GALILI SHAHAR University of Florida Fragments and Wounded Bodies: Kafka after Kleist Wound, Fragment, Symptom The question of the wound as a sign and a symbol is still open. In literary discourses this question is often translated into problems of narration or rep- resentation. The wound of Philoctetes, as it is known from Sophocles, can be seen as an example of this tendency. In the field of German literature and drama, from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to Heiner Müller, the wounded body of Philoctetes demonstrates the possibilities of representation of horror and suffering (Lessing 26–40). On the same path stands Oedipus Rex: his tragic body, his wounds, his bleeding eyes provoked paradigmatic readings and alle- gories of the literary form from Hölderlin to Freud (Hölderlin 729–36). Even the Greek wound that found a cure becomes a principal theme of literary criti- cism. Erich Auerbach’s thesis on Odysseus’s scar is evidence of this concern (Auerbach 5–27). And yet, possibly more then any other figure, it was the wounded body of Christ that continues to disturb and challenge European authors and artists. The wounds of the Crucifixion, the holes of the nails and the cut on Christ’s side made by the Roman’s spear, are sacred signatures. The sacred body became a major source for works of art and constituted the origin of the aesthetic aura. Richard Wagner’s version of Parsifal is an example of this phenomenon in the field of modern German literature. And indeed, modern German literature can be read suggestively as an in- ventory of wounded bodies. Goethe’s prose, 1 Georg Büchner ’s dramas, Hein- rich von Kleist’s plays and novellas, E.T.A Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke, Wagner’s operas, Franz Kafka’s stories, Heinrich Böll’s early works and Elfriede Jelinek’s novels are examples of a literature of wounds. 2 This article, however, proposes to investigate a comparatively minor aspect of this subject, and is dedicated to the question of wounded bodies and the poetics of fragmentation in Kleist and Kafka. The correspondence between wounded bodies and fragments should be seen as a structural one, the fragment being a form of a wound in the realm of the text. Fragments, like wounds, have the texture of a cut. Fragments are broken or unfinished texts that embody “allegories” of crisis and loss in history (Benjamin, Trauerspiel 36–39; 154–56) and represent moments of absence and The German Quarterly 80.4 (Fall 2007) 449