Safranski (who is quite the public intellectual in Germany) gives us a brand new book about Kafka and fires up a discussion: What kind of writing abouSafranski (who is quite the public intellectual in Germany) gives us a brand new book about Kafka and fires up a discussion: What kind of writing about Kafka do we need in the year 2024, 100 years after his death? There are whole libraries worth of publications about the life, times, alleged intentions, and aesthetic principles of, IMHO, the greatest German-language writer who ever lived, why still write about Kafka, and under which framework? (Sure, the currently most obvious answer is to cash in on the centennial, but you know what I mean.)
And a lot of the criticism Safranski received stems from the lack of clarity regarding the book's aim: While some critics claim that "Writing for His Life" (the subtitle "Um sein Leben schreiben") does not add enough new insights to the canon of Kafka research, I'd maintain that it never even intended to do that. This is pop science for a broad audience that hasn't spent hundreds of hours devouring Kafka's complete works and his biographies and professorial exegesis and writing papers about the guy - and don't think I'm mocking these nerds, no, I'm in fact one of them. But there was a day when I started learning about Kafka and I found him mesmerizing but also highly enigmatic, so I needed a gateway in. Safranski does provide such a gateway in. And frankly: There is nothing worse than literary snobs who rip into more light-weight writing about complex authors in order to defend a superiority they imagine for themselves. "Keep the plebs away from Kafka!" - oh, come on, you're ridiculous. Storytelling is about sharing and connection, not your fragile egos. Congratulations that you know something about Kafka, now sit down and shut up.
As the subtitle suggests, Safranski wants to tell Kafka's story from the viewpoint of him feeling compelled to write: Kafka, the insurance lawyer, almost suffered from the all-encompassing urge to create literature, and feared that it will keep him from really living - he described himself as a man who consists of literature (I love that dude, but he was quite the heady drama king). From that general starting point, Safranski gives a short depiction of Kafka's life, heavily focused on his relationships with women, and intertwines this biography with often rather lengthy re-tellings of his major works plus the most commonly accepted interpretations. That's what Safranski does, not more, but also not less.
So yes, for well-read Kafka aficionados, this is not the book, because it's not supposed to be. This slim volume is not here to give an all-encompassing deep dive into what Kafka does. The thing with Kafka is that there are numerous ways to read his texts, so there is not the interpretation, but an unusually broad corridor of what motifs and plotting might mean. That's the fascination of Kafka, the psychological complexity of his frequently nightmarish literary visions. But before studying the four trillion ways to interpret The Metamorphosis, maybe newbies should start with a gateway in that doesn't amp up the ambiguity and thus the disorientation to the max.
And yes, Safranski's book is also dubiously paced, but oh well, I think that as a starting point, it's well done. I want more people to dare and read Kafka, without fear of "not getting it". And if you can learn one thing about Kafka from Safranski's book, it's that for him, it was not about getting literature and intellectual masturbation, it was about loving literature.
This volume does not only contain the obituary that was published in the "Neue Rundschau" in 1924, but also a bunch of scientific texts about mostly mThis volume does not only contain the obituary that was published in the "Neue Rundschau" in 1924, but also a bunch of scientific texts about mostly more obscure or highly specific aspects of Kafka's works, which, given the HUGE amount of research available on my favorite insurance lawyer ever, is a daring idea: The collection aims to open new perspectives on one of the most read and interpreted writers on the planet.
For my taste - and I'm speaking as a Kafka completist more than willing to go down dubious rabbit holes - the book is a little too random and disparate to really read it as whole, it's more suited as a resource that can be pulled when doing research on specific aspects of Kafka's work. ...more
Because the greatest German-language author EVER has died 100 years ago, there are quite some books coming out celebrating his legacy, and this antholBecause the greatest German-language author EVER has died 100 years ago, there are quite some books coming out celebrating his legacy, and this anthology, edited by a man known to champion and publish challenging international literature, offers a collection of essays by authors like - Sjón, who investigates the tangents between Kafka, Hans Christian Andersen, and CoDex 1962: A Trilogy, - Clemens J. Setz, who dissects The Cares of a Family Man - Jon Fosse, who writes about his work as a Kafka translator - Sasha Marianna Salzmann, who reads Kafka from a queer perspective ...and many more.
