) shows almost a parallel phenomena. It is important to note
that another study by Trotter focuses on the concept of mess in modernist literature. Mess is a
favorite expression for Kraus; in Die Fackel he uses it more than 400 times!
78
Peter Nicholls, The Men of 1914. In: Modernisms: A Literary Guide, 2nd expanded ed.
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

48
implications on identity and gender, i.e. the creation of identity by the repression
of differences. The anti-mimetic poetic style was a response to these threats, by
the simulation of integration through the creation of an intra-personal literary
perspective. According to Nicholls, the modernist self is a self saved from the
passive mimesis of modernity by an active mimesis of the cultural past. Trotter
expands this definition and applies it to literary style and the changes of genres.
The production of this modern self can be traced in a dialectic struggle between
inner and outer experience, the imagined and the real, the present and the past (or
its eternal return), between a sense of unity and disintegration. The texts of the
period manifest this poetic style by replacing narrative and plot with self-
consciousness and symbolism, and with a tormented, fragmented and disturbed
tone. Timothy Melley further connects this threat on identity to a collective
cultural pathology.79 Beyond the literary individual expressions of writers, Melley
suggests that the anti-mimetic poetic style manifested itself as a response to
culturally produced and authorized narrative technology. Patrick ODonnell
defines such literature as a narrative work or operation that articulates the
individual's relation to the symbolic order.80 Aaron Rosenfeld continues the
same line in his beautiful analysis of the poetics of paranoia in Orwells 1984,
writing that: Modernism shifts the balance of inflection between the word and
the world in favor of the word, substituting the dream of a formally coherent text
for the expectation of coherent character, and thus opens the door to the enforced
unities of paranoid reading.81

Erich Auerbach diagnoses this new anti-mimetic style in the following way:
Common to almost all of these novels is haziness, vague indefinability of
meaning: precisely of the uninterpretable symbolism which is also to be
encountered in other forms of art of the same period.82 Auerbachs important
emphasis is that modern literature does not seek to resolve this crisis of meaning
by restoring the possibility of an identity based on the model of correspondence
adequacy between reader and text (e.g. between the modern bourgeois subject and
the modern novel), but rather to produce a different identity (subject position,
reader position):

79
Timothy Melley, Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Post-War America (Ithaca:
Cornell, 1999).
80
Patrick ODonnell, Latent Destinies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).
81
Aaron S. Rosenfeld, The Scanty Plot: Orwell, Pynchon, and the Poetics of Paranoia in:
Twentieth Century Literature 50, p. 337-367 (New York: Winter 2004), p.343. Orwell can be read
as echoing several aspects of Krauss diagnosis of a crisis of language, both in his dystopic
account of language in 1984 (War is peace etc.), as well as in his sharp critique of the press.
82
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), p.551. Its
especially Auerbachs awareness to the problematic, political aspects of Mimesis, in light of world
wars, that makes his work fascinating and valuable for this discussion.

49
 These are the forms of order and interpretation which the modern writers here
under discussion attempt to grasp in the random momentnot one order and one
interpretation, but many, which may either be those of different persons or of
same person at different times; so that overlapping, complementing and
contradiction yield something we might call synthesized cosmic view point or at
least challenge the readers will to interpretative synthesis.83

On the one hand, a traumatic experience of displacement that conflicts with the
readers expectations for synthesis. On the other hand, a new kind of unity is
created through this process: that of a hopeless interpreter, exposed to the
destabilizing effects of the text. Thus, in response to socially-constrained,
overdetermined identity, these modernity writers, through the above literary
strategies, strove to generate an alternative that relied on literary subjectivity: one
that could no longer rely on the problematic idea of a mimetic language with its
coherent concept of representation, nor on the ideological promise to provide
social order through a stable order of identities.

Along similar lines, Michael Rogers suggested that Kraus created a symbolic
language as a supplement to the modern loss of sense and integration. Kraus, he
writes, takes every instance as symbolic, as an expression of some terrifying rule
about the world in which we live.84 As Rogers beautifully shows, language for
Kraus functions as a structure that provides unity by congruence between
expression and what is expressedwhich is not the same as the relation between
a reference and referent. But while he emphasizes that, in Krauss view, reality
in effect is what the media tells you it is, and that for Kraus communication is
reality, Rogers then goes on to argue that Krauss concept of language is
tantamount to the study of reality (my emphasis). In other words, the problem is
that Rogerss notion of symbolic expression, while indeed accounting for Krauss
alternative to the model of representation, nonetheless still relies on a notion of
mimesis. Contrary to Rogers, Kraus is not making an effort to present an
undistorted representation of reality through symbols (instead of representations),
but rather seeks to construct an anti-mimetic perspective. In The Last Days of
Mankind, for example, Kraus is not striving to express the experience of the First
World War, but to present the mediatic framework (the press) through which the
events are experienced, and the effects of such mimetic language on the
subjectivation of the masses.

Friedrich Kittlers theory of media suggests a helpful analysis of the relation

between media and experience that explicitly rejects the mimetic framework. He

83
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), p.549.
84
Michael Rogers, Karl Kraus and the Creation of a Symbolic Language, in: Karl Kraus in Neuer
Sicht (Mnchen: Text+Kritik, 1986), p.39.

50
opens his book Gramophone, Radio, typewriter85 with the statement The media
determines our situation: a sentence that seems very close to Krauss view. In his
study, Kittler suggests an analysis of the ways media determine and shape social
and scientific discourse. Media do not simply transmit information but determine
what is information, and how it is structured and operates as discourse. In a
previous study, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, Kittler discusses the rise of the
modern media forms (photographs, films, radio) as a shift from strategies of
inscription to information storage and manipulation.86 He examines how these
media forms shape social relations and norms, as well as literary genres,
philosophical concepts, and ways of thinking. This perspective allows us to
understand Kraus not as a moralist or a prophet who set out on a crusade
against the press,87 but as a media critique sensitive to the constitutive role of the
media in the formation of reality and identity.

An example to the way Kraus was sensitive to the way new media technologies
rendered the notion of mimesis impossible can be seen in the following example,
which is very much in line with Kittlers analysis. Here is the character of the
Grumbler in The Last Days of Mankind on the phonograph:

Htte man die Stimme dieses Zeitalters in einem Phonographen aufbewahrt, so

htte die uere Wahrheit die innere Lgen gestraft und das Ohr diese und jene
nicht wiedererkannt. So macht die Zeit das Wesen unkenntlich, und wrde dem
grten Verbrechen, das je unter der Sonne, unter den Sternen begangen war,
Amnestie gewhren. Ich habe das Wesen gerettet und mein Ohr hat den Schall
der Taten, mein Auge die Gebrde der Reden entdeckt und meine Stimme hat,
wo sie nur wiederholte, so zitiert, da der Grundton festgehalten blieb fr alle
Zeiten.88

Had one preserved the voice of this era on a phonograph, the outer truth would
have been in conflict with the inner truth, and the ear would not have recognized
either of them. Thus, time makes the essential truth unrecognizable, and would
grant amnesty to the greatest crime ever perpetrated under the sun, under the
stars. I have preserved this truth, and my ear has detected the sound of their
deeds, my eyes the gestures of their speaking, and my voice, when it only cited,
did so in such a way that the fundamental tone remained for all time.

85
Friedrich A. Kittler, Phonograph, Film, Typewriter (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press,
1999).
86
Friedrich A. Kittler, Aufschreibesysteme: 1800-1900 (Mnchen: Fink Verlag, 2003).
Interestingly enough, although he examines many intellectuals from the German sphere of the
beginning of the 20th century, Kittler doesnt refer to Kraus. When I asked him about this issue,
Kittler answered me that Kraus may need his own categorization within this framework.
87
I don't mention here the extensive literature that mostly from psychoanalytical perspective tried
to answer this question. I will however discuss this in relation to Kraus Jewish not-identity, which
means the relation between the critique of the media and the question of assimilation.
88
LTdM p.680.

51
This paragraph shows the problematic nature of the new media technologies,
despite their seemingly transparent mimetic nature. A recording, for example, is
not a neutral documentation, but a mediatic intervention that affects the way it
is perceived. Listening to a phonographic recording of events is not a mere
sonoric chronology but, in Kittlers terms, an active form of inscription and
manipulation that shapes and transforms its content. Krauss own theatrical
documentation of the War, which is admittedly also a mediatic form (although not
precisely traditional theater, as I explain in chapter 4), is at the same time an anti-
mimetic form: a critique on the pretence of these new media forms to a
documentation of reality; their pretence to transparency, to being, so to speak,
non-media. I will explain the mechanisms behind this critique in Chapter 3,
where I refer to Krauss technique of citationality.

These examples show the importance of such an analysis in order to address the
problems and unanswered questions I mentioned in regard to the representational
paradigm. Kraus can be read as documenting and struggling against the new
media. His project is not about proper representation and the restoration of
mimesis: a return to a paradise of perfect correspondence between word and
meaning. This is no longer possible, as his tragic tone and melancholic poems
demonstrate. Instead, under the conditions Kraus diagnoses, the only way to
express the crisis and produce meaning is by confronting these new media
technologies (first and foremost the printed press), by displacing them and
exposing them as media. Kraus clearly corresponds to other projects of critique of
modernity and modern media. However, in order to understand his uniqueness,
one ought to focus on his two major life-projects, Die Fackel and the Theater der
Dichtung, and to understand them as anti-media.89 I suggest a reading of Krauss
media critique in light of his anti-mimetic literary strategy. It is in the medium
itself that Kraus wishes to create an alternative to the repressing and suppressive
forces of the times. Against the will for knowledge encouraged by the press,
Kraus creates and uses his anti-media for the suspension of knowledge, creating a
dialectical concept of language that emphasizes gaps and impasses, and provides
an alternative form of the use of language, which he calls language as shaping
(Gestaltung).

89
Sigurd Paul Scheichl / Leo A. Lensing / Heinz Lunzer, Die Fackel, ein Anti-Medium, in: Was
Wir Umbringen, (Wien: Jdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1999), p.94-112.

52
 IV. Sprachgestaltung: Krauss Alternative View of Language

One of the key concepts in understanding Krauss alternative idea of language is

that of Sprachgestaltung. In order to get an idea of what the term means, here is
the motto to his essay collection on language, Die Sprache:

Sprachanweisungen mten unleserlich geschrieben sein, um dem Sprecher

annhrend den Respekt einzuflen wie das Rezept dem Patienten. Wenn man
nur entnehemen wollte, da vor dem Sprachgebrauch der Kopf zu schtteln sei.
Mit dem Zweifel, der der beste Lehrmeister ist, wre schon viel gewonnen:
manches bliebe ungesprochen. (p.8)

[Language-instructions must be unreadably written, in order to instill the speaker

with respect somewhat like the prescription does the patient. If one would only
conclude that in the face of the usage of language the head should be shaken.
With doubt, which is the best teacher, much can be gained: certain things would
remain unsaid.]

From the outset, Krauss interest lies not in the ways language produces meaning
or communication but in that function of language that goes beyond sense. This
function lies not outside or beyond language but is rather its most essential aspect.
The critical function of Krausian doubt (Zweifel) is not to destabilize the sense of
an utterance or to question its truth, but rather to move beyond sense: to create a
rejection, a deferral that is used as a mean to trespass onto what remains unsaid in
every utterance. The point is to realize that meaning is not the product of the sense
of the words in a sentence, but of the relations between words and syntax on the
one hand and the way they operate on their addressee on the other:

Das Unverstndliche in der Wortkunst [] darf nicht den usseren Sinn

berhren. [] Das Geheimnisvolle sei hinter der Klarheit. Kunst ist etwas, was
so klar ist, da es niemand versteht. (A, 434)

The unintelligible in the art of writing [Wortkunst] should not touch external
sense the mysterious should be laced behind clarity. Art is something so clear
that no one understands it.

What Kraus calls the art of writing (Wortkunst) is his idea of a use of language
that resists and criticizes the mimetic-representational-interpellative usage of
language. The object is to go beyond the verbal understanding of meanings and
denotations, and into a different and so-called mysterious sphere that, instead of
subduing to what is spoken, provides space for imagination and poetic expression,
based not on what is said but on the unsaid, the absence or void. What is referred
to by Kraus as mysterious should not be understood as a romantic yearning for
a non-rational, transcendental, or similar sort of language, but rather as the effect
language often has on its addressees, expressed, for example, by Krauss notion of
the black magic (Schwartze Magie) quality of the press vis--vis its audience.

53
On the other hand, as the above aphorism suggests, there is also a positive sense
of Geheimnisvolle, found predominantly in art, which can be used as an antidote
that encourages an imaginative complexity. In other words, there is a
confrontation here between two distinct forms of the Geheimnisvolle of language:
a negative, interpellative, enchanting power of communicative language and
sense, versus a positive, polysemous, poetic speech that is based on deferral and
absence. What Kraus is advocating is not exactly a disenchantment of the world
(or of language) la Weber, but a use of the positive Geheimnisvolle potential of
language to transform ideological enchantment (negative Geheimnisvolle or
Schwartze Magie) into poetical indecision, which is itself, I shall argue, a form of
critique.90

In the beginning of Die Sprache Kraus distinguishes between language as

communication (Mitteilung) and language as shaping and creating (Gestaltung),
which characterizes the art of writing. In the former case, we are dealing with a
semantic field, system or code that needs to be transferred and deciphered
between addressor and addressee. Here language operates under the principle of
the familiarity (Heimliche) and recognition of pre-given meanings. Language as
shaping (Gestaltung), on the other hand, operates a complex mechanism of
suspension that allows endless possibilities and combinations to be created
through the encounter with the ever changing (immer wechselnde) nature of the
word.91 Here, language does not carry meaning: it transmits nothing else but its
own creating power (Geschaffenheit), its ability to produce or give birth
(Empfangen) to thoughts and ideas (Gedanken). Poetic language should not be
treated as a possession: it is not about reaching a clear point or position (of
understanding, agreement, etc). It is endowed with special transformative and
creative powers that turn it into the einzige Chimre, deren Trugkraft ohne Ende
ist [The only Chimera, whose creating power is endless]. This unique, endless

90
Leslie Hill suggests a definition that may also fit here: Radical Indecision, which is both the
condition and the limit of any critical decision what it reveals is that all writing precedes
the articulation, imposition and enforcement of any law. See: Hill, Radical Indecision (Indiana:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.334-335. Thus, Geheimnisvoll as enchantment is
deconstructed and yet maintains its mystical power of creation.
91
Here is how Kraus defines this transformative aspect: Ein Absolutum der Wortgestalt gibt es
nicht, da das Wort noch jenseits seiner eigenen Problematik vielfltige, immer wechselnde
Beziehungen mit dem Wort eingeht. Das eben wirkt den Gefhrlichen Zauber der Sprache, da
noch die primitivste Aussage zu voller Eindeutigkeit auf ihre Sphre angewiesen bleibt. See:
Kraus, S (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), p.434. [There is no absolute in the word-shape
(Wortgestalt), because even beyond its own difficulties, the word enters constantly changing
relations with the word. It is this, which effects the dangerous magic of language. Even the most
primitive statement aspiring for uniqueness remains dependent on its own sphere.] Wittgenstein
seems to suggest a similar argument: we grasp the meaning at a stroke, and what we grasp in this
way is surely something different from the use which is extended in time! Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations (Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), p.59.

54
power of creation in language has to do with its creaturely nature, as well as
with its hybrid and mytho-poetic origin.92

Wortkunst likewise requires a different approach from the addressee (reader,

listener), a point Kraus makes through an aphorism:

Der intellektuelle Ehrgeiz, das verstehen zu wollen, was nur empfunden

werden darf, um aufgenommen zu werden, was nur gesehen und gehrt werden
mu, wie es empfunden wurde, spielt, vom Dummkopf aufwrts beim Lesen die
verhngnisvollste Rolle. (F. 572-576, 66)

[The intellectual ambition, the will to understand, which may only be sensed in
order to be recorded, that which may only be seen or heard like it was sensed,
plays a disastrous role in reading not only with idiots.]

In reading one needs to give up the ambition to understand, and instead gain the
ability of feeling or experiencing languagewhat Kraus refers to as Sprachgefhl
or Spracherlebnis. Language should not provide the reader with a clear message
which he could understand, but provoke something in him so that would cause
him to create meaning by using his imagination. It should be sensed or imagined
through hearing and seeing, which corresponds to the act of creation of the
utterance. Another point that should be noted here is that it is not only the
ambition to understand that Kraus criticizes but also the recording, which is in
contrast to seeing and hearing. There is a critical distinction between the
idiots relation to language, which is based on reducing language to a definite
and determined meaning (Verstndnis) on the one hand, and its mechanical
recording and data processing on the other. Poetic language requires distance and
openness: it is not recorded but performed. I will further develop these aspects in
relation to Krauss practices of language and media critique in chapter 3.

All this does not mean that Kraus is advocating a form of understanding (reading,
listening) that relies entirely on emotionality instead of hermeneutic rationality.
He rather calls for an awareness and sensibility to undertones, nuances, and
acoustic effects93, all taken to be inherent aspects of language, on which the
Geheimnisvolle Macht is based:

92
Kraus writes: () wo Form nicht das Kleid des Gedanken ist, sondern sein Fleisch. See:
Aphorismen. Sprche und Widersprche (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), p.133 [Form is
not the dress of thought but its flesh]. Creaturely here relates to the distinction between
rationality (Verstehen) and physical aspects such as speaking, hearing and seeing. This also has to
do with the corporeality of language that resists and problematizes signification through this
physical excess.
93
This is another point where Kraus and late Wittgenstein seem to accord each other: The words
of a poet can pierce us completely. And that is of course casually connected to the use
(Gebrauch) they have in our life. And it is also connected with the fact that, in accordance with
this use, we allow our thoughts to roam to and fro into the well-known surrounding.

55
 Dass Sprache nicht blo das, was sprechbar ist, in sich begreift, sondern da in
ihr auch alles was nicht gesprochen wird erlebbar ist; da es in ihr so sehr auf das
Wort ankommt, da noch wichtiger als das Wort das ist, was zwischen den
Worten ist. (p.278)

Language includes not merely what is speakable, but in it all that is not spoken
can be experienced in language things depend so strongly on the word that,
even more important than the word that is there, is what is between the words.

The first point I would like to emphasize here is the importance of syntax: that
which is between the words, and is more important than the words themselves.
The fact that a sentence conveys meaning beyond its content as communication
and denotation relies on these structural and grammatical formationswhat
Fredrick Jameson calls expressive syntax.94 An acknowledgement of these
syntactical operations, and with them an acknowledgement of the void or gap
between words and experiences, encourages the reader to wonder about the
function of the words. The clothing or wrapping of language one has to be
attentive to is found not in what the words of a sentence speak but in their
syntactical links and interactions within the context of an utterance (as well as its
relation to other contexts, as discussed in chapter 3). It is in the places where
language does not speak, through this interruption or deferral, that it becomes true
to its essence.

The question, however, remains: if the reader has to give up the ambition of
understanding, what kind of reading is expected of him? How can the unsaid of
language provide an alternative to communicative language? Veronica Forrest-
Thompsons discussion of the particularities of poetic speech may prove useful
here: Only when this [suspension of meaning] is done, can the critic hope to
reach a thematic synthesis which will make contact with the poem itself on its
many levels and not with some abstract, or indeed, concrete, entity created out of
his own imagination.95 Kraus emphasizes the same point when he notes that his
readers knowledge and familiarity with the subjects they read about hinders them
from using their own creative imagination when seeking for the meaning in the
text:

Wittgenstein, Zettel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p.26. Isava is using this
quote in order to show that for Wittgenstein poetry is an exception. See: Isava, Wittgenstein,
Kraus, and Valry: A Paradigm for Poetic Rhyme and Reason (New York: Peter Lang Publishing,
2002), p.27. What I suggest with Kraus is to consider it as the rule.
94
Fredrick Jameson, Late Marxism Adorno or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso,
1990), p.63-64.
95
Forrest Thompson, Poetic Artifice a theory of twentieth-century poetry (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1978), p.16.

56
 Das Verstndnis meiner Arbeit ist erschwert durch die Kenntnis meines Stoffes.
Dass das, was schon da ist, noch erfunden werden mu und dass es sich lohnt, es
zu erfinden, sehen sie nicht ein. (A, 322)

[The understanding of my work is hindered by the knowledge of my

subjectmatter. What they do not realize is that what is there must first be invented
and that it is worthwhile to invent it.]

Creation, invention and imagination can be regarded as a toolset to which Kraus

offers the name Phantasie, and which serves the project of Wortkunst by
generating a relation between reader and text that reveals its different layers of
expression. Forrest-Thompson demonstrates the ways in which meaning is created
through suspension rather than thematic interpretation in her reading of
Shakespeares 94th Sonnet (an example that most likely would have been
supported by the Shakespeare-loving Kraus). The ambiguity and complexity of
the sonnet creates in the reader different feelings and emotions that stand in
tension to its thematic (or referential) level:

These feelings are conveyed by the non-semantic levels of metre, rhythm,

convention, sound pattern, not by reference outside the poem. The non-semantic
levels need only be related to each other and to the level of meaning as they filter
it to produce a thematic synthesis.96

These intimate relations between content and form, the non-semantic and
thematic levels that define what Forrest-Thompson calls poetic artifice are
based on a reading that suspends meaning through the different linguistic and
poetic means that structure Shakespeares sonnet.

Both Kraus and Forrest-Thompson find in Shakespeares sonnets an element of

ambiguity that forces the reader to experience the sonnet rather than understand
its content. However, two important distinctions should be made here. First, while
Forrest-Thompson is interested specifically in the poetic use of language, Kraus is
using it as a foundation for his general critique of language which covers non-
poetic fields, such as the press. His Sprachkritik is applied to the unsaid level of
various social discourses, evident in his critique of journalism and war
propaganda. Second, Forrest-Thompson attempts to formulate the ways in which
poetry differs from everyday speech and other linguistic usage, but she is also
interested in a formalistic analysis that separates and distinguishes poetry from
these other forms of writing. For Kraus, however, the suspension of meaning and
the taking into account of the non-semantic aspects of language require coming to
terms with the social context. The poetic artifice is used by Kraus to create
uncertainty and ambiguity within, among other things, press editorials and the
words of politicians, and furthermore, to problematize forms of social

96
Forrest Thompson, Poetic Artifice (New York: St. Martins Press, 1978), p.14.

57
identification and interpellation. Put differently, Krauss Sprachgestaltung turns
poetic artifice from a theory of literature into a radical form of social critique.

V. Passive Creativity

The notion of Sprachgestaltung thus finds its expression not only in the demand
directed at writers for an art of writing, but also requires what we might call an
art of reading (what Isava calls passive creativity). In his essay Die
Wortgestalt (Word-shape), Kraus suggests a kind of reading that focuses
precisely on the creative and creaturely mechanism through which language
operates:

Die Krperfhigkeit des Wortes, an dem man gemeinhin nur die eine Dimension
der Aussage erkennt, ist immer in einer Unscheinbarkeit gegeben, die erst dem
Blick, der ber den Sinn hinauslangt, die tiefere Beschaffenheit darbietet, die
Geschaffenheit, die Wortgestalt.97

The corporability of the word, in which we usually recognize only the dimension
of what it said (Aussage), is always given in an inconspicuous manner, which
presents its deeper constitution (Beschaffenheit) its createdness
(Geschaffenheit), its word-shape only to a glance which reaches beyond sense.

Before we analyze this quote, it is important to notice the close affinity of the two
terms, Beschaffenheit and Geschaffenheit, the constitution of the word and its
createdness, is apparent in the affinity between the two words, which are
identical save for a single letter. This is an example of how Krauss use of
language expresses his views about language. This is the focal point of Krauss
concept of Wortgestalt: The utterance of a word both carries with it already-
constituted aspects, while at the same time being a creative operation: always
corresponding with already-existing contexts by putting the word to use in some
new context. The problem, however, is that the createdness-axis tends to escape
readers, who are quick to overlook the critical changes that the constitution-axis
undergoes when a word is being put to use. This is what Kraus means when he
talks about the corporeality of words, and in order to realize it, the reader has to
relate to the text not at the level of its sense (die Aussage).

These creative aspects of Krauss view of language have been generally ignored
in research. The two main scholars who dealt with these aspects of his work are
Josef Quack, who analyzed Krauss concept of language at length but has not
theorized it in a systematic way, and Luis Miguel Isava, who suggests the
following condense formulation:

97
Kraus, S (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), p.289. Translation in: Isava, WKV (New York:
Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), p.85.

58
 Krauss view of language as shaping implies the acknowledgement of the
alternative forms of significance at work outside and beyond the common
process of understanding a meaning in a sentence or in a text. These forms,
however, are not to be understood as pertaining to a different (conception of)
language, but on the contrary arise from the furthering of languages common
rules and establish a dialectical relation with them. For this reason, the concepts
of understanding and agreement, as they are used in the context of
communicative language, must be superseded in order to account to more
adequate concepts such as thought process and organization (combination).98

The main emphasis in Isavas analysis is on the creativity of language and the
ways it systematically shakes and unstable language from within. This is apparent
in Krauss formulations of the relations between Wort and Gedanken. Here is one
example among many:

Der Gedanklose denkt, man habe nur dann einen Gedanken, wenn man ihn hat
und in Worte kleidet. Er versteht nicht, da in Wahrheit nur der ihn hat, der das
Wort hat, in das der Gedanke hineinwchst. (A, 235)

[The one who is thoughtless thinks that one has a thought only when one has it
and puts it into words. He does not understand that in reality only the one who
has the word into which the thought grows, has the thought.]

As Isava notes, Kraus wishes to reverse the idiom Gedanken in Worte kleiden
(to dress thought in words), through the paradoxical statement Der Gedanklose
denkt (the thoughtless thinks). According to Kraus, one first has words, on
which thoughts can then grow. The word does not function here as mere signifier
but more like a template, a space, which is activated by thought. In another
aphorism Kraus writes: Weil ich den Gedanken beim Wort nehme, kommt er
(A, 236) [Only because I take the thought literary does it come]. However, Kraus
is not arguing for a precedence of words over thoughts but for an interdependence
between them. This is expressed by yet another one of his sayings, Beim Wort
nehmen (to take thoughts at their words), which refers to the linguistic process
through which thought grows and develops in contact with words. Part of the
implication here is that words tell more than what their authors intend them to
say. Any utterance, precisely when taken literary, by the word, says both too
much and too little. As Isava puts it:

On the one hand a verbal reading of any sentence, of any utterance for that
matter, is likely to expose its real significance, its ideological tenets, the
authors apparent intentions notwithstanding On the other hand the
aphorism [Beim Wort nehmen] puts forth the possibility of producing
thought by handling words.99

98
Isava, WKV (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), p.84-85.
99
Isava, Ibid., p.68. Isava suggests that Krauss critique on ideology has to do with the concept of
taking his adversaries by the word. I basically agree, yet I find it to be just a partial explanation.

59
Words do not simply express their authors intentions, but are dynamic forms that
change with every utterance. The other side of this assertion is that the creation of
thought is made possible only thanks to this principle. In both cases, to take
someone by their words means a critical assessment of this dialectical process.

Wortkunst is constituted through this complex relationship. Thus, the creation of

thoughts (Gestaltung), not opinions (Meinungen) or communication-forms
(Mitteilung) is related to the concept of Wortgestalta linguistic space that
allows thoughts to be developed and formed. In another aphorism Kraus notes:
Das geschriebene Wort sei die naturnotwendige Verkrperung eines Gedankens
und nicht die gesellschaftsfhige Hlle einer Meinung [The written word is the
essential embodiment of a thought and not the socially acceptable wrapping of an
opinion]. Quack explains: The most important criterion for poetic-language
(Sprachkunst) is that thought and form are unified within the word so that
language, the linguistic form will be regarded as the source of the thought.100
The contrast between wrapping and creating also distinguishes between the two
forms of the geheimnisvolle power of language: the wrapping has to do with what
is socially acceptable opinion or norm, while the essential embodiment has
to do with the shaping-creating process. This contradiction however is not
between the external-social and the inner-individual language. Kraus claims that
the words are not private, and that even the inner thoughts have to do with social
experiences. 101

As a result, the shaping and creating of language has to do with a transformation

of the speaker/author, who himself becomes subjugated to what we formerly
referred to as the constituted dimension of languageunlike the case of a painter,
for example: Die Sprache ist das Material des literarischen Knstlers; aber sie
gehrt ihm nicht allein, whrend die Farbe doch ausschlielich dem Maler gehrt
(A. 113) [Language is the material of the writer; but it does not belong to him

As I showed, the verbal meaning is never just on its own, but contextualized. It relates to the
unsaid and other non-semantic aspects, finally it is the way the ideological speech with
interpellative power, which requires different critical strategies and techniques, as The Last Days
of Mankind clearly demonstrates.
100
Joseph Quack, Bemerkungen zum Sprachverstndnis von Karl Kraus, (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag,
1976), p.70 (my translation).
101
The idea that one cannot control ones own language is close to Wittgensteins claim against
private language in his Philosophical Investigations: But is it also conceivable that there be a
language in which a person could write down or give voice to his inner experiences and his
feelings, moods, and so on for his own use? The words of this language are to refer to what
only the speaker can know to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot
understand the language. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Hoboken: Blackwell
Publishing, 2009), p.95. This illustrates the gap between an inner experience and the need to
express it in external linguistic means, an issue that connects the language skepticism of both
Wittgenstein and Kraus, and the attempt to reform language. This also relates to Daniel Dors
theory of Language and Experience, see next chapter.

60
alone, whereas color does belong specifically to the painter]. What is true for
words is thus also true for thoughts: Ich habe manchen Gedanken, den ich nicht
habe und nicht in Worte fassen knnte, aus der Sprache geschpft (A. 292)
[From language I have taken thoughts that I did not have and couldnt put into
words]. Kraus goes on to argue:

Ich beherrsche die Sprache nicht, aber die Sprache beherrscht mich vollkommen.
Sie ist mir nicht die Dienerin meiner Gedanken. Ich lebe in einer Verbindung mit
ihr, aus der ich Gedanken empfange, und sie kann mit mir machen, was sie will.
(A, 134-5)

[I do not control language; but language controls me completely. She is for me

not the servant of my thoughts. I live in a bonding with her, from which I receive
thoughts, and she can do with me as she pleases].102

These quotations demonstrate what Isava calls passive creativity. Kraus is not
suggesting a notion of the death of the author (Foucault), although he does
challenge the concept of his subjectivity. The author cannot master language: in
fact the possibility to become an author is depended on the ability to give up the
tendency to try and master language, instead allowing the embodiment necessary
by nature (naturnotwendige Verkrperung103) to take place; a preformedness of
thought (Prformiertheit der Gedanken104) as Kraus puts it elsewhere. Here is
another version of the description of this process:

Ich pariere ihr [der Sprache] aufs Wort. Denn aus dem Wort springt mir der
junge Gedanke entgegen und formt rckwirkend die Sprache, die ihn schuf.
Solche Gnade der Gedankentrchtichkeit zwingt auf die Knie und allen Aufwand
zitternder Sorgfalt zur Pflicht. Die Sprache ist eine Herrin der Gedanken, und wer
das Verhltnis umzukehren vermag, dem macht sie sich im Hause ntzlich, aber
sie sperrt ihm den Scho. (A. 134)

I obey language by the word. Then from the word the young thought jumps
towards me and retroactively forms the language that created it. Such grace of the
pregnancy of thought forces one to his knees and all the efforts of outmost
accuracy become an obligation. Language is a master of thoughts, and whoever is
able to reverse the relation, to him she makes herself useful at home, but she will
block her womb.

Kraus here is not explaining but rather demonstrating or performing his point. The
quote begins with a speech act, a pledge of allegiance to language, which is also a
word-play, based on the double meaning of aufs Wort (by the word). The
speech act constitutes a relationship of obedience to words and by them. This

102
The correct grammatical form to refer to language in English would, of course, be it.
However, I did not want to lose the feminine gender aspect existing in German, which plays an
important role in Kraus.
103
F 261-262: 12.
104
F 329-330: 24.

61
double meaning opens a dialectic process whereby a new thought is conceived,
which demonstrates (and thereby reaffirms) the creativity of language. This
process brings the speaker to his knees, forces him to an accuracy of speech
and obedience. Passive creativity is here marked by gender oppositions and by the
physiological and bodily metaphor of giving birth. He who attempts to restructure
and reverse these relations (which also implies a reversal of gender categories),
finds himself barren, bound to a merely technical, non-creative use of words.

Krauss view on the relation between thought and language, as well as his critique
of the concept of representation are not far from those of Herder and Hamman,
especially as they have been developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his concept
of Weltansichta world view that is created through language:

The mutual interdependence of thought and word clearly illuminates the truth
that languages are not really means for representing already known truths rather
instruments for discovering previously unrecognized ones.105

Kraus was familiar with Humboldts ideas on language, and quoted him in one of
the mottos to his collection Zur Sprachlehre (F. 572-576). The point there, as
well as in the quote above, is that meaning in language is created by the activation
of words. Language is not a system (ergon) but an activity (energia). For
Humboldt, this process is related to the distinction between two linguistic forms,
the sound form and the inner-mental one, which should be united in speech,
through a specific mental capacity (Geistigkraft). Like Kraus, Humboldt too
argues that language is a formative organ of thought. They both share the view
that these aspects are inherent to language but also dependant on a pedagogical
project that Humboldt defined as Bildung and Kraus referred to as Sprachlehre.
The main difference between them, however, is that while for Humboldt this was
a scientific quest for the foundation of a national education system and the
advancement of the project of the enlightenment, for Kraus this was the
foundation of a critical project meant to counter many of the ailments of the
enlightenment.

In the analysis of the relations between word and thought, I have tried to illustrate
how Krauss formulations fortify his critical position. Krauss Sprachkritik, I have
argued, is based on a rejection of the representative and communicative usage of
language, and an attempt to reconstruct social life through the concepts of
Wortkunst and Sprachgestaltung. Before moving on, let me now stress a few
points.

105
Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. III (Berlin: Behr, 1903), p.169.

62
First, like Foucault in more recent decades, Kraus claims that a writer is always-
already inside a discourse, and never an isolated subject. Thus, his creation is
always part of existing discursive power-relations, and subject to their limits and
possibilities. This, however, does not mean (as some interpreters suggested) that
the author is completely bound by these limits. That is what creation in language
is all about. Furthermore, not only is language itself not an absolute boundary, it
is also the case that words always present some degree of resistance to
contextualization (a point expended in the next chapter). The artistic activation of
words through their natural embodiment is an act of transgression against the
discursive mischief of common opinions (Gesellschaftsfhige Meinungen).

Second, while discussing Goethes verses, Kraus writes Man wei, was
gemeint ist, aber das ist eine Befriedigung auerhalb der sprachschpferischen
Sphre (p.68) [One knows what is meant, but this is contentment beyond the
sphere of linguistic creativity]. On the one hand, words are not empty signifiers:
they have historical and traditional attributes, although ambiguous and uncertain.
On the other hand, this is exactly what cannot be turned into content or
message. These are aspects of language that cannot be verbally transmitted or
translated: syntax and grammatical requirements, the choice of a word, the way it
is combined in a sentence, the different associations involved or provoked by it,
its undertonesare all elements of understanding that go beyond common
concepts of communication and signification.

