Kafka’s Zionism: he has hopes for everyone except himself. For himself, he is an anti-Zionist; he does not have hopes for himself. Blanchot: ‘He wants it even if he is excluded from it, for the greatness of this rigorous conscience was always to hope for others more than for himself and not to measure mankind’s unhappiness by his personal misfortune’. Yes, this is an extraordinary gift. Remember Kafka’s aphorism: ‘Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery’; the latter is not Kafka’s vice. But isn’t his misery assuaged by the writing towards which misery leads him – the writing which is the ‘merciful surplus’ through which he rings changes on his misery? Perhaps it is this which permits him to affirm Zionism for others but not for himself.
Lars Iyer's Blog 