Preface; Introduction; Proem; 1. Wit and judgment; or, Lessing and Kant; 2. What is radical in Kant's 'Critique of Aesthetic Judgment'; 3. Holderlin's 'Swift Conceptual Grasp'; 4. Nietzsche's moods; 5. Telling Sadism in Musil's Young Torless; 6. Rapture in exile: Kafka's The Boy Who Sank Out of Sight; 7. Hearing Homonymy in Trakl's 'De Profundis'; 8. Benjamin's 'Affective Understanding' of Holderlin's odes 'The Poet's Courage' and 'Timidity'; Notes; Index.

Stanley Corngold is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, of "Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form" and "Borrowed Lives" (with Irene Giersing.)

'Elegance and intelligence meet on virtually every page of this intriguing book. I was persuaded by the perspicacity and inventiveness of the individual chapters and even more by the cumulative effect of the readings. In the end Corngold constructs a compelling itinerary. The prose is pellucid, flexible, and sinuous at the same time.' Ian Balfour, York University