Zur Rezeption von Franz Kafka und Samuel Beckett in Rumänien

Sameness/Otherness: Synchrona Analyses of Beckett's and Kafka's Prose
 Abstract

  Essentially, the main focus of this book is the shifting dynamics of cultural paradigms, which presented a challenge and an incentive to try and shed light on the circumstances that triggered the various critical approaches discussed. The motivation for undertaking such a complex and difficult approach came, as previously stated, with the awareness of a significant lack of material regarding the reception of Beckett’s short prose in Romania. This fact could be explained by the major shift of focus towards the reception of his drama. A significant reason for the choice of the short prose works of both authors was the fact that Beckett as well as Kafka tackled the issue of the ultimate truth of human existence in their writings in a radical and uncompromising way. Samuel Beckett’s work, having been translated into twenty languages, naturally prompted an overview of the extent to which the writer’s work was subjected to different acts of criticism and translations in Romania. In analyzing the technique employed by both Beckett and Kafka, it became clearer that it was the organization of the piece, the clarity of “details”, the control, the variety of the sentence structure, the word choice, the consistency and the appropriateness of tone that were to be extensively pondered upon. The reception of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka in Romania during 1963-1993 took the form of a contrastive pattern, an astonishing “otherness” with a more prolific output in the case of Samuel Beckett’s reception outside Romania and Franz Kafka’s reception in Romania. This pattern proved to be worthy of an in-depth analysis hopefully leading to a better insight into the political, economic and even geographic influences at a specific time of transient social turmoil in our country. In the beginning of their literary careers (1905 with Kafka and 1929 with Beckett) it is rather difficult to identify some relevant echo of the authors’ works in Romania, as our country was facing complex political and ensuing ideological issues. As regards Kafka’s reception before World War I, the Romanian literary world was heavily influenced by its political background, the Second Balkan War and World War I. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the first relevant reception of Kafka’s work was delayed until the mid 1920s. In Beckett’s case, this reception was delayed even more, until the mid 1960s. (Moreover, if his early work should have reached South Eastern Europe earlier, the first reactions would have been very similar to those in his own cultural environment, i.e., something ranging between astonishment and blunt rejection). The feeling of futility of a creature facing an indifferent universe – a landmark of Beckett’s entire work – has lead some exegetes, among which also Walter Strauss, to see in him a direct follower of Kafka. But Beckett plods farther along than did Kafka. With Beckett, the ego is seen in a full decomposition. Kafka’s hero is without hope in the search for his own God; Beckett’s protagonists do not search for a God, they do not even wait for him anymore. They are pleased with waiting for an indefinite something, as waiting is the only possible form of existence. It is this resignation, this eternal waiting that brings Beckett’s characters closer to Dante’s Belaqua (who waits in eternity, but not until the end of time). The present dissertation’s main aim was to show how during a period of utmost turmoil and political pressure the shift of critical paradigms had a negative influence on the Romanian readership in its reception of Beckett’s work and a positive one in relation to Kafka. By shedding light on Beckett’s and Kafka’s reception in the Romanian literary world (of both critics and readers) we hope to have made a partial contribution to the already enormous and ever-growing field of Beckett and Kafka studies. Much has been said about the two writers, and especially in a postmodern world of an unprecedented growth in accessibility of printed material, one cannot help but think of the Latin syntagm ‘nihil novum sub sole’. Although political realities and artificially imposed censorship account for a relatively limited pre-1989 analysis of their works, we can safely state that especially in Franz Kafka’s case the Romanian readership evinces a manifold and highly positive response to a work not always easy to relate to and even, simplistically put, to like. What we have aimed at in the present thesis is to show that true (literary) value cannot be subjected to and thwarted by shifting political, social and historic realities and that it stands, as Kafka’s trees in the parable with the same title, firmly on the ground of universal human spirituality. We hope that this will turn out to be a self-evident aspect of the thesis.