The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka

 

            In The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka, author and Kafka scholar June O. Leavitt explores the world in which Kafka lived.  This book deals with such ideas as the occult, souls leaving bodies, Jewish Cabala, vegetarianism, and much more.  Writing during the early twentieth century in Austria, these interests provide a small window into what life was actually like for a young Jewish man at the time, although Kafka’s life could be considered anything but normal.  Leavitt composes her book in a manner that follows Kafka’s journey through life, highlighting some of his more peculiar interests, and then explores the relationship between these interests and the worlds Kafka created on the page.  Leavitt uses both information from other Kafka scholars and directly from Kafka’s writing.  Kafka’s words are first presented fully in German and then fully in English – an interesting approach given that the rest of the book is in English.  This is probably done to provide an accurate translation of the original German and to help eliminate the small differences translated texts have.

The book is written like a long essay in that it includes an introduction and a conclusion, but it also includes seven more chapters of information.  Each of the seven chapters is broken up into three to five separate sub-sections.  Leavitt uses these sub-sections to narrow the focus of her book and look more in depth into the large concept of each chapter.  An example of this would be chapter seven, entitled “The Mystical Life of Animals: Investigations of a Vegetarian.”  The sub-sections of the chapter are entitled “Vegetarianism and Animal Sacrifice: A Case of Mistaken Tradition,” “The Mystical experience of a Dog,” “The Dog’s Christological Interpretation of the Mystical Report,” and “The Christianized Occult Context.”  As one can see, each of the sub-headings relates directly to the chapter, but focus more in depth on a topic that Leavitt decided was most relevant to Kafka’s life and writings. The one hundred eighty-page biography contains thirteen pages of endnotes, a ten-page bibliography and a seven-page index.  Given the relatively short length of the book, this is a wealth of resources that the reader can consult for both quick reference and further studies on Kafka.

The Kafka Project

            Between 1923 and 1924, Franz Kafka wrote thirty-five letters and twenty notebooks of sketches, ideas, and writings that became lost when the Third Reich confiscated them in 1933.  These papers are known as Kafka’s lost papers.  He wrote the letters to Dora Diamant, his last love, in the final year of his life.  Diamant kept the letters and journals until they were confiscated.  The Kafka Project’s goal is to regain all of those lost papers.  In order to complete this seemingly impossible task, they have gotten permission to conduct an official search for Kafka’s papers.  The group expanded their search in 1998 to include the work of Dora Diamant.  In this manner, they have been able to locate some of Kafka’s papers and personal effects as well as Diamant’s work.  Through this new material, Kafka’s Last Love: The Mysterious Dora Diamant by Kathi Diamant was written.

The Kafka Project has an official website, www.kafkaproject.com where all of the group’s work can be found.  When the Kafka Project finds work of either Kafka’s or Diamant’s, they post it on the website, sometimes including a scan of the document so that interested readers can see Diamant’s and Kafka’s handwritten letters and writings.  This serves a very functional role in addition to being a way to keep people interested because one has to know what their handwriting looks like in order to identify their work.  The website does not look like it has been updated very much since 2011.  The only pages that have recent or future dates on them are the home page and the Magical Mystery Tours page.

Navigating the website is fairly straightforward.  To the left of the screen, there are tabs to jump to the different portions of the website; they include the home page, a tour page, mission, advisory committee, discoveries, news and a contact page.  The group is run under the umbrella of San Diego State University Research Foundation and has an advisory board that ranges from American professors and authors to translators from Europe and Kafka scholars.  This source is great for anyone interested in Kafka’s missing work or just the enigma that is Franz Kafka.

Nineteenth Century Literature Scholarly Journal Profile

 Nineteenth Century Literature Scholarly Journal Profile

        Nineteenth Century Literature is a quarterly journal that  began circulation in 1945 under the title Trollopian after Anthony Trollope, whose work the journal covered.  It was printed in the summer of that year and issues came out in March, June, September, and December – a pattern that continues today.  The Trollopian lasted for three volumes before becoming Nineteenth Century Fiction from 1949 to 1986 when it became Nineteenth Century Literature.

