To Kraus, language was the moral criterion and accreditation for a writer or speaker. Joseph Peter Stern has termed this equation of linguistic obtuseness or dishonesty with moral torpor or degeneracy Kraus's "linguistic-moral imperative." Quotation is the hallmark of Kraus's satire, and in keeping with his conviction that what was most unspeakable about his age could be spoken only by the age itself he set out to fashion on imperishable profile of his time from such perishable materials as newspaper reports. Excoriating the press for its pollution of language, its poisoning of the human spirit, and its shameless invasions of privacy and civility, Kraus anticipated the judgment of present-day critics of the media.
Kraus's life and work were eminently theatrical. He served the theater as a critic, translator and adapter, playwright, reciter, and--last and definitely least--sometime actor. Kraus thought of himself as possibly the first writer who experienced his writings theatrically, the way a performer does: "Wenn ich vortrage, so ist es nicht gespielte Literatur. Aber was ich schreibe, ist geschriebene Schauspielkunst" (When I give a public reading, it is not acted literature.
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