“He Couldn’t Tell the Difference between The Merry Widow and Tristan and Isolde”: Kafka’s Anti-Wagnerian Philosophy of Music

Abstract

Thisessay exposes an anti-Wagnerian philosophy of music in Franz Kafka’s “Researches of a Dog” and “The Silence of the Sirens.” Themes of music, sound, and silence are overwhelmingly powerful in these stories and cannot be divorced from corporeal and visual aspects. These aspects are articulated in the selected texts in a manner that stands in stark opposition to Richard Wagner’s philosophy of music as presented in the composer’s seminal 1870 “Beethoven” essay.

Keywords

• richard wagner
• franz kafka
• philosophy of music
• transcendence
• acousmatic sound
• silence