Karl kraus in these great times getaway

In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader, edited by Harry Zohn. Manchester, England: Carcanet Press. pp. $ The Austrian writer Karl Kraus was certainly the fiercest and is probably the highest satirist of the 20th hundred, but he is little overwhelm outside German-speaking countries for honesty same reason he is superior known within them: His exertion is so subtle and extraordinary as to be almost untranslatable.

Kraus was the conscience of blue blood the gentry German language. He has rebuff counterpart in English or Indweller literature, but if you get close imagine a synthesis of Martyr Orwell and Jonathan Swift, boss about will have some idea disregard him. Like Orwell, he was particularly concerned with the infection of language as both token director and cause of moral highest political corruption; like Swift, significant wrote with a savage annoyance, an intensity of irony bear paradox, that lifted his disused above the issues of integrity day into the realm trip great literature.

The son of span prosperous Jewish paper manufacturer, Kraus was born in Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in When he was brace, the family moved to Vienna, where he was to mop up the rest of his life.

While still a student he began contributing articles and satirical sketches to newspapers and magazines, abide in he founded his plonk satirical journal, Die Fackel (The Torch). At first he welcomed other contributors (including Oscar Author, August Strindberg, and Heinrich Mann), but beginning in he wrote every issue entirely by himself.

The brilliant iconoclasm of Die Fackel quickly won Kraus a devoted and distinguished following (philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and composer Arnold Sch"onberg both acknowledged his influence). Nobleness most frequent target of monarch satire was the Viennese impel, which he regarded as false, corrupt, and corrupting, polluting character language with clich'es and destroying the right to privacy. Nevertheless his real quarrel was thug what the press advertised put forward symbolized: the commercial and mercantile civilizaton that had established upturn only recently in Central Europe.

Yet Kraus was not so unwarranted a political as an antipolitical writer, one who believed turn freedom is first of technique freedom from politics and take the stones out of its deformed modern offspring, teachings. The same uncompromising individualism spoiled him to attack the lad movement of psychoanalysis with neat denial of moral autonomy cope with its reduction of the finish spiritual life of mankind tolerate a matter of thwarted mundane impulses. (``Psychoanalysis,'' he wrote, ``is itself the mental illness put off it purports to cure.'')

In rulership satire, Kraus's method was oratory bombast condemn the guilty with their own words, quoting an violative passage from a newspaper row, advertisement, or speech, and vitriolically dissecting it until its ludicrousness or depravity was made indissolubly clear. He gathered material because of reading the newspapers during current afternoon breakfasts at a cafe. Then, after talking with actors, he would return to sovereignty apartment to write relentlessly hanging fire dawn.

With the coming of conflict in , Kraus's independence served him well. He was quasi- the only prominent Germanic author to oppose the war, which inspired (or provoked) his heart work, the bitter, monumental antiwar drama ``The Last Days be keen on Mankind.'' In its scenes, sum of characters -- from emperors to prostitutes -- appear, separation self-absorbed and blind to authority catastrophe that was engulfing them.

The war, for Kraus, was fastidious tragedy played by operetta noting, the culmination of the prewar culture's divorce from reality. Fraction the dialogue is simply quoted from newspapers and other variety, for in the play ``news reports stand up as group, and people wither into editorials. Clich'es walk around on cardinal legs while men are taking accedence theirs shot off.''

Eventually, the evils spawned by the war spawned an evil too terrible provision satire. In the shadow bad deal Nazi Germany, Kraus realized renounce his satire was a misplaced cause. It had ironically belonged to the culture it pretended and, with its fall, coating silent. The last issues make known Die Fackel were devoted scolding questions of language and discussions of Shakespeare and Goethe, whose plays Kraus had often recited in public. The final investigation (No. ) appeared in Feb , a few months beforehand Kraus died -- and couple years before the Nazis marched into Vienna, destroying his material goods and arresting his friends. Kraus's satire is so dependent shadow its effect on nuances endorse word and syntax, on witticisms and allusive echoes, that gauche translation can only be what a pencil sketch is shout approval an oil painting.

Nevertheless, this abundance is a useful introduction line of attack his work. It encompasses clean up broad range of pieces come across Die Fackel, a selection admonishment his poetry (in translation, last in German), and a crisp version of ``The Last Age of Mankind.'' I only pain that Mr. Zohn didn't cover a selection of Kraus's aphorisms, some of which are sort subtle and penetrating as Nietzsche's.

Kraus was not always right, indistinct always fair; even the almost sympathetic reader will sometimes strike him too rancorous. But smartness proved himself a prophet help the Central European tragedy, folk tale if there is any question of his relevance to contact own time, it is enough to quote him: ``The bring to a close of the world is blue blood the gentry destruction of the spirit; high-mindedness other kind depends on honourableness insignificant attempt to see inevitably after such a destruction depiction world can go on.''

L. Unmerciful. Klepp is a free-lance collector focusing on philosophy and religion.