In a preface to the first issue, the journal explains its purpose in profiling Trollope’s life, work, opinions, and explores the lives of his contemporaries.  Making no qualms about their intents, the journal editors later assert in the preface that their interest in a journal devoted to Trollope has a lot to do with his popularity among English intellectuals of the time.  In other words, they intended this journal to play on an author’s popularity so that it would sell.  Bradford A. Booth of UCLA edited the first issue and his advisory board consisted of twelve members – their universities are not listed – that included two females.  This first issue consisted of four articles, the longest of which was a little over ten pages.

In 1949 the journal changed its name to Nineteenth Century Fiction, but it does not offer any reason for doing so – other than what the reader may assume in that Trollope did not inspire as many readers as the editor wished.  The advisory board for this journal remained much the same as it was when the journal first started, only a few name were different, but it stayed at twelve and Bradford A. Booth was still the main editor.  The most noticeable difference about this issue of the journal is the change in material.  Of the five articles in the magazine, only one is dedicated to Trollope.  The rest of the articles cover different aspects of nineteenth century fiction.

In the most recent issue of Nineteenth Century Literature, the journal has changed quite a bit from its first issue nearly seventy years ago.  The most noticeable difference is the advisory board.  The journal’s first few years of publication saw a small advisory board of twelve people, mostly men, but that board has grown to include over thirty members working at universities ranging from MIT to UCLA and Rutgers.  The women have grown from an overwhelming minority in the early years of publication, representing just two of the original twelve, and now the number of women on the board now outnumbers the men with fourteen of the thirty advisory board members being women.  There are also two head editors, one of whom is a woman, and an assistant editor.

This major growth in journal staff is likely due to the increase in the journal’s size.  The journal still has only four or five articles, but it also includes seven to ten reviews.  In the first issue, the articles were short five to ten page deals, but in this September issue, the articles range from twenty-six to thirty-three pages and the reviews are all about three pages.  These articles and reviews cover works primarily by American and British writers such as Twain, Emerson, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Oscar Wilde as well as schools of thought and writing styles such as realism and transcendentalism.  Most of the writers this journal covers wrote fiction, but it also covers a few poets and literary critics such as Keats, Wordsworth, and Howells.  Typically the reviews cover articles or books over a school of thought as it pertained to the nineteenth century or a particular author.

At least one issue of the journal from each year can be found online at the JSTOR database.

Selected Annotated Bibliography of Victorian Literature

Selected Annotated Bibliography of Victorian Literature

Battan, Jesse F. “”You Cannot Fix the Scarlet Letter on My Breast!”: Women Reading,

Writing, and Reshaping the Sexual Culture of Victorian America.” Journal of

            Social History 37.3 (2004): 601-24. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

This article covers the influence of such works as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter on women of the nineteenth century to step out and defend what Victorian society condemned them for; such things as prostitution, adultery, and unwed mothers.  The author discusses such groups that sprung up around this movement, such as the Free Lovers, who spread their message through literature published in newspapers like The Word, Lucifer, and Nichols’ Monthly.  The sixteen-page article is divided into four sections, including an introduction and a conclusion.  With over eight pages of endnotes, this article provides extensive background information, but given its short length, it gets bogged down with all of the facts the author alludes to.

Danson, Lawrence. “Oscar Wilde, W.H., and the Unspoken Name of Love.” ELH 50.4

(1991): 979-1000. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

The author in this article deliberates the meaning of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W. H” and what its sexual implications are.  He later discusses other of Wilde’s works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and Wilde’s not so subtle hints on homosexuality.  The twenty-one-page article contains three unnamed sections and is riddled with quotes from Wilde and other’s works to help the author prove his point.  There are over thirty endnotes that provide both important information on the article and leads for the inquisitive reader.  The article reads easily and could benefit students.  It could benefit from some updating though.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie. “Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal

