Kafka : A modernist Author
Kafka : A modernist Author
By Neeti Badwe. Presented : July
2011, Published : December 2011, Pune
“There is a goal, but no way; What we call a
way, is hesitation”[1]. This
‘Reflexion’ (Betrachtung #26) aptly captures quintessence of Kafka’s
thinking and writing. However, before discussing the literary work and
the characteristic style of this modernist author, let first get introduced the
era Franz Kafka lived through.
Introduction to the Era
Franz Kafka
lived at the end of 19th – beginning of 20th century in
Prague, the capital of the Bohemian kingdom under Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The
early years of the 20th century were marked by the unsuccessful Russian
Revolution of 1905, turmoil of the Balkan Wars (1912, 1913) and the First World
War. This was the period when European colonial powers had brought the maximum
territory of the East under control. Franz Kafka was born in 1883, the same
year which marks the death of Karl Marx. In other words, end of 19th
century also meant the rise of proletariat and end of the literary epoch of
realism.
This was the
era of technology, rapid urbanization, faster transport by automobiles and
railways, international steam liners and flying Zeppelins. Heavy
industrialization caused emergence of the workers class and socialist ideology,
while on the other hand, capitalism was thriving and the influence of the
economic power was growing. The world was divided in political ideologies and
the State was totalitarian.
German and
European thinking was dominated at that time by positivism and positivistic
methods with their thrust on verifiable knowledge. Nevertheless, in this period
some new sciences like psychology, sociology or descriptive linguistics emerged.
However, the influential scientists and thinkers like Max Weber, Georg Simmel or
Sigmund Freud differed from positivist thinking. This can be seen in Freud’s psychoanalysis,
which was established in the 1920s as a new scientific method.
This was the
period of modernism, which implies break from the tradition. Modernity incorporated
everything that followed the renaissance - different philosophical thoughts and
‘isms’ until expressionism and beyond. With the technical tools and creation of
machines, the modern human being started looking upon himself as a creator, who
could presumably overpower and control the nature. Thus, the ‘homo sapiens’ became
‘homo faber’. For almost 500 years the human being proceeded and progressed in one
direction - to acquire more freedom,
more control over the nature, more knowledge, and to get the ultimate truth.
However, at the
turn of the last century, in the era of political, social, economic shifts. Consequently
followed the era of uncertainty when man started to look back. Everything around
seemed to be in flux. One started questioning stability of cultural tradition,
durability of social order and adequacy of scientific methods to explain human
life or religious doctrines.
Earlier, the main
points of reference for orientation were family and church. In the modern era,
theology and religion were replaced by sociology and psychology. Metaphysics
was replaced by science and technology. Metaphysically secured basis for
thinking, fear of God and of Nature diminished and now one started feeling
threatened by the monster of technology and commercial compulsions, which were
irreversible.
One had angst and
anxiety, as there was nothing more to hold on to. One started feeling the
senselessness of existence, of search for one ultimate truth, which was the
goal of the modern era. The new era of progress and freedom also brought along
changes in the value system, in understanding of sexuality and moral norms.
Modernist thinking
also gave rise to doubt and duality, such as duality of soul and matter,
objectivity and subjectivity, abstract and concrete, theory and practice, particularism
and universalism, etc. Materialism and
functionalism were the dominant trends of the time, whereas in the private and
social life, authoritative power was dominant.
The epoch of
Modernism in art and literature relates to this human perception. The modernist
art movement is thus critique of the modern tradition. Art emancipated itself from
the given reality, which was the basis of all the artistic creation earlier. The
traditional mode was inadequate to express radical upheavals and disorder of
the time. Aesthetics turned around. Modern art and literature were experimental,
elitist, pessimistic, expressionist, existentialist, absurd, surrealistic and
they rejected the limits of temporal and spatial coherence.
Franz Kafka and his
literary works appeared in this era. Kafka belonged to the minority group of
German speaking Czech Jews. He visited a German Gymnasium, high school, in
Prague. He completed his doctorate in law in 1906, and in 1908 he started, as
he himself says, the dual life - as a legal advisor in the state insurance
company for workers and simultaneously as a writer. He was most productive
during the second decade of the twentieth century i.e. from 1912 until 1922
when he got seriously ill. He died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium near Vienna
at the age of forty-one.
