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Kafka's crypt: W. G. Sebald and the melancholy of modern German Jewish culture.(modern homosexuality; Franz Kafka and Winfried Georg Sebald)(Critical essay)

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From: The Germanic Review
Date: 20070322
Author:Garloff, Katja

ABSTRACT: This author explores the connection between illicit eroticism and the commemoration of German Jewish culture in W. G. Sebald's Schwindel.Gefuhle. The author reads the allusions to homosexuality in the book's second and third chapters as a melancholic "encryption" of the life and work of Franz Kafka. Expanding on Judith Butler's concept of "gender melancholy," The author suggests that Sebald traces the racial melancholy that informs German Jewish culture before the Holocaust. The author concludes the article with a reading of Kafka's "Ein Bericht fur eine Akademie" as a ...

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