Naturally, the quality of the texts differs greatly and - personal preference! - there are more than a few authors in there whose opinions don't interest me one bit, but I love the idea of letting colleagues of Kafka explain what he means to them....more
Now Winner of the Wilhelm Raabe Prize (head judge Hubert Winkels, so no further questions); Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2022 Jan Faktor givesNow Winner of the Wilhelm Raabe Prize (head judge Hubert Winkels, so no further questions); Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2022 Jan Faktor gives us an unruly psychological text about the (real) suicide of his son who suffered from schizophrenia. The author's alter ego in the text shares quite some characteristics with Faktor himself: He's a Czech author from a Jewish family who moved from Prague to East Berlin, got involved with the independent writing scene and married an East German woman (fun fact: the real Faktor married the daughter of Christa Wolf). Scattered in the long-winded, highly associative text, we get very touching and sad scenes about the life of the unnamed son, and how it spiraled out of control: The obsessive-compulsive behavior, the mania, the drugs, the hospitals, the shattered relationships.
The novel is an attempt to process the suicide and how it relates to the narrator's life, which in this case means we get a broken autofictional autobiography; it also means that the narrator knows he is bound to fail, that he ultimately cannot portray his grief - Jan Faktor has spent twelve years writing this failure of a text (his own words) that intentionally mostly centers on the life of the protagonist, the son is more of a background figure that is nevertheless constantly present. The narrator tries to counter the sadness with humor, often captured in unusual language, wordplay, absurd dialogue and scenes as well as David Foster Wallace-esque meta-commentary on the functioning of the text as well as what is important and what is not. The messy result relates to the messy process of mourning, and whether this is really funny or not is probably a question of personal taste (I found it endlessly annoying).
I have to admit that the main feeling I got from the novel - and this does not apply to the scenes involving the son, but they are overall few - is boredom. I found the experimental parts to be stale, I thought the narrative tool to constantly stress the low quality of the text to be pretentious, and I frequently wondered why I should be interested in what I was told here (hello, Phlox - and again the question: Why are there no novels about the baseball bat years on the list, in a year highly influenced by quality literature about the issue?).
The narrator refers to himself as the title-giving "fool", and he also refers to the dead son as a fool - a metaphor rooted in sadness that can be seen in the context of the overall absurdity of life and the degree of helplessness we all have to deal with when facing it. I'm rather torn about the book, because I admire the concept, but really didn't enjoy the result. A book that should be longlisted, let alone shortlisted for the German Book Prize this is not....more
Czech transgressive literature: This slim novel is extremely challenging and uneasy, but also really innovative and intriguing. Our narrator is a 30-yCzech transgressive literature: This slim novel is extremely challenging and uneasy, but also really innovative and intriguing. Our narrator is a 30-year-old prostitute in Prague who means business, as she is fully aware that she is renting out her body as merchandise. She doesn't hold back when it comes to describing what men look for when they visit her fuckshop (her words, not mine), the title-giving three-room apartment furnished with anonymous, artificial objects - even the caged bird is made in China. The drastic stream-of-consciousness develops a sound of its own that is full of creative twists, most notably the way the protagonist talks about genitalia: The pronoun of her "sticker-inner" is he, while the visiting "hammers" are ascribed to be female, so referred to as she (please notice the plastic hammers on the cover; nice one!). This is not your cliched tale about an entrapped victim, it's way more layered than that.
When she is not working, the narrator, who fears her own physical deterioration because it's obviously bad for business, indulges in shopping/consumerism and rants about pedophiles (we frequently hear the argument that her job protects children from creeps) as well as the digitalized, alienated world, which begs questions regarding the product she sells, and she is all too aware of that. There is also quite some stuff in there where the narrator muses about the failures of wives/girlfriends, and it's oh-so-Michel Houellebecq-ian. I was fascinated by the particular, flowing, extreme language (I'm sure Virginie Despentes would be a fan) and the many contradictions and intellectual twists and turns that render the prostitute so interesting.