Kafka’s works
Kafka depicts in
his works the general human condition, which he found unendingly ambiguous. All
his texts revolve mainly around three core concepts : Schuld, Scham and
Schnade. Schuld is a moral and legal guilt, fault, crime or sin. Scham is shame
and Schande is dishonor, humiliation, ridicule or disregard. The permanent
feeling of guilt and being persecuted causes him shame and disgrace.
After completing
his renowned story Das Urteil or The Judgment during one single night, Kafka
describes the creative process in his diary (22nd September 1912) as “Writing
is possible only in this manner … by opening up the body and mind completely….
This story was clad in slime and other discharges like a newborn baby. Only my
hand could reach the body.” Kafka considered this story the real beginning of
his literary writing.
The Judgment is a story of Georg
Bendemann, a young businessman living with his father. He writes a letter about
his fiancé to his friend who had moved to Russia some years ago and invites him
for the engagement. This friend actually
personifies an ideal son, as Georg’s father would like to have. The father is
unhappy about Georg and his choice of the girl. When Georg conveys his wish to
marry this girl, the sick, feeble, bed-ridden father suddenly rises up from his
deathbed and pronounces the death sentence for his son. Georg runs to the river
and jumps from the bridge into water. While falling down he says, ‘Father and
mother, I really loved you’. This story is in a way a prototype of Kafka’s
writing as far as the core concept and style of narration are concerned.
In the much
significant Letter to his father
Franz Kafka elaborates on relation to the father and on his upbringing. He talks
about marriage, having own children and family and of course, about his
writing. In this letter, one can find the roots of many a conflict in Kafka’s
life and work. Franz writes about his father’s opinion, advice, discipline,
ambition, imposing attitude and also his physic as well as his robust personality
that was feared by the son, for the son was a weak and ailing child. Franz also
felt that he could never satisfy his father or fulfill his expectations as the
only son. His writings merely reveal, what he could not pour out on his
father’s shoulders.
In this letter, he
accuses his father of preaching him wrong things in the matter of maturity and
sexual experience. In many of his stories, there is a reference to fallen men. His
protagonists are often attracted towards women and try to reach their goal by
making women instrumental. Neither Kafka nor his protagonists were confident
while dealing with women and sexuality. Franz Kafka broke the engagement three
times - with one fiancé twice, with another once. The last two years of his
life, when he was seriously ill, he was looked after until the end by yet
another one. In spite of this account, Franz Kafka was never a frivolous
person. On the contrary,he was quite serious about all these relationships and
about marriage; only, he could never make a decision to marry. Franz considered
marriage as the most glorious and hopeful way to escape and free himself from his
father. However, nothing works in the matter of marriage. Therefore, he fears
that he will not succeed in making his father understand of his efforts to get
married!
Writing was indeed
paramount to Franz Kafka. He gave writing primacy over marriage - fearing, that
marriage could become an obstacle in writing. Writing itself is one of the
important themes in Kafka’s writings. In In
der Strafkolonie /In the penal colony for example he uses it as a bizarre metaphor.
There are many other much discussed and widely translated stories of Kafka,
like Die Verwandlung/ Metamorphosis
or Ein Landarzt/ Country Doctor, roots
of which can be found in Letter to his father.
Another significant text, Vor dem
Gesetz/Before the Law, will be discussed later as a part of the novel The Trial.
The disappeared
or America
Most of the
Kafka’s works are basically allegories. Der
Verschollene oder Amerika / The
disappeared or America is the first of his three novels, though it was
published as the last. In America,
the protagonist Karl Rossmann is a sixteen-year-old boy in his puberty who
personifies natural innocence. His travel to America forms the background for a
Kafkaesque unfolding of Karl’s experiences. The German title Der Verschollene means the disappeared
or the missing or the one presumed dead. The novel is about the disappeared who
appears in the first sentence and is present throughout.
