{"id":2598,"date":"2012-10-31T12:49:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T16:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=2598"},"modified":"2012-11-06T08:51:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T12:51:05","slug":"gabriele-eckart-glossen-35","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/most-recent-issue-glossen-352012\/gabriele-eckart-glossen-35\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriele Eckart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephan Wackwitz reading Kafka reading Cervantes: \u201cDie Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa\u201d \/ (\u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d) <\/strong><\/p>\n

Gorga Gemma stated about the global literary reception of Miguel de Cervantes\u2019s famous protagonist Don Quixote, \u201cthe literary line of Don Quixote is so impressive because of the quantity and quality of its members, as well as because of the inexhaustible capacity to grow and incorporate new offspring\u201d (35).\u00a0 This is certainly also true for literature written in German; just think about Christoph Martin Wieland\u2019s protagonist Don Sylvio, Johann Carl Wezel\u2019s Ritter Selmann, Jean Paul\u2019s Nikolaus Marggraf, or, to name a 20th century example, Paul Schall\u00fcck\u2019s Don T\u00fcnnes. However, the literary line of Don Quixote\u2019s companion, Sancho Panza, in German literature is also quite noteworthy.\u00a0 Examples are Margarete Hansmann\u2019s first-person narrator in the narrative Chauffeur bei Don Quijote<\/em> \/ (Don Quixote\u2019s Driver<\/em>) (1977) and Horst Dinter\u2019s recent novel Die Abenteuer der gedankenreichen Donna Quijote de la Mancha <\/em>\/ (The Adventures of the Smart Donna Quixote of la Mancha<\/em>) (2000), in which Sancho Panza, after Quixote\u2019s death, leaves his village for a new sally, together with the Don\u2019s heir, a lady called Donna Quijote.\u00a0 The most famous Sancho Panza text in German literature is Franz Kafka\u2019s parable \u201cDie Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa\u201d \/ (\u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d) (1917), in which the author provides, as Marthe Robert argues, \u201can indispensable insight into the way he perceived his own Don Quixote, namely K. and all his avatars\u201d (20).\u00a0 More than eighty years later, in 1999, the parable has been adapted by Stephan Wackwitz in the form of a remarkable novel that has the same title as Kafka\u2019s text.<\/p>\n

Kafka\u2019s short narrative, which according to Walter Benjamin was his \u201cvollendetste\u201d \/ (\u201cmost consummate\u201d) (Benjamin 228) achievement, belongs to the group of over-analyzed texts in German literature.\u00a0 This study proposes to examine those of its interpretations that might be helpful for interpreting Stephan Wackwitz\u2019s enigmatic novel The Truth about Sancho Panza<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The interpretations of Kafka\u2019s text might be so numerous because, as is well known, the strength of a literary sentence lies less in what is said than in \u201cwhat is not said\u201d (Urzidil 343).\u00a0 As will be seen in the following, Kafka\u2019s only two-sentence-long parable is packed with things not said that provoke questions and speculations.\u00a0 Since \u201cquixotic work has too much modesty \u2013 and too much humor,\u201d as Robert stated (7), it does not offer any revelations.\u00a0 The text, written on October 21, 1917, reads as follows:<\/p>\n

Sancho Pansa, der sich \u00fcbrigens dessen nie ger\u00fchmt hat, gelang es im Laufe der Jahre durch Beistellung einer Menge Ritter- und R\u00e4uberromane in den Abend- und Nachtstunden seinen Teufel, dem er sp\u00e4ter den Namen Don Quixote gab, derart von sich abzulenken, da\u00df dieser dann haltlos die verr\u00fccktesten Taten auff\u00fchrte, die aber mangels eines vorbestimmten Gegenstandes, der eben Sancho Pansa h\u00e4tte sein sollen, niemandem schadeten.\u00a0 Sancho Pansa, ein freier Mann, folgte gleichm\u00fctig, vielleicht aus einem gewissen Verantwortlichkeitsgef\u00fchl, dem Don Quixote auf seinen Z\u00fcgen und hatte davon eine gro\u00dfe und n\u00fctzliche Unterhaltung bis an sein Ende.<\/p>\n

