Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Wit and Wisdom
For curmudgeons, the best part of the book -- which is largely comprised of six sections of aphorisms, 26 pages of Introduction, and three pages of bibliography -- is the last section entitled "Lord, forgive them...."The title of this section is based on the last one of Karl Kraus' aphorisms edited for this book, a reframing of, or play upon, a New Testament idea:"Lord, forgive them for they know what they do!"

There are 18 pages of aphorisms here confronting that nasty creature called man.Thomas Szaz has also translated many of these same aphorisms in a different book, "Karl Kraus and the Soul-Doctors," and perhaps did a better job of capturing the wit inherent in Kraus's criticisms than has Harry Zohn, the editor and translator of this work.

For instance, Zohn has Karl Kraus say "The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner." This is a fine enough translation but it reads a little sterile. However, in Thomas Szasz's translation of the same aphorism, Karl Kraus says "The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are."I think the latter translation has more depth, immediacy, and wit.

Each of the six sections of aphorisms is neatly divided into six different discourses, subjects, or topics.There's one on man, one on woman, one on politics and war, one on journalism ("In hollow heads"), one on culture, and one on society at large.Kraus' views on war are both touchingly eloquent and highly pertinent (if sadly) to today's international scene, though the best ones are too long to cite here.

The Introduction is worth the price of the book because it allows a further glimpse into the biography of the man and artist, Karl Kraus.While Thomas Szasz did a fine job on the life of Karl Kraus insofar as his views on psychoanalysis were concerned, there's only one biography of Karl Kraus in English that gives a comprehensive view of the whole man and artist, and it's not readily available.This Introduction by Harry Zohn provides an overview of the man's career and focus while also illuminating certain of Karl Kraus' artistic endeavors that just aren't generally known or appreciated.

Some critics have painted Karl Kraus as a fearsome critic whose intelligence was so powerful and piercing, it didn't allow him to suffer fools gladly.While some value needs to be given to these critics' testimony, this book of selected aphorisms also reveals a thinker who is refreshingly down-to-earth and outside the class of intellectual snobbery.In the section on culture ("Riddles out of solutions"), Karl Kraus says, for example, in one among several instances regarding reading "Most writers have no other quality than the reader: taste. But the latter has the better taste, because he does not write-- and the best if he does not read."

There's more to Karl Kraus and more to his writings than have been translated within this 128-page book (as the Introduction goes to some length to explain), but this book is a real step in the right direction toward exposing all of the half-truths and revealing more than one one-and-a-half truths as well which Karl Kraus was quite capable of inventing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Liberating
Thomas Szasz's book on Karl Kraus is invaluable because it is difficult to learn about Karl Kraus directly and in English from other sources.His works, in general, have not been translated to any large extent, and, as we learn from the book, Karl Kraus has had many detractors, many of whom deliberately obscure the deliberate and simple directness of Kraus' style because of the ideological battle over the business of psychoanalysis that occurred in his own lifetime and which persists to today.

Karl Kraus was at great liberty in Vienna to openly criticize and condemn psychoanalysis and its practitioners.How many can do so today without being labeled as "insane," "reactionary" or "neurotic and unwilling to face one's demons"?

The book is divided into two parts.In Part I there are five chapters discussing Karl Kraus as an artist, a rhetorician, and a cultural hero for all time.In Part II, we get two chapters containing some of the aphoristic writings of Karl Kraus's views on psychoanalysis and on forensic psychiatry.In the last chapter, we get aphorisms from Karl Kraus on language, life and love.

The book shows that Freud once respected Karl Kraus as a writer and a thinker -- until Karl himself began to criticize psychoanalysis as a kind of evil rhetoric, turning man from creature of heroic possibilities into mere dust before the analyst.Afterward, Freud went on the attack, and Karl Kraus' reputation suffered as a consequence of this ideological backlash.Thomas Szasz shows how Karl Kraus insisted that language must be used correctly for, if not, what is said is not what is meant, and man thus becomes duped by language.

Karl Kraus's ideas influenced Ludwig Wittgenstein in his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"; he also influenced the German novelist Hermann Broch, and historian Eric Voegelin.

One of of the many witty wiseacrings by Karl Kraus on psychoanalysis is:"Psychology is as useful as are directions for how to take poison."