Third, writing here seems to constitute not an order or a system, but a refusal to
any order: a perpetual interference and displacement, where both language and the
speaking subject are transformed and deconstructed. Kraus, however, was very
strict in his use of linguistic rules and grammar. Hence it appears that his is not a
refusal of order as such, but an attempt to substitute a particular kind of order
social discourse by another which we might term poetic contextuality: the
result of adopting a relation of passive creativity towards language. This concept
contradicts the ideological logic, where ideas are wrapped in words and then
distributed and transmitted. This can be seen in the following statement of intent
from Die Sprache: Besitzfall zum Zeugfall zu erhhen, das Haben zum Sein
[To raise possession to tool, having to being] (p.272). The negative notion of
possession (Besitzfall) in this quote, as well as the transition it necessitates from
having to being, demonstrates Benjamins claim quoted in the first part of the
chapter, regarding Krauss critique of the language of capitalism and the
reification it brings with it. Krauss point is not about the class struggle involving
private property, but an epistemic change that alters languages social function.
The concept of language as shaping and creating opposes mastery and possession.
Elsewhere Kraus identifies what he considered the confusion of his contemporary

63
society, which favors Lebensmittel (goods and utilities) over Lebenszweck (culture
and values). The point of the required linguistic transformation is thus to allow
what Isava rightly calls an altogether different economy of exchange.106

VI. The Words Two Bodies: From Wortgestalt to Citationality

Krauss critique of language, as I have argued, focuses on the processes and

conditions of its production. This shaping and creating process has a material
aspect. The corporeality or embodiment of the word according to Kraus,
which we have already encountered, is constituted through the activation of its
own creative power. It is not the dress (Kleid) of a thought but its flesh (Fleisch).
Thus, the word as shape (Wortgestalt) has to do with its physical coming to being.
Thought is not only shaped, it is embodied, contextualized and expressed through
speech or writing. This process, however, is very different than that of the reifying
language of the press. The latter is not an expression of an experience but rather a
fabricated, superficial speech. Hence, while the phrases of journalists can simply
be printed and distributed, a Wortgestalt, if it is to remain true to its anti-media
essence, demands constant reenactment of its own creation in a recurrent act of
speech or writing.

In the essay Wortgestalt, Kraus explains this concept through what he considers to
be the best example, the word Turm (tower) from the last scene of Shakespeares
Henry 6th Part III.107 From a conservative point of view, this seems like a strange
choice for a number of reasons. First, it is a translated piece and not an original
German play. Second, tower is not the most important word nor motive in the
play. Third, it refers to a place, the tower of London, and not to an idea or
concept. But the most puzzling aspect is that the word Turm in the passage Kraus
cites functions as a replacement of speech, as what is used to hide more than to
reveal. It marks the border of what cannot be said at that present moment in the
play and will only be revealed later.

Here are the lines Kraus quotes followed by Shakespeares English:

Gloster: Clarence, entschuldge mich bei meinem Bruder.

In London gibts ein dringendes Geschft:
Eh ihr dahin kommt, sollt ihr neues hren.

Clarence: Was? Was?

Gloster: Der Turm! der Turm! (ab)

106
See: Isava, WKV (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002).
107
Kraus, S (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), p.284-289.

64
 GLOUCESTER: Clarence, excuse me to the king my brother;
I'll hence to London on a serious matter:
Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news.

CLARENCE: What? what?

GLOUCESTER: The Tower, the Tower. (Exit)

These lines are a dialogue between Richard of Gloucester and his brother the
Duke of Clarence. Richard says that he needs to hurry for an urgent business
(Geschft) in London about which his brother will soon hear the news. The
eager Clarence asks: What? What?, and Richard vaguely replies The tower,
the tower! As the audience learns in the following scene of the play, Richard
hurries to murder the king which is held prisoner in the tower of London. Instead
of telling his brother about his scheme, Richard only says tower. This might be
regarded as a metonymic reference to the king inside the tower. The doubling of
the word, however, as well as the fact that both the kind and, more importantly,
the nature of Richards business (murder) go unsaid, reveal that what is at stake
is not a gap between what Richard says and how he says it (tower/king) but a
tension between what Richard says and does not say (tower/murder). Kraus
remarks:

Wie dieser ungeheuren Fgung ein Monstrum in Menschengestalt entspricht,

wird erst im Unterschied zweier dramatischen Abgnge die ganze Macht wie
Ohnmacht des Wortes sinnfllig(p.285)

Like this tremendous destiny, corresponding to a monster in human-figure,

demonstrates, it is only then through the difference in the two dramatic exits
that the whole power and powerlessness of the words manifests itself...

In other words, the drama has to do with the manifestation of words that do not
represent or signify, yet still operate in a monstrous way. It is a constitutive
scene that charges the word Turm with different levels of meaning. It is now
associated with the deceit, plots and lies, with the murder of the king, the venue
where this horror took place, and with the figure of Richard of Gloucester who,
through this murderous acts, would eventually become Richard the Third (the
hunchback king, who would later serve as one of Krauss theatrical figurations of
the First World War, and was also the demonic alter-persona of Kraus himself).
Turm holds in it a world of stored associations and possibilities that unwrap
themselves out through its utterance. It is not an empty signifier on the one hand,
nor linguistic content in the usual sense on the other, but a collection of
possibilities that trigger associations of thought and action.

Thus, Kraus finds in Shakespeares theater a space of creativity through the void
that the speech opens, a speech which is a deferral or refrains from

65
representation.108 It hides what it is supposed to deliver and at the same time
seems to expresses too much (ungeheure). This is exactly the kind of speech act
that John Austin considered as parasitic, hollow and ill.109 It is the illness or
feeling of decay that Lord Chandos in Hofmannsthals story sensed but could not
cope with.110 For Kraus, this illness or void is highly crucial. It has to do with the
power of sovereignty and political violence, and is at the same time what defines
art and literature.

This examplewhich, as mentioned, refers to a foreign text (Shakespeare) as

paradigmreveals that every Wortgestalt relies on a logic of citation. Alexander
Gelley wrote about the concept of citation in Kraus and Walter Benjamin that:

Citation underscores an activating moment, the emergence of a new

affectivity of what is being cited, whether it be a word or a historical
moment citing involves not only retrieval of a text or concept, but
intervention into the temporal process, the activation of a past in the
present: citing as inciting.111
This explanation can also be applied to Krauss Wortgestalt, and the way he
suggests to think about Turm not only as an example for creating and shaping but
as a way of introducing the seventeenth century drama of sovereignty into
twentieth century Vienna. The many Shakespeare quotations found throughout
Krauss writings reveal that time is, indeed, out of joint. Whereas for
Hofmannsthals Lord Chandos quotation represented repetition and return of the
same, provoking an over-determinate speech, Kraus turns the quotation itself from
content to form, from reference to a static, past context to a dynamic movement
between past and present, an utterance that estranges itself. The staging of the
utterance, its medium of theatricality, provides the hollow space, the void, the
108
Werner Kraft noted: Why is the end of Iphigenia so great? Because the deep emotional
struggle of King Thomas is not represented here, but rather to extent sealed in a word of farewell.
Werner Kraft, Das Ja des Neinsagers (Mnchen: edition text u. kritik, 1974), p.82 (my
translation).
109
In Austins words: () as utterances our performances are also heir to certain other kinds of
ill, which infect all utterances () language in such circumstances is in special ways intelligibly
used not seriously, but in many ways parasitic upon its normal use ways which fall under the
doctrine of the etiolations of language. All this we are excluding from consideration. Our
performative utterances, felicitous or not, are to be understood as issued in ordinary
circumstances. See: Deconstruction: critical concepts in literary and cultural studies, Volume 1,
edited by Jonathan D. Culler (London: Routledge, 2003), p.238-239.
34
It is important to note that Hofmannsthals Chandos letter is dated to 1603, the year of the death
of Queen Elisabeth and the times when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Both he and Kraus turn to this
period when they confront the crisis of language.
35
Alexander Gelley, Epigones in the House of Language, in: Partial Answers: Journal of
Literature and the History of Ideas (Vl. 5, Nr. 1, January 2007), p.25.

66
suspension, that, although it appears just for a moment, transforms the logic of
time and creates interruption and rupture in it. These aspects, and Krauss logic of
citationality and inter-contextuality, as I call it, will be examined in the next
chapter.

67
 Chapter 3

Citation and Context

So wurde ich der Schpfer des Zitats, im Wesentlichen nicht mehr als das,
wenngleich ich den Anteil der Sprachgestaltung auch an der Abschrift der
Zeit nicht verkleinert sehen mchte. Die Sprachkunst besteht da in der
Weglassung der Anfhrungszeichen, in dem Plagiat an der tauglichen
Tatsache, in dem Griff, der ihren Ausschnitt zum Kunstwerk verwandelt.
(F. 800-805,2)
So I became the creator of citations, in essence no more than that, even
though I did not want to see the amount of creation in language
[Sprachgestaltung] reduced, because of the duplicity of the time. Poetic art
(Sprachkunst) consists in the omission of quotation marks, in the
plagiarism of facts, in the grasp that turns extracts into an artwork.

I. Citing as Inciting

In the previous chapter I demonstrated how Krauss conception of language

attempts to bring it to an impasse through the suspension of its representational
and communicational functions. Meaning, which is never fixed or permanent, is
created through the engagement of the reader with the shaping and creating
potential of language itself, with Sprachgestaltung. The whole process is based on
adopting a position of estrangement and doubt, an openness to the ever-changing
nature of words, as well as the bringing of social and literary traditions together
with personal or collective experience and memory, to form what Kraus calls a
Wortgestalt. This dialectic movement is made possible by placing oneself as
subjected to the creative power of language, and by an attentive kind of reading
and listening. The creativity of language has to do with those aspects of it that are
not verbally transmitted, such as tone, gesture, reference, and the visual and
acoustical aspects of speech. It is through these non-verbal aspects, located
between the words, that an utterance gains a special quality that allows it to
perform in ways that are immune to ideological interpellation. Adopting such a

68
relation to language is based not on acceptance but on continuous doubt, which
serves as the best teacher that provides a morally-critical position: Wre denn
eine strkere Sicherung im Moralischen vorstellbar als der sprachliche Zweifel?
(F. 885-887, 2) [Would it be possible to imagine a better protection for morality
than linguistic doubt?]. I will further develop this idea of the link between
language and morality in the concluding chapter.

In order to explain this view of language I have used the term inter-
contextuality. Like the notion of intertextuality, developed, among others, by
Julia Kristeva and Rolland Barthes, the former regards meaning not as something
that resides in the text but rather as created by the reader through complex
networks of texts, references and cultural codes.112 There is a similarity with
respect to some of the main practices in which these two processes are
manifested, including citation, reference, translation, parody, allusion, pastiche,
plagiarism etc. But whereas intertextuality serves to direct attention to the
constitutive relations between different texts, Kraus, so I claim, uses citations in
order to emphasizes the gap between two different contexts. It is through the
inter-junction of contexts that a new meaning can be created, as well as a moral
and critical account of the social reality in which these different contexts take
place. More specifically, Krauss critical project relies on this contextualization of
speech: his critique is directed against those simplistic and manipulative forms of
intertextuality that grant present events and actions a symbolic value, sense,
significance and familiarity. This process finds its most radical manifestation in
the press. In Krauss oeuvre, on the other hand, through the quote-practice, the
whole concept of signification-through-intertextuality is challenged: the focal
point becomes the ways signifiers are changed and modified by being used in
different contexts, and how these differences are manipulatively overshadowed by
the press. This calls for the distinction between intertextuality and inter-
contextuality. According to Kraus, intertextual citations and the references to

112
As Julia Kristeva stated: every text builds itself as a mosaic of quotations, every text is
absorption and transformation of another text, quoted in: Jeanine Parisier Plottel, Introduction to
Intertextuality: New Perspectives in Criticism (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1978),
p.xiv.

69
poetic language, like that of Goethe or Shakespeare, should not serve, as it does at
the hands of the press, to glorify or decorate present events (serving as what he
calls linguistic ornaments), but rather to suspend and prevent any attempt to
identify the symbolic and poetic with the real and communicative.

One example of this is Krauss critique of the use of Goethe in order to praise and
legitimize the First World War as an expression of German spirit. The common
recruitment of the poet and the exploitations of his works for political purposes,
together with the glorification of German war politics as the fulfillment of the
holy duty of Goethes Volk, are made possible through different forms of
intertextuality. Here is one instance of Krauss critique of the propaganda use of
Goethe from 1917. Goethes famous line, ber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh' [Above
all summits it is calm] is turned into the catchphrase Unter allen Wassern ist U
[under all water is the U (U-boat: submarine)] (F. 454-456,1). The point here,
according to Kraus, is that the Germans, who consider themselves Goethes
people, fighting the war in his name, are precisely destroying his legacy and
achievements in their commercial and technical literary productiona process
that threatens humanity and its spirit (Entmenschung). Against this literary abuse,
Kraus insists on a historical re-contextualization of the present. He writes that the
current epoch (Zeitalter, Epoche) is a time of crisis, that should be confronted and
criticized by literature. Instead, however, in the hands of the journalists, poetry
itself becomes part of this deadly mechanism: literature is transformed by
journalism, and Goethes work, which could and should have provide an
alternative and critical position, are turned into mere decoration.

Krauss critical strategy aims to undo this operation: to re-contextualize Goethes

words, and to emphasize the violence and war horrors their use by the media
serves to overshadow.113 In this case, inter-contextuality (rather than
intertextuality) provides an account of the linguistic technique used by the press
a technique that Kraus seeks to resist through a counter-move of re-

113
Kurt Krolop, Ebenbild und Gegenbild: Goethe und Goethes Volk bei Karl Kraus, in Krolop,
Sprachsatire als Zeitsatire (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1987), p.192-209.

70
contextualization. When describing his own practice of citing Goethe114, Kraus
cites lines from Eckermans conversations with the writer, in which they are
discussing the challenge of reading his Pandora (probably Krauss favorite
Goethe piece). When Eckerman admits to have difficulties comprehending the
text, although he had read it many times that he almost knows it by heart, Goethe
empathically remarks: es ist alles als wie ineinander gekeilt115 [it is as if
everything is entangled in fortitude]. Every word is an abundance and excess,
while at the same time tied to its context. Goethes work thus resists any
simplistic reading, instead requiring an acknowledgement of the different forms
of speech, tones and voices that are at play in it, as well as their mutual
interactions. In this sense, Goethes text is already structured as a quote, a speech
that is constituted by its ambivalent relation to the context as well as its
reappearance (Wiederholung), as can be seen by Eckermans repeated readings.116
Thus, the use of Goethes words as war slogans by the press is not simply a matter
of bad taste or historical injustice, but stands against Goethes spirit and poetic
achievement as such. The whole point and poetic effect of Goethes text relies on
revealing how meaning is the product of inter-contextual operations, rather than a
pre-given. What the press does when introducing Goethe into the context of the
war is precisely an effort to erase this operation and with it the differences
between the contexts. In their attempt to recreate Goethes image (Ebenbild) they
produced his intertextual Gegenbild (counter image).

What we thus might term Krauss contextual critique calls into question the way
politicians and journalists created their own version of Goethe through allusions,
juxtapositions and selective use of quotes, by challenging the way such devices
are used in order to read and code contemporary events out of context.117 The key

114
Goethe is the most quoted author in Die Fackel and used especially in Die Letzten Tage and in
Dritte Walpurgisnacht as a response to the corruption of language and the propaganda slogans
about German Spirit.
115
See: Eckermann Gesprch mit Goethe vom 21. Oktober 1823 (F 554-556: 24).
116
The Pandora fragment is central for the understanding of Krauss view of the textual nature of
gender and identities. See: Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press,
1986) p.63-94.
117
As analyzed in the next chapter, one of the key features of Krauss anti-war critique is its lack
of sense, narrative and meaning: the war as an event that cannot and should not be narrated.

71
to understanding such operations lies not with the concept of similarity but with
that of iterability: what matters is not the generation of a chain of signifiers but
how these signifiers change and transform through and by the new context. The
ever changing nature of the word, as Kraus puts it, means not only that
signifiers can be taken out of one context and used in another (the simpler idea of
citationality), but that this operations also transforms these signifiers. This
process, as suggested in the previous chapter, has to do with the material and
historical aspects of the relation between word and thought, as represented and
practiced in the form of the quote. As Alexander Gelley puts it, citing is
inciting: it functions as Verschiebung, a suspension of meaning, while at the
same time exposing the unbridgeable gap between word, experience and
contextthe very gap that the press is trying to hide, and that Krauss linguistic
critique insists on re-presenting.

II. The Soldier and the Song of the Lark

The following war-time example of Krauss use of citation may help stress the
problematic relations between text, context and experience. In 1916 Kraus
reprinted a journalistic report that appeared in another newspapers in Die Fackel,
to which he only added a title and a closing line, both of which are citations from
Shakespeare:

Es war die Nachtigall und nicht die Lerche

Unser Brsseler Korrespondent schreibt uns vom 24. d.: Ein an der
Yserfront stehender belgischer Soldat, der in diesen schnen Maientagen
des Nachts am Saume eines Waldes Wache stand, vernahm stundenlang
den prchtigen Triller einer Nachtigall und entzckte sich an ihren
Klngen. Ringsum erscholl ein furchtbarer Kanonendonner, denn die
deutsche Artillerie beschiet Tag und Nacht das belgische Lager an der
Yser und die belgische Artillerie beantwortet den deutschen Geschoregen
mit der grten Kraft. Dieser ohrenzerreiende Kriegslrm, der den in
einsamer Wacht stehenden Soldaten bis ins Mark erschtterte, schien dem
gefiederten Snger keinerlei Bengstigung zu bereiten. Der kleine
Waldvogel kmmerte sich um den gewaltigen Vlkerkrieg nicht im
mindesten und lie seine Arien los, als herrschte tiefster Friede im Walde
in dieser herrlichen, vom Monde beschienenen Frhlingsnacht.

72
 Sie sang des Nachts auf dem Granatbaum dort (431-436, 24).

It was the nightingale and not the lark

Our Brussels correspondent writes to us on the 24th. A Belgian soldier at
the front in Yser [Yserfront], who stood guard at night time in one of those
nice days of May at the fringe of the woods, heard for hours the glorious
trill of a nightingale and delighted himself with its sounds. All around the
terrible thunders of canons sounded, caused by the day-and-night German
artillery fire on the Belgian camp at Yser, with the Belgian artillery
answering the German rain of shells with the mightiest force. This
deafening war noise, which shocked the soldier, who stood in solitary
watch, didnt seem to cause any anxiety to the feathered singer. The little
bird didnt mind this tremendous war of humans [Vlkerkrieg] even a bit,
and released its arias as if the deepest peace reigned in the woods, in this
admirable, moonlit spring night.
He sang all night under the pomegranate tree (Granatbaum)
The original report (the middle citation above) creates a contrast between an
almost idyllic nature scene and the horrors and atrocities of war118. In spite of the
heavy bombing and fighting, the soldier can still hear the voice of the nightingale,
which is not only a metonymy of nature, but also symbolizes innocence and hope
for peace (tiefster Friede). There is a series of contradictions at play here that
correspond to each other: day and night, life and death, nature and technology,
creation and destruction, the song of the bird and the sounds of blasts. This
journalistic writing is thus not at all a mere report on the war, but a piece of prose
that triggers identification and empathy, raising different connotations that divert
the reader from the context of war. The effect of the intensity of the symbols,
contradictions and allusions turns the battlefield event into an aesthetic
experience, encoded through these contradictions.119

118
The relation between war and peace developed here is part of the encoding of war which Kraus
criticized. A similar ironic move is also found in Brecht, for example: Theres peace in war too,
war has its peaceful moments. See: Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children, translated
by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1982), p.22.
119
The war as poetically-encoded experience as well as Krauss attempts of decoding it will be
examined and discussed in the next chapter. The above-cited report is paradigmatic, however, in
the sense that the atrocities of war serve merely as a backdrop for private emotional experience
and an inner struggle that is meant to strengthen identity and spirit. Heres another example for

73
By adding the title and closing line, taken from Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet
(scene 5), Kraus reframes the entire scene into a Shakespeare quotation. The
anesthetization of violence in the text, as well as the mechanisms of intertextuality
that makes it possible, thus become apparent. Krauss quote-practice serves here
not so much as a pungent satire but as a critical intervention in the relations
between the encoding and decoding of war experience in journalistic reports of
the kind he cites (which was by no means unique). To understand the full effect of
the Krausian operation, we need to look at the Shakespearian text. Here is the
scene in Schlegels translation, followed by the original English:

Julia:

Willst du schon gehen? Der Tag ist ja noch fern.

Es war die Nachtigall, und nicht die Lerche,
Die eben jetzt dein banges Ohr durchdrang;
Sie singt des Nachts auf dem Granatbaum dort.
Glaub, Lieber, mir: es war die Nachtigall.

Romeo:

Die Lerche wars, die Tagverknderin,

Nicht Philomele
Nur Eile rettet mich, Verzug ist Tod.

Juliet
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Romeo
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

such emotional encoding at that period, coming from the other side of the trenches: The evening
before a great battle must always make fires leap up in the mind For there the wits and the heart
may be really astir and at gaze, and the common man may have, for the hour, the artists vision of
life as an adventure and challenge, lovely, harsh, fleeting, and strange. The great throw, the new
ages impending nativity, Fate with her fingers approaching the veil, about to lift a sense of these
things is a drug as strong as strychnine. See: C. E. Montague, Disenchantment, (London: Faber
and Faber, 1978) p.122. For a detailed analysis see: Jeffrey Verhey, Spirit of 1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).

74
The Shakespearian scene is based on a similar chain of contradictions to the Yser
report. The lark symbolizes despair and death, while the nightingales song in the
scene, as Antonio Ribeiro shows120, denotes the attempt to put time at a standstill
and to bring hope that could save both life and love. The words of Romeo, echoed
by Kraus, it was the lark and not the nightingale, shutter all hope and disclose
the tragedy. But Krauss irony goes further with the double meaning of
Granatbaum (somewhat lost by the English): grenade-tree. It is now no longer
clear weather this is a tragedy or a farce, as the report turns form a moving story
of a frontline soldier to a theatrical gesture, a satirical peace. This ability to alter
the meaning of the text by a single line was admired by Walter Benjamin121 and
Bertolt Brecht122, and was defined by Antonio Ribeiro as silent language
(Schweigende Sprache).

This would remain, however, only a partial description of Krauss citational

practice to view it as essentially an intertextual strategy, whose aim is to change
the meaning of the scene. Krauss aim was not simply to show the absurdity of the
journalistic report, or to replace one meaning (hope and peace) with another
(Shakespearian tragedy). It would also will be a misconception to view this move

120
Ribeiro, ME, in: Joseph Strelka (ed.), ME, (Tbingen: Francke Verlag, 1990), p.237-265.
121
Walter Benjamin mentions this quote in his Kraus-Essay, although he changes it: Jener Zeile,
in welcher einer vor Arras nach Haus berichtet, wie in der Frhe auf dem letzten zerschossenen
Baume vor seiner Stellung eine Lerche zu singen begonnen habe. Eine einzige Zeile, und nicht
einmal seine eigene, gengt Kraus, um in dies Inferno rettend hinabzufahren, eine einzige
Sperrung: Es war die Nachtigall und nicht die Lerche, die dort auf dem Granatbaum sa und
sang. Im rettenden und strafenden Zitat erweist die Sprache sich als die Mater der Gerechtigkeit.
See: Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 2. (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1977). Benjamin changes Brussels into Aras, referring to the battle that took
place there, where over 250,000 soldiers were killed in the bloodiest month of the entire war.
Benjamin is not simply citing Kraus, but is himself making a Krausian citational-gesture. I thank
Gerald Krieghofer for this remark.
122
Bertolt Brecht said that this method of citing without commentaries was not only a unique art
form, but the hardest one to imitate out of the whole of Krauss writing methods. Brecht writes:
Sie setzt voraus den Aufbau eines Raumes, in dem alles zum Gerichtsvorgang wird. Der sie
anwendet, muss einzig durch seine grosse Autoritt instand Gesetz sein, sein Schweigen zu einem
Urteil zu machen. Damit sein Schweigen auffllt, darf keines Andern Reden erwartet warden.
Und, seine Einstellung muss bekannt sein, an vielen Beispielen erweisen und durch kein einziges
zweifelhaft. See: Brecht, Werke Bd. 19 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968) p.431. [It pre-
establishes a spatial structure, in which everything becomes a legal proceeding. Whoever applies
it, must himself, through its great authority, be capacitated to turn his silence into a judgment.
With that his silence stands out, and requires no other speech. And his position must be clear,
manifest itself in many examples and move beyond all doubt.]

75
as a conflict between high culture and art on the one hand, and vulgar press
reports or war-kitsch on the other. The use of citation here is part of a different
concept and function of language altogether. It is designated to suspend the
encoded speech of the press, along with the semantic fullness of expression (the
report), by introducing iterability and contextuality. The example of the
Grantbaum is insightful: it shows not only how the words of the report can be
played against its authors intention, but also how Shakespeares words
themselves are transformed through the associations of war. It would be a mistake
to attribute to Kraus the view that culture and tradition (Shakespeare) remain
intact vis--vis the Yser front: culture itself is under attack, invaded and
contaminated by the war atrocities. While the Shakespearean signifier has not
changed, its reference is now shifted from nature to technology and death. In
these war times, one simply cannot hear Shakespeares Granatbaum without
associating it with the battlefield.123 The ever changing nature of the word, its
iterability, is manifested here in a horrifying way. Citation thus becomes an act of
rescue, as Walter Benjamin suggests, which allows the context that the report has
encoded and pushed back (its attempt to aestheticize the atrocious war
experience) to be clearly and forcefully stated through the sabotage-effect, so to
speak, Kraus introduces into it.

It should be noted that this singing of the lark does not refer exclusively to
Shakespeare. In April 1916 Kraus printed a poem by an unknown Heinrich
Lersch124 titled Ein Kamerad. It tells the story of a soldier who hears the song
of the lark at the front as a contrast to the violence and despair around him. Kraus
remarks: Dieses letzte Erlebnis, das der Zwang zum Sterben dem
Menschenherzen gelassen hat, nach solchem Lrm einen Vogelruf zu hren, ist so
berwltigend, da es nicht allzuschwer sein mag, die Sprache zu finden. (F.
418-422,43-44) [This last experience that the force of death left in peoples

123
Another example for the use of war terminology in theater (and vice versa) is Bombenerfolg
(bomb-success), which was used to describe a hit in theater shows. See: F 406-412: 106.
124
Heinrich Lersch was a soldier until 1915, when he was discharged because of his health
condition. He was an autodidact poet and a boilermaker, affiliated with the socialist movement,
who gained some success as a writer. In 1935 he joined the Nazi party and died in Remagen in
1936.

76
hearts: to hear the voice of the bird after such noises is so overwhelming, that it
shouldnt be too difficult to find language]. The soldiers experience at the front is
not an elevating post-Nietzschian Erlebnis, but the last experience based on the
realization of comprehensive horror on a worldly scale, as well as the failure to
constitute a new form of subjectivity that might be able to resist or even criticize
it. A month later, in the next edition of Die Fackel (F. 423-425), Kraus explained
that it is not the artistic quality of the poem that he praised but its documentary
value: while listening to the song of the lark, the soldier experienced war not as a
spiritual event but as senseless tragedy. This discussion continued in June 1916
(F. 426-430), when Kraus reprinted another lark war-poem: Der Lerche Lied in
Flandern. Unlike Lerschs poem, the latter celebrated the sweet sound of the lark
as a source of hope in the midst of the battlefield. Here Kraus remarked: Da ein
deutscher Reimer es noch wagen kann, eine Lerche anzurufen und fr
Kriegszwecke zu requirieren war zu erwarten (Ibid, 53) [That a German verse-
writer dares to call upon a lark and to recruit it to warfare purposesthat much
was expected].

In this same issue, Kraus also printed a response from a soldier in one of the
fronts, who seemed to criticize Krauss reading of Lersch.125 The soldier wrote:

Wer hier Kunst treibt, ist nicht hier. Wer nicht hier ist, wei nichts von uns!
Heinrich Lersch mag hier gewesen sein und dort nachempfunden haben, was er
hier nicht empfunden hat. Vielleicht war es ihm innerstes Bedrfnis, die Leere
dieser Zeit nachfhlend zu beleben, dem Sinnlosen nachsinnend einen Sinn zu
geben. Die Empfindungen einer friedlichen Vergangenheit sind in ihm erwacht,
strker, bewuter: die Augen, die hier die Leere nicht fassen konnten, haben dort
die Dinge gesehen. Er fhlte als Arbeiter, der nach jahrelanger Fabriksarbeit
in einer groen fremden Stadt einen Frhling erlebt: Er hrte nur da
die Lerche sang! Auch wir hren die Lerche singen; wir sagen vielleicht auch,
da wir sie singen hren; aber so, als sprchen wir nicht von uns. Unser Leben
kennt kein Erleben mehr.

125
Marlies Tropp views this as an example of Krauss ability to change his views and contradict
himself. However I dont find, that the case of the Lark-report and the printing of Lerschs poem
contradict each other. See: Marlies Tropp, Zur Methode der Sprachkritik bei Karl Kraus, in:
Jochen C. Schtze / Hans U. Treichel (eds.), Die Fremdheit der Sprache (Hamburg: Argument
Verlag, 1988), p.99-100.

77
 [Whoever engages with art is not around here. Whoever is not here knows
nothing about us! Heinrich Lersch might have wished to be here and felt there,
what he could have not felt here. Perhaps it was an inner need for him, to give
life to feelings of emptiness of these times, and to sensefully give sense to
senselessness. The feelings of a peaceful past are awakened, stronger, conscious
in him: the eyes, which could not grasp the emptiness here, saw the things over
there. He felt like a worker, whoafter years of factory work in a large and
foreign cityexperiences spring: he heard onlythat the lark sang! We
also hear the lark sing; perhaps we too say that we hear it sing; but it is as if we
are not talking ourselves. Our lives cannot experience anything anymore.]

For the soldier, Lerschs poem is not only a misconception of the war. What it
describes is quite impossible. Lerschs writing is not about a battlefield
experience he had undergone, but an expression of the fact that he was not there
anymore. He expresses the things he could not have sensed had he stayed in the
front. Unlike the image created by the poem, the war itself stands in contrast to
the spiritual, intimate and inner experience. It is about the emptiness of the
time, the inability to feel or to experience anything anymore, the lack of any
significant emotion. Poetry itself, that is, any attempt to give a poetical dimension
to the war, even when it contains a tragic and critical undertone, is a falsehood
that should be condemned.

The other side of the inability of the poet outside the battlefield to capture the war
experience is the inability of the soldiers at the front to fully experience what they
are undergoing. The soldiers can indeed say that they hear or see or feel certain
things, but they have no experience of this in the full sense, nor can they articulate
either that experience or its loss. This view on the relations between war and
language will become the core of Krauss Die letzten Tage der Menschheit,
discussed in the next chapter. War affects language itselfa point demonstrated
in the above soldiers letter, through the repeated use of Sinn: dem Sinnlosen
nachsinnend einen Sinn zu geben [to sensefully give sense to senselessness]. The
horror is this acknowledgement of zero-experience, demonstrated through its
effect on language: a language that cannot lift itself into particular senses, but
remains at the level of yearning to reach the zero-level of sense-making. Like the
epoch, speech too becomes empty, consisting of no more than repetitious plays:

78
Sinn, Sinnlos, Nachsinnen; Sagen, Singen, Sprechen. It is a speech that fails to
fulfill its role, a repetition that exemplifies lack of meaning.

The lark that Kraus inserts into the report from the Yser front in August 1916
should be read as part of this exchange. It is a reference to the noises of war, to
the hopes and despair of soldiers, to the politicization of poetry, music and sound.
In these lark debates the issue is not the symbolic meaning of the larks song
but the relation between poetic language and war-experience. In Lerschs poem,
the soldiers inner experience does not comply with the emotional encoding of the
war by society and culture, so that the larks singingand with it poetry as
suchturns into an act of mourning the impossibility of the former kind of
experience. The soldiers letter of critique, however, challenges this option of
mourning, presenting the emotional and experiential gap as one that cannot be
bridged by language (including poetic language). This argument seems to
correspond with Benjamins Erfahrungsarmut,126 since it has to do not with the
private experience of this or that soldier but with a collective consciousness, its
processing and transmission. As the next section will show, these concerns have
to do with Krauss citational practice, his silent language. The challenge is to
show and expose those gaps and misconceptions, to represent the missing context,
and to turn speech against itself in ways that could effectively avoid the singing of
the lark, which turns out to be not the voice of a forest bird but the noise of the
press.

126
Nein, soviel ist klar: die Erfahrung ist im Kurse gefallen und das in einer Generation, die
1914-1918 eine der ungeheuersten Erfahrungen der Weltgeschichte gemacht hat. . die Leute
kamen verstummt aus dem Felde? Nicht reicher, rmer an mitteilbarer Erfahrung. Walter
Benjamin, Erfahrung und Armut, in: GS, Vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), p.214.
[No, this much is clear: experience had fallen in value amid a generation which from 1914 to 1918
had to experience some of the most monstrous events in the history of the world. Wasnt it noticed
at the time how many people returned from the front in silence? Not richer but poorer in
communicable experience? And what poored out of the flood of war books ten years later was
anything but the experience that passes from mouth to ear. Walter Benjamin, Experience and
Poverty, in: SW, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p.731-732.

79
 III. Omission of Quotation Marks

These lark debates show the close affinity between Krauss Sprachkritik and his
use of citations. What they reveal is not only the application of a satirical method
or style, but a general, well-conceived and programmatic critical endeavor. In
April 1919, marking the twentieth anniversary of Die Fackel, Kraus read his
poem Nach Zwanzig Jahren, which expressed the falseness and hypocrisy of the
times through a collage of images and motives, expressed in prophetic tone and
blended with phrases taken from Hamlet in Schlegels translation (Act III, Scene
1). In 1921, in response to the accusation of plagiarism in this poem, Kraus
formulated his concept of quotation without quotation marks, which offers
crucial insights into Krauss citational practice in the context of his overarching
critical project:

[da] die bedrckende Staatlichkeit und die totschweigende ffentlichkeit

eine Lcke lieen, in die das Zitat einschlpfen mute, weil ja ganz sicher ist,
da von keinem Shakespear hier etwas strkeres Neues gefunden werden knnte
als dieses Shakespeare-Zitat, aber nicht als Inhalt, sondern weil es ein Zitat ist.
Der knstlerische Wert dieser Einfgung besteht in der selbstverstndlichen
Deckung mit den noch zu bezeichnenden Themen und die originale Leistung in
der Weglassung der Anfhrungszeichen. Das Leben, in das die Worte eingesetzt
sind, ist von dem Leben, dem sie entnommen sind, so verschieden, da auch
nicht die Spur einer innern Identitt mehr vorhanden ist, und die uere, also das
Plagiat, ist nichts anderes als die Leistung, die es bewirkt hat. Aber
wahrscheinlich wird es leichter mglich sein, vor einem intellektuellen Forum
mit der Begrndung, da es ja doch ein unverkennbares Zitat ist, von dem
Vorwurf der Aneignung freigesprochen zu werden als ihm plausibel zu machen,
da eben diese der originale Wert ist und da sich die Produktion hier nicht in
den Worten, sondern in ihrer Einschpfung vollzieht. (F. 572-576, 61-61)

[The pressuring statehood and the dead-silent public realm leaves a gap into
which the quote had to slip in, for it is quite clear that out of all of Shakespeares
nothing could be found that is stronger and new than this specific Shakespearean-
quote, not as content though, but because it is a quote. The artistic value of this
insertion consists in the evident congruence with matters left to be indicated, and
the original achievement in the omission of the quotation marks. The life into
which the words are inserted is so different from the life from which they are
extracted from, that not even a trace of inner identity remains, and the outer one,
that is plagiarism, is nothing else than the effect it caused. Still it will probably be
easier to be acquitted from the charge of appropriation in front of an intellectual
forum with the justification that it is indeed a distinctive quote, than to make it
plausible that the appropriation itself is the original value, and that in this case
production does not take place in the words but fulfills itself through re-creation.]

