KAFKA - and the Kafkaesque
Unmask all pretentiousness! Culture is the science of generosity.
The intent here is to form a discussion concerning
the place of FRANZ KAFKA´S works in the
literary tradition and also the Nature
of the troubling "Kafkaesque",
refuting the not at all uncommon almost childish views of Kafka as ...
a "magical realist," or a "religious mystic,"
or for that matter a ... "writer of Jewish parables."
WHAT IF one had a Dream of a Dream and the two of them could communicate??
That is what happens in a Franz Kafka story!
The book
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis
deals with Kafka's novels and short stories
from the aspect of the Kafkaesaque, and it does so in looking for
the means that create this effect. These means turns out to be largely technical.
Thus, in this book,
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis,
is shown how Kafka uses a narratological split, split
consciousness, and SPLIT Unconscious of the hero to create the
Kafkaesque by a rare trick.
This new book shows how Kafka became one of the most prominent artists
to create and define Modernity. Kafka took part in the thrilling
creation of Self-conscience of the 20ieth century, marked by a constant
dialogue with Freud and his works. Self-conscience as Man knew it since
St. Augustine, the Italian renaissance writers Erasmus, Shakespeare,
and Montaigne, and later with the secular Romantics and Hegel
swiftly developed within Modernism into something much more
complex, primarily with the appearance of Freud's "Traumdeutung" in the
year of 1900. And Kafka - rebutting Schnitzler - then set out to complete it all.
The works of Kafka appeared as a reaction to 1.) Modern
times, to 2.) his own personal alienation, and to 3.) Freud.
Kafka's answer to Modernity – to the modern condition –
was astonishingly complex, but it turned out to be very
accurate and accomplished right from the beginning.
When other reactions to the Modern Condition, like
Hugo Ball, Appolinaire and Dada, displayed a picture of a chaotic and rebel
attitude to reason and morals, Kafka, much like
Rimbaud actually, showed a far more complex
ability to make modern society's human-understandable
itself, in a universal narrative.
Kafka, in exploring the Unconscious, as
by Freud, and in doing so using a Romantic
"Ästhetik des Schwebens," is the unique discoverer
of the marvels of mind, and is, in this, equal
to Freud.
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis
sets out to explain how the
Kafkaesque itself generates
- even today, 100 years after
its birth - an interrogation
that scrutinizes the Freudian
theory and our conception of
the unique human consciousness.
Kafka's relation to Freud was somewhat like a son's
relation to the father. Hence, Kafka did not
acknowledge Freud's discoveries, methods, and
notions as truths. But he saw them – ironically
enough – as facts. And in a sense, they were.
Freud's views were historical facts in their
profound influence on Mind and Society the
century. Kafka used Freud as part of the
( revealing ) Modern Myth.
Kafka used Freud,
but Kafka added on top of Freud´s medel of the human psyche another split
to human consciousness in his literary universe.
Kafka thus did not "believe in" Freud,
but he was fascinated by him. Freud
suited Kafka well. Almost too well. He did not look at all
to Freud to a great extent, ... did
not own several books by Freud ...
but he had – like many others –
acquired a sort of immediate understanding
of Freud's ideas through a kind of
everyday osmosis.
Kafka actually started as
a writer of lyrical prose, short
prose poems in the style of W. Goethe,
von Kleist, and G. Flaubert.
But his dream was to write a novel, and it ought
to be like the one G. Flaubert in his usual rage once claimed he wanted
to write: a lovely book about nothing at all.
So it happened that Kafka - not at all being highly
intellectual or an eloquent philosopher - developed a technique for writing novels where he was extending a sole situation into a perfectly static ( i.e., nothingy ) drama displaying a struggle between conscious and unconscious. It also seems as he tried to develop the style of Tieck and the Romantics.
Using his extraordinary ( perhaps autistic )
sensibility, Kafka's technique miraculously was born on
one evening in 1912, writing the short story "The Verdict."
The following day, he even asked his fiancée Felice for
its meaning. Later, in 1912 with the writing
of "The Metamorphosis" and, in 1913, the unfinished
"The Trial," his technique of displaying the
Kafkaesque was already full-fledged. Here he –
almost FORCE by his own personal and social
catastrophe - introduced a pseudo plot in a kind of
pseudo novel displaying a story of a split, a
struggle of a conscious instance of a person,
shown as a hero-figure battling this person's
OWN Unconscious.
As it turned out, this battle caused a second
unconscious part to appear in the universe of
this fiction. ( Examples can be found in
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis.)
It seems that the hero-figure, devoid of his Unconscious,
HAD TO develop such an unconscious to be able to handle
his surrounding world, which was his original Unconscious.
Here we thus are having a triadic structure and a strange
meeting of two unconscious instances.
This fictional condition primarily results
in a double exposure of the unconscious
and a strange transcendence of the Ego,
which cannot easily be reflected upon
since it has no equivalent in reality.
This is NOT EASY TO UNDERSTAND!
As a result of this Kafka-technique, which
probably was unconscious (!) to Kafka himself, we
are also – apart from the nausea of double
Unconscious, a kind of the self-consciousness
of the Unconscious - experiencing a very intense
poetry, depicting utter loneliness in a
framework of a sad pseudo-protest, parallell to Weber´s, against the superpower
of civil organization and law in general, as well as
a hymn of the melancholy beauty of existence the like of which
actually nobody else in the 20ieth Century has created:
The concept of "Kafkaesque" has been created upon the
experience of the works of Kafka by the Collective Mind,
and in some yet not quite analyzed way, it also has
extended our mode of perception.
The concept of the Kafkaesque, and the Kafkaesque itself,
AS IRONY, is vital for both the being and
the understanding of our culture and being!
The questions regarding this concept, raised in
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis
questions
somewhat elusive, are mainly two: [ 1. ]: what IS
the kafkaesque? (…that is caused by this split )
And [ 2. ]: how did Kafka DO to create this,
the" Kafkaesque"?
These questions are highly original and deals with ideological,
cultural, and psychological matters
and tacit knowledge, and complicated
issues concerning the ontology of fiction.
Perhaps the concept of "Kafka" is an ongoing
question in Modernity itself that will prevail
no matter how much Kaj Bernh. Genell - and others -
keep trying to sort out the problem?....
You are visiting Kaj Bernhard genell real home site,
The main subject here is kafka and the kafkaesque
and the book,
Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis.
NOW - also ON AMAZON , in Swedish:
Med koffert och paraply, - Essäer om Franz Kafka