The directness of
the opening sentence of this novel is striking (1999: 12) : “As Karl Rossmann,
a poor boy of sixteen, who had been packed off to America by his parents
because a servant girl had seduced him and got herself pregnant with a child by
him, stood on a liner slowly entering the harbor of New York, …”
Arriving in
America Karl gets entangled in other complicated matters without his fault. He
is surrounded by bad companions; he faces accusations and is in the danger of being
arrested. He is interrogated, punished, expelled and degraded repeatedly. Karl
is uprooted and dislocated and is left to himself. His goodness and innocence,
however, save him to some extent in comparison to the protagonists of the other
two novels. That freshness of youth is felt in this novel as against the
declining vigor of the protagonists in the later two novels.
Like
other two of Kafka’s novels, this novel too is a fragment, an incomplete piece
of literary work. These incomplete novels were first published by Max Brod,
Kafka’s very dear friend and a close observer of his creative process of
writing. Brod edited and published all the three novels posthumous, actually
against Kafka’s wish, but with the consent of his family members. Kafka had
read out excerpts from America in a
small group and had planned to end the novel with the last chapter as in the
published works. Max Brod has noted so in the editor’s note.
America
is seen as a myth of the modern new world and of Freedom. America is a metaphor
of longing and desire, but also of unfulfilled dreams and ideas, of an
alienating otherness. New York is an icon of modernity with endless
opportunities, high-tech firms, high-rise buildings, gigantic business
enterprises. Karl Rossmann, for example, works as a liftboy in a multistory
hotel ‘Occidental’ with 30 lifts. Scientific innovations, technological
progress, rapid industrialization leave Karl as well as the reader in awe.
These developments ultimately lead to alienation, to stretched human relations
in this country of dreams and comforts. In addition, Karl’s relation to women,
relation to father figures, his failures and punishment by male characters like
his uncle, uncle’s friend Mr. Green, the headwaiter, the head porter of the
hotel, and the jobless tramp Delamarche are alienating experiences in the age
of puberty. Karl is expelled at every juncture; he does not progress. He shows
inner instability, hesitance, uncertainty, anxiety; he is groping for a hold,
cannot make sense of his own environment. In the end, Karl is disillusioned and
joins the Theatre in Oklahoma, as a place to escape. In a way, Karl takes
refuge in the world of illusion after many failures.
However, this too
remains just a possibility, for, Karl has not yet reached Oklahoma. In the last
scene, he has just got onto the train and is sitting at a window enjoying the
pleasant surroundings. Most of the scenes in this chapter appear to be surreal
: Karl gets a job without the papers and without having to prove his identity. Everyone
who came found a job and all could find a place on the train. It is also
ambiguous whether Karl is hired as an actor or technician. It is indicated that
the journey ahead is very long, which makes you wonder whether it is a journey
to any real geographical destination.
The motive of
Travel is used as a paradigm for social critique, not for the quest for
knowledge or enlightenment. Not for ‘Bildung’,
as in the great German literary tradition of ‘Entwicklungsroman’.
There is no free will to travel. The metaphor of suitcase indicates
homelessness, being constantly on the move or even on the run; it stands for
the plight of an immigrant, feeling of otherness and longing to belong to a
group. In many of Kafka’s works we notice that there is an abyss between the self
and the world, a divide, a disconnect. The surroundings are often
incomprehensibly hostile. The journey of the protagonist remains disoriented
and his experience fragmented.
With
the backdrop of realistic description of the modern condition, Kafka portraits
a fictive protagonist and criticizes in the social and geographical
surroundings. From the concrete worldly atmosphere, the reader is taken
unnoticed into the inner world, chain of thoughts, of illusions of the
protagonist. What starts as an objective reportage, glides into the dreams,
desires, visions of the inner world. Reality becomes a guise of fiction.
Perceptual confusion between the sense of noise, dust, smell, etc. Crisis of
linguistic ability works as powerful stylistic means in Kafka’s narrative.
In America, the protagonist Karl Rossmann
is accused and expelled, but he escapes the arrest. In The Trial the protagonist Joseph K is arrested, cross examined,
heard and executed for the unknown accusation, unidentified guilt and unnamed
charges!
