Balance

Abstract

One would entirely misunderstand Kraus’s significance if one were to try to analyze his views in a purely intellectual manner, to try to define his concepts, and to arrive at theories. It was only rarely and in a very fragmentary way that Kraus dealt at all systematically or even connectedly with any of the phenomena which occupied him. When he did so, it was under the impact of intense, often violent, emotion. The reader felt the sincerity of these outbursts, and experienced something of the author’s intensity in the rapid alternation of despair, hysterical laughter, and lyric beauty. Underlying such passages, one sometimes senses scraps of attitudes which may be pieced together into a basic attitude toward the world. One is closest to the “core” of Kraus in those writings which by their very form suggest freedom from convention, such as small Notizen, Glossen (notes, glosses), and comments on the latter, and most of all between the lines of passages reprinted from contemporary newspapers and books.