Keywords
Franz Kafka
tradición
judaísmo
parábolas sin verdad Walter Benjamin
Franz Kafka
Tradition
Judaism
Parables without truth
How to Cite
Abstract
In a letter written in 1938 to Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin maintains that the work of Franz Kafka represents the «sickness of tradition». In this paper, we seek to develop the historical processes of this agony of tradition, maintaining that with it the author alludes to the crisis of transmission of Judaism at the beginning of the 20th century in Central Europe. We examine firstly the situation of a generation of assimilated Jews, for whom tradition was no longer a living fact, and how this process crumbled the horizon of meaning in which to inscribe their actions. Secondly, we analyze the idea of narrations or parables without truth, that Benjamin develops in his interpretation of Kafka, and we propose that in such parables lies a new and singular possibility of facing the lack of a legacy: one that narrates or transmits the ultimate untruth characteristic of our own time.References
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