The Trial
Kafka started
working on his second novel Der Prozess /
The Trial in August 1914,
immediately after breaking his first engagement with Felice Bauer. The Trial reflects Kafka’s inner
conflict and deals with an arrest, which is no arrest.
Joseph
K, a bank officer, wakes up early morning on his 30th birthday. As
he is still in his nightgown, two unknown watchmen at the door of his room tell
him that he is under arrest. On his query they reply, it is not a part of their
duty to know why he has been arrested. They do not give him any further bit of
information. In fact, Joseph K. doesn’t want to give any heed to the watchmen,
but he actually starts looking for his ‘Legitimationspapiere’, his
identification papers to prove his identity. Then he realizes, through this
act, he has indeed given them the right to question and arrest him. Later on
Joseph K. does not want to recognize the court, but he submits himself to trial
and ultimately to his own execution!
Though he is under
arrest, the watchmen allow him to go to the bank, his work place. He gets a
call in the bank that he has been summoned to the court for a hearing on
Sunday. After a long search, he finds the courtroom in the poor peoples’ shabby
quarters. At a later juncture, he enters the room of the judge through a secret
door from an attic studio of a painter who was supposed to have contacts with
the judiciary. Kafka thus transcends effortlessly into surreal and describes
the event as if it were as real as any routine matter. The surreal, thus,
appears to be a seamless continuation of the tangible world.
In his Sunday
hearings, instead of admitting his guilt or misdoing, he tries to defend
himself as innocent until the end. This probably leads to disastrous
consequences. He is very eloquent at the time of his interrogation. However, he
does not speak to the point; instead, he ridicules and laughs at the court.
Through his own behavior, he makes his case hopeless.
The main narrative
in this novel is about Joseph K.’s preparation of his plea or petition, his
visits to the advocate, his attempts to reach the authority or judge through
flirting with common women like a waitress, court servant’s wife, or advocate’s
housemaid. The novel reveals K.’s unrest, anxiety, his losing confidence and
hope, the loss of concentration at work; in short, the distress of an accused,
his senseless efforts to get himself free and escape through legal channel.
This situation forms a downward spiral to his own damnation and conviction.
The places linked
with the court are obscure, sticky, suffocating, without light and without
fresh air. They are at queer sites like in a very ordinary and poor locality,
in the decaying buildings, on upper floors and are difficult to find. The judge
is invisible; he either sits in the dark or is faceless. Corridors of the
lawyers’ chambers are labyrinthish. The atmosphere is gray and gloomy.
In the second last
chapter, he visits a cathedral as a part of his duty towards a client of the
bank. He can not meet his client there. But as he wants to leave, a priest
calls him by name. The huge cathedral is empty, cold, dimly lit. There he
confuses this priest for a prison chaplain.
At this point
follows one of the best known, small, allegorical texts of Kafka - most
intreging and yet rich in meanig. This was published by him as an independent
story, entitled Vor dem Gesetz/Before the
Law. The priest, mistaken for a prison chaplain, tells Joseph K. the story
of a doorkeeper. A man from village comes and seeks entrance at the door of
Law. The watchman says, he cannot let him in. The old man asks, can he get
entry later. The watchman says, it is possible. May be. The old man sits at the
door on a stool offered by the watchman and tries every mean to reach the inner
of the Law. At the end, he sees a ray of light through the door of Law, which is
always open. Now the man asks the doorkeeper, how is it that in all these years
nobody else has come to this door to seek admittance in the Law? The watchman
realizes that the man is about to die. He then bows to reach his ears and says,
‘Now I can go and close the door, which was meant only for you.’
The story ends
here. However, the real masterpiece of Kafka’s writing is the discussion that
follows in the novel. The question is who is the duped or the deceived. - Was
that the man from village or the doorkeeper? Joseph K.’s first reaction was the
doorkeeper deceived the man. However, the chaplain or the priest says, see, the
doorkeeper is just doing his duty. He is not a free man like the villager; in
fact, he is serving the villager. He is considerate, offers the villager a
stool to sit, and accepts all his gifts, so that the villager has the
satisfaction of having tried everything to enter the Law. The priest also
praises the doorkeeper as a friendly man, because he goes beyond his duty to
talk to the man. He answers both the questions when asked. There is no
contradiction.
