Kafka and the Kafkaesque.
What follows here is the early sketch.
I posted this one too, because I like the introduction.
For the complete verson, ( that unfortunately does not contain the introduction here, go to: ( also hosted on this site...)
Engl.: Kafka - a Freudo-Structuralist Analysis
Online-version ©
Kafka and the kafkaesque.
Part One
THE uniqueness of the works of Franz Kafka and the perplexing historical accuracy of the concept of the Kafkaesque are both phenomena that over the years have been noticed by many readers and scholars. This book sets out to unravel the enigma of this very concept, by reference to the process of creation, and to Kafka´s implicit use of two unconscious levels within the universe of discourse of his most important works. Always a fruitful explanation of the uniqueness of these works has been missing. Scholars have ever since the 1930s been noticing the extraordinary qualities of the Kafka text. Strange - Kafkaesque - features have been attributed to the short stories and the novels of Kafka. The Kafka hero has - rightly - been seen as a mere figure, and the " dream-like " landscape-universe has been seen as characteristic, and one has frequently been looking upon these entities, together with a few stylistic features, as technical dominants in the shaping of the concept of the Kafkaesque.
This book displays a model, together with a biographical survey and a historical perspective on possible influences, that, quite reversely, forms a hermeneutic explanation to these features, as well as to what is denoted by the concept. This is achieved from the perspective of a dynamic contextual center, explained in a model containing three levels, levels steadily forming the discourse, typical of Kafka.
The veil of mystery may never be lifted when it comes to Kafka´s classics of Modernity. It might be essential to know about the technique behind the Kafkaesque to be able to reflect upon the Self-consciousness of Modern Man of the 20th century, a century so intensely marked by a dialogue between society and the works and ideas of Sigmund Freud.
Self-consciousness of Man, as it appeared with St. Augustine, the great Italian Renaissance writers, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Montaigne, the German secular Romantics and Hegel, swiftly developed into something even much more complex with the appearance of Freud and the publication of his Traumdeutung in the year of 1900, and, more so, with the creation of the Kafkaesque, with the works of Kafka, around 1912.
The work of mine displays a distinct answer to the question regarding the uniqueness of Kafka and regarding the concept of the kafkaesque and how Kafka managed to achieve this very effect of the Kafkaeasque through his special technique. My work is an attempt to look for the meaning of the use of the kafkaic style. The uniqueness of the kafkaesque is noticed by many others but here it is explained by reference to the process of creation of the kafkaesque. Through the years this explanation has been missing. Kafka´s uses two unconscious levels in his major works. Sholars like W. Benjamin, Th. Adorno, M. Walser and H. Hiebel have noticed the extraordinary experienced qualities of the kafka text, the strange features owned by the hero, the hero as a mere figure and the “dream-like” universe. But I am displaying a model that can bring these features into a dynamic scheme, explained from an author´s ( albeit unconscious ) view.
It is in fact essential for Modern Man - FOR US - to be aware of this technique, to be able to reflect on the picture of Modern Man. Kafka was part of the creation of THE Self-conscience in 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 in Modrnism developed into something much more complex with the appearance of Freud and the publication of the Traumdeautung in the year of 1900. And Kafka fulfilled 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 an astonishingly complex one, but it turned out to be very accurate and accomplished right from the very beginning. When other reactions to the modern condition, like Dada, displayed a picture of a chaotic and a rebel attitude to reason and morals, Kafka, like Rimbaud, showed a far more complex ability to encompass the soul of humans in relation to the Modern society in a universal form.
Kafka´s relation to Freud was somewhat like that of a relation of a son to the father. Thus Kafka did not acknowledge Freud´s discoveries, interpretations, methods and notions as truths. But he saw them – ironically – as facts. And in a sense they were. Freud´s views were historical facts in their deep influence on mind and society of the century. Hence Kafka used Freud as part of the Modern Myth.
Kafka did not “believe in” Freud, but he was fascinated by him. He did not study Freud at great extent, but he had – like many others – acquired a sort of immediate understanding of his ideas, through a kind of everyday osmosis.
Kafka started out as a writer of lyrical prose, short prose poems. But his dream was to write a novel, and it should be a novel like the one Flaubert ( Kafka´s literary idol ) wanted to write: a very beautiful book about nothing at all. It also seems as he wanted to develop the style of Tieck and the Romantics. So it turned out that Kafka now developed a technique for writing novels where he was extending a sole situation into a perfectly static ( i.e. nothing ) drama displaying a struggle between conscious and unconscious. Using his extraordinary ( perhaps autistic ) sensibility his technique, the kafkaic, miraculously was born in 1912 with the writing of the short story of The Verdict. He asked his fiancée Felice for the meaning of it.
Later, with the writing of 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 originated – caused - a second unconscious part to appear in the universe of this fiction. 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 secondly in a strange transcendence of the Ego, which cannot easily be reflected upon, since it has no equivalent in reality.
As a result of this kafkaic 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 displaying utter loneliness and in a framwork : a sad pseudo-protest against the super power of civil organization and law in general as well as a melancholy beauty of existence. The like of which never again has been created.
PREFACE
FRANZ KAFKA, A UNIQUE WRITER WITHOUT ANY PREDECESSORS OR SUCCESSORS. In an important sense, Kafka is, of course, neither a "magical realist" nor a "religious mystic," nor, for that matter, any "writer of parables." Kafka´s works are Kafkaesque. If Kafka´s works are political, religious, or psychoanalytical is a matter of interpretation. But that they are Kafkaesque is not. They are distinctly Kafkaesque. Kafka's works are entirely original, and they are so by the existence of the Kafkaesque. And the Kafkaesque is the determining factor when it comes to the effect of the entire work. The Kafkaesque - a product - emanates in its purely technical aspect out of a literary form. Kafka's structural, literary form, in which his significant works are put, is based upon a refined mega-structural narrative split, paraphrased upon Freud´s notion of Unconscious, the division between a hero-"voice" and a world-"voice" on the one hand, and conscious unconscious, on the other. This book is much about these splits and their consequences. In another aspect, this book claims that the Kafkaesque connects to Romanticism in a combination that thrives in surpassing Symbolism, Freud's theories, and Freudianism. Whereas Kafka's authorship is very subtle and complex, it is also wholly and utterly unique. It is unique because no other author is even remotely close to having written anything that can even be mistaken to be written by Kafka. There is, at the same time, nothing artificial in it. It is also coherent, and the beauty and truth of these literary works spring from a very rare literary and psychological sensibility and an innate knowledge of writing fiction. On that, many agree. Furthermore, the uniqueness is of such a kind that Kafka is without actual predecessors. There are no successors either, no "Kafka-school," and there will probably never materialize any such thing. Kafka also, in this splendid isolation, has, as we all know, grown to become a "concept," a concept of his own: Cf.: "It was quite a Kafka scenario."; "Almost Kafkaesque!"; "It certainly was a bit Kafka." The mind has created the concept of "Kafkaesque." which has become an important, almost everyday concept, extending our way of perception. This concept has almost become vital for the understanding of our culture. Our questions regarding this concept, which is somewhat elusive regarding its actual content despite its frequency and importance, are mainly two:
1. What more precisely do we mean by "Kafkaesque"? 2. How did Kafka DO to create this "Kafkaesque"? 3. Has the Kafkaesque any broader importance and implications to us? Merely asking for the meaning of the concept of the" Kafkaesque," we find ourselves almost stuck in the classic circular paradox of analysis. Furthermore - since we are trying to describe this effect and the technique that shaped this effect, we are simultaneously executing two studies - genuinely dependent on each other in a scientifically quite forbidden way. These analyses are mutually reliant on each other! In trying to elucidate technique by effect, one could not possibly avoid subjectivity. Therefore, this study that does precisely this is not even pretending to be scientific but is just philosophical. It is philosophical reasoning around a narrative that is split in a twofold manner, around a twofold axis. However, this Philosophical work aims to determine the meaning of the concept of "Kafkaesque" to eradicate mystifications.
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The first question is simply put. What is Kafkaesque? The EFFECT: When it comes to the hero figure, we have a Buster Keaton-like hero in Kafka´s work without any shadow. According to Adorno, the Kafka heroes are â€sinstructed to leave their psyche at the door,.â€t We are prone to think that the hero stands close to some wall, shadowless and that we, at the same time, can perceive an extreme contrast. On the one hand, we have a shadowless hero; on the other hand, we seem to have a hero with a giant contrast. One might perhaps say that the impossibility of the description of this effect has led to the creation of a brand new concept derived from the proper name of Kafka: the concept of the Kafkaesque. One might look upon the Kafkaesque as a literary genre term, although it is not evident that there is a genre. There is much confusion regarding the concept of Kafkaesque. By using the concept, some scientists and other authors refer to the way Kafka wrote, while others, by using the concept, refer to the effect of Kafka's works. By using the word "Kafkaesque," some are referring exclusively to a special kind of fictive universe, some sort of ontological sphere, and it is here as if the concept of Kafkaesque could be put alongside f. ex. "supernatural," "surreal," "Helvetic," "Paradisiac." As a literary concept, it is comparable in cultural importance to "Orwellian," but overshadowing this. Concepts referring to experiences of literary works are rarely, if ever, concise. The notions of romanticism, realism, magical realism, symbolism, and surrealism, to take a few, have no precise definitions. In determining literary experience, we deal not only with ideological, cultural, and psychological matters but with tacit knowledge and complex matters concerning the ontology of fiction. Perhaps the concept of "Kafka" might be regarded as an ongoing question in Modernity itself that will prevail no matter how much we try to sort out the problem?. The relation: The "Kafka code" ( the central theme in this book ) => The Kafkaesque is not at all obvious. Many technical aspects were most probably not even known to Kafka himself. We shall take a slow approach to find a fruitful explanation of the special connection between the method and the Kafkaesque by first taking a brief look at Kafka's life. It is, although it has nothing to do with central technical, formal matters, still essential to include some biographical facts concerning Kafka since it is implausible that a work like Kafka's could have been produced by anyone else than Kafka and in another place in another time than in Prague around this very time. I think that historical phenomena have an essential part as requisite and condition in creating the concept of Kafkaesque. PART I
CHAPTER I
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
PRAGUE. During this time, the double monarchy of Habsburg was intact, powerful, and wealthy. This superpower was compounded of about fifteen different nationalities, and it was run, since 1848, by the emperor Franz Joseph. Prague is situated on both sides of the river Moldau, almost in the midst of Bohemia. This ancient town 1900 had about 40.000 German-speaking inhabitants, while the majorities were 400.000 Czechs. These groups – who were both Christians and Jews, lived almost segregated. Different groups existed side by side "with and against each other," as someone has said. In Prague, 9% of the population was, like the Kafka family, Jews, in this time. Prague was a more complex city concerning class than, for example, Vienna, the center of power of the Habsburg dynasty, was at this time. In Vienna, with its 1.7 million inhabitants, the group of Jews had rapidly grown to a more predominant group of people, and anti-Semitism was much more trouble than in Prague. The Jewish ghetto of Josephstadt, which was the biggest in Europe, and probably the oldest, had been dissolved in the revolutionary year 1848 when Franz Joseph became ruler, and the Jews had acquired their full rights to marry, etc. In Prague, socioeconomic bonds generally prevented anti-Semitism, except in economically challenging times, when one blamed the Jews as one had done for centuries all over Europe. Official business, government, and institutions were run mainly by German-speaking people, while Czechs handled commerce in general and in the Czech language. Jews in Bohemia were either German or Czech speaking, but they all spoke Yiddish, and many of them in the countryside could read Hebrew. The general Class inequalities in Bohemia were enormous like they were in the empire and Europe. Prague at this time had a German university with about 17000 students and two German theatres. Kafka could enjoy dramas by August Strindberg and Ibsen, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Lessing's Nathan der Weise, Schiller's, Goethe's, MoliA¨re's plays, and those of G. B. Shaw and Arthur Schnitzler. Kafka perhaps attended Verdi's Rigoberto, with Caruso in the main part. Max Brod asserts that the mood of Prague was naAZve. It was almost revolutionary when the Zionist M. Buber started his newspaper there or when Karl Kraus came to town. Karl Kraus was the founder of Die Fackel, a Vienna newspaper concentrating on political satire. "Prussia is very generous as far as muzzles concerns." Kraus pointed out. "Austria is the isolation cell, where you are allowed to scream." Kraus, in Prague, during lectures, spoke in front of a roaring, excited crowd in the student club, "Die Halle." The great critic of both political and cultural matters, not least of new-born Psychoanalysis, came to this small cultural club more than fifty times, from 1910 and on. We do not precisely know if Kafka listened to Kraus in person, but it is very likely he did so. From his diaries, we see that he was well informed, widely read, and interested in everything in society. Many Jews in Prague were secular Jews. Kraus had left Judaism, just like f. ex. Wittgenstein did. Kraus later became a forceful opponent of the famous Viennese founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl and Buber. Like Vienna, Prague did not have any radiant cultural figures with the stature of Kraus, i.e., intellectuals, who fundamentally could stir society and stimulate change. Kraus's influence upon Central Europe was enormous, to which many vital scholars, such as Freud, Musil, and Arnold Schonberg, bore witness. Max Brod, FK's life-long friend, would later characterize himself, together with Franz, as Prague-Austrians, which tells us a lot about the two young authors and their social situation. The era was marked by the dominance of the bourgeoisie and, consequently, by a moral of double standards characterized by the oppression of women. Oswald Spengler, another important essayist academic voice, nicknamed "der Untergangster" by Kraus, bluntly asserted, in his Untergang des Abendlandes, that every culture was subject to demolition. His field of study, History of Culture, was physiognomics; Culture was a living organism. Spengler´s historicism was of an extremely impressionist kind, quite like Vico´s and Friedell´s. Prague, certainly in juxtaposition to Vienna, had acquired a unique, dense, and slightly ghostly atmosphere for various reasons. Its literature reflects this. Within Czech literature, which stood very close to the classic German Romantic one, a genre marked by mysticism, often called "Ghost literature," might be traced back to Rabbi Yehuda Loew, who wrote the famous fable of the strange Golem. Golem was a small creature made of clay that, in this myth, came to life when a rabbi, Maharal, put a small piece of paper with God's name on it in the mouth of Golem. Loew lived around 1600, and his works were done into pastiche by G. Meyrink, E.E. Kisch, and others. Kafka was part of the very important, somewhat educated German bourgeoisie in Prague during this turbulent time. Around 1910, he rapidly came as a young aspiring author to be a part of Modernism. As a citizen, he never became a revolutionary activist; his early sympathy for anarchism and various socialist movements was known only to a minimal circle of friends. However, it later became an essential subject in many of his short stories and prose poems. ----------------------------------------
Kafka was no ordinary young man. He regarded himself as a kind of Unmensch, a "Quasimodo," and as being "literature." He thus often did not consider himself a human being. We do not precisely know why. Where are there hidden secrets in his life? Based on information in diaries and letters, we are prone to think that Kafka wrote to survive some ordeal. However, survival probably should also fulfill the needs of his mind. ( The strange thing with survival is that one normally does not survive on nothing. ) The writing was a "way out," but not into emptiness, but instead into delight. We will later discuss the relation Kafka - writing – desire/jouissance. Mainly the Central European culture of those days was a hedonistic, often eroticist one. Franz Kafka was born in 1883. Franz [Anschel, as was his Jewish name] was the only son, the son of a son of a kosher butcher from the countryside in MA¤rhren, not far from the place where Sigmund Freud´s grandfather lived. Herman Kafka, FK:s father, was of Western Jewish descent and a successful merchant. His wife, Julie, b. LA¶wy, of Eastern Jewish, was the daughter of a wealthy well known Prager brewer. Herman was a member of the Jewish community's counsel and the only synagogue in Prague that provided a Czech language service, which was the only language Herman ever fully mastered. Franz never got any orthodox Jewish education since this was not compliant with Herman's determinate vision of the Jewish people's future in Europe. Kafka had three sisters, Valli, Elli, and Ottla, and they had a French governess, Mademoiselle Bailly. The family, who generally had three servants in the house, also had a children's nurse named Anna PouzarovA?, not much older than the children themselves, a nurse/playmate of which Franz felt very strongly. G. Rieck asserts that this "forbidden love strongly marks the entire authorship." It was a bilingual home, but he went to German schools. He never grew completely familiar with the Czech language, and he could not write literature in this idiom. Already as a boy, Franz came into conflict with his father. The son got locked out on the balcony in the night for a minor offense, which created psychic trauma. Young Franz never showed any interest in the family business, all the more in art and literature, and hence Herman often treated young Franz with sarcastic Irony. Julie Kafka is hardly mentioned in the diaries, while the father is almost permanently present in these. Franz always sought confirmation from him but hardly ever got any. He also felt physically inferior to his father. In connection with feelings of inability to live, the father more and more stood out as an example of human beings too fit to live. As far as we know, the emotional climate of the Kafka family was neither warm nor cold. There were not much dance and music in the home. Herman liked to play cards in the evening, and when his friends were not available, Julie played with him. Herman seemed to have been all for his business. Religion meant nothing to anybody in the Kafka family. One might get a glimpse of Kafka's boyhood and Prague's surroundings where he lived from the prose collection Betrachtung, where one might perceive the bittersweet and the unattainable as themes. During high school, young Franz took a pronounced negative attitude to romantic verse. Nevertheless, he was, on the contrary, utterly thrilled by the romantic saga, the Kunst-MA¤rchen – a highly stylized prose, that in a sense was from the very start a parody of itself. Kafka was not a prominent scholar in primary and secondary school but more of an average pupil and later student. Emil Utitz, who had been to school with Kafka, later, in a letter to Klaus Wagenbach, gave a vivid and memorable description of F.K.: "If I were to say something characteristic concerning Kafka, it would be that it was not anything special at all with him." He took his high school exam in 1901, and he began to study law at the Ferdinand-Karl's-UniversitA¤t without any particular interest in the subject. Between 1901 and 1906, he was a student at the University. As a lawyer, he was later able to devote himself to writing in his spare time. This was his idea from very early on. During his lifetime, Kafka would many times stress the vast importance and meaningfulness of the possibility of indulging in writing, and he was mesmerized by literature and words. Kafka, as a teenager, wrote a lot. He seemed to be born with a very fluent literary style. ------------------------------ Already in high school, Kafka became introduced to a famous and influential philosopher of his time, Franz Brentano. He generally is described as a phenomenological thinker. Kafka appears to have been susceptible to observations on perception problems, often called a philosophy of mind, around which Brentano had evolved his philosophical psychology. It is striking how there are ideas similar to Brentano's regarding the mental experience in Kafka's Description of a struggle (1909) and some notes in the diary from 1913. B. Smith and J. Ryan are both referring to signs of the impact of Brentano upon Kafka in a passage in Kafka's early work: "I continued my wandering. But since I as a pedestrian feared the troubles and strains of climbing the steep path, I made it more and more smooth, and then made it sloop down towards a distant valley. The rocks disappeared according to my will, and the wind ceased to blow..." F.K. bases the content upon the" inner life" of the narrator, upon his fancies and wishes. Kafka purportedly draws consequence from the philosophy of Brentano in surpassing it. Brentano always stressed the difference between perception and object and that we are always left with our experience, of which we, while we have this experience, always obliquely at the same time, are consciously aware. We are thus, according to Brentano, aware of what we are aware. Kafka could easily have grabbed this idea and developed it in this manner, as is seen in the example. Practically, however, Brentano, in his philosophy of perception - like Dilthey does - comes into counter-position to the old romantic idealist philosophy. Kafka does not mention Brentano at all in his notebooks. Brentano was probably of no significant importance to F.K. F.K. still might have gained essential knowledge of moral philosophy and the philosophy of right by dealing with Brentano's writings, just as he possibly acquired some skill in sophistry by reading the Talmud and other Jewish literature, which he often sought out as a compensation for the lack of intellectual and religious tradition in his own childhood home.