Disturbing in the best way, and aesthetically forward-thinking. If it's too strong, you're too weak....more
English: The Castle This is the ultimate text about the effects of power without accuntability: Kafka, the lawyer, once again shows a protagonist who hEnglish: The Castle This is the ultimate text about the effects of power without accuntability: Kafka, the lawyer, once again shows a protagonist who has to obey laws that seem arbitrary, who suffers under a monolithic, enigmatic force that robs him of his agency and renders him utterly helpless. The lack of self-efficacy is a main source of depression – no wonder parts of this story read like a gothic tale (and might be inspired by a classic horror movie).
Kafka’s protagonist K arrives at a nameless village and is informed that he can’t stay without permission from the enigmatic castle; K then states that he ist he new land surveyor, which the castle first declares to be untrue, but then he is allowed to stay anyway (we will never know whether K is actually a land surveyor or whether he was in fact hired or not). Gradually, to be acknowledged by the castle becomes K’s only objective: He wants those who hold power over his new home to acknowledge and legitimize his existence. His focus becomes an obsession, a futile striving that can never lead anywhere – again and again, he is denied access to the castle (not unlike the protagonist in Before the Law, who is denied access to justice objectified as a space behind a door he can’t pass). K dreams about success, but experiences failure.
First K doesn’t relate to the submissive and resigned villagers, but after a while, he himself takes on the same attitude, brought down by the apparent randomness and illogic of the system he can’t understand (and that maybe just makes no sense). The dynamics between village and castle remain beyond his grasp, the people in the castle seem to shun reality and operate a faceless, bureaucracy that has taken on a life of its own; there are no (apparent) bad intentions and throughout the story, the castle doesn’t sanction anyone, but it’s the lack accountability, logic and empathy that drives K to the edge. At the same time, K is an unreliable narrator: For instance, we don’t know what his job actually is, whether he has a wife (which he first claims, but then he proposes to Frieda), and when he is lying (towards the end, he admits that he is partly lying).
So what does the castle stand for? Could be a faceless bureaucracy, the human mind, the defiance of logic, the world of fathers, authoritarianism…if you could ascribe one clear meaning tot he text, it wouldn’t be Kafka. In German, „Das Schloß“ means „The Castle“, but also „The Lock“ – and not only is the castle literally locked to K, the story also can’t be fully unlocked by readers.
Interestingly, Kafka might have been inspired by Murnau’s classic vampire movie „Nosferatu“ which also features a castle a person can’t access. When Kafka wrote the text, he was staying at a health resort near Orava Castle, the setting of Nosferatu.
And after 35 texts by and about this great author, this concludes my Kafka reading extravaganza for now. What a writer. And for German-language readers: Check out Raphaela Edelbauer’s Das flüssige Land, inspired by The Castle, it’s a wonderful Austrian debut novel....more
English: Letter to the Father / Brief an den Vater It's a well-established fact that our Franz did struggle with the relationship to his father, a selfEnglish: Letter to the Father / Brief an den Vater It's a well-established fact that our Franz did struggle with the relationship to his father, a self-made businessman whom he experienced as physically and mentally stronger than himself. But reading this letter - which is more of a therapeutic exercise, it was never really posted and only published posthumously in 1952 -, one has to wonder whether one of the greatest authors ever actually was a drama king, and not in the literary sense. Or should the text be read as fiction? Many of the things Kafka describes are disputed, other aspects seem factually harmless, but are portrayed in a dramatic fashion.
The letter does a great job describing psychological states and emotions, and while Kafka passes judgement, the reader can clearly reach different conclusions - or none at all. The author ponders family dynamics, religion, the father's attitudes towards other people, marriage and writing as a profession. What it comes down to is that he perceives the father and himself as completely different characters, and he knows that he himself wants to win the father's approval, but also employs his literary works as a means of emancipation (see especially The Trial).