In Part II, we also learn, among many other case examples, the horrific case of Louise von Coburg who was involuntarily committed to an insane asylum for a year (a deed to which Freud had no objections whatsoever) because she had psoriasis on her scalp and kept scratching her head and because she did not like her husband, a prince, but chose a non-royal lover instead.Karl Kraus exposes the idiotic psychoanalytic thinking that led to this monstrous decision by the state court.

Karl Kraus' aphorisms not oriented toward the subject of psychology are also a treat to read:"Matrimony: the union of meanness and martyrdom.""The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are." ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Dense yet engaging
It seems as though the writer of the previous review missed the author's point entirely - namely, to demonstrate that previous conceptions of Kraus as a zealous, self-hating Jew oversimplifies his complex nature. Reitter delves deep into Kraus' life and work without suffocating the reader.The best analytical work I've found on the topic thus far.

expanded Phd thesis
This expanded Phd thesis does not do justice to the great Austrian satirist at the turn of the last century.The thesis is dilligently researched and documented but written with a somewhat forced premise to drive home the point that Kraus was an antisemite, whereas he raises his writings far above sectarian views. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A PROMINENT "ANTI-PSYCHIATRIST" INTRODUCES AN EARLY CRITIC OF FREUD
Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. Thomas Szasz (born 1920) is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center. He is a well-known critic of psychiatry, of the social role of medicine in modern society, and is a social libertarian.

Szasz states in the Preface to the First (1976) Edition of this book, "I have a twofold aim in offering this book to the contemporary English-speaking reader. I want to introduce Kraus to this public. And I want to add a chapter to the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis---not as such history is usually presented, through the hagiographies of 'great' psychiatrists, but as it emerges from the work of a contemporary critic of such a great man---in this case Freud---and of his unworthy followers."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

TS: "Psychoanalysis was born of a basic lie: There was no therapy, only an intimate conversation between two persons."
TS: "Kraus was opposed to involuntary mental hospitalization, at least in some instances. Freud remained silent on the subject, even in his lengthy analysis of the Schreber case."
KK: "What particular impressions and inclinations of Wagner and of Wagner alone have led to the creation of 'The Flying Dutchman'? After all, of all the males in the world, only one, namely Wagner, has created this piece of work. Most of the others have become, out of their desire to be like their fathers, stockbrokers or lawyers, tram-conductors or music critics. Those, of course, who dreamt of becoming heroes became psychologists."
KK: "If I tell the analysts to kiss my (posterior), they tell me that I have an anal fixation."

Two great wits in one book
What a combination: Kraus, the man who first denuded the emperor Freud, and Szasz, the man who methodically stripped psychiatry/psychotherapy of any scientific pretensions. Aside from a lesson in history, a major debunking of psychiatric fraud, and an interesting biography, this book is a lot of fun. Kraus ranks with Twain and Mencken as an aphorist, and Szasz's translations of the original German make the quotes ring clear and powerful.

Genius, by fermed
Freud tried to cozy up to him (and was rejected); his work was fundamental to Wittgenstein's philosophico-linguistic theories, and three times he was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature by French academicians; yet he remains essentially unknown in this country, despite this marvelous exegesis of his work by Thomas Szasz, which was published in 1976.

Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was, and continues to be, an embarrassment to many intellectuals. His punishment has been to have his work misread, misinterpreted, untranslated, and finally ignored. He has been attacked as being antisemitic ("self-hating Jew"), mentally disturbed, and (symbolically) envious of his father's penis.

Kraus's commentaries and aphorisms concerning psychiatry and psychoanalysis are delightful, powerful, and as accurate today as when he uttered them. Szasz, who has been fighting the good battle against psychiatric abuses and pretensions all of his career, is the ideal person to introduce Americans to Kraus and his work. A short, well indexed book. Worth having to keep and to read over from time to time.

Freud's frauds uncovered by Vienna's HL Mencken
The most telling line against Freudianism: "Psycho-analysts are the disease posing as the cure".Kraus had a real nose for blather and imposture, and dissected the Vienna circle around Freud as Mencken did the fundementalists.An exposure to Kraus is a sure and certain innoculation of the psychobabble that passes nowdays as charcter analysis.Take two hours to slowly devour, digest, and delight in this tasty intellectual treat. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The absurdity of wars by the example of WW I
Compiled out of quotations, newspaper articles, different folk songs and own experiences with Austria-Hungary and Germany through World War One Karl Kraus wrote this book to show the people of the time after the War theirown absurd behavement.The book is written as a Drama, but without acontinuous story it shows the war with examples of Journalists, Politics,Aristocrats, Workers, Soldiers. It is an important forefather of Brecht'sepic drama. To understand the different quotations you should know a bitabout the Austrian and German history and the Emperors of the time.

