ABSTRACT
The position of Kaf ka in the modern novel, even in modern culture in general, parallels that of Goethe. Both are central figures of transition at the two ends of the long nineteenth century: Goethe lived through the Sattelzeit around 1800 (Koselleck 1988), marked by the American and French revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars, while Kafka experienced the similarly liminal events of World War I and the Bolshevik ‘revolution’. Yet, in spite of such structural analogies, there is a major difference between them, no doubt due to the fact that one was living at the start, while the other at the end of this long transition period: while Goethe is one of the greatest artist of all times, whose impact on German culture is comparable to that of Shakespeare on English culture, Kafka’s work not only remained radically incomplete, but also fails to offer cathartic and redeeming features, remaining tied to the nihilism of modernity which it not only documents and analyses, but paradoxically reflects, comparable to the way the work of Callot or Newton ‘reflects’ the liminality of their times (Horvath 2013a) – with the exception of the Zürau Notebooks.