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At Prague University, there was a student Cultural Club, the aforementioned "Die Halle," where one could listen to lectures and discussions concerning political, philosophical, and cultural matters. One night on the 23rd of October 1902, a small, near-sighted, hunchbacked, extremely self-confident boy, Max Brod, held a speech about Schopenhauer's views on destiny at "Die Halle." Since Brod in his speech violently attacked Nietzsche's ideas in this speech and actually named him "Hochstapler" (scammer) and since Kafka very much did appreciate Nietzsche, Kafka afterward approached Brod, and they then violently, discussed these matters. A lifelong friendship started with this quarrel. Max and Franz soon began to study literature together in privacy, the readings of Plato and Flaubert. Kafka, who was fluent in French due to his love of his childhood nurse, loved to read Flaubert aloud in his baritone voice. Both Brod and Kafka were of course, fluent in both Latin in Greek, even Hebrew since they both passed high school. Franz and Max even translated parts of Plato´s Dialogues, which is interesting particularly for a Kafka scholar, since Plato's style might, to some degree, have affected Kafka's style. Being a solid skeptic and an astute Nietzsche fan, Kafka probably found it very hard to believe in the idea of the Good with Plato, though. During his years at the Carolinum, Kafka also consumed many memoirs and biographies, his favorite lecture throughout his life, together with travel books. He usually read several newspapers and periodicals a day throughout his life, like the Bohemia, Deutsche Arbeit, Der Jude, Der Prager Tageblatt, Hyperion, and Wir. Kafka wrote to his comrades O. Pollak, Baum, O. Kisch, and M. Brod during summer leaves. In the letters, he told them of his consummation of literature and the beauty of the landscape around the idyllic Triesch to the north of Prague, where Kafka used to visit his uncle, the country doctor. Kafka was an assimilated Jew, if it was possible to be "assimilated" at all in Prague. He was utterly irreligious. It seems that he supported secular Zionism more than covering such. Max Brod propagated lifelong for Zionism, moved to Israel, and ended his days in Israel as a convinced Zionist, acclaimed by the establishment as an honorary citizen. Kafka himself was never won over to the Zionist outlook. Friedlander: "Kafka was never a Zionist.". However, Kafka's interest in Jewish identity increased with the years - perhaps as his inner desperation grew. Perhaps in line with his surroundings, with the circle of Jewish intellectuals with which he socialized, he increasingly became aware of Prague's insulation, and many of his friends discussed a future ideal society in Palestine. Towards the end of his life, his studies in the Hebrew language were more intense. He first studied this language in two rounds, first as a 25-year-old and later in 1923 when he was dying. However, it is difficult to prove that this study affected his writing. B. Becker, in her thesis, investigated the possible Kabbalistic influences in F.K.'s authorship. Kafka had read Karl Marx' Zur Judenfrage, written in 1844, where Jewish emancipation is scrutinized. This 88-page book has an essential discussion on power, the power of the mass, the difference between European and American politics and religion, and human rights. It is exceptionally well written, which was often the case with Marx. Marx points at an alleged inherent contradiction between freedom of religious belief and Human Rights. De Beaumont had earlier invented the concept and idea of human rights in France. Bruno Bauer –the opponent against whom the book explicitly is directed – claims that no emancipation for Jews is possible as long as there are religions. Marx asserts that there is no possible emancipation for the Jews before all humans are socially emancipated. This book also contains a minor discussion of alienation. Kafka in 1906, graduated with a Doctor of Law. After the usual practice period, the "Rechtspraktik" - a prerequisite for working in the state administration - F.K. got nine-month employment with an Italian insurance company, Assuracioni Generali, which was headquartered in Trieste - then belonging to Habsburg, at their Prague office. In 1908, he soon got more suitable employment as an investigator at the large Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt in Prague. The insurance system in Bohemia was extensive; over 200,000 contractors and about three million workers were affiliated. Officials' number was on this job not less than 250. Only two of these were Jews. Kafka FK was an ambitious, resourceful, caring, and much-respected official. He always chose to work part-time but had a good salary and never had severe financial problems, apart from the last years. In Berlin, living with Dora, he was broke. Most often, F.K. lived with the family in different chilly and noisy apartments in Prague's absolute center and rarely rented his own rooms or apartments. At nighttime Kafka was creative. From 22:30 to 02:00 or 03:00 at night, Kafka occupied himself with his literary work during his "vintage years," i.e., the years 1912 to 1917. His breakthrough novel The Verdict, was conceived during one single autumn night session. During these years, he seems to have been indulged in the creative process instead of sleeping. From 1909 onwards, he wrote a diary, advised to do so by his dynamic, persistent, and optimistic friend Max Brod. It is a sporadic diary, and here literary drafts are mixed with short notes on health status, practical things, and notices about the family members he held very dear. Kafka's focus was not exclusively on literature. He liked to draw, and he - despite his lack of talent - practiced on his violin, and he was fond of gardening and outdoor life. Kafka often wished to be something entirely other than a lawyer, for instance, an athlete. FK was a good swimmer, and he could, despite his weak constitution, master a horse in terrain. He cared about his health and practiced gymnastics daily in front of an open window from his earliest years. The writer in spe had his rowboat by the river Moldau. He rowed upstream and then floated down, lying on his back in the boat dressed in his usual suit, gliding under the famous KarlsbrALcke and the other eight bridges. Kafka was fascinated by naked bodies and beautiful naked bodies in particular; he attended nudist camps, such as the Baltic Sea and health facilities. Around 1909-1910, trips took Kafka to Northern Italy, Lugano and Venice, Austria, Hamburg, Helgoland, RALgen, and Marienlyst in Denmark. Kafka and Max Brod were to visit Paris together two times. When Max, the music enthusiast, chose to go to the opera, Kafka - who seems to have been almost totally insensitive to music ( although he played the violin at home ) - went to a horse race. When Brod and Kafka were in Italy, they attended an air show outside Brescia. They decided to compete to see who wrote the best record of this event, an airplane race, where the famous French pioneer aviator Bleriot took part. This article became F.K.'s debut as a writer. The newspaper Bohemia displayed it on the 28/9 1909 with the title Die AeroplA¤ne in Brescia. It contains, apart from a description of a vivid scenery on the countryside, reflections on perfection and courage. It is striking in its precision of thought and its exact and fresh descriptions. He frequently socialized with a small group of tightly knit friends, young men he had met in school or at the university: Oscar Pollak, Oscar Baum, Max, Otto Brod, and Felix Weltsch. These friends meant a lot to Kafka, and he was cautious not to lose them. They generally met at the cafA©s in Prague, at the Arco, CafA© Louvre, Savoy, Imperial, or the Concordia. Many of those boys, because they were all boys, came from families who were well established for generations in the city and had a long tradition of high education in their families than Kafka, at least on his father's side. Kafka and friends also assembled in more private milieus than cafA©s. At the Prague pharmacy, Zum Einhorn, one Mrs. Bertha Fanta had created a wonderful cultural oasis, the rumor of which spread through the city. Visitors here were, among others, the mathematician Kowalewski, Max Planck, and also Albert Einstein, and the latter both played the violin, accompanied by Brod on the piano, and talked of his theory of relativity. He also vividly discussed the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the Fanta-house, also debates about psychoanalysis were frequent. Sometimes also matters like Spiritism and Anthroposophy. Kafka often was present at the meetings, and he there listened to the famous mystic Rudolf Steiner and even discussed his own life with him later at his hotel. Probably around 1904 - four years after the appearance of Freud's Traumdeutung - Kafka became aware of Freud's existence. In 1910 he purchased and read Freud's all-new Leonardo da Vinci - a childhood memory, where Freud uses the term "narcissism" for the first time. In the "psychoanalyst bible" at the time, Three essays on sexual theory discuss the concept of "sublimation". Kafka later also read Freud's essay on Michelangelo's Moses statue. The interest in Moses stayed with Kafka, and he commented to the young student G. Janouch a picture of the Moses statue - never missing a chance to criticize an authority - with the words: "'That is no leader. That is a judge, an austere judge.'". This was not Freud's view of Moses, who saw Moses as a tragic hero, a lone hero who doggedly wore his disappointment over the Jewish people. We can speculate on the "mythology" behind Kafka's world of thought OVERALL and imagination just as much as we can speculate over the "mythology" behind Freud's work in its entirety. In Kafka's case, the answer about his mythology actually might be … Freud. Kafka owned, what we know, only a few books on psychology and on school philosophy. We know that Kafka studied The Destiny of Man by Fichte. It is a very educational and well-spoken popular display of Fichte's philosophy and his current philosophical idealism. Kafka studied Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's predecessor, together with his sister Ottla. F.K. probably appreciated the antiauthoritarian approach and the constant reference to skepticism. He also was deeply impressed by the anti-authoritarian Kierkegaard's diaries, as well as S.K.'s two early works, Either-Or and the small book by S.K. on Genesis 22, the story of Abraham and Isaac, Fear and trembling. Maybe Kafka was fascinated by Kierkegaard´s take on religion and philosophy, mingling these subjects into a kind of insidious abstract horror fiction inspired by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher. SSB was the creator of The Vicar of Vejlbye, the world’s first detective story, way before Mark Twain. Kafka himself was very fond of reading aloud in public and sometimes even made speeches which do not match the general myth of him. His way of reciting his own works was, as his friend Oscar Baum testifies, peculiar: F.K. read in a gradually increasing pitch, read the whole short story almost in one breath, and extremely fast, "with blaring tongue." He, as a young man, was a man full of self-reproach. He was intuitively sensitive concerning changes in moods around him - and to everything, just like Rimbaud. One would today claim that F.K. suffered from Asperger's. Max Brod was a more social character. Brod, as a writer, was very productive. He had notably published himself in the erotic magazine Amethyst, which Kafka also subscribed to, with Das Tschechische DienstmA¤dchen. Brod seemed - as already indicated - to have a deep fascination with Prague, while he early became determined to move away. What Brod later came to write about Kafka seems to many as part of a "hagiography." Regardless of this, he was a friend who never let Kafka down, and he was virtually inexhaustible in good and bad times, in word and deed. Much time was spent by Kafka, before and during his sickness, in sanatoriums in the countryside, often on the Central European Mountain massive. In Prague, Kafka came into contact with Franz Werfel, poet and renowned columnist. For a while, Werfel, charming and extrovert became one of the most ardent young Kafka critics. After having read Betrachtung, Werfel, who at the time was enjoying success with his writings, claimed with strong emphasis: "This book will never be read outside Bohemia!". He was later proved to be wrong. Werfel, who was extraordinarily productive, was part of the expressionist movement, consisting of authors who often came right from the trenches of World War I, writers like Sternheim - who was a millionaire -, Werfel, Edschmid, Heym, and Trakl. F.K. was also acquainted with Musil, who wanted Kafka to write for Neue Rundschau in Berlin, where he was hired as a columnist. When F.K. was studying law, he met with a renowned professor of Philosophy of Rights, Hans Gross, and attended his lectures for three terms. Gross' son, Otto, born in 1877, was to become a friend of Kafka's. Gross junior seems to have been revolting against his father. O.G. was trained as a physician, served abroad, and then became a psychiatrist, settled in Vienna, where he entered in the circles of S. Freud. O.G. distinguished himself as an independent thinker in psychoanalysis, and Freud himself said that there were only two original thinkers he knew of among his friends: CG Jung and Gross. However, Gross slid, because of morphine addiction, into a schizophrenic state, and Jung's attempt to cure Otto G. with psychoanalysis. Hans Gross wanted to have his son incarcerated in a mental institution. Kafka and Otto Gross first met in 1917. Kafka then had already produced what we now know as Amerika and The Trial and published The Metamorphosis. O.G., intelligent and communicative ( his father had died in 1915 ), was interested in everything from psychoanalysis to revolutionary movements. Franz Werfel, Kafka, and Otto Gross, who by then had left the Freud circle, in 1917 grew plans – in the midst of a war - of starting an anarchist magazine, BlA¤tter gegen Machtwillen, but the whole thing stalled due to economic problems and to F.K.'s bad health. Franz and Otto had conversations about psychoanalysis. It has been assumed that the precocious Gross was the developer of Kafka's insights into Freud's thinking. Kafka took a skeptical view of psychoanalysis as a whole, and he never studied it at all. Gross' influence on Kafka came relatively late but may have confirmed individual perceptions, and it might even further have contributed to setting F.K.'s mind and style free. Otto Gross committed suicide in 1920. Hermann Kafka, Franz´s father, was planning the wedding between Elli and Karl Herman. Karl Hermann had in mind to start an asbestos factory and needed money: the dowry. Herman Kafka went along with this but took counsel from his son, the lawyer, and made him promise not only to be part of the company's board but also to participate in the factory's management, which had around twenty employees. Thus F.K.'s father tried to force his son towards a future as a supervisor of a factory... The marriage and the up of the factory were soon conducted, and Kafka took part in the legal issues, and he frequently visited the factory, which now was led by a hired engineer. Franz immediately tried to withdraw from the father's "trap," which, of course, threatened to take his entire remaining time outside the insurance institution in claims, and - what was for him the overall disastrous matter -: it thus threatened to prevent him from writing. It was precisely in this situation when he really "hated his family," as Corngold writes, and it is probably the first and only time in his life he did so that he wrote the extraordinary short story The Metamorphosis. He had earlier this year encountered Felice Bauer, and they had exchanged a couple of letters, and Kafka probably was determined to marry her dutifully. One might read The Metamorphosis against this background. It is not hard to imagine that Kafka saw marriage as a struggle between himself and his father. In the notebooks, fantasies of punishment, fantasies to be faced with a large court, now appeared. F.K. felt that he betrayed his family. The asbestos factory business ran into difficulties, and it gradually came to cost Herman a small fortune. Franz considered suicide and consulted Max Brod about his problems. Brod wisely talked to Julie Kafka about her son without letting Franz know. In the Letter to his father, Kafka later accused his father of his misery. Letter to his father is no short story but an actual letter. ( Kafka later admits to Milena JesenskA?, sending her a copy of the letter, telling her it is full of a lawyer's tricks. ) The letter, written in 1919, far away from Prague, was given by Franz to his mother Julie for further deliverance to Herman, but Julie never fulfilled the wish of her son. It is essential to know that when the 39-year-old Franz wrote this, he already had written what we know as The Trial. Franz now was severely ill in tuberculosis, and the two engagements to Felice Bauer lay behind him. He had also tried to get permission to marry Julie Wohryzek. Kafka, by this time, had been through a lot. As the son emphasizes in the letter, his father, Herman, had been too strong toward him. Gilles Deleuze and FA©lix Guattari, in their Pour une littA©rature mineure, puts focus on how Kafka's oedipal situation influenced his works. They assert that he reversed the oedipal situation and doubly. The first of these suspensions, according to the authors, was one based on three-digit relations, primarily the Prague societal triangle, with F.K. experiencing his father as a traitor against the rural Bohemian-Jewish-orthodox heritage, the father submitting to the Czech bureaucracy. Franz, however, was able to preserve his respect and love of the Father, only that the son knew that his father was just as oppressed as he was. The second suspension consists of the many transformations of "himself" into an animal, e.g., a dog = "The schizo-animal par prA©ference." Kafka is seeking not freedom but a way out, and he finds this in the non-human: in becoming a beetle. We might compare this identification to other animal figures into which he likewise transmogrifies himself: the monkey, the dog, the giant mole, the badger, the rat. These all are symbols of loneliness: marks of an utterly painful, almost pathological solitude and an extreme outsider position are beyond doubt. In the famous letter, Kafka claims that both he and his father are innocent, both victims and that they are both guilty. Kafka seems, seen from this letter's content, to have compassion for his father, but is this sincere? According to the two Frenchmen, it is that of a "perverse Oedipus." Here one cannot escape the problem of the so-called "authoritarian personality.". The father's relationship can be divided into three or four, more or less distinct levels: [ 1.] The purely emotional. Here we can conclude that Kafka harbored his father's very warm feelings, which were mutual, even if the father almost always demonstrated his superiority. F.K. entertained, even directly, great admiration for his father. [ 2.] Herman required Franz to take over his business and acquire a reputable position in society (asbestos factory). These requirements were significant concerns to F.K. [ 3.] His writing always seemed to him to be incompatible with marriage. [ 4 ]: Herman's unilateral pursuit for assimilation in the Habsburg Empire, as well as his lack of interest in Judaism, in the end, contributed to the alienation of his son. There was always a strong sense of guilt with F.K. concerning the father. Herman had worked hard and dedicated his whole life to his family. Kafka's texts are often fantasies of punishment built upon a sense of guilt. That there are sexual elements in these stories seems clear. One can perceive with F.K. an early attraction to submission, to sadomasochism. Masochism should probably be regarded as a kind of double movement, just like L?iLlek sees it - as a complex mix of perpetrators and victims' positioning. Deleuze has stressed the revolutionary character of masochism and the humorous element in masochism, noting the Irony in sadism both concerning law and society and the super ego-suppressing Humor in masochism. Several stories and passages in the novels have a theme that alludes to masochism. In masochism, the victim talks through the voice of the torturer. Kafka does not hide the sexual element and the Oedipus situation in his works but very often stresses it. He is amid a taboo, displaying it fiercely. Kafka stays close to the prohibited, even to the downright painful, and to the painfully pleasurable, but also the pleasurable painful and painfully comical. Moreover, in the end, he sometimes is, existentially, close to the life-threatening in his paradoxical fantasies of punishment and on the verge of what he probably can stand emotionally. A crisis in the relationship between F.K. and his beloved sister Ottla is mirrored in The Metamorphosis, where Gregor's sister Grete together with the mother, tries to clear Gregor's room, but Gregor refuses to leave the portrait of a lady in fur on the wall. This story is reflected in the deep open conflict between F.K. on one side Herman and the entire family on the other, in 1912 regarding the asbestos factory. Franz had been asked to help with the factory and to leave the nightly writings aside. At this time, F.K. was actually in utter rage and thought of committing suicide, which he also told Brod. The close friend noted that he had never seen his beloved Franz that upset ever. It is important to note that the letter to his father never was transmitted to Herman. Since it is here too late in life for a reorientation between them, Kafka tries, in writing this letter, to transgress the problem between them by, as G/D claims, turning the causal relation Oedipus-situation around by asserting that this Oedipus situation has its roots in society, actually in a whole neurosis of society. Julie Kafka refused to transmit the letter, probably thinking that this letter could not promote the relationship between Franz and Herman. F.K.: "You seem to have some clue regarding what I want to say, curiously enough. You said a while ago for example: 'I always liked you, even if I never behaved towards you as other fathers use to, just because I simply cannot – like the others can - pretend.'" To Louis Begley, it is evident that Franz hated his father. Since F.K. felt so alien in the world, the feeling of connectedness to his family was always very important to him. Thus he – I think – never wanted a real conflict with his father, risking losing his great affection. Alongside Herman, his sister Ottla was of significant importance to Kafka during his entire life. She was born in 1892 and was the youngest of the sisters. She was very close to Franz, and she had almost the same looks as F.K., with a very dark complexion and deep, intense gaze. Like so many Jews, she early became interested in Zionism and joined a club for Jewish women. She was interested in agriculture and took up farming in the West-Bohemian village of ZALrau, to the north of Prague, until the end of the war. She married against her father's will in July 1820 to the Catholic Czech Joseph David and gave birth to VÄ›ra in 1921 and Helene in 1923. During the summer of 1922, Franz spent three months together with the young family in PlanA?. However, Ottla DavidovA? and Joseph David had an unhappy marriage. Unlike her two sisters, she was a very independent woman, a fact that may have contributed to the tensions. Franz and Ottla had, throughout life, from early childhood until the death of Franz, a close contact and held long secret talks, which took place primarily in the house's bathroom and in a park in Prague's center. In letters to her, Franz stands as quick-witted, conscientious, practical, relaxed, and natural. Significantly, Kafka would rather read philosophy with Ottla than with Max Brod. Brod had an attraction to metaphysics that most likely "discouraged" Kafka. Max had very little of the robust skepticism which was characteristic of Kafka's thought. Ottla's importance to Franz was huge. It must be stressed that their intimate conversations were the most life-close and warmest like Kafka experienced throughout his life. Ottla was, after the death of her brother, totally opposed to the publishing of Kafka's posthumous papers, novels, and other things. H. Zylberberg, who knew Ottla Kafka, writes: "She never accepted the fact that Kafka's works had been published as the result of someone's indiscretion. Franz had left a will, and his deepest and holiest wish, that everything he had written should be burnt should have been obeyed. Due to all this, she was very angry at Brod." In October 1943, Ottla accompanied, as a helper, a children's transport to Auschwitz, and soon after, she was murdered by the Nazis there. Her daughters escaped when Ottla voluntarily, protecting the non-Jewish husband, separated from his family. Part of what we know about Kafka we know through his diaries and letters. Kafka's diary is a selection of brief notes, drafts of novels, etc. -; the notes are mainly about his health, almost a "medical record", and on how very little he thinks he accomplishes as a writer. Notes are like these: "June 5. Nothing is written.";" June, 13. All-day in bed."; "June, 15. All day in bed." Kafka often suffered from headaches and spent much time in his life, especially the later part of it, after the lung disease outbreak, in bed. He complained of insomnia. When he slept well, he did not write at all! Sleeplessness and sleep is also by F.K. often put in relation to guilt, e.g., in the correspondence with Milena. In a certain and unusual sense, his life was centered upon literature, sleep ( to try to get rid of his terrible head-aches ) , and his dreams. Franz Kafka - as well as Brod - did not very much like Prague. He often expressed his wish to change location, to move to Berlin, which he managed to do in 1923, for his last winter. Prague was not offering any intellectually stimulating milieu. Kafka's heroes are overwhelming a vulnerable and endangered kind; they are, in one way or another, tormented and always looking – but often half-heartedly – for a way out. By a letter, the four-page letter to Max Brod - the so-called "Rat letter"… -, written on December 4th, 1917, where the F.K. reveals his great fear of rats, one can conclude that Kafka had an obsessive syndrome linked with a cluster of deep anxiety and fear of castration, rooted in the Oedipal situation. Freud's famous patient, Rat man, E. Lasker, had read about Chinese rat torture in the same book as Kafka, i.e., in the French anarchist Mirbeau's Le Jardin des Supplices, which is sometimes referred to as the role model for Kafka's masterpiece In the Penal Colony.
HEDWIG W.
During the summer of 1907, Kafka was in Triesch, in the countryside, residing at an uncle's place. He enjoyed himself, bathing and riding a bike, and having a romance with the nineteen-year-old Jewess by the name of Hedwig Weiler. Kafka was 25 years old at the time. In a letter to Brod, Kafka describes her as "very ugly, small, and chubby, with red cheeks and has two large front teeth, which do not fit in the mouth." One can compare F.K.'s heartless description of her with one later made of Felice, in which F.K. thinks Felice looks "like she has a broken nose." F.K. appears to have excelled in describing girls' ugliness, at least in his letters to Brod. Hedwig was born in Vienna in 1888, studied philology and philosophy, and was a social democrat. She later took a degree, and became a Ph.D. in 1914. Franz writes the eleven letters to Hedwig in Prague, where he worked full-time at the aforementioned Italian insurance company. These letters are neither incredibly intimate nor warm-hearted but have more of a mocking tone. Perhaps they are meant to be humoristic. Hedwig did not think they were. She was very reproachful regarding the "Irony" in them. Kafka does not seem very interested in Hedwig, and he seems to have been very depressed at the time. Hedwig calls him a liar in her letters, and Kafka tries to transform the fact that he is lying into something interesting. They did not seem to get along at all. Supposedly Kafka felt inferior to Hedwig, both intellectually and emotionally. The relationship with her might have contributed to Kafka's fear of women. H.W. survived two wars and died in 1953 in Vienna.
FELICE B.
The most remarkable and intense relationship that Kafka ever had and which had the most significant impact on his literary works was with the Berlin girl Felice Bauer. Franz went over to the Brod family one evening in August 1912. When he there first saw Felice Bauer, he believed by her looks that she belonged to the servants. The meeting was marked by several misunderstandings and confusion. Kafka would this evening originally edit his debut collection of short prose together with Max, the Betrachtung ( Looking out ), for Rowohlt's Verlag, an enterprise which now, because of the presence of Felice, instead was left entirely to Brod. Kafka later accompanied Felice to her hotel, gave her by accident his address, and a week later, he typed a letter to her on a paper with the insurance company's letterhead. Here a relationship began, and giant vampirism from Kafka's side one of the most grotesque in literature history. Kafka and Felice are almost exclusively associated through letters. Kafka demanded challengingly detailed answers to his letters twice a day (!) from Felice. Much of what followed in their relationship seems to have happened one-sidedly out of Kafka's fear of marriage. Kafka monitored himself intensely regarding this fear, living for many years, being the only son, strongly victimized under constant pressure from his family to get married. E. Krause-Jensen: "Between 1912 and 1917, he writes incessantly to her, now and then taking back what he has just written, the lines he had just sent away, but he obliges her, however, to answer twice a day. He replaces the marriage contract with a diabolic pact, a sort of "vampire business correspondence," as Deleuze and Guattari put it, an activity that Kafka needs in order to be able to work. 'Motionless,' by his table of existence, Kafka sucks Felice's blood like a spider, weaving his yarn. The only fear he glimpses and perceives, all terrified, through his oversensitive intuition, is that he should perish in his own yarn of words and that the "resort areas" should prove to be dead ends. Therefore he simultaneously is writing short stories on the theme of himself slowly turning into an animal. /..../. " What now followed was an intensely creative period, the most intense of his life, during which Kafka's stronghold to everyday life was the letters to Felice. Franz Kafka did not become engaged to her until June 1, 1914. Kafka's fear of marriage can, according to many, have had its base in sexual agony or even more of a general feeling of not being man enough or in a different sexual orientation. Kafka wrote The Verdict, The Stoker, and The Metamorphosis within just a few months in the autumn of 1912. The Verdict was created in one swoop on the night between the 22nd and 23rd of September 1912, a short story dedicated to Felice. On the 23rd of September 1912, after having completed The Verdict, Kafka wrote in his diary the famous words:" Thoughts of Freud, of course." One might say that this date constituted the birth of the Kafkaesque. During October-November this year, the year of the birth of the Kafkaesque, the inaugurating chapter of Amerika was written, the piece which soon would be published in a magazine under the title "The Stoker" ( Der Heizer ). He recognized this short story as his first mature work, and he read it aloud to his friends and to an open audience at a recital evening only a couple of days after it had been created. In two days (i.e., nights) in November and December, he then wrote The Metamorphosis. After completing this "short novel," Kafka devoted himself to writing his "American novel," the unfinished Amerika. Kafka then suddenly got into a writing paralysis. The non-productivity lasted until Kafka engaged Felice over a year later. During this "latency," Kafka came to realize, even better than before, that he was a great writer, but a writer put in a complicated situation. Kafka wrote about two hundred letters to Felice, very self-centered ones. A tangible silence, drowned in words, one might say. Judging by them, he seems to have been during this period in a kind of constant crisis. The letters lack fundamentally essential and relevant content. They deal with unimportant details in life. The catastrophe in Kafka's predicament, and in particular concerning Felice, can be illustrated by the reproduction of extracts from a letter from the correspondence, from what is sometimes called the "dog letter," written in April 1913: "My real fear - it can hardly be said or heard anything worse - is that I never ever will be able to have you. That, in the most favorable case, I would be limited to like a stray faithful dog to kiss your hand, distractedly passed, which would not be a sign of love, but merely a sign of the desperation of this animal, forever doomed to dumbness and despair. That I would sit next to you and, which already has occurred, to feel your body's breathing and life at my side, and basically be more different from you than now, in my room. I would never be able to attract your gaze, and that for me everything really would be lost, when you looked out the window or when you put your face in your hands. I am ostensibly allied with you, riding with you all through the world, hand in hand, and, that none of this is true. In short, I will forever remain so excluded from you, even if you were suppress to indulge to me, that it would bring you in danger. " F.K. often returned to the dog-theme. Kafka falls away in the letters to F.B. from the role of capable author to that of a failed suitor, to a complete stranger in relation to human life and existence, to the role of a fleeing animal. Example 2. Kafka in the so-called "wooing letter" in June 1913: "You already know of my strange predicament. Between me and you stands - regardless of everything else - the doctor. What this man says ought to be doubted. By decisions like these, medical diagnoses are not decisive. If they were, I would not hesitate to take them into account. I was not sick – as I told you, but I still am. Possibly living under other circumstances would make be healthy, but it is impossible to create these other circumstances. The medical judgment (which, as I have already said, not to me unconditionally is true) remains of character: the foreign judgment. My family doctor, for instance, would in his stupid irresponsibility not see the slightest obstacle, on the contrary; yet another, a better doctor might clap his hands together over his head. Consider, Felice: in view of this uncertainty this can hardly be said, and it might sound strange. It is now too early to talk about it. Later, however, it would be too late; there would no longer be any time to talk about such things, just as you do point out in your letter. But it is no longer time for any doubt, at least this is how I feel, and I am therefor now asking you: Will you, during the above, unfortunately not very extensively, outlined premise, think about whether you want to be my wife? Do you want to? " He wrote a long pro- et contra-list in his diary. He actually wrote to Felice: "Within me I have always had – and still have – two souls, battling each other. One is roughly the way you want him. (…) The other one is only thinking of his work." The first betrothal between Franz and Felice lasted between 1/6-12/7 1914, - i.e., only five weeks. Kafka seems to have changed his mind immediately, and he ended up in a state of agony and total despair after the engagement. In a letter to Felice's friend Grete Bloch Kafka revealed – while the negotiations still were held - he found the whole engagement a mistake. Grete told this to Felice and her parents. The two families' resolution to break up the engagement took place in Berlin in a hotel, Askanischer Hof, in the presence of members from both these families, and Kafka experienced this meeting as a trial against him. On July 29, 1914, F.K. started to write The Trial. This novel seems to thrive from material tied to the engagement to Felice. The second engagement to her was initiated three years later, at the beginning of July 1917, and ended soon, shortly after Kafka realized that he had contracted tuberculosis. One night in August, Kafka woke up in his bed, noticing that he coughed blood. He was, as he later mentioned, most of all surprised and then actually delighted, despite the pools of blood on the floor – this because Kafka, by instinct, knew he could at least sleep now, not being bothered by the usual severe headache. Franz went to work as usual the next morning after his Czech maid, horrified at the sight of the blood-stained floor of the apartment, having exclaimed: "Poor Herr Doctor, with you, it is soon running out!". Not until the afternoon of the same day does he go to his doctor! Later Kafka wrote the following lines: "There is only one disease, neither more nor less, and this sole disease is hunted blindly by Medicine like one is hunting an animal through endless forests." Kafka's tuberculosis would, mostly untreated, undulate back and forth, sometimes forcing him feverish to bed, sometimes almost wholly subsiding - yet sometimes giving hope to disappear, other times re-issue despair at deterioration. In letters to Milena JesenskA? three years later, he would be more bantering and talk about the disease and its outbreak. One can imagine the difficulty in the situation that arose, with fits of tuberculosis including recurrent bouts of fever, in devoting himself wholeheartedly to such advanced writing as his. Maybe he wove part of his thought of the disease into the writing itself. One can also speculate on what effect Kafka's tuberculosis had mentally on Kafka. This disease sometimes brings psychological effects, such as a change of moods. Numerous are Kafka's thoughts and speculations about the disease in his letters and notes. It is quite clear that he seems to have considered that its outbreak originally had to do with the continuous mental struggle that was going on inside him: marriage or writing. In The Diary, he wrote about how "the brain covenanted with the lung behind my back."…On tuberculosis, Kafka wrote to Felice: "The blood does not come from the lung, but a well-aimed blow from one of the fighters." Kafka did not feel strictly bound by any oath of allegiance to Felice during the periods of engagement, but he several times met with other women during this time. During a trip to Riva in northern Italy, he spotted an 18-year-old Swiss non-Jewish girl, Gerti Wasner, to which he immediately got attracted. They spent several days together. Franz composed thrilling tales in the evenings, which he read to her at breakfast at the hotel. Kafka avoided strong girls and often sought himself very young ones. Perhaps F.K. often liked asexual advances. He found pleasure in having relationships in the form of playmate-playmate. From a young age, he was also the sort of man who clenched tight friendships with men, often for life. He cherished these contacts well. The second engagement with Felice Bauer also ended in 1917 due to Kafka's tuberculosis. Felice then, in 1919, married and had a child the following year. She died in New York in 1960, at 77 years old, after having sold all Kafka's letters in an auction to pay her medical bills. During the years with Felice, Kafka wrote nearly all of his major works, such as The Verdict, The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and Amerika.