The priest or
chaplain tells Joseph K. (2002 : 230), “Don’t misunderstand me. I am only
showing opinions. … You do not have to pay much attention to it. The Script is
incomprehensible. The opinions are often an expression of frustration about
it.” The chaplain also says that understanding and misunderstanding are not
mutually completely exclusive.
The
core image in this novel is that of the State machinery, bureaucracy,
hierarchy, corruption, adulteration, non-transparency. It is about how helpless
one is while knocking at the door of justice and how the end is obvious and
inevitable. In The Trial, nobody
passes a judgment on Joseph K. He destroys himself through his own doings and
behavior. He does not want to blame anyone or hold anyone responsible for his
failures and his death. He undertakes everything, which he had to in the given
circumstances.
This novel is
understood an allegory for life. The given situation of a human being is that
of imprisonment. You are tied in
chains, you are arrested. The whole life is an ongoing court trial. Anywhere and everywhere, courts are in
session. A human being is guilty until it is proved otherwise. This struggle is
already lost when it begins.
This novel unfolds
in about 300 pages all the efforts and damnation of the accused, without the
accusations against the accused being revealed. The ultimate authority to
convict is not seen. The death sentence is executed, without specific charges. The Trial, like Kafka’s other works,
underlines impossibility of unambiguous interpretation.
The Castle
Kafka’s last novel
Das Schloss / The Castle deals with
the author’s quest for an unknown ultimate superstructure or the highest
authority, symbolized by the Castle in a small village.
This is a story of
one ‘Landvermesser’, a land surveyor, who has been invited to a village for
work. The supervising authority in the village has its office on top of the
hill, which looks like a castle. Land surveyor or inspector is a stranger in
this village. He wants to go to the office and confirm his assignment, his
duties and rights. His struggle to cover this small distance from village to
the castle and thus, to reach the authorities is the subject matter of this
novel. As the judges in the trial cannot be seen, so also is the authority in The Castle unreachable.
Kafka’s novels
portray the fight of a lone person with the authority that is impersonal,
invisible, unapproachable, but very powerful and can influence life of every
individual. In The Trial Joseph K.
tries to escape the powerful grip of law, in The Castle the protagonist K. experiences rejection and denial in
many ways. He does not get any response to his repeated queries. Both of them
are running on the spot. They can neither make any progress nor cover the
distance to reach the authority. Also in his other small texts like Kaiserliche Botschaft / Emperor’s Message, or Das nächste Dorf / The neighboring village, we see that there is a goal, but no way.
Kafka’s texts detail a perpetual journey without ever arriving at the
destination.
There are
increasing misunderstandings and failures while K. is going from pillar to
post. He is consistently degraded,
dishonored, humiliated till he is completely doomed at the end. He is condemned
to serve as a sweeper in a school. In the beginning, K. wanted to fight with
courage and enthusiasm for his right to see the highest authority, as did
Joseph K. All in vain. It is a tragic
and hopeless struggle of a common person, whereby the names and professions of
the protagonists or names and description of places hardly matter.
What makes one
uneasy while reading this novel is the strong hold of the state machinery on a
common man’s private life who perpetually lives in fear, ducks down to the
anonymous and corrupt power and is always hesitant. It’s a mega machinery with
permits and papers, misinformation and mishandling, reports and protocols, missing files and job profiles, where
one is questioned and cross-examined, and where one doesn’t get any relevant
information. No decision is ever taken or conveyed, everything is ambiguous.
There is a communication gap between two state departments and between the
state and the common man. Administration is full of domineering and corrupt
officials and insolent lower servants, negligent secretaries in their chamber (which
turn out to be bedrooms), discriminatory treatment, and promiscuity. For fear
and uncertainty, the villagers cannot talk to, help or accept the land surveyor
as a stranger.
All
the three novels are narrated in the third person, and yet the peculiar Kafka
style of presenting the thoughts of the characters directly, makes you read
them as if they were in the first person. We find many similarities in the
author and his protagonists. Kafka obviously writes about himself, but in such
a manner that his writing becomes description of human condition and
conditioning in general, - cutting across the time axis. Kafka’s narratives thus
reveal a host of perspectives and perceptions.
