MINISTERIO DE SALUD

I have demonstrated how Biller employs various aspects of Schulz’s writing in order to inscribe himself into a specifically Eastern European Jewish tradition. In what follows, I will explore how his novella uses intertextual references to ward off a certain heritage: Biller’s engagement with Thomas Mann in Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz and in

Der gebrauchte Jude demonstrates a visible anxiety of influence, which relates to

Mann as a literary forefather and rival, and as a symbol for German culture in its entirety. Biller’s representation of the sadomasochistic German-Jewish relationship can be read as a polemical demonstration of the dangerous seductiveness of German culture. According to Biller’s narrative, Thomas Mann lured Jews like Bruno Schulz

356 _{Feminising Thomas Mann could also be read as an ironic reversal of the anti-Semitic stereotype of}

the effeminate Jew, or as a reference to Gustav von Aschenbach’s character in Der Tod in Venedig and thus yet another allusion to Mann’s alleged homosexuality. The fact that the fake Mann is described as wearing make-up in the novella (IKvBS, 50) points to the latter explanation.

126

and Marcel Reich-Ranicki into a submissive state, sustained by the illusion that an untainted love for German culture and a German-Jewish symbiosis are possible.

In order to better understand this argument, it is important to consider the portrayal of Thomas Mann in Biller’s novella, which encompasses three facets: firstly, there is the Thomas Mann that Schulz’s fictional letter is addressed to. Known to Schulz only “von Fotografien und aus Zeitungen” (IKvBS, 7), this noble gentleman remains silent and absent throughout the text.357 This idealised Thomas Mann is gradually overwritten by, secondly, the fake Thomas Mann, a “bösartiges Abbild” (IKvBS, 33), who roams the streets of Drohobycz, and is physically and morally repulsive. Not only is he dirty, a slovenly dresser and generally unkempt, he also abuses the town’s Jews in increasingly sadistic ways and turns out to be an agent of Germany’s secret police. Thirdly, there is the author Thomas Mann, who is supposed to help Schulz. It eventually becomes clear that both the ideal and its grotesque reversal spring solely from Schulz’s imagination. There is no fake Thomas Mann in Drohobycz; Schulz has made him up to gain the actual Mann’s attention and protection. The split Mann therefore exists exclusively in Schulz’s mind, as an expression of the writer’s ambivalent love-hate relationship with the idol. The sadomasochistic relationship between the fake Mann, Schulz and the town’s Jews is thus uncovered as a fantasy entertained by the book’s protagonist. However, the separation between the protagonist’s fantasies and the author’s opinions is complicated when considering Biller’s autobiographically inspired “Selbstporträt” Der gebrauchte Jude.358 _{The text}

circles obsessively around Thomas Mann – there are at least 10 episodes or dialogues that involve him – and Biller’s personal love-hate-relationship with the idol,359 so that

357 _{Interestingly, the real Mann’s silence reproduces the coldness and cruelty of the female in the}

sadomasochistic constellation; this would support the interpretation that Schulz’s imaginary sadomasochistic relationship with the fake Mann is an expression of his actual relationship with the real Mann.

358 _{It should be noted that Der gebrauchte Jude is a heavily fictionalised autobiography, in which the}

narrator repeatedly stresses the unreliability and fragmentariness of his account. The reader is thus urged not to take the text at face value, which gives rise to the question of whether or not Biller’s hateful relationship with Thomas Mann should be taken seriously. I would argue that, while some of the encounters Biller describes in his “Selbstporträt” are heavily edited – including those with Reich- Ranicki – the issues that are being negotiated via the triangle Biller-Mann-Reich-Ranicki remain unaffected by the ontological status of these events. The question of whether or not Biller ‘really’ hates Mann is not as important as the ways in which Biller uses Thomas Mann to express an extremely negative view on the issue of pre- and post-Holocaust German-Jewish symbiosis.

359 _{Biller’s negative obsession with Mann has unfolded across various genres: apart from prose (Im Kopf}

von Bruno Schulz) and autofiction (Der gebrauchte Jude), he also voiced his hatred in several

interviews, see Alan Posener, ‘Maxim Biller will Thomas Mann zerstören’, Die Welt, 28 September 2009 <https://www.welt.de/kultur/article4654102/Maxim-Biller-will-Thomas-Mann-zerstoeren.html> [accessed: 16 August 2015]; Christine Käppeler, ‘“Mit Angst kenne ich mich aus”’, der Freitag, 11

127

Schulz’s fantasies can be said to convey Biller’s own negative sentiments towards the precursor:

Thomas Mann ist der neue Goethe, und den Deutschen ist egal, dass fast alle seine Bücher einen dunklen Hinterausgang haben, durch den man direkt in die schmutzige Phantasiewelt der Rassentheoretiker des 19. Jahrhunderts gelangt. Die Juden bei Mann sind schnell, schmierig, gewissenlos und Demokraten. Sie haben platte Nasen und wulstige Lippen, und wenn sie wie Sieglinde und Siegmund in Wälsungenblut Geschwister sind, schlafen sie miteinander (DgJ, 42).