--------------------------------------- It has been hypothesized by FriedlA¤nder that Kafka would have been almost totally uninterested in women and that Kafka would instead have had an attraction to children of both sexes. Shame consistently is a motive in Kafka's writings, and shame is an entirely natural thing connected to pedophilia, Friedlander asserts. This theory – because we have not got any proof of Kafka being a pedophile - opens up a plausible view of unexpected tragedy. It contributes to a plausible understanding of a prerequisite of F.K.'s work regarding the possible concealment of desire and hence of a duality concealed. It might also, in part, explain his negative attitude to marriage. Some passages from the works point in the direction of FK being attracted to children. There is an abundance of "Quasimodo" creatures in Kafka's texts, of helpers, young boys, and rowdy girls. One can imagine that Kafka had a penchant for non-adults, for the eternal adolescent, as he appeared to many people. According to third parties, e.g., K. Wolff, FK reminded him of an eternal teenager. A book about pedophilia that Brod lent him made him entirely out of equanimity. He then also compared the reading of such literature to the reading of psychoanalytic writings. In the diary, Kafka often leaves descriptions of young people's beauty, mostly young naked boys. This reasoning by FriedlA¤nder, who claims that FK seems to have been a pedophile, can be looked upon in contrast to Brod's biography, with its high-strung description of Kafka as almost a miraculous Saint-like man. One often connects Kafka with the notion of masochism, and he told Max that he liked to be punished by women. That F.K., together with the prostitutes in brothels in Prague, would have made real his innermost fantasies that altogether met his sexual needs is not likely.
----------------------------------------- JULIE W.
Julie Wohryzek was a Jewess, born in Prague in 1891 and of simple origin. Her father served as a Kustos in the synagogue in a suburb of the capital. Julie worked as a "komptoiristin," a clerk, just like Felice did. F.K. describes J.W. in a letter to Brod as an uneducated girl fond of nice clothing and operettas, and he says she is more of a fun than a sad person. He also emphasizes that she "is not without beauty" but also writes that she is the type of waitress. The two had met in January 1919 in an almost empty pension in ZALrau during one of Kafka's first convalescences, when he was quite ill. The two seem to have had good emotional contact, contrary to what seems to have been the case in Kafka's relation with Felice. Kafka never talked of love when he talked of relationships. He was almost entirely unromantic. In Kafka´s stories, there is nearly no romantic scene whatsoever. We might find out about the relationship in a letter to Julie's sister KA¤the, whom F.K. met in company with Julie in Schelesen. Kafka confided to KA¤the in the same way he had to Grete Bloch earlier. In this letter he explains how close Julie and he got to each other and he describes his views on marriage and the essentials of having a family with children and the perception of him as a consumptive official whose highest interest is literature. He writes that he wants to meet Julie but that the question of marriage should be left open. Following the traditional Jewish custom and Herman's will, Franz Kafka seems to choose a wife with Jewish roots. Franz and Julie got engaged. The wedding was planned to occur in November 1919. It was opposed vehemently by FK.s parents, perhaps because of rumors about Julie's sexual "liberal habits." Herman insulted his son and bluntly told Franz that "a girl just needs to wave her blouse" for Franz to fall for her, and advised him to visit a brothel instead. Julie's father was equally against the relationship. Rieck claims that Julie indeed was the more loving of the two. In July 1920, they disbanded their engagement. Julie was utterly heartbroken. Perhaps the break was due to Kafka´s meeting with the Austrian young volcanic intellectual Milena JesenskA?-Pollak. In 1921 Julie married a banker, Werner, with whom she later lived in Bucharest and Prague. She was deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz and died there, probably in August 1944. During his years with Julie, Kafka composed almost no literary works.
------------------------- MILENA J.
Twenty-three years old Milena JesenskA? wrote a letter to F.K. from Vienna expressing her great admiration for his short stories. She told him she wanted to translate some of them into Czech. Kafka proudly and thoughtlessly showed the letter to his fiancA©e, Julie W, and told his publisher to send to Mrs. PolakovA? copies of all his books. Then the two of them met at a cafA© in Prague in October 1919. They soon began to exchange letters. She was a Czech girl, born in 1896 as the daughter of a famous physician Jan JesenskA? in Vienna, a specialist in jaws reconstruction. She was versatile and talented. According to Pawel, Jan JesenskA? was a radical nationalist and anti-Semite. Milena early became involved in radical leftist circles and was politically compromised. She entered avant-garde circles, took drugs, excelled in wearing shocking clothes, and began to study medicine, something his father had always taken for granted. She had from early years been assisting him during surgery. Milena married Ernst Pollak, a jet-set man of letters, an amateur philosopher and a banker, and Werfel and Brod's friend. Pollak also was considered to be something of a "sexual athlete." He was of Jewish descent. In all respects, Milena was rebellious, and this, unfortunately, led her father to incarcerate his daughter - whose mother had previously died - at a mental hospital for nine months in 1917! She managed to escape, though, after that, her father broke all contact with her. She followed Pollak, with whom she married in 1918, to Vienna, where he sought membership in the renowned philosophical club, the "Vienna Circle," under the famous professors Schlick and Carnap's leadership. Ernst consistently refused to give Milena any money. Right after the Great War, there was chaos in Vienna, and it was then especially difficult for a Czech, and indeed for a girl without any thorough education, to get any work there. Milena was even considering becoming a prostitute. She suffered from malnutrition and sought translation jobs, mostly translations from German to Czech. Kafka's relationship with the powerful Milena became very stormy. They only met a few times IRL. Kafka asked Milena to move to Prague, and Milena wanted Kafka to come to Vienna. It was not long before Kafka, full of growing anxiety, 1921 refused to meet Milena. The continuing correspondence between them developed into a bizarre struggle. It was no longer a "one-way terror" like in the case of the relationship with Felice. F.K. and Milena were now both of them sick. Kafka's T.B. had deteriorated - something he did not want to face but was forced to realize, among other things, mainly by his sister Ottla. Milena had apparently also had a bout of tuberculosis - and her husband also had become ill, and she told Kafka in letters, that she had to and wanted to take care of Ernst. Milena periodically also was a morphine addict and a cocainist, adventurous as she was. At this time, F.K.'s sister Valli married, which almost shocked Kafka, who was always extremely sensitive to changes. Milena thus did not want to leave her sick husband, and the relationship with F.K. ended in November 1920. From December 1920 to August 1921, Kafka lived at a sanatorium in the Tatra Mountains. In the spring of 1922, Milena visited F.K. in Prague a few times. F.K. generally saw Milena as more robust and had more insight than he, and he knew that she, although sick at the time, was an extraordinary woman fit for life. The last time they saw each other was in June 1923. Some say that The Castle is about Milena. Kafka began writing this novel on the evening of 27 January 1922, when he arrived at the mountain resort of SpindelmALhle in Riesengebirge. M. Blanchot – the French writer hailed by Adorno - is questioning the prevalent assumption that there is a "Milena portrait" in Frieda of The Castle... Milena divorced Pollak in 1925. She became a resistance activist against Hitler in 1939 and died in RavensbrALck in 1944, aged 48. During the Milena years Kafka composed The Castle, The truth seeking dog and The Hunger artist. ---------------------------------------
DORA D.
In July of 1923, on a Baltic Sea trip with his sister Valli and her children, Kafka met Dora Diamant. Dora pretended to be 17, but she was at the time 25, while Kafka was 40. Dora [Dworja] Diamant [Dymant] originally came from Pabiance in Poland, and she was a daughter of a relatively successful Jewish orthodox Chassidic businessman. She seems to have been on the run from the prospects of life within the hometown's narrow Jewish community. Having lived in Krakow and Berlin, in July 1923, she worked as a volunteer taking care of children in MALritz, where she met Franz. They fell in love with each other, spent three weeks together, and soon decided to live together in Berlin. Kafka had, due to his bad health, taken leave from his work. Dora stayed with him in Berlin. Franz wanted to leave old times behind. Dora was teaching him Hebrew, a language he devoted much time to try to master. From time to time, F.K. thought of trying to leave Europe for Palestine. When Kafka met Dora, she held a sermon for the children in the orphanage where she worked, and on one of their first private meetings, she read the book of Isaiah aloud in Hebrew to him. Franz told her that she seemed to have qualities as an actor and urged that she become one, which later also happened. Later, in the autumn, Kafka wrote a letter to Dora's father and asked him for her hand. After consulting a Rabbi, the father answered back with a negative answer. F.K. was not an orthodox Jew, and this fact ended the whole matter. Living in Berlin with Dora was the first time F.K. lived with somebody outside his family. Dora seems to have been a clear-minded, intelligent, empathetic, and strong-willed young woman, and she also seems to have supported Kafka, encouraging him to shift to a more natural approach to life. Nevertheless, during this time, Kafka continued to write his "animal stories," like The Burrow, tales of utter loneliness. Eventually, T.B. forced him off to Prague in March 1924 and in April to the sanatorium Kierling at Vienna's outskirts. This sanatorium was small and quiet, in contrast to a hospital. Dora followed him there and stayed with him. Along with Kafka's friend, the physician Robert Klopstock, she was with him throughout the last time, and very soon, after having been visited by Max Brod and Elli, his eldest sister, Kafka died on June 3, 1924. On June 6, Milena's obituary appeared in NA?rodnA LAsty. On the 11th of June, Kafka was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Prague-Strachnitz. After Franz's death, she secretly kept an unknown number of Kafka's notebooks and several letters, which remained in her possession, despite Brod's request to her to give them over to him until they were stolen from her apartment in Berlin in a 1933, Gestapo raid. Dora died in London in 1952, aged 54. During the years with Dora, Kafka wrote Er, and Josephine the singer, his last story. ------------------------------------------------ MAX BROD
" A whole bunch of critics seems to have made up their mind to misinterpret him.â€t ( M. Brod )
Max Brod - 1884-1968 - was born in Prague in an upper-class Jewish family. His father was a banker. Max studied law and graduated in 1907. He married in 1913 and worked at the postal service in Prague until 1924. In 1910 he became active in the Zionist movement and was in 1918 a founder of the Jewish National Council of Czechoslovakia. Between 1918 and 1929, Max worked as a governmental press and information officer. The receptive, multitalented, and energetic Brod later became a literary critic for Prager Tageblatt and a music critic. In his books, he was strongly influenced by a kind of decadence called "Indifferentism," e.g., Tod den Toten 1906 and Schloss Nornepygge. Brod's early works often display the cultural clashes between Jews and Christians in the early 20ieth century, as in JALdinnen and Arnold Beer: Das Schicksal eines Juden. Later works frequently reflected Brod's interest in Zionism. Among his most famous works is the erotically charged Die Frau, Nach der man sich sehnt (1927), the historical novel Tycho Brahe´s Weg zu Gott, and a book on ideas, Heidentum, Christentum, Judentum (1921). In his widespread biography of Kafka, Brod emphasizes Kafka as a person possessing a certain distinctive talent, timidity, and a vast mysteriousness, but Brod also describes him as a physically bold person. In Franz Kafka, Glauben und Lehre Brod puts the religious aspect in the center, but also pointed at Flaubert's influence on Kafka. Brod focuses on how the FK´s aphorisms crystallize a doctrine of the "indestructibility" of human life and how Kafka claimed spiritual life as the only true life. Brod, in 1953 adapted Kafka's The Castle for the theatre. Brod here even incorporated the parable Before the Law. Kafka's own "testament," which he left among his papers to Brod, clearly stated:
"Dearest Max, Maybe I will this time not come on my feet again, / ... / In this case, therefore: my last will concerning all that I have written: Of all that I have written the only books that counts are: The judgment, The Stoker, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor and the story A hunger artist. ( The few copies of Betrachtung can be left as they are...). When I say that these five books and this story counts, I do mean by this, that I have no desire that they should be printed anew and be passed on to the future. On the contrary: would they completely go lost, it would suit my real desire. If people want to keep the small books, I will of course not try to hinder that. However, everything else from my hand ( in print in magazines, in manuscripts and in letters ), must without exception, unread ( though I do not object to you looking through them, but rather you did not, and in any case: do not let anyone else see them…) be burned, and this as soon as possible, this I beg you
Franz. " Brod felt he could not complete the wish of his friend, and he certainly did not. This decision has later become very much debated. Through his edits, Brod has mainly of the three novels, 1925-27, left an important and lasting imprint in the entire History of Literature. Many people worldwide have read The Trial, Amerika, and The Castle in the same costume in which MB de facto "handed them over to the world" ... One might in the structure of these editions meet, if not a hidden agenda, yet strong preferences and tendencies, which was all Brod´s own. Many later interpretations of Kafka's works, the â€sBrodian Kafka,â€t deal with an imaginary writer. It is this imaginary Kafka, who largely, and for a long time, has become Kafka. Writing about a true, a real Kafka, is still impossible today because of the manuscripts' conditions. Critical editions are of some help, but Brod's damage is irreversible and cannot be overestimated. Beissner has summarized the criticism often nowadays directed at Max Brod: â€tMax Brod has made program music out of the works of Franz Kafka.â€t. It seems evident that Brod, much earlier, should have presented the world with the Kafka heritage in its entirety. However, it can be supposed that Brod himself thought he was utterly loyal to his late friend. In 1939 Brod migrated with his wife to Palestine and did not return to Prague until 1964. He died in 1968 in Tel Aviv. ------------------------------------------------------ LIFE AS A not widely KNOWN WRITER OF SHORT STORIES What was then the big reaction of Kafka in relation to his time's major historical and cultural events? Was it one of actual rebellion, a subversive, revolutionary one, or was he an aesthetic, more interested in using his environment and the horrors of his time for his enjoyment, quite like we know he used people around him, like Felice? The authorship of F.K. has perhaps more to do with Modernity as a spiritual phenomenon than with the war and social struggle's direct experience. His "soulmate" Robert Walser was a more active portrayer of daily social life. Kafka's The Verdict and Amerika were both created before the outbreak of the Great War, i.e., within the Habsburg empire's structure. Kafka's work only in part, or in aspect, mirrors the political and cultural climate. There was a spiritual emptiness, anguish, and rootlessness that Lavelles, Maritain, Mounier, Sartre, and others in existentialism later formulated. This philosophy was mainly about the impossibility of formulating maxims to live by and was affected by Nietzsche's (1844-1900) thoughts. Both existentialism and modernity itself were also about the enormous confusion created by Freud's ideas. The existentialists would later think of Kafka as a clear-sighted predecessor, formulating insights concerning Modern Man's conditions.
--------------------------------------- After his first publication, Betrachtung, Kafka became primarily known among connoisseurs in Prague and Vienna as a writer in the Robert Walser style. He did not seem to seek success as a writer to any prize. On the contrary, he knew that he had enormous talent, and he was determined not to waste it. Kafka worked extremely conscientiously and was careful with every aspect of the craftsmanship, up to the choice of paper and typos. His quarrels with his publishers were endless. His goal was to write something nobody had written before. Kafka died in Vienna from tuberculosis - after many years of sickness - at the age of 40 years and 11 months. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Syranice in Prague in the presence of but a few people, including Dora. On the tombstone, his name is engraved in Czech and German. The names of the parents were added later on the same stone in 1931 and 1934. Kafka´s three sisters do not have any graves. Elli and Valli and their husbands were both murdered between 1941 and 1942, maybe in Lodz, and Ottla in Auschwitz 1943. On a marble stone, close to Franz´ tombstone, are engraved the following: â€tIn memory of the sisters of the famous Prague-Jewish author Franz Kafka, murdered during the Nazi occupation 1942-1943.â€t. ------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER II
