Between Quran and Kafka: West-Eastern Affinities

by Navid Kermani

What connects Shiite passion plays with Brecht s drama? Which of Goethe's poems were inspired by the Quran? How can Ibn Arabi s theology of sighs explain the plays of Heinrich von Kleist? And why did the Persian author Sadeq Hedayat identify with the Prague Jew Franz Kafka?

One who knows himself and others will here too understand: Orient and Occident are no longer separable : in this new book, the critically acclaimed author and scholar Navid Kermani takes Goethe at his word. He reads the Quran as a poetic text, opens Eastern literature to Western readers, unveils the mystical dimension in the works of Goethe and Kleist, and deciphers the political implications of theatre, from Shakespeare to Lessing to Brecht. Drawing striking comparisons between diverse literary traditions and cultures, Kermani argues for a literary cosmopolitanism that is opposed to all those who would play religions and cultures against one another, isolating them from one another by force. Between Quran and Kafka concludes with Kermani s speech on receiving Germany s highest literary prize, an impassioned plea for greater fraternity in the face of the tyranny and terrorism of Islamic State.

Kermani s personal assimilation of the classics gives his work that topical urgency that distinguishes universal literature when it speaks to our most intimate feelings. For, of course, love too lies between Quran and Kafka .

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Essays, Philosophy, German Literature, Islam

300 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Navid Kermani, born 1967, lives as an Islamic scholar, journalist and writer in Cologne.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why do I like this writer and his works so much? Navid Kermani has the following special qualities, which always let me return to his works:

1. He is of the same age as me (more precisely, he is four years younger).

2. He writes in a clear, engaging, and eloquent style, without messing around and only about subjects he is versed in.

3. He is German and writes in German (although this book is also available in an English translation).

4. He is also Iranian, speaks Persian and Arabic, and habilitated in Oriental Studies. This kind of dual identity, as a Muslim and a German, is what distinguishes him and I can’t think of any other author like him.

5. He knows most of German literature by heart (or has a sophisticated filing system) as well as the authors of Islamic mysticis, the Sufis, and he is able to build bridges between East and West, that is between Orient and Occident, that I’m inclined to cross.

6. He introduced me to Jean Paul through his novel Dein Name and for that I’m grateful.

7. He is a Neil Young fan, just like me.

This monograph contains the following essays and transcripts of speeches, all of which focus, in the narrower or wider sense, on the literature of the West (mostly Germany) and the East (on the basis of Iran and the Quran). As is often the case, such a compilation has strengths and weaknesses. Although weaknesses is not the right word. It’s merely a matter of lack of interest on my part. Other readers will surely have different preferences. For all the pieces contained here, however, point 3 from above applies.

———

Don’t Follow the Poets! – The Quran and Poetry

A revealing piece on the origin of the Quran, on how the original text works, especially in an aesthetic sense, and how this religious book, paradoxically, has helped launching secular Arab poetry. Also, a discussion of the Arabic language and how different the written word is compared to the spoken one, and the immense influence of the Quran on language, and why “translation is impossible” is particularly true of the Quran.

Revolt against God – Attar and Suffering

About the Persian poet, theoretician, and Sufi Farīd ud-Dīn ʿAṭṭār and one of his lesser known works called The book of suffering (translated from the German title used here). According to Navid Kermani ʿAṭṭār’s book is “perhaps the blackest poetry ever written by man”. Black in the sense of gloomy, but also in the sense of humor it seems. One is inclined to start reading the “sufferings” right away after reading this essay!

World without God – Shakespeare and Man

Circling around Shakespeare’s King Lear the question of why there is no God (as a character) in the bard’s works is discussed. Very interesting but also a little too short for my taste.

Heroic Weakness – Lessing and Terror

It’s fascinating to see how Navid Kermani brings together such different topics as Lessing’s play Philotas, the German “National Socialist Underground” terrorists, and the Al-Qaeda network.

Breathing God – Goethe and Religion

The title pretty much says it all. Goethe’s religious development over the course of his life has much more to it than just the East-West divan. I guess one could call him a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to religions.

Filth of My Soul – Kleist and Love

The essay starts with a simple question: “What is love?” and explores answers from different writers and their works. But no one has described love (in German language) deeper, more comprehensive, also illusionary than Heinrich von Kleist.

The Truth of Theatre – The Shiite Passion Play and Alienation

I don’t know much about the history of theater. Therefore, this essay, which is devoted to the Shiite Passion Play and its relation to the modern Western theater, somewhat incomprehensible.