Kafka wrote the letter in 1919, when he just got engaged to Julie Wohryzek - his father disapproved of his fiancee. But it's not like Kafka was a 18 years old and without means and standing in the world: He was a 36-year-old doctor of law with a secure job and an obsession with his father's opinion who, from the outside, seemed like a pretty average guy. The closer you look, the more enigmatic this text gets: How much of Kafka's resentment was justified? Who was his father Hermann Kafka? Who was Franz Kafka himself: The guy in the letter? Which version in which biography?
At the end of the day, it's funny that so many scientists try to decode Kafka via this letter which might be just another literary text, a conglomerate of fact and fiction, true sentiments and wrong clues. It's impossible to interpret Kafka's literature, and it's just as impossible to decode him as a person....more
English: A Report for an Academy You know what species behaves most inhumanely? That's right: Humans. In this short story, Rotpeter (Red Peter), the moEnglish: A Report for an Academy You know what species behaves most inhumanely? That's right: Humans. In this short story, Rotpeter (Red Peter), the most famous monkey in German-language literature, gets captured in the West African jungle by an expedition for Hagenbeck and he is shipped away in a brutally small cage. Trying to figure out a way to survive and to escape the cage, Rotpeter starts to imitate humans, learning gestures and even the human language. When he finally arrives in Europe, he doesn't want to live in a zoo (which just means a bigger cage), so he starts working as a performer in a variété. With the help of teachers, he learns more and more about human behavior and even gets a proper education, thus becoming extremely popular - the whole text is written by himself and aims to explain his transformation and his former life as an ape to an enigmatic academy.
Alas, Rotpeter doesn't properly remember his life in the jungle: His assimilation is complete. What is tragic is that he did not learn the ways of humans because he wanted to or because he finds them particularly convincing; no, he simply wanted to survive, so he decided to deny his own nature and exchange it for the weird behaviors of the cruel species that shot and captured him. He even goes so far to have a chimpanzee as a lover who is traumatized by his life in captivity, and to state that he doesn't want to see her by day because he doesn't want to face her inner brokenness. We, the readers, never get to know what the title-giving "academy" is all about.
The obvious theme here is Jewish assimilation: Kafka was Jewish and the text was first published by Martin Buber in a magazine called "Der Jude" (The Jew). But there are more ways to read the text: In Prague, there really was a monkey performing in a variété, and Kafka was probably aware of that. On top of that, Kafka was very interested in social darwinism and animal behvior as depicted by Alfred Edmund Brehm. Just like in some of his other stories, Kafka questions what the difference between humans and animals really is (see: The Metamorphosis, The Burrow). And then, the whole thing works as a parody of the idea of education as imitation of what's socially acceptable, no matter how stupid.
And that's where the humor comes in: For instance, there is an episode in which Rotpeter has to learn to drink schnapps, because that's what humans do. Yup, the really absurd parts are the ones depicting human behavior that the poor (reasonable) monkey tries to adapt.
All in all, a slightly enigmatic, funny, sad and profound story about the weird species that is humanity. Kafka at his best....more
English: "First Sorrow" Another one of Kafka's stories about being artist, and here, the audience doesn't even matter - in fact, it's not even mentioneEnglish: "First Sorrow" Another one of Kafka's stories about being artist, and here, the audience doesn't even matter - in fact, it's not even mentioned. A trapeze artist dedicates his whole life to his craft and suffers whenever he is not on his trapeze (as Kafka did whenever he couldn't write); his troupe and impresario indulge him because he is invaluable for the traveling theater. At some point, the artist implores the impresario to get him a second trapeze, which is immediately granted to him. Still, he bursts into tears before taking his seat again and falling asleep. For the first time, the impresaio notices wrinkles on the artist's forehead.