80
The passage begins with the problems and impasses of contemporary Austrian
society, and a public unable to speak out faced with the pressure of that state. This
sentence is itself an allusion to Hamlet, where the notion of the pressures of the
time marks not only a crisis of sovereignty, but also has to do with the directions
Hamlet gives to the troupe of actors regarding the kind of mimesis or re-creation
they should atone to in their acting in order to express this troublesome
experience of the epoch.127 The disjoint of time and speech in the Shakespearean
tragedy epitomizes the state of war, where a gap is opened through which the
quote can slip in and give expression to this inability of speech. Kraus
emphasizes that it is not the quote as content but as form, the very act of
repetition and the displacement of Shakespeares words, that matters here. The
fact the Shakespearean quotes appear in Krauss poem without quotation marks is
precisely meant to expose the potential these words possess, which can only be
fulfilled in the form of a quote. This operation is not based on similarity, identity
or representation of what really happened, but on the realization that this kind of
representation is not possible. Plagiarism is defined here as a dialectic process. On
the one hand, a congruence is created between poetic writing and the crisis in
realitynot in the sense of identity or signification, but through a divided,
ambiguous and uncertain voice. On the other hand, this plagiarism creates tension
and estrangement, which makes room for re-creation, the production of something
new from existing material (Einschpfung). Kraus makes it clear that, unlike the
view of literary intellectuals, the point is not a recovery or retracing of the exact,
original context from which the quote is taken, but rather the confrontation of the
two different contexts, which generates a poetic effect and realizes the artistic
potential of speech.

127
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that
you oerstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as twere, the mirror up to nature; to
show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form
and pressure. Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 (emphasis: mine), in: Shakespeare, Hamlet (Hertfordshire:
Woodsworth, 1992). The concept of modest theater and respect for minimal rather than factitious
acting characterizes Krauss own views on theatricality (as I demonstrate it in chapter 4). Kraus
quotes this passage in 1916 (in Schlegels translation), in his critique against a new trend of the
time: Soldiers Theater. See: F 426-430: 9.

81
Kraus argues, in relation to his use of quotes from Hamlet in another occasion,
that a foreign word inventory is used to express ones own thoughts [der fremde
Wortbestand als Ausdruck des eigenen Gedanken verwendet wird] (F.787-794,
166). The point being that, in a situation where language is in a state of crisis and
experience is dwindled to a meaningless degreea situation that is the basic
diagnosis of the First World War Kraus is constantly operating withthe ability
to take things by their words (Beim Wort nehmen), must rely on a form of
citationality, a repetition of the words of others: on der Fremde, the foreign body,
a material element of estrangement and otherness that creates constant
transgression. It is this relation to other contexts (be it Shakespeare, Goethe, or
anything else) as foreign that distinguishes this inter-contextual attitude from the
inter-textual manipulations of the press that triggers an attitude of identification
(Shakespeare in the trenches, Goethe in the U-Boat).

Antonio Ribeiro claims that even when the words are not changed, the quote is
used in order to incorporate the context of another discourse that is not in the
words, but lies between them [Zwischen den Worten].128 While I agree with this
analysis, I suggest formulating it somehow differently. The concept of
Einschpfung means to express oneself through the repetition of the words of
others by performing them. This is why the question of context (as well as tone,
gestures, and so on) becomes so central. Kraus makes this point when he is
referring to another work by Shakespeare that he admired, Timon of Athens:
Denn was ich zu der Wirklichkeit noch zu sagen habe, knnte ich mit keiner
eignen Schrift eindringlicher sagen als mit der Grabschrift des Timon (F.845-
846, 30) [What I still had to say about reality, I could not say so strikingly as with
the Timon epitaph]. Ribeiro suggests that the technique of Einschpfung contrasts
with the usual definition of plagiarism or repetition that characterizes the
language of the press. It is not mimicry, but schpferische Sprachmimesis: the
ability to imitate the creative essence of language. The quote brings different
contexts and discourses together, creating a new metaphoric level. Ribeiro

128
Ribeiro, ME, in: Joseph Strelka (ed.), ME (Tbingen: Francke Verlag, 1990), p.246 (my
translation).

82
explains: im Akt des Zitierens schliessen sich dann neue Bedeutungsebenen auf,
wird doch der Sinn des Zitts in diesem Prozess vom Sinn ihrer (wiederum
metaphorischen) Wiederholung berlagert129 [In the act of quotation new levels
of meaning open up, as after all through this process the sense of the quote is
superimposed by the sense of its (again metaphoric) iteration]. This echoes
Krauss own emphasis on the metaphoric character of the quote as to draw the
inner from the outer [ein Drinnen von einen Draussen geholt]. Ribeiro goes on
to analyze this logic of the quote, which he defines using such terms as
Unterbrechen, Verfremdung, Ambivalenz, as well as Benjamins term, Dialektik
im Stillstand. The quote, he writes, functions as a commentary that creates
interruption instead of interpretation, thereby provoking doubt and Phantasie130
on the part of the readers.

On the one hand, I do agree with Ribeiros account of the logic of the quote, the
Wortgestalt effect of Shakespeare and Nestroys cited words, as well as the way
he relates it to Benjamin and Brechts ideas of dialectical break and estrangement.
However, the fact that he frames all this under heading of the metaphoric seems to
me problematic for a number of reasons. First, the function of the quote, with or
without quotation marks, is to create a different effect on the reader than a
metaphor, since, by working against the regular communicative function of
language, it provides a critical relation to it. Second, when Kraus is quoting
Shakespeares in these great times, this serves not only as a metaphor for the
war, but also as a deconstruction of metaphoric speech as such (similarly to the
former example of the lark). In other words, what we have here is a metaphoric
operation that at the same time undermines the capacity of the host text to
support such a metaphor: a metaphor that works and fails to work at the same
time; an inter-contextual operation (Shakespeare-Vienna 1919) whose success is
precisely what reveals the failure of the target context. This is what I have tried to
show in the analysis of the lark debates. Third, unlike Ribeiros claim that the

129
Ibid., p.253.
130
Phantasie is a central term in Krauss view of Language, which he developed mostly during the
war years, and will be explored in the next chapter.

83
effect of the quote is achieved in part by enlisting the authority (Instanz) of the
quoted text (Shakespeares canonical status), I argue that the juxtaposition the
high of the canonical and the classical with the low of the newspaper is an
operation that bypasses such authority altogether: what is enlisted is precisely the
(allegedly paradoxical) foreign-relevance of Shakespeare, and not his
authoritative status (which is precisely what the press is appealing to). Fourth, the
metaphor-paradigm neglects the critical function of Krausian citationality.
According to George Lakoff, a metaphor is conceptual mapping131: a way to
facilitate the understanding of one idea in terms of another. The Krausian quote,
on the other hand, is not about explaining one meaning in terms of another, but
about showing the tension that meaning undergoes in its transference from one
context to another. This in turn allows him to expose ideological mechanisms that
underly such mappings.

The critical limits of metaphoric speech and conceptual mapping can be seen in
the following example by Kraus himself. In 1913, during the Balkan wars, Kraus
defined what he believed to be Die Katastrophe der Phrasen. In a short
paragraph titled Die Phrase im Krieg, he argued against metaphoric speech,
ironically remarking: Seitdem Kaufleute Klippen umschiffen und Advokaten
Ufer erreichen, knnen es die Admiralen nicht mehr tun132 (F. 374-375, 3) [Since
businessmen sail around cliffs and Lawyers reach the shore, the admirals cannot
do it anymore]. This metaphor, the conceptual mapping that turns economical
interests and greed into a brave journey of crossing the seas is exactly what the
quote and satirical remark wishes to confront. Kraus emphasizes that the
metaphor creates an inversion. Things are no longer the objects they used to be

131
George Lakoff / Mark Johnsen, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1980). The most important aspect in Lakoff and Johnsens theory in relation to Krauss
Sprachkritik is their main argument that metaphors are not in language but in the mind,
determining how people mentally relate things to one another. Edward Timms refers to this idea,
pointing to the centrality of the critique of metaphors to Krauss view of language. See: Edward
Timms, The AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.143-144. Following
these discussions, one might suggest that, had Kraus written a book on metaphors, he would have
titled it not Metaphors We Live By but Metaphors We Die For.
132
This metaphor-critique is not far from Fritz Mauthners, who considered language as
metaphoric and therefore suitable for poetry, yet unfit for science or for representing reality.

84
but turn into their metaphoric representations: Wenn statt der Dinge Bilder von
anderen Dingen bezogen werden, steht es schlimm genug. Aber wenn diese Bilder
auch dort noch gebrauchsfhig sind, wo die Dinge schon bei den Dingen sind,
wenn Ufer eine Umschreibung fr Ufer und Klippe eine Phrase fr Klippe ist
dann ist ein Krieg unvermeidlich!133 (Ebd) [When instead of objects images of
other objects are related, this is severe enough. But when those images are also
serviceable where the objects are already alongside of the objects, when shore is a
euphemism for shore and cliff a phrase for cliffthen war is inevitable!].
Metaphoric speech is, on the one hand, an encoded speech that changes and
determines the perception of acts and events, very much in line with Lakoffs
description. On the other hand, this speech does not express these objects but
replaces them: it creates an empty and distorted speech that has far-reaching
mental implications (some of which were discussed by Fritz Mauthner and the
late Wittgenstein).

The following wartime Shakespeare-quote is an illuminating example of this state

of affairs. In the June 1916 issue of Die Fackel (F. 426-430, 88-89) appeared a
story titled Desertion in den Tod [Desertion to Death]. The piece begins with a
quote from King Lear (IV, 6) that functions as a motto: Ward auch die Wohltat
noch versagt dem Elend,/ Durch Tod zu endigen? Trost wars doch immer,/ Wenn
Jammer konnt sich der tyrannschen Wut/ Entziehen, und ihre stoltze Willkr
tuschen. [In Shakespeares English: Is wretchedness deprived that
annotate benefit, to end itself by death? Twas yet some comfort, when misery
could beguile the tyrants rage, and frustrate his proud will]. These are
Gloucesters lines after his failed suicide attempt. Following this quote, Kraus
reprinted a report from the military court in Prague, where a young woman named
Erna Putzman stood trial for the murder of her husband. The horrors of war
traumatized the woman, who decided she would rather die with her man than

133
Lakoff develops an interesting argument on the relation between metaphors and war in relation
to the gulf war. See: Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf ,
in: Vietnam Generation Journal & Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Tucson, Arizona: November 1991).

85
having him undergo the atrocities of war. When he came back home on leave she
used the opportunity, took his gun and shot him dead. But as she tried to put an
end to her own life, a worker who heard the shot came in and took the gun away
from her in spite of her vigorous plea. From that moment on she tried killing
herself in all kind of ways: jumping from the window, drowning in the river,
cutting and suffocating herself all in vain. Her trial proceedings could only
reflect the absurdity of this affair and the contrast between the legal proceedings
and the tormented, traumatized woman. Kraus states in a concluding remark that
when people would like to talk to their children and grandchildren about heroism
in war, this is the story they should tell. The quote from King Lear both reframes
the scene and decodes it. This is not another military crime-scene or an act of
madness by a deranged woman who couldnt take it anymore, but an expression
of the cruelty and senselessness of the times when even the attempted desertion to
death is made impossible. This link between the report and Shakespeares tragedy
creates an alternative to the discourse of heroism, glory, blood and death,
reinforcing instead the readers ability to acknowledge the distressful and
hopeless situation.134 The quote creates a shift, a transition from the court to the
theater, from the reality of war to literature, from seventeenth-century English
theater to the present times of the war in Prague. The quote juxtaposes these two
different contexts, that of the scene from King Lear and that of the military court,
which seems to reflect not simply madness or loss of hope, but also a crisis of
sovereignty and the collapse of the social institutions. This juxtaposition allows,
as Kraus concludes, to talk, to articulate that which cannot be experienced, to live
through the reality of the times by turning this emptied experience into a story that
can be told (etwas zu erzhlen), to create a different form of speech through the
method of Einschpfung.

134
Shakespeares quote refers to the inability to frustrate the tyrants proud will. In the Schlegel
translation the term was rendered Willkr, arbitrariness, which in this context emphasizes the
senselessness of the situation in question.

86
 IV. Kraus hat alles vorausgewusst (Kraus knew everything in advance)

In the discussion so far, I have concentrated mostly on the quote-practice in

wartime. But this practice was in fact developed earlier, with one of its most
significant moments being the early years of Die Fackel, and the period Kraus
wrote his important Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt (1902-1908). There are
considerable differences in Krauss writing-style between that time and the war
period. The choice of themes, the eloquence and range of satirical strategies, and
the voice of a public prosecutor (Anklger) verses the more apocalyptic tone
of the war years. Nevertheless, the early engagement with law and morality and
the question of Krauss own authority make this an important case-study in
understanding his citational practice, about which Adorno wrote: Das strkeste
Mittel jedoch, mit dem Kraus die Richter richtet, ist das strafende Zitat135 [The
strongest means so far, with which Kraus is judging the judges, is his punishing
quotation]. In that period, citation serves as a punishing tool directed against the
legal system and the authority of juridical institution in general.

Consider the following case. In March 1904 Kraus published an article titled Ein
Unhold (A Villain). It deals with a scandalous verdict of life-imprisonment with
hard labor for the 23 year-old Anton Kraft who, in a drunken state, attacked a
woman in Viennas Ringstrasse and tried to snatch from her the petty sum of 1
Crown and 20 Hellers. The article is a direct attack on the judge Johann Feigl as
well as a call for the citizens of Vienna to act against what Kraus perceived as a
grave injustice.136 The polemic style and somewhat apocalyptical tone of the
article is framed by a quote from Hamlet Act III scene 4 that serves as a motto
(cited here in the Schlegel translation used by Kraus):

Des Himmels Antlitz glht, ja diese Feste,

Dies Weltgebu, mit trauerndem Gesicht,

Als nahte sich der jngste Tag, gedenkt

135
Theodor Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt Zum elften Band der Werke von Karl Kraus,
in: Noten zur Literatur III (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p.73.
136
The sentence was changed thanks to the efforts of Kraus and others. Kraft, however, still spent
twenty years in prison.

87
 Trbsinnig dieser Tat

Heavens face doth glow

Oer this solidity and compound mass

With tristful visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

These are Hamlets lines to Gertrude after the killing of Polonius, when he
confronts her for being an accomplice to the murder of the king. The crisis of
sovereignty is connected to the judgment day (emphasized by Schlegels choice
of jngste Tag), where evil acts would provoke the resentment and rage of
Heaven. The kings assassination and the marriage of the queen to his murderer
are actions that immensely deviate from the boundaries of human morality and
thus destabilize the social order itself. Hamlets condemning words point not to
the need to bring the criminals to justice or a call for moral correction, but rather
express the obsoleteness of the law itself under such circumstances: doomsday is
the sign of total social collapse and of legal order that has lost its validity.

This tension between the crisis of law and morality and the theological reference
is repeated in the text with another Shakespeare quote, this time from Measure for
Measure137 which carries a more ironic tone, and is directed at the judge Feigl: in
kurze Majestt gekleidete Mensch Als wie zornge Affen spielt solchen
Wahnsinn gaukelnd vor dem Himmel, da Engel weinen138 (F. 157, 3-4). [Man,
drest in a little brief authority, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before
high heaven make the angels weep (Measure for Measure, act II, Scene 2)]. Like
the Shakespearean figure, the judge too embodies the discrepancy between his
great responsibility and petty personality. The point here is the relation between
the corruption of law and the abuse of authority that makes even the angels
weep. Krauss re-contextualization of Shakespeare into the juridical landscape of

137
Measure for Measure plays an important role here, since it deals directly with themes of legal
authority, sexuality, and also takes place in Vienna. Its first Viennese performance was in 1902,
the time of Krauss Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt.
138
These lines are part of the motto for the entire book.

88
his fin-de-sicle Vienna thus also serves to shed new light on the central themes
of Measure for Measure, namely the question of authority and the awareness of
its arbitrary and corrupting nature.139 Both Shakespearean plays call for the
restriction of power and moral reflectionthe indispensable role of thought and
critique which theater itself should provide.

Kraus does not simply charge judge Feigl ad hominem but as one personification
of the crisis of authority and the corruption of the institute of law. Nor is he
analyzing the case as a socialist, as the Arbeiter Zeitung advocated.140 Instead, as
Timms argues, he is interested in literary categories, i.e. how the judge uses the
law, how he speaks, how he treats the defendant, etc. The severity of the sentence,
as Kraus notes, is a result of the defendants behavior in court, of the fact that he
dared to speak out to the judge, who then convicted him of contempt. The
tension between law and authority is thus linked to the right to speak, and the
issue becomes not so much the crime itself but the challenging of authority and
order. Likewise, Kraus emphasizes the long and overly pompous title of the
judge, Der mit dem Titel und Charakter eines Hofrates bekleidete Vizeprsident
des Landesgerichtes in Strafsachen Dr. Johann Feigl (Sittlichkeit und
Kriminalitt, 52), as an expression of the tension between title and character: of
the emptiness or vacuum of social institutions that Kraus, together with Adolf
Loos, defined as an ornamentization of public life. The faade of order replaces
the essence of justice, and the purpose of the legal system becomes the
preservation of this faade for its own sake. Under these circumstances, a critique
of juridical discourse in juridical terms (pointing, for example, to technical or
legal problems in the conduct of the trial) would be insufficient and ineffective.
The enlisting of Shakespeare serves not as an internal discourse analysis, but as a
mirror that reflects the very framing of this discourse itself as faade.

139
See for example: Authority is arbitrary it apes a state unfit for humanity, encourages hidden
vice in its own representative by endowing him with arbitrary power, and starves to overthrow
truth and justice. M.C. Bradbrook, Truth and Justice in Measure for Measure, in: The Review of
English Studies, Vol. 17, No.68 (Oxford: 1941), p.385-399.
140
The article appeared in Arbeiter Zeitung a week earlier the 11th and the 12th March. In:
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.48.

89
The case is framed through the relations between authority and speech, power and
performance. The judge is described by Kraus as a Paragraphenrichter (articles-
judge). It is he who is the true threat to public freedom, since he literarily
enforced the folly of that century-old law (dem Wahnwitz jenes hundertjhrigen
Gesetzes buchstblich gerecht ward [emphasis mine]).141 Kraus is condemning
the Beamtenhochmut (bureaucratic arrogance) and the power of the
Druckschriften (printed legal papers) in the hands of the judge who uses them as
he pleases.142 The literal way the judge approaches the law is already its abuse.
Instead of considering the context of the offence, the judge is using the folly of
the law for the purpose of manifesting his authority, which, through this process,
appears simply as brute force disguised in a judges suit.143 Krauss citational
practice clashes here head to head with its obverse, juridical citationality: the
article-referencing, literal understanding of the law, with its ornamentization of
speech and authoritative, strict formalism, which turns quotation into a
mechanical performance of authority. On the other hand, the Shakespearean
quotation, which creates openness and moral consideration, is taking into account
the specific social context.

The judges discursive practice is captured by Michel Foucaults account of the

relations between crime and law. In Discipline and Punishment he argues that
crime becomes a separate and distinct category through the new disciplines of the
nineteenth century, such as criminology, sociology, psychiatry and legal theory.
These new discursive strategies create not only possibilities for the exclusion and

141
By Wahnwitz Kraus is referring to the 1803 law, paragraphs 190 and 195, which was used in
the trial, and which declares that an act of robbery that has caused physical injury, or in this case
Nervenschock to the victim (which in this case was doubtful), is punishable by life-sentence. See:
Reinhard Merkel, Strafrecht und Satire im Werk von Karl Kraus (Frankfurt an Main: Suhrkamp,
1998), p.267-272.
142
The mechanization of data and media technology and its influence on law and legal practices
lies at the heart of Cornelia Vismanns work. These aspects are tightly linked to forms of
bureaucratic authority, as well as new relations between law, subject and state. Vismann shows
how the dark aspect of the bureaucratic logic and its dehumanizing implications have been
explored in Kafka, Melville, and others, as well as in legal practices themselves. See: Cornelia
Vismann, Akten (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000).
143
This issue of clothes (Gekleidet) associates with another important German court play, Heinrich
von Kleists Der zerbrochne Krug [The Broken Jug], which begins with a naked judge putting on
his formal clothes.

90
control of designated populationminorities, the lower class, prostitutes (a
prominent phenomena in 1900 Vienna)but also detach the question of crime
from its socio-economic and political context. This is resonated in the words of
judge Feigl to the defendant Kraft: You are uncorrectable [Unverbesserlich]!
(S&K, 45). The judge is framing the entire case according to a juridical discourse
that views crime as deficiency of character, thereby justifying the banishment of
the criminal from society.

I therefore disagree with Timms statement that the intermediate dimension of

socio-economic analysis remains unexplored.144 Such exploration was
thoroughly taken by the Arbeiter Zeitung as well as by Edmond Benedikt in the
Juristischen Bltter of that period, which Kraus cites in length. It is nevertheless
true that Kraus does not focus on social class-struggles but rather on the
discursive differences whereby law turning from a process of justice into an
instrument of authority and exclusion. This process, as I tried to show, is based on
speech and quotation, on the textual and discursive operation of law, which
dehumanizes both the judge and the defendant. Paragraphing the law corresponds
to the ornamentation of social life and the break with tradition and culture. The
Shakespeare quote functions as a warning against this process, as well as an
alternative model of citationality and hence of judgment. My suggestion is
therefore that the purpose of the Shakespeare motto, as well as the entries from
Measure for Measure, is not to portray the judge as a Shakespearean villain (like
Antonio the corrupt judge for example), but rather to present the conflicting
discursive strategies of law and morality145 as articulated in Krauss famous
sentence:

Wir knnen uns nicht daran gewhnen, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt, die wir so
lange fr siamesische Begriffszwillinge hielten, von einander getrennt zu sehen.

144
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986) p.49.
145
This issue is paradigmatic in another important court case covered by Kraus in a piece, which
he titled The Witch-Hunt of Leoben. Here the historic-literary context Kraus refers to is not
Shakespeare but the medieval witch hunt trials (Hexenprozess). This case illustrates that the
discourse of criminality and its practice of exclusion goes beyond the mechanism of court and
legal proceedings, turning into a collective outburst of chauvinism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

91
 [We cannot get used to viewing morals and criminality, which we have for so
long considered as Siamese twins, as separated from one another.] (S&K, 67)

This juxtaposition of the (morality of the) quote against the (authoritative) logic of
bureaucracy is articulated in the concept of knowing in advance
(vorausgewusst). Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt begins with the statement
Shakespeare hat alles vorausgewusst (Shakespeare knew everything in
advance). The expression refers to the quotes that serve as motto for the book: a
series of seven quotes from King Lear and Measure for Measure. It suggests that
Shakespeares words are not referring to the past, but they prove actual and
relevant to 1900 Vienna. Thanks to the divinatorische Kraft des Genies [the
divine power of the genius] The Shakespearean text, or better, his thoughts
(Shakespearegedanken), provide a key for understanding these discursive
transitions, becoming aware of the crisis of transmission, and a way of dealing
with the challenges of modernity. As Kraus emphasizes, dort ist Kultur, wo die
Gesetze des Staates paragraphierte Shakespearegedanken sind (S&K,12)
[Culture is where the laws of the state are paragraphed Shakespearean thoughts].
For Kraus, the law should be structured in such a way as to bring forth this
Shakespearean quotability.

This knowing in advance is not exclusive to Shakespeare: Kraus also writes that
Goethe der alles vorausgewusst hat (F. 706-711, 119), Schiller hat alles
vorausgewusst (F.735-742, 55); Offenbach and Horace similarly knew it all in
advance, while Nestroys work is Unvergnglich [non-ephemeral]. This
actuality has to do with the act of quoting itself (Urform, Wortgestalt), the way
words operate as templates that can be used again and still remain fresh and
productive. Unlike phrases, words do not become familiar but hold an element of
foreignness and alienation. On the one hand, like the example of the Turm as
Wortgestalt, the word is constituted in a moment of crisis: it brings with it the
memory and trauma of the scene from which it originated. On the other hand,
they are not allusions to the past but to the present. Like their authors, the writings
Kraus cites stand on the threshold of their epoch, as well as ours: a luminal
temporality that bestows upon their words a transformative potential.

92
 V. Creation of the New Order by Quote - Conclusion

It is not surprising then, that in 1934, after the Nazi partys rise to power in
Germany, Kraus referred to Goethes Faust, writing that: Aber das deutscheste
Ereignis dem der Superlativ ziemt ist wunderbarer Weise Zug um Zug im
deutschesten Gedicht prformiert. (F. 890-905,81) [The most German event
that suites the superlative is concurrently performed wonderfully in the most
German poem]. Kraus is not attributing a demonic prophecy or a kind of literary
mysticism to Goethes text with respect to the rise of Nazism, but a profound
sensitivity to the way political power and the modern state mechanism rely on
specific (and highly problematic) forms of quotation and repetition, which are
connected to the intertextual and discursive practices, in turn a product of new
mediatic possibilities, mentioned earlier.

Under such circumstances, the critic can opt for several strategies of critique and
resistance. One option is to undermine or delegitimize this usage of language: to
expose the hidden level of utterances, to frame them as quotations, and to show
how words are misused and phrases are self-contradictory or meaningless. The
second option is to radicalize and mimic this practice, bringing it to absurdity
(like in the example of the admirals and businessmen). The thirdand possibly
the peak of Krauss critical practiceis to create an alternative system that uses
quotes, references, repetitions and allusions, yet is meant to do the opposite:
instead of interpellation, encoding, narrating and so on, to create uncertainty,
ambivalence and disintegration. This will be developed further in the next
chapter, where I analyze Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit and other wartime
essays in the Fackel. In all three options, the quote functions as a foreign body in
the text. It is a displaced speech, a delegate of a different time and context that
provides an alternative concept of history.

Antonio Ribeiro suggests that Krauss quotations and translations of Shakespeare

are connected to his concept of epigone, as he expressed in the well-known and
often cited poem Bekenntniss (Confession) which I have already mentioned in
the first chapter. Ribeiro writes: Der Epigone wird fr ihn derjenige, der einen

93
Auftrag vollendet, den andere nicht ausfhren konnten, und somit gewaltsam eine
neue Ordnung grndet146 [The epigone is for him the one who completes the
mission that others could not accomplish, and thus violently constitutes a new
order]. The concept of epigone, claims Ribeiro, means that the natural and
peaceful relation to tradition is no longer possible. What can be inherited is only a
tradition of struggle, a struggle that never ends but only repeats itself over and
over again. This struggle aims to perform a radical transition, and the bringing
about of a new order. The epigones destructive struggle signifies the relation to
tradition that is repeated not in a conservative or restorative way, but fulfills and
actualizes itself through this change and transformation. This is the same tension
that lies in the logic of the quote between old words and a new context; the way
words gain their power and meaning through this change and transition. In this
sense, Krauss role as the last epigone who resides in the house of language is
not to escape into spiritual life, but to use this literary sphere in order to bring out
the radical and revolutionary potential of the question of tradition, transmission
and performance. When Kraus quotes, he puts on a mask, suggests Ribeiro: the
mask of Timon of Athens, who is the outcast, but also the one who aims not to fit
in and play the game, but to create his own private order, in the Shakespearean
sense.

146
Ribeiro, ME, in: Joseph Strelka (Hrsg.), ME (Tbingen: Francke Verlag, 1990), p.247.

94
 Chapter 4
The Techno-Romantic Adventure and
Theater Degree Zero

I. The Vacuum of the Age

Die Unvorstellbarkeit der tglich erlebten Dinge, die Unvereinbarkeit

der Macht und der Mittel, sie durchzusetzen, das ist der Zustand, und
das technoromantische Abenteuer, in das wir uns eingelassen haben,
wird, wie immer es ausgeht, dem Zustand ein Ende machen. (F 474-
483: 41)

[The unimaginabilty of the experience of daily things, the

incompatibility of the power and the means used to establish it, this is
the situation, and the techno-romantic adventure, in which we engaged
ourselves, and which would bring the situation to an end, no matter
how it will turn out.]

These are the closing lines of Krauss short essay The Techno-Romantic
Adventure (Das Technoromantische Abenteuer), written as a kind of summary
of the war experience, and published in Die Fackel in May 1918. In the essay,
Kraus stresses the incompatibility between the old order and the new social
reality, that of applied science and technology, new media and global markets.
This unimaginable situation leads to an ornamentization of life through the
extensive use of institutions and symbols that have lost their meaning and
function in a period of radical changes.147 Political power (Macht) is no longer
attached to specific institutions or mechanisms, but is redistributed and

147
This view was expressed by other intellectuals of the time like Walter Rathenau, in a letter
from December 1914: Eine Kaste, Tchtig, selbstbewusst, aber der Initative unfhig, regiert uns.
Das ging so lange sie sich der Rckstndigkeit nicht schmte. Nun wollte sie Modern sein,
zerrttete das Alte, gewann das Neue nicht.... [A caste governs us, which is efficient, confident,
yet lacks initiative. That worked as long as they were not ashamed of their backwardness. Once
they wanted to be modern, they shattered the old but didnt achieve the new.] Brief an Fanny
Knstler, in: Margarete von Eynem (ed.), Walther Rathenau in Brief und Bild (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1967), p.133.

95
dispersed.148 It puts on new forms and yet remains obscure.149 The present is
therefore not a neo-romantic age but a techno-romantic adventure, and the
enthusiastic, patriotic speech that characterizes the pre-war era is not some
expression of authentic feelings but a technological mass-product. Widespread
nationalistic and war-related notions like Vaterland or deutscher Geist underwent
commercialization and reification that turned them into empty phrases.150

This process has significant epistemological implications. Because of the break or

unbridgeable gap between the old order and emerging technical capacities, reality
can no longer be grasped or articulated through the existing discourse. Words lose
their meaning, used to a point of exhaustion, and distort their users perceptions.
The repertoire of phrases used in newspaper headlines, political speeches, and
even literature becomes misused and detached from its origins. In other words, the
social and political crisis implies a crisis of language and representation as
well.151 But although devoid of meaning, these empty words nonetheless gain new
performative power, as they are able to mobilize the modern public in an
unprecedented way. They turn not simply into commodities, but into objects of
desire.152

In other words, the crisis of language Kraus is describing goes beyond the
emptying of meaning, seeing as this emptiness nonetheless shapes mass desire.
But if this is the case, what kind of critique could address this structure of desire,
148
Gottfried Benn remarked, that the powers of state and society were no longer conceivable.
On the relations between the new forms of political power and the crisis of experience and
representation in the context of the First World War see: Michael Markopoulos, Haltlose
Souvernitt. Benjamin, Schmitt und Die Klassische Moderne in Deutschland, in: Manfred Gangl /
Gerard Raulet (eds.), Intellektuellendiskurse in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1994), p.197-211.
149
Es gibt Technik und Brokraten. Es gibt nur den Knopf, auf den das Plutokratische drckt.
Aber da ist kein Gesicht (F 462-71: 171) [There are technology and bureaucrats. There is only the
button on which the plutocracy presses. But there is no responsible face]. See: Edward Timms, AS
(New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.362 (translation modified).
150
This was one of the main themes in Fritz Mauthners Sprachkritik, namely what he called
leere Begriffe. See, for example, Begriff und Gesetz, in: Beitrge zu einer Kritik der Sprache,
Bd. III (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923), p.472.
151
This theme is further examined by I. F. Clarke: It was the result of the now familiar time lag
between the rapid development of technology and the belated abandonment of ideas, mental habits
and social attitudes that the new machines and the industries had rendered out of date, in: Voices
Prophesizing War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), p.133.
152
For example, Kraus refers to the war poets as Geschft der Leidenschaft (F 418-422: 43).

96
this erotic speech? In a thought-provoking article, Irving Wohlfarth suggests a
concept of Technological Eros,153 which he finds in Walter Benjamins essay
Zum Planetarium (1928), and which he connects Krauss Technoromantische
essay. The two texts connect the atrocities of war to an epistemic crisis and to an
historical discontinuity marked by the rise of the new technological forces. Unlike
the Marxist assumption that the dialectical tension between the political
configuration and the relations of production would lead to a revolution and the
liberation of the proletariat, the World War made it possible for the old order to be
contained within these new forces.154 In his essay, Kraus gives an example for
such continuity without substance: he describes the military discipline-exercises
in a Krakow hospital where soldiers, wounded from poison gas, had to march and
salute. In an ironic tone he notes: Wunder ber Wunder, Es sind die alten
Ornamente zum neuen Wesen des Todes [a miracle on top of miracle, it is the
old ornaments for the new form of death]. Even at times of technologically-
produced death (trench warfare, poison gas, mechanized killing), old military
rituals, gestures and decorations are still taking place. Kraus suggest there is an
interdependency between the good-old decorum and the bad and the new, to
borrow Brechts formulation: Nur da die Macht den neuen Tod zu ihrer
Erhaltung braucht [the fact remains that the old order needs the new death for its
self-preservation]. The old (military rituals and discipline) and the new
(mechanized death) are not posited one against the other, but rather create a fatal
symbioses (which is what the Marxist approach, with its idea of progress,
misses).155 Much like Benjamin uses the term phantasmagoria to describe the

153
Irving Wohlfarth, Walter Benjamin and the idea of Technological Eros, in: Benjamin Studies 1
(Amsterdam / New York, 2002) p.69-109.
154
Kraus criticized both the socialists and the social democrats. Since they do not provide a
different concept of power, their revolution would simply mean turning the poor into the new
tyrants. See: Unser Weltgeschichtes Erlebnis (F 457-461: 96-97). Against the ideas of social
revolution he stated: Die bessere Revolution wre unser Teil, wenn wir noch so viel
Geistesgegenwart htten, zu bemerken, was in unsern Gehirnen vorgeht. (F 457-461: 100) [The
better revolution could have been our share, if we had enough presence of mind to notice what is
going on in our brains].
155
They are, in fact, dependent on each other: Gbs die Ornamente nicht mehr, deren
Beibehaltung die wahre Kriegslist der Macht gegen die Menschheit bedeutet, so wre alles klar,
nchtern, ungefhrlich. Solange die alte Fassade hlt, ist die neue Macht geboren. (F 457-61: 18)
[If the ornaments, whose perpetuation means the genuine stratagem of power against humanity,

97
surreal state in which people perceive the modern, urban conditiona form of
experience he also compares to that of illnessKraus uses the term miracle to
describe the ecstatic, emotional effect military rituals still carry for both officers
and soldiers; a bliss of the epileptic, as he puts it.