LITERARY TRADITION & ITS INFLUENCE UPON KAFKA
A. GERMAN LITERARY ROMANTICISM.
The German Romantic movement around the year 1800 was very complex in structure, composed of elements of both masked and distinct revolt as it was, and at the same time marked by various forms of Irony. Irony was the soul and the mark of Romanticism, and this Irony was, in turn, a very complex one, which the writers themselves seldom refrained from pointing out. Thus the assault from Romanticism on Man and society was twofold. It is easy to perceive that the KunstmA¤rchen is an assault on the ordinary MA¤rchen. Beneath the surface of purest, seductive beauty there is almost everywhere deep despair lurking. KunstmA¤rchen has traits of the modern genre of â€sDark fantasy.â€t It is noteworthy that Kafka all his life returned to the German romantic authors, holding them in high esteem. Among the authors of the KunstmA¤rchen were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Clemens Brentano, von Chamisso, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Tieck´s Der blonde Eckbert can be read in connection with Novalis´ Hyazint und RosenblALte. Tieck´s strange landscape almost returns with Novalis. It resolves in a strange new supernatural - surreal - dimension, which might remind us of the ending of FK´s Amerika. The dimension in the fictive universe in H. und R.'s final scenes surpasses the ontology of the work. It is a kind of fiction within fiction. In this small tale, the young man, Hyazinth, grows up in a flowering mountain landscape, and he early senses that he is in love with RosenblALte, but is driven by strange anxiety to foreign countries, far away from home. Here with his heart pounding, he suddenly falls asleep on a meadow. Then the Dream brings him with music away to something very familiar. Out of the familiar, RosenblALte springs forth. Hyazinth is reunited, not only with her, but also with his parents and homeland. H. and R. soon get several children, yes many, because – as stated in the end of the tale - :â€t at that time, people got as many children as they liked.â€t It is a parody of the famous educational novel, Bildungsroman, and the fairy tale. The story is far too rash, and it tells its moral almost brutally. Strange is that the story ends within a dream. Reality vanishes. By ending within a dream, the story thus forms a solemn, heavenly, eternal cliffhanger. We might think of Novalis´ aphorisms: â€s… a MA¤rchen [is] a dream-picture /…/ but without context.â€t; A MA¤rchen is:â€t… a collection of wondrous things and happenings – for example, a musical phantasy.â€t Kafka later came to surpass Romanticism in transforming it. He does so in multiple ways. R. Caillois in a classic investigation on the relationship between Romanticism and Modernity: â€t/…../ Romanticism essentially found itself incapable of producing myths. Of course, it perfunctorily produced tales and ghost stories and fooled itself into the fantastic; but, in doing this, it departed more and more from the myth.â€t Romanticism transcended itself in abandoning exotism, in looking for the center of power, and it searched for myth, thrill, and meaning in the fantastic, in the evasive, in the myth of itself, in the midst of the commonplace, just like Modernism did, creating its myth in the nexus of the new world in the great city. Now Kafka did not follow Modernism suit. The thrill and myth that Kafka created are about the intrapsychic and the inner life of Modern Man. The perception of this myth of Kafka will be condensed into the concept of Kafkaesque. However, we could not find a myth about Prague, modern Prague, in the works of Kafka. Kafka was not exclusively interested in a description of the city of Prague of 1910. ( Kafka had no interest at all in Nationalism. ) In his â€smyth,â€t Kafka incorporates episodes and figures from literature together with images of people, individuals appearing homeless and unconnected to each other. Kafka also uses allusions and other unique literary means to tell stories, where connections to real places and familiar milieus are impossible to find. He is severed from the other great modernists, who often underline that they live during the hectic life of the modern urban capital. We partly recognize phenomena in the world of F. Kafka, but as soon as we get closer to the familiar, we realize that we have been fooled. We find ourselves in a caricature of Modernity with trams, trains, and telephones, but we are in a void, and it is like an ancient world and a world surrounding us virtually beyond time. We find ourselves, and many critics have noticed this, in an eternal, â€tgreyish-brownish,â€t shadowy Middle Age. Nothing new threatens to break in; nothing old yields for a revival. Nothing disastrous has occurred; nothing of the sort will ever come. The colorful novel Amerika is, of course, the exception. FK´s Amerika is very much a parody in advance of science fiction and fantasy in one crucial respect. Moreover, with Kafka, we are also often in a particular sort of nausea. We always get the feeling that there is something subversive going on in the writings of Kafka. If one cannot absorb and enjoy the interplay between different vertical layers appearing in the German romantic MA¤rchen, it is improbable that one could accept Kafka's works. To read a KunstmA¤rchen by Tieck or others literally,â€t flatâ€t makes reading fruitless. Irony was characteristic to Romanticism. Irony may often have a highly critical dimension but may here also often have been a passive game. Philosophical speculation can look upon Irony as a form of knowledge, can suggest that Irony is questioning and implicitly also asking itself for meaning, at the same time, like some sort of the Self-consciousness of Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness comes before Irony, is a prerequisite of Irony. However, Irony can be a hint to others that I am in Self-Consciousness. Irony can sometimes be seen, as by JankA©lA©vitch, as a â€shappy consciousness.â€t a â€sBonne Connaissance,â€t a concept used by J. in opposite to the â€sunhappy consciousnessâ€t put forth by Hegel in his 1807 PhA¤nomenologie. Irony might, in its extended form, be the intense enjoying of Self-consciousness itself. This might be the case with Kafka. Irony is dynamic in its steady creation of new space. Irony is a rare species of live investigator for truth; - it questions standing as an intermA©diare. Irony is a way of mental expansion. Irony is, among other things, a perfect defense. It defends against every authority and implicitly insists that authority has never been of any use. The Irony is - in itself - never an authority. It is certainly never a compromise! During certain periods in history, it sometimes becomes overexploited, and then it disappears and is replaced, at least for a while, by the straight discourse – before it re-enters the scene again, all fresh. Irony often comes forth in times of change, and often it inaugurates such an era. Irony may, in specific periods – often in media - get a vanguard position and get a position where it has to take care of itself, and it then does not care much about anchoring new hope into new realities - it is confinium – the transition itself and might act in hubris, running wild. It is not dangerous in this state but just fades away. Generally, Irony also has a built-in sustaining power in its antithetical, "dialectical" structure, and this gives the ironist in his confinium, his intermediary, a strong, dangerous sense of freedom; it can be a terrific weapon against oppressors, not for oppressors …, and can ruin many a wall and rampart. The freedom of Irony is a kind of freedom that is freedom from, that is: it is determined as a negation, negative freedom for Kierkegaard Irony was situated between the aesthetic and the ethical stage on the long and winding road to being religious, just like the category of the â€sinterestingâ€t was. The aesthetic has, in the Irony not yet passed into the ethical, the "realization of the common /good/." Irony thus can be used for enjoyment and, as we have seen, more radical in the use of breaking new grounds. Irony is a Negation and a sibling to Adorno´s creative â€sNoâ€t of Negative Dialectics. When Irony serves as the preparer of the new, it is a kind of "double movement". It demands elasticity by its performer, it demands youthful powers, and it requires big funds of talent: the timing of the "ironic means". It is power-consuming in its protracted tension! It is difficult to stop Irony once it has been born. The meaning of Irony is that it is not one. It utilizes the relative and, in this, in its dynamism, it has a utopian character. Thus it can be active, for instance in the central parts of philosophy to re-evaluate and restructure meaning within such a cultural sphere. Irony is seldom the questioning of just one phenomenon; it almost immediately proceeds to subvert a whole cluster of objects. Irony is a relation. Irony has clear limits. It puts in question! It is a negation. Therefore Irony remains a Hegelian dialectical Confinium, because it is quite unable to assert anything new! It is qua Irony no more than a counterpart of something else. But it nevertheless IS and asserts! On a meta-level, it still asserts something. Irony has problematic variants: non-transparent, secret Irony, which is Irony known exclusively to the ironic in splendid isolation: In the non-transparency – i.e., if the ironist does not allow the recipient to notice the Irony - if the ironic means are omitted by the sender, only the ironist himself enjoys the ironic â€smeaning.â€t He has thus secretly robbed the world of new meaning to other than himself. The covert ironist is ironist incognito. No one will ever know about the small orgy of the ironist. And it can also be found in a third form, semi-transparent narcissist Irony, hovering between overt and covert Irony. This happens when the recipient is not sure of whether it is Irony or not. Irony can be attacked. Irony might also be used exclusively as a shield, a shield against having to take a stand. It can be used as a shield against the feeling of utter loneliness and against the insight about this. The loneliness of a lonely ironist can be easier to bear than the carrying of a shield against loneliness by a lonely serious person. An ironic is so to say, â€sby professionâ€t … a loner. Irony is loneliness per se, and by definition. There are no real ironic masses. Irony is all relation, never essence, never substance. Why Irony comes up is often a mystery. Solving this mystery can give us the key to the spirit of the time and of its environment of it. The Romantic ideologist Friedrich Schlegel asserted that no great art is produced without Irony. Ljunggren writes about Irony and adds to the description of the Ironic in his The Aesthetic Systems, a shaking portrayal: â€sIrony is the genius of the Subject's sovereignty. The brilliant ironist stands above everything, and nothing is sacred to him, nothing of importance except his own Self, and he overrides even this Self. He creates but is not serious about his creations. He elevates them again and is then retreating within himself. Therefore, the artist must be ironic towards his own work; his ideas shall not be understandable to the crowd; His calling is to live and create without purpose, without intention. " Central to Romanticism and Romantic Irony were the writings of Fr. Schlegel, Die Heimat der Ironie, and Ironie der Ironie, Novalis´ Lichtpunkt des Schwebens, as well as the theories of Karl Solger. The Romantic Irony excelled in the soluble fragmentary philosophical speculation, which sometimes is described as the "Irony of Irony." The "insidious" thing with Irony also is that it is not just a double in its expression; it caters not only towards an addressee, but it infiltrates and does so to the very extreme its sender, and this one must be on guard against Irony disarming him/her likewise. Thus the German romantics said of their Irony that it could annihilate everything, that it was universal: "Ironie ist der alles vernichtende Blick.â€t Among the romantic storytellers, Kafka valued, Franz Grillparzer, stands out. Grillparzer, an Austrian solicitor, 1848 published the small book The Poor Fiddler. G. initially planned it to be an autobiography, but he rewrote it a dozen times over several years, and when it was finally published, it was in a diminutive form and more of a saga compared to the original plan. This book stayed very close to Kafka´s heart his entire life. The Italian Germanicist Claude Magris renders this book central to the â€tHabsburgian myth,â€t a myth that centers around the decay of the empire, a decay that was in part obscured by the complex structure of the literary genre which â€sKunstmA¤rchenâ€t composes. One is struck, in reading The Poor Fiddler, by certain similarities in â€stoneâ€t and "color" to the "greyish-brownish" of the environments in Kafka´s works. There are also other similarities too: Grillparzer was sophisticated, very well educated, and a solid skeptic. He had a deep aesthetic feeling and a gloomy outlook on life. Anarchism is always lurking as a subtext in his works, as it is in Kafka too. In the center of Grillparzer´s tale, there is the protagonist Jakob, son of a wealthy man, whose life is spent in misery and an overwhelming unhappy love with music. The narrator tells us that Jakob is undertaking psychological investigations, and Grillparzer is anticipating Freud´s ideas in the famous Psykopatologie des Alltagsleben. Jakob is a monomaniac, but not to the degree of Joseph K. Jacob profoundly falls in love with Barbara, a woman who later survives him, and on the last page of the story, she is crying from her heart over him, his death, and his life. Grillparzer´s description of Jacob's inability to play his violin, but his holding on to the playing, is a small masterpiece. Parts of Grillparzer´s implicit reasoning will seem similar to Kafka's reflections on art, music, and life. Kafka, all his life, had sort of an unlucky relationship with music. The most striking similarity is, however, the overall tone and matters on the structural plane. The characters' outlines are mainly built through the display of gestures, movements of hands, feet, and the head of the figures. Jacob is a kind of hero who, placed within tragic Irony, strongly reminds the Kafka heroes' modern reader. Nevertheless - and this is important - a G.s hero is a whole person, be it a very limited one. He thus is a character, a singularity, and no mere figure. This story's extreme and peculiar sentimentality is often contrasted with skepticism, Irony, bright-eyed reflection, and fleet-footed realism. It is admirable how Grillparzer managed to create a distinct whole out of this, thus many times rewritten story. Grillparzer somehow creates a subtext that is very elusive and haunting. It is here equally important to mention Heinrich von Kleist, who was greatly admired by FK. Kafka mentions in his diaries his public reading of Michael Kohlhaas: Kafka: â€tI read the beginning of Michael Kohlhaas in the Toynbeehalle. It is a real failure. Bad theme, badly executed story; finally I was swimming around in the text, without being able to find any meaning in it at all. During the afternoon I was trembling from hunger to read; I could not even keep my mouth closed.â€t ------------------------------------------------
In structural ironic, literary discourse, different layers can relate to each other thus: one layer is covering another, and this, the covered layer, will be made visible by the use of ironic means. To be able to perceive Irony in all its complexity, which it gains in structural form, it might be necessary to adopt a kind of â€sfloating attentionâ€t, not unlike the one that Freud once demanded from his disciples in Vienna. Perhaps this is the case with Kafka. The probability of this being the case is our main subject of study.
B. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.
Kafka's favorite writer throughout his life was Gustave Flaubert. Kafka read a lot. Among others: Cervantes, Goethe, Lagerlof, Kleist, Grillparzer, Dostoyevsky, Werfel, Stifter, Keller, Sterne and Strindberg. He encountered the works of Flaubert early in life, probably already in his early teens. Flaubert's radical aestheticism and his intense style fascinated him, and Flaubert's novel style likely initiated what later came to be such a completely independent and unique FK technique. However, Flaubert's works were written in a completely different era and a different cultural context, transitioning from Romanticism to Realism. Gustave was born in 1821 in Rouen as the son of a doctor, A.- C. Flaubert. He began writing very early and came to study law in Paris as a pretext. By 1843 he had the first version of L’A‰ducation Sentimentale ready, a somewhat greyish, dreamy, tedious story. This novel, however, came to be FK´s absolute favorite. This book has a circular composition with GF using â€tle style indirect libre,â€t SIL ( free indirect speech ), and is a model example for this style, a style very convenient for satire. GF often worked on a manuscript for ten years. He labored with them. GF: â€sThe pen is a heavy oar.â€t Often with Flaubert, there is a deep resignation about love and life as a whole. There is also something static about most of them. L’A‰ducation Sentimentale has a great rhythm, which Kafka enjoyed. Flaubert was influenced by and contributed himself to the famous ideas of poesie pure and l´art pour l´art. Flaubert: "What seems very beautiful to me, and what I would like to write, is a book that was about nothing at all, a book with no connection whatsoever to the outer world, which solely was kept together by the sheer force of the style of it /…/ a book almost without any subject at all. " In the following passage, Flaubert´s irony is formed by a sophisticated interplay between rows of events. Flaubert is putting part of the fiction events in sharp contrast to other events, letting them elucidate each other ironically. It is about Rudolphe and Emma Bovary, where R. is seeking contact with E. in the tower of a building high up above the square market in Rouen: â€sHis arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odor of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone forever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rudolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves; she wiped her hands, and then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councilor intoning his phrases. He said —"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. "Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labor no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps as florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilization. Rudolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, and magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, and planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little Rudolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flows but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other." And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "For good farming generally!" cried the president. "Just now, for example, when I went to your house." "To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix." "Did I know I should accompany you?" "Seventy francs." "A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you—I remained." "Manures!" "And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!" "For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin." "And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "For a merino ram!" "But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow." "To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." "Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not?" "Porcine race; prizes—equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg, sixty francs!" Rudolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed— "Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on: "Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service." Rudolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal - , value: twenty-five francs!" "Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councilor. She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering— "Go up!" "Don't be afraid!" "Oh, how stupid she is!" "Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache. "Yes; here she is." "Then let her come up!" Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. /……./â€t The Irony is apparent. However, it is not the auctorial Irony that is the most interesting here, or with Flaubert´s style generally. Weinberg has dealt with the problem concerning the sensitivity of different readers. Brombert asserts: â€tIrony in the structure of the novel points to the steady intervention from the author, and conceives sort of an internal commentary.â€t Flaubert is maybe the most classical example of â€tstyle indirect libreâ€t (SIL). Some have questioned the concept of SIL and others argue that SIL and Irony are incompatible. A possible third voice in Flaubert´s story would be someone looking over or talking over the narrator's shoulder. We quickly realize that the advanced reader of Flaubert is dealing with more voices than one. Weinberg claims that a third voice implies "uncertainty." Note that this refers exclusively to uncertainty regarding precisely the question: Who is speaking? With Flaubert, we often meet with more or less revolutionary thought. The repelling and the sordid mingle with â€sthe naturalâ€t is paramount in GFs works. Both Flaubert and Kafka resented conservatism, especially the conservatism of Romanticism like they both resented compromise. Sexuality appearing in broad daylight during the reign of the bourgeoisie is a sign of Modernity being born. The innovative, insidious Flaubertian burlesque inspired surrealism, Rimbaud and it inspired Kafka.
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C. ROBERT WALSER.
'Walser is a Kafka inside-out.' ( G. Davenport )
Certain similarities between Kleist and Kafka's writings – a fascinating subject in itself - were pointed out by the Swiss writer Robert Walser ( 1878-1956) in a review of Der Heizer in 1916. Kafka was familiar with Walser, who also was a writer of novels. FK and Walser (1878-1956) were often published in the same literary journals. The novelist R. Musil, working as a newspaperman and critic in Vienna, had to assure the general public that it was about two different writers. They were sometimes using the same literary means. The mood in their short stories made them seem strikingly secretly connected. One of Walser´s most famous short stories was Der Spatziergang, which has some similarities with individual chapters in Franz Kafka's Amerika. His early novel Jakob von Gunten was one of Kafka´s absolute favorites, and this one reminds one too much of the romantic MA¤rchen. One can look upon this book both as a surrealist novel as well as a novel of ideas. It ( as well as Walser´s Der RA¤uber ) may have inspired Kafka´s Amerika. Concerning the Walser short stories, Kafka's - we are talking about the pieces that are in the debut collection Betrachtung - are more intense and darker in tone. If Walser's works are more marked by playfulness, Kafka, in the early stories of this debut collection, came up with a more radical form of experimental art, with elements that can be characterized in terms of anxiety and the bizarre. Robert Walser wrote prose as well as poetry. His last book, Die Rose, appeared in 1924, only months after Franz Kafka's death. In 1929 Walser was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he spent his last twenty-seven years in Waldau and other asylums in Switzerland, showing but slight interest in literature. He died in 1956. A detailed comparative study has been written by H.D. Zimmermann, and another by BA¶schenstein, comparing FK´s Betrachtung to Walser´s Berliner Skizzen. Walser had a more significant reputation than Kafka had in the early decades of the 20ieth century. Walser has immense qualities.
D. CHARLES DICKENS. Observing Kafka having literary favorites of a most diverging kind, favorites who also served as raw models in writing to him, like Flaubert and Dickens, whose views concerning literary realism and satirical attack are very different, we are perplexed. The immense flow of images and ideas and good humor in Dickens´ discourse do stand in deep contrast to the darker but rallying tone that Flaubert strikes within the reader. The vivacity in the descriptions of contemporary life and nature are in both authors of the highest rank and are equal to the ones of a Balzac, a Melville, and a Strindberg at their best. We are already familiar with what Kafka learned from Flaubert. Charles Dickens ( 1812-1870 ) seems, first of all, to have stimulated Kafka in the handling of the detail, with the technique of letting utterly small details change the course of the story. Kafka admired Dickens and the use of the "unexpected detail", a stylistic device, which is also frequent with H.C. Andersen. The sharp-eyed Kierkegaard called it the "unnecessary detail of Andersen." The flow and the ease with which Dickens always told his stories were also merely seductive to Kafka. The overflowing fantasy with Dickens Kafka also did find with Laurence Sterne Dickens´ flow, musicality, and sense for â€sthe seemingly unnecessary detailâ€t make him a great teller of adventures and is part of a technique that makes his book â€spage-turners.â€t . The third thing with Dickens that might have been noted by Kafka, might be something G. Orwell later pointed out in his famous essay on Dickens, namely, that his characters seem to be acting in a â€tnever-never land, a kind of eternity.â€t This is sometimes also the case with the characters in some of Kafka´s works. What we are meeting with here also is a forerunner to â€sexpressionistâ€t Entfremdung, [ estrangement ]. From Dickens we might turn toTolstoy, also appreciated by FK. Compare the Russian â€sformalistâ€t Sklovskij on the metonymical style of Tolstoy: â€tWith Tolstoy, the concept of estrangement consists in this: he is not calling the object by name, but is describing it as if it was the first time he saw it and also describes events as if it were the first time ever they were taking place; in describing something he uses not ordinary descriptions, but uses partial descriptions used for similar, corresponding parts with other objects or events.â€t
PART II
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KAFKA´S LITERARY TECHNIQUE AND THE STRUCTURE OF HIS WORKS. â€sThe century since Franz Kafka was born has been marked by the idea of "modernism" -- self-consciousness new among centuries, a consciousness of being new. Sixty years after his death, Kafka epitomizes one aspect of this modern mind-set: a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated; a sense of an infinite difficulty within things, impeding every step; a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage and religious belief, must record every touch as pain. In Kafka's peculiar and highly original chastise dreadful quality is mixed with immense tenderness, oddly good humor, and a certain severe and reassuring formality. The combination makes him an artist; but rarely can an artist have struggled against greater inner resistance and more sincere diffidence as to the worth of his art.â€t
( John Updike ) CHAPT. III.
THE LITERARY WORK.
THE TRICK
Traditionally we are dealing with literature as if we are dealing with pure description. When we are talking about literary works, it is as if we assume that a literary work – and the fictive universe of a literary work – is composed through the description. This is not always true, or not at all true in many cases. Among theorists, only some - like, for instance, Umberto Eco - have realized that in literature, in poetry as well as prose, we might be rewarded with greater insight if we stop talking about descriptions and instead concentrate on literary grips, devices, perceivable by a formalist eye, and upon the troublesome fact, that literature most often deals with deception and mischievous TRICKS. ( Dylan Thomas knew this.) Never has it been more accurate than in Kafka's case to assert that a short story or a novel forms itself by a massive TRICK. Perhaps to Kafka, the TRICK is more important than anything else. To some people, this structural and formalist notion is not a very welcome insight. It makes it much harder to interpret and evaluate literary work, and for some people, who have an AGENDA, to explain Kafka´s technique out of the effect that their particular interpretation of the works of Kafka leads them. It is much harder to discuss a literary piece's supposed philosophy if this philosophy works inside a literary structural TRICK, much like inside a magician's mirror. Noting the use of a TRICK in a literary work does not diminish the piece of art in question. On the contrary: It takes enormous skill, craft, and talent to seamlessly use a TRICK IN A LITERARY WORK, SO THAT ALMOST NOBODY CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE USING ONE. We cannot easily discuss anything that seems to be set in a universe with other dimensions than our familiar universe. Moreover, to the typical person, or the ordinary reader of a literary work, any technical reasoning concerning how a novel is built results in almost totally obscuring the experience of the work and is hugely tiresome. It is, as we have hinted at, even to the expert reader, troublesome. How could we comment explanatorily, fruitfully, on something made out of a HOAX? Still, we have to do this if we want to comment upon Kafka, however uneasy this might make us. Many an earth-bound comment or existence-philosophical argument will have absolutely no ground to stand upon if it turns out that the discourse in question is a mere literary device and based upon a paradoxical construction outside every tangible human experience of the world. A question like: â€tWhat is the meaning of the work?â€t only has got an answer on a meta-level. We need to shatter innocence. If we should subtract meaning, this will have to happen through the mediation of structural reasoning around literary tricks. Furthermore, this WILL also be extremely hard. A Literary work is not mainly ABOUT some particular thing, but it instead WORKS, functions, in a certain way. To reveal this, we will have to use a formalist method and – in this very case – a Freudo-Structuralist approach since the universe of Kafka is built upon the notion and existence of a Freudian Unconscious. I. TRANCE AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.
