Gustavo Bernardo Krause
Universidade do Rio de Janeiro
Gustavo Bernardo Krause was born in 1955 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (1995), and is a Professor of Literary Theory at The Languages Institute of the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). His non-fictional books are: Redação inquieta (1985); Quem pode julgar a primeira pedra? (1993); Cola, sombra da escola (1997); Educação pelo argumento (2000); A dúvida de Flusser (2002); A ficção cética (2004); Verdades quixotescas (2006); Vilém Flusser: uma introdução (2008) – with Rainer Guldin and Anke Finger); O livro da metaficção (2010); O problema do realismo de Machado de Assis (2011); Conversas com um professor de literatura (2013); A ficção de Deus (2014); and O homem sem chão: a biografia de Vilém Flusser (2017), with Rainer Guldin, also published in German as Vilém Flusser: ein Leben in der Bodenlosigkeit – Biographie). Bernardo Krause also wrote the following novels: Pedro Pedra (1982); Me nina (1989); Lúcia (1999); A alma do urso (1999); Desenho mudo (2002); O Mágico de Verdade (2006); Reviravolta (2007); A filha do escritor (2008); Monte Verità (2009); O gosto do Apfelstrudel (2010); e Nanook (2016).
Articles of Gustavo Bernardo Krause
A metamorfose de Kafka em Flusser
The most famous literary metamorphosis is Kafka’s short eponymous tale published in 1915. For more than a hundred years now, the first sentence of The Metamorphosis has been provoking an infinite series of metamorphoses: in culture, literature, as well as in readers and writers. Among the writers most affected by the event, we find Vilém Flusser who turned himself into Brazilian and foreigner in the world at the same time. Flusser transformed philosophy into a philosophical fiction and charged it with the same sardonic irony we associate with Kafka’s fiction. Because of his metamorphoses, he became a fictional character himself, as Rainer Guldin and I pointed out in the biography we wrote about him. Sérgio Paulo Rouanet called Vilém Flusser ironically a Meta-Švejk. Flusser did not consider himself a post-philosopher – a Post-Husserl or Post-Vaihinger – but rather a Post-Kafka. In this sense, his philosophy is a kind of a post-Kafkaesque fiction.
FlusserBrasil
FlusserBrasil was a virtual space for the preservation and dissemination of Vilém Flusser’s work. Its major goal was to make his texts available and to promote the publication of his work in Brazil and worldwide. The site has been recently discontinued (February 11, 2024).
O homen sem chão: a biografia de Vilém Flusser, Vilém Flusser (1920-1991). Ein Leben in der Bodenlosigkeit. Biographie
O homen sem chão: a biografia de Vilém Flusser and Vilém Flusser (1920-1991). Ein Leben in der Bodenlosigkeit. Biographie are the Portuguese and the German version of a common biographical project that was conceived in Miguel Flusser’s country estate in Itatiba near São Paulo in November 2014. The two books will be published this fall by Annablume editora in São Paulo and transcript Verlag in Bielefeld (http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4064-9/vilem-flusser-19201991), respectively. This bilingual attempt is the first book-length biography of Vilém and Edith Flusser.
How to Face the Terror of Reason: From Philosophy to Literature
This paper explores the relationship of philosophy and literature, and the role of irony in the search of a possible way out of the hell of the apparatus created by the terror of reason. Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis and Jaroslav Hašek’s Švejk from The Adventures of Brave Soldier Švejk pre-figure the future and are in a way are ironical brothers of Vilém Flusser.
Meta-Švejk
This text is an extract of a planned bilingual Portuguese (O homem sem chão) and German (Ein Leben in der Übersetzung) biography of Vilém and Edith Flusser by Gustavo Bernardo and Rainer Guldin. It deals with Flusser’s Czech origins from the point of view of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) and Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk written between 1921 and 1923.
A terceira margem do pensamento Brasileiro / The Third Bank of Brazilian Thought
“O Ser que nega”
The article develops the Flusserian metaphor of the mirror as a being who denies, by relating it to the short stories of Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa, which have “The Mirror” as their title. The mirror of these three writers, just as their fiction or their philosophical fiction, denies reality to propose an alternative reality. The article also shows how the thinking of Vilém Flusser is connected with the fiction of God built by civilization, with the God of fiction as He appears in literature.