In Benjamins terms, the war is an event that can be lived through but not
experienced. This insight is based on his distinction between Erlebnis and
Erfahrung,156 which can also be found in Krauss text. According to Wohlfarth,
through this distinction, both authors provide a revised materialistic account of the
war as an epistemic break within modernity. They emphasize the
incommensurable gap between the new, industrialized experience and Nature,
which results in shock and paralysis. This shock is yet another aspect of the
vacuum; it cannot be translated or expressed within the discourse and provides
people with no clear orientation. Nevertheless, it provokes a highly emotional
response. Thus, Benjamin and Kraus, writes Wohlfarth, view the war as the
terrible perversion of an irrepressible [emotional] need. This view, which
identifies an eruption of emotions and erotic desires through the war, was also
shared by some of the prominent Lebensphilosophie thinkers. It can be
juxtaposed, on the one hand, to the view of those who supported and promoted the
war as an outlet from the self-same tensions (e.g. Ernst Jnger); and, on the other
hand, those who saw the war as the final struggle between the corruptive powers
of Geist against the freedom of the Seele and the Cosmogenic Eros, and who
subsequently opposed the war (like Ludwig Klages, whose work on war and eros
Benjamin admired).

wouldnt exist anymore, everything would be clear, sober, innocuous. As long as the old faade
holds, new power is born.]
156
Benjamins distinction between Erlebnis and Erfahrung appears in his essay, Some motifs in
Baudelaire. As Martin Jay suggests: The immediate, passive, fragmented, isolated, and
unintegrated inner experience of Erlebnis was, Benjamin argued, very different from the
cumulative, totalizing accretion of transmittable wisdom, of epic truth, which was Erfahrung.
Evidently, in Benjamins dual scheme, Erfahrung was something no longer available to the
individual in the modern world [] The continuum of Erfahrung had already been broken by the
inassimilable shocks of urban life, and the replacement of artisanal production by the dull, non-
cumulative repetition of the assembly line. Meaningful narrative had been supplanted by
haphazard information and raw sensation in the mass media. Martin Jay, Cultural Semantics
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998) p.48-49. I will return to this distinction in the
discussion of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit.

98
The tension, intensified by the war, was depended not simply with respect to the
failure of speech but also its perversion, reproduction and circulation. The
mechanization of speech prevented a personal and thoughtful experience of
language, and produced instead a collective effect, a new form of enthusiasm and
desire that was reflected in the spirit of 1914. Anachronistic phrases or
linguistic ornaments functioned not as false representations, but rather as
channels of emotional excess and erotic desire. At the same time, in spite of these
turbulences, the social structure did not change. Instead of a new politics, the
public was brainwashed by an empty speech that could not provide a real solution
to the social tensions, but rather diverted potential revolutionary energies. Hence,
as Wohlfarth concludes, in the absence of any other outlet, a pent up cosmogenic
Eros is channeled into Thanatos.157

Although in former years Kraus was much invested in a critique of the discourse
of eros, during the war his campaign shifted to the concept of nature.158 While
Benjamin suggested a renewed alliance of the proletariat with technology, based
on new form of eroticism, Kraus was advocating an alternative discourse that
would acknowledge technology as an impasse. In spite of these differences, both
Benjamin and Kraus identify the war as a hysterical response to this epistemic
crisis, which has to do not only with the new and formerly unimaginable
technologies and social changes, but also with the inability to come to terms with
the loss of the past, and to redefine the human condition, both individual and
collective, under these new circumstances. The prevailing distorted utopia, based
as it is on the ornamentation and perversion of speech, has far reaching

157
Irving Wohlfarth, Walter Benjamin and the idea of Technological Eros, in: Benjamin Studies 1
(Amsterdam / New York: 2002), p.82. This is related, as Wohlfarth notes, to Freuds Das
Unbehagen in der Kultur and Warum Krieg?
158
These terms are not completely separated. The two relate both to the epistemic break as well as
marking a social and poetical ideal. See: Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Nietzsche and the rhetoric
of nature in the aftermath of the First World War, in: Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche and the Austrian
Culture (Wien: Facultas Verlag, 2004), p.244-254. See also: Edward Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New
Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.12. Nature refers to the pre-modern state where
literature expressed the society and the modern phase in which literature is transgressive and
works against the time. See: Dietrich Simon, Karl Kraus, Stimme Gegen die Zeit, in: Kurt
Krolop / Dietrich Simon, Kommentare zu Karl Kraus (Berlin: Volk und Welt Verlag, 1971), p.3-
89 (on Kraus's concept of Nature see: p.64-65).

99
implications on peoples psyche as well as their body, and thus calls for drastic
measures: in Benjamins case, a shock therapy that would re-unify experience
through a new technological Eros, or according to Krauss suggestion, an
alternative erotic experience of language and history.

The following example from January 1917 shows the relations between the
perversion or failure of speech, the new power of technology, and its relation to
death. Kraus notes that the German use of chloral gas in combat was defined as
the yielding of a sword (Zum Schwerte Greifen). The sword, a symbol of the old
order that lost its relevance, is now used as the linguistic faade for the new
killing technology. This ornamented speech is not local but paradigmatic, and it
supplies Kraus with a key for understanding the power mechanism of the war
itself:

Kann man sich denken, dass solcher Entschlu je zur Redensart werden
knnte? Es sollte Aufschlu ber die Technik geben, dass sie zwar keine
neue Phrase bilden kann, aber den Geist der Menschheit in dem Zustand
belsst, die alte nicht entbehren zu knnen. In diesem Zweierlei eines
vernderten Lebens und einer mitgeschleppten Lebensform lebt und
wchst das Weltbel. (F 445-453: 15)
[Can one think that such a decision (Entschlu) would become a mere
idiom? It ought to expose (Aufschlu159) the way in which technology,
while unable to coin new phrases, leaves the spirit of mankind in a state of
being unable to do without the old ones. In this duality of a changed life,
dragging on in unchanged forms, the world's evil grows and prospers.]
There are a number of issues here. First, the figure of speech (yielding a sword) is
used in order to veil the military decision to use poison gas, while at the same
time preventing speech from providing a proper account of reality or allowing any
moral evaluation of it.160 Second, it shows the way the human spirit is caught up
in a situation where language is no longer a natural form of expression but a
technical or mechanical speechmarked by the transition from Entschlu to

159
This is a Krausian word-play between Entschlieen (to decide) and Aufschlieen (to explore or
dissociate; also the chemical term for decomposition, and in this context relates to poison gas).
160
Gas as the new face of warfare is for Kraus the paradigmatic case of the new situation: Im
Wortspiel von einer chlorreichen Offensive ist schlielich dieser ganze abominable Kontrast
endgltig abgebunden (my emphasis). See: Das Technoromantische Abenteuer, Ibid., p.43. [In
the word-play of chlorious offensive the abominable contrast is finally manifested.]

100
Aufschlu. The entire process of war-related decision-making is in a state of
decomposition. It is now based on the new order of technology, and on the logic
of consumption and mass productiona culture industry, to use Adornos
terminology.161 Third, it is a dialectical process, in which a speech that lost its
relevance (the sword-phrase) has not become entirely obsolete, but rather turned
into a powerful political means thatto a recall a point already mentioned
functions in spite of its meaninglessness. Society is both in a state of paralysis
and, at the same time, unable to articulate or express this state: to process its own
experience and to deal with its memories and history.162

Later that year, in response to the revolutionary ideas of the Social Democrats,
and to the case of Friedrich Adler, the Social Democrat leader who assassinated
Austrian prime minister Count Karl von Strgkh in 1916, Kraus writes:

Die Problemstellung: DemokratieAutokratie trifft ins Leere, in

das Vacuum der Zeit, das hier nur fhlbarer wird als im andern Europa.
Autokratie als ein technischer Begriff: das knnte es sein. Ein Ding, das nicht
selbst, sondern von selbst gebietet. Und alle treibt das hohle Wort des Herrschers
Zufall, der die Quantitt regiert. (F 462-471: 171, my emphasis)

Posing the problem: Democracy versus Autocracy is an empty formulation in the

vacuum of the age, which is merely more marked here [in Austria] than
elsewhere in Europe. Autocracy as a technological concept: that would be more
plausible. A thing, which does not command by itself but from itself. And
everyone is actuated to contingency by the hollow word of the ruler, who governs
the quantity.

161
Culture industry suggests a double nature of ideology that is based not on ideas but on
forms of mass-culture reproduction. It is this aspect that, according to Irina Djassemy, is shared by
Adorno and Marcuses projects on the one hand and Krauss press critique on the other. See: Irina
Djassemy, Productivgehalt kritischer Zerstrerarbeit (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neuman,
2002), p.278-285.
162
This emptiness, paralysis, and lack of sense of experience, which lead to a break in history, is
also echoed by Adornos account of war: Everywhere, with each explosion, it has breached the
barrier against stimuli beneath which experience, the lag between healing oblivion and healing
recollection, forms. Life has changed into a timeless succession of shocks, interspaced with empty,
paralyzed intervals. But nothing, perhaps, is more ominous for the future than the fact that, quite
literally, these things will soon be past thinking on, for each trauma of the returning combatants,
each shock not inwardly absorbed, is a ferment of future destruction. Karl Kraus was right to call
his play The Last Days of MankindWhat is being enacted now ought to bear the title: After
Doomsday. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (London / New York: Verso, 2005), p.54.

101
Against Adlers claim that political absolutism is the worst enemy, Kraus argued
that this stand ignores the real dangerthe rising power of technology. Politics is
saturated with an empty discourse that cannot provide an alternative to these new
forms of power, and hence the distinction between democracy and autocracy is no
longer valid nor relevant. As Kraus argues in the above citation, the thing
commands not because of what it means or what it stands for but from itself,
through its very act of speech. The political speech can no longer be perceived as
part of the democratic discourse and public debate but as a transgression. The
mistake of Adler and the Social Democrats is that they do not pay attention to this
discursive vacuum created by the epistemic crisesa vacuum that neither
socialism nor democracy appear to adequately grasp. They fail to grasp the nature
of this new power mechanism, continuing their efforts for political reform as if
the words they themselves are using remain unaltered.

Based on this critique, I would like to argue that the attempts of certain scholars to
regard Kraus as either a socialist or a republican also end up in an empty
formulation. Kraus did not position himself within the coordinates of the given
political discourse, but attempted to create a language that could subdue the
already technologically-constituted and reified political speech. His project aimed
both to criticize and to offer an alternative for the vacuum of these great times.
Against the prevailing language-turned-ornament, and war as a container of the
old order within the new, Kraus confronted this techno-romantic language not
only through his media critique butas I shall argue in more detail in the third
part of the chapterby creating an alternative language of silence.

Although Krauss silence was discussed by a number of scholars, it was usually

understood as an act of reluctance, an avoidance of speech, an expression of
hopelessness or lack of words in the face of the horrors of the war, and the
brutality of political power.163 In short, Krausian silence is often interpreted as
marking the limit of the satirists ability to condemn and criticize. Against such a

163
As noted, this was already the case in Krauss lifetime. Later critics adopted this approach as
well. See: Kari Grimstad, MP (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1982), p.227.

102
reading, I wish to suggest that silence was an integral part of Krauss language
critique, and an active satirical strategy rather than a limit-option. As Kraus was
well aware, the crisis of language that I have portrayed here cannot be resolved by
speech. Against the vacuum of the age, there is an urgent need not for purity of
language or for a conservative-oriented worship of the word or the sentence, but
rather for radical linguistic skepticism. Like other practices, such as citationality
and plagiarism, discussed in the previous chapter, my aim here is to show how,
bringing together strategies of silence, montage, and nonsense, Kraus constituted
a language which defies and resists ideological constrains (silence being one,
active element of this assemblage). This language is based not on the creation of
new content or meaning, but on the presentation of vacuum and emptiness, which
reflects, albeit through a distorted mirror, the vacuum and emptiness of the
prevailing language. That he accomplishes in various ways, fluctuating between
speech and silence, combining satire and quotations, juxtaposing history and art,
journalism and theater. In doing so, Kraus aimed to create what I suggest calling,
in a paraphrase on Ronald Barthes, language degree zero.

Writing about these times in Vienna from his exile in the United States in the late
1940s, Hermann Broch too defined the epoch as a social and political vacuum. He
remarked that in the Habsburg monarchy of 1900 the state was one thing, and the
political machinery existing inside it quite another.164 This also had an effect on
art and literature, seeing as in an epoch totally centered in a value vacuum []
the work of art becomes the mirror of the vacuum, and in doing so vindicates its
revolutionism, because mirror that shows the vacuum is an uncanny
(unheimliches) thing.165 It is this uncanny mirror, a reflection not of society but
of a vacuum, that Kraus insists on placing in front of the Viennese publica
mirror that captures the essence of his Kriegsfackel as well as his play Last Days
of Mankind (Die Lezten Tage der Menschheit).

164
Hermann Broch, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his Time (London / Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1984), p.72.
165
Ibid., p.55.

103
 II. Language Degree Zero

The concept Writing Degree Zero was coined by Roland Barthes and served as
the title of his first published book from 1953. Although the concept itself is
marginal in the book and not systematically developed, it can also be said to
denote Barthess critical stance in his later works. Zero Degree or Neuter both
refers to a mode of writing that aims to generate resistance within the social
discourse, as well as to provide the foundation for the critical position itself. In
what follows, I will begin with a short excursus into Barthes thought, in order to
explain the concept as it is defined in the book, and elaborate on the ways it was
developed in Barthes later works. I will then suggest some modifications and to
the concept for the purposes of my analysis of Kraus, marked by a shift from the
degree zero of writing (criture) to that of language in general. Finally, based on
this theoretical framework, I will return to the Viennese war period and to Krauss
Last Days of Mankind.

Although Barthes makes no direct reference to Kraus, two of his significant

sources of influence, namely Flaubert and Brecht, are close to Kraus in their
critical position on language and their practice of writing as a form of
problematization of social reality. Flauberts irony, silence and citationality,
especially in Bouvard and Pcuchet, and his satirical collection of phrases in
Dictionnaire des ides recuesaspects Barthes mostly develops in his S/Z and
Flaubert et Le Phraseare often referred to in comparison with Kraus,166 and a
recent study suggests examining them as correlating strategies.167

166
Burkard Mller points to a very intriguing correlation between Flauberts Dictionnnaire and
Peter Altenberg and Egon Friedells Schwarzes Buch project, published in Die Fackel in 1905.
Their aim, as they formulate it, was to present readers sentences that would allow them to be
immediately identified according to social class. Among this list of sentences is: Ich bitt Sie, die
Juden sind auch Menschen. Ich kenne gute Juden und schlechte Christen. (F 191: 13) [I beg you,
the Jews are also human beings. I know good Jews and bad Christians]. In reaction to a complaint
by one reader, Kraus has stated his own view on the project: Welches Fressen fr jeden Snob,
ber seinen Nebenmenschen sagen zu knnen: Der gehrt ins Schwarze Buch! Mit einem Wort,
das Schwarze Buch ist bereits eine ausgemachte Platitude und fr mich zum Schiboleth geworden,
an dem ich jeden erkenne, der zu der unausrottbaren Riesenarmee der ekelhaften Kerle gehrt. (F
195: 23). [What a feast for every snob, to be able to say to the nearby person: he belongs in the
black book! In one word, the black book is an arranged platitude, and for me it became a
Shibboleth, with which I can recognize anyone who belongs to an ineradicable and great army of

104
As far as Brecht is concerned, his relations with Kraus are direct and concrete,
and Kraus on his part included some of Brecht's poems in his public readings.168
Brecht met Kraus in 1933 in Vienna, exchanged letters with him, and wrote about
him on a number of occasions. In the previous chapter I quoted Brechts comment
on Krauss practices of citationality and silence. Another example of Brechts
interest in these Krausian themes is his poem On the Significance of the Ten-line
Poem in No. 888 of Die Fackela reaction to Krauss poem, published in a
special edition of Die Fackel from October 1933, titled Man frage nicht. After
almost a year-long hiatus from publishing or addressing the public, Krauss poem
appeared in a short, three-page edition that contained the poem and an obituary to
his friend Adolf Loos. The poem expresses Krauss choice of silence after Hitlers
seizure of power, which he discussed at length in the next edition of Die Fackel
later that month, in a long essay titled: Why was Die Fackel not published?
(Warum die Fackel Nicht Erscheint?). Brecht was one of the few intellectuals
who rightly understood Krauss silence as resistance rather than an act of
despair.169 He praised Krauss campaign for an ethics of language, and embraced
his concept of social critique as tribunal aspects that he had further developed in
his own theater. Through Brecht, Barthess thought is thus indirectly linked to
Kraus, and both writers share certain concerns on the thematic levelhistory and
literature, culture vs. nature, critique and truthas well a focus on style, form, the
theatricality of language, and the practice of writing as itself a mode of critique.

gross characters.] Krauss point is not directed at the misuse of language, but at the way certain
performance of identity are constituted through banalities and clichs. See: Burkhard Mller, Karl
Kraus: Mimesis und Kritik des Mediums (Stuttgart: M&P Verlag, 1995), p.247-262.
167
See: Tanya Winkler-Bluestone, Silence and Citationality in Gustav Flaubert and Karl Kraus:
The Struggle Between Social use and Literary Writing (Saarbrcken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mller,
2009).
168
Kurt Krolop, Bertolt Brecht und Karl Kraus: Sprachsatire als Zeitsatire bei Karl Kraus
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987), p.252-303.
169
Here are a few lines from Brechts poem: When the eloquent one excused himself that his
voice failed him / Silence stepped forward to the seat of judgment / Removed her veil / and
revealed herself as victim See: Bertolt Brecht, Letters (Manheim / London: tr. Ralph, 1990),
p.147. Brecht was one of the few who appreciated Krauss silence in relation to the rise of the
Nazis, and argued in favor of the failure of speech, pointing to a connection between silence and
judgmenta theme that will later be addressed by Barthes in his reading of Brecht. For further
discussion on Brecht and Kraus during the crisis of 1934, see: Andrew Barker, Fictions from an
Orphan State (New York: Camdon House, 2012), p.113-121.

105
Barthes concept of zero degree is connected to a specific historical moment
that of modernity and the rise of the industrial bourgeois society. He traces an
epistemological break which he dates at 1848, and which he demonstrates through
the paradigmatic distinction in literary style between Balzac and Flaubert.170
Starting with this break, literature becomes an object for itself, separated and
dissociated from society, and estranged to historical narrative, teleology or an
ethos of continuity. The novel-form could no longer function as an expression of
society once that society has lost its coherence and reasoning, opposing and
contradicting nature. In modern society, literature can only function as a fictitious
ideal, as a myth. For the writer, this can serve as a tragic remainder, a mourning
process, or an act of destruction. The writer is an Orpheic figure that must destroy
that which he lovesliterature. Thus, Barthes notes that modernism begins with
the search for literature which is no longer possible.171 This awareness to the
break and loss marks the point of departure for the concept of zero degree,
defined as the response to the omnipresent impasse of modernity through an
attempt to conceive of an alternative literary ideal:

There is therefore an impasse in writing, which is the impasse of society itself:

writers today are well aware of it: for them, the search for non-style, or for non-
oral style, for a zero degree or spoken degree of writing, is nothing but the
anticipation of an absolutely homogeneous state of society; for many of them
realize that there can be no universal language without the concrete, and no
longer mystical or nominal universality of civil society.172

The call for an alternative or non-style is not limited strictly to the writers of
modern society: it also refers to literary critics who do not fully grasp the severe
consequences of this new era and, instead of trying to find an outlet from its

170
What is described today as an epistemological break [] what may be thought to emerge was
a new age of language. See: Roland Barthes, Oeuvres compltes, Vol. III (Paris: Editions du
Seuil, 1998), p. 642. Translation in: Leslie Hill, RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
2010), p.113.
171
Ibid., p.38.
172
The original paragraph: Barthes, Oeuvres Compltes, Vol. III (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998),
p.87 also here I used Leslie Hills modified translation from RI (Indiana: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2010), p.90.

106
impasse, seek to force their own values or ideologies.173 Barthes has a specific
critic in mind. In her preface to the English edition of his book, Susan Sontag
notes that, in a sense, it constitutes a critical response to Sartres What is
Literature?, published that same year.174 Against Sartres simplistic call for a
new revolutionary consciousness, and the demand that the ethical and moral
engagement of the writer would confront and challenge bourgeois society from an
independent literary position, Barthes argues that the writer is always a part of the
given social context, and that literature itself is always historical and social as
well. For Barthes, any attempt to conceptualize literature should be based on its
historicity, which is exactly what his book aims at. Nor can the writer detach
himself from the society in which he lives or from its history by means of what
Sartre defined as freedom of style, seeing as he is bound not only by the social
context in which he is operating but also by the history and tradition of literature
itself. It is not granted to the writer to choose his mode of writing from a kind of
non-temporal store of literary forms. It is under the pressure of history and
tradition that the possible modes of writing for a given writer are established.175

What Sartre and others miss, according to Barthes, is the inescapable ideological
function or functioning of language, including literary language:

To act as though it were possible to speak innocently against ideology is to

continue in the belief that language is merely the neutral instrument of prevailing
opinion. But in reality today there is no place in language that stands outside
bourgeois ideology; our language comes from that ideology, returns to it, remains
enclosed within it. The only possible rejoinder is neither confrontation nor
destruction, but only theft: to fragment the ancient text.176

If ideology is not a matter of content but of form, and if the author is always part
of (bourgeois) ideology, down to the level of his memories and body, then
freedom and resistance cannot be about the creativity of writers and the
173
This will be one of the central themes in Critique and Truth, this time in relation to critics like
Raymond Picar.
174
Sontag also lists Barthes together with Kraus and Adorno among the rare brand of language
and culture critics. In: Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968),
p.vii.
175
Ibid., p.16.
176
Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Berkley / Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1989), p.10.

107
development of new literary styles. But seeing as that road is blocked, what kind
of horizon can Barthes nonetheless point to? The direction he suggests is that of
bringing language to a standstill: the constitution of a writing located on the
threshold of its functionality, and working against itself. As Barthes states in his
1977-78 lecture course: The Neuter is anything which outplays the paradigm.177
The possibility of this Writing is based on the ability to create a difference within
the given literary order, rather than on a utopian, external position (the Sartrean
author). This can be achieved through such practices as fragmentation, plagiarism
or citationality practices that, as we saw, are the bread and butter of Krausian
writing; a sort of counter-writing that circumscribes the external author-position
and its representational devices. Instead of stability and affirmation, it introduces
elements of uncertainty and ambiguity into language. This is an act of resistance
at the level of the medium itselfthe zero degree of critique, if you will.
Paradoxically, such critical engagement is possible only through disengagement.
The history of modern literature, as Barthes re-writes it, has to do with these zero
level tactics without strategy; these forms of resistance from within. That is
how he examines silence or citationality (Flaubert), non-style or blank writing
(Camus), and absence (Kafka). As he concludes: Writing [in this sense of
Writing Degree Zero] is a way of conceiving Literature, not of extending its
limits.178

According to Barthes, Writing is a space in which all these conflicting aspects

the personal and the social, the contemporary and the historical, nature and
industrial production, style and forminteract. Writing is not an act of creation,
but of choice from available poetical options, which is also attached to the
writers own biography, body and memories. But what kind of choice can the
author make under these pressures and limitations? Surely, in order to enjoy the
status Barthes ascribes to it, even this kind of Writing must provide the writer
with some degree of autonomy, some sort of autonomous position vis--vis social
realityeven if this is not the kind of literary autonomy someone like Sartre has

177
Leslie Hill, RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.129.
178
Ibid., p.15.

108
in mind. And yet how can is this possible if the author is at the same time limited
and constrained? Barthes replies: Writing is precisely this compromise between
freedom and remembrance, it is this freedom which remembers and is free only in
the gesture of the choice, but is no longer so within duration179 (my emphasis).
On the one hand, the writer faces an historical and literary impasse: his freedom
of writing is more a formal gesture than an act of free choice. He is like an actor
pointing to his mask (Barthes image of Flaubert) rather than the author of the
play.180 On the other hand, Writing operates not through some kind of artistic
freedom and morality, nor does it serve as precursor for an alternative social
order: instead it operates through gestures that aim to destabilize temporality, such
as interruption, displacement, estrangement, pause and suspensiona halt.181
Therefore, as Barthes puts it, Writing as Freedom is therefore just a moment.

The concept of a gesture of choice underscores an inherent impasse of

signification that was articulated by Barthes in relation to Brechts epic theater.
After attending a performance of the Causasian Chalk Circle in July 1955, he was
particularly taken by the capricious and vulgar figure of Azdak: the rogue who
becomes a judge is ironically the one who is able to bring justice. As Leslie Hill
notes, Barthes paradoxical point here is that justice is achieved when the legal
machine is divorced from itself, when the law is both maintained and suspended.
The Brechtian revolution, in Barthes words, is about staging these moments in
which a decision must be made, like in a court of law, only in order to expose an
inherent indecisiveness within them. The staging uncovers the complex relations
between the rule and the exception, justice and violence and the ideological
mechanism behind this order. The Brechtian gesture of decision, like in his

179
Leslie Hill, RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.16-17.
180
In Writing Degree Zero Barthes is referring to modern literature as being in state of
Flaubertisation, an unmasking through literary style of the social state of the fact that the
bourgeois spectacle is in no way commensurable with itself. See: Roland Barthes, WDZ (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p.64.
181
Leslie Hill, RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.17. This pause is remindful
of Brechts famous Halt in the beginning of his Manahme. As Reiner Ngele suggests, the
latter gives certain stability in the midst of change [] and a destabilizing Stop! in a smooth
flow of orders. See: Reiner Ngele, Theater, Theory, Speculation (Baltimore / London: John
Hopkins University Press, 1991), p.150.

109
famous Ja Sager, exposes the paradox of following rules, and ends not with the
reaffirmation of the law, but with separating the sign from the effect.182
Brechts theater is designed to bring performance to the moment that demands
decision-making, in order to expose the inherent disability of any such action
which then transforms into a gesture. Thus, the epic theater is revolutionary in the
sense that it stages the impasse of signification, and provides an alternative in the
figure of indecisive language of gestures.

The zero degree is thus not a different mode of writing but rather a certain kind of
action on language. It has to do not with what language expresses or signifies but
with the act of reading and writing itself. Barthes emphasizes this mediatic aspect
of this kind of writing not as an empty or neutral in the regular sense, but as an
openness and potentiality. According to Barthes, each word contains a degree of
ambiguity that has to do with its function not as signifier but as reference. It is
thus not only a specific meaning, but an ever-changing relationship and an open
game of meanings that is at the same time also a detachment from every specific
use. In a paragraph that is quite close to Krauss Wortgestalt, Barthes writes:

Thus, under each Word in modern poetry lies a sort of existential geology, in
which is gathered the total content of the Name, instead of a chosen content as in
classical prose and poetry. The Word is no longer guided in advance by the
general intention of the socialized discourse the Word, here, is encyclopedic,
contains simultaneously all the acceptations from which a relational discourse
might have required to choose. It therefore achieves a state which is possible only
in the dictionary or in poetryplaces where the noun can live without its
articleand is reduced to a sort of zero degree, pregnant with all past and future
specifications.183

The word for Barthes is mainly a form, a category, and yet also an unexpected
object, a Pandoras Box (another Krausian motif). Every text is constantly
rewritten, and reading becomes as critical as writing in the sense of the production
of the text. As Barthes explains in Critique and Truth, the object of the word is
no longer the full meaning of the artwork, but on the contrary the empty meaning

182
Barthes, Oeuvres Compltes, IV (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 2002), p.784-785. Translation in Hill,
RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.98.
183
Roland Barthes, WDZ (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p.48.

110
that underpins them all184 (my emphasis). Writing creates a discourse of gaps and
absences, which seeks to avoid any precise intention or denotation. This requires
the reader to make his own choice, to make the gesture of choice himself. Barthes
makes this point in relation to Camus Outsider, which he regards as an ideal
absence of style:

Writing is then reduced to a sort of negative mood in which the social or

mythical characters of language are abolished in favor of a neutral and inert state
of form; thus thought remains wholly responsible, without being overlaid by a
secondary commitment of form to a history not its own.185

In the first chapter I have discussed the dialectical relation between word and
thought in Kraus, which was central, for his concept of creation in language
(Schpfung). Barthes can be seen as providing us with an insight regarding the
disengagement of thought that is achieved through this process. The kind of
language or writing that is stripped to its mediumality, thereby exposing the
neutrality of its form, marks its otherness against the historical context from
which it emerges. This non-style thus allows the reader to become an outsider,
and to relate to language in a way that deprives it of any unequivocal history and
meaning. Barthes expresses this idea in his Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes,
where he experiments with being an outsider, writing about himself in the third
person: what is needed is to pass through the whole of meaning since
meaning is the product of History, not Nature.186 Against the linguistic ideal of
communication, Barthes suggests a performativity of speech, which seems to
replace the language of social functionality with that of an almost physical, bodily
experience, an experience of Nature, which creates an exception. History here
suggests order and power, as Barthes notes: in the present state of History, any
political mode of writing can uphold a police world.187 Meaning and History
presuppose power and ideology. They are part of the bourgeois social structure
that uses language in order to present itself as natural. Hence, Barthes advocates a
form of meaning annulled, which aims to dispose of this ideological system of

184
Roland Barthes, Critique and Truth (London: Continuum, 2004), p.29.
185
Ibid., p.77.
186
Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (New York: Hill and Young, 2010), p.87.
187
Roland Barthes, WDZ (New York, Hill and Wang, 1968), p.28.

111
control that is based on social codes and stereotypes through writing in the zero
degree:

The writers only control over stereotypic vertigo (this vertigo is also that of
stupidity, vulgarity) is to participate in it without quotation marks, producing
a text, not a parody. This is what Flaubert did in Bouvard et Pcuchet: the two
copyists are copiers of codes (they are, one may say, stupid), but since they too
confront the class stupidity which surrounds them, the text presenting them sets
up a circularity in which no one (not even the author) has an advantage over
anyone else; and this is in fact the function of writing: to make ridiculous, to
annul the power (the intimidation) of one language over another, to dissolve any
meta-language as soon as it is constituted.188

In referring to Flauberts use of citationality, Barthess argument seems to

correlate with Krauss statement on the way language can only function through
the omission of quotation marks. Flaubert seems to produce not just a parody on
the stupidity and vulgarity of the two clerks, but a non-hierarchical
linguistic/textual space, in which the positions of the author and reader
interchange with those of the protagonists. This insighta text, not parodyis
highly relevant to reading Krauss Last Days of Mankind. The bringing together
of different discursive positions and contexts makes the production of a single,
unified language impossible. The ambiguity now pervades several different
levels: the signification process of words, the performativity of words and
gestures, the readers identification with the text, the authors position in the
discourse, and the value of the discourse itself. It is not that Barthes believed in
the existence of a meta-language, but it is rather its function as a myth that he tried
to dismiss. Barthes description of this textual vertigo thus echoes both the
shiver or epileptic bliss mentioned by Benjamin, as well as the shock of the
overwhelming noise of the warfront, that Kraus associates with symbolic excess.

There are two other aspects that Barthes develops in the context of the zero level
of writing which are of importance for the discussion on Kraus. The first is the
kind of subjectivity it entails. Under the influential studies of Emil Benveniste,
Barthes gave up the concept of extra-linguistic individuality based on pre-
linguistic essence and nature, adopting a performative concept that regards

188
Roland Barthes, WDZ (New York, Hill and Wang, 1968), p.41 (my emphasis).

112
subjectivity as a discursive act. Hill suggests that, for Barthes, subjectivity was
like an empty costume identity, meaning, subjectivity: all was linguistic
performance, dramatization, simulation, like in an endless Brechtian play.189 It is
again the emptiness, a kind of zero level of identity this time, that sustains the
infinite repertoire of gestures and quotations, from which the self is created. This
self cannot be unified: it is a fragmented, ambiguous figure, which posseses
several bodies and speaks in many voices. Like Writing, it performs with and
against any intended result. But there must be something other than this
performance, an element of otherness which can provide the space for choice and
for resistance from within. This otherness cannot be reduced to bodily existence,
since the body, although it carries an irreducible difference, is not detached
fromonce againthe social and ideological discourse or context. What is
required with respect to identity is the same thing that enables Writing to take
place with respect to words and meanings: a zero level that moves between
identities, underneath costumes and in-between discursive acts. Barthes refers to
this alternative mode of identity, somewhat surprisingly, as a principle of
pleasurean idea he borrows not from Freud but from the Marquis de Sade:

Never underestimate the force of suspension of pleasure: which is a veritable

epoch, a halt, that puts a stop in the distance to all accepted values (accepted by
oneself). Pleasure is a neuter (the most perverse form of the demonic).190

The importance of Sade for Barthes lies not in his pornographic style and
obscenity, but in his ability to translate his desires into Writing. His text creates a
dialectic of desire, a movement constituted by an unpredictable game of
possibilities. The continuation of the game, however, is based on constant
suspension. Pleasure is therefore a site of tension between desire and suspension,
a non-position that can hardly be defined, and is subversive with respect to any
ideological order. But what is the difference between this non-position of

189
Leslie Hill, RI (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.123.
190
Barthes, The Pleasure of Text (New York: Hill and Young, 1998), p.65. Translation modified
by Hill, Ibid., p.99.

113
resistance and the non-position of obedience?191 In other words, how to
distinguish between lack of identity which is subjected to ideological
interpellation (normal, everyday identity, so to speak), and the neuter position
a la Sade? The answer has to do with the fact that the latter is a textual
subjectivity. The reader is not absorbed into the text or ideologically interpellated
by it. Instead, through the operation of the zero level or the neuter of the medium,
what he explores is his own act of reading, the experience of the pleasure of the
text, the encounter with the otherness of languageand hence also with the
otherness of identity, both that of the protagonists, and, consequently, his own
(and perhaps we might add: that of the author as well).

In conclusion, Barthes zero degree applies to writing (language) as well as to

reading (identity). In fact, it redefines the literary field as a whole. Instead of
narratives and symbols, literature is turned into a theater of gestures. It redirects
the reader from signification and meaning to mediumality and performance. It
thus it offers a writing that does not comply with given values, ideologies and
discursive hierarchies; a form of resistance that acts not from the outside, but
through disruptions and interventions, by punctuations of the discourse, as
Barthes puts it. Although the reader cannot find a stable grip in the text, he can
nevertheless enjoy the pleasures of the disfunctionality of language, creating his
own fragmented position through this dialectic of desire and suspension. There is
a transition in Barthes, since his first book and the later discussions on the neuter
which allow relating to the term beyond the concept of blank writing, or
authorless text. The zero degree is a strategy of exposing the emptiness of speech
and its impasses, by providing a mediumal and performative awareness that
repositions the field of literature from bourgeois art to resistance and defiance.
The Last Days of Mankind, as I will will now try to argue, is based on a very
similar literary strategy, as Kraus turns the events of the First World War into
scenes of writing, and its voices and noises into a zero degree operetta.

191
This is the logic behind Hannah Arendts concept of the banality of evil. One of the ways in
which Kraus can be regarded as challenging this view in The Last Days is through the dialogues
between the Optimist and the Nrgler, as I will show in the next section of this chapter.

114
 III. Zero Degree in The Last of Days of Mankind

The Last Days of Mankind is regarded by many as Krauss most famous and
successful work. It is a theatrical and satirical achievement that addresses the
public mindset and the function of social and political institutions during the war.
The focus of the play is not the war itself, but the way its events were represented,
conceived and expressed. It presents social conditions in which phrases and
rumors are turned into horrific acts. The play was not really intended for theatrical
performance, but was rather meant to be read. Only the epilogue, The Last Night,
was staged during Krauss life time. The play consists of a plethora of over 250
scenes in five acts, with approximately five hundred characters that rapidly
interchange and move between different locations and sceneries. It evades any
attempt of generistic definition, and is too fragmented and polyphonic to suggest a
comprehensive interpretation. Kraus himself refers to the mammoth and uncanny
nature of the play in the prologue, where he states that the theater audience will
not be able to bear it, and that it is intended not for a theater on earth but on
Mars.192 The uniqueness of the play lies in its documentary content, which is
based on speeches, newspaper articles and other materials Kraus assembled, as
well as on its forma montage of citations, images and sounds. The war is
broken down into different mini-scenes and sideline episodes, which often seen
meaningless in the context of the Great War. However, as Georg Knepler
remarks, every small detail is a symptom of the entire social crisis, where generals
and the press, politicians and business men, doctors and patients, people on the
street and intellectuals, are all part of a new global capitalist system that Kraus
tries to portray.193

The play was written over a period of seven years. Writing began in 1915 and
continued until the final version appeared in print. The writing was irregular, with
productive periods, such as the summer of 1917, which Kraus spent with Sidonie
Ndhern. Some of the scenes were published in Die Fackel, and over 50 were

192
Ironically referring to the Roman god of war.
193
Georg Knepler, Karl Kraus liest Offenbach (Wien: Lcker, 1984), p.85.

