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cultural analysis out of place, there is a less obvious point to her dismissal. Leavittapproaches Kafka from a theoretical position (and in reference to hypothetical sources,cf. 75) on mystical experience that eschews the primacy of normative discourses andideological frameworks characteristic of Kafka reception (cp. Freud and Jewish

Cabala). Applied to highly idiosyncratic texts, considering Kafkas texts along thelines of more indirect cultural and religious influences may lend a different vitalityto interpretive stratifications; the exemplary readings interspersed throughout thebook certainly serve to showcase highly imaginative interpretations. In this senseLeavitt offers an interesting point of departure for re-examining the premises espousedby Deleuze and Guattari in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature: Components ofExpression (1985): a minor or revolutionary literature begins by speaking and onlysees and conceives afterward (I do not see the word at all, I invent it) (New LiteraryHistory 16 (1985) 591), giving more associative and creative free-play to the text andthe depths of its cultural milieu.

The study proceeds from a discussion of Kafkas negative experience with clair-voyance that caused him to initiate contact with Dr Steiner. Extrapolating the sig-nificance of this negative evaluation within the context of Theosophical thoughtLeavitt draws out other frameworks for mystical experience, particularly William

Jamess work (1902). Leavitts readings contrast a mainline, Judeo-Christian religiousperspective of Kafkas cabalistic references with possible alternative frameworks avail-able to Kafka in occult ideology. Thus emerge various aspects of mystical experience,according to the differing frames of reference, that are treated in analysis: namely thesignificance of sound and the role of out-of-body experiences, meditative techniques

in visualisations, dreams and the eschatological perspectives on reincarnation, inter-sected respectively by illustrative interpretations of texts from Kafkas diaries, dream-sequences and a selection of stories, ranging from Description of a Struggle, TheBucket Rider, Investigations of a Dog to The Trial.

With its numerous pointers to questions for further research, a breadth of referencesacross the literature and historical connections between Theosophical thought, occultpractices and cabalistic philosophies, June O. Leavitt provides a highlight tour throughKafkas life with its gravitational centre in Prague drawn up around the meeting,pivotal to Leavitts argument, of Kafkas introduction to Dr. Steiner. She offers theinterested public an engaging and innovative view on a notoriously oblique author

and his texts, the literary critic a line of attack on the question of minor literature, andtraces a number of philosophical and ideological trajectories in the life of mysticalexperience as she sees it expressed in Kafkas writings that beg for furtherdifferentiation.

KATJA NEUMANN

University of Stirlingdoi:10.1093/litthe/fru015

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