Zirkus‑Akrobatik als poetologische und existentielle Kippfigur bei Richard Weiner und Franz Kafka
Circus Acrobatics: An Ambiguous Figure with Poetological and Existential Dimensions in the Writing of Richard Weiner and Franz Kafka

Summary/Abstract: Perpetually teetering on the verge of failure, circus artistry, when seen as a figure of thought, takes on both a poetological and an existential dimension: In Richard Wein er’s Rovnováha (Equilibrium), an acrobat addresses his audience to expound the difficult art of his balancing act. Franz Kafka’s Erstes Leid (First Sorrow) conveys the anxieties of an eccentric trapeze artist, intent on keeping to the lofty heights of the circus tent dome, far from the lowly vicissitudes of everyday life. That both authors conceived of their own writing as an act of balance, coalescing into the thought image of a tightrope walker, be comes apparent in the remarkable congeniality of their depictions of a troupe of Japanese acrobats figuring both in Weiner’s short story, as well as in a drawing by Kafka, contained in a diary entry.

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