Kafka’s favorite work of fiction was a novella by the German philosopher-poet Heinrich von Kleist, whose genius has been largely forgotten in the Anglophonic world. Named after its titular character, Michael Kohlhaas tells the story of an upright and uniformly respected horse trader living in Brandenburg during the time of Luther. A husband, father, and pious Christian, Kohlhaas has earned a reputation as a lawful and fair-minded businessman of whom none has cause for complaint. One day, as he makes his way through Saxony with a harras horses he intends to sell at market, the unhappy Kohlhaas is detained by a representative of the menacing sot hilariously named the Junker Wenzel von Tronka. Before he can be permitted to pass along the road that leads through the Junker’s estate, the servant tells him, Kohlhaas must obtain the requisite permit in Dresden. There has to be some mistake, Kohlhaas protests, for he has passed along this very road countless times before without ever needing any such papers; the servant, however, persists and Kohlhaas begrudgingly agrees to leave two horses behind as collateral while he goes on to Dresden to retrieve the proper permit.

Knowing, as you now do, that Kohlhaas was one of Kafka’s great favorites, what do you think happened next? As it turned out, Kohlhaas was right when he said that no permit was required. Yet in his absence, his horses are starved and mistreated, made to do the work of oxen and stabled in a sty hardly suitable for pigs. Upon his return, Kohlhaas is outraged to discover that his horses have suffered such neglect and abuse. Wanting nothing more than the just recompense owed him by the Junker, he goes to his local officials who, in a series of feckless attempts to mollify his anger, refuse to mete out justice – largely because of their ties to the Tronka family and its high standing in the government.

What, I ask you, is a man of honor – confronted by such mendacity – to do?

Here is what Kohlhaas does do: He raises an army and embarks upon a violent crusade, sacking cities and demanding justice be conferred. He chases the Junker across the countryside, burning towns and villages along the way. He lays waste to farms and livestock, inspiring terror in the hearts of the guilty and the innocent alike and refusing to relent until his horses have been nursed back to health by the Junker’s own hands. He courts the support of Martin Luther, forces the state to grant him a hearing, and in so doing, secures some tacit acknowledgement of the government’s complicity in the maltreat born by him and his horses. In the end, he obtains the satisfaction he’s so savagely demanded – but only moments before being beheaded for treason.

Der geharnischte Reiter (1643) by Hans Ulrich Franck

Michael Kohlhaas came to mind as I read through a recent work of literary theory by the philosopher Matthew Clemente titled Bacchus Agonistes: Metarealism and the Future of Art (Senex Press). Like Kohlhaas, Clemente appears to be inspired by a profound sense of the rightness of his cause. And like Kohlhaas, he is the architect of a preposterous rebellion against the disillusionment that comes from being robbed of one’s naivete.

In the opening pages of Bacchus Agonistes, Clemente sets the stakes for the work to come. His philosophy, he makes clear, is an attempt to upend the seemingly serious scholarship on offer today, a scholarship devoid of the wit and whimsy once commonly found in the philosophical treatise (one thinks of the nearly extinct tradition of Montaigne and Descartes). His ideal scholar is nearer to that of Emerson’s – “Man Thinking” rather than the “mere thinker” or, worse still, “the bookworm” – and he sees no reason why today’s philosophers must succumb to the pedantry of academic convention.

Reflecting upon the famous quip by the 20th century political scientist Wallace Stanley Sayre – “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low” – Clemente calls for “a new philosophical and literary movement, an age when authors can take themselves lightly and give themselves to their writing with the seriousness and generosity of a child at play.” And yet, claiming for himself the mantle of “anti-scholar,” he nevertheless shows a strange affinity for the academy which he lovingly terms the “High Temple of Human Pleasure.” How is one to interpret the dissonance?

Reading Bacchus Agonistes is an unusual experience. Divided into two symmetrical parts – Part One: “Foreword by John P. Manoussakis,” “Preface to William Hendel,” “Essay: The Wisdom of Silenus”; Part Two: “Essay: The Folly of Morychus,” “Postface to John P. Manoussakis,” “Afterword by William Hendel” – the first half of the book appears right-side-up on the righthand pages with the second half printed upside-down on the left so that in order to continue past Part One, the reader must turn the book over and read it back to front. Indeed, when holding the book, it is not clear which side is the back and which the front since each displays its own cover art and each bears the barcode typically reserved for the back cover. The essays mirror one another not only in structure but in content, and the reader is left to wonder whether the work is to be taken seriously or is merely being offered in jest. Safe to say this is no ordinary work of academic philosophy.

Still, there is no denying that Bacchus Agonistes is the work of a scholar, one who may make pretenses at distancing himself from his academic training but nevertheless remains thoroughly beholden to it. The essays are overstuffed with citations and textual analysis, bearing testimony to an author who is erudite and wants his readers to know it. At several points, Clemente’s bookishness becomes cumbersome, and this reader was left with the feeling that the author was needlessly showing off. What is more, Bacchus Agonistes’ most provocative claims – like, for instance, that the divide between what we typically term “fiction” and “reality” is a fiction and thus that our fictional creations have just as much reality (or, I suppose, “metareality”) as you and me – are neither as original nor as compelling as Clemente would have us to believe.

There is, of course, the germ of an interesting idea in the literary theory Clemente calls “Metarealism” – a name, by the way, which has already been given to an alternate literary movement of which the author seems unaware. If, as Clemente claims, “the very notion that there is a distinction between reality and artistry is itself a work of art,” then isn’t it the case that we’re all just fictions waiting to be written? Certainly Sartre seemed to think so, and his literary and philosophical heirs continue to promote the work of existential self-creation, albeit under different guises, to this day. If the effects of art “are the same as those produced by other life events because, of course, aesthetic experiences are life events and all life events are works of art,” then isn’t all experience just a waking dream as Calderón or Wilde or any of a number of poets and artists would agree?

Again, these ideas aren’t new, they have entire traditions and lineages of thinkers standing behind them, and the assertion that they can help us get “beyond the postmodern” – a phrase of dubious merit which appears nearly a dozen times in the pages of Bacchus Agonistes – is, by my estimation, an overstatement. Indeed, there is something quixotic (in a literal sense) about Clemente’s entire project. In this slight book, we are presented with a philosopher fighting windmills and calling them giants. Like Cervantes’ commentary on his comic hero, or Kleist’s depiction of his proud, noble herdsman, Bacchus Agonistes is a book that will inspire laughter among some readers, pity among others, and entertain more than a few. It is worth a read, and I would recommend it – even if it ultimately fails to live up to its lofty aspirations and its author’s immense pretensions.

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Hillary Momucles is a writer and professor of rhetoric living in Boston, Massachusetts

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