A collection of short stories,
Noveller
in Swedish:



FELLS POINT on Amazon!

The English novel ( ..... under the pen-name of Bill Clactoe ) Fell´s Point.
In Fell´s Point, Baltimore, U.S.A., two women
and a man are investigating the sudden
death of their friend Martha. They meet
with many strange people in their search.
Most remarkable - aside from the
picture they get of Martha herself - perhaps
is the secretness of Captain Longman, Martha´s widower,
who quite suddenly also starts up
a social club for youngsters in Fells
Point. Surprise after surprise reveals to
those who thought they knew Martha...
The Lions Disease


LISTEN TO CHAPTER ONE!
SYNOPSIS
THE LIONS DISEASE
Kaj Bernhard Genell
Thirty-five-year-old Sam Diggerson ( the NARRATOR ) is hired
as a 3rd officer on m/s Punjab of London. As soon as he is
onboard and the ship has started on his journey to Surabaya,
all of a sudden a Mrs. Williamson gets sick. One-sided blindness
has hit her. But it is no ordinary disease. It turns out
it stays with her and has a strange form. The blindness
alternates from one side to the other side. Continuously.
A lion in a cargo hatch is found to be the source.
Soon, this new, horrendous sickness, which troubles Mrs.
Williamson, is highly contagious. Several others on m/s
Punjab get the disease, and it turns out that the whole
world fears for this, The Lions Disease .
Soon the British
Gov. decides to offer the crew on the unlucky ship to go to
Tristan da Cunha. The vessel is not allowed to go to
port anywhere.
The clever captain of the ship turns this offer down....
This novel was originally
written in English,
for then
to be translated by the
author into his
native Swedish idiom:
LEJONSJUKAN


Ett stort fartyg, en
Geared Bulk Carrier, - m/s Punjab -
lämnar Londons hamn med, bland mycket annat, ett lejon i
lasten. Inte långt efter man kommit ut till havs märker
man att det grasserar en alldeles ny sjukdom ombord.
Tredjestyrman Diggerson och Kapten Stork gör under
den långa färden till Surabaya sitt bästa
för att rädda fartyg, besättning och hela världen
från en hotande ny världsepidemi...

