Brecht and Benjamin

around the unfathomable character of Kafka's work

Abstract

The paper intends to analyze the discussions between Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin around Kafka in Svendborg-Denmark, showing the importance of tension as a method of building and improving antifascist artistic strategies and art criticism. It is evident that the differences between the authors are almost confused, since what Brecht insinuates to be unforgivable in Kafka - the unfathomable character of his works - also ends up emerging in the most important element of his epic theater: the epic gesture. From the formal point of view of the works, Brecht and Benjamin use the montage strategy that breaks with the hierarchical and linear ordering of artistic production. Kafka disagrees with both in this respect, leaving the reader in charge of constructions beyond his work. His tireless gesture of writing, however, places him as an assembler of processes that hardly adheres to the final form of the work - he wanted his manuscripts to be even destroyed after his death. The dissonances, although tiny, are essential for elaborating the thoughts of these characters who lived under European Nazifascism and tried to respond artistically and intellectually to the horror that prevailed at the time.