First published in 1922, and then again as part of the story collection "A Hunger Artist", the very short story ponders artistic obsession and what might happen when he can't perform anymore - much like, well, A Hunger Artist. Not Kafka's best work, but essential reading when trying to figure out Kafka's attitude towards his profession, the art of writing. ...more
English: The Trial Kafka has only written three novels and finished none of them, because those texts were just too much for him to take - and I can reEnglish: The Trial Kafka has only written three novels and finished none of them, because those texts were just too much for him to take - and I can relate to that. Don't get me wrong, this is a compliment, because the haunting, nightmarish quality of the scenes, the psychological ambivalence, the specific mixture of the real and surreal, and the evocative portrayal of helplessness when facing random forces is what makes this author a genius, and of course this kind of literature is not easy to stomach.
In "The Trial", 30-year-old Josef K who works as a procurist in a bank gets arrested without knowing why, and he can still move freely after being informed about his "arrest". K desperately tries to find out what is going on, he discovers that the court has offices everywhere in the city, he even speaks in the courtroom without any effect, and he just can't make sense of the whole situation - then a priest tells him the story Before the Law, and K, without resisting, finally gets murdered (his unspoken sentence) in a bizarre ritual reminiscent of the human sacrifices of ancient civilizations in South America. The end. (For more details, check out this hilarious re-telling with playmobil figurines (in German)).
Let's face it: Trying to attempt to interpret this story is a ridiculous, if not to say kafkaesk endeavor (ha!). Kafka, the lawyer, questions power and its rules, he shows K as a man subjected to the random workings of a world out of control, of an anonymous force lacking accountability - although K, the banker, is himself a machine part of the inner workings of modern capitalism, he can't save himself. There is sex as compulsion, a means of power and manipulation, there is sadism, there is a complicit church preaching the pointlessness of resistance - and there is humor.
Of course it's possible to read this in an autobiographical context:When Kafka started working on the book in 1914, he had just broken up his engagement with Felice Bauer and felt like he was unfairly blamed. The same year, his home country declared war on Serbia - the start of WW I.
Essential reading (although he has written even better stuff) - Franz Kafka, what a guy....more
English: A Hunger Artist Many of Kafka's texts are bleak, but this one is particularly haunting: The protagonist works for an impresario who markets hiEnglish: A Hunger Artist Many of Kafka's texts are bleak, but this one is particularly haunting: The protagonist works for an impresario who markets him as a hunger artist travelling around and eating nothing for up to 40 days - not because it becomes too dangerous after that, but because experience shows that that's the time span audiences are captivated by the act. But as the times change, people get less interested in hunger artists, and the proatgonist goes on sitting in his cage and eating nothing next to the circus animals, where he is almost forgotten and finally dies, the cage then being occupied by a panther.
One obvious theme here is the joy of the masses being entertained by novelty and an "art" that is destructive for the performer - but this performer enjoys his work, although it eventually kills him. Kafka saw loneliness and ascetism as necessary conditions for an artist to do his job properly. And then there's the disconnect between the audience, who turns their backs on the hunger artist, and the artist who goes on doing what he does, because it's a compulsion. Again, Kafka is known to have said that not being able to write was like torture to him.
The ending is interesting as well: The hunger artist wanted to sit in the cage and perform, the panther is forced to sit in that unnatural environment - it's also an obvious nod to Rilke's poem The Panther ("To him, there seem to be a thousand bars / and back behind those thousand bars no world" - this sounds so much better in German).
What a troubled individual this Franz Kafka must have been, and what a great writer he was....more
English: The Burrow This unfinished parable published posthumously in 1928 tells the story of an animal building and constantly perfectioning a subterrEnglish: The Burrow This unfinished parable published posthumously in 1928 tells the story of an animal building and constantly perfectioning a subterranean burrow to protect supplies and defend itself against enemies. The unspecified animal is governed by obsession, fear and an increasing paranoia, and the burrow becomes an ever-evolving labyrinth in which the builder traps itself, but which nonetheless can never satisfy its inhabitant's longing for absolute safety. When the animal starts hearing a sound, it desperately tries the identify the source...