February 1922 he started
writing this last novel, when he was very ill and suffered of insomnia and
depression. 1st July he gave up his job. He was brought in a
sanatorium. He gave up working on this novel in August 1922 and thus the novel
remained a fragment.
Kafkaesque writing
Kafka’s concept of
Guilt is multilayered : it is a sin
in religious sense, crime in the legal sense or morally it is any wrongdoing.
Beyond that, there is an existential guilt. A human being is occupied with the
perennial existential question : How did I get here? Who is responsible for or
guilty of our existence itself? It is a fact that we have been thrown on the
earth and are condemned to die. We are ignorant of our offense. We cannot ‘not
act’, since not-acting too affects
lives. Therefore, we are ourselves responsible for our life and death. One
cannot shun away from the responsibility or push the blame on others.
Kafka’s
protagonists are doomed on the account of many fold guilt. One interpretation
is that they are guilty because they suppress their guilt and never admit it, because
they are insistent and tenacious, because they try to prove themselves innocent
and plead as ‘not guilty’. They are insolent, critical about the authorities,
remark frankly and carelessly, they make the men in power laughable, they make
fun of the authority. By their own behaviour and speeches, they make themselves
punishable, get into serious trouble, make the proceedings irreversible and
destroy themselves.
Two more concepts
connected with the existential question are the ‘Weltangst’ or the existential
fear, fear of the Ultimate Knowledge or Self-Realization, getting free from all
the bonds of life, be completely free and independent; and ‘Erbsünde’ or the
born blemish, being thrown on the earth and condemned to death.
The multiple guilt
patterns in Kafka’s work are revealed and interpreted beyond existential
thinking - among others – for example, as legal, moral, psychological,
religious or social guilt.
In Kafka’s writing,
there are obvious references to both - Christianity and Judaism. The most
important scene in The Trial takes
place in a cathedral. However, the legend of the doorkeeper has a reference to
the Old Testament. Moses had to conquer many heavenly watchmen in a
hierarchical order to get the five books down from the Mountain of Sinai. ‘Thora’,
the sanctum sanctorum or the shrine in a synagogue contains these five books of
Moses, which are called the books of law. These are seen as legal and moral
religious scriptures. A villager seeking admittance to Law, the judgment, as
well as mercy or punishment are the images related to these religious books.
Kafka had engaged himself with the study of Judaism and had started learning
Hebrew.
‘Kabbala’ is
another important term from the Jewish religious, which means both - punishment and mercy. In all his works, Franz
Kafka implicates divine justice and grace. Brod sees the function of Kabbala,
Court of Justice and Mercy of God – in The
Trial and The Castle and explains
them theologically. He underlines the religious interpretation of these two
novels in the editor’s note.
Max Brod called
Kafka’s novels ‘Trilogy of loneliness’. All the three novels clearly show a
divide between the protagonists and the world. Longer the trial or search,
stronger the drift from the world. It is undoubtedly a process of advancing isolation,
which is portrayed through the struggle of a single person against the system.
The powerful nags on the strength of a person, who ultimately succumbs to the
given situation helplessly, is completely isolated and crushed.
Kafka’s novels are
called by some critics the ‘Landscapes of failures’. Fear for failure has been
elaborated on in Kafka’s Letter to his
father. His protagonists fail on many accounts – they fail to love, to
defend themselves, to have right contacts, to insist, to penetrate the system,
to submit the plea, above all to admit the guilt, to marry, to get right
information, to be friendly with the officials, to communicate, and so on. At
the end, Joseph K. fails even to kill himself. Unknowingly these protagonists
take a path of self-destruction. Their journey is often farcical and yet tragic.
In The Trial the protagonist first refutes,
is full of rage and enthusiasm to fight for justice, to defend himself. But
gradually he loses his energy, stamina, hope, strength, faith and nerve, till
he becomes completely feeble, listless, suppliant and pitifully submissive. At
the end, he resigns and shows no signs of protest, of self-defense or
self-respect in the moment of death. Such a death he sees as shame that will
outlive him.