Fantasies in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 2.3

(1977): 04-13. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

The author of this article discusses the rampant sex allusions in Dracula, pulling from both the novel itself and from other scholarly articles.  She also discusses some newer ideas that previous scholars do not, such as the idea of group sex that Stoker presents on more than one occasion in the novel.  The author also discusses the feminism that appears in the novel when Stoker places a female in a positive leading role.  At the beginning of the article, the author provides a brief summary of the article for readers who are unfamiliar with it.  This article is a good starting point for research into the sex in Dracula, but it does not go into enough depth in nine pages to be much more than that.  The author also repeatedly refers to the novel as tedious, potentially turning off much of her intended audience.

Gitter, Elisabeth G. “The Power of Women’s Hair in the Victorian

Imagination.” PMLA99.5 (1984): 936-54. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

This article explores the obsession Victorian writers had with women’s hair.  The author asserts that this obsession stemmed from ancient preoccupations with it that grew as time went on and long, traditionally golden hair symbolized both wealth and sex to the Victorian male.  Used in literature to both garner lovers and to strangle them, females’ hair played a large role in fiction.  This nineteen-page article includes three full-page paintings of women where their hair is a central theme.  There is an extensive list of works cited at the bottom that could be used for further research.  While a good source, this article is dense with block texts that make reading slow.

Langland, Elizabeth. “Nobody’s Angels: Domestic Ideology and Middle-Class Women in             the Victorian Novel.” PMLA 107.2 (1992): 290-304. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

In this article, the author asserts that Victorian literature saw women step out from the roles that had been placed on them in the eighteenth century.  In the Victorian era, authors such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell created female characters who rejected the idea that women should be passive creatures of the house and became active heroines in their novels.  This fifteen-page article is a little bit dense to read, but provides a refreshing take on women in literature during the Victorian age.  It contains a plethora of sources that help the reader contextualize information and aid in further research.

May, Leila S. “”Foul Things of the Night”: Dread in the Victorian Body.” The Modern

            Language Review 93.1 (1998): 16-22. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

This article explores the Victorian obsession not of cleanliness, but instead the opposite, of filth – namely a dirty body.  The author associates the dirty body with that of a prostitute and thus monsters of Victorian fiction as sexually diseased beings that prey on women who in turn come to symbolize prostitutes. The author of this eight-page article uses Dracula as his main basis of information and the article is limited because of its narrow range of references.  Other than that, this article provides an insight into the Victorian frame of mind and adds color to the monster myths of the era.

Nelson, Claudia. “Sex and the Single Boy: Ideals of Manliness and Sexuality in Victorian

Literature for Boys.” Victorian Studies 32.Summer (1989): 525-50. Humanities

            Full Text. Web. 2 Oct. 2013.

The essay does not go into the stereotype of the Victorian manliness and his sexuality, but rather it explores the change in how a young man is portrayed as a man in Victorian literature.  Nelson does not focus on all of Victorian literature, but instead focuses on male sexuality in children’s literature of the time.  The twenty-six-page document is split into four sections and an introduction of the topic.  It contains footnotes for an easy reference to certain terms and phrases that are not common knowledge.   This document is an excellent source that dispels many popular myths about Victorian sexuality.

Psomiades, Kathy A. “Heterosexual Exchange and Other Victorian Fiction: “The Eustace

Diamonds” and Victorian Anthropology.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 33.1

(1999): 93-118. JSTOR. Web.

In this article, the author asserts that Victorian novelists portray women as a something of a form of currency, given that they are passed from father to suitor, in exchange for a dowry.  Using this argument, the author claims that sex is used as a currency and uses the term “heterosexual exchange” to describe the transactions.  The article is composed in five sections, with three focusing on novels dealing with this idea, by such authors as Anthony Trollope, John McLennan, and Henry Summer Maine.  While the authors and their works are separate, the article pulls contents from all of the novels into each argument, so that they are all interrelated.  While good, the article would benefit from more citations.