TRANCE. Kafka started writing literary prose in his teens. He soon discovered his odd ability and tendency to put himself in a half dormant state, some trance, when writing. Without this ability, it seems unlikely that he could have written something close to what he did. Now, writing in this state of trance seems to connect to some form of ecstasy. Kafka: „My terrible calm takes my fantasy away.â€s He thus seems to have used an almost pathological state in creation. If this state or condition was a hypnagogic or a hallucinated one, we do not know. What can be inferred from his biography is that creative periods coincide with periods of insomnia and severe headaches. Headaches did not torture him when he refrained from projects that appeared difficult to him, like, for instance, the completion of a novel. Kafka was well aware of this. It must have been a peculiarity to him and a horror noticing that the headaches had a connection to the large artistic projects. His body strongly revolted against his creations and his literary method! What again was this nightly â€stranceâ€t? Was it a state of â€sdouble consciousnessâ€t? He was here, so to say, present in two worlds simultaneously, both awake and asleep, partly enjoying imagination, partly aware and writing, using several senses, in a kind of â€sstream of unconsciousnessâ€t? It also seems he loved to be in this state of mind. As if he was addicted to it. â€tThe main enemy of Don Quixote was not his fantasy, but Sancho Panza.â€t (FK) FK was almost using himself as a â€tmedium.â€t Furthermore, FK's stories are about writing itself. These tales - or poems - do not just use writing as a pretext, but writing is displayed, in brilliant disguise, in a discourse of desire, sometimes quite like an erotic act. Kafka thus displays images for this, as in A Country Doctor, where Kafka uses the idea of riding for writing - riding on his pen -and maybe is naming the tales themselves â€shorses.â€t HIEBEL One of the keys to understanding Kafka's writings can be found in the relationship between Kafka and psychoanalysis. Hans Hiebel elaborates interestingly on this subject in his book Franz Kafka, Form und Bedeutung. He has a lot to say about the presence of elements with traditional psychoanalytic color in several of Kafka´s works. Hiebel asserts that one has to discern those narrations by Kafka, that has a structure very much like that of the dream, in having inherent a kind of mechanic of the hieroglyphic kind like that of the dream, for example, A Country Doctor has, from works like The Trial, where there can be found an abundance of conventional dream elements, which almost seem to emerge from examples from the dream theory of Freud. It is a good distinction to do, and necessary for further understanding of Kafka´s literary style. That FK did not align to psychoanalytical thinking, but that he sooner, as a kind of protest, shaped his competitive theory and/or style, is also part of Hiebel´s view here. It seems reasonable. However, Kafka´s theory was not explicit as a theory, but is explicit only in the form of the art it aimed to create. In Kafka, it is not about dreams but about â€tsimulations of dreams,â€t Hiebel asserts. This idea seems rather undialectical, though. Hiebel is clarifying his view: â€t/…../ and these again are not meant as dreams, but as realities, which are structured like dreams.â€t/……………../ â€tIt is apparent that Kafka well knows of the model of psychoanalysis and to a certain extent is accepting this, but sees it as pure â€tmodelingsâ€t, pictures, images of mind, myths, tales, and he disrupts from it every value of explanation as well as therapeutic value. From his explicit utterances one can understand that Kafka is comfortable in a psychological theory of his own, rejecting contemporary psychoanalysis. This competing of theories is, however, restricted to his own literary works, in which his own psychology emerges. This comes about, like we have underlined several times, in a conscious manner, which carries the consequence, that psychoanalysis cannot be used as a â€tmethodâ€t on the works of Kafka and on Kafka as a person.â€t It is a remarkable conclusion, that Kafka himself couldn´t be viewed through psychoanalysis because he was creating a competing theory! Hiebel claims that the analyses made by Kaiser and Mecke concerning psychopathological problems in cases of presumed schizoid personality, infantilism, fear of sexuality, fear of homosexuality, etc., with Kafka himself, perceived through his stories, are absurd to undertake. Hibel´s view is that, to understand Kafka´s works, the understanding of the psychoanalytical mythology provides an essential layer within a broad symbolic and mythical interpretation. This seems evident. II. THE KAFKAESQUE. A SPLIT UNIVERSE History has really done a great job: it has created the concept of Kafkaesque! Even â€sKafkaâ€t might almost be said to have become a concept. It is rare for a writer to be known partly through a concept molded after his or her name. What then, is the meaning of the concept of Kafkaesque? Interestingly enough, a small empirical investigation of the â€tKafkaesqueâ€t concept has been undertaken by D. Jakob. He has come up with the following characteristics, which should mark this concept: â€tAnxiety, uncertainty, frustration, â€sVerfremdung,â€t exposure to a cruel fate, anonymous in shape, bureaucratically governed power, terror, dreadfulness, gloom, guilt, despair, judgment, meaninglessness, the resortless, absurdity..â€t The concept of â€sKafkaesqueâ€t can never be fully defined since it belongs to the class of concepts of essence or concepts of style. We can only reflect upon these concepts in strict subjectivity and try to make our views probable. In making views liable, it is crucial to reach a certain consensus. Regarding some distinctive points and in determining the â€sKafkaesque,â€t I think that our conception regarding who the hero of Kafka´s works is, is of significant importance. The following has to be agreed upon: the relationship between the hero and the surrounding world is crucial for determining the content of the concept. The nature of this relationship is hard to formalize. However, determining this very relation seems to be the key to this concept. We might come near to a description by finding out what the Hero of a Kafka story appears to be able to execute and the configuration of the world surrounding the hero. The surrounding world is also an agent, a Spirit in disguise. In this, the works of Kafka are similar to those of symbolism but oddly exaggerated. â€sIn my dictionary, â€sKafkaesqueâ€t is defined as a â€svision of man’s isolated existence in a dehumanized world,´.â€t ( Zadie Smith ) When something yearns so bad for a description, but none is given, the world soon normally produces one. In trying to explain what we mean by â€sKafkaesqueâ€t, we have to refer to the reading of Kafka, and to the remarkable effect, like the noticing of the â€tshadow-lessnessâ€t or the extreme loneliness of the hero, or to the absolute lack of hope for him: â€ta lonely, isolated human being standing opposed to a hostile world, a world that malevolently seems to block every single step towards happinessâ€t. Reading Kafka´s novels, we are immediately faced with a bizarre problem: on the one hand, we trust the hero; on the other we do not. Conventional intellectual understanding of an actual person is built upon understanding a person through his surroundings and the surroundings through the person. The form of consciousness met with in a Kafka discourse is formed like a grotesque. The grotesque indicates that something ELSE is going on, that is constituted by the exaggeration itself, that shaped the grotesque. THE FORM The Technique. The FORM: The basic FORM of the Kafka text is one of ironic, incongruent interplay between S and O. (S)=subject, (O)= object world. The form of consciousness (S) is covering the form of the surrounding world and vice versa, in an alternate process. The reader will come to experience the different layers through the ironic admonition to do so, in order to be able to grasp totality, because in Kafka totality is in Irony. The form of consciousness in the Kafka work constitutes an intellective level of fictive reality. The conceptual part is with the Hero-figure. It is perceived mainly through the speech of the Hero and the narrator´s referring of the thoughts of the Hero, referred in SIL. But also in the continuous evolving of speech and acts through the story. We thus have in the Kafka universe what we might call a division of â€sSelfâ€t. This state of division constituting FK´s fictional universe has many times been suggested, and as explanatory, but has never been explained. W. Emrich – for example - notices how – in the Kafka work - Das Man, [ the generalized human ] of the world of laboring Man is covering the Self. FK's principal works are constructed in a way that makes it impossible for the hero-figure to make any progress. FK places the hero-figure together with the world that surrounds him. The natural way to tell a story is to tell it so that the reader can understand the hero from his surroundings and the surroundings from the hero. But in Kafka, we have on the one hand the Hero, the Hero-figure's thoughts and action ( which mostly not is depicted in a very corporal way, but by way of speech and occasionally by his movements and gestures ). On the other hand we have the surrounding World, with the other personages. Moreover, there is a distinct difference between the hero-figure and the surrounding world. Around this difference or split, the â€scosmos Kafkaâ€t is evolving. What happens in the fictive universes of Kafka's novels and short stories has in another, more real fictive universe already happened. This will be explained. What is displayed in the Kafka-story is not a narrative epilogue but a pseudo-existence, a theatre beyond time, an elaboration, a â€tthird sphere,â€t a relevant concept used by Deleuze/Guattari to denote this fictitious fiction. Something always in the prehistory of the tales of Kafka has broken asunder. The main prerequisite of the story is that an irreversible split (x) has occurred. There is no way back to undo the split, to mend it, but there certainly is a wish to do this, among other forces in the stories. The end is set all from the beginning in the story by a kind of cruel logic. â€sThe train has started, - the journey is over.â€t The tales are static. [ This is almost a Contradictio in Adjecto.] The telling of the tales is â€sinfiniteâ€t, it is beyond time. By use of the dynamic created by the frames - the frames which we will soon closely examine -, Kafka provides, like in an ancient Greek tragedy, dramatic - or Romantic - Irony. In every tale by Kafka, we might study the Hero along with his thoughts and decisions, thinking that we are watching, picturing, a person. This is perhaps possible, and many commentators on Kafka's works have regarded Joseph K. and Gregor Samsa as persons, literary persons. We assume that the characters in the Kafka tale are some sort of individuals. Because we ould not read a story any other way. But others believe that this can barely be done or at least that it is not fruitful. They - Martin Walser, Adorno, and Hiebel - are wisely claiming – and I will repeat this now and then, because of the importance of it - that we have not to do with complete persons with Kafka's stories, but rather with f i g u r e s. The Hero thus is not an ordinary hero. He has a minimal extension. It seems strange at first sight that we stay satisfied with such a poor figure-hero as a hero, but we do, only because we unconsciously are taking the whole universe of discourse as a description of the person. The very book The Trial, thus constitutes (the picture of ) a person. Not the figure of K. in it. The Metamorphosis constitutes ( the picture of ) a person. Gregor does not. The universe of discourse = a person. We are always longing to form whole pictures of objects at hand. This we have learned from Gestalt psychology. It is not a strange or unusual thing in literary works to have a crippled caricature as a hero, but when so, we almost always have a stable surrounding world. To have a stable world is not the case with the Kafka text. We are experiencing the â€sthoughtsâ€t of the Hero-figure as well as a picture of the â€slifeâ€t of the surrounding world, and the interplay between these two separate entities gives us the picture of the whole person, the person which constitutes the novel as a whole. The next step is to investigate the nature of the interplay between (S) and (O), which indeed can be perceived as a conflict. In the Kafka work congruity is death. The tension between (S) and (O) will from now on be referred to as an ironic structure and as the kafka-literariness. The structure namely, has a certain formal similarity to that of Irony, but the structure of the kafka-literariness in itself also creates an Irony. Because: - and here comes the strange and surprising thing - when we are watching the Kafka-story and concentrate upon the interplay between hero (S) – ( (S) being the Subject ) and surrounding world (O), the Kafka story still remains inexplicable, and it apparently refers to something genuinely unknown. We have not yet explained the nature of the Kafkaesque, but we are still in the preliminaries, and we must – after having noted the basic ironic structure, go on in discovering the nature and mechanisms behind both the Irony and the Kafkaesque, noting some of the further criteria: things we discover that we cannot understand at all, negativities in the Kafka narrative, before arriving at the notions of what we can grasp: Criterion No. I . [ Negativity No.1. ]. We are facing, as a first sign of the Kafkaesque, a Hero – a hero-figure - that is unable to learn from mistakes. It is as if he was cut off from some faculty of mind. The small clerk in The Trial seems to have been stuck in a limbo. He does not have any unconscious! Criterion No II. of the Kafkaesque [ Negativity No.2. ]. The second criteria is that we in Kafka´s works find ourselves in a very strange world, unlike any other is that the surrounding world around the Hero, the Object part (O), almost always contains pictures that are typical of everybody´s dreams. This fact is noted by almost every commentator of Kafka´s works. Kafka uses the â€slanguage of dreams.â€t Furthermore, we are here met with certain forms of dream-language that Freud specified and displayed semi-systematically in his famous Traumdeutung, written just a decade before Kafka's works. Thus, Kafka's works might serve almost as a map of â€sFreudianâ€t forms of dream-language, forms like displacement, condensation, distortion, censorship, etc.. We are noting that there is a connection between Kafka and Freud in the display of content in the object part (O) in FK's novels. Hiebel has - as we saw - described Kafka´s use of the dream-like style as a simulation of the dream. Hiebel asserts: â€t/…/ aesthetical and psychological motivations for Kafka´s simulation of the psychic process. Kafka´s works seems inherently to be psychology. Not just though by looking at the psychological motivation and the psychological characterization of the figures and so on, but in regarding a â€squasi-professionalâ€t mimetic psychological mechanism, as psychoanalysis theoretically interprets it and has investigated deep-hermeneutically. The figures in Kafka´s work ( for instance in The Trial and in The Castle ) are not only characterized by wrong actions (/ Fehlleistungen /) symptoms, dreams and so on ; the structure of the text usually is constructed according to the laws of The Unconscious, according to the mechanic, described by psychoanalysis.â€t In using the word â€tsimulationâ€t we are getting very far from the dynamic and determining aspect, which is essential to look for. A Franz Kafka in a trance did not simulate. Kafka did not calculate the effects! We are almost sure that Kafka wrote nearly all of his novels in a â€tdreamlikeâ€t state, â€tportraying inner lifeâ€t, and we guess that his hallucinate state meant to extract pictures – almost like the famous Romantic philosopher S.T. Coleridge did, when creating his poem of Kublai Khan. â€sIt is only pictures, Frank!â€t, as Felice Bauer soothingly wrote to Franz. The situations that the hero finds himself in are quite obvious dreamlike – by simulation or not …- and certainly that the world surrounding the hero in the Kafka cosmos is constructed under experiences familiar to us from the â€sworld of dreamsâ€t and the world of the unconscious. This does not e x p l a i n the uniqueness of the kafka cosmos or the Kafkaesque, though, but it is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for the existence of the Kafka Cosmos. The hero is often nightmarish either enclosed in vast buildings or in long corridors or stuck in the infinitely small. He might find himself awkwardly pressed against other people´s bodies, in tiny stuffy rooms or cabinets, or locked out on a balcony, chased by officials, etc.. It is a worried dream. But this is not the whole picture! Criterion No. III.- [ Negativity No. 3. ]. The third sign of the utterly strange and unique, that, which we might call the Kafkaesque, is that this dreamlike world, which we meet through the senses of the hero, is a world Kafka constructed to serve the following functions: A.) For the (O) to comment upon the actions of the hero, in organizing itself according to, or in contrast to, the thoughts and actions of the hero. Thus, the surrounding world (O) seems to KNOW - just like Freud´s omniscient Censor and almost like a conscious unconscious, what the hero wishes and fears. B.) But if this is the case, then the surrounding world must be in contact with the hero, and the whole universe of the novel must be a communicating whole, maybe without any entrance or exit at all. The primary form of the Irony of the (O) looks like that.. One problem is the kind of status we should give the hero in our model. The hero = the conscious part? Let´s see what properties this hero/conscious has! We are having a hero, in a certain universe of discourse, a hero that is not in possession of any unconscious, a hero(-figure) that is just half a human being, a quasimodo, wandering about – so to say – in his own unconscious. The Kafka-hero quite like a saga-figure in a middle of a giant globe, the sides of which are covered with pictures which are projections of an unconscious that he does not, any longer, possess, but that are remnants of the unconscious of a world of the pre-narrative. This split universe of the story itself is created right before the beginning of the story ( before the beginnings of The Trail, The Castle, The Metamorphosis, The country Doctor, etc. ). The contradiction is set, as the Romantic philosophers used to say. Everything has already happened, and the stories are nothing more than elaborations of what already has occurred. Hence the stories are completely static.
------------------------------------ Distinctive for the longer texts by FK on which we concentrate is the dialectical interplay between subject (S) and object (O), where they alternately superimpose each other in a structure of expectation. As subject (S), we have consciousness, as an object (O) a form of unconsciousness. We might reserve the interpretation of these structural parts a something within the universe of these discourses. In a universe of discourse, things are different from reality. We find ourselves close to universes like in Hoffmann´s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper and Lewis Carroll´s Alice in Wonderland. The primary distinctions and noticing of the basic structure are again not quite new but can in certain forms be found also with Emrich, Walser, and Schillemeit. Emrich early underlines the opposition between subject and object. He describes the lucidity of the language of Kafka with expressions like â€sthe saving function of the concreteâ€t resp. â€sthe upraise of thingsâ€t. Important is Martin Walser´s 1962 dissertation on Kafka, Beschreibung einer Form, as well as a discussion that Schillemeit carries out in Zum Wirklichkeitsproblem der Kafka-Interpretationen, on M. Walser: â€tHe [ Walser ] has himself studied both the „stableâ€s in the figures that the heroes are meeting with in the works of Kafka, as well as the â€tstableâ€t, â€tlastingâ€t in these meetings. Basis in this investigation is the thesis of the distinction figures d?l world. Because, as Walser says: â€tKafka’s world is /…/ the condition without which no repetition may occur. What is taken from an existing world is singular, since it is individual. The characterized, created world on the other hand in this art is as Walser says a â€tstereotype planetariumâ€t. He [ Walser ] discerns between two â€tordersâ€t in it, one with the hero and one with the counter-side, and he describes the â€tpaly of orders towards each otherâ€t, that constant repeated rhythm of the â€tasserting of existenceâ€t and of the â€supheavalâ€t through the opposite side. Asserting and upheaval is the â€sform of emptinessâ€t that exists in all the narrated courses, that form which stays the same.â€t Schillemeit, looking to determine the different reality levels with Kafka in the fictitious ontology, has with Martin Walser found more a description of a structure than an ontology. Both Schillemeit and Walser are finding the interplay between two sides, aka orders. Like Adorno, Walser also believes that we are not with the hero dealing with a person but with a â€tfigureâ€t. However, neither Schillemeit nor Walser claims the nature of the play of orders to be one of a play between a conscious and an unconscious of a singularity equal to the entire universe of discourse, the manifest discourse. III. THE EXTENDED STRUCTURE : UNCONCIOUS B. The Trick. What breaks through as lively, meaningful, and … as the Kafkaesque in Kafka's works is not the play itself between (S) and (O), but it is – almost in a Hegelian way - in a Third, the Irony. The Irony is here mainly shaped by the ironic mean, and the ironic mean is something outside of both the conscious and the unconscious part of the universe of discourse. The ironic mean in this structure is what here will be called the â€sUnconscious B.â€t. The Unconscious B. consists of the quite absurd 1.) Will, and, 2.) the quite absurd Fancy or Whim. These are absurd because the hero cannot really will anything and cannot have any whims, according to the original scheme of division, because the hero is a figure deprived of his unconscious. One cannot have whims without an Unconscious. The source of whims is the Unconscious. Markers in the Kafka-text of will power and whims are in Kafka cosmos several but some are words like â€tsuddenlyâ€t and â€tapparentlyâ€t and many more features in the Kafka text, which I shall show below. Explanation of Unconscious B.: Here thus emerges an Unconscious from the f i g u r e, i.e., from the hero within the sphere, which consists of the â€tforbiddenâ€t Unconscious of his ( the hero ). This is the Unconscious B. of the f i g u r e, not the Unconscious A. of the work ( situated in (O)! Joseph K. is deprived of his unconscious, which thus is his surrounding world, (O), the bubble in which he lives. As we already have said Joseph K. is a mere figure. Figures do not – typically - have any unconscious.( Figures do not typically live, or die.) BUT, the Kafka-figure (of (S)) has got one. And THIS is the kafkaesque! Now – against all logic – this happens: Joseph K. finds, every time he makes a decision or gets an impulse, a new Unconscious. Thus, with this description, we realize that our dichotomic basic scheme has to turn into a trichotomic. Because: when Kafka is letting in the structural part of the Unconscious B, that means the narrator is letting in yet another voice, another â€scarrierâ€t of the story. To a Kafka active in trance the whole thing is – consciously or unconsciously - quite simple: all he has to do is to build the most grotesque contrast between the Hero and the Unconscious, and then momentarily let the hero get access to a second Unconscious. With Unconscious B. our hero gets access to self-reflection, which else is absent in the story. He also gets access to everything that the outer world contains of processing of memories, will-power, imagination, whims and fancies, hallucinations, etc.. The interplay seems first to be played between the hero (S) and his surroundings (O) but now we have a third party in the game, yet another â€spersonal unconsciousâ€t belonging to the h e r o f i g u r e , ( but to no one else in the universe of discourse ) and we thus gets a double Unconscious, at times, and thus a double split of the consciousness of the hero. Hence the Kafkaesque. Examples of Unconscious B. will soon be served. We have transcended Walser's ideas, in the adding of an explanation to what a figure is. Gaining access to Unconscious B. is important to the hero, because he might now momentarily get a â€sshadow of a soulâ€t, and the hero-figure thus is not a pure automaton governed by Unconscious A. ( O= the â€smaterialâ€t ground ). Here we have the explanation of the vertigo of the Kafka tale. We might say that we are noting that while Kafka´s hero does seem to be shadowless, this hero STILL seems to be put in some KIND OF RELIEF against the background. This seems confusing, paradoxical. But this reflects the existence of the double Unconscious. (O + B) A double unconscious is sure to produce a vertigo. One of the most peculiar things is that the hero-figure creates to himself an Unconscious B., and is helped out, defensively, by it in his speech and his frequent rationalizations and in his ability to fall asleep once something threatens him. He is not able to dream. Unconscious B. does not help him with that! Since the hero is – figuratively speaking - living in the center of a dream within Unconscious A., he cannot dream. The hero-figure also gets fancies and whims. All of a sudden, Joseph K. â€swishes toâ€t open a window, guided by the defense of Unconscious B. to release the pressure of … anxiety. Which the figure is typically not able to feel. Joseph K. is, per definition, unable to get impulses because he has no natural unconscious, being a pure f i g u r e. Joseph. K., the hero-figure seems to us to have a very narrow field of perception. We might look upon the amnesia of Joseph K. as belonging to the philosophical Category of the Sudden, discussed by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety. And this all – the levels of different kinds of consciousness within a universe of discourse - constitutes the main treats of a theory of the kafkaesque, as presented in this book.
EXAMPLES iv. EXAMPLE of theory: THE TRIAL. â€sSomeone must have been telling lies about Joseph K.; he knew he had done nothing wrong, but one morning he was arrested.â€t An APPLE Let us take a brief look at the episode with the apple in the introductory chapter of The Trial. After having been declared arrested, but denied breakfast, both Franz and Willem offer him breakfast from a night cafe nearby. Joseph K. is returning to his room, and angrily throws himself on his bed: "... and took an apple that he the night before had prepared for breakfast. Now it was his only breakfast and in any case / ... / much better than the breakfast from the filthy night cafe would have been. " The apple is from the period before the x, ( the split in the pre-narrative ), i.e. before the arrest of Joseph K., an apple prepared for himself to eat on the birthday morning. Mythically this apple can be looked upon as a blend of the Eris´ apple in Homers' Iliad, and of Eve's apple in Genesis, and the apple of the Sleeping Beauty in the Romantic saga. In The Trial, the Apple has "survived" into the new realm into the story, the virtual universe. The apple of The Trial is a "tragic appleâ€t, because it is a reminder of the old, and it is the beginning of the end. Perhaps this apple is emblematic – an entrance to the sleep, â€sthe big sleepâ€t (Chandler), or fictitious fiction. Perhaps Joseph K., in his thought already having eaten the apple the night before, and so the apple is a part of the mediation into Wonderland! Joseph K. has not brought much with him, no friends, memories, books or anything, but just an apple. Another option is to see the narrator as ironizing over Joseph K. and over the story's entire cosmos. ( Solid Irony.). We don´t know if we have a covert Irony here. The word â€sapparentâ€t or â€sostensibleâ€t, [â€sscheinbarâ€t], might indicate that Kafka is playing with Irony here. This very word serves as the creator of ambiguity. But it is delivered in an â€tunsure positionâ€t, because we do not know, in this SIL, who is talking. Kafka uses Unconscious B. most elegantly in The Trial. A small grain of doubt cleverly is sown on page one, a doubt affecting the entire novel. Thus it almost becomes a detective story. It has been read and looked upon as such. JUVENILES. After a long talk, during which K. wonders by what right the guards are arresting him, the guards Franz and Willem underline that they are the closest to K. in the entire world. They are exchanging looks, and they are acting through gestures. We might come to think of G. Simmel and Benjamins' theories on the importance of gesture to Kafka. The guards are examples of the â€ttwo men-themeâ€t with Kafka. These Erinyes have a twin pact. They have their task in common, and we might find them in several of Kafka´s works. They are often juveniles, half-grown, and sometimes half-figures, Quasimodos. Their presence creates a kind of limbo level between the hero (S) and the main power, in (O). In a play between opposites like in the Kafka cosmos, the parties' contours grow more and more distinct, the longer we proceed in the game. Who is winning the game seems settled. Nevertheless, Joseph K. is looking for a solution until the bitter end. One of the other accused, merchant Block, sits waiting for the end of his process. Joseph K. finds waiting meaningless, but the co-accused, Block, disagrees: â€t- Sitting and waiting is not pointless, but trying to intervene by oneself is pointless..â€t Generally, the hero-figures in Kafka's works are watching things from underneath - from a worm´s perspective. They have small aspirations. Sometimes it seems as if their highest goal on earth is to survive. Everything ends in a feeling of being an object claustrophobically locked up within a big Irony. It seems as if Kafka first has to scare his reader in order later to play with him or her by the loosening of the pressure. Joseph K. will never get out of the trial alive. The two men, in Chapter One, are constantly bullying him. "That's true, you know, you'd better believe it," said Franz, holding a cup of coffee in his hand which he did not lift to his mouth but gave K. an apparently meaningful look, [â€t /scheinbar bedeutungsvoller Blick/ ] that could not actually be understood.â€t This passage does not tell more about the look, in positive respect, than it was a long one. The rest of the description is pure speculation from part of the narrator. This beautiful description of the gaze depicts the vast distance between the outer world, the world of objects (O), and that of the hero-figure (S). Joseph K. descends the stairs from the fifth floor in the house where he is looking for the Commission of Inquiry. This is the house – or one of the houses – where the court is, but Joseph K. leaves without any results, but, in descending these stairs, he, all of a sudden, determines to return, not being satisfied with not reaching what he is looking for. Example A.: â€sOn the first floor, his search began for real. He still felt unable to ask for the investigating committee, and so he invented a joiner called Lanz - that name occurred to him because the captain, Mrs. Grubach’s nephew, was called Lanz - so that he could ask at every flat whether Lanz the joiner lived there and thus obtain a chance to look into the rooms. It turned out, though, that that was mostly possible without further ado, as almost all the doors were left open and the children ran in and out. Most of them were small, one-windowed rooms where they also did the cooking. Many women held babies in one arm and worked at the stove with the other. Half-grown girls, who seemed to be dressed in just their pinafores, worked hardest running to and fro. In every room, the beds were still in use by people who were ill, or still asleep, or people stretched out on them in their clothes. K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there. It was usually a woman who opened the door, heard the enquiry and turned to somebody in the room who would raise himself from the bed. "The gentleman's asking if a joiner called Lanz, lives here." "A joiner, called Lanz?" he would ask from the bed." "That's right," K. would say, although it was clear that the investigating committee was not to be found there, and so his task was at an end. There were many who thought it must be very important for K. to find Lanz the joiner and thought long about it, naming a joiner who was not called Lanz or giving a name that had some vague similarity with Lanz, or they asked neighbors or accompanied K. to a door a long way away where they thought someone of that sort might live in the back part of the building or where someone would be who could advise K. better than they could themselves. K. eventually had to give up asking if he did not want to be led all round from floor to floor in this way. He regretted his initial plan, which had at first seemed so practical to him. As he reached the fifth floor, he decided to give up the search, took his leave of a friendly, young worker who wanted to lead him on still further and went down the stairs. But then the thought of how much time he was wasting made him cross, he went back again and knocked at the first door on the fifth floor. The first thing he saw in the small room was a large clock on the wall which already showed ten o'clock. "Is there a joiner called Lanz who lives here?" he asked. "Pardon?" said a young woman with black, shining eyes who was, at that moment, washing children's underclothes in a bucket. She pointed her wet hand towards the open door of the adjoining room.â€t Joseph K. makes up his mind not to return. â€t But then the thought of how much time he was wasting made him cross, he went back again /…./.â€t, Joseph K. then finds the court after a decision in a sudden rage, just because he has made up his mind to find it. So it seems. Unconscious B. here supplicates and acts upon Unconscious A.. The object world (O) is changing â€sdialogicallyâ€t just because of the very impatience of Joseph K. according perhaps to a typical â€sdream logicâ€t. The decision ( of (S)) thus is determinant to the world (O). Thus Unconscious B. shows its sovereignty and puts the narrator in a (nice) difficult position. Joseph K. is about to leave the attics in the suburb: â€sK. became aware that he was standing in front of the way out, and that the young woman had opened the door. It seemed to him that all his strength returned to him at once, and to get a foretaste of freedom he stepped straight on to one of the stairs and took his leave there of his companions, who bowed to him. "Thank you very much," he repeated, shook their hands once more and did not let go until he thought he saw that they found it hard to bear the comparatively fresh air from the stairway after being so long used to the air in the offices. They were hardly able to reply, and the young woman might even have fallen over if K. had not shut the door extremely fast. K. then stood still for a while, combed his hair with the help of a pocket mirror, picked up his hat from the next stair - the information-giver must have thrown it down there - and then he ran down the steps so fresh and in such long leaps that the contrast with his previous state nearly frightened him. His normally sturdy state of health had never prepared him for surprises such as this. Did his body want to revolt and cause him a new trial as he was bearing the old one with such little effort? He did not quite reject the idea that he should see a doctor the next time he had the chance, but whatever he did - and this was something on which he could advise himself - he wanted to spend all Sunday mornings in future better than he had spent this one.â€t As a â€sbodily signal of freedomâ€t, anxiety appears from Unconscious B., and is revealed, just to become concealed again. Worry over bodily sensations is yet another sign of freedom. Joseph K., when out in the fresh air again, after the visit in this â€scourthouseâ€t, feels sick. Example B. Chapter 5, The flogger. Joseph K. passes past the lumber-room in the corridor at the bank where he works and suddenly feels an irresistible yearn to look for what´s inside. Joseph K. opens the door, and it turns out that this very action's randomness is just apparent. In fact, Joseph K. has to be guided by an Unconscious, an Unconscious that he – according to our theory - has not got. Thus: Unconscious B.. Hence the Irony, and Irony here=the kafka-effect, the Kafkaesque. The two guards, Franz and Willem, are sitting in the lumber-room. They are waiting for flogging because of the complaints filed by K.. The two seem to be in the room, but outside temporality! On the following day, when K. opens the door again, they are still there ( or: they are there again ) together with their mysterious torturer. After this incident, the strange thing is that Joseph K. acts as if the inhabited lumber-room could be regarded as his own hallucination, and as if the presence of the guards in there were not real, since he simply orders for the cleaning up of this room!! This is – by added self-Irony - a double Irony. He is not calling the police! These facts add yet another dimension, or should we say: affirms our dimensions here sketched. Here is indicated by the narrator, that Joseph K. (S) does not believe in the existence of Unconscious A.(O), but orders other members of this very universe ( Unconscious A. (O)) in the bank to clean up in the universe of discourse. We find ourselves as readers in a complete vertigo. The whipping of the guards takes place in the Unconscious sphere, in (O). In the Unconscious A. of Joseph K. there is a lumber chamber (!) – thus yet another unconscious, the Unconscious of Unconscious A.! ( The â€sLumber chamberâ€t sure is Kafka´s mocking and caricature of Freud´s idea of the Unconscious.)