(Without making any boast of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of years, by feeding him a great number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from himself his demon, whom he later called Don Quixote, that this demon thereupon set out, uninhibited, on the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack of a preordained object, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody.\u00a0 A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a sense of responsibility, and had of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days.) (Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The sensational title \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d that Max Brod gave to Kafka\u2019s text (Robertson 17) announces already that the literary material \u2013 Cervantes\u2019s famous figures Quixote and Sancho \u2013 will be deconstructed from the distance of a narrator who reproduces it1<\/a>.\u00a0 The text consists of two sentences, in both of which Sancho Panza is the subject.\u00a0 Most importantly, as Richard Thieberger pointed out, he, and not Quixote, is the central figure.\u00a0 Don Quixote, the grammatical object in both sentences, is called Sancho\u2019s devil.<\/p>\n

Hartmut Binder mentioned that Kafka, in a letter to Robert Klopstock written in June 1921, related Abraham to Don Quixote (Thieberger 357).\u00a0 In another letter, to Oskar Baum, written in fall 1917, Kafka talks about his reading of the Danish philosopher S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard\u2019s book Fear and Trembling <\/em>(1843) in which Abraham plays an important role\u00a0 (Thieberger 357). Therefore, it can be assumed that Kafka related Cervantes\u2019s figure of Don Quixote to Kierkegaard\u2019s figure of Abraham \u2013 a figure he disagreed with (see Binder 20).<\/p>\n

According to Werner Kraft\u2019s interpretation, Kafka\u2019s Don Quixote grows \u201cinto the spectral\u201d and Sancho Panza \u201cinto the real\u201d (146).\u00a0 However, due to the fact that reality is elusive, we only can strive to emulate Don Quixote. (148) Arno Dusini comes to a similar conclusion, stating that Kafka\u2019s Don Quixote grows into a spectral direction.\u00a0 The critic goes on to ask: \u201cBut, whose ghost, whose specter is haunting this text?\u201d (57) In his opinion, the spectral dimension in Kafka\u2019s figure of Quixote cannot be explained satisfactorily due to the extreme ambiguity of many of the text\u2019s elements.\u00a0 However, Dusini feels that this dimension has to do with the fact that there is no woman, no Dulcinea, in the constellation of figures of Kafka\u2019s parable although it was written in between the letters to his girl friend, Felice Bauer.\u00a0 Might the absence of a Dulcinea have anything to do with the fact that Kafka was already spitting blood at this time due to the tuberculosis he suffered from? In a letter to Felice, Kafka wrote: \u201cThe blood is not from the lung, but from the (or a) decisive stab of a fighter\u201d (quoted in Dusini 61).\u00a0 Afterwards, also referring to the act of stabbing, Kafka scribbled the following lines in his notebook:<\/p>\n

Eine der wichtigsten Don Quichotischen Taten, aufdringlicher als der Kampf mit Windm\u00fchle ist vergessen worden der Selbstmord.\u00a0 Der tote Don Quichote will den toten Don Quichote t\u00f6ten; um zu t\u00f6ten, [\u2026] braucht er aber eine lebendige Stelle, diese sucht er nun mit seinem Schwerte ebenso unaufh\u00f6rlich wie vergeblich.\u00a0 Unter dieser Besch\u00e4ftigung rollen die zwei Toten, in unaufl\u00f6slichem und f\u00f6rmlich springlebendigem als unaufh\u00f6rlicher Purzelbaum durch die Zeiten. \/ (One of the most important actions of Don Quixote, more obtrusive than the struggle with the windmill, has been forgotten, the suicide.\u00a0 The dead Don Quixote wants to kill the dead Don Quixote.\u00a0 But, to kill him he needs a spot that is alive; he seeks it with his sword as continuously as in vain.\u00a0 In this occupation, the two dead men roll through history in an insoluble and bubbly somersault.) (Dusino 61)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This literary statement about Cervantes\u2019s novel seems to be nonsense.\u00a0 However, as Manuel Dur\u00e1n said wisely, \u201cperhaps the nonsense of a genius is worth more than ten erudite routine articles\u201d (224).\u00a0 Did Kafka contemplate committing suicide because his illness prevented him from marrying Felice? Being diagnosed with tuberculosis was a death sentence in those days.\u00a0 Dusino does not draw this conclusion in his interpretation, but rather states more generally that it cannot be decided if there is a conflict between the so-called not-literary and the literary texts in Kafka\u2019s oeuvre.<\/p>\n

