Kafka: Ein j|discher Schriftsteller aus arabischer Sicht (LITERATUREN IM KONTEXT. ARABISCH - PERSISCH - TuRKISCH)

Regardless of skin color, religion, language and place, everyone feels close to Kafka, the ill friend who lived in Prague, composed his work in German, but whose massage survived despite his early death. In a poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Kafka seems close to Arab reality: "I found Kafka sleeping under my skin, in accord with our garb of nightmare and the police in us." The 1988 Nobel Prize holder, Naguib Mahfouz, wrote: "I have known Kafka for more than forty years, but I encountered him first particularly after the Arab defeat of 1967". Since 1939, Kafka's oeuvre has been read in the Arab World, commented on, translated and quite controversially discussed: whether through identification, appropriation, literary inspiration, projection, misunderstanding, or politicization. But only in 1946 did he become famous when the eminent Egyptian writer, Taha Husain, introduced him to the public in a series of articles. His comments on Kafka can be conceived as a part of his secularization project. While in the 1960s Kafka achieved a special significance in the Arab world, the east European polemic against him had been more and more exacerbated in the context of the Cold War. Stimulated by those polemics and in the course of the rising Arab anti-Zionism, the question of Kafka's attitude to Zionism arose from 1971 on. As a Jewish writer who was predominantly on the move among the Zionist circles of Prague, his reception became more complicated and difficult after the rise of the Middle East conflict. This study is concerned with the entire history of reception, focusing on the significant contest of Arab intellectuals and beyond to point this reception in context of the modern Arab History of thought. In this respect the study can be considered part of a future-oriented research, which deals with exchange processes, the transfer of ideas, cultural translation, and overlapping and interference between Europe and the Arab area. However, these spheres are not considered opposites. German text.