The Castle appears to be a real incomplete fragment. In the last chapter the
same sledge takes K. away in his despair and loss of energy which took him in
the beginning to the private lodge. By this time, all his efforts to reach the
Castle or any responsible official from the Castle have shattered. The bar maid
in the lodge, who he wanted to marry because she had an affair with a prominent
official, leaves him. His assistants leave him. He does not get any assignment
as a land surveyor and is sent to the school as sweeper. Even that low job he
has to leave. Everyone in the village knows him and calls him ironically Mr. Surveyor,
while he is further degraded, humiliated and disgraced, until at the end he
loses his self-respect and identity.
However, different
from his protagonists, the real solution and salvation for Kafka comes through
writing. He has noted in his diary that his abilities and every possibility lie
in the field of literature. At another place, he laments that he was torn
between the inner and outer obligations. His writing is a depiction of his
dream-like inner life and the monstrous world in his head. Especially after
breaking the first engagement, he immersed himself in writing that came to be
known as The Trial. Writing was his
refuge. His solace. Letter to his father
is seen an exemplary self-psycho-analysis.
Does Kafka want to
suggest a sort of continuity, though the story line and goals are apparently
different in The Trial and The Castle? The progression of age of
the protagonists is noticeable. Karl Rossmann is 16 year old, Joseph K. is 30
year old and K. is in his 30is. There are obvious similarities with the
author’s biography on many accounts. All these three protagonists along with
some more from his stories like Georg Samsa from the Metamorphosis and Georg Bendemann from The Judgment, have much in common. They are all lone fighters, get
seriously entangled in situations without any bad intention.
They display
striving for freedom and self-realization. Freedom from the controlling power
of father through marriage, freedom from home or from the package of lineage
and heritage. Freedom from the authoritative, suppressing, exploiting power
through legal means; freedom from doubts about rights and duties, about the
right and wrong by approaching the highest authority.
The repeated issue
in all the three novels is that of identity and self-identification, papers and
documents to prove one’s identity. Karl Rossmann faces this question in every
episode of the novel. He is dismissed from the hotel as a liftboy and he had to
leave the place at once without his suitcase and his ‘Legitimationspapiere’. In
addition, Joseph K in The Trial
thinks of his ‘Legitimationspapiere’ as the first thing in self-defense. In The Castle, too K. has to show his
papers and prove his identity time and again. Not finding identity papers seems like Kafka’s nightmare. Kafka’s
protagonists always fumble and hesitate when they have to tell their name. They
don’t always give their real name. Karl Rossmann, e.g., gives his name as Negro
when he goes to the theatre group. K. in The
Castle mentions only once his name and that was again Joseph, like in the
Trial.
Kafka conjures and
surmises his stories. At every juncture, he speculates and pans out many
options. ‘Vermutung’or speculation and ‘Zögerung’or hesitation are the key
words to describe his narratives, which are at the same time real and surreal.
Reality and fiction, experience and imagination are intermingled to transform
mental images into literary fact in a common idiom, which unfolds with apparent
absurdities and contradictions. He sprinkles lexis of uncertainty and
subjunctive forms a bound. So is also the beginning of all the three novels.
Auf der Gallerie/ Up in the gallery is
an exemplary short story in this respect. The same story is told first in the
subjunctive. Then the second paragraph starts with : But it is not so. Then
follows the same story in indicative!
Kafka’s narration
is speculative, abstract, contemplative, illustrative, multivalent and
ambiguous. His assumptions, illusions, imagined allegations, his conditional or
wishful thinking come to the fore in his novels. What is said or depicted does
not actually give any information. Kafka makes contrary arguments supporting
both the sides, as a lone person playing both the parties in chess. There are
many such examples in Letter to his father,
which are extremely logical and consistent. He enumerates only potential
possibilities. Every narration of Kafka remains devoid of any conclusiveness,
any statement. The end of the stories is often mysterious and open. Thus,
ambivalence remains the underlying principle of all his writing.
Kafka’s experience
of reality is shaped by family, religion, language, society, inter personal
relations and his surroundings. Though Kafka’s literature sets out from a
private environment and experience, his novels are like dream sequences in the
picture series. More than in America, the other two novels are full of
nightmarish visions.