Also many other critics (as, for instance, Hillman, Kobs, Sokel, and Thieberger) interpreted Kafka\u2019s parable \u201cDie Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d from a biographical point of view.\u00a0 One of them, W. G. Kudszus, draws attention to the important fact that due to the \u201cextraordinary tolerance for interpretation\u201d (160) of Kafka\u2019s two sentences in this text, it is impossible to construct an absolutely right or wrong meaning around it.\u00a0 Since Kafka wrote this text during a relatively happy period of his life, the critic tends to identify Kafka with Sancho who, in this text, is an \u201cimaginative man, familiar with romances, and he is quite happy with the entertainment provided him by his devil\u201d (159).\u00a0 In addition, knowing about his devil, he knows about truth.\u00a0 Therefore, as Kudszus goes on to say, Sancho\u2019s self-knowledge is sufficiently transparent to him to give him a sense of freedom.\u00a0 Similarly, Walter Benjamin, whose praise of Kafka\u2019s \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d was quoted at the beginning of this study, interprets the parable as a text about relief in the following brief gloss that is as enigmatic as Kafka\u2019s parable itself:<\/p>\n

Gesetzter Narr und unbeholfener Gehilfe, hat Sancho Pansa seinen Reiter vorangeschickt.\u00a0 Bucephalus hat den seinigen \u00fcberlebt.\u00a0 Ob Mensch, ob Pferd ist nicht mehr so wichtig, wenn nur die Last vom R\u00fccken genommen ist. (Benjamin 228) \/ (Sober fool and hapless assistant, Sancho Panza sent his rider before him.\u00a0 Bucephalus outlived his.\u00a0 Whether man or horse is no longer so important as long as the burden is lifted from one\u2019s back.) (Weber 230)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bucephalus was, as is well known, Alexander the Great\u2019s horse that went on living as a lawyer in Kafka\u2019s story \u201cThe new Advocate,\u201d published in 1920.\u00a0 Samuel Weber stated about Benjamin\u2019s reading of Kafka\u2019s parable \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d: \u201cin interpreting (Auslegung<\/em>), rereading, and staging one\u2019s own life, a repetition takes place that lifts the burden from the subject who would be sovereign, allows him to divest himself of his rider and simply go along for the ride\u201d\u00a0 (230).<\/p>\n

As most other critics did, also Ritchie Robertson studied the journal entries as well as letters that Kafka wrote around the time when he composed \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d as a starting point to examine this text.\u00a0 However, contrary to most former interpretations that considered Kafka\u2019s story to be a comment about his own life, Robertson sees it as a comment about the relationship between the individual and society and the \u201cproblem of responsibility\u201d (18).<\/p>\n

By contrast, Gert Mattenklott read Kafka\u2019s text as a parable about \u201chow to deal with evil\u201d (961) \u2013 without trying to detect what this evil might have signified for Kafka.\u00a0 He concluded, \u201cYou cannot defeat the negative; but you can turn it aside\u201d (962).\u00a0 The most important aspect of this strategy of deflecting the evil, according to Mattenklott, is not making any boast of it because who boasted about having defeated it would be hopelessly lost.\u00a0 In this sense, Kafka\u2019s text is \u201can allegory about silence\u201d (962).\u00a0 Only when you are able to keep your mouth shut will you be what Sancho became in the end \u2013 a free man.<\/p>\n

