Kafka plays a major role in my doctoral project, entitled ‘Conceptions of Hearing in German Modernism’, and which explores different forms of hearing and being heard in Rainer Maria Rilke, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser. One chapter explores technological hearing in Kafka’s fiction and autobiographical writing, focusing on the figure of the seashell (Muschel) and its relation to the outer form of the hearing organ (Ohrmuschel) and to the telephone receiver (Hörmuschel). A second chapter, on overhearing and eavesdropping, contains further work on Kafka; in this, I argue that overhearing provides a means of affirmative connection in ‘Die Verwandlung’. I also rely upon several diary entries and Kafka’s recently published drawings. My analysis ranges across different forms and genres (poetry, painting, autobiography, etc.), often within the oeuvre of a single author; for example, I consider Kafka not only as an author, but as an artist in several senses.