Brilliant satire from a modern Cassandra
Karl Kraus is still well known in Germany, and deserves to be better known here. THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND, 'a play to be performed on Mars' is one of the most trenchant satires written this century.Kraus compiled the play from newspaper articles, official bulletins, and overheard conversations during World War One in Vienna.He actually performed excerpts from this damning indictment of the human race during the war.I wish that someone would translate all of this book from the German; one flaw of this edition is the note early on which states that 'since modern Americans are not familiar with minutiae of the life of the Emperor Franz Joseph, these chapters have been cut.'With all due respect, if we did not know something about the later Habsburgs we would not be reading THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND in the first place. The lowest pit in Kraus' hell is reserved for those vultures who treated wartime reporting as popular entertainment--which makes him an uncomfortably modern writer.Please, please beg borrow or steal a copy of this book and try to get it reprinted in a full translation! ... Read more

Product Description
Karl Kraus (1874-1936) is widely regarded as one of the most talented and influential satirists of the twentieth century. He was an enormously productive writer of poetry, critical essays, and aphorisms, and spent the bulk of his life in Vienna. The key to his work is his love of language, and his disdain for those who abuse it. To him, language was the moral criterion and accreditation for a writer. He set about to provide an imperishable profile of his age from the very perishable materials of newspaper reports. Kraus is famous as editor of the satirical journal Die Fackel (The Torch), and as author of the immense play, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Humanity, 1918-19). This is the first attempt to analyze the most significant literary criticism on the works of Karl Kraus, an undertaking that reveals even more about the literary establishment in Vienna than about the great writer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

uncertainty is the most terrible damnation
This love story is full of wonderful visual imagery, but it is overlaoded with gloom. I quote from page 39; 'Happy? Oh, I doubt whether I can ever be happy again! - But uncertainty is the most terrible damnation!'

This novel is also a mystery story, probing behind the veil of death. It recalled to me another book I read recently 'Ghost Hunters' by Deborah Blum. On page 81 I found, 'I am like a messenger who is carrying a sealed letter to the place of its destination. What it contains might well be a matter of indifference to the messenger - he is simply out to earn payment for delivery.' Is that also our 'purpose' in living? To carry a message whose purpose and significance is unknowable to us?

The Ghost-Seer
"The Ghost-Seer" is a novel written by Friedrich Schiller, the German playwright, poet and philosopher. The story was published in the 1780's, and Schiller eventually left it unfinished. While this is no doubt annoying, the work nevertheless has a certain interest.

The main character is a German Prince who is manipulated by unknown forces during a visit to Venice. At first, the Prince is moral, pious and intellectually curious, but unfortunately his religious convictions are of a simplistic Pietist kind. He is also very superstitious and easily lead. A group of conspirators, led by a mysterious Armenian, takes advantage of this. First, they stage a Spiritualist seance during which the spirit of the Prince's best friend is conjured up. Next, they reveal that the seance was just a hoax. By this double bluff, the conspirators make the Prince loose his religious faith, and turn him into an out-and-out sceptic.

As a sceptic, the Prince becomes immoral, lustful and completely uninterested in serious philosophy. He begins to advocate what's essentially an early version of Nietzscheanism: life is meaningless, and the only thing that matters is brute power. How or why power is won, is irrelevant. Eventually, the Prince realizes that his new "philosophy" only brings him personal unhappiness. How can anyone be happy, if life is meaningless?

Unfortunately, the Prince doesn't want to end his immoral lifestyle. He wants "meaning" only for the sake ofhis own personal consolation. At this point, the conspirators strike again, and eventually converts the Prince to a false religion: Catholicism. The conversion is facilitated by stage-managing an unhappy love affair with a devout Catholic woman. In other words, the Prince embraces Catholicism for reasons of lust, rather than reasons of faith or intellectual conviction.

