ABSTRACT
Otto Dov Kulka’s book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death illuminates the reading experience as a way of mobilizing a split between the emergent being that was trapped in the claustrum of a personal trauma, and an excessive continuous doing that helped the self to remain anchored and even contributing in his world. Kulka’s book offers a testimony of a trauma written many years after the event, a period during which Kulka took on the role of an ‘objective’ researcher and kept his private experiences apart from this preoccupation. Kulka’s reading of Kafka’s story ‘Before the Law’ continued to breach the claustrum’s shell that had cocooned him in eternal death and led to a dramatic transformation in his inner equilibrium between the singular and the general. Kulka’s reading liberated the besieged city in his mind and led to the reestablishment of the metaphorical inner witness.
