[XI, 26, 25] CENT’ANNI DI KAFKAONE HUNDRED YEARS OF KAFKA

Kafka’s occasional public readings are described in Max Brod’s biography as being sites of riotous laughter, not least from Kafka himself, despite the ‘fearful earnestness’ of the chapter being delivered. David Foster Wallace – among other, usually English-language critics – writes of the immense difficulty for the modern reader of grasping how exactly the Czech modernist’s often nightmarish work might also be read as funny. This piece will explore one possible avenue into this difficulty. Building on the work of critic Anca Parvulescu and the translator Michael Hofmann’s concept of ‘Kafka-time’, the paper will explore Kafka’s relation to what Jorge Luis Borges glosses as his most distant literary antecedent, the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea’s ‘paradox against motion’. Focusing on selections from Kafka’s shorter works, this paper examines how the asymptotic mode, moments which Hofmann describes as imbued with the ‘infinite possibility of infinitesimal change’, functions as vital architecture in the composition of Kafka’s comedy.

KEYWORDS: Kafka, humour, Zeno of Elea, belatedness, incongruity theory

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