115
later added, among them many of the dialogues between the Grumbler and the
Optimist, which constitute the pedagogic parts of the play. The result is a
fragmented piece: Die Handlung, in hundert Szenen und Hllen fhrend, ist
unmglich, Zerklftet, Heldenlos wie jene.194 [the action, leading into hundred
scenes and hells, is impossible, fissured and hero-less, as it was]. Timms argues
that the text is also fractured due to a shift in Krauss own critical paradigm, from
a conservative view to a social-democratic one.195 But the play does not succumb
to any ideological system, and its fragmentation gives room to many possibilities,
none of which is coherent or systematic. This fragmentation, however, is an
aspect I regarded as intentional, and as something that can be account for, using
the Barthesian terminology discussed above, as zero degree theater, in which
logic and coherence, plot and narrative, structure and sequence are all dismissed
in favor of conveying a different kind of message regarding the all-embrassing
crisis of language.

In this section I will be focusing on what I claim to be the zero degree features of
The Last Days of Mankind, demonstrating how they are put into practice in the
play. These include chaos and lack of causality, ambiguity (Phantasie), silence,
citationality, fragmentation, suspension and caesura. Based on this analysis, I will
propose a reading of the play that places it between Krauss linguistic skepticism
and his operetta-style theatricalitytwo critical tracks that culminate in this play,
and that are later developed in Krauss original genre (or even art form) of
Theater der Dichtung.

Chaos without Casuality

Dem Eintretenden tnt ein groes Geschrei entgegen, aus dem er zunchst nur
unartikulierte Laute hrt, dann in allen Tonarten hervorgestoene, gebrllte, gepfiffene,
gerchelte Rufe, die zumeist eine Bekrftigung bedeuten. Nher hinhorchend, vermag
man erst genauer zu unterscheiden.

DAS GESCHREI: Mir gesagt! Ihm gesagt! Unter uns gesagt !

Sag ich Ihnen ! Sagen Sie! No wenn ich Ihnen sag!
Also ich sag Ihnen ! Was sagen Sie! Sagt er!
Auf ihm soll ich sagen! Ich wer Ihnen etwas sagen No

194
LTdM, p.1.
195
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.371-377.

116
 196
was soll ich Ihnen sagen? Ihnen gesagt!

These lines, taken from act V, scene 6, demonstrate what I suggest to define as the
zero degree of the play. In the stage instructions Kraus writes that the scene takes
place in a street caf on Viennas Ringstrae, where a crowd is gathered in one
stinking, insect-swarming afternoon. Merchants and agents, petty officers in
uniform, women covered in gowns to repel the insects, all conversing over life
routine in times of war, asking how to get hold of basic products and luxury
goods. What they actually say however, cannot be clearly heard. It sounds more
like an unclear mesmerizing sound, as Krauss directions emphasize with striking
superlatives: hervorgestoene, gebrllte, gepfiffene, gerchelte Rufe.197 This
characterization of speech which is not really a speech, a whistle or a roar, relates
more to animal than to human voice. This emphasis on the physical production of
the sound marks the scene and is an important theme in the whole play.

When the crowd comes nearer the front of the stage the noises turn into definable
speech and recognizable words. But what words are these? The characters repeat
pronouncing the verb Sagen (to say) in different conjugations. The logic of what
they saying is thus something like I am telling you that I am telling you. There
is no actual content to the conversation. As the scene unfolds, though the
conversation is clearly heard, there is still very little that is actually being said.
Moreover, the characters themselves are not clearly defined. They are first named
after animals (Hamster, Rhino, Lion, Deer, Tapir, Condor, and others), and later
in the scene after qualities such as good-will, right-on and breakdown. All
they do is randomly repeat fragments of rumors they overheard on other
occasions, regardless of what has been previously said. Less than attempting to

196
LTdM, p.184.
197
Pfeifen is the word Kafka uses in Josephine the Singer or the Mouse Folk to describe
Josephines singing: an indefinable sound between whistle and squeak. About the German-Jewish
context of the story and its relations with Mauscheln the Jewish dialect that Kafka attributed to
Kraus , see: Mark Anderson, Kafkas Clothes Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin
de Sicle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p.205-226. These creaturely aspects continue to be
developed both in this scene and throughout the play.

117
say anything or contribute to the conversation, the figures are trying to establish
the reliability and reinforce the validity of their speech, often by repetition:

Vershiedene Stimmen Hastig Eintretender: Aber ich sag Ihnen, es is nicht wahr!
So wahr ich da leb aus kompetenster Quelle, es is wahr! also wenn ich Ihnen
sag, es is nicht wahr !? und ich sag Ihnen, es is ja wahr, fertig sind wir! also
wetten, es is nicht wahr?198

[Voices of hasty entrants: but I tell you, this is not true! So true that I have
gained from the most reliable source, it is true! So when I tell you, this is not
true!? and I tell you, it is true after all, we are through! So we place a bet, isnt
it true?]

As these few lines show, the characters are not talking about specific events or
voice specific opinions, comments or ideas. Instead what they do is negotiate the
conditions for discourse. Moreover, although they fail themselves in their words,
this does not affect the conversation. The entire scene is constituted by utterances
that do not relate to each other but rather interrupt and cut one another in a chorus
of displaced clichs. The point is the sheer act of speaking, rather than its content.
This is more a series of gestures than actual speech. It can thus be argued that the
theatrical scene is not working either: such repetitive speech cannot form a
dramatic theme, and such characters, distinct only by their fictitious names,
rapidly appearing and vanishing, cannot leave any significant impression. In this
sense, theater itself is suspended, and the staging of the war becomes the
presentation of a vacuum lurking on stage.

To show the extent of the use of this strategy in the play, here is another scene
that does not deal with discourse at the level of content (nor even in the extended
sense of speech acts, namely linguistic performances), but instead explores its
conditions of possibility. The Patriot and the (newspaper) Subscriber are one of
the pairs of figures that inhabit the play, reappearing several times in different
acts. Their discussions show how the spirit of 1914 penetrated ordinary
peoples minds,the way ideology functions not as a system of ideas and beliefs
but as a set of Flauberian Ides reues:

198
LTdM, 185.

118
 Der Abonnent und der Patriot im Gesprch:

Der Abonnent: Was sagen Sie zu den Gerchten ?

Der Patriot: Ich bin besorgt.

Der Abonnent: In Wien sind Gerchte verbreitet, da in sterreich Gerchte

verbreitet sind. Sie gehen sogar von Mund zu Mund, aber niemand kann einem
sagen

Der Patriot: Man wei nichts Bestimmtes, es sind nur Gerchte, aber es mu
etwas dran sein, wenn sogar die Regierung verlautbart hat, da Gerchte
verbreitet sind.199

[The Subscriber and the patriot conversing:

Subscriber: What do you say about the rumors?

Patriot: I am worried.

Subscriber: The rumor circulating in Vienna is that there are rumors circulating
in Austria. They are actually moving from mouth to ear, but no one can say them
-

Patriot: Nobody knows in certainty, these are only rumors, but there must be
something in it, that even the government announced that rumors have been
spread.200 ]

Like the former scene, the thing to be noted here is the self-referential, self-
validating nature of this speech; the pointless feedback-loop of what is ultimately
an empty, content-less discourse. The formula for the discussion here is rumors
about rumors. The point is not the content of these rumors, which is never
disclosed throughout the dialogue. The rumors are just rumors, but it is precisely
because of that that they cannot be just rumors: there must be something in them,
something which the Patriot and the Subscriber desperately try to uncover, but
finally coming to nothing - Gar-nix. And yet, although no sense or validity are
extracted from the rumors, they nonetheless work, as the concluding words of the
Patriot indicate: Man is rein auf Gerchte angewiesen! [One can only count on
rumors!].

Last Days of Mankind is full of such scenes, some of which take place on street
corners in Vienna and Berlin, others in government bureaus, generals offices and

199
LTdM, p.17.
200
LTdM, p.180, (translation modified).

119
war rooms, classrooms, hospitals, and newspaper editorial offices. Many of these
scenes perform a displacement of speech, while meaning and signification are
suspended. This is also the case at the level of the montage form of the play as a
wholea form that dismisses any order or logic. Instead of a plot and the
dramatic presentation of events, the play focuses on rumors the discussions
and conversation around them, and the way they are conceived or
(mis)represented. It is as if the reader/viewer gets to enter the backstage of the
production of history, without being able to consolidate or find any logic or
structure in what he sees there. The battlefields of the war, on the other hand,
hardly make an appearance, and its heroic and dramatic moments are never
shown. Even when the play presents known public figures, the scenes focus on
marginal aspects. Conrad von Htzendorf, the Austrian chief of staff, is not seen
commanding his armies or making strategic decisions, but posing for a newspaper
photographer (I, 24); foreign secretary Count Brechtold is not seen drafting the
ultimatum to Serbia but ordering coffee (I, 5); Hindenburg and Ludendorff are
presented as pair of buffoons (IV, 13); and the Kaiser, confused and detached
from the events, is shown sleeping in his study (IV,31). The play is thus not a
documentary that uses these trivial, mundane, backstage scenes as materials for
telling the story of the war, but a presentation of these materials in a way that
makes any glorifying story of the warindeed any coherent narrative about it
appear questionable and fabricated.

As Edward Timms notes, this kind of theater is innovative in its transgression of

the concepts and rules of the medium itself. Although Kraus defined the play as
tragedy, in the prologue he refers to it as an operetta, declaring that the
protagonists are not real human figures but marionettes and shadows. He further
claims that Der Inhalt ist von dem Inhalt der unwirklichen, undenkbaren, keinem
wachen Sinn erreichbaren, keiner Erinnerung zugnglichen und nur in blutigem
Traum verwahrten, Jahre, da Operettenfiguren die Tragdie der Menschheit
spielten.201 [The content is from the content of the unreal, unthinkable, that no

201
LTdM, preface.

120
awaked sense could grasp it, it is not accessible to memory, and can only be
stored in nightmares, years in which mankinds tragedy was played by operetta
figures]. Kraus is quite clear: the war has brought theater to an impasse.202 His
stylistic fluctuation between Shakespearean tragedy and satirical operetta suggests
a problem of genre Kraus himself was facing. As Timms suggests, the problem,
for any author writing about the First World War, was to find a literary form
commensurate with the unprecedented magnitude and horror of the events.203
The Last days of Mankind is a quest for a form that would point to the impasse
and at the same time suggest a way out of it. The challenge is to find a new form
that could represent the unthinkable, unreal and unnatural events. What Kraus
aims to show is not the real events but the non-events or the nothingness of the
events that took place, their zero degree. In order to show this, Krauss choice is
the form of tragic operetta.204

Kraus discusses the operetta as literary form mostly in relation to Offenbach. In

an article from 1909 he explains that it is based on a dialectic between the
seriousness and sincerity of the subjects it handles and its parodic-nonsensical
style. The operetta presents an incongruence between social conventions and the
normative order they are part of and the realities of social life, dismissing any pre-
determined logic or reason that could be attached to them. It creates a world of
nonsense that implies social transgression (women can play men, poor peasants
can pretend to be noble, etc). Unlike the theater or the new opera, which insist on
meaning and sense (only to end up as entertainment), the operetta rejects these
demands and creates an alternative viewpoint, that of nonsense (Unsinn):

202
Kraus used the term Angsttraum (nightmare) to characterize the play (F 406-412: 166).
203
Edward Timms, AS (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1986), p.375. It is fair to say
that this is not simply a technical problem, but the most critical aspect of the play. Kraus is first
and foremost a critic of form, and his campaign focuses on attacking the discrepancy between
Wort und Wesen (in the press as well as in theater and literature). Furthermore, the war itself is
connected to shifts and changes of genres and styles, and to the ornamentation of life, as stated
in Das Technoromantische Abenteuer.
204
Kraus states this much in the apocalyptic epilogue: wirklich nach Operette klingt (F 834-883:
49). In relation to this, Gerald Stieg suggests a concept of negative Operetta. His analysis is
mostly based on the musical aspects of the work, which I regretfully cannot address here. See:
Gerald Stieg, Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit Eine Negative Operetta?, in: Klaus Amann /
Hubert Lengauer (eds.), sterreich und der Groe Krieg 1914-1918. Die andere Seite der
Geschichte (Wien: Verlag Christian Brandsttter, 1989), p.180-185.

121
 Zu einem Gesamtkunstwerk im harmonischesten Geiste aber vermgen Aktion
und Gesang in der Operette zu verschmelzen, die eine Welt als gegeben nimmt,
in der sich der Unsinn von selbst versteht und in der er nie die Reaktion der
Vernunft herausfordert. Offenbach hatte in seinen Reichen phantasiebelebender
Unvernunft auch fr die geistvollste Parodierung des Opernwesens Raum: die
souverne Planlosigkeit der Operette kehrte sich bewut gegen die Lcherlichkeit
einer Kunstform, die im Rahmen einer planvollen Handlung den Unsinn erst zu
Ehren bringt. (F. 270-271, p.9)

[Action and chant may melt into a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) in the
most harmonized spirit in the operetta, which takes for granted a world in which
nonsense is obvious and in which it never challenges the reaction of reason.
Offenbach, in his rich series of lively-imaginative (Phantasielebender) nonsense,
always also left a space for the most brilliant parody of the operas character: the
sovereign aimlessness of the operetta consciously turns against the laughableness
of an art form, which grants value to the nonsense within the scope of a well
aimed plot.]

The operetta is a subversive art form in the sense that it is not governed by the
logic of a given social order, but constituted by a principle of aimless non-reason,
guided by an artistic concept of imaginative creativity (Phantasie). The gestures
on stage, the change of costumes, the use of music and sounds, all serve the
purpose of turning the obvious questionable, laughable or absurdaspects that
define the chaos (Wirrsal) of reality. Thus, the operetta is producing unexpected
connections and juxtapositions that trigger or activate thought: Der Gedanke der
Operette ist Rausch, aus dem Gedanken geboren werden; die Nchternheit geht
leer aus.205 [The thought of the operetta is intoxication, from which the thought
is being born; soberness goes empty-handed]. As I have argued in the first chapter
in relation to Krauss view of language, non-verbal aspects and other dimensions
that are beyond expressionthe unsaid, the Chaos or Wirrsalare of great
significance, according to Kraus. And it is that level that the operetta thematizes
and puts into action.

Krauss interest in operetta and specifically in Offenbach strengthened after the

war. In a poem dedicated to Offenbach, he defines the operetta as Das Chaos
ohne die Kausalitt!/ Die Bhne wr es/ die ich lang entbehre/ und die die Welt
nicht trumt: die Operette.206 [The chaos without the causality!/ that would be

205
Kraus, Die Chinesische Mauer (Paderborn: Salzwasser Verlag, 2012), p.228.
206
Kraus, Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), p.152.

122
the stage/ which I have long done without/ and the world that doesnt dream: the
operetta.]. Since it is guided by the rule of chaos,207 operating in a world that has
lost its coherence, the operetta is in fact the only theatrical form that can sustain a
level of integrity and allow artistic freedom and transgression.

Phantasie

As mentioned above in the poem on Offenbach, one of the things that allows the
operetta to provoke thought and reflection is its inherent imaginative quality that
Kraus calls Phantasie. In the Grimm Brothers dictionary the term is defined as
die schpferische, besonders dichterische einbildungskraft. [creative,
particularly poetic imagination]. This quality is not restricted only to poets and
writers, but also determines the relations between texts and readers. It
accomodates a free space, open movement and an aimlessness (Planlosigkeit),
as can be seen also in the words of Georg Lichtenberg, one of Krauss admired
thinkers: Durch das planlose Umherstreifen, durch die planlosen Streifzge der
Phantasie wird nicht selten das Wild aufgejagt, das die planvolle Philosophie in
ihrer wohlgeordneten Haushaltung gebrauchen kann.208 [Through the aimless
struggle, through the aimless wandering of the Phantasie the wild is often
aroused, so that philosophy in its well-ordered housekeeping can make use of it].
Phantasie in this sense is a kind of suspension of judgment, a break within the
linguistic order that opposes order and determination, and allows an open and
creative approach to language, as if everything is constantly rewritten.

Phantasie is a central term for Kraus, used over 500 times in his writings. Already
in his famous first anti-war article from November 1914, In These Great Times
(In dieser Grossen Zeit), the word appears five times, presented as a key for
understanding the conflict as related not to tensions between nations but to ways

207
Chaos is a term Kraus used regarding aspects of sexuality, which arent meant to be publicly
disclosed and carry a normative and a legal connotation. In his text The Chinese Wall denouncing
the hypocrisy of the public order in this respect Kraus wrote: Und das Chaos sei willkommen
denn die Ordnung hat versagt! [And chaos will be welcomefor order has failed]. See: Kraus,
CM (Paderborn: Salzwasser Verlag, 2012), p.455.
208
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe Vol. 2 (Mnchen: Carl Hanser Verlag,
1972), p.286.

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of relating to language in times of epistemic crisis. In stark contrast to the phrase,
which is the linguistic equivalent of the ornament, Phantasie creates an
unbridgeable gap, keeping life in a state of ongoing expectancy that remains
forever unfulfilled. It is a precondition not only of literature and theater but also
of law and morals.209 In these times of war however, Phantasie is that which has
been lost, murdered or destroyed by the new social powers.210 This loss results not
only in a media-technological takeover, but also in the subjugation of humanity to
history, not as an agent but as a marionette and a victim of brutal violence.

Here are the lines from one of several dialogues between the Grumbler (Krauss
dramatic personification in the play) and the Optimist, a typical middle class
Viennese, conversing over the question of Phantasie and war:

Der Optimist: Die Entwicklung der Waffe kann doch hinter den technischen
Errungenschaften der Neuzeit unmglich zurckbleiben.

Der Nrgler: Nein, aber die Phantasie der Neuzeit ist hinter den technischen
Errungenschaften der Menschheit zurckgeblieben.

Der Optimist: Ja, fhrt man denn mit Phantasie Kriege?

Der Nrgler: Nein, denn wenn man jene noch htte, wrde man diese nicht mehr
fhren.211

[Optimist: the development of weapons cannot fall behind the technical

achievements of humanity in the modern era.

Grumbler: No, but the Phantasie of the modern era has fallen behind the
technical achievements of humanity.

Optimist: Well, do you conduct wars using Phantasie?

209
For example: Denn der Mangel an Phantasie war die psychologische Voraussetzung der
gegenwrtigen Massenaktion, deren fortwirkendem Kommando kein Gegenruf der
Menschenwrde mehr antwortet, um die in Einzelschicksale aufgelste Masse wieder zu
sammeln (F 462-471: 171).
210
This insight is in line with Walter Benjamin's concepts of artistic reproduction in his essay The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In this well-known text, Benjamin claims that
technological development and new reproduction techniques also resulted in a loss: the loss of the
artworks aura. For Benjamin, the work of art is related to tradition and authority. No longer
defined in its singularity and authenticity, the modern artwork is publicly presented, reproduced
and transformed into a replica. It is no longer related to a place and time or to a specific audience.
Its reproductions spread everywhere and appeal to the masses. It is the issue of quantity that
affects quality, which both Benjamin and Kraus sense. This change, Benjamin shows, has a
dramatic social and political impact, and results in a new concept of art and aesthetics.
211
LTdM, p.167.

124
 Grumbler: No, because if you still had Phantasie, you would not make wars
anymore.]

The War itself, says the Grumbler, was a direct result of the loss of Phantasie.
This argument sounds quite strange. If we turn to other authors of the time, such
as Hermann Bahr, Thomas Mann, Robert Flex, Martin Buber or Ernst Jnger, it
seems they had no shortage of Phantasie. In fact, their writing aimed, as Kraus
noted, at transforming military action into a romantic adventure that identified
war with the realization or actualization of the German spirit which then will
transform the human spirit. Shouldnt Krauss argument be, then, that the war was
a result of too much, rather than too little Phantasie? In order to examine this
question, here are Ernst Jngers words on his war experience:

Das Vaterland, das unter glnzender Zurschaustellung eine offizielle Sache zu

werden gedroht hatte, wurde zu einer Lebensfrage, die jeden einzelnen
unmittelbar ergriff. Das Abenteuer, nach dem viele sich aus einer
unbefriedigenden und spezialisierten Existenz hinausgesehnt hatten, das groe
Erlebnis, das uns unerwartet eines morgens nach dem Aufstehen in lockenden
Farben begrt und das Leben reicher, tiefer und inniger erscheinen lt, hier war
es Ereignis geworden, es war kein Traum mehr, man stand schon mit beiden
Fen darin.212

The Fatherland, that empty illusion which was threatening to become an official
thing, now came to be a question of life and death that took hold of every single
person. The adventure many had longed for from the depths of their dissatisfied
and specialized existence, the great experience which unexpectedly greets you in
alluring colors one morning when you wake up and makes life appear richer,
deeper and more intimate, suddenly appeared, here it became an event. It was no
longer a dream; here you were, standing in it firmly with your own two feet.

Jnger expresses here the intoxication of the fulfillment of a dream and also of
desire. The symbolic becomes real, and the sudden and unexpected new existence,
this awakening, is an overwhelming bodily experience. On the one hand, the
tensions between the old and the new, the external world and inner experience,
individual and collective, abstract and concrete, all are joined in this short and
condensed paragraph. On the other hand, there is much that Jnger is leaving out:
the inhumane conditions in the battle field, the fact that it is an industrial war, the
senselessness that underscores this event, and the way such a conceptual

212
Ernst Jnger in: Lars Koch, Der Erste Weltkrieg als Medium der Gegenmoderne: Zu den
Werken von Walter Flex und Ernst Jnger (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2005), p.209.

125
transformation could take place, i.e. the role of Jnger as that of many other
good, patriotic intellectuals. From a literary perspective, language is no longer a
mere medium. Words became deeds, concepts turn into reality and bodies are
transformed and redefined. Writing is meant to fill this gap or emptiness and
feeling of social and political impasse that is strongly felt. In this sense, Jngers
literature of enthusiasm addresses the same crisis as Krauss satire.

This can be seen in the dialogue between the Grumbler and the Optimist quoted
above, where the Grumbler, in sentences which may seem as a reply to Jngers
enthusiastic writing, explains how Phantasie could prevent war:

Der Nrgler: Weil dann die Suggestion einer von einem abgelebten Ideal
zurckgebliebenen Phraseologie nicht Spielraum htte, die Gehirne zu benebeln;
weil man selbst die unvorstellbarsten Greuel sich vorstellen knnte und im
Voraus wte, wie schnell der Weg von der farbigen Redensart und von allen
Fahnen der Begeisterung zu dem feldgrauen Elend zurckgelegt ist; weil die
Aussicht, frs Vaterland an der Ruhr zu sterben oder sich die Fe abfrieren zu
lassen, kein Pathos mehr mobil machen wrde [...] Htte man also Phantasie, so
wte man, da es Verbrechen ist, das Leben dem Zufall auszusetzen, Snde,
den Tod zum Zufall zu erniedrigen [...] Htte man statt der Zeitung Phantasie, so
wre Technik nicht das Mittel zur Erschwerung des Lebens und Wissenschaft
ginge nicht auf dessen Vernichtung aus.213

[Grumbler: Because then the suggestion of a phraseology, left over from a

deceased ideal, would not have any space left to befog the brains; because people
themselves would be able to imagine the most inconceivable atrocities, and
would know in advance how quickly the way from the colorful phrases and the
flags of enthusiasm to the grey misery of the fields can be traveled; because the
visage of dying at the Ruhr for the Fatherland, as no pathos would mobilize feet
if you let it freeze in the cold. [] If we had Phantasie, we would know that it is
a crime to hand over life to the hands of chance and that it is a sin to degrade
death to the level of chance. [...] If we had Phantasie instead of the newspaper,
technology would no longer be a cause for difficulties in life, and science would
no longer aim at its elimination.]

Phantasie provides a moral reading of reality, a relation to language that is based

on distance and doubt, reflection and estrangement. It allows speech to function in
the poetic sense, forming an ambiguous, dynamic, undeceived movement that
rejects the possibility of ideological manipulation. As argued in the first part
section of this chapter, Kraus powerfully emphasizes the discrepancy between the
dead old ideals and the phraseology that maintains them. Phantasie in this sense
213
LTdM, p.104.

126
operates as another form of linguistic skepticism that works against the
performative power of pathos and symbols, of phrases and ideological
conventions or manipulations, historical teleology, social and political pressures,
discursive constrains and reified mechanistic speech all the sicknesses of the
modern media-technology era.

In referring to Krauss concept of Phantasie and generally to the role of the

Grumbler in the play, Timms suggests that his ultimate aim is to convince us that
this unthinking use of language may have apocalyptic consequences, and he
attributes the atrocities of war to a concept of failure of imagination.214 Timms
notes further that the atrocities of war would not be possible without the inherent
capacity of clichs to promote patterns of collective thinking that are remote from
the realities of political action.215 He suggests that the problem with clichs is
that they create false perceptions. Instead of true and reliable information, the
media spreads and repeats the clichs that prevent people from thinking rationally.
But again the question arises, how can Phantasie, itself a form of imagining,
assist in combating the platitudes and clichs of the press? Kraus is not suggesting
a withdrawal from imagination towards hard facts, telling it as it is, so to
speak, and instead insists on Phantasie as the solution to the poisonous media
effect. Although Timms offers a convincing account of the first half of Krauss
critical move (against the prevailing form of imaginary identification), something
is still missing. Kraus claims that because of the lack of Phantasie the war
atrocities couldnt be imagined, but as war literature by Jnger and others shows,
the problem seems more like too much imagination in the place where judgment
and moral considerations were in great need. Moreover, imagination in the above-
cited paragraph refers to the real rather than some imaginary world: the death at
the Ruhr and the freezing winter in the trenches. It is about the missing context
that I have discussed in the previous chapter. The issue for Kraus is therefore not
the failure of mental capacity but the way discursive fields constitute their own
logic and create a manipulative and enthusiastic impact, or what could also be

214
Edward Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.78.
215
Ibid.

127
defined, following Barthes and Sade, a structure of desire. In summary, it is not
failure of imagination which is the cause of the war, but a failure to constitute
separation between the imaginary and the real and between life and art, redirect
frustration and passion from actualizing ideological concepts, onto creative
artistic freedom. This is exactly what Phantasie in Krauss terms, supposed to do.

Phantasie, a term with erotic undertones, constitutes relation to language that is

based on tension between desire and uncertainty. It demands active engagement
with the words, as well as a space or a margin (Spielraum) in which memories,
traditions, contexts and emotions can come together. Therefore, it problematizes
any predetermined meaning or sense and functions, very much like Barthes
Neuter as a displacement that brings language into a constant state of
indetermination. Thus, it is not an imaginative capacity that is set against the
propaganda per se, but rather a mechanism that prevents interpellative and
manipulative forms of speech. However, it does not mean a dream world or a
symbolic sphere but an ability to read or sense what the language hides, thus
enables to create a position and judgment.

Phantasie has another important function. It marks the difference between human
speech with its moral potential, and the mechanized reified language of this new
bourgeois society. Kraus writes: At first everything was a lie, including the
persistent lie that only others were lying, and now, plunged into the neurasthenia
of hatred, it is all true.216 In Timms analysis, the key words in this quote are
truth and lie, which indicate the function of the media as propaganda. This
again brings us to the paradox of Phantasie, i.e. that the media creates an
imaginary and false perception and therefore enhances the Phantasie instead of
providing true information. The approach I am suggesting highlights a different
word from this quote: neurasthenia, the exhaustion of the central nervous
system. This mental condition was popular among the members of the upper
class, and associated with the modern urban environment. It was also associated
with the First World War and related to shellshock. The flood of information has

216
See: In Dieser Grossen Zeit (F 404: 12).

128
a dramatic impact on the nerves, and if we identify, as Kraus does, telegrams as
grenades and words as weapons,217 then it is possible to think of the newspaper
readers as traumatized by its linguistic effects.

The operation of the media on the nervous system is exemplified in another line
from Krauss essay: The world has been defeated by soundbytes [Tonflle]. I am
convinced that it is no longer events that occur, but clichs that function
automatically (F321-2, 1911). This quote, which seems to be taken directly from
judge Daniel Paul Schrebers memoirs, defines some of the scenes of the Last
Days.218 It is true, as Timms claims, that clichs distort reality, but in a media-
operated, simulated reality, this claim is not enough in order to form a critical
position. It is not a matter of bad press or greedy and cynical politicians: it is a
social crisis for which there is no language; for which a new language (a new
linguistic form) must be formed in order to both describe and criticize it. Hence,
Krauss critical move goes further, as he explores the way these clichs are
manufactured and distributed. Through Phantasie and the chaotic he attempts to
provide an alternative experience of language: an awareness of the medium, and
an option of resistance from within. Phantasie, the ability to grasp or imagine, has
to do with the very condition of judgment and morality, i.e. with the newspaper
readers (potential) subject position.

Silence

Am Ende war das Wort. Jenem, welches den Geist gettet, blieb nichts brig als
die Tat zu gebren.219 [In the end was the word. For the one, who killed the spirit,
nothing left but to give birth for the act].

Krauss paraphrase of John 1 in Luthers translation makes an allusion to

Goethes Faust and his famous statement, Im Anfang war die Tat, suggesting a
tension between words and deeds in the context of German language and
literature. As already discussed, although according to Kraus the language of the
press fails to provide meaning or sense, it nonetheless functions: either as an

217
Telegram is an instrument of war like the grenade. See: Edward Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New
Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), and F 404: 12.
218
Perhaps the most paranoid moment, excluding the epilogue, is scene 58, act V.
219
LTdM, p.594.

129
ideological institution or as a mechanism of desire (e.g. Jngers writings), or as
soundbytes and media effects that provide mass linguistic repertoire. It is not
surprising that, following a period of several months of silence after the outbreak
of the war, once Kraus finally spoke openly against it in November 1914, in his
Fackel-essay In These Great Times, the main theme becomes the relation between
language and silence:

Erwarten Sie von mir kein eigenes Wort. Weder vermchte ich ein neues zu
sagen; [...] Wer Taten zuspricht, schndet Wort und Tat und ist zweimal
verchtlich. Der Beruf dazu ist nicht ausgestorben. Die jetzt nichts zu sagen
haben, weil die Tat das Wort hat, sprechen weiter. Wer etwas zu sagen hat, trete
vor und schweige!220

[Expect from me no word of my own. Nor should I be capable to say anything

new. He who addresses deeds violates both words and deeds and is twice
despicable this profession [war literature] is not extinct. Those who have nothing
to say because it is the turn of deeds to speak, talk on. Let him who have
something to say step forward and be silent.]

As Walter Benjamin argued in his essay on Kraus,221 Silence is an element that

marks all of Krauss writings. Benjamins term is gewendetes Schweigen, which
can be understood as something reversed and also as something to rely on.
Although Kraus declares that for him the only eligible speech is silence, this has
not convinced many of his readers. Most critics viewed Krauss silence as
separated from his concept of language, or considered it as an emotional response
of despair by a powerless prophet facing the atrocities he cannot prevent.222
Michael Thalken suggested a different definition, connected to Krauss attempts
to distinguish between communication and practical language uses and poetic
language:

Ein Schweigen das aber nicht mit Verstummen und also mit Abwesenheit von
Sprache identisch, sondern deren nicht instrumentalisierte Anwesenheit bedeuten

220
F 404: 2.
221
For Benjamin, everything Kraus wrote, ist ein gewendetes Schweigen, ein Schweigen, dem
der Sturm der Ereignisse in seinen schwarzen Umhang fhrt, ihn aufwirft und das grelle Futter
nach auen kehrt. See: Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: GS, Bd. 2 (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977), p.334-367.
222
See: Note 16.

130
 will.223[Silence is not identical with speechlessness or to absence of language, but
is rather the presentation of their non-instrumental meaning.]

This definition is most relevant for our above discussion on the zero degree of
writing. In order to show the relations between the discussion on Barthes and
Krauss play, I would suggest that first, it is one of the main aspects of writing
zero degree since it challenges the evident function of the medium. Second, that
silence is not the opposite of speech, but rather always present and incorporated
within it. Third, that it is based on absence and gaps, that are meant to create an
estrangement and difference that works against any given social and historical
context. Forth, that it is directed to the style and form, and these are the aspects it
problematizes. For last, that it concerns citationality, which in this context means
speaking through the words and voices of others. As also noted by Brecht (quoted
in the beginning of this chapter), all these features are most relevant for the
analysis of silence in Krauss work and are used in the Last Days.

In October 1915, Kraus publishes an article titled Schweigen, Wort und Tat,
where he again analyzes the relation between words and deeds, and calls for
silence against the Klingklanggloria of mechanical speech. This silence does
not simply mean a withdrawal from speech, but an attempt to constitute a new
form of speech: Und das Schweigen war so laut, dass es fast schon Sprache
war[and the silence was so loud that it almost became language]. Silence is
meant here to create the opposite effect to the one the press is producing, and to
do so through the disclosure of its mediumality. This concept, as I have already
suggested in chapter 2, is related to the use of quotations and juxtapositions.

An example for the use of silence through juxtaposition in the war period is the
article Zum Ewigen Gedchtnis [for eternal memory] (F. 418-422, 1-3), printed
March 1916. A case of Krausian citationality and silence at its highest, it contains

223
Michel Thalken, Ein beweglisches Heer von Metaphern: Sprachkritisches Sprechen bei
Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Gerber, Fritz Mauthner und Karl Kraus (Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang, 1999), p.307. Thalken reads Krauss silence as an expression of a metaphysical position,
relating hid concept of silence with Meister Eckharts: as Ort erfller Sprachintention. I disagree
with the identification of this metaphysical aspect in Kraus, as well as with the idea of the
fullness of language; Thalken suggests, that this is an outcome of the aforementioned silence.
Beyond that, I am also not convinced by his reading of Eckhart.

131
not a single original word by him. It is a reprint of two newspaper reports side by
side. The first tells the story of a train of Serbian refugees travelling in unbearable
conditions on top of loaded wagons in the cold, without food or water, towards an
unknown destination: a ride full of misery and death. The other story is about a
luxury train ride from Vienna to Budapest, carrying two dozen senior journalists.
The journalists are enjoying a conversation while a high class dinner is served at
their warmed cabins. The page layout seems to tell the whole story: the congested
lines of the Serbian refugees report on the one side, the spacious report on the
luxurious press journey on the other.

This Balkan refugee train appears in a dramatic moment in the Last Days of
Mankind (V, 58) with the same shocking images of helpless dying people, cries
for help and death of children. A cry of a young boy is heard saying: Tschicha,
daj mi hleba (Uncle give me bread in Serbiana citation from the first report
above).224 The scene changes: a restaurant wagon appears with war reporters
enjoying some drinks. Again a cry is heard: Es ist doch etwas schnes um dem
Krieg (citation from Julius Hirsch,225 the author of the second report). This
example shows how Krauss documentary drama operates and transforms the
written text (and its spatial configuration) into a theatrical performance. In both
cases, the operation is what Kraus calls schauerliche Kontrasthaftigkeit (F. 462-
71, 171) [gruesome contrast]. The contrast addresses the relation between words
and deeds, press and reality, indulgence vs. misery, the good life of the few vs. the
senseless death and suffering of the masses. By bringing these two trains on stage,
Kraus is able to compose the juxtaposition between the voices and cries, the speed
of the train and the physical motion of the characters, using an off-stage
techniques to project images of the surroundings.