------------------------- THE COMMENTATOR After visiting his lawyer, Joseph K. gets a sealed letter to a painter of portraits, called Titorelli. He lives on the other side of the city, in a tiny apartment on top of a building on its outskirts. After taking various twists and turns, walking narrow, winding stairs, stairs with steps of alternate height, Joseph K., guided by a hunchbacked thirteen years old, laughing girl, finally gets inside Titorelli´s â€sofficeâ€t. K. is politely requested to sit down and asked to give his opinion of a painting. Titorelli´s picture is a custom-portrait of a judge. It is semi-finished and sloppily painted, "uneven in outline.". Behind the judge, in the portrait one can spot a shapeless shadow. On closer inspection, Joseph K. notices that it is an image of Justice, with its scales. It is the Roman Justitia, not Greek Dike. Dike was with the Greeks depicted only with a stick, the stick with which he chastised his sister, Adike, ( Injustice. ). Justitia has, in the Titorelli chapter, small wings on her feet. Joseph K. thinks she resembles the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, but he then sees that it is in fact …the goddess of hunt. K. finds, however, that it is inconsistent with the law to link up with the chase. He realizes, of course, that it is the judge who gave the order for this version. A conventional symbol, Justitia, here is used in a "distorted" state to emblematically show a characteristic bypath, on which History itself seems to proceed. Bypaths are as crucial with Kafka as â€sunnecessary detailsâ€t are. Here one might also think of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor in Kafka's Amerika version as a parallel. Amerika's goddess of freedom does not have the torch of Enlightenment in his hand, but rather a sword, swinging it in the air. Titorelli is a rather lousy painter, selling ghastly paintings, showing Josef K. landscapes with trees with sprawling branches. The motifs are frequently the same – Romantic ones. On the other hand, the painter appears to be both well taught in the prevailing legal doctrines and equipped with a considerable acumen portion. He also seems very polite and benevolent. Joseph K. is not precisely dissatisfied with Titorelli, but more with what Titorelli, with poorly suppressed joy, has to say about the court, and in particular about the rules for acquittal. The content of those indeed rhymes with the backlight message of the portrait: "the prey" shall not escape! Some kafkaists say that Titorelli is molded after Sigmund Freud´s Leonardo. Like the historical Leonardo da Vinci, Titorelli is multitasking, restless, he does not care about women, is talented, and never finishes anything. The language of Titorelli is learned and well-modulated. In studying the original manuscripts, we are noticing very few alterations in this chapter by Kafka's hand. It seems as if Kafka here was using his education in law, and he is letting Titorelli very cleverly expose the possibilities at hand for the accused. P. Glen asserts that what Titorelli tells about the Law is tales of what the law has formerly been, before modern society, before Modernity turned Law into a formal, predictable process, in our society of reification, defamiliarization and alienation. Thus – according to Glen – what Titorelli tells are legends that do not at all apply to reality. Often legends and commentaries are invented in support of the existing power. Legends are often part of commentaries. It seems that Kafka had a passionate interest in paragraphs and commentaries, and it might be that he almost is formulating an aesthetic and philosophy of commentaries in his works, perhaps in connection with the ideals which he got from Flaubert concerning the good novel, which solely ought to be held together by its own force. â€tParadise was the place where everyone knew of everything, but nobody explained anything. The world before the Fall, before the commentary.â€t ( Cioran ) Now the situation for the accused, according to Titorelli is the following: There are three possibilities. The accused may choose A.) absolute ( real ) acquittal B.) apparent ( ostensible ) acquittal, C.) deferment. Any real acquittal does not, in reality, exist. The â€sapparent,â€t or â€sostensibleâ€t is a â€scategory of eternity,â€t which is also pointed out by Titorelli himself. The ostensible belongs to what Hegel named the category of â€s bad eternity.â€t By the use of the ostensible, one cannot advance. â€sThe ostensibleâ€t purports to be something else and more than a negation. In a group of people who are questioning something, it is as if somebody kept claiming the importance of keeping on with this very questioning. To assert that something exists â€sin ostensibilityâ€t is an assertion covering up a simple binary distinction by claiming that one ought to take a closer look at the surface of either absence or presence, without telling why. The judicial system in the manifest story does not at all take into account the possibility of innocence. Unconscious B. provides Joseph K. with the strength to make small decisions of zero importance in order for him to delay the inevitable outcome of the process. Kafka´s arrangement in this unfinished novel is exquisite. Since the verdict already is â€ssetâ€t in the pre-narrative, the exciting thing now is to try to figure out, by the manifest story, the nature of the judicial system that already, beforehand, has convicted Joseph K., because we might guess that this system might be very similar to the system we are met within what we may name the â€sshow trialâ€t in the novel. However, we do not know anything about the original system, the extensive system behind it. Hence we will be left in uncertainty with the true nature of both. Adorno, Deleuze, Derrida et.al. all are claiming that Kafka is one of the most essential writers when it comes to the mechanisms of power and critique of power. Dahlberg asks himself if it is â€tthe forms of the process of justice, that is the object of criticism here, or if it is ideas of law and justice, that comprise the target for the satire of Kafka.â€t. Thus: maybe the ideas of Morals and Ethics are on trial? Even Kafka´s skepticism can be looked upon as a kind of profound negation. Concerning the anti-authoritarian treat, there is also such a treat inherent in Jewish humor where jokes about the Rabbi are not uncommon and intricate jokes about Yahve. Kafka is not, however, not typical of Jewish humor, which often defends the status quo. But, are parable-like tales like Before the law, Odradek, and The Hunger Artist making fun of the parable as such? Moreover, if they are, what has this to do with skepticism? Kafka: "They are no allegories.. "It should be underlined that the structures of power displayed in The Trial and The Castle displays a very odd, peripheral world. How peripheral it is we do not know. We have here telephones, but we seldom have radio or newspapers. We are left in an unknown landscape that has a certain similarity to our own. The utter uncertainty is here Kafkaesque. With von Kleist we can easily perceive the diversification of power in society and the contours of real people. With Kafka, the contours are rather sharp in the object world of Unconsciousness A., while we are lost in a haze when it comes to the subject part, the hero-figure. We might clarify our view by comparing Joseph K. of The Trial with Camus' hero Merseault in his novel The Stranger (1942): Merseault is accused not only for the murder of an Arab, but also, implicitly, for having no soul, and M. barely protests against this himself. He wants to be hated while waiting to be beheaded in his colonial State. Merseault is, in a way, a caricature of Joseph K. Merseault thus is a caricature of a caricature. Camus never reaches the power of Kafka. Kafka does not with The Trail depict a real situation, which Camus, more or less, does. Camus, all his life was a great admirer of Kafka, and himself soon regarded The Stranger as a failure. Chr. Eschweiler and several others claim that the manuscript Ein Traum ( A Dream ) should be placed as a genuine part of The Trail. To Adorno and others this seems almost absurd. It would be most unlikely had Kafka permitted his hero to dream. None of Kafka´s main heroes are – if we look away from the suggestion made by Chr. E. - ever dreaming. If they are, their dreams - like Gregor´s before the transformation - are referred superficially. Joseph K. dreaming could be seen as a complete absurdity. The reason for this is of course the technique used by Kafka. Joseph K. dreaming would be against the principle of ego-split,((S)/(O)) and the function of it. A hero deprived of his unconscious cannot possibly have any dreams at all, and he could not interpret them if he had had any. Kafka most probably lifted out A Dream from The Trial, because it did not meet the requirements set by the frame. None of the Kafka-heroes are dreaming anything. But they very often are falling asleep, or are at the verge of doing so. A dream, published in 1917 in Die Selbstwehr; has fewer dimensions than Kafka´s tales used to have, probably – paradoxically – just because this story is a particular temporality. There is nothing Kafkaesque about it, but it is merely a Romantic horror story. The story is lacking levels, and it is therefore lacking lack. A common interpretation of The Trial is that it is about a moral defeat, a life wasted, the self-destruction of Joseph K.. The essence of the novel thus seems as the result a verdict from within, the real agent being conscience itself, and the novel itself is a giant discussion on guilt and shame ending up with a suicide. Joseph K. however always hopes â€sfor the bestâ€t, and he is thus a true believer in the credo quia absurdum absurdist philosophical tradition from Tertullian. Perhaps The Trial never was completed by FK, because it was impossible to do so, by very strong structural reasons. The ( Aristotelian ) Peripeteia in The Metamorphosis according to common interpretations of this story, occurs when Gregor Samsa gives up hope. Some interpretations The Trial has tried to assert a peripeteia to this unfinished novel too. If there is a peripeteia in The Trial, then the novel can be interpreted in a very distinct way. Most interpreters see a peripeteia in The Metamorphosis but none at all in The Trial. And here the order of the chapters of course is of extreme importance. Many interpreters perceives in the In the Cathedral-chapter which includes the famous parable Before the Law a peripeteia, where Joseph K. is thought to get insight in his own fate. Eschweiler as well as Uyttersproot sees a peripeteia here. Eschweiler claims that Joseph K. dies redeemed and that The Trial has the character of a classic KunstmA¤rchen, A? la Tieck. E. sees The Trial originally as a morality, containing a peripeteia and thus resembling not only the KunstmA¤rchen but also the classic Bildungsroman. One might - I think - question if there really is a peripeteia in The Trial, no matter how the chapters might be arranged. Eschweiler is like many others not happy with the order of the chapter, an order wilfully created by Brod. ( See: my chapter about Brod. ) This scepticism is adequate. The chapters of The Trial were found by Brod in a box, where FK had put them, and they were not in any apparent order. I think it is important to have SOME order when it comes to the chapters in The Trial, but that it is not necessarily essential. Why so I think will be clear later on. In the discussion above on Flaubert, we noticed that with the theatre-likeâ€tremote remarkâ€t Flaubert was flirting with the reader, in the â€sremote commentâ€t from the narrator. This distinct turning to the audience with direct remarks - in Flaubert´s anarchist´s rage over the state of things - would put these remarks in strong relief against the rest of the discourse. We sometimes see this happen in the Kafka discourse, and already from the start. What is seen by Flaubert, in Madame Bovary, can be looked upon as a germ to what we experience by Kafka. Furthermore: what is ordinary, but strong, Irony, by Flaubert, turns into a Split Universe by Kafka. The Trial begins with the remark upon the innocence of Joseph K., delivered by the Unconscious B., - to evoke the reader's skepticism. Because: why should the narrator be trusted? Thus we are thrown into the story by this remark. This beginning cannot be SIL, style indirect libre: it is not a normal way of displaying the thoughts of the hero. It is either the narrator or somebody standing close to the author who is talking. This narrator has put himself in a delicate position, because he seems to know a lot of things. He seems to know: [ 1.] the nature of evil. [ 2.] that Joseph K. have done no evil things. [ 3.] that there is reason to suspect that Joseph K. has been an slander object. Also, [ 4. ] the conditional relation: had this slandering not occurred, Joseph K. would not have been arrested. There are many theories in kafkalogy on what kind of crime Joseph K. has been accused of. Some actually thinks he is guilty of a crime, and that the narrator is in collusion with Joseph K.. Has there been a rape of Miss BALrstner or Mrs. Grubach? Has he committed a crime we cannot even guess? Wilhelm Emrich claims that the crime of Joseph K. is that he does not know the Law. Is this a satire over a judicial system or is it a psychography of Franz Kafka? This is what I.W. Holm asks himself. But Holm ends up in regarding The Trial to be a novel, either about literature itself or a novel as a political act. Some say, that since Joseph K. is trying to find out what he is accused of, he is guilty. Some say, that since he permits the two men to execute him, he is guilty. Joseph K. claims in the end: â€tLogic is unshakeable, but it cannot resist a human being who wants to live.â€t He dies in+of shame, after having accused his executioners of being actors: â€sK. suddenly turned round to face the two men and asked, "What theatre do you play in?" "Theatre?" asked one of the gentlemen, turning to the other for assistance and pulling in the corners of his mouth.â€t In indirect speech (SIL) we are told about one of the guards ( policemen ) who come to deliver the message about the arrest: â€sThere was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before. He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close- fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for.â€t This can aesthetically be seen as pure comic and it might psychologically be explained as part of a Freudian â€sAbwehrungâ€t, a warding off. It is more a Gogolian kalembur than it is characterization. Another feature in this novel is the immaculate logic with which it is told. V.
K.B. Genell 2021
Copyright Kaj Bernhard Genell 2024
Sw. Här följer förordet till den svenska upplagan. Kafka och det kafkaeska.:
Inledning och bakgrund till problematiken.
VID TANKEN PÅ ATT SKRIVA en bok om Franz Kafka och kafkabegreppet är det svårt att inte med detsamma bli belägrad av tanken på motsättningar. Hos och kring denne författare, en av vår tids mest berömda och egenartade, tycks det finnas motsättningar i överflöd. Det är inte bara så att liv och verk tillsammans bildar en bestämmande motsättning, det finns även motsättningar runt Kafka, det fanns en gång motsättningar i den livsmiljö han växte upp i, motsättningar i det liv han levde, och det finns analogt ett flertal dominanta, determinerande, unika motsättningar i de flesta av hans verk. Ofta såsom en spricka. Alltihop är kringgärdat av och sprunget ur stora motsättningar, allt lever av motsättningar. Delvis just det är man nödd och lockad att behandla, vid skrivande om honom. Franz Kafka kunde mot slutet av sitt liv, tidvis, ångra nästan allt han skrivit, eller i varje fall vilja förstöra det, bränna det, och till co med vilja plocka tillbaka de återstående, ännu ej sålda exemplaren av sina tre, ganska små, böcker ifrån bokhandlarnas hyllor. Böckerna fanns där, och han hade i pressen fått flera mycket goda och utförliga recensioner och Franz Kafka var ett aktat namn i litterära finsmakares kretsar. Han hoppades – in till sin död,1924, att kunna skriva något, som i hans egna ögon var ännu bättre, verkligt stort, författa en stor roman eller rentav flera sådana. Någon roman hade han ju inte alls publicerat. Han hade troligen inte en aning om, att det som fanns i hans byrålådor och hos vänner skulle bli publicerat en dag, och göra honom till en av världens mest lästa och beundrade författare. Tillsammans med sin sista kärlek, den unga judinnan Dora, brände han också under vintern 1923/24 mycket han skrivit i en kakelugn i Berlin. I mycket levde denne tyskspråkige judiske jurist hela sitt liv i skrivandet självt, som tycktes honom, reduplikativt, som en slags ”utväg” ur detta samma liv. Det verkar klart, att Kafka ändå var mer nöjd med de av honom själv då publicerade korta texterna, än vad han var nöjd med sig själv. Troligen bortsåg Franz Kafka under större delen av sitt liv i stora delar från sig själv som person, till förmån för sina litterära verk. Men det var inte så att han var självdestruktiv rent fysiskt: han var alltid extremt, och ibland tvångsmässigt, mån om sin hälsa. Så till den grad att han t.o.m. grundligt misstrodde varje läkare, vilket generellt är ett tecken på en ordentlig hypokondri. Inriktad på litteraturen, som han var, kanske kan man, i just det monomana och i det radikala försummandet av levandet av livet, verkligen se honom såsom självdestruktiv. Man kan spåra självdestruktiviteten även som ett innehåll i verken. Många kritiker har iakttagit och diskuterat det masochistiska inslaget i dessa. Och många har även sett Kafka som en faustisk person som sålde sin själ till djävulen för sin litteratur. Man påstår ofta just det, när man redogör för hans förskräckliga agerande gentemot Felice Bauer, hans två gånger tålmodiga trolovade. Han ses som utnyttjande henne, parasitärt, som medel för att kunna skriva. Ty Kafka tog i sitt skrivande, som de flesta gör, klart sitt liv, som det nu var, som utgångspunkt. Det yttre livet var dock bara material. Några liknelser eller allegorier handlade det inte om, menade han. Om man tar fasta på, att det hos Kafka inte är fråga om liknelser, så måste man inse, att det inte går att rakt av ”översätta” något av hans verk till något annat. Vi har att göra med en skrivande komplexitet, som går utöver liknelsens eller vid sidan av den. Liknelsen själv som form är skäligen enkel. Liksom allegorins. Nu var det nog tvetydigheten, diskrepansen, det ekivoka , det svävande, som gav den spänning i själen, som bidrog till det tillstånd hos honom, ur vilket allt detta väl sovrade och extremt väl formulerade berättande flödade. Skrivet oftast ett svep. Och det tycks som om det var formen, mer än innehållet, som var det viktiga för Kafka. Han tycks ha levat med ett inre spänningsfält, i en motsättning som faktiskt aldrig gav med sig. Han kanske också med flit sökte behålla detta spänningsfält, utöka dessa kraft, söka sig nära ett estetiskt/psykosexuellt "retningsfält", en "retningslinje", en slags ”irritation”… . Utvecklingen av detta fält kan man följa, eller tro sig följa, genom att vi har flera manus i original, i handskrift, såsom Amerika , Processen och Slottet, i vilka vi kan se vad Kafka strukit och ersatt i sin text: vi har på detta vis möjlighet att kunna ”skugga honom” i hans estetiska tänkande. Man kan, i studiet av spänningsfältet, jämföra hur en ironi stegras, eller ändrar karaktär, hos en ironiker. Kafka var ju just det, som människa, vad man vanligen kallar ironiker. Han var också den slags ironiker, som inte är ovanlig, där ironin vuxit fram tillsammans med en solid skepsis, en skepsis som vid sidan av den litterära talangen kanske är hans mest framträdande drag. Han hade, som människa och som författare, ett stort mått psykisk energi – även om han själv ständigt klagade över motsatsen. Man förvånas över den absoluta frånvaron av slappa formuleringar i alla texter från hans hand, och avundas honom utan vidare denna formuleringsförmåga. Det finns alltid i varje text en drivande kraft framåt, som hos varje god författare. Det är själva grundkvalitén hos honom. Han ägde från början den extremt gode författarens alla signum. Men han skulle – troligen av en historisk slump - komma att s.a.s. ”transcendera alltihop” de andra samtida i flera avseenden. Det är förresten också rentav något av en ironi, och därmed en motsättning, att den kanske allra vackraste tyskan genom alla tider är skriven av en … tjeck! Och det är dessutom så, vilket visserligen en helt annan sak, kanske något av ironi, att det är en ironi, som hjälper fram denna tyska. Det är, i sanningens namn, en variant, denna tyska. Det är Prag-tyska. Nå, en variant av en variant. "Seit Paar Tage", i.st. f. : " Seit ein Paar Tagen"... Kafka använder också diverse ålderdomliga ( eller pragensiska ) stavningar: -”gieng” i. st. f. ”ging” ( sv. ”gick” ), ”nöthig” i st. f. ”nötig” ( ”nödvändig” ), ”frug” i st. f. ”fragte” – o.s.v. , detta främst i tidiga skrifter, brev och i Dagboken. Man slås också av att han behövde ett så relativt litet ordförråd för att skapa dessa sina mästerverk. I breven är det använda ordförrådet betydligt större än i prosan. Det har, apropos partagtyska, påpekats av flera, att segregationen i Prag vid denna tid var så stor, att de tysktalande i överklassen knappt själva kände, att de alls talade ordentlig tyska, men en avskild variant av detta språk. En nästan kuslig upplevelse, kan man tänka, för känsliga personer, som t.ex. Kafka själv. Men Prag var – som vi skall se – i många avseenden en plats för både kusligheter och historiska undantag.
Den tyskspråkiga litteraturen var dåförtiden rik i Prag, men det skulle ju bli så, att det snart, efter 1945, nästan inte fanns någon sådan litteratur alls kvar. Vi granskar emellertid här ett författarskap frambragt i en annan omvälvande tid, mellan 1910-1924, delvis inom en ålderdomlig habsburgsk hegemoni, och dennas definitiva implosion i och med att det ”absoluta kriget” bröt in över världen i WWI. Och det var ju också bland allt annat Freuds tid. Det kan också synas ovetenskapligt att framföra uppfattningen att Kafka inte kunde undgå att påverkas av Freuds existens, men är troligen sant: mycket talar i själva verket för att så var fallet. Kafka nämner Freud i explicita termer mycket sparsamt. Man kan dock förutsätta att Kafka kände till Freud, och att han både gillade, och inte gillade Freud. Under Kafkas tidiga skapande år trädde också marxism och anarkism in som starka politiska krafter i Väst- och Centraleuropa. Industrialisering, modernisering och urbanisering kom snabbt hand i hand eskalerande. För statsapparaterna kom både denna urbanisering, teknikutvecklingen och de sociala åtagandena att öka mängden byråkrati och institutioner på ett accelererande sätt, något som kom att noteras av bl.a. Weber. Media och kommunikationer, med bl.a. radion, växte till sig med en enorm kraft. Moderniteten kom i sin egendomliga gestalt. Framtidstro och skepsis, med skräck inför det nya, böljande fram och åter. Moderniteten, som omfattades som en slags tidens dimfigur, fick en egen kulturell skugga med enorma mängder av kulturella schatteringar. Författarskapet vi studerar är frambragt i en enklav i Europas mitt, där judar levde segregerade, men vilka ändå var en vital och skapande del av moderniteten. Kombinationen av välutbildade människor och en segregerad miljö har ofta visat sig gynnsamt inte minst för konstnärlig kreativitet.
