From Shore to shore: Kafka’s Gracchus arrives in Riva

Commentators have noted that Kafka’s 1917 Gracchus story harks back to his 1913 stay in Riva del Garda, but they have failed to identify the author’s personal experiences it unmistakably evokes. After elucidating this question, the article will argue that Kafka's story should be interpreted on its own terms. The key to the story’s interpretation is also an answer to the question of why Kafka chose to set it in an actual geographical location, something he never did nowhere else in his fiction. Since riva means ‘shore’ in Italian, Riva may be understood as the proper name of a shore, or as a capitalized allegorization — the Shore. Finally, the biographical and the literary parts of our argument are brought together to show that, when the Gracchus story is read alongside Kafka’s diaries and correspondence, the sense of permeability between Kafka’s real and fictional selves becomes particularly acute.

Duke Scholars

Author Aslan Cohen Mizrahi