Manuel Dur\u00e1n in his socio-historic approach to Kafka\u2019s text, does exactly what Mattenklott avoids doing; he attempts to detect the meaning of this evil for Kafka that Sancho finally manages to exorcise by reading novels on knights and robbers and, in this process, creating the figure of Don Quixote.\u00a0 The most important clue for Dur\u00e1n is the year in which Kafka wrote his famous parable: 1917.\u00a0 In this year, World War I devastated Europe.\u00a0 Because Sancho (not Cervantes who is not even mentioned in Kafka\u2019s text) creates the figure of Don Quixote2<\/a>, Sancho becomes the kind of hero that such times of war require according to our modern understanding: the pacifist.\u00a0 Cervantes\u2019s Sancho Panza, as is well known, cannot read and write.\u00a0 However, how can the illiterate Sancho feed Don Quixote those romances of chivalry in Kafka\u2019s story? As Dur\u00e1n points out correctly, Kafka\u2019s Sancho, the reader, cannot be the same one as in Cervantes\u2019s text.\u00a0 Kafka, according to the critic, allegorically created a new, educated, modern Sancho \u2013 a practical man who for the sake of his well-being does not like war.\u00a0 Therefore, he behaves as he does, freeing himself from his inner violence: \u201cThe devil that we carry inside is the violence, the desire for power, the belief that all problems could be resolved by the strength of weapons, the belief that with armies \u2013 Charles V and Phillip II believed that, and also the protestant princes \u2013 one could change the world\u201d (Dur\u00e1n 228).\u00a0 What the religious wars were in Cervantes\u2019s times, Dur\u00e1n goes on to say, were the much more devastating World Wars in the twentieth century.\u00a0 Under such circumstances \u2013 Kafka wrote the parable in the fourth year of World War I \u2013 Kafka\u2019s sympathy is not with Quixote who tries to use his sword to solve problems, but with Sancho, the hidalgo\u2019s pacifist counterpart.\u00a0 Having exorcized his inner violence, Sancho, as a consequence, according to Kafka, is a free man.\u00a0 With the following important statement, Dur\u00e1n closes his interpretation: \u201cHopefully, the allegory of Kafka\u2019s short Cervantes\u2019s interpretation will become a prophecy\u201d (228). Without doubt, Dur\u00e1n shares Robertson\u2019s belief that Kafka\u2019s text \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d comments on the relationship between the individual and society and the problem of responsibility.\u00a0 This is a huge step away from the interpretations that see the text as a literary discussion of Kafka\u2019s difficult personal life.<\/p>\n

For examining Stephan Wackwitz\u2019s use of Kafka\u2019s text in his astonishing novel Die Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa<\/em> (1999),Robertson\u2019s and Dur\u00e1n\u2019s interpretations are by far the most helpful, as will be seen. In this novel, the Jewish scholar Heinrich Katz, who as an adolescent had escaped with his parents from Nazi Germany to England, remembers his life.\u00a0 His most troublesome memory is a devastating mental crisis that he experienced in Germany when he was only twelve years old \u2013 the devil had appeared to him!\u00a0 In the first person, Katz narrates step-by-step how he slid into and finally overcame this \u201cpsychotic episode\u201d (45), as the family\u2019s psychiatrist had called it.\u00a0 However, looking back on his life, this strange episode, for mysterious reasons, has taken center stage in his memory:<\/p>\n

Es sind die abseitigen Ereignisse, in denen ich den Schl\u00fcssel zu meinem Leben finde.\u00a0 Was ich erlebt habe, die Figuren und Vorkommnisse der letzten achtzig Jahre: sie bewegen sich wie Figuren einer mittelalterlichen Rathausuhr um ein vergessenes Kinderentsetzen aus den fr\u00fchen drei\u00dfiger Jahren.\u00a0 Der nur f\u00fcr mich bestimmte Teufel taucht in regelm\u00e4\u00dfigen Abst\u00e4nden auf in ihrem Tanz.\u00a0 \/ (It is in the remote events of my life that I find the key to it.\u00a0 What I experienced during the last eighty years, those figures and happenings are circling \u2013 like figures of the clock of a medieval city hall \u2013 around a forgotten horror of a child in the early 1930s.\u00a0 The devil destined only to me appears in regular distances in their dance.) (1999, 96-7, Transl. G.E.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before Katz dies, he says to his son that his whole life appears to him to be a mere commentary to Kafka\u2019s text \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza,\u201d which Katz knows by heart and recites to him deeply moved.\u00a0 In fact, the reason for Katz\u2019s comment on his life seems to be quite obvious.\u00a0 By employing different strategies, Katz, as Kafka\u2019s Sancho did, had succeeded in turning aside his devil \u2013 ensuring that the \u201cpsychosis\u201d remained a short episode in his youth instead of swallowing up his whole life.\u00a0 Or, to use some of Kafka\u2019s vocabulary, by exorcising the devil, Heinrich Katz had made sure that this evil in him that crystallized into the form of the devil, whatever it signified, could not harm him.\u00a0 With this strenuous and stressful work, Katz had behaved responsibly and would have found Sancho\u2019s approval.\u00a0 The question of whether Katz, as a result, was also entertained by the devil\u2019s adventures (or, to use Wackwitz\u2019s metaphor, whether he was entertained by those figures and happenings that were circling in his memory like figures of the clock of a medieval city around the \u201chorror of a child\u201d) remains open in Wackwitz\u2019s novel.\u00a0 However, due to my interpretation of what Katz\u2019s devil might signify from a socio-historic point of view similar to that of Dur\u00e1n\u2019s, my answer would be negative.<\/p>\n