Liberate Bayreuth! – Wagner and Empathy

I admit I only skimmed this one. Richard Wagner and his music/operas are not really my cup of tea.

Swimming in the Afternoon – Kafka and Germany

A Jew in Praque who was writing in German. Kafka really didn’t have an easy life....

The Purpose of Literature – Hedayat and Kafka

.... Neither had the Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat who was compared to Kafka (and loved and despised for that).

For Europe – Zweig and the Borders

Stefan Zweig has triumphed, and with him Heine, Nietzsche, Benjamin, the brothers Mann, Hesse, Hofmansthal, Tucholsky, Döblin, to name but just a few of the German-speaking writers, who at best were laughed at for their commitment to Europe and at worst have been killed.

In Defence of the Glass Bead Game – Hesse and Decadence

A must-read for anyone who enjoyed Herman Hesse’s masterpiece!

The Violence of Compassion – Arendt and Revolution

The acceptance speech for the Hanna Arendt price for political thinking given in December 2012. It is astonishing how absurd some of Hanna Arendt’s theses appear at first sight, but at second glance sound reasonable, while at the third glance, lose their meaning again. I must read her!

Tilting at Windmills – Mosebach and the Novel

The laudatory speech to award the Georg Büchner Prize to Martin Mosebach in October 2007. Mosebach, another one of the seemingly infinite number of authors I haven’t read yet. The speech gives a crash course on Mosebach novels.

One God, One Wife, One Cheese – Golshiri and Friendship

The most personal piece of the collection. In fact, the only personal one. Hushang Golshiri was Kermani’s friend and this is (part of) the story of their friendship.

———

When I looked up the English translations of the titles I found out that the English edition has one more essay in it: Sing the Quran singingly – Neuwirth and Literalist Piety. I suppose this one was added after the original German edition was published. I guess I’ll go hunting…



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the "literary synthesis" essay subgenre, where an author who's widely read and deeply thoughtful traces the connections between literature and the broader world at their leisure, unlocking hidden insights from silent texts with the help of their brethren. Kermani is ethnically Persian but culturally German, and so most of these essays link elements of German culture, particularly the great authors of the past, to their Islamic counterparts, in often surprising but always logical ways. The Koran is the fundamental text of not merely Islam but also Islamic culture; this gives Kermani plenty to talk about in regards to its influence, although he regrets its near-hegemonic dominance. German literature has no comparable single text, but certain authors come up again and again, most prominently Kafka. Kermani talks very personally about what Islam and Germany mean to him, but like all worldly writers, his interests are far too broad to be confined: not only does the title neatly sum up the major preoccupations of the book, it balances his Iranian heritage and German birth, and also faith and doubt, belonging and alienation, and parochialism and universalism.