Biller’s novella thus uses an allegedly “real” historical event – Schulz writing a letter to Mann – to continue his own dialogue with Thomas Mann and to cope with the anxiety of influence. The novella’s doppelgänger-theme therefore extends to the relationship between Biller and Schulz, in the sense that Schulz represents Biller’s alter ego or, more accurately, his mouthpiece.360 This makes both Thomas Mann and Bruno Schulz into victims of Biller’s anxiety: the last of Bloom’s “revisionary ratios”, termed

Apophrades or The Return of the Dead, involves “the triumph of having so stationed

the precursor, in one’s own work, that particular passages in his work seem to be not presages of one’s own advent, but rather to be indebted to one’s own achievement”.361

Although Bloom refers to the level of style which is not the focal point of Biller’s intertextual engagement, Biller’s novella attempts to achieve this triumph on the level of plot. The project of getting inside the head of Bruno Schulz is an attempt to raise the dead on certain conditions: “The mighty dead return, but they return in our colours, and speaking in our voices”.362 _{The necromancy practiced in Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz}

is thus a form of ventriloquy: through the hand and head of Bruno Schulz, Biller expresses his own issues und anxieties as an author. This demonstrates that the postmemorial affiliation performed in Biller’s novella is not an exclusively ethical one – it is both, an act of homage and an act of appropriation, a continuation of tradition and a form of patricide. The nostalgic longing for a lost tradition that runs through the novella is thus the flipside of anxiety. The self-and meta-reflexivity of Biller’s engagement with the tradition of “ghetto writing” in Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz and

November 2013 <https://www.freitag.de/autoren/christine-kaeppeler/mit-angst-kenne-ich-mich-aus> [accessed: 16 August 2015].

360 _{This has also been noted by some of the more critical reviews of the novella, see especially Katharina}

Granzin, ‘Janusköpfiger Kollege aus Deutschland’, die tageszeitung, 21 December 2013 <http://www.taz.de/!418016/> [accessed: 16 August 2015]; Bettina Hartz, ‘Im Kopf von Maxim Biller’,

Fixpoetry.com, 12 December 2013 <http://www.fixpoetry.com/feuilleton/kritiken/maxim-biller/im-

kopf-von-bruno-schulz> [accessed: 16 August 2015].

361 _{Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 141.} 362 _{Ibid., p. 141.}

128

his lucid criticism of Holocaust hypermediation in Harlem Holocaust are thus counteracted by a highly appropriative reading of Bruno Schulz which blurs the lines between the literary forefather and Biller’s authorial self.

While expressing the anxiety of influence, the sadomasochistic relationship between Mann and Schulz/the town’s Jews also connects to the larger issue of the Jew in German culture and the (im-)possibility of a German-Jewish symbiosis. Framed within the sadomasochistic constellation, Thomas Mann and German culture are imagined as feminine and highly seductive. Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz features various scenes in which the people in the town are inexplicably drawn to the fake Mann, and this is so in spite of his repugnant physical appearance and atrocious behaviour:

Die vielen wichtigen Leute aus unserer Stadt, die ihn seit seiner Ankunft wie der Bienenstaat die Königin umschwirren, ducken sich kurz, und danach tauchen sie – die Mundwinkel zum unterwürfigen Lächeln hochgezogen, die Augen vor Schrecken gerötet und glasig – wieder auf und bitten ihn, ihnen weiter seine aufregenden Geschichten zu erzählen (IKvBS, 17).