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Inom världslitteraturen har Kafka sedan länge intagit sin plats. Han har till och med, alltså, eponymiserats, blivit ett "begrepp", ett begrepp som transcenderar det litterära: Ex." Det var absolut ´kafka´ över det hela!"; ”Det blev ett rent kafkascenario.”; ”Helt kafkaartat!”; ” Kafkaesque! ”. Så kan man säga, att jag här delvis också är ute efter, om inte ursprunget till en idé, så efter ursprunget till ett begrepp, lika mycket som jag söker essensen i en förnämlig stil! Jag försöker förena frågan om hur Kafka gjorde, hur Kafka skrev, med att söka efter essensen i det kafkaeska. Det ”kafkaeska” är avseendet jag söker. Det ”kafkaeska” är dock inte stilen, vilken här – något oegentligt - kallas ”kafkaisk” . Så har jag åtagit mig två svåra uppgifter, (x) att å ena sidan besvara frågan om vad det ”kafkaeska” är skapade, och å den andra (y) frågan om hur - i helskotta - han gjorde för att skapa det? Tittar man närmare på författarskapet, så kan man komma att inse att bara en del av författarskapet riktigt passar in under termen ”kafkaeskt”. Jag koncentrerar mig främst på den del, som allra mest passar in under benämningen. Och hur i kom nu då begreppet ”kafkaartat” och ”kafka” till? Man kan säga, att begreppet, eponymen ”kafka” förmodligen i förstone är ett tecken för den förtjusta vanmakten över att denna upplevelse de facto inte går att beskriva. Här är något nytt, fantastiskt och mystiskt. Vi har, kollektivt kulturellt, i och med detta begrepps skapande och i och med användningen av det i realiteten skapat en extension av vår upplevelse- och kommunikationsförmåga. Termen är i sig är intetsägande, liknar inget, då den enbart hänvisar till upphovsmannen. Den fordrar alltså i någon grad kunskap om vad Kafka gjort. Termen, begreppet ”kafka”, har vissa likheter med metafysiska begrepp, i det att den både är tautolog och suddig, men att vi på ett intuitivt sätt inom vår kultur ändå successivt har interioriserat en allmän betydelse i den. Denna betydelse är inte i allt upplysande, men kan användas repressivt. Det tycks, om vi tänker på, att begreppet avser beskriva ett fiktivt ( Kafkas) universum, röra sig om ett begrepp som i mycket betecknar en närmast ontologisk sfär, och som om det famösa begreppet ”kafkaartat” skulle kunna stå vid sidan om kategorier som ”övernaturligt”, ”apokalyptiskt”, ”helvetiskt”, ”paradisiskt”. Den enda motsvarigheten, med en något liknande originalitet och ”tyngd”, som har med modern litteratur och litterära universa att göra och samtidigt med vårt samhälle och liv, är kanske ”orwellskt” , med alla olikheter som finns mellan dessa begrepp med avseende på extension och på grad av klarhet. Vi har här att göra både med ideologiska ting och ”verkuniversala”, fiktionsontologiska. Begreppet ”kafka”s extension består nog också – som en tredje aspekt - i det, att det är likt en pågående fråga. Vi skall se, att denna i viss mån är en öppen fråga, och en svår sådan, och på vilket sätt den är det. Men om man vill klargöra världen och söka undanröja mystifikationer, som ju i längden står i vägen för förståelse av världen, så kan man otvivelaktigt ge sig på begreppet ”kafkaesk” som ju – det håller alla med om - används lite slarvigt: man blir ju inte mycket klokare om man står inför en samhällsföreteelse, som av någon blir benämnd ”kafkaartad”, om inte denne någon med ”kafkaartad” inte menar mer än t.ex. groteskt+oförklarligt. Vad jag skriver här – i detta manus – är alltså mycket till för att lösa upp denna föreställning och föra sakernas tillstånd dithän att man kan få bort ordet ”kafkaartad” som synonym till något sådant förenklat och uppenbart felaktigt som ”grotesk+oförklarlig”, och få det till något mer substantiellt, och med en mer verksam, preciserad innebörd, med en klar genes. Då, om jag lyckas med detta, så har jag lyckats ”befria världen” ifrån en mystifikation och dessutom förhoppningsvis bringat ytterligare ”positiv” kunskap till världen. Kanske kan begreppet, genom en kantiansk revolution, få en mer solid innebörd? Detta kan jag uppnå, genom att svara på frågan: vad var det för författaren Kafka helt särpräglade? Man skulle då t.ex. inte längre kunna gömma undan t.ex. egendomliga samhälleliga tillstånd bakom ett oförklarligt begrepp, men måste faktiskt se till, vad som faktiskt ligger i det föregivet kafkaartade, t.ex. i en aktuell rättegång i en gammal f.d. sovjetstat, där rättssystemet uppenbarligen är genomkorrupt. Ty en genomkorrupt rättegång i en genomkorrupt stat har ju definitivt tydligare orsaker, än de vi kan ana bakom ”fallet Josef K.” inom rättssystemet i Kafkas Processen. Om man i dagens läge sätter epitetet ”kafkaartad” på en sådan aktuell rättegång, så har man i praktiken lagt en död hand över den, i en repressiv användning av begreppet ”kafkaesk”, stoppat vidare konstruktiv diskussion och analys, ty eftersom begreppet ”kafkaesk” inte - i alla fall inte än - har någon exakt innebörd, så är det inte fråga om någon analys alls. Begreppet spelar, i en sådan överförd bemärkelse, enbart på känslor, och diffusa sådana. Man skulle kunna undanröja förvirringen helt om man nu till äventyrs exakt skulle - till att börja med - veta vari kafkatekniken och Kafkas estetik består. Ty då får alltså ordet, begreppet, en innebörd som troligen inte alls är ekvivalent med vare sig ”grotesk”, ”hopplös”, ”absurd” eller ”oförklarlig” eller vad för konnotationer nu begreppet har idag, men något annat. Man skulle då kunna ta stöd i sin kunskap om stilen och i en mer reflekterade syn på begreppet ”kafka”, för att klarare se på vilket sätt den här som exempel tagna rättegången INTE är kafkaartad, samt också det sätt, på vilket den föreges vara kafkaartad. Så är det en ganska angelägen demaskering vi i grunden har att göra med: som det är nu, så kan man i världen tro att det finns företeelser i verkliga livet av mystisk art, och att företeelser som liknar innehållet i Kafkas verk, bokstavligen är sådana som i Kafkas verk. Det är alltså, sammanfattningsvis, min uppfattning att vi inte kan ge begreppet ”kafkaartad” eller ”kafkaesk” en klarare, eller alternativ, innebörd, om vi inte reder ut hur Kafka bar sig åt för att skapa den effekt, som begreppet åsyftar. Som exempel på det problematiska med det kafkaeska ( the kafkaesque ) kan vi – ur ett överrikt material - ta fram Fredrick R. Karls uppfattning av begreppet ”kafka”. FRK har låtit publicera en massiv bok om FK: Franz Kafka: Representative man. I New York Times skriver recensenten I. Edwards om denna bok, där F.R. Karl menar att ordet ”kafkaesque” är missbrukat och felaktigt ungefärligt jämställt med begreppet ”absurt”: ”Så, vad exakt menas då med adjektivet ”kafkaeskt” / kafkaesque / ? Och varför tror Frederick R. Karl, författare till en utförlig kritisk biografi om Franz Kafka, att ordet är lika missbrukat, som det är brukat? Kafka är den ende nittonhundratalsförfattare vars namn har ´trätt in i språket på ett sätt som ingen annan författare har´, säger Karl. Men ´vad jag är emot är, när nån skall ta en buss, och i det han finner att alla bussar har slutat gå, säger att det är kafkaeskt. Det är det inte. ``Vad som är kafkaeskt´, säger han i en intervju i sin Manhattanlägenhet´, är när du träder in i en övernaturlig värld i vilken alla dina kontrollmönster, alla dina planer, hela sättet du har konfigurerat ditt eget uppförande börjar falla sönder, när du finner dig själv stå emot en kraft som inte stödjer det sätt du uppfattar världen´. Du ger inte upp, du lägger dig inte ner och dör. Vad du gör är att kämpa emot det med precis allt du har. Men givetvis har du inte en chans. Det är kafkaeskt.” ( I. Edwards ) Har nu F.R. Karl träffat rätt här? Som vi märker är han inne på ”effekten” – den unika effekten - av Kafkas verk. Men han talar inte om hur Kafka gör. Inte heller beskriver han ju hela effekten. Han presenterar i stället en liknelse. Det är naturligtvis också så, att F.R. Karl söker pådyvla andra sin egen uppfattning av vad det kafkaeska ( effekten ) är, men det är ju hos var och en en faktisk, subjektiv upplevelse. F.R. Karl ersätter – i sin kritikersubjektivitet - en mystisk uppfattning med en annan. Vi kan idag på ett konstruktivt sätt - t.ex. i dagligt samtal - använda figuren Don Quixote. Det råder en viss klarhet och samsyn bland oss, mitt i den ”underbara mystiken”, beträffande vad som karaktäriserar denne långe riddare, och beträffande ”don quixotteri”, vilket dels är en genreterm, dels beskriver en viss typ av ”vansinne”. En dag kanske Josef K. kan framstå lika klart som Don Quixote, laddad med en mer distinkt innebörd, skild från den idag skäligen diffusa. ( Kafka själv var en beundrare av Miguel Cervantes, och han har vid ett flertal tillfällen kommenterat Don Quixote.). Men idag är det ännu långt till att använda Josef K. liknelsemässigt i verkligheten, och orsaken är givetvis att Josef K. är kontroversiell, medan Don Quixote inte är det. Man kan idag se begreppet ”kafka” specifikt som en litterär genreterm, och alltså inte bara som en term som hänvisar till en situation i verkligheten. Det är dock inte alls är klart, att det finns en sådan genre, att någon har skrivit något som är likt det Kafka skrev. Jakob Schott t.ex. påstår emellertid, att så är fallet i en kommentar till Marthe Robert: ”I ljuset av hennes kritiska verk, brukas i det andra kapitlet Roberts insikter i läsandet av två romaner som tillhör en Kafkaesk tradition. I Dans le labyrinthe och Aminadab undersöker jag genre, retorik och det problematiska tolkningssättet.” Schott anser, genom att använda ”Roberts insikter” , att Maurice Blanchots romaner Dans le labyrinthe och Aminadab är exempel på sådana böcker. Sant är ju att Blanchot verkligen sysslat mycket med och skrivit om Kafka, men att dessa romaner skulle tillhöra en sådan föregiven ( kafka-)genre är, menar jag då, inte upplysande, åt något håll. Mycket kan i själva verket anföras emot ett sådant syn. Ingen har skrivit som Kafka. I detta sammanhang kan man också erinra sig Artur Lundquists kloka varning beträffande att söka kopiera Franz Kafka. Vad jag förstår har Lars Gustavsson i Poeten Brumbergs sista dagar och död ( 1967 ) försökt göra en kafkaparodi. Det är givetvis oanständigt att trivialisera Kafkas stil, något jag faktiskt upplever att t.ex. kafkabeundraren Borges gjort. Som om denna stil var något skapad med yttre attiraljer och enkla knep. Även Nabokov t.ex. har gjort några slags kafkaimitationer liksom, i Sverige, kafkaöversättaren Hans Blomqvist med romanen Fängelset. Ecos pseudorecension av Processen är i kontrast till detta helt klart upplysande. Filmerna och teaterdramatiseringarna, som t.ex. André Gides uppsättningar av Kafka, Processen i Barraults version i Paris 1947 och densammes Slottet i Paris, uppsättningen av Processen på Göteborgs stadsteater 1976, är inga imitationer, men tolkningar. De missar dock den helt avgörande dimension, som Kafkas texter i originalformen kan skapa. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Man kan i ett sammanhang som det som kommer att utveckla sig här om Kafka, och om ”kafkabegreppet”, också erinra sig att klassikern ofta står i centrum i romanens teori. Vad är då en klassiker? Etymologiskt kommer ´klassiker´, av classicus, = lat. ”första klassens medborgare”. En ”första klassens litteratur”. Men man menar oftast också att klassikern kommit med något nytt. Klassikern har så extraordinära kvalitéer, att den oftast, paradoxalt, tycks ha ersatt något, något som faktiskt alls inte fanns innan…. Ofta en form förknippad med en ny förståelse. Vad är det för slags imaginärt tomrum, som är uppfyllt av Don Quixote, Cervantes´ mästerverk? Av Shakespeares Hamlet? Eller av Kafkas Processen, kanske 1900-talets klassiker par préferènce, och för mången själva bilden av den västerländska 1900-tals-människan? Denna Kafkas klassiker är ett "mystiskt" fenomen, i det att dagens värld knappast går att tänka sig utan… Kafka: vi har till dels, och mest då indirekt, formats av Kafkas Processen! Klassikern speglar alltså inte bara historien; den är en del av den. En del av hur Anden kommer till insikt om sig själv, om vi skall tala med Hegel. Klassikern är en verkande kraft i historien. Kafkas verk må alltså vara typiskt för den tid, 1900-talet, i vilken den koncipierats och som ligger alltför nära för att kunna riktigt betraktas. Men vi försöker ändå i alla fall oftast att se på dessa verk genom begreppet "modernism". Liksom vi ofta ser modernismen genom Kafka och några andra kreativa giganter. Kafkas Processen, är den då inte något av det "litterära konstruktionens", det moderna experimentets klassiker, och därjämte den litterära paradoxens klassiker … vid sidan av Swifts Gullivers resor, Lewis Carolls Alice i Underlandet och Kierkegaards Gjentagelsen, Prousts På spaning efter den tid som flytt och Samuel Becketts Molloy? Processen - och kanske lika gärna Amerika, Slottet eller Förvandlingen - utgör, - man tvekar inför varje formulering här -, den "perfekta paradoxen". För somliga utgör läsandet av verk av Kafkas verk nu en explicit omöjlighet: Albert Einstein – för att ta en i detta sammanhang helt prestigelös läsare… - lämnade tillbaka till en vän, som lånat honom en bok av Kafka, boken med orden: "Jag har inte kunnat läsa den. Den mänskliga anden är inte nog komplicerad för att kunna förstå den.". Man har alltså i allmänhet svårt att begripa vad hans berättelser ”handlar om”, trots att de fångar och fascinerar läsaren, och att de ofta är sannskyldiga ”page-turners”. Att denna fascination alltså är svårförklarad, det är understruket av många. ”Bara Kafka har levt fabeln som ren taleform, som fabeln själv - så att säga, just för att hans erfarenhet dömer det som man kallat litteratur såsom intet annat än talet, under levandet. Men hos honom är levandet och skrivandet inte annat än en och samma praktik. Bok och liv är samma ”verb”. ( H. Meschonnic ) Med Kafkas romaner är det mycket underligt, att de kunnat bli klassiker, när så många människor hävdar, att de alls inte förstår dem, och alltså ändå söker inrangera dem, än här, än där. ”Rena ofoget.”, tyckte den rättframme B. Brecht om Kafkas böcker. Och det gällde då formen, ”form”, som Brecht såg den. "Bilderna är ju bra, men resten är rena ofoget.", menade Brecht. Men Brecht sökte dock sannerligen läsa Kafka, och diskuterade ingående tolkningar av Kafkas verk med den klarsynte vännen W. Benjamin. Så avvisade alltså icke Brecht alls Kafka. En knappt läsbar bok, alltså, Processen! Man råkar här givetvis in i en slags tvivelsstorm, som om Kafkas författarskap skulle ha något av ”kejsarens nya kläder” över sig: ” De betyder ju ingenting alls!”, eller likn.. Samtidigt har vi det fenomen, att Kafka fortfarande läses och kommenteras med oförminskad styrka, årtionde efter årtionde efter årtionde. Processen är den bok, som ingen läser utan att tvingas vrida sin tanke lite ur led; en bok, som man inte, på ett vettigt sätt, alls kan redogöra för innehållet i. Man kan inte på något VETTIGT sätt alls referera Processen! Inte utan att göra den stor orättvisa. Många har skrivit böcker, som de själva uttryckligen påstått inte går att referera, som t.ex. Adorno och Blanchot, - båda möter vi i det följande – men det är nog så, att dessas böcker är mycket möjligare att referera i jämförelse med Kafkas. Kafkaverket kan inte refereras. Med t.ex. Alice i Underlandet är det ju så, att den mycket bättre låter sig refereras än Processen, och att man t.ex. bättre kan göra teater av den, att den mer innehåller paradoxer, än bildar en sådan, vilket senare är en lämpligare karaktäristik av Processen. Men dock ändå inte särskilt träffande, vid närmare påseende, som vi skall se…. Det är för många inte bara klassikerstatusen, som är intressant, men även om Kafka rimligen kan inrangeras i raden av tragöder. Eller raden av stora komiker. Eller satiriker. Eller mystiker. Eller predikare. Eller om han tillhör en klass för sig själv. Det finns – kan man tycka … - tragiska inslag i verk som Förvandlingen, Processen och Amerika, - för att nämna några verk. Vad är det då som i verken gör, att Kafka här närmar sig det klassiskt tragiska: i vad är verken tragiska, i vad är de något helt annat? Ty ingen nöjer sig med karaktäristiken: tragedi.. Och vad är själva det tragiska, - i sig? Det ”kafkaartade” har kanske främst inte ett tragiskt inslag, men det har ändå ett mindre sådant, kan man intuitivt känna. Vi skall se på det närmare. Jämförelseobjektet här – vad gäller t.ex. Processen - blir ofta Sofokles´ Kung Oidipus. Oidipus med sin ”en skuldlösa skuld” som Marcuse skriver . Det tragiska är en kategori vari Kafkas verk kan ingå, men är det den kategori som är mest väsentlig? Det tragiska har sin förklaringsgrund främst i förhållande till etiska konflikter , eller till religiöst tänkande, eller bristen på sådant, - eller i förhållande till upplevelse av ödet, och ödets spel och grymhet. Vissa vill alltså se Kafka som komiker. Så kan man se svårigheterna med det hela, med Kafka, ännu en gång. Kafka är gäckande, som en litteraturens Pimpernel Smith. Det är dock svårt att se den kategoriseringen, av Kafka som komiker, såsom något annat än en vinkling tillkommen i förbifarten. Det finns långt över 10000 titlar skrivna om Franz Kafka.( Jag har svårt att uppskatta antalet.). Kafka kommer, vad jag förstår, ”som n:o två” efter W. Shakespeare i den ” liga” bestående av böcker o. artiklar, som kommenterar litterära verk/produktioner. Böckerna om William Shakespeare fyller sannolikt ett helt hus. Som dessutom växer. Fler manus från Kafkas hand är dessutom att vänta: Man talar om ”kafkaister”, ”kafkaloger”, m.m. i något nedsättande ton – och det är den rika mängd av subjektiviteter som förekommer i dessa nästan alltid föregivet "nya och radikala tolkningar", som väl givit dessa termer en så negativ laddning i litteraturvetarkretsar. Vi har här t.ex. alla dessa definitiva författarporträtt, uttalanden om, att det egentligen t.ex. är en ”barnlek” att läsa Kafka, som bl.a. så kallade "Kafkakonkretister" hävdar. Somliga forskare ( … något, som ju alla som har en åsikt i frågan, har rätt att kalla sig … ) har, när de påstår, att det inte är någonting speciellt, mystiskt eller underligt med Kafkas verk, och när de säger att vi kan - helt enkelt - översätta allting i Kafkas verk till, eller spåra ursprunget i, hans personliga liv, i varenda liten detalj, att materialet är självbiografiskt, de har den åsikten att : sen är det inte mer med det! Detta ursprung föreges då – häpnadsväckande nog - vara den stora meningen med Franz Kafkas verk. Intet mer väsentligt är att tillägga, menar de alltså. Kafkakonkretisterna har alltså tagit sin historiskt komparativ analysmodell, och givit denna statusen av allenarådande förklaringsmodell, i det de säger att denna analys förklarar allt som behöver förklaras beträffande Franz Kafka. De anser att allt, som är skrivet om Kafka, annat än vad vi kan kalla "konkret Kafkaläsning" ( "Kafkakonkretism" , alt.: "den biografiska läsningen av Kafka" ), är ren metafysik, vad det än innehåller. De missar det obestridliga, omvittnade faktum, att Kafka påverkar sina läsare på ett mycket udda sätt. De ignorerar det faktum att Kafkas verk - därav Kafkas berömmelse - har en stor och egenartad unicitet, som fått stå oförklarad i decennier. ( Kanske menar de att denna effekt inte tillhör betydelsesfären.). Deras - konkretisternas - "lösning" är icke en lösning på något problem. Men väl givetvis en läsning! Vad de säger om Kafka och om förhållandet mellan verk och liv ( som är kärnan i deras kafkasyn ), det låter sig ju förmodligen sägas om varenda skapare av fiktion i hela världen. ”Kafkakonkretisterna” har inte tillagt något väsentligt till förståelsen av – eller upplevelsen av - t.ex. Förvandlingen , som konstverk, på något sätt. Ty vad de skriver genom att mena att Gregor = Franz och Gregors far = Kafkas far, adderar inget till vår förståelse av uniciteten. Alltså: Kafka blir reducerad till sin egen biografiker av ..."vanlig sort". Och det är självklart att vi bör behandla skönlitteratur som konstverk, och alltså behandla det ganska så avancerat, - med alla de svårigheter som det innebär att ta med i resonemanget att någonting inte bara har ett biografiskt, men också har ett konstnärligt värde. Detta gör det givetvis svårare, och inkräktar på sådana önskvärda kvalitéer som exakthet och objektivitet, men blir i gengäld något spännande att läsa, och man undviker den platthet som det enkla översättandet som en biografisk läsning är. Tolkningar – med andra korrelatorer än biografin - finns nu av många slag: religiösa, biografiska, marxistiska, psykoanalytiska, och andra. Bland de religiösa kan nämnas Max Brods, bland de marxistiska Goldstückers , Garaudys , Mittenzwei och Bense , historiska är Satonskis, E. Fischers och Schumachers. I centrum för kafkatolkningen stod under en tid kring 1960 - 1970 de marxistiskt psyko-sociologiska tolkningarna. Som t.ex. Ernst Schumacher, i 'Kafka vor der neuen Welt': ”/…./ har inte detta med rätta bortstötta vulgär-sociologiska betraktelsesätt blivit ersatt, nämligen med det filosofiskt idealistiska, till sist med en existentialistisk, som gör Kafka lika mycket ( /litet/ ) rätt som de andra ? Utgående från människans förfrämligande, som Kafka som få andra samtida uppfattade och kunde gestalta litterärt. Följer att detta förfrämligande samtidigt skulle vara en det mänskligas eviga kategori, att Människans misslyckande är oundvikligt och måste bäras stoiskt, så som Kafkas gestalter gör det. Jag menar att detta ”filosofiserande” ( / Verphilosophierung / ) är otillbörligt för en marxist.”. ( ES. 1963.) Alexej Kusak skriver:" Kafka tycks mig som det 20de århundradets monumentale, oerhörde realist /…/ ";"Som marxist intresserar mig inte, /..../ vad Kafka själv tänkte om sina verk." Och psykoanalytiska tolkningar kan man räkna Stekel, Rieck samt Guattari/Deleuze. Vi återkommer till dessa.). Bataille och M. Blanchot - har betonat det ”absurda” element man tycker sig finna hos Kafka, i samband med en existentiell djup förtvivlan: ”Georges Bataille - liksom Maurice Blanchot - frilägger språkets tystnad. /…/ Det första en sådan mängd tystnad och så många extremt drömartade situationer framställer, är ett närmande till den mystiska upplevelsen , för att negera på samma gång det mänskliga förnuftet och den gudomliga transcendensen ( i vilkas mitt hjälten cirkulerar, såsom en frånvarande ) , en symbolisk bild för det mänskliga villkoret: dessa personer är robotar i det Absurdas byråkrati, dubbelt bleknad och oroande, Varats ektoplasmer och fantasmer ….” ). Marthe Roberts bok Kafka presenterar en djärv - och svårförståelig teori ( hon betonar själv sin kortfattadhet … ) - om den alluderande ( som om-) tolkningen ( vilken uppskattades stort samma år av Roland Barthes.). Kanske är begreppet ”allusion” här utvidgat utöver det möjligas gräns. Till de på detta vis semiologiskt / lingvistiskt / symboliskt spekulativa hör Pavel Trost och måhända likaså Max Bense, Tauber, Meschonnic och Richter. Vi har i M. Walser en belysande stilistisk/narratologisk skribent i: Kafka, Beschreibung einer Form, (1962) och litteraturhistorikern O. Walzel, - redan 1916 -, ( ! ) med sin artikel Logik in Wunderbaren , har en friare syn. Följande avsnitt – av Walzel - behandlar Förvandlingen: "Romantiska sagodiktare som Arnim, Chamisso eller Hoffmann leder långsamt t in sina läsare i inledningen till det mirakulösa. /.../. Kafka kastar med den första meningen in läsaren in i det mirakulösa :"När Gregor en morgon vaknade ur oroliga drömmar, fann han sig i sängen vara förvandlad till en jättelik skalbagge." Emellertid, när, när väl det otroliga har krävts ( av oss ), att en människa i en handvändning förvandlas till skalbagge, tar Kafka för den fortsatta berättelsen inget mer under i anspråk. Det är som om hela hans berättelse bara var försinnligandet av en logisk slutledning, vars första betingelse lyder: om det vore tänkbart, att en människa förvandlas till en skalbagge /..../." Jämför Kafkas egen berömda, klassiska dagboksanteckning:"Början på varje novell nästan skrattretande." .( Som en fransk litteratör nånstans skrivit: ”Tåget har startat. Resan är slut.”