Abstract
This paper will show that Kafka, in his enigmatic short story, “A Visit to a Mine,” depicted the concept of identification in a literary manner, similar to the way Freud articulated identification in his psychoanalytic writings. It will be argued that the subjects found in “A Visit to a Mine,” and who were used by Kafka in his quest for personal and professional identification, were among the most important European writers of the early twentieth century. This group of authors with whom Kafka identified included many highly influential figures, such as; Gorki, von Hofmannsthal, H. Mann and Anatole France.
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Wasserman, M. Kafka's “A Visit to a mine”: The literary path to a Freudian view of identification. Neohelicon 25, 275–307 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02572864
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02572864