Robertson, in his interpretation of Kafka\u2019s story, in which Don Quixote provocatively is called a devil, pointed out that Kafka was not only influenced by Kierkegaard\u2019s figure of Abraham, called by the Danish author the \u201cKnight of Faith,\u201d but by similar characters who, according to Kafka\u2019s journal entries and letters, caused a mixture in him of both admiration and skepticism. They were characters such as Jossel from the town of Klezk about whom Kafka read in Salomon Maimon\u2019s autobiography. Kafka commented on such religious fanatics in a letter using descriptions as, for instance, \u201cgespenstisch\u201d \/ (\u201cspecter-like\u201d) or \u201cwahnwitzig\u201d \/ (\u201cmad\u201d) (Robertson 20). The use of such negative words indicates Kafka\u2019s fear of fanatical behavior. About Jossel, Kafka read in Maimon\u2019s book that during his religious fits he saw ghosts and smashed windows and stoves because he thought they were his enemies and behaved \u201croughly as his predecessor Don Quixote did\u201d (Robertson 21). Since in both cases their unconditional devotion led to delusions and mad behavior, Jossel and Quixote easily could melt together into one figure in Kafka\u2019s fantasy. Also Georg Langer, a friend of Kafka, was a person who was unconditionally devoted to an ideological cause. Influenced by a famous \u201cWunderrabbi\u201d \/ (\u201ca rabbi performing miracles\u201d) (Robertson 21), Langer became such an orthodox Chassid that, to the horror of his family, he started to wear a Caftan and payees and refused to look women, even his own mother, in the face. As Robertson stated, \u201cbecause of his unwavering obedience faced with the demands of his religion, as bizarre as they might appear to his environment, Langer had a lot with Kierkegaard\u2019s Abraham (and in a way also with Don Quixote) in common\u201d (21). That Abraham\u2019s obedience in the face of God\u2019s demands went so far that he was willing to kill his own son, explains Kafka\u2019s deep skepticism towards this figure. Men devoted to a cause so unconditionally, like Abraham and Quixote, are quite able to commit crimes. When Kafka stated in a letter about Kierkegaard\u2019s Abraham, \u201che worries that as Abraham he will leave with his son, but turn into Don Quixote on the way\u201d (Robertson 20), it could be interpreted as an indication of Kafka\u2019s hope that men like Abraham would be diverted \/ tamed on the way by people like Sancho and therefore not be able to commit the crimes they have in mind. In other words, when Kafka wrote \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d according to this interpretation, he was thinking wishfully that thanks to Sancho\u2019s (common people\u2019s) sense of responsibility, the \u201cknights of faith\u201d or the men whose devotion to an religious \/ ideological cause is so unconditional that they are willing to kill could be stopped.<\/p>\n

According to Robertson, that Kafka awarded Sancho Panza such a sense of responsibility \u201ccan only be meant ironically\u201d (20).\u00a0 I do not agree with this presumption.\u00a0 However, my opinion that Kafka was serious in having Sancho save his hide and the world from the knights of faith and their crimes might be influenced by my reading of Stephan Wackwitz\u2019s novel The Truth about Sancho Panza<\/em>, in which I see a connection between Heinrich Katz\u2019s encounter with the devil and the Holocaust that happened only a few years later.<\/p>\n