- "Don't Follow the Poets!". The power of the Koran owes something essential to its original language, as seen by the plentiful conversion-by-poetry stories. However, the special relationship between religion and poetry in Islamic tradition could be considered a weakness as well as a strength, especially when you consider that modern spoken Arabic has diverged from Koranic Arabic in different ways in different countries. Classical Arabic's beauty hangs over modern Arabic in a positive way, providing endless inspiration thanks to its ambiguities, but also a negative way, with over-literal interpretations risking stagnation: Osama bin Laden spoke Arabic in a plain, austere way that mirrored his fundamentalist religious views.
- "Revolt against God". Dante's Divine Comedy can be seen as a response to Islamic literature, above all the Persian Fariduddin Attar's The Book of Suffering. Many Islamic writers had surprisingly diverse theodicies and attitudes to the "submission" at the heart of Islam, as individuals have similar reactions to the tribulations of life no matter their religion, much as we can see in the different ways the Book of Job is viewed. Though much of the modern Christian and Jewish literary traditions sees themselves as apart from the Islamic tradition in terms of individual independence vs submission, the universal urge of defiance (Kermani's most-lauded cultural signifier) crosses boundaries.
- "World without God". King Lear is Shakespeare's finest work, because of how it parallels the great Biblical drama of Job in its exploration of sorrow, resolution, loss, and loyalty without repeating it; in fact its secularization might even put it above its religious competitor. As George Orwell pointed out, even famed Shakespeare-hater Leo Tolstoy appreciated how Shakespeare put human agency above divine destiny, and even when our explanation for our calamities shifts from the caprices of God to the vagaries of nature/fate (cf. Julius Caesar's "The fault is not in our stars... but in ourselves"), we are still masters of our own fate, even when it hurts.
- "Heroic Weakness". The minor 1759 play "Philotas" by Gotthold Lessing, where a captured prince decides that his death rather than being ransomed will give his country a decisive advantage in a war, offers a useful framework to discuss modern terrorism, not only 9/11 but also crimes in Germany by both supposedly "Germanized" Arabs and "native" Germans. Often people decide that the conflict between your cultural heritage and your ethnic/religious heritage often can't be reconciled; Thilo Sarrazin's infamous book Germany's Self-Destruction emphatic declaration that Muslims can't ever be anything but Muslim is contrasted with Hannah Arendt's melancholy agreement that for Jews are often forced to place their Jewish identity over every other aspect of their selves. To Kermani, all ideologies beneath universalist humanism are beneath any civilized person - patriotism, religion, and ethnonationalism are all deadly traps.
- "God Breathing". The act of breathing - inborn and automatic, yet capable of being voluntarily overridden for brief periods - provides a good metaphor for the eternal question of free will vs human choice. Goethe, the archetypal German humanist, wrote a lot about everything, but in his poem Talisman, among other works, his use of the breath metaphor is a perfect way to think about the spirit of God.
- "Filth of My Soul". Heinrich von Kleist, a German playwright who committed mutual suicide with his platonic girlfriend (!), wrote the play Amphitryon, which contains a scene wherein at a crucial moment the heroine Alcmene, struggling to express her feelings of love, utters a single word: "Ach!" A simple, single word, but in context of the play, as well as compared to the varied depictions of love in von Kleist's other works, it offers an excuse to discourse on the nature of love and its expressions, which range from the brutal devouring of Achilles by Penthesilea to more refined sighing, as in the writings of the great Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi.
- "The Truth of Theatre". Shiite passion plays, known as taziyeh, honor the death of Hussein at the Battle of Karbala. The conventions of the taziyeh are contrasted against the theories of Berthold Brecht, in particular the alienation effect. Brecht rejected much of the philosophical underpinnings of Western drama, especially the emotional catharsis theories of Aristotle which form the implicit backbone of most conventional Western plays, but even though Brecht's works strike observers as very different due to his emphasis on artificiality, taziyeh is often a level beyond Brecht in both in its rejection of the Western model and its use of mythic/historical energies to produce emotional impacts. This is especially due to the role of the audience, which responds to this Shiite origin story in a way that has no contemporary in secular Western theater. It is extremely curious why he does not compare taziyeh to Christian passion plays, however.
- "Liberate Bayreuth!". Yet another Wagnerian conversion story, though Kermani can't get over the lameness of the period staging, feeling that it's unworthy of the grandeur and power of the music. The transcendent effects of some of the greatest music ever written struggles in its settings partially because of its being straitjacketing by the conventions of the past; anti-naturalism produced in an era of naturalism. There's also a funny dig at the operatic pretensions of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd, although he's wrong... The Wall rules!
- "Swimming in the Afternoon". Much like how second-generation Americans often feel not-quite-fully grounded in American culture, Germany can inspire the same ambivalence in its recent arrivals. Kermani feels that way, and so did Kafka: no matter how Kafka wrote, he was tormented by identity - Hapsburg, German, Czech, Jewish? Defining a national literary culture is always tricky, especially when it's one that wants to have an international aspect as well, and even more especially if it's German, which has been separated, united, divided, and reunified in so many ways throughout history, and whose many writers have often been defined as much by their opposition to German politics as much as by their love for German culture. It would be only too fitting to declare Kafka the ultimate German writer, who only escaped the Holocaust by dying too young.
- "The Duty of Literature". The early 20th century Iranian author Sadeq Hedayat was one of those cranky, scandalous, outré writers whose iconoclasm has become much more attractive with the passage of time. His life has many parallels with Kafka, and he was fascinated by his German counterpart, but their artistic sensibilities did not always overlap - Hedayat's stories were much more grounded in everyday life than the more abstract settings of Kafka. Hedayat's interest in Kafka was primarily in Kafka's grim portrayal of the world, an interest made more poignant to the reader by his own suicide, but much like Kafka's reputation has survived his early death, so has Hedayat's.
- "Towards Europe". Poets, Stefan Zweig chief among them, had been singing the praises of Europe as a single entity long before politicians had the vision, even as its nations were still vigorously persecuting their greatest artists over distinctions that now mean nothing. But while "Europe" now means something to the residents of its current member states, you only have to look at the refugee crisis to see how it means something far different to its neighbors to the south. In one sense, Europe's defenses against unchecked immigration are perfectly rational, but in another they are an abandonment of the dreams that helped create it. Refugees are trading the certain death of their homes for the potential death of the crossing of the seas; while the urge to wall oneself off is understandable, one need only look at Europe's history to see where that urge leads. You don't have to be religious to favor accommodating the refugees, you just have to look at the lives and works of the great Europeans of the past.
- "In Defence of the Glass Bead Game". Hermann Hesse's final novel The Glass Bead Game was much derided upon its release, but its vision of a sterile, uncreative world where people play meaningless games all day is, shall we say, not without interest in the modern world. This essay is kind of a downer; Kermani makes many comparisons between our own time and the fictional land of Castalia in the novel, but shies away from the obvious conclusion that we're at the end of our creative tether. I don't agree, but I can sympathize with that conclusion.
- "The Violence of Compassion". On the occasion of being awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize, how the rights of man (based on the idea of universal rights) are balanced against the rights of the citizen (based on a nationalist conception of identification with a particular state), with reference to the American and French Revolutions, as well as Arendt's relationship to Zionism. Are revolutions always providers or guarantors of liberties, or to truly benefit their participants do they require preconditions, like relative equality, that modern revolutions like the Arab Spring lack?
- "Tilting at Windmills". At an event honoring the writer Martin Mosebach, a comparison of his novelistic style with Cervantes', and a questionable (?) what really matters in novels:

