“Gewalt”: Images of Violence in the Literary German Expressionism from Kierkegaard and Benjamin

Abstract

The present article examines Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling in order to explore the various expressionist representations of violence (Gewalt) conveyed by the word’s three different meanings in German, which are unknown in Spanish, English and French. Many authors, however, such as Arendt, Benjamin, Derrida or Weber, have reflected on violence, an essential motif in Expressionism, and so in the following pages images of violence in German literary expressionism (specifically, in texts by Georg Heym and Franz Kafka) will be reinterpreted for the first time in consideration of the original German term and its various applications.