Notes From the Field - Sicily Lerner: The Death of the Messiah: Messianic and Temporal Impossibility in Franz Kafka’s Der Jäger Gracchus and Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą

The Death of the Messiah: Messianic and Temporal Impossibility in Franz Kafka’s Der Jäger Gracchus and Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą

Abstract:

Franz Kafka’s Der Jaeger Gracchus and Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium pod Klepsydra are both dominated by undead figures wandering homeless in worlds. This paper argues that these figures are dead Messiahs from the kabbalistic myth of the Mashiach, reworked into the twentieth century. These works rupture realist tradition by situating modern Jewish domesticity as a space infringed upon by urban politics in the times of intercontinental war. The finitidue of the infinite is defined via avant-garde aesthetic rupture and is motivated by political intent. Death as a space and time is thus invaded by politics, and aesthetics posthumously break down.