unsettling to see residual animal aspects in human nature; to see human acrobatics from a simian point of view can make more than the apes laugh.
Yet ultimately the ape, like Kafkaâs other creature protagonistsâGregor Samsa the insect, the burrowing mole, the investigating dog, or Josephine of the mouse peopleâelicits more empathy in the reader than comedy can tolerate. Whereas the human heroes of Kafkaâs works are kept at armâs length in a way that mirrors their impersonal relations withothers, his creatures are so intimately conceived that they pull us into their predicament and hearts. Comedy needs enough detachment from its subject to allow for the enjoyment of its playfulness. If Heineâs comedy is overtaken by anger, Kafkaâs is overtaken by grief.
Thus, of the two possibilities open to him, the ape has chosen the variety stage over the zoo, and concludes his report with a description of how he ends his days.
When I come home late at night from a banquet, or from some scientific society, or a friendly get-together, a little half-trained little chimpanzee is waiting up for me, and I take my pleasure with her after the apish fashion. I have no wish to see her by day; you see, she has the crazy, confused look of the trained animal in her eyes; I am the only one to recognize it, and I cannot endure it.
In any case, I have on the whole achieved what I wanted to achieve. Do not say it was not worth the trouble. Besides, I am not asking for a judgment from any human, my only wish is to make these insights more widely known; I am simply reporting; to you, too, honoured gentlemen of the Academy, I have been simply making a report. 28
The apeâs refusal of pity is belied by the sympathy he feels for the creature that is just beginning the transformative process he has successfully traversed. By the point where the ape says, âI cannot bear it,â the comic potential of the story has dissolved, and the bewildered half-broken animal stares out at us with an insane look in her eye.
The same pressures that produced taufjuden âbaptized Jews who appeared to continue in their Jewish ways, somewhat like Marranos, the secret Jews who outlasted the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, but now were tolerated though seen as equally suspect by both Christians and Jewsâfueled German Jewish humor. Taufjuden humor claimed the right to mock from the perspective of Jew or Gentile, or the perspective of both or neitherâdemonstratively free, yet aware of the forces that had brought it into being. Feeling threatened, Jews sublimated their anxieties in joking, which did not eliminate the threat. In Heine and Kafka, warnings against the limits of comedy emerge from the comedy itself. This is the quality that seemed prophetic in retrospect, when their premonitions were actualized by fellow Germans, and to an extent far beyond their imagining.
German Jewish humor influenced all other branches of Jewish culture. The man who stood at the helm of modern Yiddish culture in Poland, I. L. Peretz (1852â1915), came to regret what he considered the excessive influence of Heine while he tried to find his own literary voice. But no such qualms troubled other Yiddish writers who likewise discovered literature through Heine. The humor magazines published in New York City by Yiddish immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century regularly featured translations from Heine and imitations of Heine (some unacknowledged). In 1918, a group of these writers put out an eight-volume Yiddish edition of Heineâs workâthe only such literary tribute in U.S. Yiddish lettersâreflecting not only the esteem in which the German writer was held but also a publisherâs (no doubt exaggerated) estimation of his public appeal.
It is worth noting, however, that the introduction to these collected works casts Heine as a âtragic Jewish poet, perhaps the most tragic poet who every climbed the sacred
Yet ultimately the ape, like Kafkaâs other creature protagonistsâGregor Samsa the insect, the burrowing mole, the investigating dog, or Josephine of the mouse peopleâelicits more empathy in the reader than comedy can tolerate. Whereas the human heroes of Kafkaâs works are kept at armâs length in a way that mirrors their impersonal relations withothers, his creatures are so intimately conceived that they pull us into their predicament and hearts. Comedy needs enough detachment from its subject to allow for the enjoyment of its playfulness. If Heineâs comedy is overtaken by anger, Kafkaâs is overtaken by grief.
Thus, of the two possibilities open to him, the ape has chosen the variety stage over the zoo, and concludes his report with a description of how he ends his days.
When I come home late at night from a banquet, or from some scientific society, or a friendly get-together, a little half-trained little chimpanzee is waiting up for me, and I take my pleasure with her after the apish fashion. I have no wish to see her by day; you see, she has the crazy, confused look of the trained animal in her eyes; I am the only one to recognize it, and I cannot endure it.
In any case, I have on the whole achieved what I wanted to achieve. Do not say it was not worth the trouble. Besides, I am not asking for a judgment from any human, my only wish is to make these insights more widely known; I am simply reporting; to you, too, honoured gentlemen of the Academy, I have been simply making a report. 28
The apeâs refusal of pity is belied by the sympathy he feels for the creature that is just beginning the transformative process he has successfully traversed. By the point where the ape says, âI cannot bear it,â the comic potential of the story has dissolved, and the bewildered half-broken animal stares out at us with an insane look in her eye.
The same pressures that produced taufjuden âbaptized Jews who appeared to continue in their Jewish ways, somewhat like Marranos, the secret Jews who outlasted the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, but now were tolerated though seen as equally suspect by both Christians and Jewsâfueled German Jewish humor. Taufjuden humor claimed the right to mock from the perspective of Jew or Gentile, or the perspective of both or neitherâdemonstratively free, yet aware of the forces that had brought it into being. Feeling threatened, Jews sublimated their anxieties in joking, which did not eliminate the threat. In Heine and Kafka, warnings against the limits of comedy emerge from the comedy itself. This is the quality that seemed prophetic in retrospect, when their premonitions were actualized by fellow Germans, and to an extent far beyond their imagining.
German Jewish humor influenced all other branches of Jewish culture. The man who stood at the helm of modern Yiddish culture in Poland, I. L. Peretz (1852â1915), came to regret what he considered the excessive influence of Heine while he tried to find his own literary voice. But no such qualms troubled other Yiddish writers who likewise discovered literature through Heine. The humor magazines published in New York City by Yiddish immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century regularly featured translations from Heine and imitations of Heine (some unacknowledged). In 1918, a group of these writers put out an eight-volume Yiddish edition of Heineâs workâthe only such literary tribute in U.S. Yiddish lettersâreflecting not only the esteem in which the German writer was held but also a publisherâs (no doubt exaggerated) estimation of his public appeal.
It is worth noting, however, that the introduction to these collected works casts Heine as a âtragic Jewish poet, perhaps the most tragic poet who every climbed the sacred
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