KAFKA AS A PROBLEM - WHEN AUTHORS READ KAFKA (Kafka ako problem - ked autori citaju Kafku)

The lecture thematizes the authorial reception of Franz Kafka in world literature. The author concentrates on the question of 'influence' while noting a triviality of inter-textual filiations among many contemporary (esp. American) authors. The problem of authorial reception appears much more seriously in the context of active authorial reception among some Central European writers, who find it necessary to come to terms with Kafka as one of the most symptomatic phenomena of modern literature. Going beyond Kafka has thus become the program of I. Aichinger, as well as P. Handke or P. Roth, but it also forms the background of the confrontation with Kafka in E. Cantetti. Productive employment of motifs from Kafka's work as universal and global cultural topoi can be found in the Japanese writer H. Murakami, whose work Kafka on the shore has brought a new model of authorial relationship to Kafka's work, among others.