Similar to the bug in The Metamorphosis, this animal is of course not really an animal, at least not completely. And much like Poe's haunted house in The Fall of the House of Usher, the burrow can be read as representing a deranged human mind which in this case obsesses over perceived enemies and threats. The labyrinth is (also) in the animal's mind, and its thoughts are getting lost in the maze. And there's another story by Poe that comes to mind, The Tell-Tale Heart: While Poe's protagonist is tortured by the real or imagined sound of a beating heart that seemingly manifests subconscious guilt, the animal hears a real or imagined sound that might represent fear or universal danger that can't be escaped. The fact that the animal can't find a logical explanation for the sound causes panic and complete loss of self-awareness.
It's also interesting that the animal governs and feeds off of smaller animals inside the burrow, and fears those that are equally strong or stronger in the outside world. The stream-of-consciousness technique and the fact that the burrow can also be seen as a metaphor for the modern city in which people get lost and are alienated makes this a typical text representing literary modernity - but don't read it as an exemplary text for a literary period, read it as an unsettling tale about the common craziness of, well, homo sapiens. I would love to know what ending Kafka would have envisioned had he been able to finish the piece. ...more
English: Before the Law Kafka declared this text (which is also part of his novel The Trial) to be a legend, which might have been intended as a joke cEnglish: Before the Law Kafka declared this text (which is also part of his novel The Trial) to be a legend, which might have been intended as a joke considering the content. The very short story goes like this: An unnamed man from the countryside (so probably a guy without much power and money) wants to enter "the law" - materialized as a room -, but he is held back by a doorkeeper who tells him that he can't enter - presently. The man keeps on waiting, pleading, and arguing for years and years, he tries to bribe the doorkeeper - and shortly before he dies, he asks the doorkeeper why nobody else has tried to enter "the law", to which the doorkeeper replies that this entry was designed only for him and that he will now close it. The End. Wow.
Kafka was part of the German-Jewish minority in Bohemia during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he was a lawyer working for an insurance company - just let that sink in in the context of this story. Much like In the Penal Colony, there is no justice in the legal system portrayed here, its workings remain mysterious and random. The doorkeeper fulfills his duty - towards whom and why? Should the man trying to gain access have been more persistent, as some reviewers suggest? If so: What could he have done? Considering Kafka's body of work, it seems like a rather far-fetched interpretation to me to say that the author wanted to say that instead of waiting, people should take action. Rather, this seems to be a text about helplessness and an authority that can't be overcome, about the cruelty of institutionalized power employed randomly - which crushes the individual. Kafka is not here to give advice or offer solutions.
The room is a powerful metaphor in many of Kafka's works - just look at The Metamorphosis and the rooms which Gregor can and can't access, or The Judgement where the terrible verdict is spoken in a small, dark room. Now, this door to "the law" was designed especially to not let this particular person pass through it - that's a whole new level of cruelty.
For Kafka, this is a very accessible text, but it's only the door through which you have to pass to make it to The Trial....more
English: A Country Doctor The title story of Kafka's 1920 text collection is really, really dark: It is told from the perspective of the title-giving cEnglish: A Country Doctor The title story of Kafka's 1920 text collection is really, really dark: It is told from the perspective of the title-giving country doctor, a man who is confronted with the plight of simple rural folk every day while lacking the means to truly care for them. The doctor's horse has died in the winter's cold, and when he is called to an emergency during the night, he has to borrow two horses while knowing that the guy who has helped him will probably rape his housemaid right after he leaves. When the doctor arrives at the sickbed of the child he was called to heal, he finds the boy with a terrible wound full of worms. And now - Kafka, guys! - the story takes a surreal turn...
