"A Czech? No." Franz Kafka's topographically conditioned exophony and the innermost dyad of Judaism and Slavia
Abstract
The article deals with the question whether it is possible to identify a dyad of Judaism and Slavia in Kafka's personality that can be traced back to the multi-ethnic topography of Prague. On the one hand the focus is set on Kafka's relationship to the Czech speaking urban population majority.
On the other hand, it is about his perception of the (former) language of his ancestors, Yiddish. For this purpose, collective attitudes towards such a dyad in Kafka's social milieu are outlined and checked out on accordance with Kafka's individual attitude.
Based on the findings, the motif of exophony in Kafka's prose is discussed and its importance in the context of literary self-definition is determined. After reconstructing to what extend Kafka functionalized the public image of his own relationship to his Czech environment a look at Kafka's fixed written (literary) language leads to a preliminary answer to the main question formulated above.