Speaking for Liveliness: Franz Kafka's Obituary for Hyperion and his Introductory Speech on Yiddish

Known for shying away from public exposure, Franz Kafka nonetheless wrote and spoke publicly for two very different kinds of peripheral literature. In this article, I juxtapose his lesser‐known obituary for Hyperion , a discontinued bibliophile journal, and his well‐known introductory speech to Yitzhak LÖwy's recitations in the Yiddish language. Analyzing the rhetorical strategies in these reviews, and relating them to Kafka's diary notes on minor literature, I show how, in both texts, Kafka is profoundly concerned with the tensions between a lively, unmediated mode of speaking for oneself and any kind of intervention, editorial or explanatory. In addition to identifying the Hyperion ‐necrologue as a critical text for Kafka's œuvre, I propose a more comprehensive understanding of liveliness as a property of peripheral forms of artistic expression. By simultaneously reflecting and performing speaking‐for ( Fürsprechen ), Kafka negotiates a poetics of margins that connects high modernist aestheticism, Jewish vernacular, and his own writings.