1 Quoting the Language of Nature in Karl Kraus’s Satires Ari Linden I. The Other Language of Satire Perhaps more so than other literary forms, satire depends on an external referent: the more ignoble it determines the object of its ridicule to be, the more derisive is the invective it unleashes. Fredric Bogel has recently compared the signature gesture of the satirist to that of an officer or a judge: “The act of exclusion or expulsion requires a firm line to be drawn between inside and outside, expeller and expelled…as one might argue that the point of arresting and incarcerating criminals is not only to restrain them but also to clarify the line between legal and illegal behavior” (Bogel, 68). The satirist as adjudicator or incarcerator would, indeed, be an apt characterization of the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus (1876- 1934), for whom satire was less an individual genre than a trans-generic mode of expression informing the various literary forms that make up his oeuvre: the aphorism, the gloss, the essay, and the drama. The question thus often raised when addressing his writings is from what source or sources does Kraus draw his unwavering authorial voice? Or, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, an early reader of Kraus: on what firm ground does the satirist stand when passing his judgments? i The “ground” on which Kraus stands, as many have argued—Benjamin before most—is his notorious practice of quotation. ii By satirically reproducing the language of others in a new context—most often journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and the Literaten—Kraus aims to delegitimize or reveal the absurdity of what was intended in the quote’s initial instantiation. In each one of these quotations Kraus thus bears witness to a corpus delicti (GS II, 349); in this way alone, he incarcerates his criminals. As the scholar Wilhelm Hindemith has written, Kraus “besteht darauf, dass das Unmenschliche, das Unbeschreibliche nicht in Begriffe zu fassen, nicht zu erklären ist. Es ist bloß darzustellen” (Hindemith, 8). To “put on display” is to place in quotation, as Hindemith essentially repeats Kraus’s own self-description: “Mein Amt war, die Zeit in Anführungszeichen zu setzen, in Druck und Klammern sich verzerren zu lassen, wissend, daß ihr Unsäglichstes nur von ihr selbst gesagt werden konnte. Nicht auszusprechen, nachzusprechen, was ist” (Die Fackel 400, 46, 1914). In this article, however, I will focus on Kraus’s other, less “punitive” quotation. There are moments in his journal, Die Fackel, in which