More and more, the essential feature in Kafka seems to me is humour. He himself was not a humourist, of course. Rather, he was a man whose fate it was to keep stumbling upon people who made humour their profession: clowns. Amerika in particular is one large clown act. And concerning the friendship with Brod, I think I am on the track of the truth when I say: Kafka as Laurel felt the onerous obligation to seek out his Hardy - and that was Brod. However that may be, I think the key to Kafka's work is likely to fall into the hands of the person who is able to extract the comic aspects from Jewish theology. Has there been such a man? Or would you be man enough to be that man?

Walter Benjamin to Gerhard Scholem, February 4th, 1939