The comparison of the town’s community to a “Bienenstaat” puts the fake Mann in the position of the proverbial queen bee. Schulz’s choice of words is revealing when he mentions that the fake writer has come to the town to make everyone’s head spin (IKvBS, 32): “Und so habe ich mich neulich auch, sehr verehrter Dr. Mann, wie jeder andere von Ihrem Doppelgänger einwickeln lassen (IKvBS, 32)”. Such images of seduction, ensnarement and manipulation are usually associated with the figure of the

femme fatale.363 Schulz seems to distance himself from this senseless admiration, but he is not immune to Mann’s charms and finds himself trapped in his love of the German language and German culture as a whole:

Die biegsamen Regeln der Mischna, die fast beschwingte Schwermut des Predigers, die sanfte Klarheit des Schulchan Aruch? Nein, das war nie etwas für mich. Ich sehne mich eher mit Malte Laurids Brigge und Gustav von Aschenbach nach einem Ende, das uns alle ohnehin erwartet, dessen Schönheit und Zeitpunkt wir aber selbst bestimmen sollten [...] (IKvBS, 62).

Schulz’s admission that he would rather choose Mann and Rilke over his own Jewish traditions is of course reminiscent of Reich-Ranicki’s rejection of Kafka in favour of Mann. This once again suggests that Biller uses Schulz and Reich-Ranicki as literary father figures to negotiate similar issues.

363 _{The fake Mann is not only connected to the femme fatale. By continually stressing his fakeness and}

status of a mere “Abbild” (IKvBS, 33), the text also casts him as a “false idol”, which links him to the practice of idolatry, one of the worst transgressions in Judaism.

129

Flirting with the femme fatale usually does not end well for the male characters. This is not any different for the Jews who have fallen prey to the temptations of Thomas Mann and German culture. The fake Mann lures them into a profoundly sadomasochistic constellation of dominance and submission which eventually leads to their death. This is epitomised in the bathroom scene, which is at the centre of the narrative arc and forms the climax of Biller’s text (and Schulz’s fantasy). The scene relies on the provocative image of the doppelgänger giving the town’s Jews a whipping inside a bathroom that evokes the iconography of the gas chamber:

Sie hatten ihre Kleider an die Haken gehängt, sie saßen stumm oder übertrieben leise miteinander sprechend auf den beiden Bänken und warteten. Als der Meister mit dem Direktor und mir reinkam, erhoben sie sich fast gleichzeitig, sie verdeckten mit den Händen ihre nackten Brüste und Genitalien, und auch die letzte, allerleiseste Unterhaltung brach ab (IKvBS, 34ff.).

References to the gas chambers are of course anachronistic from the viewpoint of the novella, which is set in 1938. However, they also suggest that Schulz’s fantasies are a

form of premonition, as mentioned earlier. The superimposition of the iconographies

of sadomasochism, the Holocaust and anti-Semitic violence in the bathroom scene indicates that the blind and masochistic Jewish love of German culture makes Jews follow Germans like lambs to the slaughter, which anticipates future historical events. The violence is sparked when the Jews start to beleaguer the fake Mann in response to his announcement that he is leaving Europe for America, to escape the advent of German fascism. The physical contact made by the Jews is thus a cry for help, but their actions could also be interpreted as the culmination of their desire for symbiosis and amalgamation, which, however, provokes fear and violence in the German. What begins as a sadomasochistic orgy eventually turns into a pogrom, an act of anti-Semitic destruction. Schulz’s narrative positions the fake Mann within a genealogy of anti- Semitic excess, which logically leads to the Holocaust as the endpoint, making him part of the perpetrator collective:

Doch allmählich wurden die Hiebe des Deutschen schwächer, seine Stimme auch, in der silbernen Rauchwolke formten sich für einen Moment die wabernden Konturen des traurigen Kindergesichts von Leutnant Alfred Dreyfus, aus dem französischen Offizier wurde die weinende und blutende Jagienka Łomska, dann schaute ich mich selbst aus dem Rauchschleier an, und schließlich drehte sich die Wolke, sie zog sich zusammen und stieg zur Decke auf, wo sie mit einem lauten Zischen in den Düsen der Duschen verschwand – und gab so den Blick frei auf einen großen Haufen nackter Körper, die leblos um den vor Erschöpfung knienden, falschen Thomas Mann herumlagen (IKvBS, 40f.).

130

The recourse to the image of the gas chamber is undeniable in this passage. The fake Thomas Mann, suddenly addressed solely as the German, is represented as a Nazi perpetrator, executing anti-Semitic violence, while the townspeople are integrated into a community of eternal victims, with the prophetic Schulz as their latest addition. This scene suggests that German-Jewish relations can only ever result in anti-Semitic excess because, sooner or later, all Germans will turn into perpetrators. According to this scenario, German-Jewish relations function as a one-sided dependency, based on an act of delusional submission on the side of the Jews, which inevitably entails their destruction. The introduction of Mann as “Meister” at the beginning of the scene thus carries multiple meanings: he is not only a master commanding words and slaves but also the “Meister aus Deutschland” that haunts Celan’s Todesfuge, and thus an emblem of Nazi extermination policies.364 _{The Schulz in Biller’s story aims to exploit the}