The enigmatic layers of this text are fascinating: The doctor has to make the impossible choice either to defend his housemaid or help a dying child - and why didn't he take the housemaid, an object of desire for both him and the brute horse owner, with him (sex! Freud!)? What's up with those borrowed horses, who watch him treat the boy through the window (Freud!!)? Why does the wound have the color after which the housemaid is named, Rosa (which means pink in German)? Does the twist stand for the repressed guilt the doctor feels (even more Freud!!!)? Why does the doctor, who is anticipated by the boys' parents as a savior, hardly act and seems more like a man who is pushed around by fate (voilà: Kafka's typical theme of helplessness)?
The most captivating element of the story is its atmosphere though: The cold, the darkness, the sense of doom, the violence, the sickness - this is a haunting tale of horror. At some point, a choir enters the scene, which gives this text about a nameless doctor in the countryside the air of a Greek tragedy. Disturbing, to say the least - and great....more
English: The Stoker Also published as a stand-alone in a literary journal, "The Stoker" is the first chapter of "The Missing Person" (Der Verschollene)English: The Stoker Also published as a stand-alone in a literary journal, "The Stoker" is the first chapter of "The Missing Person" (Der Verschollene), an unfinished novel later published as America (today, the correct title to reference this work is the original one chosen by Kafka himself). In the text, 16-year-old Karl Roßmann is sent to, you guessed it, the US to avoid scandal and alimony after a 35-year-old housemaid had his child. Upon leaving the ship, he realizes that he forgot his umbrella (hello, metaphor!) and goes back inside - but he gets lost in the many hallways and finally runs into the stoker of the vessel. After some chatting, he joins him on his way to the captain where he wants to complain about his superior and find justice (notice the connection between Karl's last name, Roßmann (horseman), and Michael Kohlhaas, the famous novella about a horse dealer seeking justice against the authorities). But in the captain's cabin, Karl coincidentally meets his influental emigré uncle...
The whole piece lives from the clash of Karl, who was abandoned and sent to another continent by his parents, and the lowly stoker on the one side and the captain and the uncle who is a senator on the other. When, in an unrealistic identity-reveal-twist of Shakespeare-like proportions, it becomes clear that the stoker's new buddy is the senator's nephew, power relations shift as Karl is now associated with the powerful. But as he himself wonders: Will the uncle ever be able to replace him the stoker?
The theme of power relations is also illuminated when the superior of the stoker enters the scene: From a logical point of view, he must be in the wrong, but he displays the same habitus as the captain and is thus trusted and taken more seriously.
Kafka initially intended to publish "The Missing Person", The Judgement and The Metamorphosis in one book, as a trilogy entitled "The Sons" - "The Missing Person" would have shown Karl Roßmann sinking lower and lower in the social hierarchy and then...well, you know what happened to Gregor Samsa (The Metamorphosis), Georg Bendemann (The Judgement) and Michael Kohlhaas. It's very sad that we will never read the finished book....more
English: The Judgment Kafka himself tried to interpret this story he "gave birth to" (his words) one night in 1912, and his analysis culminates in the English: The Judgment Kafka himself tried to interpret this story he "gave birth to" (his words) one night in 1912, and his analysis culminates in the sentence: "I'm not sure either" - and that's an argument FOR the text. The power of Kafka is his ability to puzzle readers with worlds that are both familiar and surreal, and there is more than one and no definite way to read him. As Susan Sontag points out in Against Interpretation and Other Essays: "The work of Kafka (...) has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. (...) But the merit of these works certainly lies elsewhere than in their meanings." Word, Susan.
"The Judgement" tells the story of Georg Bendemann, a young merchant who writes a letter to his unnamed friend in St. Petersberg. The text tells us that Georg hesitated to convey his successes and recent engagement to the friend because he perceives himself to be happier and more accomplished than his hapless, unmarried friend - and this is why Georg shows the letter to his elderly father first. The old man who sits in a dark room with dirty undergarments goes on a rant and claims that he has been corresponding with the friend for quite some time and that Georg is a terrible son and friend with a fiancee who is more or less a slutty brute...
