In an essay on Moses Maimonides entitled “The Literary Character of The Guide to the Perplexed,” Leo Strauss suggests that we read Maimonides as we would read a good novel: we should look for textual contradictions and read into the relationship of one “chapter heading” to another. In other words, he believed that Maimonides was […]
When people ask me if one can find any characters like the schlemiel in other traditions, I immediately think of Robert Walser. Indeed, I can think of no better example of the schlemiel than in his fiction. I can also think of no better person to write such fiction since he, too, was a schlemiel, […]
While writing on Franz Kafka, the Jewish-German thinker Walter Benjamin was interested in finding common ground between Jewish and non-Jewish comic characters. We see this project in his notes and in his essay on Kafka’s work. To be sure, the essay starts with a reflection on a Russian fool named Shuvalkin; but it also includes […]
Does attention to detail make one a thinker? Isn’t it the attention to the whole? Robert Walser’s portrayal of the philosopher – in his prose piece “The Philosopher” – makes him into a person who is obsessed with small things. He is, as Walser says, like a child who is “groping for small things.” […]
Philosophers, mystics, and schlemiels have something in common. They are all, in some way, detached from the world and aloof. In Plato’s Theaetetus, there is a telling tale about a Thracian servant girl who laughs at Thales, the philosopher; who, while gazing at the stars, falls down a well. Socrates Why, take the case of […]
Ruth Wisse argues that the schlemiel character is situated between hope and skepticism. Since Wisse is a scholar of Yiddish folklore and literature and not a philosophy scholar, I have taken it upon myself to look into this distinction from a philosophical perspective. To this end, one of my current research interests is in how […]
Extreme difference in size or scale is a staple of comedy, caricature, folklore, and literature. The Brothers Grimm, for instance, tell many stories about small people who comically stumble through the world and are thought not just to be small in scale but small minded. Take, for instance, “The Seven Swabians,” a story about how […]
These days one cannot watch a comedian or see a comic show or film without coming across a punch line that doesn’t include an awkward reply or gesture. Many a comedian seems to be telling us that in most of our encounters there is an awkwardness that we find both endearing and terrifying. The fact […]
I have written a lot on the place and meaning of simplicity and smallness in both Schlemiel Theory (see here and here) and Berfrois (see here and here). As Ruth Wisse points out in The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, the schlemiel character is rooted in the Hasidic take on the simpleton (as found in Rabbi […]
As we get older, our understanding of time and space change. The world is not the same. And while time doesn’t matter as much when we are young, the older we get the more time matters and affects us in a bodily and a psychological sense. In contrast, the world becomes less pressing. What I […]