Nevertheless,
these poetically transformed texts remain socially applicable. They are as
appealing and relevant today as a century ago. We can recognize in them our own
experience of authority, hierarchy, bureaucracy, injustice, inaccessibility and
anonymity of domineering power, of corruption, of helplessness in the lonely
struggle with the system.
Kafka’s ability of
objective observation and working out personal experience in universal language
is astounding. His stories are about human destiny in general, irrespective of
chronological or topographical framework. They are timeless. Kafka did not talk
about someone or something that was. He was stuck in his present, actual
surroundings, without a temporal or spatial distance. He analyses the actual
situation he was living through which is, at the same time, a perpetually given
situation of human life.
Kafka has noted
that there are ‘innere und äußere Pflichten’, internal and external obligations.
He depicts the inner world. He gives expression to the monster in his head.
There is obviously a disconnect in his inner and outer world. He alienates
himself from the outer world. Empirical surroundings form the background in his
writing, but then the narration slips into the inner world of thought and
dreams. There is no explicit reference or indicator for the unreal, fabulous or
the dream world. The real and the unreal or surreal depictions are seamlessly
interwoven.
Kafka thus
presents psychological reality as social reality. His texts and the contents
remain highly abstract in spite of the concrete set up of the plot in day-to-day
life. Qualifying descriptions of situation and elaborations make them appear
even more senseless.
Kafka hardly ever mentions the
geographical names of places. When he does, they do not fix a location in
reality, but they become symbols. Time brackets and locations are amorphous,
fluid, without a tangible concreteness. Strangeness of Kafka’s locations and
spaces make them ambiguous, like the Judge in the painter’s attic, court in the
washwoman’s backyard, etc.
Ambiguity and confusion are common features
of Kafka’s writings. Nothing is definite or determinable. Kafka is a
genius in finding metaphors and symbolic situations. He depicts in allegories
and parables, which point to a manifold potential and various possibilities of
interpretation and application. Kafka’s anxiety or Angst is often defined by
temporal confusion. The stoy entitled Eine
alltaegliche Verwirrung / A common confusion is exemplary for this.
There are mistaken
identities and confusing situations. Joseph K. confuses priest for a prison
chaplain, books of law with pornography books, his colleagues in the bank with
the watchmen. Artist Tivorelli’s painting shows a goddess of Justice, of
victory and of hunting all in one. The Statue of Liberty in America carries a sword, and not a
torch. These situations of confusion are illusions and at the same time a
statement of the author, for they reveal the world as seen by the author.
Doubt,
uncertainty, restlessness, sense of being uprooted, sense of social exile,
crisis of expression and language, deconstruction of God’s world order, loss of
orientation, a lot of hesitation are characteristic of Kafka’s modernist
writing. Illusion, comment, critique or debate and ironic self-awareness are
used as effective means in his writing.
Immense striving
and struggle of Kafka’s protagonists for knowledge, justice, truth, and freedom
continue without any foreseeable end. They keep running on the spot, without
being able to make a step forward. Kafka’s novels, therefore, can be called ‘anti-Entwicklungsromane’,
where the storyline gives a picture of stagnation or regression.
Kafka’s texts
contain merely possibilities, potential of advancement. The Trial is also seen as revealing possibilities to turn away from
the so called normal world and find your own identity. The story of the doorkeeper
does not mention any deception, for, as the priest says, ‘the script is not
understandable. Understanding and misunderstanding are not mutually exclusive.
Opinions are often expression of frustration!’
Kafka’s modernist
writing, thus, does not depict the reality, as it is generally perceived. His
writing is condense and saturated with content. Kafka is, therefore, not just
an author of despair and deception, but far more an author of illusion,
speculation and of potential possibilities to interpret the contemporary
condition.
Bibliography
Arnold, H. L. (Hg.): Franz
Kafka, Text + Kritik, Sonderband, VII/94, München, 1994.
Badwe, Neeti: Nivdak
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Frankfurt am Main, (1953) 1976.
Kafka, Franz: Amerika,
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