This contrast principle is related to our discussion in the last two chapters
regarding Krauss view of language. The idea that two different aspects are joined

224
This scene is paradigmatic for Krauss understanding of the war. It is again referred to in the
Grumblers final speech Act V, Scene 55.
225
Julius Ferdinand Hirsch was a local reporter in Vienna, and an editor of the Neue Freie Presse.
He appears two times in The Last Days, enjoying life as a reporter, instead of being drafted to the
military and forced to fight.

132
together to create a new effect (word and thought) that requires the reader to use
his own Phantasie, and create the meaning by himself. In other words, the literary
achievement is based on the thing which is unsaid but re-created. This is the kind
of language-experience Kraus aims to create through these contrasting images.
This relates to his idea of shock therapy for war trauma. The increasing pace of
changing scenes that are suddenly interrupted creates a feeling of being under
constant attack. Kraus called these interruptions Verwandlung a change but also
metamorphosis.

The transition here refers not only to the changing of scenes, but also to the shift
in media. This transformation of newspaper reports into a theatrical scene is
another technique of silent writing. As Kraus mentions in the prologue,
Dokument ist Figur; Berichte erstehen als Gestalten, Gestalten verenden als
Leitartikel; das Feuilleton bekam einen Mund, der es monologisch von sich
gibt.226 [Document is dramatic persona; reports come to life as characters,
characters perish as editorials; the feuilleton acquires a mouth that speaks itself in
a monologue]. Beyond the contrast between real people and newspaper-figures,
there is also a conflict between two different media: the theater and the press.
Krauss silent writing transforms quotations into theater scenes, and creates a
problematization of the text on the medium level. Kraus explained this difference
between media in 1908 (a view that would form the theoretical basis for his new
medium of reading sessions, which he begins in 1910, and which will stand at the
center of the next chapter):

Der Journalismus, der auch das geschriebene Wort an die Pflicht unmittelbarer
Wirkung band, hat die Gerechtsame des Publikums erweitert und ihm zu einer
geistigen Tyrannis Mut gemacht, der sich jeder Knstler selbst dann entziehen
mu, wenn er sie nur in den Nerven hat. Die Theaterkunst ist die einzige, vor der
die Menge eine sachverstndige Meinung hat und gegen jedes literarische Urteil
behauptet. (F. 261, 9)

[Journalism, that tied the written word to the duty of immediate effect, has
expended the easement of the public; strengthened it and turned it to an
intellectual tyrant that every artist must withdraw from, if he only has the nerve.

226
LTdM, Prolog.

133
 Only in theater are the masses competent in thinking and stand up against any
literary judgment].

Thus, against the tyranny of the reading-masses provoked by the press, Kraus sees
theater as a medium that could create a counter-effect. Last Days of Mankind is
taking this notion one step further, when it presents not a standard theater play
(a theatrical text in the traditional sense) but a staging of press articles, as well as
scenes that show the tyrannical reading public in action (like characters such as
the Alte Biach or the Abonnent). The theater is meant to provoke thinking,
problematize the press, and most importantly, to do all this precisely by making
use of the latters own medialitycitations, gestures, sound effects, music, visual
materialas a counter theatrical effect. Thus, what we have is not an attempt to
provide new information or truths about the war (an attempt destined to be
emptied by the corrupted mediatic form of the press), but rather an orchestrated
repetition in which mediality itself becomes a critical strategy.227

There are other forms of writing that can be considered part of this technique of
silence, some of which we have already mentioned: deformed or unrecognizable
speech (cries and noises), continuous repetitions, extremely detailed stage
instructions (several pages long in the case of scene 58) instead of lines spoken by
the characters, gestures, sound effects and other physical effects. Each act begins
with newspaper boys shouting Extraausgabe!, and the play ends in great
silence, a moment of suspension, at the end of the great carnival of the Last
Night, followed by the divine voice from above, that of God citing the Kaiser: I
did not want this.

227
Those scenes show the journalist Alice Schalek focusing on the process of production or the
staging of her reports from the front. Schalek is blamed not only for being a prominent war
correspondent, but also as a woman. This is not the product of chauvinism, but of a symbolic
connection Kraus sees between woman and nature. See: Dietrich Simon, Karl Kraus, Stimme
Gegen die Zeit, in: Kurt Krolop / Dietrich Simon, Kommentare zu Karl Kraus (Berlin: Volk und
Welt Verlag, 1971), p.66-67. Schalek sued Kraus for libel after the war; the case was withdrawn.
See: Kraus, No Compromise, Selected Writings of Karl Kraus (New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing, 1977).

134
Citationality

In the prologue to the play, Kraus states that: die grellesten Erfindungen sind
Zitate [the most glaring inventions are quotations]. Although some of the
dialogues are fictitious, most of the material is based on real quotations; many of
them, like the two-train example or the nightingale that were discussed in the
previous chapter, are taken from Die Fackel. In this sense, the Last Days is based
on what a devout Die Fackel reader is already familiar with. Although there are
scenes where these are simply read out loud, most of the citations in the play are
staged. They are cut, modified, repeated and rephrased through a montage
technique that creates a dialogue between two or more different citations. The
characters of the play are constantly using citations, whether by unintentionally
expressing ides recues or deliberately citing the newspaper or some politician.
The point, however, is less the content of what they cite, and more the fact that
they have turned into citing-marionettesa fact produced by the Gestalt effect of
the play as a whole, this overabundance of citations. Kraus emphasizes this by
contrasting cited words with different dialects of speech, creating a strong effect
of dishonesty and falsenesses. This is evident in the Sirk-Ecke scenes where
people simply repeat and cite what they have read or heard.

Citations have another role in the play. They are related to the documentary
function of the play itself, as an attempt to recount a traumatic event that cannot
be articulated. In his closing monologue, the Grumbler states:

Htte man die Stimme dieses Zeitalters in einem Phonographen aufbewahrt, so

htte die uere Wahrheit die innere Lgen gestraft und das Ohr diese und jene
nicht wiedererkannt. So macht die Zeit das Wesen unkenntlich, und wrde dem
grten Verbrechen, das je unter der Sonne, unter den Sternen begangen war,
Amnestie gewhren. Ich habe das Wesen gerettet und mein Ohr hat den Schall
der Taten, mein Auge die Gebrde der Reden entdeckt und meine Stimme hat,
wo sie nur wiederholte, so zitiert, da der Grundton festgehalten blieb fr alle
Zeiten.228

[Had one preserved the voice of this era on a phonograph, the outer truth would
have been in conflict with the inner lie and the ear would not have recognized
either of them. Thus, time makes the essence unrecognizable and would grant
amnesty to the greatest crime ever committed under the sun, under the stars. I
228
LTdM, p.599.

135
 have saved this essence, and my ear has detected the sound of their deeds, my
eyes the gestures of their speaking, and my voice, when only repeated, so quoted,
that the fundamental tone remains for all times.229]

There are several points here important for our discussion: First, Kraus refers to a
process that has to do not with the collection of documentary material, but with
the representation of the tension between outer truth and inner lie. This cannot be
achieved by a mechanic medium, such as the phonograph, only through human
voice, the physical act of production of sound. Second, what the Grumbler states
to have preserved is the sound of the deeds, the gestures of speech, the tone.
These are not the words as such, but the Stimmung, the expression, the non-verbal
aspects of speech that is the essence and the critical thing to be documented.
Third, this documentation is itself based on citation: It is through the repetition of
the Grumblers words that the tone can be rehearsed and recognized. Finally, in
defining his documentary mission, Kraus has a dramatic figure in mind. Just after
these lines, the Grumbler cites Horatio from Hamlet (Act V, scene 2). Although
this last monologue is the Grumblers most honest moment, he speaks there in
words that are not his own. The point being that, in order to be (finally) true
with himself, he needs to put on a mask.

IV. Conclusion

HAUPTMAN NIEDERMACHER: Immer wieder zgern unsere Jugens. Jeder

von ihnen wei lngst, da General Ruhmleben bei einer Besprechung der
Kampflage den prgnanten Befehl gegeben hat, Kriegsgefangene, ob verwundet
oder unverwundet, mit Gewehrkolben oder Revolver niederzumachen und
Verwundete auf dem Feld zu erschieen, wie die Lgenpropoganda unser Feinde
behauptet.

[CAPTAIM NIERDERMACHER: Our boys keep on hesitating. Each of them

knows for long time that General Ruhmleben when discussing the battle situation
gave precise orders to use rifle butts or revolvers to finish off all prisoners of war,
whether or not theyre wounded, and to shoot the wounded in the field, just as the
false enemy propaganda claims we do.]230

In this short scene, the captain is trying, without success, to order one of his
soldiers to shoot a French war prisoner. When he realizes his words are of no use,

229
LTdM, p.204 (translation modified).
230
LTdM, p.179 (translation modified). Niedermachen means to slam down. Ruhmleben means
life of fame or reputation. Another major appearing in this scene is named Metzler massacre.

136
he utters, irritated, do I have to do everything for you shitheads?, and then
shoots the prisoner himself. In her analysis of this scene, Tanya Winkler-
Bluestone emphasized how the question of Niedermachung (execution) is already
anticipated both in the order of the general and in the uncanny name of the
captain. Although the order to kill all prisoners is dismissed as a lie of enemy
propaganda, this is precisely what takes place. Here is a language that is not
aware of itself, and thus all the more dangerous argues Winkler-Bluestone.
What does Lge [lie] mean here, if that which it denies actually takes place? Its
meaning is vague to the captain as his name is identical to the word he uses to call
for the destruction of helpless human beings. [] this nonchalance of the captain
has the opposite effect on the reader who recognizes the power of words to
kill.231

But that is exactly what does not take place in the scene. The captain is using all
the words he has, commanding and threatening the soldiers, and yet they still
hesitate, until in the end he must perform the act himself. This is a beautiful
example of a speech that, instead of encouraging action, results in hesitation and
indecision. The word-action relation in the scene is emphasized by the names of
the captain and the other two officers (Ruhmleben, Metzler), as well as by their
speech, which focuses on executing orders. Like other secondary figures along the
play, they are bodies of the new sovereign power, and their speech is part of this
mechanism. They are marionettes in the operetta. This new language of power
is evident when the captain himself fails in his speech. Like so many other similar
examples in the play, the point is not nonsense itself, but rather its making clear
that under such conditions, reasoning is useless. The soldiers seem to refuse to
accept this non-logic: they hesitate. In their hesitation they force the captain to
execute the war prisoner himself, and expose the brutal violence of a mechanism
that needs no words. It is thus not words that kill, but the result of a new form
of power that turns humans into marionettes who lack the capacity to resist or

231
Tanya Winkler-Bluestone, Silence and Citationality in Gustav Flaubert and Karl Kraus: The
Struggle Between Social Use and Literary Writing (Saarbrcken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mller, 2009),
p.115.

137
give themselves any account about the events. As the Grumbler emphasized, the
(mechanized) word has killed spirit, resulting in a language of actions.232 This
hesitationa zero degree resistance, we might saycreates a gap between word
and deed, which is all the Grumbler can hope for.

This also concerns a more general problem in regard to the readings of the play.
Although Krauss critique focuses on the medial aspects, this does not mean that
he believed in an omnipotent power of language, wether metaphysical, magical or
poetic. Unlike views such as Ungars, who claims that Kraus firmly believed that
purification of language would work to purify ethics,233 or that he believed in a
mystical unity between word and essence,234 I argue that the play presents a
completely different image of language. The zero degree I have used to describe
Krauss writing practices implies a deep level of linguistic skepticism. On the one
hand, there is too much power in language: the press, institutional speech, the
ways the streets of Vienna became scenes of writing. What Kraus suggests against
this access of writing and speech is (a very particular kind of) silence. On the
other hand, this new language cannot be refuted or resisted from an external point
(the Sartrean ideal of the critic that Barthes attacks). Through the zero degree
theater, Kraus aims to create a gap between words and actions, and to sneak in
hesitation and indecision. It is therefore not a pure language or metaphysical
harmony, but an intensive attempt to bring language to the threshold of its ability,
to turn it against itself, and provide not redemption or solution, but an opportunity
to see oneself through this uncanny mirror.

232
In this dramtic monolog the Grumbler states: Nicht da die Presse die Maschinen des Todes in
Bewegung setzte aber da sie unser Herz ausgehhlt hat, uns nicht mehr vorstellen zu knnen,
wie das wre: das ist ihre Kriegsschuld! See: LTdM, p.594. [Not that the press set the machines
in motion, but that it empties our hearts, that we could no longer imagine ourselves: that is their
war-guilt!].
233
Fredrick Ungar, Introduction to the Last Days of Mankind (New York: Fredrick Ungar
Publishing, 1974), p.xviii.
234
Franz Mauthner, The Last Days of Mankind Critical Analysis, in: Beitrge zu einer Kritik der
Sprache, Bd. III (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923), p.258.

138
 Chapter 5
Poetry as Mediatic Shift:
The Theater of Reading

Das Wort hat einen Feind, und das ist der Druck. (F. 300, 22) [The word has one enemy, this is
the print.]

As already indicated in previous chapters, the Last Days of Mankind presents a

tension between different media forms, literary styles and genres. The play
explores different strategies aimed at manifesting and overcoming linguistic and
literary impasses which the War made obvious. As the play goes on, its emphasis
shifts from word-games and satire on common phrases in the public discourse to a
chaotic performance of mumble-jumble, nonverbal expressions and noise effects.
The tragedy of mankind is turned into an operetta that aims to present not
narrative or political critique in the usual sense, using language to state what is
wrong about the status quo, but what the character of the Grumbler (Nrgler) calls
the sound of deeds: to show what is wrong with language itself. When he utters
these words, the Grumbler sits behind a desk. He doesnt act so much as orates
and embodies the figure of the reader (Vorleser). This moment demonstrates the
increasing emphasis that is placed on tonality and acoustics, as well as the tension
between the printed text and the act of speecha central motif in Krauss post
war theatrical endeavors. It may be argued then, that the main literary and
mediatic conclusion of the Last Days of Mankind relates to the shortcomings and
dangers of the written word,235 and the urgency of creating a new kind of
theatrical language that would concentrate on voice, tone and sound; a language

235
Here are the words of the Grumbler on the dangers of the printed word: Das gedruckte Wort
hat ein ausgehhltes Menschentum vermocht, Greuel zu verben, die es sich nicht mehr vorstellen
kann (LTdM, Akt I, Szene 29) [The printed word has brought about a hollow mankind to commit
evils, which it can no longer imagine.]

139
that would use the stage in order to readdress the relation between language and
experience after the traumatic times of war.

I. The Theater der Dichtung as Anti-Medium

In order to face the failure of the written word and printed text, writing and
publishing in Die Fackel was not enough for Kraus. During the War, he extended
his public reading performances, in which he sat behind a desk, sometimes
accompanied by piano, reading his essays or scenes from plays, reciting all the
parts himself as a one man show. These readings were considered as successes:
although their advertising was limited to Die Fackel and Die Arbeiter Zeitung, a
700 seat hall was often full. The audience consisted mainly of the circle of Kraus
admirers, who reacted with excitement to his performances. Recounting his
memoirs from these times as a student in Vienna, Elias Canetti describes his
impressions of these public reading:

When he read aloud from [The Last Days of Mankind], you were simply
flabbergasted. No one stirred in the auditorium, you didnt dare breathe. He read
all parts himself, profiteers and generals, the scoundrels and the poor wretches
who were the victims of the warthey all sounded as genuine as if they were
standing in front of you. Anyone who had heard Kraus didnt want to go to the
theater again, the theater was so boring compared with him; he was a whole
theater by himself, but better.236

According to Canettis account, Kraus created a powerful theatrical experience,

based on voice and gestures that moved his audience more than any other
theatrical performance. As Canetti notes elsewhere,237 Krauss gift for mimicry
enabled him to produce an acoustic citation238 (Akustische Zitat). Krauss
mimetical speech was also commented upon, albeit ironically, by Franz Werfel,

236
Elias Canetti, The Torch in My Ear (New York: Macmillan, 1983), p.66.
237
Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words, (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p.32.
238
Canetti notes on the relation between the printed and the spoken word: The black, printed,
dead words were audible to him. When he quoted them, he seemed to be letting voices speak
acoustic quotations. See: Canetti, CW (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p.32. In his descriptions
of Krauss readings Canetti moves between mimicry: Thanks to Kraus I began to understand that
each individual has a linguistic figure; and critique of the medium: That there is no greater
illusion than the idea that language is a medium of communication among men. One talks to the
other, but in such a manner that he does not understand. See: Ibid, p.42. This tension in Canetti
remains unresolved.

140
who coined the expression acoustic mirror (Akustischer Spiegel) in his
Spiegelmensch, discussed in Chapter 1. In his counter play, Literatur oder Man
wird doch da sehn, Kraus reacted by using the same expression in a way that was
meant not only to ridicule Werfel, but also to emphasize a different understanding
of the mimetic logic.239 Kraus too emphasizes the acoustic aspect of such
theatrical citations. But whereas for Werfel and Canetti the mimetic aspect means
presenting the faults of politicians and journalists by repeating or mimicking their
words like a talking mirror, for Kraus the purpose is to highlight the tension
between the written, manufactured word that possesses interpellative power, and
the bodily-produced spoken word that provides a creative, interpolative potential
(Einschpfung). As already noted in Chapter One, what Kraus tries to show in his
attack on Werfel is the distinction between the techniques of plagiarism and
montage as poetic strategies of resistance, versus Werfels banal mimicry and
literary misappropriation. Krauss Akustiches Zitat is contrasted with what he
calls Akustischer Zierrat (acoustic ornament): the ornamented speech of the press
and well as of writers like Werfel, who turn the theater into mundane, bourgeois
entertainment.

The notions of mimicry and acoustic mirroring also prove problematic when
viewed against the overall context of Krauss project of public readings.240 In his
lifetime, Kraus held in total 700 public readings, of which 260 were entirely of his
own writings and 300 of other authors.241 Between 1916 and 1925 Kraus held
over 200 such readings, two thirds of which were of his own writings, and the rest
of other authors, including Nestroy, Goethe, Shakespeare, Jean Paul and others.
However, in the next decade the proportion shifted, as he dedicated most of the

239
The following is a fine example that not only expresses the essence of Krauss critique of
Werfel, but also performs it: Dein Buch, mein Sohn hat sieben Siegel./ Jedoch akustich ist mein
Spiegel. [Your book, my son, has seven seals/ However my mirror is acoustic]. Kraus, Dramen
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), p.65. Throughout the play Kraus stresses the difference
between Werfels mimicry that uses the words of others in order to accord with and take part in
artistic discourse, and his own satirical usage, which deconstructs any such positions.
240
When Benjamin refers to Krauss mimetic talent, he emphasizes how the characters speak
through him, and that what is exposed is not the figures he cites but Kraus himself. This is, in
my reading, a description of what one could call the mediatic aspect of this reading.
241
Edward Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.376.

141
readings to those other authors.242 Knowing that many of his admirers preferred
readings of his own writings, Kraus sometimes tricked his captive audience,
reading some classical text instead of one of his own, as advertised in the program
for that evening.243 It seems that, at some point, he deliberately distanced himself
from the immediate social and political context in favor of giving his
performances an apparently non-contemporary and alienated nature.244 The point
of these public readings was thus not a specific reference to a public figure or a
social state of affairs in Vienna (although there are many such examples in
Krauss writings), but rather the rejection of any immediate association, and a
shift from direct confrontation with reality to forms of reflection that inspire a
creative and imaginative attitude towards that reality. In a 1925 essay marking his
200th public reading,245 Kraus stresses that what matters in the readings is not the
content (Stoff)which, in the case of his writings, might distract the audience
onto focusing too much on timely issuesbut the form, which allows the
shaping word (Gestaltendes Wort) to develop. This is achieved not by acting or
role-playing but by a series of zero degree reading practices, such as the re-
creation of speech acts, and the ability to rehearse and (re)cite. On the one hand,
these reading practices can be understood through the concept of silent language,
discussed in previous chapters, namely talking through the words of others. On
the other hand, this also means that the performance is based not on the enactment

242
Kari Grimstad, MP (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), p.159.
243
Jens Malte Fischer, Karl Kraus Studien zum Theater der Dichtung und Kulturkonservatismus
(Kronberg: Taunis, 1973) p.39.
244
Kraus has an interesting definition of up to date, which he contrasts with the timeliness of
the press: Aktuell ist die berwindung des Zeitwiderstands, die Wegrumung des berzugs,
den das Gerusch des Lebens dem Gehr und der Sprache angetan hat. Fr aktuell aber halten die
Zutreiber der Zeit den Triumph des Gerusches ber das Gedicht, die Entstellung seiner
Geistigkeit durch ein psychologisches Motiv, das der Journalbildung erschlossen ist, und die
Belebung des Schauplatzes durch Erkennungszeichen des neuen Lebens (F 759-765: 71). [Up
to date means to overcome the resistance of the times, to remove the cover that the noise of life
has placed over the capacity to hear and speak. However, what the whoremongers of the age
consider to be up to date is the triumph of noise over the poem, the deformation of its spirituality
by means of psychological motive that is accessible to anyone whose mind is furnished by the
newspapers, and the enlivenment of the theaters by the distinctive signs of new life]. This means
that, first, the concept of up to date should be understood as going against the times, so to
speak. Second, that this resistance focuses on the artistic and mediatic aspects. Third, that this
resistance is not to the newspapers but to the social logic that produces them, and to the
psychological consequence of their mediatic functioning.
245
Kraus, Zweihundert Vorlesungen und das geistige Wien (F 676-678: 54).

142
of a dramatic figure but on the embodiment of the medium itself; a presentation
that exposes the mediatic function through the estrangement of its words:

Das sind jene Vortrge, in denen ich nicht mein eigenes Wort bediene und nicht
den geringsten Spielraum habe, andere als positive Fhigkeiten zu beweisen, zu
welchen man doch wohl die Gabe der Darstellung und die Bereitschaft, dem
fremden Dichterwort zu huldigen, wird rechnen mssen. (F 676-678: 57)

Recitations, in which I serve not my own word and dont have the smallest
margin, other than to attest to the positive abilities, to which one must take into
account the talent of the presentation and willingness, to praise the foreign word
of the poet.

Kraus describes himself as Vorleser. Unlike a performing artist who provides his
own interpretation of a text, his recitations are based on an objective delivery
(he uses the terms Objektivitt and Sachlichkeit), and a rigorous tonality and
pronunciation that channels the poetic effect. What he voices is not the content
but the form, the creative potential the poetic language already possesses, and
which can trigger the minds of his audience. His expertise lies in his ability to
serve (Bedienen) in the role of a medium, without any free space of personal
contribution. Viewed from this angle, Krauss reciting achieves its effect through
a double dialectical tension: first, between the embodiment of the word and its
foreign body (Fremdkrper); and second, between the act of reading, located in
space and time, and the words being read, which transgress any contingency. This
intricate embodiment of words through speech emphasizes the material-bodily
aspect of language, and the demand to give words their contextual flesh; at the
same time, it also keeps them in motion and never fully determined. It is therefore
a project that marks the difference between written and spoken word, a tension
that is critical for understanding Krauss reading method and his critical life-
project more generally.246

246
This can be seen in the important 1980 aphorism which is often quoted in this context in the
secondary literature: Wenn ich vortrage, so ist es nicht gespielte Literatur. Aber was ich schreibe,
ist geschriebene Schauspielkunst. (F 336-337: 41). [When I recite, it is not acted literature. But
what I write is a written work of acting]. The point here, in my reading, is not that writing and
theater are combined, or that Kraus sees himself as an actor when he writes, but that any use of

143
It is not only that the spoken word provides a material embodiment and context,
but also the fact that the possibility of art and poetry depends upon these mediatic
aspects. In the following aphorism, for example, the question of artistic and
aesthetic value becomes a question of the shift and transition between two media:

Der Dichter schreibt Stze, die kein schpferischer Schauspieler sprechen kann,
und ein schpferischer Schauspieler spricht Stze, die kein Dichter schreiben
konnte [...] Zwei Wirkungsstrme die einander ausschalten." (F. 389-390, 40)

The poet writes sentences that no creative actor can speak, and the creative actor
speaks sentences that no poet could write two streams of effect that neutralize
one another.

There is an artistic quality in each of these media which, regardless of talent, is

incommensurable. This leads to an inherent deficit of expression in moving from
one medium to another: The performance of the playwrights written words ends
not with their enactment, but with the two media neutralizing one another.
Commenting on this aphorism, Kari Grimstad claims that such remarks show that
Krauss mode of thinking was theatrical.247 There is no doubt that the
theatricality of language plays a central role in Krauss thinking. However, the
aphorism is not meant to contrast an eloquent theatrical performance with a
constrained written literature, but to emphasize an impasse in the relations
between these two media that has an impact on the artistic experience itself. What
Kraus seems to suggest is a rethinking of the relations between writing and
theatrical performance through a different conceptnot staging, but reading:

Literatur ist wenn ein Gedachtes zugleich ein Gesehenes und ein Gehrtes ist. Sie
wird mit Aug und Ohr geschrieben. Aber Literatur muss gelesen sein, wenn ihre
Elemente sich binden sollen. Nur dem Leser (und nur dem, der ein Leser ist)
bleibt sie in der Hand. Er denkt, sieht und hrt, und empfngt das Erlebnis in
derselben Dreieinigkeit, in der der Knstler das Werk gegeben hat. Man mu
lesen, nicht hren, was geschrieben steht. (F. 294-295, 37-8)

one medium is problematized and confronted by the other: his recitations are not play-acting; it is
his writing that is theatrical. The spoken word on stage is textualized, and the written word is
theatrically performed.
247
Kari Grimstad, MP (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), p.127.

144
 Literature is when something that is thought is at the same time seen and heard. It
is written with the eye and the ear. But literature must be read, if its elements are
to be bound together. Only the reader [Leser] (and only the one who is a reader)
can achieve this. He thinks, sees and hears, and senses the experience in the same
trinity, in which the poet created the work One must read, not hear, what was
written.

To engage with literature requires the ability to achieve an experience of reading

that has mental, visual and acoustic aspects. An experience that, as the previous
aphorism indicates, is only possible when these aspects are harmonized. Hence,
the act of reading properly-understood refers to different levels of experience that
can be obtained through mediatic trinity (seeing, hearing, sensing).248 Only
through this kind of reading can these aspects be reunified. The reader is
demanded to enact the words and the sentences, to read not only with his eyes but
also with his ears and mind; to find between the lines, through the sentences, and
within the words the level of the unsaid of the text (see the discussion in Chapter
2 section IV on the concept of Sprachgestaltung). The mediatic deficit cannot be
compensated through a theatrical performance (enactment), but only through a
performative reading that would negotiate between the experiential and the
semantic aspects of language. Such reading does not relate to a text in the usual
sense of the word, but focuses on its ability to create an experience that is rich and
tempting, and at the same time, full of gaps and absences that demand mental
engagement and material and sensual integration.

In another passage, Kraus pushes the same point further, emphasizing the tension
between the printed and the read word:

... denn wenn das gedruckte Wort sich ber das vorausgesetzte Mitwissen und
Mitfhlen der Anhnger getrost erheben mag und immer wieder die bekannte
Handlung zwischen mir und der Gegenwelt zum neuen Werk erhhen das
gesprochene, vor den frmlich Stoffbeteiligten gesprochene, mu ihnen in der
Tat nicht sagen, was sie nicht nur wissen, sondern woran sie selbst gewirkt
haben. (F.676-678, 54)

248
As Isava mentions, Geschrieben steht is a biblical expression, first introduced by Martin
Luther. Together with the trinity-motive, there is definitely a theological undertone. The
expression as it was written suggests an untimely potential for re-actualization. See: Isava, WKV
(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), p.76.

145
 ... since the printed word may rise above the assumed common knowledge and
joint feelings of its followers safely and time and again elevates the familiar story
line between me and the counter-world to a new art work the spoken, before the
formally in the subject-matter involved word, must not tell them indeed, not only
what they do not know, but on what they effectuated themselves.

The printed word is not obsolete, but should be elevated and turned into a spoken
art-work. The experiential aspects are again emphasized here, as well as the
dialectic between what is written and the way it affects the audience. But it seems
that the printed word, even in the form of satire, nonetheless has a limited effect,
as it relates to the social discourse and thus trapped in its impasses. Once again,
contrary to interpretations, such as Canettis, that emphasize the mimetic aspects
of these reading practices, simply telling people what they dont know or
condemning people out of their own mouth is of no use.249 Ignorance, as
harmful as it may be, is not the reason for social decay, but one of its outcomes.
And furthermore, such decay, as repeatedly stressed, has to do with the condition
of language itselfwhich therefore affects the language of the social critic as
well. Krauss readings should thus not be viewed (as many commentators tend to)
as a theater of language, one that is supposed to remedy social ailments through
an accurate pronunciation and tone, but as a theater of reading, one that aims to
generate a different experience of language altogether, through these means of
acoustic effects and tonalities. In so doing, these reading performances create a
mediatic confrontation that uncovers not the content of the discourse or text in
question but the way it functions and operates. It achieves this by bringing to the
fore the tension between different discursive levels, the gaps between words and
intentions, verbal manipulations, misleading loops of repetition, and above all, the
emptiness of speech. Kraus is suggesting a theater that works against itself as
illusion or myth, exposing the mediatic aspects of theatrical performance as such,
thereby emphasizing the limits of every representation.250 The public readings of
Shakespeares works, for example, many of them performed in Krauss own

249
See: Elias Canetti, CW (New York: Seabury Press, 1979).
250
As Georg Knepler argues, these features are close to Brechts epic theater and to the notion of
Verfremdungseffekt. See: Georg Knepler, Karl Kraus Liest Offenbach (Berlin: Henschelverlag,
1984) p.93.

146
adaptation (Nachdichtung), have to do not with a conservative cultural approach
or nostalgic sentiment for the old Burgtheater, as Jens Malte Fischer and Kari
Grimstadt suggest. Such analysis simply suggests an ornamentization of the past,
which Kraus, as a harsh critic of ornamentation in general, would clearly have
rejected. Kraus indeed regards some of the Burgtheaters actors as models and
reference points. However, one should note that those actors he admired are those
who stood out against their timea time Kraus refers to in one of his poems,
dedicated to one of his favorite Burgtheater actresses, as empty time (die leere
Zeit).251 An interesting example is Krauss review of a book dedicated to another
prominent Burgtheater performer, Josef Lewinsky, whom Kraus already saw in
1883.252 While the critics of the day, such as Hermann Bahr, criticized
Lewinskys style as declamatory, for Kraus this was one his greatest
achievements. What those critics failed to grasp was, that it was blindsided by
the experience (dass es von dem Erlebnis berrumpelt wurde). The acting-
reading Lewinsky related not to the content of the performance but to its style.
The declamation of the theatrical text was considered by Kraus as connected to
the ability to create not simply a reading but a powerful experience of the
expressive potential of language. This goes back to the tension between speech
and action, and between the said and the unsaid. Lewinskys performance voices
the disintegration of speech in face of a traumatic experience, creating a critical
act in a society that has lost its ability to speak. Kraus concentrates on those rare
theatrical moments of unification between language and experience, such as the
small shift of emphasis in the expression of a single word, father, in Adolf
Sonnenthals performance of Henry IV, which Kraus praised in 1901.253 The

251
The poem is titled Liebeserklrung an Zerline Gabilion (F 743: 62).
252
(F 726-729: 71-73).
253
In this line of the play, the king is referring to his son Harrys wish not to see him again and to
succeed him. As Kraus notes, the emphasis should be on the word wish. However, in a 1901
performance Kraus attended, the famous Viennese actor Adolf Sonnenthal emphasized the word
father, creating, according to Kraus, a powerful emotional experience. This example appears in
an article where Kraus discusses the ways Shakespearian plays should be performed as provoking
the imagination through mediatic shifts and gestures. See Heinrich IV (F 65: 23- 29). Timms
relates Krauss emotional response to this theatrical nuance to his own psychodrama,
following the deterioration of his relations with his father after his mothers death in 1891. See:
Edward Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.256-357.

147
moment of correspondence between language and experience Kraus is seeking are
found in these rare moments of mediatic shifts of nuances, tones, and gestures.
Such theatrical reading is based on the ability to negotiate and associate between
written text and spoken word, between experience and trauma. In this sense, the
concept of reading in the Theater der Dichtung is based on the same logic as the
citation (discussed in Chapter 3), namely the problematization of discourse
through inter-contextuality, and the creation of meaning through discursive
transgression. This is how, in Krauss view, a theatrical performance can provide
an alternative to the printed words of the press, and can attune and address the
language crisis, which the War brought to a horrifying climax.

Although Krauss readings were a success, establishing the Theater der Dichtung
as an institute was not an easy task, and required financial support. In November
1929 he published a request for funding of 500,000 Mark in Die Fackel. The
project was meant to bring new life into the dead middle-European theatrical
tradition, through the creation of an inflammatory ensemble that would focus on
public readings of literary works. This was meant to be an alternative to the
modern theaters, which were overtaken by new ideas influenced by expressionism
and realism, which Kraus argued present not new forms of poetry but end up
replicating the phraseology of the press, and answering to the demands of an
already-established gang of critics. As Kraus states:

denn im Gegensatz zu der Bhne, die den Temperamentsmangel der heutigen

schauspielerischen Natur so fragwrdig durch Regieknste ersetzt, ist dem
Theater der Dichtung, das mit Stimme, Miene und Gebrde sein Auslangen
findet, keine Aktion unerreichbar und nichts Menschliches fremd. (F 806-809:
61)

In contrast to the theaters, that have replaced the loss of temperament of todays
questionable nature of acting by artistic directing, the Theater of Poetry finds
its way through voice, mime and gestures, so that no action is unachievable and
nothing human is foreign to it.

Kraus is suggesting a theater that shifts the emphasis from acting and directing to
attentiveness to voice and gestures. This modern, experimental theater is not

148
simply minimalist, but aims to present the richness of poetic theater-works, with
their word-games, puns, associations, insinuations and references. These elements
gain their life through speech and are formed by the shift from the written text to
the vocal performance: in rhyme, repetition, intonation, pauses, etc. Heinrich
Fischer defined it as a theater against the modern age,254 which expresses the
way this new theater estranged itself both from its social context and the theatrical
developments of the time. It wasnt only the new operetta or realistic kitsch (like
the wartime heroic theater shows in which real soldiers were brought on stage255)
that Kraus criticized, but also the extravagant multi-media performances of
prominent directors of the time, such as Erwin Piscators production of Schillers
Die Ruber at the Berlin Volksbne, or Max Reinhardts bloody production of
Macbeth at the Deutsches Theater.256 According to Kraus, these productions
experimented with technological and visual effects at the expense of the text and
its dramatic acoustic nuances.257 Unlike these tendencies, the Theater der
Dichtung left the stage empty, using only the readers voice and a few gestures to
inspire an imaginative attraction (Phantasie) among its audience. The idea behind
this is not an appeal to a conservative, anti-modern, restrained style of
performing, but a divorce from theater altogether:

Das dramatische Kunstwerk hat auf der Bhne nichts zu suchen.

