Professor Rosy Singh
After Ph.D (Existential Situations in Kafka's Works. A Semiotic Analysis), I taught German Studies in Delhi University from 2004 to 2016. Then I moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi where I currently teach German literature. My interests are literature, particularly German language literature, Sufi poetry in Punjabi and Urdu, comparative studies and semiotics. Author of Rilke, Kafka, Manto. The Semiotics of Love, Life and Death (2001), Tagore, Rilke, Gibran: A Comparative Studies (2002), Autobiography: Fact and Fiction (2009), •Franz Kafka and Literary Criticism: ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Burrow’ (2010), Essays on Contemporary German Literature (2017).
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The two terms, Judaism and Jewishness, are technically different, for Judaism refers
to the set of fixed religious beliefs and rituals whereas Jewishness is an existential
concept and is, therefore, extremely personal and difficult to define.
There are umpteen references to the Jewish people and their concerns in Kafka’s
letters and diaries, but when it comes to his fictional writing, he is discreet. His
stories are conspicuous by the absence of a single Jew or even a remote derivative
of the word, Jew. One explanation for this marked difference is clear. In contrast to
the fictional writing, the letters and diaries were not written for public consumption.
The only exceptions are the ›Animal in the Synagogue‹ (In unserer Synagoge, geschrieben 1920) and ›Jackals and Arabs‹ (›Schakale und Araber‹, 1917) where Jewish motifs can be located in the titles itself but even these texts are subtle. Let us explore Kafka’s ›Animal in the Synagogue‹ and ›Before the Law‹ in terms of this discussion. Th e former is hardly known whereas the latter is one of Kafka’s most popular works.
Glühende Lobsprüche sind dem Magnum Opus gewidmet. Die Autoren Grimm haben es selbst einen »Wortgarten« genannt. Rilke hatte es reine »Dichtung« genannt und Marcel Reich-Ranicki erklärte, dass es »der interessanteste Roman und das allerwichtigste Buch in deutscher Sprache« sei.
The two terms, Judaism and Jewishness, are technically different, for Judaism refers
to the set of fixed religious beliefs and rituals whereas Jewishness is an existential
concept and is, therefore, extremely personal and difficult to define.
There are umpteen references to the Jewish people and their concerns in Kafka’s
letters and diaries, but when it comes to his fictional writing, he is discreet. His
stories are conspicuous by the absence of a single Jew or even a remote derivative
of the word, Jew. One explanation for this marked difference is clear. In contrast to
the fictional writing, the letters and diaries were not written for public consumption.
The only exceptions are the ›Animal in the Synagogue‹ (In unserer Synagoge, geschrieben 1920) and ›Jackals and Arabs‹ (›Schakale und Araber‹, 1917) where Jewish motifs can be located in the titles itself but even these texts are subtle. Let us explore Kafka’s ›Animal in the Synagogue‹ and ›Before the Law‹ in terms of this discussion. Th e former is hardly known whereas the latter is one of Kafka’s most popular works.
Glühende Lobsprüche sind dem Magnum Opus gewidmet. Die Autoren Grimm haben es selbst einen »Wortgarten« genannt. Rilke hatte es reine »Dichtung« genannt und Marcel Reich-Ranicki erklärte, dass es »der interessanteste Roman und das allerwichtigste Buch in deutscher Sprache« sei.