A protagonist in Martin Kessel\u2019s novel Die Schwester des Don Quijote<\/em> \/ (The Sister of Don Quixote<\/em>) (1984) says about the atmosphere in Europe during the first quarter of the twentieth century that \u201cpeople work too much and don\u2019t live enough\u201d \u2013 a situation that puts people under too great a strain and leads to \u201coutbreaks [\u2026], spiritually and materially\u201d (58).\u00a0 Although there is some quixotism to be seen, the speaker goes on to say, it lies only \u201cin doctrinaire behavior\u201d (58)\u00a0 \u2013 not in the enjoyment of life, in the generosity of living and letting it go.\u00a0 It is impossible not to sense a connection between Kessel\u2019s and Kafka\u2019s descriptions of quixotism towards the end of World War I and during the two World Wars \u2013 a time when \u201cisms\u201d were in their heyday, as for instance, nationalism, militarism, communism, Zionism etc.\u00a0 Both writers tacitly point to the state of mind of a man whom Kierkegaard calls a knight of faith \u2013 a man who in the name of a cause is willing to commit crimes \u2013 or whom Sancho Panza calls a devil.\u00a0 It can be assumed that the boy Heinrich Katz from discussions at the family\u2019s dinner table or comments he heard in school received a feeling of the atmosphere of this time, drenched in the ever-shriller partisanship for different ideological causes that produced such a \u201cquixotic\u201d state of mind.\u00a0 In this situation, he got scared and, in an attack of anxiety, he \u201csaw\u201d the devil.\u00a0 As Kafka is said to have foreseen the history of the twentieth century in his nightmarish stories, the boy Heinrich Katz, perhaps, \u201cforefelt\u201d Hitler and the fate of the European Jews.\u00a0 Therefore, this single memory, as if it were too crazy to be dealt with by reason, still troubles him as an old man.\u00a0 In Kafka\u2019s parable, Sancho Panza, after he turned the devil \/ Don Quixote aside so that he could not harm him, \u201cphilosophically\u201d \u2013 which means in an even-tempered mood \u2013 followed him on his crusades.\u00a0 Could it be said that Wackwitz\u2019s protagonist Katz also followed his devil after he defeated him \u201cphilosophically\u201d?\u00a0 Did he watch, from his safe haven of exile in London, the Nazi\u2019s crusades in Europe even-temperedly?\u00a0 It is unlikely.<\/p>\n

Kudszus, in his positive view of Kafka\u2019s text \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d as a reflection of a relatively happy man, goes on to mention that, unfortunately, the text also can assert the opposite:<\/p>\n

We cannot know for sure that Sancho\u2019s failure is out of the question.\u00a0 Perhaps the stage he creates for Don Quixote is an empty one, and Sancho, presumably its creator, has to play along, a victim of his own clever scheme, bedeviled by \u201chis\u201d devil, engulfed by the consequences of his externalized power of imagination. (160)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because such a pessimistic perspective on the text is possible also in Heinrich Katz\u2019s case, it is likely that he did not have \u201ca great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days.\u201d This might be the reason that Katz\u2019s psychotic episode from his early years when he was a high school student in Germany troubles him so deeply still as an old man.<\/p>\n

Wackwitz, born in 1952 in Stuttgart, recently has become quiet famous with the publication of his novel Ein unsichtbares Land <\/em>\/ (An Invisible Land<\/em>) <\/em>(2003).\u00a0 <\/em>Using old photographs and clippings from his grandfather\u2019s journal, the narrator in a Sebaldian3<\/a> way reconstructs the life of three generations of his family and engages, as Helmut Schmitz stated, \u201cwith aesthetic and ethical questions regarding a post-Holocaust memory\u201d (257).\u00a0 Interestingly, one chapter of the novel, called \u201cIn the Palace of the Emperor,\u201d can be read as an interpretation of Kafka\u2019s short text \u201cAn Imperial Message\u201d (1917).\u00a0 In other chapters, the narrator plays with references to Kafka\u2019s text \u201cHunter Gracchus\u201d (1917).\u00a0 Given these frequent examples of Kafka-reception, it can be assumed that Wackwitz\u2019s novel The Truth about Sancho Panza<\/em> is not only the story of an old Jewish man who narrated his life into the author\u2019s tape recorder, but rather a highly complex literary creation that includes the play with intertextual material.\u00a0 In the novel An Invisible Land<\/em>, the narrator asks the important question<\/p>\n

ob die sogenannte Wirklichkeit, die uns meistens als etwas unbestreitbar Festes, Undurchdringliches und K\u00f6rperhaftes erscheint, nicht vielmehr eher ein lockeres und ver\u00e4nderliches Gewebe aus Erinnerungen, Geistern, Stimmungen ist und erst in zweiter Linie aus Tatsachen und Gegenst\u00e4nden besteht. \/ (if the so-called reality that most of the time appears to us as something firm, impenetrable, and body like, is not rather a loose and changeable fabric made from memories, ghosts, moods and only consists in the second instance of facts and objects.) (2003, 136, Transl. G.E.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without doubt, Wackwitz\u2019s novel The Truth about Sancho Panza <\/em>is adding another ingredient to this \u201cfabric\u201d of which reality is made: literary myths as those of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.<\/p>\n

To summarize, most interpretations of Kafka\u2019s parable \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d were undertaken from an autobiographical point of view.\u00a0 Some more recent interpretations, however, most importantly Stephan Wackwitz\u2019s novel The Truth about Sancho Panza<\/em>, that see the text as a discussion of the responsibility of an individual living in society, open a new \u2013 political \u2013 dimension for interpreting Kafka\u2019s very short and mysterious text.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Notes<\/h3>\n