Die theatralische Wirkung eines Dramas soll bis zum Wunsch reichen, es
aufgefhrt zu sehen: ein Mehr zerstrt die knstlerische Wirkung. Die beste
Vorstellung ist jene, die sich der Leser von der Welt des Dramas macht. (F 264-
265: 31)

The dramatic work of art has nothing to do with the stage. The theatrical effect of
a drama should reach as far as the wish to see it enacted; anything more destroys
the artistic effect. The best performance is that which the reader makes for
himself from the world of the drama.

254
Quoted in Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.351.
255
Kraus reported on one of those performences in Die Fackel: Das bervolle Haus jubelte den
Helden begeistert zu, die stramm salutierend dankten (F 462-471: 1-7).
256
Kraus criticized Reinhardts production of Macbeth in 1915 in Berlin, which used extensive
quantities of blood and stage-effects, bringing various war technologies onto the stage.
257
Kraus defines Piscator as Schpfer nach dem Anspruch der Zeit and his work as zeitgemsse
Zweckhaftigkeit ohne Zweck (F 759-765: 49) [contemporary purposefulness without purpose].
Piscators works not only betray their purpose as works of art, but also succumb to the style and
phraseology of the Neue Freie Presse. See: Mein Vorurteil gegen Piscator, (F 759-765).

149
Kraus is paraphrasing Goethe who remarked that Shakespeares plays should be
read rather than performed.258 Theatricality is not on stage but in the readers
mind, and the role of the actor is to provoke and arouse the audiences
imagination.259 Acting should not be overtaken by action. The important elements
should not be represented or enacted but left out as unfulfilled desire, as a lasting
expectation. This is another erotic element enacted through recitation. The artistic
effect depends on this fine line between representation and concealment, which
demarcates mediatic limits and the actors craft. These aspects are based on a
mediatic shifting between text and performance, written and spoken word, which
can be achieved only by a theatrical performance that focuses on acoustic re-
citation.

II. The Experience of Sound

Krauss readings play an important role in his lifework. However, although they
are often evaluated by scholars in terms of their content and reception, they were
hardly analyzed in terms of their acoustic and theatrical effects. A short but
insightful examination of Krauss recitation practices was recently provided by
Timothy Youker. Youker follows Benjamin and Canetti in his reading, analyzing
a recording of one of Krauss readings. In this recording, Kraus reads a newspaper
advertisement followed by a critical essay of his titled Promotional Trips to
Hell (Reklamefahrten zur Hlle).260 The advertisement in question was published
in autumn 1921 in the Swiss newspaper Baseler Nachrichten, which offered its
readers luxury tours to the battlefield in Verdun. The contrast between the

258
Goethe meint, dass es kein Unglck wre wenn Shakespeare ganz von der deutschen Bhne
verdrngt wrde (F 65: 27) [Goethe said that it will be no mishap if Shakespeare will be
completely oust from German theater].
259
Another example is found in Krauss play Traumtheater (1923-1924) (dedicated to his beloved
actress Annie Kalmar who died in 1901). Mein Sinnenspiel: dein Spiel der Phantasie, dass mirs
zur Lust und dir zum Geist gedieh. Karl Kraus, D (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), p.216.
[My sensual acting: your play of imagination (Phantasie) that flourishes in my desire and in your
mind]. Kraus relates the restrained way of acting to erotic desire and sensual experience as well as
to the concept of Phantasie.
260
See: (F 577-582: 96-98). This recording is available online at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATRX52E4xI4

150
touristic attraction and luxurious ride (comfortable car, excellent food, wine and
drinks on the house) versus the horrors of the war at those battlefields provoked
Kraus. He did not only include this advertisement in his readings, but also added
his critical lines in a way that continued the advertisements tone: You learn that
one and a half a million had to bleed to death in the very place where wine and
coffee and everything else is included.261 And he ironically summarizes: Let the
devil take you to a battlefield par excellence! [hol Sie der Teufel nach einem
Schlachtfeld par excellence!]. This powerful satirical piece works on different
levels. The commercialization of the memory of the war, the exploitation of
soldiers sufferings, the clichs used to provoke emotional response, and the
straight line drawn between these abusive aspects and the violence of war itself,
i.e. the economical and ideological interests that lurk behind patriotic discourse.
All this takes place by and through the press, demonstrating not only the relations
between the representation of war and its abuse for profit, but also the way the
very same discursive elements are used both for war propaganda and for business.

The public reading of the advertisement was thus of special significance to Kraus.
He included it in about 30 of his public readings, and also in a radio recording,
which makes it available for acoustic analysis. Youker suggests that Krauss
reading techniques express control and authority that create contrast between
dramatic expression and banal content. Kraus keeps on reading in the same tone
and phrasing, thereby harmonizes the advertisement with his own remarks on it.
In Youkers view, this is a manifestation of what Benjamin (following Krauss
own use of the term in relation to Timon of Athens) refers to as Krauss
cannibalism (Menschenfresser).262 The performance of reading and its steady,
vocal rhythm not only joins content and critique together in a way that exposes
the advertisements twisted and immoral logic, but also digests it into Krauss
own thought and style, producing a cannibalistic act of appropriation.263 As

261
Translated in Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.82.
262
F 91: 1
263
Timothy Youker, The Density of Words: Documentary Theatre, the Avant-Garde, and the
Politics of Form (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2012), p.64.

151
interesting as Youkers interpretation may be, it still leaves some questions open
with respect to Krauss reading praxis. What is the added value of the reading that
is not already present in the written satirical piece? How can reading compensate
for the mediatic loss or provide a critical move with respect to it? How is the
cannibalistic metaphor different from the idea of quotation without quotations
marks and the notion of plagiarism Kraus endorsed and used so often in his
writings (and which seem to stand in the focus of Benjamins intention)? And
perhaps the most critical question, how by breaking the text through his speech
does Kraus aim to invoke accountability and moral judgment? Canettis mimetic
interpretation and Benjamins gastronomic metaphor fail to address these issues.
At the same time, it seems to me that if we set aside Benjamin and Canetti for a
moment, Youkers vocal analysis may nonetheless suggest another unnoticed
direction for dealing with these questions:

In his recitation of the advertisement Kraus sounds similar to an old-fashioned

stage actordrawing out his vowels, crisply enunciating his consonants (except
for the occasional lavishly rolled r), booming as if projecting his voice to the
balcony. He shapes each sentence so that the rhythm rises and falls like a wave,
cresting on the main verb and then trailing off during prepositional phrases, only
to rise up again as he moves into a new clause or reaches a choice turn of phrase.
[] As the performance goes on, the rhythmical ebb and flow of Krauss voice
264
creates an unsettlingly incantatory effect.

Youkers analysis emphasizes the strangeness in Krauss voice that produces a

sense of estrangement and displacement. It has to do with the shift from the
newspaper ad to the theatrical reading, as well as with rapid shifts within the
reading voice itself. This is also the case with his rhythmic changes and the
diversity of volume and intonation. Youker defines these qualities of Krauss
reading as booming, as if meant to break the speech, to turn it into an almost
violent act, perhaps with the aim of associating the advertised battlefield-tour to
the rhythms and sounds of war. The result is an unsettling effect that is perhaps
not so much incantatory but more of a diversified composition that challenges
the act of reading and understanding, and the very experience of language as

264
Ibid., p.63.

152
something natural, honest or clear. Through its recitation the advertisement can no
longer be related to as an innocent offer for a luxurious ride. With his critical
strophes, Kraus continues the advertisements phrasing and tempo, while
expressing those aspects that the original text suppressed: the suffering of
soldiers, the horrors of war, the futility and absurdity of these battles. The
recitation is therefore not an imitation, nor even a digestion or appropriation from
an authoritative position, but a transgression, a repetition that does not simply
allow reflection but opens up an alternative form of listening, one that is sensitive
to tone and not only to content.265 Language in Krauss reading does not tell us
what is wrong by condemning the abuse of war memory. Instead, through the
shifts of tonality and rhythm, it turns attention to the malfunctioning of speech
and the divorce of words from any authentic expression or meaning. The
emphasis and extension in the pronunciation of verbs, as well as the occasional
emphasis and intonation of words like Granaten (grenades), is thus not simply
theatrical, but an expression of the sound of deeds, an echo of that which has
been suppressed by commercial-journalistic speech, and has lost its inner
reference.

It is interesting to compare this recording of the Promotional Trips to Hell to

Krauss readings of writings by Goethe and Shakespeare. In these recordings from
1930 and 1931, Krauss reading voice shapes each sentence, emphasizing tone
and dramatic expression, especially in the dialogue lines from Timon of Athens.
Not only verbs but different words are emphasized and prolonged, at times in
ways that seem to change and challenge the original meaning of the sentence, or
to suggest a sense of self-awareness that doubles that meaning. For example, in
his reading of Timons plea to his friend Vendtius help (Timon act 2, scene 2)
265
Tone is a central term for Kraus. On the one hand, every word has its own specific tone (F 864-
867: 59), and part of the art of performance involves the ability to use and relate to it. On the other
hand, as Krauss essay Der Ton (F 357-359: 1-11) states, tone is also that which replaces real
speech with phrases and mimicry, and ends up with fragmented speech: Es gibt nur einen
Standpunkt zu den Ereignissen und der lautet: ss! Oder, wenn es grosse Ereignisse sind: ..tt!
Alle Publizistik ist nur ein khner Versuch der Umschreibung von Sentiment, die sich in einem
Laut abmachen lassen. (Ibid., p.1) [There is only one standpoint to the events and it says: ss!
Or, when these are great events: ...tt! Journalism as a whole is only a venturous attempt to
paraphrase a sentiment that is detached from the voice.]

153
Kraus is cresting the word Freunde (friends), changing its intonation in a way that
gives the impression its speaker doubts whether the word still carries any
meaning. In his reading of Goethes Pandora, the rapid wave-like tone of the
advertisements reading is replaced by more subtle speech, sometimes with
emphasized pathos, and the outbreak of words through his booming voice is
supplemented by shifts in intonation and pauses. In the reading of Timon again,
Kraus almost sings the sentence Misanthropos bin ich, und hass die
Menschheit266 [I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind], stressing and prolonging
the word Misanthropos. Sometimes his voice sounds reluctant and remote, other
times, condemning and full of rage, as he renounces every encounter and rejects
every human quality. These vocal changes, however, seems more of an uncanny
and troubling style than a theatrical acting that aims to voice characters. Krauss
Timon with its hoarse voice sounds not like a man in pain, proclaiming his
revenge on Athens, but more of a demonic figure that wishes to eliminate the city
through the suspension and demolition of language. Thus, a play that is usually
understood as addressing matters of money and greed (as in Marxs
interpretation), is transformed into a performance of duplicity of language and an
emphasis on its crisis as a medium.267

Georg Knepler notes that Krauss uncanny reading voice works on two levels.
First, it focuses attention on language and on the hearing of the words and
sentences that are often in tension with the action or intention of the characters.
Second, it also creates, like in fragmented texts such as Shakespeares Timon or
Goethes Pandora, a sense of estrangement and ambivalence in relation to
language, one that Kraus terms unnatural (unnatrlich). These aspects become
even more prominent in his readings of Offenbach, where music is used to

266
Timon von Athen, Vierter Aufzug, II. Szene, p.53. In: Karl Kraus, Theater der Dichtung:
Shakespeare (Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp, 1994). This is Krauss own version of the play, an
adaptation of Dorothea Tiecks translation.
267
Ferdinand Ebner, a catholic philosopher who served in the red cross during the war, and
attended one of Krauss readings, noted: He imperceptibly glided over into the tone of singing a
satirical song, sustaining the tone for a few lines and then abruptly breaking off and reverting to
speaking voice that had a bareley credible effect, and the end result was that I too was utterly
swept away, in: Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.402.

154
enhance these effects and provide another range of acoustic and tonal
possibilities.268 The same can be seen in Krauss instructions to actors that he
issued as part of a series of productions of Offenbach he was involved in
instructions that sound very close to Brechts concept of epic theater:

Nur unnatrlich sein! Zuerst unnatrlich! Alles weitere wird sich finden. Dann
beginne ich ihnen das Klima der Sprachregion zu erffnen, in der die Charaktere
wohnen, und zu erklren, da ein Satz nicht blo aus Subjekt und Prdikat
besteht, die man zur Not nicht immer in die Verbindung eines ueren
Sinnes bringen kann, und da jedes Wort sein Leben, seinen Ton hat. (F 864-867:
59)

Only to be unnatural! Primarily unnatural! Everything else will turn up. Then I
begin to introduce to you the climate of the linguistic province in which the
characters live, and to explain that a sentence does not merely consist of subject
and predicate, which one can at need not always bring into connection with
an external sense, and that every word has its own life, its own tone.

Such unnatural acting strives to open the linguistic province where characters
live, which, as in the case of Timon, involve not so much the discursive field in
which they operate as its mediatic and performative limitations and possibilities.
Such acting is thus based on an estrangement of language and, at the same time,
provides it with a tone, a sound that opens to another level of expression. As
Kraus notes, a sentence is not merely the combination of subject and predicate: it
involves tonality, intonation and gestures that play a crucial role in its ability to
convey meaning, to inspire the imagination, and to operate as a speech-act. These
elements, which written language has neglected, are what unnatural acting seeks
to represent. Kraus further differentiates between the inner experience and
external meaning of the sentence. Tone and gestures are part of the inner
experiential aspect of language, while the sentences semantic and grammatical

268
In order to define Krauss view on the role of music, Knepler quotes a line from his Offenbach
poem: von Lust und Schmertz unsagbar zarte Neige! [Between desire and pain there is a very
fine line.] Music not only relates to emotional experience, but also creates polare Strmungen
(F. 349, 11) [polar currents] that enhance the ambivalence and diversity of that experience. See:
Georg Knepler, Karl Kraus liest Offenbach (Wien: Lcker, 1984), p.94-95. The musicality of
speech as well as the shifts from speech to singing is a central theme in Krauss Theater der
Dichtung, especially in reference to Offenbach. This is another neglected theme in Kraus research,
which goes beyond the scope of the current study.

155
meaning relates to the external level. Unnatural acting and Krauss reading
performances seem to operate within this gap, showing how the sentence can
differ from its meaning and how it acquires different connotation through tone.
Like the case of citations, where the quoted verse signifies its iterability and its
migration across contexts, unnatural theatrical speech exceeds its external
semantic function and refers to the listeners experiences and associations. The
result is a performance that uses words in an unconventional way, pushing
language to its limits and concentrating on its mediatic aspects and forms of
production. This now also becomes a new aesthetic criterion: Es ist der
Gipfel eines Genres, worin sich das Unnatrliche so von selbst versteht [It is the
peak of a genre, in which the unnatural becomes self-evident]. Like the characters
busting into song in the operetta, the unnatural should become self-evident within
every genre. The concept of unnatural is thus not meant to indicate what is
artificial or fake, but, as Knepler suggests, can be considered a second
neutrality269: a style that rejects any false pretences for clarity and transparency.

To return to Krauss recording, it is easy to show how the concept of unnatural

speech is present both in the Promotional Trips to Hell reading as well as in the
recitation of classical pieces. Tonality is used not simply to produce dramatic
theatrical effects, but to provide listeners an experience of the diversity and
ambivalence of language, to make them notice gaps and absences, nonsense and
absurdity, and encourage them to try and find inner references to what they hear
and feel. By giving words a tone Kraus is not performing mimicry, but aims to
create what he defines as inimitable unutterable double tongness/languagness
[unnachahmliche Doppelzngigkeit; F. 757-758, 47]: a language that betrays its
formal purposes, and instead produces contradictions that remain throughout, and
that cannot be easily reconciled or ignored. Through this duplicity and unnatural
difference, Kraus is able to produce an acoustic citation in the sense of a
juxtaposition between language (in crisis) and experience (which has no words).

269
See: Knepler, Karl Kraus liest Offenbach (Wien: Lcker, 1984).

156
The foundation of the Theater der Dichtung as an institution that was supposed to
undertake this assignment was, however, never fully accomplished. At first, the
initiative of creating his ensemble attracted some prominent members who have
endorsed the appeal. Yet this was a short-lived charity that quickly dissolved in
1934 under the pressures of economic depression.270 Nevertheless, the Theater
der Dichtung as a concept and an effort to revolutionize theater through a
performance of speech and tone did go on and developed. Kraus kept using the
title Theater der Dichtung in the advertisements for his public readings in Berlin,
Munich, Prague, Paris and other cities. Under this title, Kraus also published his
own adaptations of Nestroy, Offenbach and Shakespeare. This was a critical
project, aimed not to please and entertain the bourgeoisie, but rather, to use
Krauss formulation when describing Nestorys theater, Wortbarrikaden gegen
die Herrschaft der Banalitt (F. 349-350, 16) [Word barricades against the rule of
banality].

Up till now the discussion focused on Krauss idea of a theater of reading that
would not only confront the language of the press and the new forms of theater of
the time, but also aim to create a critical standpoint through mediatic
transgression, achieved mainly through acoustic means. This is how I suggest
understanding Krauss adaptations and readings of Timon or his affinity to
Offenbachs operettas.271 Experiential speech and estrangement of tonality are
central to Krauss views of poetry, and have to do with some of the central terms
he uses when writing about poetry, including rhyme, inner-experience and origin.
If the theater calls for reading, poetry calls for listening and performance. This
will be the subject of the next section of this chapter.

270
See: Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.377.
271
In his Timons Mahl (Timons Feast) Kraus suggests not only that the best way for him to
speak his mind is through Timons words, but alsoas already mentionedstresses the metaphor
according to which the stones that Timon uses to cast out his guests from the feast are Krauss
words of satire. Timon is not just an embodiment of the social critic, but also a figure that serves
as a mediatic outlet, a combination of Flucht und Fluch, escape and curse (F 845, 30-36).

157
 III. Poetry as Theatricality: The Acoustics of the Rhyme

Er ist nicht Ornament der Leere,

des toten Wortes letzte Ehre.

Nicht Wrze ist er, sondern Nahrung,

er ist nicht Reiz, er ist die Paarung.

Er ist das Ufer, wo sie landen,

sind zwei Gedanken einverstanden.272

He is not an empty ornament

of dead words last testament

Not spices but nourishment

he is not allure, but an attachment

He is the bank on which they board

two thoughts that are in accord.

These lines from Krauss poem The Rhyme (Der Reim) exemplify some of his
central thoughts on poetics. The first verse presents a contrast between rhyme and
empty, ornamented speech (dead words). Through a rhyme, words are not
decorated but regain their vitality. As stated in the other verses of the poem, in the
rhyme, words also undergo a process of estrangement with respect to history as
well as any discourse of utility.273 Instead of an external communicative or
aesthetic function, the rhyme creates an inner connection between words. Through
this bonding or coupling words are nurtured and gain their essence and
objectivity (Sachlichkeit).274 As the second verse shows, this is also an erotic

272
Karl Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), p.94.
273
The rhyme possesses an objectivity (Sachlichkeit) that estranges any given historical context,
as the following verse form the poem states: Aus allgemeinrer Sachlichkeit/ glckt neu der Reim
von Leid auf Zeit. [From the general objectivity / rejoices the rhyme from agony of the times].
Kraus emphasizes this point further in the essay: Der Reim, in: Ibid., p.324-325.
274
It is interesting to note that the concept of Sachlichkeit is not something that language already
possesses but a potential that is fulfilled by its form and function. This can also be seen in a
passage from Oscar Wilde, published in Die Fackel in 1911: Die Dinglichkeit der Welt, die
allerdings eine andere ist als die Sachlichkeit der Wissenschaft, strmt mit ihren irrationalen

158
bonding, again marked by a contrast, this time between deceptive allure and true
affection. In the third verse quoted above, Kraus describes this bonding through a
spatial metaphor: the rhyme is a river bank (Ufer): a natural border and a meeting
place between different elements. It is where two different thoughts comply with
each other by the acoustic effect of their rhyming sound. On the one hand,
something new is created through this joining-together of two different thoughts,
thereby exposing the re-creative power of language and the dialectic movement
within it, which Kraus repeatedly emphasizes. On the other hand, this ability of
re-creation is based on an acoustic effect, which generates new thoughts and ideas
through endless combinations and intersections of the sounds and tones of words.
However, as stated both in this poem as well as in Krauss essay The Rhyme, not
any two rhyming words produce a rhyme in this sense. Kraus differentiates
between rhyme as decoration (acoustic ornament), which he calls Klang
(sound), and rhyme based on necessity, erotic tension, and an ability to re-create
thoughts he calls Drang (urge).275 As an example he refers, in his essay, to lines
from Stefan Georges poem Der Stern des Bundes, in order to show that what
seems to be a perfect and pure rhyming effect is actually a Missreim a rhyme
that is aesthetic and not poetic, phonetic but not erotic.276 Rhyme-as-Drang is thus

Qualitten selbstschpferisch in Sinn und Klang. (F 321-322: 43) [The materiality (Dinglichkeit)
of the world, which is indeed something different than the objectivity of science, self-inventively
streams into sense and sound with all its irrational qualities]. There are several resemblances
between Kraus and Neuer Sachlichkeit, the 1920s German artistic movement. For an attempt to
examine this resemblance, although preliminary and general, see: Marko Milovanovic: Ich Habe
gemalt, was sie nur Taten Karl Kraus und die Neue Sachlichkeit (Berlin: Weidle Verlag, 2013).
275
Dort ists ein eingemischter Klang/ hier eingeboren in den Drang. [There it is a half-breed
sound/ here an original urge].
276
The citation from George is part of Krauss critique against the poet and his circle as
representing an aesthetic concept of language that meant disavowal of contextual reference as well
as the inability to express genuine lifeexperiences. This is demonstrated in Krauss statement that
George did not came from the origin (F 810: 10). In Krauss view, the quest for purity and
beauty (schnheit) betrays the nature of language, and creates an ornamental literature. The
tension between Kraus and George comes to the surface in 1929, and had mostly to do with the
Shakespeare translations marking their opposing concepts of translation, and their views of the
social and cultural function of Shakespeares works. In the context of this study, it could be argued
that, although both writers had a special relation to language, as well an erotic attachment to it,
while for Kraus this potential had to do with its actualization through citation, recitation etc., for
George there is an inherent mystical aspect within language itself. This can be seen in Krauss
comment on George in his poem Nach Dreissig Jahren: Und der das Ziel vor dem Weg
gefunden [He reached the goal before the journey]. For George, what was needed was not a
transformative citationality, but rather a conservative-encoded kind of writing. For a study of

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another form of Krauss discussion of Sprachgestaltung. This is made possible
not by the similarity in the meaning of the words, but through their unexpected
interaction. This demonstrates how Krauss thought on language is linked to its
performance and speech: what matters is not what is already in the language itself,
but its actualization through speech. As the examples in the essay show, the
rhyme is meant to create an experience that goes beyond words and their usual
connotations as well as their communicative meaning. Through rhyme, words can
create an experiential effect:

[durch den Reim] ist eine solche Einheit von Erlebnis und Sprache erreicht, eine
solche Eintnigkeit aus dem Motiv heraus, da nicht nur der Gedanke Form
geworden scheint, sondern die Form den Gedanken selbst bedeutet.277

[Through the rhyme] such a unity of experience and language is achieved, such
unison comes out of the motive, that not only thought appears to get a form, but
rather the form becomes meaning and thus the thought itself.

Kraus analyzes here the poetic function of the rhyme in his own poem, Night-hour
(Nchtliche Stunde).278 The poem is based on repeating the first two strophes in
each verse, with one word-change in the third and fourth strophes, creating a
monotony that is echoed in the repeated, unchanging rhyme. This creates a
dissonance between the slight change of words, which marks a progress of life-
circle (day-spring-death), and the repeating sound produced by the rhyme, which
underscores the concept of change, and brings the reader back to a feeling of
living in a monotonous state of constant night hour. This acoustically triggered
dissonance creates a unity of experience and language: a moment of inner
reference to the poems lines. It should be noted that Kraus not only cites himself
in this poem, but that the structure of the poem itself is constructed through
recitative strophes, and that it is based on an iterable logic of repetition and
change. In this sense, the rhyme can be regarded as an acoustic citation. In

Krauss critique of George and his circle see: Georg Kranner, Kraus contra George Kommentare
zu den bertragungen der Sonette Shakespeares (Wien: WUV Universitt Verlag, 1993).
277
Der Reim, in: Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994),
p.345.
278
Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen, VII (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), p.442.

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another poem of his, Imago, Kraus shows how this effect is produces by the
absence of rhyme, which corresponds to the failure of erotic binding between the
two lovers in the poem. The point is not only that Kraus argues for literary
expression through poetic form, but that the ability to hear the monotony in the
first example, as well as the silent absence in the second, allows the reader not to
understand so much as to feel and experience through the engagement with poetic
language. As Kraus emphasizes, it is not the rhyme for itself (fr sich) nor its
quality as such but the way it can generate thoughts that could not have existed
without it.279 The rhyme can revitalize language through its ability to
acoustically combine and contrast different, often seemingly contradicting
meanings, and to provide another dimension of language that transcends the
normal communicative level where words are simply used to signify.

In order for the acoustic effect of the rhyme to inspire an experience it too
requires recitation, a reading out load, or at least the ability to hear the words in
ones mind. The words need to be expressed in a way that would animate them.
Their function depends on their intonation as well as their ability to connate to
each other, modify and even mark their absence. Furthermore, since meaning
should be created through the unexpected encounter between two thoughts, it calls
for a very attentive reading: one in which the reader witnesses the dramatic
bonding between thoughts, and allows this dynamic to go on through reading. The
reader, then, cannot simply enter into a text, to examine or interpret its
meaning. Instead, he is demanded to create meaning himself through this process
of staging the words. Krauss Theater Der Dichtung was meant to serve as a
model for such a mode of reading, just as essays like The Rhyme provide
examples of how this effect should be performed. Poetry related not simply to
theatricality but relies, more precisely, on a theatrical reading, which in turn is
based on mediatic shifts and on the tension between text and sound, reading and
hearing. The rhyme is not merely creating something new in language but also
refers to an inner, sometimes personal experience, a reference that has to do with

279
Der Reim, in: Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994),
p.357.

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the notion of origin (Ursprung), as the following verse from Krauss Der Reim,
with which we began our discussion, suggests:

Ein Wort, das nie am Ursprung lgt,

zugleich auch den Geschmack betrgt.280

A word that in its origin never lies,

and at the same time common taste defies.

IV. The Subject of Reading

The notion of origin, featured in the above-cited verse points to the tight relation
between Krauss understanding of the rhyme and the kind of experience of
subjectivity that it constitutes. In the following I would like to demonstrate how
the notion of origin, contrary to most Kraus interpretations, and despite their
differences, refers not to an object, destination or telos towards which poetic
language strives, but to the form of striving itself; that is, to the kind of alternative
subjectivity the Krausian project poses: a subjectivity that has to do with a
constant awareness of the linguistic mechanisms through which it is enabled and
with which it operates.

In his Karl Kraus essay, Benjamin refers to this verse, developing it into what
Christian Schulte calls the rhyme as an emblem of origin.281 For Benjamin,
origin has to do not with a return to a primordial past or a point of departure, nor
an inner authentic source, but rather with discovery, reappearance, and the
possibility of recognition. Through the concept of origin Benjamin is moving
between literary categories, history and epistemology. In his Trauerspiel study he
makes use of the term not in order to locate or define the literary source of the
genre of German mourning plays, but as an option for problematizing historical
and epistemological perspectives through juxtaposition (baroque vs. modernity),
and for exploring different forms of recognition and representation (theater vs.
science). This understanding of origin is twofold. It generates a distinction

280
See: Der Reim, in: Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
281
Schulte, Ursprung ist das Ziel (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2003), p.113.

162
between a phenomenon (e.g. modernity, sovereignty, theology etc.) and its
otherness (the origin), and also forms an encounter between the two, which
exposes its own necessity, thereby challenging the boundaries of the phenomenon
itself.282 In Benjaminss view, Krauss concept of rhyme has to do with such a
notion of origin:

Dieser Ursprung das Echtheitssiegel an den Phnomenen ist Gegenstand

einer Entdeckung, die in einzigartiger Weise sich mit dem Wiedererkennen
verbindet. Der Schauplatz dieser philosophischen Erkennungsszene ist im Werk
von Kraus die Lyrik und ihre Sprache der Reim.

This originthe seal of authenticity on the phenomenonis a subject of

discovery that in an inimitable way connects with re-cognition. The stage for this
philosophical recognition-scene in Krauss work is his poetry, and its language is
the rhyme.283

The authenticity of the phenomena can be acknowledged not from within, but
rather through an act of recognition which is provided by an external perspective.
This is not simply correlation between two distinct subjects, but an inimitable
connection that changes the perception of the two. In the case of Krauss work,
according to Benjamin, the rhyme is a Schauplatz, a kind of theater-stage that
presents and exemplifies this scene of dialectical epistemology. To return to
Krauss own poetic formulationEr ist das Ufer, wo sie landen,/ sind zwei
Gedanken einverstandenBenjamins suggestion is to read this verse not as an
aesthetic demand or literary category, but as an epistemological process, whereby
language is developed through an ongoing process of recognition, shifts of
references, and new alliances. The rhyming verbs in the above example (landen-
einverstanden) capture the movement as well as the moment of recognition that
takes place in a luminal meeting point (Ufer, river-bank). The two thoughts
change through this process, creating a new meaning through their coming-
together. A rhyme is therefore the recognition of the necessity of the connection
between two words. In this sense, rhyme and origin share the same

282
In Benjamins Trauerspiel, the baroque is set as the (repressed) origin of modernity, while this
very claim demands a rethinking of both these historical epochs, as well as a reevaluation of the
historical perspective by which they are defined and explained.
283
Benjamin, SW Vol.2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p.451, (translation
modified).

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epistemological function. The question that needs to be addressed is whether this
correlation between two terms is also valid for Krauss concept of origin, as
Benjamins reading goes on to suggest.

In a comprehensive essay on Krauss concept of origin, John Pilzer collects the

different usages of the term in his work, and also reviews the different readings
suggested in the secondary literature.284 He argues that in order to provide an
account of Krauss concept of origin one needs to go beyond conventional
readings that are limited to artistic originality or correspondence between the
linguistic utterance and an inner source. Instead he suggests an excurse to
Benjamin, writing that: Origin is the goal for Benjamin and Kraus, but on both a
linguistic and epistemological level, its approximation is not to be achieved
through stasis, but through a disruptive dialectic.285 This dialectic is echoed in
Krauss famous stanza from his poem The Dying Man (Der Sterbende Mensch),
Urspung ist das Ziel [the origin is the goal], which served Benjamin as motto to
his fourteenth thesis in On the Concept of History. But in spite of all his efforts it
seems that Pilzer leaves many open questions. What does Kraus mean when he
writes about someone that did not come from origin, as in his polemical
remarks on Stefan George and Erwin Piscator? How can anyone come from origin
and yet still aim to achieve it (as in the poem Two Runners) or remain there (The
Dying Man)? How can origin signify both the point of departure and the
destination, which is different yet similar to the goal? Pilzer sums up the different
suggestions: Adornos interpretation of the term as marking an unreachable ideal;
Benjamins notion of origin as that which reappears; and Michael Rogerss
suggestion that Krauss usage of the term meant to evoke an ideally complete
congruence between the expressed and the expression.286 However, the attempt
to clarify the term by focusing on its usage and function in different contexts
seems to end in contradictions and in tensions between the different views. This

284
John Pilzer, Ursprung ist das Ziel Karl Krauss Concept of Origin (Modern Austrian
Literature Volume 27, No. 1, 1994), p. 1-21.
285
Ibid, p.7.
286
Ibid, p.16.

164
inability to make sense or to provide a comprehensive account is found in Pilzers
problematic conclusion:

Though Kraus was not a religious man in any traditional sense, he clearly felt a
religious reverence for origin as an ideal aesthetic and epistemological telos.
Remaining at the origin for Kraus meant attaining the goal of wisdom, of an
extraordinary insight into and understanding of human affairs.287

It is not at all clear to me that Kraus felt any kind of religious reverence to
origin as ideal, nor with respect to any of the other concepts he used, even though
he was very passionate and outspoken in his usage of them (such as Wortgestalt
or Phantasie, which were of no less importance to him than Ursprung).
Furthermore, origin is the term Kraus uses in order to criticize the aesthetic
tendencies of the literature of his times (e.g. Stefan George), rather than an
aesthetic ideal to strive for. When it comes to epistemology, as suggested by
Benjamin, origin does not suggest any telos, but rather functions as the critical
rejection of any teleological thinkingwhat Benjamin calls un-intentionality,
and what could be understood as Krauss expression unexpected encounter. The
many references from Kraus provided by Pilzer all attest against any simplistic
form of attaining or achieving a goal, but rather demonstrate a dialectical
tension between goal and origin, emphasizing that origin is never a pre-given but
rather constituted through an epistemological process. My intention, however, is
not to criticize Pilzer, whose article provides insightful readings of the concept of
origin both in the study of Kraus as well as in the context of modern Austrian
literature. My point is to show that an attempt to explain the concept in Krauss
work by focusing on its meaning and separating it from Krauss view of poetic
language is highly problematic. Such an alternative reading was provided by Jay
F. Bodine, who analyses the concept as part of epistemology of reading that
relates to past reference and experience, and at the same time provides a new
encounter and suggests new thoughts and ideas. His analysis views origin not as
associated with any concrete historical era, but, together with concepts such as
Geist and Phantasie, as generating creativity through repetition in languagea

287
John Pilzer, Ursprung ist das Ziel Karl Krauss Concept of Origin (Modern Austrian
Literature: Volume 27, No. 1, 1994), p.18.

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creativity Kraus formulates in one of his poems as Sieh das Gewohnte stets zum
ersten Mal288 [view the familiar as if for the first time]. Bodine writes: For
Kraus the determining factor is not the conforming to the model of an ideal
historical form, but rather the ever present diligent cultivation of the human
mental faculties.289 The origin is therefore neither a mystical or religious
concept, nor marking a utopian paradise to which one yearns to return. It is about
the different references and associations, experiences and emotions that a word or
phrase can inspire. The former examples of the acting performances by Adolf
Sonnenthal or Josef Lewinsky can be considered as producing this kind of
originality. Like the rhyme, the concept of origin is about meaning-production
which is not derived from signification but created through a mental and
experimental process that involves, as Bodine demonstrates, Geist and Phantasie.

From this epistemological perspective, it is possible to return to Ursprung ist das

Ziel from The Dying Man. The poem was written in 1913 but first read on
November 19, 1914, Krauss first public appearance after a period of silence
following the break of War, and the same public reading in which he recited his In
These Great Times. Hans Weigel suggests that in The Dying Man Kraus envisions
his own death in the face of the atrocities of war and his despair from the
Viennese society that has lost its truthfulness and origin.290 The poem, however,
seems to avoid adopting a tragic tone, and instead stages death as an
epistemological drama. In the 9th verse the dying man states this directly: Was
weiss ich, was ich weiss! Ich weiss es nicht/ Ich glaube, zweifele, hoffe, frchte,
schwebe. [How do I know, what I know! I do not know / I believe, doubt, hope,
fear and tremble]. The entire poem is dedicated to exploring different forms of
knowing, based on a series of concepts: conscience, memory, spirit (Geist), doubt,
faith and joke. The man rejects these options and states:Wer wre, was er ist, wo
Trug und Wesen/ Die Welt vertauscht in Jmmerlicher Wahl! [Who would be

288
Suchen und Finden, (F 474-483: 84).
289
Jay F. Bodine, Karl Krauss Conception of Language (Modern Austrian Literature: Vol. 8
Issue 1/2, 1975), p.268-314.
290
Hans Weigel, Karl Kraus oder Die Macht der Ohnmacht (Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1972), p.182.

