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Title
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Sartre, Kafka and the universality of the literary work
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Author
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Abstract
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| French existentialism is commonly regarded as the main impetus for the universal significance that Kafka gained in postwar France. A leading critic, Marthe Robert, has contended that this entailed an outright rejection of interest in the biographical, linguistic and historical dimension of Kafka's writing in order to interpret it as a general expression of the human condition. This article will consider this claim in the light of Sartre's original conceptualization of a dialectic of the universal and the particular in the intercultural mediation of the work of art. The notion of a 'true universality' proposed by Sartre as a defence of Kafka during the 1962 Moscow Peace Conference will allow for a reassessment of Robert's criticism in a paradoxical reversal of terms: it is precisely the inevitable loss of context and the appropriation within one's own particular situation which allow the literary work to elucidate a foreign historical context and thereby gain a wider significance. Rather than a universal meaning of the work, Sartre's concept points to literature's potential to continually release specific meanings in new contexts. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Sartre Studies International
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Publication
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2014
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ISSN
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1357-1559
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DOI
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10.3167/SSI.2014.200106
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Volume/pages
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20
:1
(2014)
, p. 69-85
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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