difference between his grotesque invention and the actual Thomas Mann, who he hopes will save him. However, the fact that Mann remains silent and Schulz’s fantasies eventually become real – Drohobycz is overrun and destroyed by Nazi troops at the end of the novella – implies that the difference between the fake and the real Mann is not that big, and that Schulz himself fell prey to a delusional belief in German culture as the opposite of and antidote to Nazi barbarism. The novella hence employs Schulz’s

pre-Holocaust interpretation of German-Jewish relationships as a masochistic

dependency on the side of the Jews to express a post-Holocaust consciousness. In contrast to Schulz’s illusions, the logic of the story corroborates the conviction that, after the attempted extermination of an entire people, Jews and Germans are “für immer geschiedene Leute” (DgJ, 107).

Excursion II: A Return to Polemics?

This interpretation of German-Jewish relations once again raises the question of the representational mode: is the depiction of the German-Jewish symbiosis as a sadomasochistic death trap a grotesque exaggeration, or does it represent a radical post-Holocaust Jewish stance on the matter? There are arguments for both readings.

364 _{I am referring to the iconic stanza from Celan’s Todesfuge: “Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken}

dich nachts/wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus/ Deutschland/wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken/der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau/er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau/ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete/er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der/ Luft/er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein/ Meister aus Deutschland“, see Paul Celan, ‘Todesfuge’, in: Paul Celan, Ausgewählte

131

Although Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz is not as openly polemical and grotesque as for example Harlem Holocaust, it still taps into the surrealist legacy of Schulz’s written and graphic work, so that the reader is made to question the factual accuracy of what is described to him/her (by both Schulz and the third-person narrator). The town of Drohobycz is presented as a topsy-turvy world, in which the most fantastical things are happening: “Sehen Sie, Dr. Mann, was für ein Irrenhaus dieses Drohobycz ist? Keiner hier denkt und benimmt sich, wie er sollte!” (IKvBS, 27). The events happening in the “Irrenhaus” of Drohobycz could be described as carnivalesque in Bakhtin’s sense,365 pointing to a temporary suspension of the existing order:

We find here a characteristic logic, the peculiar logic of the ‘inside out’ (à l’envers), of the ‘turnabout’, of the continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings […]. [I]t is to a certain extent a parody of the extracarnival life, a ‘world inside out’.366

The notion of the grotesque, which is intimately connected to the “carnival spirit” in Bakhtin’s work,367 _{would also account for the hybrid bodies (mostly Helena’s border-}

crossing physicality, but also the repeated destabilisation of the human-animal-divide) and the strong emphasis on sexuality. However, reading the novella through the lens of Bakhtinian carnival and the grotesque also poses problems: a carnivalisation of German-Jewish relations would entail a reversal of the roles of victim and perpetrator, oppressor and oppressed. This is ultimately not the case in Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz: the application of the sadomasochistic configuration reinforces the existing power structures instead of inverting them. Bakhtin showed that the carnivalesque suspension of hierarchies and rules is a temporarily limited phenomenon, which is followed by the reinstatement (and possible reinforcement) of the existing order. If the arrival of the German troops towards the end of the novella can be interpreted as the violent intrusion of historical reality into the surreal fantasy world of Drohobycz, then this would suggest that fascism is the ‘correct’ order which is reinstated after the carnival period. Finally, the carnivalesque grotesque in Biller’s novella does not carry any of the positive connotations associated with the grotesque; as it merely signifies the monstrous and the abject, death, demise, and decay, it is lacking the crucial aspects of renewal, comic laughter, and rebirth. The grotesque in Biller’s novella therefore

365 _{Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984).} 366 _{Ibid., p. 11.}

132

conforms with the negative grotesque, which, following Bakhtin, is the main manifestation of the grotesque in European culture ever since Romanticism.368 The novella’s employment of the grotesque thus highlights the negative aspects of the German-Jewish relationship, without challenging the underlying power structures in a carnivalesque manner.

Although Schulz uses the metaphor of the “Irrenhaus” to describe Drohobycz, the fact remains that the madness is in the end translated into historical reality – Schulz thus turns from a lunatic into a prophet, and this turnaround makes the carnivalesque strategy even less plausible. I would like to introduce another important intertext here, namely the rather obscure biblical story of King Abimelech and the town of Sichem. It is brought up more than halfway through the book, when Schulz starts wondering