During his stay in Venice, the Prince goes deeply into debt, to finance his new, libertine lifestyle. At the end of the story, he begins to contemplate a coup in his German principality, and perhaps an assasination of the legitimate heir to the throne, simply to get his hands on the family fortune. The story ends with the Prince attending a mass celebrated by the Armenian, who turns out to be a Catholic priest.

What strikes modern readers as most odd with the story is that Schiller sees scepticism, libertinism and Catholicism as part of the same problem, even the same conspiracy. Perhaps this is how German Protestants and Deists saw Catholicism during the Enlightenment? The story becomes more comprehensible to modern readers if Catholicism is seen as a symbol of false religion. After all, somebody might argue that New Age and interest in the occult is simply the flip-side of Western libertine, libertarian materialism. New Age promises the believer quick fixes, and some versions of it are notoriously commercialized. And isn't worship of raw power typical both of certain "atheist" philosophers (Nietzsche) and some "New Religious Movements" (Satanism)? When the Prince slips from immoral "atheism" to immoral "religion", he only thinks of his own individual well-being, his own quick fix.

At the same time, Schiller obviously didn't sympathize with good ol'religion either. Schiller could perhaps be described as a Deist, and one of the reasons why the Prince falls for the machinations of the Armenian, is that his own religion is simple-minded and uncouth. He also nourishes a superstitious belief in the supernatural, including communication with the spirits of the dead. Although there is a certain sympathy in Schiller's description of the Prince's old faith, it's nevertheless obvious that it's regarded as dangerously out-moded, and incapable of withstanding the allurements of a purely negative scepticism. Schiller's alternative seems to have been a spiritual form of the Enlightenment, as described in his "Aesthetic Letters".

Schiller lived during a time when the old religions were increasingly being challenged by materialism and scepticism, and he seems to have resented both camps. This, I take, is the main point of "The Ghost-Seer".

PS. For some unfathomable reason (another double bluff, perhaps?), this edition of "The Ghost-Seer" carries a preface by one Martin Jarvis, who treats this philosophical masterpiece as if it was a literal story about...conjuring tricks, a kind of "how to" manual for the aspiring stage illusionist. My God, whatever gave him *that* idea???
... Read more

Product Description
This is the first and only comprehensive monograph on Albert Bloch that provides a balanced approach to Bloch's life and work as well as taking into account Karl Kraus's pervasive influence. It presents original sources from archives and libraries important for tracing the stages of Bloch's life and development as caricaturist, painter, journalist, essayist, critic and first authorized translator of Kraus's poetry. Theodor Haecker praised Bloch's flawless renderings of Kraus's poetry into English as 'beautiful and noble' reflecting his 'great love' of Kraus's work. In his correspondence with Kraus published in 'Die Fackel' Bloch recognizes Kraus's goal of better social and political conditions on the basis of purified language. Bloch supported Kraus in the latter's crusade against the social and political evils of poor journalism. After Kraus's death Bloch played a decisive role in keeping alive Kraus's spiritual legacy and helped preserve Kraus's unpublished writings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good selections, but poor presentation
The compiler and editor Heinrich Fischer has arranged this selection from Kraus' printed tirades topically in ten or twelve sections. Each section begins with aphorisms, then continues with the wild pun-laden, allusion-rich holdings-forth that Kraus was famed for.
Though quite a lot of these speeches-on-paper (Klaus remained a talker more than a writer, and his writings are scripts for declamation, really) are prefaced by the fatuous and inelegant journalistic Schwulst that prompted him to fire off his intelligent rants, none of these extracts from the Viennese press are identified, and indeed, none of extracts from Kraus himself are provided with a citation or even assigned a year of origin. Nor are there any explanatory notes. I wouldn't expect that Suhrkamp would see the need to explain Kraus' language to the readership who are largely highly educated native speakers of German, but I'd be willing to bet that many Germans and even a few Viennese are left baffled by allusion after allusion, and really, part of the charm of this sort of thing is the illumination of the historical and ideological background. This background is just not quite present enough among people of average education for the publisher to assume it, and after all, Suhrkamp IS a popular publisher.
So, I'd grant that this is an acceptable anthology of Kraus' activity, but it isn't for people whose German isn't highly advanced nor would I recommend it for students who don't already have a fair grounding in early 20th Century Vienna. ... Read more

Product Description
This Book Is In German. ... Read more