"The structure [of his latest novel, The Moon and the Girl] is frighteningly perfect – and yet that is not what thrills this eulogist, for one, about the laureate. Naturally we younger readers want the explosion, not the perfection; what interests us about the plot is most of all the digression. But, on the other hand, something emerges further in The Moon and the Girl that was not yet present in the early novels, with their fairly endearing characters, and that only in West End, in A Long Night at the latest, takes on the unsettling quality I find indispensable in literature: what emerges is malice. It is no accident that The Moon and the Girl contains the first cold-blooded murder in a Mosebach novel. Literature has to be malicious, it has to hurt; for the sake of humanity itself, it has to be merciless in its view of human beings."

- "One God, One Wife, One Cheese". Kermani's recollections of Hushang Golshiri, an Iranian poet who was a bit of a character.
- "Sing the Quran Singingly". The Koran is meant to be read aloud, and though oral recitation of the Bible/Torah is also important in their respective traditions, the act of speaking what is technically the word of God is more important in Islam. Germans have worried about Muslim efforts to spread Islam in a manner akin to Christian proselytizing, but as the research of scholars like Angelika Neuwirth has confirmed, audience participation is key to the Koran's effect.
- "On the Sixty-Fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the German Constitution". Big thanks to modern Germany for being great.
- "On Receiving the Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association". His memories of Father Jacques Mourad, a Catholic priest in Syria who was kidnapped by ISIS amid their efforts to re-establish a caliphate. Moderate Muslims struggle with these horrors, seeing that some of the greatest victims of fundamentalists are moderates, yet also reaching out for the humanity of those of other religions caught up in this disaster. Seeing this internal struggle exposed is shameful, but also a reminder of shared humanity.

I have never read any of his fiction, but he is unquestionably a superb essayist.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: Kermani's book has subsequently been translated into English, if anyone is interested.

Navid Kermani is one of the most interesting essayists working in Germany today. In this collection of loosely-related stories, he explores his dual identity as Muslim and German as one of both belonging and apartness, and elaborates that dual role into a general theory of Germanness that he sees exemplified in many of its greatest literary figures, such as Goethe, Heine, and Kafka.

In this reading, what it is to be truly German is to be part of a culture world of German speakers, not to be bound to a particular nation. And this has been literally true for the vast majority of history - a unified German nation has existed only briefly and periodically.

Kermani is a gifted interpreter of aesthetics, particularly with respect to German modernism and classical Islam. He brings these two great currents into dialog in a deeply illuminating way, and on a personal level I learned as much or more about Islam and how it is actually experienced by its faithful than I have probably learned from any other single book. To be sure, Kermani speaks my language.

It is worth noting that his idea of cultural identity with respect to Germany is not original - Günther Grass argued for something like this for his entire career, for example, and it is exemplified in the intellectual-left by advocates of liberal cosmopolitan internationalism such as Jürgen Habermas. But the use that Kermani makes of it is highly personal, and highly relevant to questions dominating our current political and intellectual landscape.