1 As Dietrich Krusche showed, Kafka\u2019s \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d belongs to the few exceptions among Kafka\u2019s texts, in which the narrator is located outside the setting of the story, i.e., in which there is offered more than the \u201cperspective from the inside of a monologizing (reflecting, dreaming) subject\u201d (20).<\/p>\n

2 Also Borges, as Dur\u00e1n has stated, scandalously ignores Miguel de Cervantes as the author of Don Quixote<\/em> in his short story \u201cPierre Menard, author of the Quixote.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Borges tells us in this story in a provocative way that because reading is creatively writing there are as many Quixotes as there are readers of Cervantes\u2019s most famous novel.<\/p>\n

3 W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) was a German writer and scholar who lived most of his life in England.\u00a0 His most important novels are The<\/em> Rings of Saturn<\/em> (1995) and Austerlitz<\/em>\u00a0 (2001).<\/p>\n

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Bibliography<\/h3>\n

Benjamin, Walter.\u00a0 Schriften<\/em>. Vol. 2.\u00a0 Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1955.<\/p>\n

Binder, Hartmut.\u00a0 Motiv und Gestaltung bei Franz Kafka<\/em>. Bonn: Bouvier, 1966.<\/p>\n

Borges, Jorge Luis.\u00a0 \u201cPierre Menard, author of the Quixote<\/em>\u201d, Ficciones<\/em>. Madrid: Biblioteca Borges, 1995.<\/p>\n

Dinter, Horst.\u00a0 Die Abenteuer der gedankenreichen Donna Quijote de la Mancha<\/em> Jena: Verlag Neue Literatur, 2000.<\/p>\n

Dur\u00e1n, Manuel.\u00a0 \u201cFranz Kafka interpreta El Quijote.\u201d\u00a0 Adolfo Sotelo V\u00e1zquez, Marta Cristina Carbonell. (Eds.) Homenaje al Profesor Antonio Vilanova<\/em>.\u00a0 Vol.1.\u00a0 Barcelona: Univ. de Barcelona, 1989, 217-28.<\/p>\n

Dusini, Arno.\u00a0 \u201cSancho Pansa Kafka<\/em> Don Quichote.\u201d Transkulturelle Beziehungen: Spanien und \u00d6sterreich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert<\/em>.\u00a0 Marisa Sigu\u00e1n, Karl Wagner. (Eds.) Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004, 47-62.<\/p>\n

Gorga, Gemma. \u201cEl libro \u00bftinta o veneno? De Don Quixote a Peter Kien.\u201d Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 640 (2003): 35-47.<\/p>\n

Hannsmann, Margarete. \u00a0Chauffeur bei Don Quijote: Wie hap Grieshaber in den<\/em> Bauernkrieg zog<\/em>.\u00a0 D\u00fcsseldorf: Claasen, 1977.<\/p>\n

Hillmann, Heinz.\u00a0 Franz Kafka. Dichtungstheorie und Dichtungsgestalt<\/em>.\u00a0 Bonn: Bouvier, 1973.<\/p>\n

Kafka, Franz.\u00a0 \u201cDie Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Panza.\u201d\u00a0 Franz Kafka.\u00a0 Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande, und andere Prosa aus dem Nachla\u00df<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: Schocken, 1953.<\/p>\n

Kessel, Martin.\u00a0 Die Schwester des Don Quijote<\/em>.\u00a0 Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.<\/p>\n

Kierkegaard.\u00a0 Furcht und Zittern<\/em>.\u00a0 Hermann Diem. (Ed.) Kierkegaard, ausgew\u00e4hlt und eingeleitet von Hermann Diem<\/em>.\u00a0 Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1961.<\/p>\n

Kobs, J\u00f6rgen.\u00a0 Kafka: Untersuchungen zu Bewusstsein und Sprache seiner Gestalten<\/em>.\u00a0 Bad Homburg: Athen\u00e4um, 1970.<\/p>\n

Koelb, Clayton.\u00a0 \u201cThe Margin in the Middle: Kafka\u2019s Other Reading of Reading.\u201d\u00a0 Alan Udoff.\u00a0 (Ed.)\u00a0 Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance<\/em>.\u00a0 Bloomington: Indiana UP (1987): 76-86.<\/p>\n