166
what he is, where deceit and essence / wretchedly interchange in variations in the
world]. At that point, three different figures of knowledge appear: a dog (who
doesnt know since he cannot read the newspapers), a whore (who is scorned by
the people), and the liberal man, the bourgeois citizen (Brger) that seems to be
an early version of the optimist from The Last Days of Mankind, who can only say
what hes being told. Again, the dying man rejects these options, stating that he
has never languished for their love and honor. In the last stanza comes not a tragic
death but what seems at first to be a moment of revelation. God appears, saying to
the man that he did not lose in the game of life, and invites him to the Garden of
Eden. Then he states: Du Bleibst am Ursprung, Ursprung ist das Ziel [You stay
at the origin, origin is the goal]. Most readings of the poem understand Gods
words as suggesting a withdrawal from the world to an ideal paradise where evils
and deceit would no longer be possible; an escape to heaven. But according to this
view, the verse is not answering the dying mans question, but rather functions as
a deus ex machina, a concept which has very little to do with Kraus. Furthermore,
if origin has to do with a divine transcendent ideal, how can it serve as a literary
or linguistic critique, as so many examples from Krauss work show? My
suggestion is to follow Bodines line of thought in reading origin as related to
epistemology, language and identity. Gods response in the last verse aims to
answer the two questions that the dying man poses. First, to be able to know and
understand in a world of deceit, where mental and linguistic options (memory,
conscience, doubt, joke) seem to be blocked. Second, how can he be true to
himself in a world where identities (man, woman, animal) are also based on deceit
and failure of judgment?291 Through these questions, the dying man points exactly
to the question of origin the thing that all the alternatives examined yet failed to
achieve. The last verse not only calls it by name, but also suggests that the origin

291
Timms remarks that the poem is structured as the last dialogue between a man and different
figures, resembling Hofmannsthals Jedermann (1911). See Timms, AS (New Haven / London:
Yale University Press, 1986), p.231. Krauss poem also seems to be refering to Hofmannsthals
essay on Schiller (1905). Consider, for example, the concluding lines from that essay: Sein Leben
und sein Tod gleicht dem des Fackellufers, der in sich verzehrt aber mit brennendem Licht ans
Ziel kam, sterbend hinstrzte und so strzend, so sterbend ein ewiges Sinnbild blieb. See: Hugo
von Hofmannsthal: Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbnden. Reden und Aufstze 13. Band 1
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1979).

167
was there all along. It had to do with the constant challenge of mental and
linguistic aims, as well as the rejection of pre-given identities and the avoidness of
succumbing to the game of life (Lebensspiel). Instead, origin refers to a different
engagement with language. This is what the combinations of rhyming words
(Licht-Gesicht, Garten-Warten, Ziel-Lebensspiel) reveal: not simply contrasts or
connotations, but a notion of the Garden of Eden that is related to the idea of
waiting rather than arriving; a goal or aim that is not transcendent but directly
related to the life game, and that functions as an internal critique (light), which
shines not on the way one is walking but on the face (Gesicht), on the image.

Taking into account once again the context in which this poem was first read
Krauss silence-breaking appearance since the outbreak of the First World War
it would be wrong to interpret this reading as a poetic supplement to the Krauss
main feature of that evening, his great anti-press manifesto In These Great Times.
Instead, The Dying Man is better viewed as the reading instructions, through
which In These Great Times is to be received: not merely as a critique of the press
(the emptiness of its phraseology etc.), but as a critique of the kind of subjectivity,
the kind of reading-subject the press constitutes. The Dying Man suggests a
different kind of subjectivity that rejects any form of simplistic identification that
relies on a superficial form of reading. Instead, it poses a kind of theatrical
subjectivitykeeping in mind the idea of theatricality as reading rather than
identificationone that can contain opposing positions and roles, ambiguity and
polysemy; one that lives with and through the citationality of its subjectivity, and
that always includes within itself the ability to pose a mirror in the face of both
himself and society; a reading subject that knows how to listen to the theater of
poetry.

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 Conclusion:

An Epigone in the House of Language

In his reading of Krauss Confession, J. P. Stern suggests that the line living in
the ancient house of language is similar to the idea W. B. Yeats expresses in The
Song of the Happy Shepherd when he writes that words alone are certain good.
Stern goes on to argue that, for Kraus, word-play is a compensatory activity in
the face of all manner of personal and social deprivations.292 My own reading of
this line in the first chapter, pointing to the special relation between language and
identity that cuts through Krauss entire critical project, goes precisely against
such a view. As I argued, for Kraus, words alone might just as well be dead,
serving as mere literary-ornaments; they can be turned into clichs that justify
senseless reactions and promote violent acts. The problem is precisely that words
in and of themselves are never certain gooda point Die Fackel not only
insisted on demonstrating and condemning in various ways, but also sought to
immunize its readers against. This is what the use of literary strategies such as
word-play and doubt sought to achieve. These strategies were not meant to
compensate for the loss of an idealized sphere of language, or to re-create a
mystical unity between words and reality, as Stern and others suggest, but
precisely to negate such nave conceptions of language, and to expose the
precarious relations between good and evil, truth and manipulation, honesty and
deceit, origin and mimicrysometimes through the change of a single letter. In
other words, Krauss writings aim to expose the dangers and exploitations of such
views of pure language by forging a skeptical relation to every mediumbe it
textual, visual, or acoustic, the daily press or high poetry.

But if this is indeed the case, what does it mean to be an epigone living in the
house of language? What kind of home or shelter can a language that is subject to

292
J.P. Stern, Words Are Also Deeds: Some Observations on Austrian Language Consciousness
(New Literary History: 12:3, 1981), p.514.

169
such endless skepsis provide? And why does Kraus think of himself as an
epigone, as one who repeats, imitates and cites great masters, rather than, as might
be expected of him, one who holds a position of creativity and originality vis--
vis language? My suggestion is to understand the Krausian position not simply as
living in language, but rather as a literary-mediatic form of existence, of life as an
epigone who maintains himself through constant engagement with- and
transmission of culture and tradition in times of epistemic crisis. In talking
through the words of others, Kraus creates an inter-subjective speech: one which
can be defined not only as critical but also as moral. Instead of using language to
define or constitute a stable and original identity, Kraus suggests a mediatic
non-identity, an epigonal inter-subjective space, which allows one to occupy an
alternative position to various identity-discourses, and to form a critical
standpoint that resists ideological institutions and mechanisms. Instead of
endorsing any of the available identity options from the given social inventory,
Krauss epigone-position allows him to pose critical questions with respect to that
inventory. These questions include, among others, how can cultural transmission
operate under the crisis of modernism? What does it mean to cite, translate, or
identify with any ideological position under these circumstances? What is the
function of the media in this process? What kind of theater (or other art forms, for
that matter) can capture and present the political crisis of the liberal era? It is not
only the new answers that Kraus suggests, but the radicalization of the questions
themselves, which make his critique so valuable and relevant even for today.

Addressing these questions also implies an ongoing questioning of the self. Kraus
is not to be regarded as the man behind a series of masks, but as an expert of
disguise who turns identities into a theatrical role-play, examining and changing
them through acting. When it comes to the question of Krauss Jewish identity,
such a position rejects both the option of assimilation as well as that of national
identity, suggested by the Zionist movementtwo positions that rely on an
endorsement of social categories and on the attempt to join them, whereas Kraus

170
is advocating their change and transformation.293 This model of non-
identification, which was already alluded to in chapter one and implicitly referred
to throughout the work, is what I would like to dedicate this concluding chapter
to. Given everything that was said about what I insisted on regarding as Krauss
theory of language, his literary mode of social criticism, and his two major
enterprises of counter-journalism and counter-theater, I would like to argue that
the Krausian position as a whole is to be understood outside the standard prisms
that are most often applied to it, and that tend to label him as either a cultural
critic or satiristtoo options that strike me as overly reductive. I also have in
mind two predominant prisms through which Krauss uvre is commonly
regarded: either as an overarching gesture of negation aimed at a nostalgic, even
conservative return to origins, which certain modernist-leaning scholars tend
towards; or as a great masquerade based on redeeming endless options through
language renewal and revitalization, as certain post-modern thinkers suggest.294
To me these options seem to misunderstand and underappreciate the two
underlying feature of Krauss work I attempted to highlight throughout the
previous chapters: his epistemological-linguistic critique, and the kind of literary
position that emerges out of it as an alternative.

I. Nestroys Strophes and the Morality of Satire

One of the models for such an epigone-position is Nestory, on the basis of whom
Kraus develops his medium of public readings and adaptations of Shakespeare
plays, Offenbachs operettas, and other aspects of the Theater der Dichtung:

Der Knstler aber nimmt so wenig Partei, da er Partei nimmt fr die

Lge der Tradition gegen die Wahrheit des Schwindels. Nestroy wei, wo
Gefahr ist. Er erkennt, da wissen nichts glauben heit. (F 349,350: 1-23)

293
This is a crucial point that is usually misunderstood among Kraus scholars. Against the concept
of assimilation, Kraus uses the concept of independence, which refers to the shift from an identity-
discourse of Vienna 1900 to a literary form of being; this offers an answer to the question of how
society and individuality function in the modern world beyond the political horizon of the times.
294
See, for example: Tanya Winkler-Bluestone, Silence and Citationality in Gustav Flaubert and
Karl Kraus: The Struggle Between Social use and Literary Writing (Saarbrcken: VDM Verlag
Dr. Mller, 2009), p.137.

171
 The artist takes no political sides, so that he sides with the lie of tradition
against the truth of fakeness. Nestory knows where danger is. He
recognizes that knowing does not mean believing.
In these lines from Nestroy und die Nachwelt (Nestroy and the Present
Generation) Kraus states that Nestroy did not belong to any political party. This
does not mean that he was a-political, but that his literary work was
incommensurable with respect to any ideological conviction, and furthermore
exposed the falsity and dangers of any such position. In other words, Nestroy is a
model not for the rejection of all political standpoints in favor of an isolated
literary-world (the liberal concept Kraus opposes), but for literature as political
critique that offers an alternative to the very logic of political power. Kraus
explains how in the Vormrz era, the theater functioned as a critical medium by
exposing that the liberal discourse of democracy was a cover for interests of
aristocratic sovereignty. What these plays exposed was precisely the mechanism
of identification through uncritical automatic citations, the use of pathos and
clichs as means of deceit and pretense, and the identity-games that disguised
personal intrigues and abuses of ideals. Nestroy created a theater that was able to
present these discursive social deformities through the use of comic gestures and
jokes (Witze) that freed language from a state of paralysis (Starrkrampf). The
senseless repetition that marks ideological discourse was exposed by reducing it
to its mediatic function. Such discourse was simulated as a series of fragmented
acts of speech, rather than the presentation of contentful claims. This effect,
which Kraus highlighted and admired in Nestroys works, is what I suggested to
define as mediatic shift. It is what allows the theater to both recreate and criticize
languages potential, in order to affect the audiences consciousness: to provoke
viewers to question and doubt pre-given positions, by recognizing the ideological
function of language within the public and individual sphere.

Writing his essay 50 years after Nestroys death, Kraus finds it remarkable that
the latter, who operated in times of political censorship and absolutism, was able
to create a political theater that confronted and challenged the concepts of
sovereignty and political power of his day, while Viennese theaters decades later,

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in times of so-called democracy and liberal freedom, have turned into
entertainment, money-making establishments. The promise of liberalism not only
went unfulfilled, but actually led to a much worse situation: the very institutions
that were supposed to criticize and safeguard society, namely the theater and the
press, have become collaborators with mechanisms of injustice. Thus, he
concludes that 1912 Vienna is eine bertreibung aller Details, welche die Satire
vor fnfzig Jahren hinterlassen hat (ibid. p.20). [An exaggeration of all the
themes that were pointed by satire fifty years ago]. Nestroy for Kraus, in a
paraphrase of Adornos description of Kraus himself, is not simply a satirist but
a critic of ideology in its full sense.295

In his very insightful reading, Timms shows how through Nestroys literary style,
his the topical strophes (Zeitstrophen), Kraus was able to move from the
individual voice of the critic to the expression of the concerns of the community,
speaking out for the common people excluded from political discourse.296
According to Timms, this ability has to do with the nature of literature, which
provides an alternative view of society and an option for rethinking its hierarchies
and structure. In its complex and detached form, it creates a way of challenging
not only political figures or specific ideologies but the social order itself, as Kraus
stated in one of adaptations of Nestroys topical-strophes: Ich hab mich als
Feind dieser Ordnung erklrt [I have made this order my enemy]. 297 But Nestroy
is not only a model for theater as a critical institution within society, and its ability
to challenge the way it is structured and governed, but also serves as a kind of
house in language for Kraus the epigone. This can be seen in Krauss series of
adaptations of Nestroys Judith und Holofernes (itself an adaptation by Nestroy of
a play by Hebbel). Timms shows how Kraus, in his different adaptations, redirects
the critical object of the playfrom anti-liberalism in the 1912 adaptation to anti-
295
Er [Kraus] ist Kritiker der Ideologie im genauen Sinn: er konfrontiert das Bewusstsein, und
die Gestalt seines Ausdrucks, mit der Realitt, die es verzerrt. [He (Kraus) is a critic of ideology
in its full sense: he confronts consciousness and the form of its expression with the reality that it
distorts.] Theodor Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt, Noten zur Literatur III (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p.62.
296
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.406.
297
Kraus, Theater der Dichtung Nestroy: Zeitstrophen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992),
p.217.

173
militarism in the 1917 version. Krauss ongoing revisions of Nestroys plays
include adding lines, changing words, and borrowing motives in order to criticize
contemporary affairs and relevant political figures (such as Mussolini in 1923).298
This practice is brought to a climax in his famous 1925 campaign against
Bekessy, the corrupted businessman and media mogul (a kind of contemporary
Rupert Murdoch), whom Kraus managed to kick out of Vienna. As part of this
campaign, Kraus inserted several new lines into Nestroys Eine Wohnung ist zu
vermieten [An Apartment for Rent] condemning not only Bekessy, but the way the
very concept of freedom of the press was abused as an excuse for intruding
upon peoples privacy, turning their lives into sensations and scandals that sell
newspapers. If one considers Nestroys Apartment for Rent to be a kind of house
in language, one can see how the epigone-tenant, Kraus, is not simply repeating
or imitating his landlord, but indeed making his strophes topical and relevant to
the contemporary social context. This relation to the origin is far from one of
nostalgia or conformism: it is a literary logic of creativity, experience and
imagination that seeks to confront the liberal society of property and private
interests, represented by Bekessy and his likes.299

Timms suggests that with his Nestroy adaptations, Kraus was now mobilizing
satirical comedy behind a campaign for social justice.300 This is a crucial point,
since Kraus is not simply using Nestroys style to express his own ideas, but finds
in that style the adequate literary form (Zeitstrophen) for expressing and voicing
precisely what is excluded from social discourse: injustice. Krauss varying
insertions or interventions in Nestroys texts reflect changes in the predominant
forms of social injustice, and the way they go unnoticed due to the blind-spots of
societys ideological framework. The limits of Timmss account, however, are
revealed when he goes on to write that the aim of this topical strophes-strategy

298
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.403.
299
I have already quoted this line in the second chapter: Besitzfall zum Zeugfall zu erhhen, das
Haben zum Sein [To raise possession to tool, having to being]. In: Kraus, TD Nestroy
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), p.272.
300
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 408.

174
was to integrate satirical protest with the values of the community. 301 This
implies a view according to which social injustice means the failure of society to
uphold or fulfill a set of values it relies on and is committed to, instead of
questioning those very values. But if this is indeed the case, what is the point of
using Nestroy who, at least in Krauss mind, challenges the very notion of
community values? As I tried to show, the question of injustice or morality for
Kraus has to do with the gap between two different kinds of logic: the liberal-
conformist versus the literary-critical one. From the latter perspective, morality is
a result of the constant examination and doubting of values, as opposed to
questioning the degree of implementation of these values, which cannot but
amount to an uncritical affirmation of these values. The problem for Kraus lies
not in breaches or malfunctions in the social order but rather with this very order
itself. An example of one of these strophes demonstrates well the difference
between these two logics of critique, as well as between Timmss position and the
one developed here:

Wir haben jetzt Freiheit und das ist das Wort

fr weitere Willkr von Raub und von Mord.302

Now weve got freedom and that is the name

for robbery, murder and all kinds of shame.303

Although freedom is, in Timms terms, a community value, for Kraus the
situation of having freedom (the liberal condition) nonetheless fails to result in
a moral society. In fact, freedom becomes just another name (Wort), that is, an
empty gesture that can itself serve for bringing about injustice. The question is
what is the point of advocating for community values in times of political vacuum
and lack of moral agency? And what is the use in such values if they cannot be
thought through and challenged? Furthermore, what is Krauss campaign in
Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt if not a radical critique directed against the ways
morality is turned (through the judicial system) into a discriminatory device
301
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.409.
302
Kraus, TD Nestroy (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), p.217.
303
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 408 (translation
modified).

175
against unprivileged social groups, such as the poor, prostitutes and homosexuals,
all in the name of community values. Moralityor rather, adopting a moral-
critical positionhas to do not with the re-emphasizing of values in the face of
their mis- or abuse, but with challenging and transforming these values in a
situation in which they have become corrupted to an irrecoverable degree.

This is where the literary critical-logic comes into play: it is through the re-
contextualization of literary forms such as Nestroys topical strophes, Offenbachs
operettas, and Shakespeares sonnets that Kraus aims to generate in his audience a
sense of ambiguity and doubt, which in turn places them in a position of
responsibility, which is the hallmark of moral agency. When quoting the
following sentence in the beginning of Chapter Three, Wre denn eine strkere
Sicherung im Moralischen vorstellbar als der sprachliche Zweifel? (F. 885-887,
2) [Is it possible to imagine a better protection for morality than linguistic
doubt?], I emphasized the importance of doubt to Krauss view of language. Here
I want to stress the moral claim of the sentence, which can now be better
understood. The classical idea of morality (exemplified, for example, by Kant)
relies on the stability of moral utterances as imperative commands that constitute
unequivocal calls for duty. Kraus, however, argues for the opposite: morality
relies on a linguistic impasse that has to do with ambiguity and uncertainty
triggered by doubt. The purification of language cannot guaranty morality, nor
can it be perceived as clear and well-defined.304 Morality for Kraus is related to
the destabilization of language. In another aphorism he talks about morality as a
breaking and entry instrument (Einbruchswerkzeug),305 which, in the context of
the current discussion, can be thought of as a means of breaking into the house of
language. This idea is not far from Wittgensteins claim that morality demands
one to run against the boundaries of language.306 Morality cannot be understood
through a Kantian-like framework of a rational subject who is an addressee of a

304
Donald G. Daviau writes: The closer language, thought and deed coincided, the closer the
individual or society approached moral perfection See: Daviau, Language and Morality in Karl
Krauss Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, in: Modern Language Quarterly: Vol. 22 (Washington:
1961), p.48-49. It should be clear by now, that this is a position, with which I couldnt agree less.
305
Kraus, Sprche und Wiedersprche (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p.40.
306
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 44.

176
moral call, but as a Kafkaesque moment where neither the addressee nor the call
succeed in performing their constitutive acts. Instead of a successful speech-act
that is the culminating-point of morality (this is what I ought to do), the failure
should serve as the starting-point of moral responsibility. This is precisely what
takes place in Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, discussed in Chapter Four, which
presents a world inhabited by marionettes. The latter are operated by phrases that
themselves turn into a chaotic mixture of fragmented speech, making it
impossible to maintain the kind of stable subject-position required for making
successful moral judgments. A critical and moral intervention in such a context is
required first of all to give an account of how to turn such beings into moral
agents. Kraus rejects the idea that the moral position or (which amounts to the
same thing) the critical position implies a clear, pre-given set of ideals and values
in relation to which one can judge, or rather measure, society. Instead, such a
position requires the a mediatic shifte.g. through the social use of literature
that opens up a maneuvering space (Spielraum) that allows one to free oneself
from this overdetermined marionette-like condition. Literature for Kraus is thus
hardly a form of escapism from the harsh realities of the early twentieth century,
or a mourning of the loss of its former, nineteenth century tradition, but a project
meant to reinstate a literature that seems to be out of joint. This power of
literature, and of language in general, to free oneself into a position from which
one can shape a renewed position of moral responsibility does not rely on an idea
of language as omnipotent, or on the idea of a correct language that can serve as
a moral yardstick for correcting society, but rather on its capacity to open up the
possibility of adopting an epigone position.

From this perspective, Krauss language and social critique, expressed in his two
great enterprises of Die Fackel and Theater der Dichtung, come together in a joint
project of critical intervention. The complex mechanism of Wortgestaltung and
the relation between words and thoughts, words and context, and the experiential
non-verbal aspects of language, consolidated in Krauss Sprachkritik, provide a
concept of poetic language that can function as an alternative to ideologically-
interpellative discourse. By inviting them into the house of language, Kraus

177
subjects values, identities, phrases, and ideologies to the literary logic of doubt,
Phantasie, origin, citationality and inter-contextual tensions. If this might strike
one as an elitist anti-political position of a cultural connoisseur, one should keep
in mind Krauss following remark:

Knnte ein Kulturmensch berhaupt den Drang verspren, sich politisch zu

bettigen, er wrde in sterreich stets zwischen den Parteisthlen zu sitzen
kommen. Die Tendenz gegen ihre Vertreter in Schutz nehmen zu mssen, wre
seine erste Erkenntnis. Jede Partei treibt ihn der andern zu. (F. 190, 15)

If a man of culture would so much as feel the urge to engage himself politically
in Austria, he would have to find a seat in-between parties. He would quickly
realize that he has to defend any idea against those who are supposed to support
it. Every party would drive him towards the other one.

II. An Epigone Krauss Literary Figure

In the first chapter I tried to show how Kraus refuses to fall under any category of
identity. I claimed that it is not a negation triggered by a need for uniqueness or
narcissism, but an understanding that such independence is a precondition to
adopting a critical position.307 Like the question of morality, identity too is
subjected to a literary logic, constituted and deconstructed, changed and reshaped
under different circumstances and contexts and could even be contradictory, as in
the poem Mein Widerspruch (My Contradiction), in which Kraus fluctuates
between reactionary and revolutionary positions. It is an allusive kind of identity
that is strongly attached to writing and language, as the following example shows:

... da ich jeden fremden Schmerz als Wohltat empfinde und jede Sensation als
Gelegenheit. Bin ich ein Vielschreiber, dem jeder Buchstabe zum Wundmal
wird: wer wird behaupten knnen, da ich ein Journalist bin? Es mte denn eine
jdische Eigenschaft sein, keine zu haben. (F 386: 8)

307
Paul Reitter writes: Krauss investment in independence and in the appearances of it had a
number of sources. He believed that his critical voice and stylistic gifts were unique, utterly so.
Reitter, AJ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.26. Krauss independence is linked
first and foremost to his refusal to be part of the press institution, which he regards as a condition
in order to keep his critical voice unbiased. It is interesting that while Reitters aim is to explore
Krauss self-fashioning, he dismisses one of its most prominent aspects as a form of narcissism
and self-esteeming.

178
 that I sense every foreign pain as a benefit and every sensation as an
opportunity. I am a fair writer, to whom every letter turns into a cicatrice. Who
can claim that I am a journalist? It must be a Jewish characteristic not to have
any.

These lines are taken from Krauss essay Er ist doch ein Jud (He is still a Jew). In
it, Kraus is neither confirming nor rejecting his Jewish identity, but rather uses
this question as an opportunity to negate the very concept of identity. In this
quote, stressing the emotional as well as physical experience of writing, 308 which
is presented in contrast to the professional identity of a journalist. This tension is
resolved through another paradoxical identity, one that is defined by its non-
identity. In other words, the question of identity is turned into a question of
writing, which then remains undetermined and paradoxical. In the first instance, if
every pain and sensation is turned into writing and every letter is a wound, then
those are Krauss defining features rather than journalist or Jew. But
furthermore, once the question of identity is transformed into a practice of
writing, the very possibility of such definitions become absurd in the first place.
This is also the case with Jewish identity, which is apparently the paradigm for
non-identity. If it is a Jewish characteristic to have no Jewish characteristic, what
kind of definition is this? Among other commentators, Carl Schmitt suggested, in
his short and rather offensive text on Kraus,309 that such an identity lacks any
essence, and hence can only imitate and copy. Schmitt, however, evaluates Kraus
according to the categories of an identity-discourse that Kraus himself was
rejecting, thereby regarding the latters mimesis as negative and inferior to that of
authentic German identity. Kraus, who to some extent could accept the definition
of his work as relying on repetition and mimesis, nonetheless believes there is no
essence to these socially-constructed identity definitions. He opposes every form
of nationalism, rejecting not only the concept of Volk but also every attempt to

308
Writing, for Kraus, has to do with printing. As noted earlier, he paid outmost attention to every
detail of his printed materials, such as typeface and page layout, making repeated corrections on
every page (sometimes as many as a dozen times). See Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London:
Yale University Press, 2005), p. 132-134.
309
Carl Schmitt, Die Fackelkraus, in: Vismann, Akten (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000), p.224.

179
define a national culture.310 For Kraus, the issue is the richness of language and
literature, and its ability to avoid and negate such simplistic definitions. What
Kraus achieves both through his practice of citationality and his mimetic abilities
is the creation of what Timms suggests defining as heteroglossiasomething not
altogether foreign in the context of the multilingual reality of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire.311 Krauss achievement is in bringing different voices, dialects
and jargons into a polyphonic literature. In this sense, if his writings threaten
anything, it is not Jewish identity but rather the German national projectas
Schmitt rightly notices and therefore furiously attacks. This is one of the main
defiant features of Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, which Kraus further
develops in his 1933 unpublished piece Dritte Walpurgisnachthis reaction to
the Nazi seizure of power, whose examination is unfortunately beyond the scope
of this study.

Another writer who was engaged with identity discourse, and whom Kraus
appreciated, was Otto Weininger. According to David S. Luft, the important
achievement of Weiningers Geschlecht und Charakter was the shifting of such
discourse from biological categories to social ones.312 Kraus, it seems, basically
agrees with Weininger, yet takes the matter a step further by translating these
social categories into literary-textual ones. This additional transformation
amounts not only to a constant resistance to the over-determination of every
identity discourse, but also suggests an alternative to the kind of subjectivity it
presupposes. Although Kraus uses Weiningerian dichotomies like man/women,
German/Jewish, mind/sexuality, he goes on to turning them into a literal space
that allows him to constitute new hybrid combinations. The point is not to achieve
any of these categories, but to focus on the tension they produce, which triggers
thought and inspires transformation. This is expressed in Krauss reflection on

310
To give just one example, in his court case against Kraus, theater critic Alfred Kerr accused
him of being anti-German, submitting as evidence Krauss poem Lied des Alldeutschen, in which
he satirizes the German spirit of 1914. See: Kraus, Gedichte, Worte in Versen I (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), p.235-240.
311
Timms, AS Vol. 2 (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2005), p.131.
312
David S. Luft, Eros and Inwardness in Vienna: Weininger, Musil and Doderer (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2003), p.45-81.

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prostitutes, which he believes to be an integral part of bourgeois society, and a
product of the Viennese Catholic suppression of sexuality. The prostitute is not
simply a social phenomena but an allegory for this culture and its double
standards. It is on the basis of such figures, prostitutes and pimps, petty thieves
and misfortunate beings living in the margins of society, that Kraus positions
himself as a public prosecutor, setting out to constitute a different social logic
based on different concepts of ethics and law.

In her reading of Kraus, Cornelia Vismann emphasizes the concept of authority

(Instanz) in his writing.313 She suggests that, through his writing, Kraus created
his alternative kind of authority, one that challenges that of the law, by using the
same speech-act logic. In the voice in which he writes Die Fackel, his Ich
becomes not a manifestation of his self, but an appeal to the public. It is not only
that Kraus challenges the monopoly and unitary voice of the law by creating a
subversive mimetic-double (as Schmitt too notices), but that he also creates this
different kind of Ich, one which is not attached to a person or that expresses
private matters, but rather uses this fist person form to express a collective
concern. From this perspective, Die Fackel is a self-fashioning not of the authors
identity but of a counter-authority. Like legal and juridical authority, it needs to
be continually constituted, yet unlike the latter, it does not claim for itself a
privileged position. Instead it calls upon the reader to position him- or herself not
as an addressee of an ideological call by some political order, but as a potential
Ich, participating in the ongoing, dynamic social game on their own terms. The
ethical call here is the call to readership and audience to resign their marionette
posture and regain their own figure.

In chapter three I relied on Antonio Ribeiros essay, The Power of the Epigone,
which connects the two notions of literary figure and epigone. Ribeiros
suggestion is that the satirists true selfin Krauss case, his literary personais
based on changing masks and roles. For Kraus, Shakespeares characters as well
as Nestroys lines or Goethes images provide not simply costumes for his own

313
Vismann, Akten (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000), p.211-227.

181
ideas or positions, but material for constructing and deconstructing his own image
and persona. The concept of literary figure means that the self is never separated
from language, and that language is the template (Gestalt) of its formation. Living
in the house of language is thus not simply an act of repetition or imitation, but
the ability of the employer of citationsalthough fashioning something that is
never completely newto resist, to criticize, and to try and change both the
linguistic and social space in which he finds himself. One of the most impressive
examples of such an epigone-gesture can be seen in Krauss admiration of Rosa
Luxemburgs letter of mid-December 1917, written from the Breslau prison.314 In
that letter, Luxemburg does discusses not her own pain nor human suffering in
general, but rather that of those animals forced to be part of the war-machinethe
mistreatment of buffalos used for carrying military supplies:

The other day a lorry came laden with sacks, so overladen indeed that the
buffaloes were unable to drag it across the threshold of the gate. The soldier-
driver, a brute of a fellow, belaboured the poor beasts so savagely with the butt
end of his whip that the wardress at the gate, indignant at the sight, asked him if
he had no compassion for animals. No more than anyone has compassion for us
men, he answered with an evil smile, and redoubled his blows.315

This short and direct description provided a sober and forlorn account of the
human condition brought by the war: a condition of being unable to feel or relate
to other living creatures. Morality here is as material as the skin of a buffalo.316
Yet in spite of its tragic description, the letter nonetheless insists on the value of
writing, and on its ability not only to report but also to convey feelings and
experiences as well as the loss of experience, thereby also affecting and
transforming the reader. Kraus regarded Luxemburgs letter as a great work of
poetry, and recommended it be included in school textbooks about the war. He
also included it in his public readings, in a gesture that can be regarded as offering
an opposing call or message to that of other pieces, such as the Promotional Trips
to Hell or to the nightingale piece, discussed in chapter 3. Although Kraus too
insisted on reading and writing even in hopeless times, his was not an optimism
314
See: F 546-550.
315
See: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1917/undated/03.htm
316
See: Friedrich Pffflin, Karl Kraus, Rosa Luxemburg, Bffelhaut und Kreatur (Berlin:
Friedenauer Presse, 2009).

182
that put its faith in some redeeming notion of language and society, but that of an
epigone-Grumbler, who for four decades drafted what can be regarded as an
immense German mourning play, both building and demolishing in the old house
of language as a way of life.

183
 Bibliography
Selected Writings of Karl Kraus
- Die Fackel (Wien: Die Fackel, 1899-1936 reprinted in: Mnchen, Ksel
Verlag, 1968-1976 and: Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins, 1977).
- Die demolirte Litteratur (Wien: A. Bauer, 1897).
- Eine Krone fr Zion (Wien: Frisch, 1898).
- Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987).
- Sprche und Widersprche (Mnchen: Albert Langen, 1909).
- Die Chinesische Mauer (Mnchen: Albert Langen, 1910 Neuauflage
Paderborn: Salzwasser Verlag, 2012).
- Worte in Versen 9 Vols. (Leipzig: Vol. I-IV Mnchen: Vol. V-IX, 19161930)
- Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. (Wien: Die Fackel, 1919).
- Literatur (Wien: Die Fackel, 1921 online: Chicago: University of Chicago
Digital Preservation Collection).
- Traumstck (Wien: Die Fackel, 1922 online: Chicago: University of Chicago
Digital Preservation Collection).
- Shakespeares Sonette. Nachdichtung (Zrich: Diogenes, 1977).
- Aphorismen. Sprche und Widersprche. Pro domo et mundo. Nachts (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).
- Die Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987).
- Dramen. Literatur, Traumstck, Die Unberwindlichen u. A. (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1989).
- Theater der Dichtung - Nestroy (Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp, 1992).
- Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1989).
- Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, Bhnenfassung des Autors (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
- Brot und Lge (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991).
- Die Stunde des Gerichts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
- Hben und Drben (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993).

184
- Theater der Dichtung, mit Bearbeitungen von Shakespeare-Dramen (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
- Die Katastrophe der Phrasen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).
- Die dritte Walpurgisnacht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998).
- Literatur und Lge (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp,1999).

Secondary Literature
- Theodor Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalitt Zum elften Band der Werke von
Karl Kraus, in: Noten zur Literatur III (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965).
Minima Moralia (London / New York: Verso, 2005).
- Robert Alter, Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin,
and Scholem (Cambridge / Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
- Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York / London:
Monthly Review Press, 1971).
- Mark Anderson (ed.), Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Sicle
(New York: Schocken, 1989).
Kafkas Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de
Sicle (Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Jewish Mimesis? Imitation and Assimilation in Thomas Manns
Walsugenblut and Ludwig Jacobinskis Werther, Der Jude, in: German Life and
Letters Vol. 49, Issue 2 (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 1996), p.193-204.
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1951).
The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age,
edited by Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978).
- Helmut Arntzen, Karl Kraus und die Presse (Mnchen: Fink, 1975).
- Steven Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The Eastern Jew in German and
German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1982).

185
 Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with
National Socialism and Other Crises (New York: New York University Press,
1996).
The Metaphysical Psychologist: On the Life and Letters of Gershom
Scholem, in: The Journal of Modern History Vol. 76 (Chicago: Chicago Journals,
Dec. 2004), p.903-33.
- Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1973).
- J. L. Austin, Deconstruction: critical concepts in literary and cultural studies,
Vol. 1, edited by J. D. Culler (London: Routledge, 2003), p.238-239.
- Andrew Barker, Fictions from an Orphan State (New York: Camdon House,
2012).
- Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968).
Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Berkley / Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1989).
The Pleasure of Text (New York: Hill and Young, 1998).
Oeuvres Compltes, Vol. III (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998).
Oeuvres Compltes, Vol. IV (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 2002).
Critique and Truth (London: Continuum, 2004).
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (New York: Hill and Young, 2010).
- Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca / New York: Cornell
University Press, 1991).
- Evelyn Torton Beck, Kafka and the Yiddish Theater: Its Impact on His Work
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971).
- Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1991).
Selected Writing, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
- Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
(New York: Penguin Books, 1982).

186
Michael Andr Bernstein, Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in
Twentieth-Century German Writing (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
2000).
- Richard Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge /
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996).
- Jay F. Bodine, Karl Kraus, Ludwig Wittgenstein and 'Post-structural'
Paradigms of Textual Understanding, in: Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 22
(Bowling Green / Houston: 1989).
- M.C. Bradbrook, Truth and Justice in Measure for Measure, in: The Review of
English Studies, Vol. 17, No.68 (Oxford: 1941), p.385-399.
- Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children, translated by John Willett
(London: Methuen, 1982).
Werke Bd. 19 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968).
- Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
- Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit: Eine Studie. (Zrich: Rhein-
Verlag, 1955).
Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984).
- Momme Brodersen, Spinne im eigenen Netz: Walter Benjamin Leben und
Werk (Kln: Elster, 1990).
- Elias Canetti, Karl Kraus: Schule des Widerstands, in: Das Gewissen der Worte
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