The first impulse of readers who have heard a thing or two about Kafka is to point to his Letter to the Father / Brief an den Vater which illustrates Kafka's own difficult relationship with his old man. The autobiographical references are of course there, but it's interesting to note that the it's the friend in Petersburg who lives how Kafka imagined an artist should live: Unmarried, lonely, not distracted by being forced to work and provide. So who's the author's alter ego here? Mysterious!
But let's discuss the obvious for a second, which, interestingly, hasn't gotten as much attention as all things more meta: The father in the story can be read as showing signs of beginning dementia. Confusion, low emotional and social control, aggression - is the father ill? And let's question Georg: Is he really a successful, self-assured businessman when he consults his dad before posting a letter to his friend? What kind of friend is a man who never visits and only gets curated information? Mysterious!
And of course you can try to decipher this story by referring to Sigmund Freud. Or ponder the many connections to The Metamorphosis. Or you can find an access via mythology: Georg drowns - in the river Styx / Hades? Does he pass over (hello, theological interpretation) to a new life, or to the realm of the dead, or does he kill a part of himself metaphorically? Hmmm...mysterious!
This is great, great literature, because it's not here to be decoded and digested - it's undecodable, it transcends traditional ideas of meaning. It holds on to the mystery of art....more
English: In the Penal Colony Torture porn of the kafkaesque variety: A highly renowned explorer visits an island in order to do research on its peculiEnglish: In the Penal Colony Torture porn of the kafkaesque variety: A highly renowned explorer visits an island in order to do research on its peculiar legal system which revolves around an elaborate, monstruous execution machine that inscribes the (declared) wrongdoings of the condemned deeper and deeper into his skin until, after hours of torture, he finally dies. The officer who demonstrates the device to the explorer aims to convince him of the advantages and importance of the traditional machine which was designed and built by his old commander - the new commander, on the other hand, seems to be more sketipcal of its value. To underline his point, the officer makes the person who should be executed get out of the machine again and lets himself be strapped onto it - and then things get out of control...
I will not even try to fully decipher all levels of meaning Kafka offers us - at the end of the day, Kafka's riddles can't be solved, which is why he's a genius. But what stands out is of course that all characters remain unnamed, they are untterly defined by their function, and they outsource justice to a machine - a machine that finds everyone guilty, so it also tortures and kills everyone, there is no way out (needless to say, this legal system has de facto nothing to do with legality and justice). Check for a typical topic of this author: Helplessness. All this happens on an island, so there are ways in which the place is isolated. Aaaand: The machine is said to promise a form of deliverance, so there is also a religious theme going on.
Plus, hey: The thing tortures through writing. A non-human entitiy, built by a human, produces text and passes judgement, it inflicts pain by writing on the victim on whom it impresses meaning. It's a well-known fact that Kafka himself suffered when he couldn't write, that he explained that he felt physical pain in such instances. Has your head exploded yet? There's more: Kafka, a lawyer working for an insurance agency (who saw lots of reports on accidents with machines at the workplace), was a student of Robert Heindl, the lawyer and criminologist known for his advocacy of fingerprinting. Heindl also wrote a book called Meine Reise nach den Strafkolonien in which he talks about his travels to the penal colonies in the South Sea - there, he saw...you guessed it: An execution machine. Has Kafka read the book? That's a definite maybe.
Another attempt at decoding the text: Does Kafka talk about war? Mind you, this was written in 1914, two months after the start of WW I, so before the rise of industrialized warfare (WW I) and industrialized genocide (WW II). Still, the story can be read as a tale about totalitarianism, rationalization and dehumanisation - literary modernity, these are your hot topics. In this context, it's interesting to look at the characters and their behavior: The explorer is just standing by, he is not trying to stop the events while he himself is safe. The officer is defending the inventor of the torture machine with ideological furor and based on personal allegiance to his former commander. The simple soldier does what he is told to do, although he gets along well with the condemned. And the condemned? He doesn't matter. He's here to die, human material for the machine, and the text we read doesn't treat him any better.
A tricky, vicious, enigmatic, fascinating text - a typical Kafka....more
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