Renner, Karen J. “Seduction, Prostitution, and the Control of Female Desire in Popular

Antebellum Fiction.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.2 (2010): 166-91. JSTOR.

Web. 2 Oct. 2013.

This article discusses the idea of the prostitute in American literature during the Victorian era.  The article argues that during a period of passionless women, the prostitute stood out as an object of outright sexual desire.  The authors who used prostitutes often portrayed them as victims.  This negative portrayal of sexual desire was a way of pushing the passionless ideology onto women of the period.  The twenty-seven-page article has lengthy footnotes on every page that assist the reader and come in handy when the author makes references to specific pieces of literature.

Schaffer, Talia. “”A Wilde Desire Took Me”: The Homoerotic History of

Dracula.” ELH61.2 (1994): 381-425. JSTOR. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

The author of this article discusses the theory that Oscar Wilde’s relationship with Bram Stoker influenced the novel Dracula.  The author asserts that Stoker was a closeted homosexual who felt confined after his friend Wilde was arrested for sodomy.  The landscape of Dracula is set up to mirror a homosexual’s feelings of confinement and the sexual nature of the vampire is set up to be ambiguous as Dracula bites both males and females.  This forty-one-page article provides an interesting perspective on a classic novel, but it is very dense with citations, making it slow to read.  There are over one hundred in text references so this source provides a good place for readers to begin research.

Seidman, Steven. “The Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure: Victorian Sexuality

Reconsidered.” Journal of Social History 21.1 (1990): 47-27. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct.

2013.

This article confronts the stereotypical notions of sexuality in the Victorian era.  It discusses the origins of these beliefs and how Victorian sexuality differed from those beliefs.   This eighteen page document is split into different subheadings that include, “True Love as Spiritual Union,” “Marriage, Sex and Love: The Antinomy of Sensuality and Love,” and “The Dialectic of Sex: The Pleasures and Dangers of the Sex Instinct.”  This document sheds new light on the stereotypical views of Victorians as a prudish people.

Simek, Lauren. “Feminist “Cant” and Narrative Selflessness in Sarah Grand’s New

Woman Trilogy.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 67.3 (2012): 337-65. JSTOR.

Web. 23 Oct. 2013

In this article, the author discusses Sarah Grand’s New Woman Trilogy and the manner in which she portrays female characters and at times attempts to moralize in the novels.  The author asserts that Grand wants females to articulate better and uses the novels as a means to convey that message.  The Trilogy Grand writes is Grand’s cry for women to not be seen as the passive characters they have been portrayed as in literature.  This twenty-nine-page article contains helpful footnotes dealing with the historical aspects of the article or trivial occurrences in Grand’s life.  This article has page breaks, but it reads like a monster block of text.

Stetz, Margaret D. “The Bi-Social Oscar Wilde and “Modern” Women.” Nineteenth-

            Century Literature 55.4 (2001): 515-37. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

This article discusses Oscar Wilde’s influence on the writer’s, namely female, at the end of the nineteenth century.  The article mentions some of the men Wilde influenced, but is dedicated primarily to the women influenced by Wilde.  Wilde’s approach to literature showed signs of feminism and women after him ran with it.  While the article deals with his influence, it is mainly about Wilde’s own life and writing.  The twenty-four-page article feels rather lengthy, as there are no separations to break up the reading.  This is still a good source to see the influence of a writer in the late Victorian era.

Stevensons, John A. “A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula.” PMLA 103.2

(1988): 139-49. JSTOR. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

In this article, the author explores the sex in Dracula in a manner different than what has been conventionally explored.  While many scholars speculate that the fear of Dracula’s sexual appetite is that of incest, Stevenson suggests that while Dracula has had an incestuous relationship with his own women, during the novel he only desires the foreign women who belong to other men.  Stevenson claims that this is the true fear of Dracula.  This short ten-page article is littered with citations from the novel that serve to reinforce the author’s opinion.  It also includes a lengthy works cited page that could lead to further research. While the plethora of citations helps provide context, it can bog down the article at times.