ABSTRACT
If Kafka is the quintessential modern author for both Adorno and Benjamin, his take on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must inform their reading to a major extent. However, it is what Kafka would call the truth of Sancho Panza that is the truth of the thinkers' differing relationships to Don Quixote. In a letter to Gershom Scholem dated 11 August 11 1934, Walter Benjamin argues that the authors find "Kafka's messianic category" which is embodied in the "reversal" of "studying." Don Quixote goes backwards and by following him Sancho Panzo "rereads his own existence." Benjamin, to be sure, situates Kafka's version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at the very end of his own essay on Kafka. Kafka's Sancho Panza-Benjamin tells us, echoing Kafka-has a philosophical delight in following Don Quixote all his life.