Kraft, Werner.\u00a0 Franz Kafka: Durchdringung und Geheimnis<\/em>.\u00a0 Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1968.<\/p>\n

Krusche, Dietrich.\u00a0 Kafka und Kafka-deutung.\u00a0 Die problematisierte Interaktion<\/em>.\u00a0 M\u00fcnchen: Fink, 1974.<\/p>\n

Kudszus, W.G.\u00a0 \u201cKafka\u2019s Cage and Circus.\u201d\u00a0 Alan Udoff.\u00a0 (Ed.)\u00a0 Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance<\/em>.\u00a0 Bloomington: Indiana UP (1987): 158-64.<\/p>\n

Maimon, Salomon.\u00a0 Salomon Maimon\u2019s Lebensgeschichte<\/em>.\u00a0 M\u00fcnchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1911.<\/p>\n

Mattenklott, Gert.\u00a0 \u201cGewinnen, nicht siegen.\u201d\u00a0 Merkur<\/em> 39 (1985): 961-8.<\/p>\n

Muir, Edwin.\u00a0 Muir, Willa.\u00a0 \u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza.\u201d\u00a0 [Online.]\u00a0 >http:\/\/www.endeneu.com\/kafka\/sanchopanza.html< 2\/9\/2010.<\/p>\n

Paul, Jean.\u00a0 Der Komet oder Nikolaus Marggraf: Eine komische Geschichte<\/em>.\u00a0 Z\u00fcrich: Manesse, 2002.<\/p>\n

Robert, Marthe.\u00a0 The Old and the New: From Don Quixote to Kafka<\/em>.\u00a0 Berkeley: U o California P, 1977.<\/p>\n

Robertson, Ritchie.\u00a0 \u201cKafka and Don Quixote.\u201d\u00a0 Neophilologus<\/em> 69 (1985): 17-24.<\/p>\n

Schall\u00fcck, Paul.\u00a0 Don Quichotte in K\u00f6ln<\/em>.\u00a0 Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1967.<\/p>\n

Schmitz, Helmut.\u00a0 \u201cZweierlei Allegorie: W. G. Sebalds Austerlitz<\/em> und Stephan Wackwitz\u2019 Ein unsichtbares Land<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Gerhard Fischer. (Ed.) W. G. Sebald: Schreiben ex patria \/ Expatriate Writing<\/em>.\u00a0 Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009: 257-75.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sokel, Walter Herbert.\u00a0 Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 M\u00fcnchen: Albert Langen, Georg M\u00fcller, 1964.<\/p>\n

Thieberger, Richard.\u00a0 \u201cDie Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa.\u201d Hartmut Binder (Ed.) Kafka-Handbuch<\/em>.\u00a0 Stuttgart: Alfred Kr\u00f6ner, 1979, Vol. 2, 357-8.<\/p>\n

Urzidil, Johannes.\u00a0 \u201cCervantes und Kafka.\u201d\u00a0 Hochland<\/em> 63 (1971): 333-47.<\/p>\n

Wackwitz, Stephan.\u00a0 Die Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa<\/em>.\u00a0 M\u00fcnchen: Piper, 1999.<\/p>\n

———-.\u00a0 Ein unsichtbares Land<\/em>.\u00a0 Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2003.<\/p>\n

Weber, Samuel. Experimenting: Essays with Samuel Weber<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: Fordham UP, 2007.<\/p>\n

Wezel, Johann Carl.\u00a0 Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen, sonst der Stammler genannt<\/em>.\u00a0 Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1971.<\/p>\n

Wieland, Christoph Martin.\u00a0 Der Sieg der Natur \u00fcber die Schw\u00e4rmerey, oder die Abentheuer des Don Sylvio von Rosalva, Eine Geschichte worinn alles Wunderbare nat\u00fcrlich zugeht<\/em>.\u00a0 Z\u00fcrich: Haffmans Verlag, 1997.<\/p>\n

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Stephan Wackwitz reading Kafka reading Cervantes: \u201cDie Wahrheit \u00fcber Sancho Pansa\u201d \/ (\u201cThe Truth about Sancho Panza\u201d) Gorga Gemma stated about the global literary reception of Miguel de Cervantes\u2019s famous protagonist Don Quixote, \u201cthe literary line of Don Quixote is so impressive because of the quantity and quality of its members, as well as because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"parent":2534,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2598","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2598\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}