. Detta skulle man kunna sätta som hjälprubrik över mången kafkatext. ). Och vi har, som angetts ovan , även psykoanalytiska läsningar av Kafka, t.ex. Freuds tidige elev, W. Stekels, essä om Förvandlingen och den " psykosexuella infantilismen". Denne WS blev, p.g.a. avvikelser från den ”rätta läran”, snart inte välkommen i Freuds berömda "onsdagsklubb" på Berggasse Nr. 19 . W. Emrich i sin tur menar, i sin bok Franz Kafka, att vi hos FK befinner oss "på andra sidan allegori och symbol". Parabler ”är inströdda i de större berättelserna”, skriver E. , men de är icke entydiga, menar han - : de kan måhända tydas med hjälp av de olika figurernas relationer till varandra.: " Och just vid dessa frågor / om de agaerande verken handlar rätt eller orätt. KG. / besvaras på ett motsägelsefullt sätt; a l l a möjligheter för tydning lämnas öppna; ingen är entydigt säker. D.v.s. denna föregivna parabel / här åsyftas Inför lagen. KG. / upprepar enbart i diktad form samma problem, förlopp, motsägelser, osäkerheter, som den stora romanen Processen framställer."; ”/…./ ordet ´symbol´ förlorar sin innebörd /…./.” . Bilderna och utsagorna i Kafkas verk är "det egentliga själv"; skriver Emrich: de "menar" sig själva. Nu uttalade sig Kafka också själv, ( sic! ) som svar till litteraturforskaren Kasimir Edschmid, - bl.a. också förf. till en spridd bok om expressionismen ... , som menade att Kafka lade in under(-verk) i vanliga händelseförlopp : "Jag har bara lagt lite extra ljus över scenen." ( Analogt med O. Walzels resonemang. ). Jämför likaså W. Sokel, som talar om Kafkas ”berättarmässiga magnetism ”. I en bred, utvidgad betydelse behandlas Kafkas förhållande till parabeln av den sensible H. Meschonnic . Hela Meschonnics kafkasyn är en sådan, som endast den kan ha, som s.a.s. ”interioriserat” sin läsning av Kafka. Det är s.a.s. en kafkasyn för den meditative, för den ”metaspråklige”, eller för den poetiska läsningens – kanske den romantiska ”svävningsestetikens” människor. Sådana läsningar är ju också bevisligen fullt möjliga. Och kanske i verkligheten mycket mer vanliga än man i förstone tänker sig, både beträffande sig själv och andra. Hans teori om poesi såsom rytm är intressant. Kafka är för Meschonnic såsom en ständig Moses:” då hans / Mose / liv ju var ett mänskligt liv ” - som det också står i Bibeln, Moses, som aldrig kommer in i Kanaans land, - där den explicita meningen finns. Men ”metaspråksskribenten” – i Meschonnic … - håller sig lättjefullt svävande i den av honom skapade metaforiska rymden, och kan göra det i evighet, och undkommer så frågor av mer substantiell och mindre subjektiv natur. Ty denne skribent är ju helt subjektiv, själv en poet. Helt visst spanar han ut över kulturens fält, och söker i stora drag sammanfatta sina fynd, men förblir ofta ändå gåtfull, förklarande gåtor …. med andra gåtor. D.v.s. svävar vidare i det skenbaras rymd. Jean-Paul Sartre sade vid något tillfälle : "Om Kafka har jag intet att säga.”. Sedan yttrade han sig om honom i alla fall. Som : ”Hans /Kafkas/ universum är på en och samma gång fantastisk och rigoröst sant.”. Roland Barthes har kanske rätt i, att litteraturen mer är till för att ställa frågor, än att ge svar. Den har, primärt enligt denne, en "interrogativ funktion". Denna funktion syns hos Kafka ( av okänd anledning ) vara mer framträdande än hos de flesta. Men verken har en flerfaldig karaktär, vilket vi skall försöka belysa. En flerfaldig reaktion på Kafkas verk är inte sällsynt, och den är ju fullt förståelig – när man betänker komplexiteten i verket, från hur många vinklar man kan se det – och dess författare - och välja att ge sin huvudbedömning utifrån. Vi tycks, när det gäller Kafkas verk, också kunna utesluta en del läsningar jämte den biografiska såsom mest väsentlig och allena ”saliggörande”, t.ex. den lika vanliga som den biografiska, nämligen den allegoriska: Roman Karst skriver: "Hur som helst har alla försök till allegorisk tolkning av Kafkas bilder misslyckats och detta huvudsakligen på grund av två orsaker: 1. ) I allegorin kan man uttrycka en och samma idé, alltid enligt samma konvention, på olika sätt; - hos Kafka är denna slags utväxling otänkbar. 2. ) Den allegoriska bilden, om den än är mer eller mindre gåtfull, är alltid entydig, medan Kafkas bilder är flertydiga och tillåter flera tolkningsmöjligheter, något som den oerhörda mängden av kommentatorer har bevisat." Så uttrycker Karst också ännu ett tvivel, - som jag delvis delar: "Allvarliga betänkligheter väcker också den symboliska tolkningen, till vilkens anhängare Norbert Fürst hör. Symbolen förfogar självklart över betydligt större möjligheter än allegorin. Bilden har i allegorin en underordnad funktion, man kan beteckna den som etikett för det allmänna begreppet; hos symbolen däremot bevarar denna en viss autonomi och är likaställt med begreppet. Allegorin är en gåta som bara har en lösning. Symbolen låter sig kommenteras på olika sätt. Den förenar bilden och begreppet till en dynamisk enhet. Liksom i de stora avantgardistiska verken i den moderna litteraturen, så upphör också hos Kafka den traditionella epikens och symbolens liv. Den symbolikiska tolkningen med sin mikroskopiska metod för här ut på irrfärder. Det har redan Norbert Fürsts bok bevisat." Harry Järv kallar ju det för pseudotolkningar, om man skulle mena att ”Kafka inte har tänkt på något särskilt”. Petr Rákos ser till möjligheten att betrakta mångtydigheten i sig, att betrakta motsägelsefullheten per se, och inte fråga sig vad Kafka menade ! Man undviker en ”vulgarisering” av meningen med FKs verk, om man håller mångtydigheten i minne, enligt denne. PR. menar även att man inte bör grunna över vilka samhälleliga förhållanden som Kafka kanske försökte beskriva, men mer vilka samhälleliga förhållanden som betingade hans skrivande. . Henri Meschonnic betraktar Kafkas verk såsom endast åtkomliga på ett metaplan, som metafabler: ” Detta / Kafkas / språk är en andlig oro, denna minutiösa pointillism där överdriften av ”realism”, närvaron av ting inte bara blir fabel, men så att säga fabulös fabel.” .-----. Är det inte ändå fråga om parabler? Den judiska parabeln är ju klassisk. När Kafka, genom M. Buber, lät publicera två berättelser i en tidskrift, undanbad han sig den föreslagna titeln: "Två parabler." och ville i stället ha överskriften:" Två djurhistorier.". Det viktiga här är - kanske - att notera Franz Kafkas estetiska medvetenhet och bestämdhet. / Dessa två historier hade dessutom djuret i tredje person. Kanske har Kafka skrivit endast en (!) parabel: Inför Lagen? Eller är det kanske en anti-parabel ? I vilket förhållande står Kafka till parabeln ? Om vi ser till författarskapet in toto, och till hans yttranden om sina texter? Man kan här också tänka på Pasleys resonemang kring den lilla novellen Elf Söhne, där de elva sönerna, enligt Max Brod och andra, skulle hänsyfta på de elva noveller, som var tänkta att ingå i samlingen En läkare på landet. Varje novell är betraktad som en son. Detta är ju plausibelt. Men hur lite Kafka själv brydde sig om förhållandet mellan det betecknade och betecknande, det visar ju det förhållandet att han redigerade om novellsamlingen, så att den - inkluderande "Elva söner" - innehåller.... tretton ( sic! ) små noveller. . Är Kafkas ”parabler” då istället ( anarkistiskt ) … anti-parabler? Reiner Stach koncentrerar sig - naturligt nog, eftersom han skriver en biografisk bok – på den biografiska grunden till Förvandlingen, samt på omständigheterna kring dess tillblivelse. Hans resonemang är intressant, även om det i någon grad är präglat av gissningar. Man kan inte vara alls (!!!) säker på hur det gick till vid författandet av denna berättelse. Stach kritiserar Pavel för dennes överdrivna spekulationer kring förhållandet FK-Felice Bauer, men är ju inte främmande för att själv göra historiska spekulationer. Ändringar, strykningar och tillägg, ( eller frånvaron av dem ) i manuskripten är också betydelsefulla bidrag ( för den idoge ) till förståelsen av hur Kafka såg på sin skrivarverksamhet estetiskt. ( Apparatband finnes, och till somliga av FKs verk bilder av handskriften, faksimil. ) . Själv kommer jag inte till fullo utnyttja de möjligheter, som den textkritiska utgåvan ger här. Är Franz Kafka satiriker? Fischer: "Det är den – ”fantastiska” - satirens metod, denna medvetna deformation uti det absurda, som Kafka betjänar sig av./.../. Det förskräckande i denna satir, det denna överskjutande är, att den hela tiden upplevande av världen inte möter den som Gulliver, utan liksom intensifierad av den erkänner sig som medskyldig." Nog är vissa delar av Amerika en satir över moderniteten, och Processen över rättssystemet? ( ”/…/dock i en rättstat.” Josef K. ). Och är inte också Slottet en satir beträffande byråkratins alla förödande verkningssätt? Och är inte Svältkonstnären den mest brutala satir över livsförnekelse man kan tänka sig? Nu kan det ju vara så, men det har inte så stort förklaringsvärde, som påstående. Hur blir denna berättelse så effektiv som den nu är ? Hur blir den en satir ( i så fall ) – , det är en bättre problemställning. Vad en teori, uppställd om Kafka, eller om något annat, kräver, det är: ett stort förklaringsvärde och en stor fruktbarhet. Horkheimer/Adorno: ”Att sanningen i en teori är lika med dess fruktbarhet är visserligen fel. Många tycks emellertid av detta dra den motsatta slutsatsen, att teorin, i stället för att komma till användning i tänkande, skall göra allt tänkande överflödigt. De övertolkar varje uttalande i riktning mot en yttersta trosbekännelse, ett påbud eller ett förbud. De måste antingen falla på knä för idén som för en gud, eller bekämpa den som ett beläte. De har ingen frihet i sitt förhållande till den. Till sanning hör emellertid just att man själv ingår som aktivt subjekt. Man kan höra objektivt sanna satser uttalas, men man kan inte erfara deras sanning utan att samtidigt tänka vidare./…/ Att vara ofärdig, och att veta om det, är utmärkande också och i synnerhet för tänkande vid vars sida det vore värt att stupa.” David Foster Wallace: ”/…./ det verkliga kafkaskämtet – att den fruktansvärda kampen för att forma ett mänskligt Själv resulterar i ett Själv, vars humanitet är oskiljbart från den fruktansvärda kampen. Att vår ändlösa och omöjliga hemresa faktiskt är vårt hem.” ( David Foster Wallace ) Författarinnan Zadie Smith , kanske mest känd kanske för genombrottsromanen Vita tänder (2000) , har skrivit två tidskriftsessäer om Kafka , där hon i den ena, den första, tar upp en del problem beträffande Kafkas verk utifrån en läsning, som jag finner begränsande. Jag vill ändå här kommentera något av hennes resonemang, även om jag återkommer till frågeställningarna – som inte är unika. Hon finner att Kafka eg. inte skriver några romaner i konventionell mening, men hon fruktar honom ändå. Hon slår, i The limited circle is pure, 2003, ,fast det kompletta ointresset från Kafkas sida för att beskriva psykologiska skeenden, för byggandet av ett Själv och för samspelet mellan människor, - något som hon ser som romanens primära uppgift att belysa - och menar att hela författarskapet istället behandlar frågan : om det alls är möjligt att leva. Även Adorno tvekar i frågan om att ( alls ) kalla Kafkas Amerika, Processen och Slottet för romaner. Zadie Smith menar att Kafka arbetar med religiösa strukturer men på ett allmänt plan. Bibelns Job är hos Kafka en världslig Job, menar hon. Det ( Kierkegaardska ) ”språng” ut i det okända, som, i Kierkegaards tolkning av den groteska offerhistorien, för Abraham är en religiös handling, hos S.K. betecknad som tro, en tertulliansk paradoxtro är hos Kafka en inställning till världen. Kafkas paradoxtro tycks ibland vara en tro på litteraturen, men visst vara för övrigt ett rent nihilistiskt språng, en ironisk-absurd livshållning, - som vi skall belysa i senare kapitlet. Smith är väl inläst på Kafka, och i modern litteratur som helhet, men tycks vara okänslig för det spel med nivåer som Kafka utnyttjar. Hon är inte ensam om att läsa Kafka endimensionellt, och det är av intresse att se hur en sådan läsning, en modern sådan från vårt sekel, genom sin ytterliga förenkling enbart bidrar till att grumla bilden. Smith hänvisar bl.a. till ett citat av Walter Benjamin :”För att göra rättvisa till fenomenet Kafka i dess renhet och speciella skönhet, krävs att man aldrig förlorar ur sikte denna enda sak: det är en skönhet och renhet komna ur ett nederlag.”. I samband med detta menar Smith, att Kafka ju de facto misslyckades med att skriva färdigt romanerna, och att det är själva kravet på en roman, att den har en slutförd, konsekvent, narrativ linje. Ett krav som Kafka inte uppfyller. Detta behöver dock – även om det som ZS skriver om romanen skulle vara sant – inte vara innebörden av WBs rader ovan. Så menar ZS också att det rör sig om ett misslyckande från FKs sida med att skriva om vad romanförfattare brukar skriva, men slår samtidigt fast, att det Kafka skriver om, det är något lika så viktigt som det är svårgripbart, och för var och en privat. ( Och då rör det sig, ju, inte om något explicit misslyckande …. ). Om nu Kafka i sin dagbok skrev nedsättande om romanskrivandet, så innebär det ju ingenting definitivt rörande hans faktiska förmåga att skriva, eller om vad det nu än var han skrev, och heller egentligen ingenting väsentligt om hans faktiska inställning till vad han ville skriva. Man får ju dock se till helheten. Så berör nu i den aktuella essän Zadie Smith två fält där Kafka , enligt henne, arbetar, på [ a.] tidens och [ b.] etikens. Det är - enl. ZS. - inte ”korridorerna som är långa” hos Kafka, det är ”tiden som nästan står still”. Ändå benämner ZS tiden i Kafkas verk som byråkratisk, hon förvånar sig över att karaktärerna i romanerna alla underkastar sig ( utan minsta ironiska distans … ) denna tid , som ju – då den inte framställs realistiskt – både tycks stå still och ( därmed … ) vara evig. Hon sammankopplar detta med ett slags tonårsaktig trotsighet, och blandar samman litterär teknik med Kafkas personliga mogenhetsgrad. ”För Kafka är vårt sociala livs tid osann.”, skriver Smith. I Kafkas verk tycks det inte röra sig någonting framåt mot ett slut, i temporal mening. . Det finns inget ”sedan”. Smith frågar sig nu om detta är ”judisk tid”, och drar fram en hassidisk parabel som Kafka tyckte om, ( en parabel med innebörd som är i stil med den svenska ordleken ” och så bidde det bara en tumme” …. ). Endast en del korta noveller av Kafka rymmer en viss förändring. I övrigt råder ett slags … evighet, en tidsstilla. Detta tycks Smith anse är … fel: ”I romaner är det tid att leva. Romaner är våra nödvändiga liv, våra resor som skall leda någonstans.” Inför lagen anser hon – i likhet med mig - är en pseudohassidisk allegori. Smith menar också att Kafka var rädd för människor som var fulla av liv. ( Alternativt: alla människor.). I en senare artikel - Zadie Smith on Kafka, - utgår hon primärt från – anknyter till - Louis Begleys bok om Kafka, ( som delvis är en kritik av ” a Brodly reading of Kafka”, d.v.s. då ( som en ”pun”… ): en kritik av en läsning präglad av Brods redigeringar, och dennes olika lanserings- och propageringsmetoder.), och denna Smithska artikel är mer koncentrerad på människan Kafka, som fullständig outsider, och som en slags förlorare i livets spel - snarare än författaren. Hon tar upp utanförställningen och Kafkas många livsproblem, men det viktigaste och mest slående i artikeln är kanske, att hon koncentrerar sig, mot slutet av denna, på den akuta betydelse Kafka kan ha för dagens människor/läsare – främst den unga generationen, och globalt - i fråga om identitet och grupp: ”Ty det är i ett avseende så , att Kafkas judiska fråga, ”Vad har jag för gemensamt med judarna?”, har blivit allas fråga, att den judiska alienationen blivit ett mönster för alla våra tvivel.” I distinkt, konträr, opposition mot Max Brods och flera andras tolkningar, som i hög grad hänvisar läsarna av Kafkas verk till en religiös tolkning av dessa, ställer sig den konservative George Panichas i sin essä Kafka´s afflicted Vision: a literary-theological critique . Panichas essä behandlar främst FKs Slottet. Den läsning av Slottet som P. gör - och den behandling av författaren Kafka, som härmed blir följden - är av det "platta" slaget, i stil med Zadie Smiths…, dennas essäer om FK, på vilka Panichas också stöder delar av sitt resonemang. Således betraktar P. nu lantmätare K. som en realistiskt beskriven verklig individ och söker finna ut om denne alls söker någon frälsning, någon Gud, eller om det inte faktiskt är så att lantmätaren bara är en självisk man, vars främsta karaktäristiska är egoism, jordbundenhet och manipulationsbenägenhet. K. själv är – enl. P. - representant för den ”dömda människan”( / condemned man / ), som är maktlös inför förtvivlans outtröttliga villkor, för icke-mening, uteslutning, isolering. För honom - lantmätare K. i Slottet - finns ingen mänsklig värdighet, inget undkommande ifrån dödsdomen; det är till och med så, enligt P., att ”uthållig tro” är en plattityd i en värld som manar till utrotning i en ”liten enslig, ödslig gränd ” såsom sker med Kafkas protagonist, Josef K., i Processen.” Den troende katoliken Panichas finner i sin läsning av Slottet inget hos K., som tyder på någon längtan efter frälsning, men enbart ett sökande efter egna fördelar, hänsynslöst och egoistiskt utnyttjande de människor som han kommer i kontakt med. Uppenbart är att han menar, att Kafkas verk är ett uttryck för svårigheten för ”den moderna människan” i en gudlös, sekulariserad värld att finna något att sätta sin tilltro till … sedd från en missförståelse av värdenihilismen, och då – kanske - FK.. Panichas: ”Modernismens ansikten har samma diabolism, samma luciferska grimas.” ( … liksom en gulag ... ) ). Lika uppenbart är att Panichas - i sin läsning av - som det förefaller ...- enbart till engelska språket översatta texter av Kafka .... - helt har missat det estetiskt-strukturella, och bland annat därmed allt som gör Kafka till stor litteratur, - det suveräna bildspråket och rytmen - och att Panichas läser Kafka på en slags … veckotidningsnovellsnivå. Utan känsla för nivåer och skiktningar. Hans kritik är formad med nitet hos en frälsningspredikant, och späckad med fördömanden, präglad av intolerans. Panichas hänvisar till det explicita. Detta är – sett som enskildhet och totalitet - en ganska ofruktbar inkörsport till skönlitteratur. Skribenten i Humanitas ogillar helt enkelt moderniteten och öser sin galla över den. Kanske avskyr han komplexiteten. Man ser även hos George Panichas – något paradoxalat från min synvinkel sett - en övertro till kommentaren/kritiken. Han försöker övertyga sin läsekrets om , att en bok som bevisligen många i läsekretsen funnit ( om än gåtfullt ) meningsfull, att denna bok inte har nån stor mening ( i generell som i personlig bemärkelse ) alls. Den missuppfattning han förfäktar är ( bl.a.) den, att Kafkas verk enbart är en skapelse av missledda eller rabulistiskt tänkande kritiker, ( liksom i en konspiration ) och att verkets effekt inte kommer av egen kraft hos detsamma. Panichas tror – ohistoriskt – att ett litterärt verk kan blåsas upp till erkännande så till den milda grad av kritiker. Panichas dristar sig så till denna sinistra slutsats: ”Han skulle komma att dö den 3 juni i ett privat sanatorium i Kierling, nära Wien, och begravas med en enkel ceremoni den 11 juni på den judiska kyrkogården Olgany i Strachnitz i ytterkanten av Prag. Hans snedvridna vision skulle komma att utsudda varje antagande om att Dr. Franz Kafkas själ till slut hade kommit att övergå in i ”judendomens själ”, för att där finna vila i den tredje, den heliga, jorden.” Processen, Amerika och Slottet står som klassiker, i vår omedvetna kanon, anses som sådana, behandlas så, med det för klassikern klassiskt och paradoxalt och mystiskt typiska: nämligen, att anses ha uttryckt, för evärdliga tider, på det allra bästa sättet, något om det mänskliga livet, - kanske någon del av det - , som förmodligen aldrig nånsin kommer att uttryckas bättre… Processen är ovanlig. Andra litterära mästerverk tvingar inte, i sina respektive komplexiteter, sin läsare till samma slags ovanliga anspänning och förtvivlade försök till anpassning , som Processen gör : Man måste anstränga sig – ja, nästan överträffa sig själv - för att läsa, och för att alls ha LÄST Processen, för att ha gjort annat än att ha läst den i sin halvhet ! Bortseende från att den eg. bara är en torso. Den erbjuder svårigheter. Den är - i detta - likt t.ex. filosofi, utan att alls vara det! Den bjuder motstånd. Den skapar av varje läsare en slags ny Wittgenstein. Man är kanske alltid tvungen att läsa om den, om och om och om igen. Som om denna bok vore en slags evig barndom. Hermeneutiken, tolkningsläran, resulterar ofta i en ren subjektivitet, vilket är det stora problemet med denna disciplin. En motsatt fara vid uttolkning, är givetvis den föregivet objektiva tolkningen, som infamt luras, och har ett vetenskapsideal som inte förklarar, upplyser, någonting alls, men påpekar klara och motsägelsefria, oftast för sammanhanget meningslösa, samband. Och sammanhanget är givetvis: innerlig förståelse. ( Ty den som nu inte tycker att Kafkas texter är värda innerlig förståelse, men bara förståelse, vad har den att tillföra? ) Jag vill se ”fenomenet Kafka”, begreppet ”kafkaesk”, Kafkas författarskap - ur olika synvinklar. [ 1.] idéhistoriskt [ filosofiskt, psykologiskt, sociologiskt ] och [ 2.] narratologiskt. Här vill jag se hur Kafka skapade sina verk, hur de är byggda, så att han fick sin stil, den stil som, med sina ”grepp”, var så annorlunda allt annat inom skönlitteraturen, så att han kunde skapa ”det kafkaartade”. Här följer nu, i det ni kommer att läsa, en studie som söker belysa Kafkas tre romaner , samt Förvandlingen, ( lång-novellen/kortromanen ), En läkare på landet och Domen, ( jämte några fler noveller ) samt diskutera något kring den unicitet, som dessa verk äger, utan att – vad jag tror - upprepa i onödan vad andra har uttryckt. Jag söker också ställa dessa längre kafkatexter i relation till majoriteten av texter, vilka är korta, ibland mycket korta, ja de är ofta en novell-prosa(-lyrik ) på en halv ordinär boksida. Om man skulle skriva en "introduktion till Kafka", så vore väl inte denna bok ni läser, den, som man skulle skriva, om nu sådana böcker alls låter sig skrivas. Denna bok, som ni nu läser, ger sig dock ut för att förklara något av Kafkas speciella teknik, och på vilken plats i världslitteraturen, som jag själv anser att Kafka bör placeras. Den gängse populäruppfattningarna av Kafka, såsom varande t.ex. "magisk realist", eller - ännu värre - "religiös mystiker", eller - för den delen - "judisk parabeldiktare" syns mig inte bara grund i ansatsen, utan, i deras respektive brist på djup, insikt och allvar, helt felaktiga. Denna bok kan alltså - delvis -, ses som ännu ett försök i raden att "korrigera" missuppfattningar om Kafka, missuppfattningar som oftast bottnar i villrådiga försök att beskriva något för andra, som man inte har kunnat förstå själv. Många har sagt sig, och det är visserligen sant, att det lockande och intressanta är det, som man inte förstår. Som Beata Agrell excellent uttryckt saken: " Det är först när man inte förstår, som det intressanta börjar." Men de flesta böcker om Kafka, de slutar faktiskt just där de börjar: i samma rejäla förvirring, alternativt: i en förvirring som är än värre. Man kan nog vara ganska säker på att Kafka hade ett, inte bara allvarligt, men ett passionerat förhållande, till skrivande/text. Till och med kan det nu vara sant, att författarskapet stod i en djupt mystiskt ( = en ersättning för en djup längtan ) förhållande ( också präglat av massor av dunkla önskningar… ), kanske paradoxalt och dynamiskt sådant, till hans eget liv. Man vet inte i vilken grad han tolkade, eller bearbetade vardagliga händelser i sitt skrivande. Vi misstänkare att han dock gjorde just det. Man vet ingenting om vilken slags sfär satte han skrivandet och i vilken han satte sitt eget liv. Var det fråga om en medveten självanalys, en medveten reningsprocess el. dyl., en överlevnadsstrategi, eller kanske en sökande, försöksvis verksamhet åt det hållet ? Eller ett självmord, eller ett inväntande av döden ? Eller var det bara … en ( mindre allvarlig ) "tekniklek" ? Allt sådant kan ju enbart stanna vid spekulationer, ( mer eller mindre starkt stödda av tolkningar av dagboksanteckningar och passager ur brev.) - men som spekulationer är de naturligtvis, anser jag, väldigt viktiga. Man kan inte utesluta, bör man tillägga, att skrivandet är en så tätt i anslutning till sexuell tillfredsställelse knuten sublimering, att man i någon mening kan kalla den för en variant av (auto-)erotisk perversion. Det är inte svårt att finna exempel i Kafkas texter som tyder på att de – dessa textstycken – på ett lekfullt , ”retfullt” sätt - kan ha fyllt ett behov av detta slag. Jfr. t.ex. inledningskapitlet i Processen! Det är alltså lika viktigt för förståelsen av Kafka att dessa spekulationer är för handen, som det är viktigt att inte söka leda i "bevis" något inom dessa fält! Vem var Franz Kafka? Vi vet alltså inte det, och på sådana frågor ges ju sällan riktiga och/eller användbara svar. Vad som är rent tekniskt att se, det kan vi däremot – hur svårt nu än detta i sig är, metodologiskt - försöksvis påpeka - i en slags ”modell”.