[Niko Schmitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nachdem ich "Die Revolution der Kinder" gelesen hatte, war ich bezaubert von der Art, wie Kermani schreibt. Also wollte ich mehr von ihm lesen, und "Zwischen Koran und Kafka" war das Buch, dass ich schon auf meinem Tolino hatte.

Ich habe den größten Teil des Buchs im Philcafé gelesen, während Beni bei ihrem Praktikum bei Wortwert war und ich an meiner Hausarbeit über Anführerinnenschaft in der Frau, Leben, Freiheit Protestbewegung schrieb, deren Thema ich ausgehend von meiner vorherigen Kermani-Lektüre begründete.

Das Buch besteht aus verschiedenen Essays, die jeweils ein Kapitel bilden. In der Einleitung begründet Kermani sein Anliegen mit der Nachricht einer Kollegin und Freundin, die ihn nach seiner (grandiosen!) Rede vor dem Bundestag in eine Reihe mit Autoren wie Zweig, Goethe und wem auch immer ??? stellte. Tatsächlich hatte ich bei meiner vorigen Lektüre auch schon dieses Gefühl, aber vor allem aus sprachlicher Sicht - der Mann kommt verdammt nah an die Schöne verwundene Sprache Stefan Zweigs heran. Kermani macht sich also auf die Suche nach den Wurzeln seines schriftstellerischen Tuns in der Reihe deutscher und vor allem jüdischer Deutscher Autoren und stellt dafür verschiedene Aufsätze und Betrachtungen zusammen. Diese sind aber nicht speziell auf die Fragestellung ausgerichtet sondern stehen eher für sich alleine.

Deshalb war mein Lesefluss auch nicht immer gleichermaßen einfach. Während ich manche Kapitel unglaubliuch spannend fand, zum Beispiel die Kapitel über Kleist, Hedayat oder Golschiri, fand ich andere Kapitel schwierig zu verstehen, wie zum Beispiel das Kapitel über das iranische Improvisationstheater und den Verglich mit Brechts V-Effekt, beides kenne ich nicht, oder den Aufsatz über Wagner und die Bayreuther Festspiele, wovon ich auch keine Idee habe. Diese Kapitel waren also nicht nur langweilig für mich sondern nötigten mir auch extreme Konzentration ab und ein extremes Wiederlesenmüssen vieler Sätze und Abschnitte. Ich war aber auch zu verbissen, um diese Kapitel zu überspringen, da ich auch nie wusste, ob sie nicht doch noch spannend würden. Deshalb will ich nun eine kleine Zusammenfassung der einzelnen Kapitel geben.

Begonnen habe ich mit Kermanis Rede vor dem Bundestag zum 75. Jahrestag des Grundgesetztes, die im Anhang stand, da diese den Ton für das Buch setzen sollte. Diese Rede ist einfach grandios und ich würde allen empfehlen, diese zu lesen oder auf Youtube zu hören; sie ist auch nicht lang. Sie greif viele verschiedene Theman auf, und das mit wundervoller sprachlicher Eleganz. Kermani zeichnet nach, welch ambitioniertes Projekt das Grundgesetz zur Zeit seiner Entstehung war und wie toll dessen Versprechen und Ideen tatsächlich sind. Er rezitiert dabei einzelne Sätze aus dem Grundgesetz und stellt heraus, was diese tatsächlich bedeuten.

[Lev · Rating 5 out of 5]

(read in German)

This book was a revelation and a half. I love learning about many different random things, especially theology, literature and culture and the connections between them, so I was primed to enjoy it. Kermani effortlessly demonstrates cultural exchange and fusion in a way that feels more revealing that constructing. I was especially struck by the sensitive yet fearless way Kermani approaches Jewishness and its place in German and European culture. He made me see a lot of German lit staples in a different light and I'm coming away with a longer to-read list.

Of course, I think that both the title and summary as well as any effort to make sense of the premise of this book aren't particularly accurate. Mainly it's a collection of think pieces by someone with a specific set of interests written for different purposes, so expecting it to be in any way systematic is a pretty futile endeavour. I quite liked it that way, though. If public intellectuals have to have any place in discourse, I'm glad we've got Kermani.

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

All nice and well, ultimately not very insightful. If you have the basic understanding of history of the West and of the Islam, it is all very good, but then the book actually adds very little. Something more cutting, more confronting, like Gray on modernity or like Mishra on Islamist movements is far more pressing.