Franz Kafka

[xiuxiu]

anyone into him?

i'm thinking INTp

quotes: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#Sourced

[indigoroom]

NiTe imo too

[false]

Kafka is ENTp it is for sure. My girlfriend is a great fan of him, I heard a read many about him. He is more like ENTp not INTp.

[Not A Communist Shill]

The piece 'Letter To My Father' is basically an autobiography of Kafka's life (in relation to his father), and is a thoroughly interesting read. It can be found here.

Kafka's father was clearly not a nice person, by Kafka's own account. I was wondering what Kafka's type might appear to be from this letter (which wasn't actually sent), and if this typing differs from what people (i.e. you) would otherwise have thought.

I only have a loose and crappy opinion on his type .

[Phaedrus]

xSTj (ESTj > ISTj) for Franz

Definitely not. Are you insane?

[Radio]

Bump.







“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

“Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
― Franz Kafka

---

My first impression of him was INXx, Ne-INXj > INXp, but now I think Ni dom is a much closer fit. I think k0rpsy was the first to suggest INTp and that seems alright. At the moment I'm thinking Te(?)-INTp E5 sx/sp. Possibly Fe-INFp? Not entirely sure.

[glam]

of his works i have only read "The Metamorphosis", but reading it made me think IEI/ILI due to the stream-of-consciousness style in which it was written, not to mention the depressing, fatalistic melancholy of it


from what i remember semantics/themes & speech peculiarities are especially pronounced throughout the story:

crises, sense of time
interdependence of objects, events, and processes
foresight or anticipation
memory
uncertainty
birth and death imagery
mirror and reflection themes
metamorphosis
symbolism
synesthesia

metonymy and synecdoche should probably also be included, but i'd have to re-read for the specific language used.

[Korpsy Knievel]

IXI works fine for me. Typing him adds nothing to his writing.

[Beautiful sky]

SLI

[Animal]

That is one rad pompadour.

I've read a few of his works: The Metamorphosis, The Castle, The Trial, and the first chapter of Amerika. ILI works, I think. He reminds me of what Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. would be like if Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a depressive, over-earnest European.

[inconnu]

ILI

negativist, Se-valuing, strong Ni

[Creepy-bg]

[HERO]

On a subjective note, for what it's worth, I don't think I like his writing all that much. The only work by Kafka I read from start to finish was The Metamorphosis, and that was in 2004 for English 10. But whenever I tried to read one of his novels, I never had a strong desire to continue reading.

My Mom likes Franz Kafka. She said, "Kafka's writing is gorgeous, expressive. Everything he writes I see in images and feel. He's so natural in his writing and so powerful."

"I was crying..." referring to how moved she was by the (ending of) The Metamorphosis.

She also read The Castle: "The Castle -- the nonsense, the paradox(es) really thrilled me . . ."

"Even in our reality, sometimes we get so entangled, and no one believes us. We are condemned, accused with no reason."

"Kafka is such a mind, it's like going in a labyrinth..."

"Kafka has such a uniqueness of writing. Without using too many new words it makes me feel the pain and suffering."

[HERO]

“Nobody will read what I say here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were commanded

to help me, every door and window would remain shut, everybody would take to bed and draw the

bedclothes over his head, the whole earth would become an inn for the night. And there is sense in that,

for nobody knows of me, and if anyone knew he would not know where I could be found, and if he knew

where I could be found, he would not know how to deal with me, he would not know how to help me.

The thought of helping me is an illness that has to be cured by taking to one’s bed.

“I know that, and so I do not shout to summon help, even though at moments—when I lose

control over myself, as I have done just now, for instance—I think seriously of it. But to drive out such

thoughts I need only look around me and verify where I am.”—Franz Kafka, “The Hunter Gracchus”


Literature: Franz Kafka’s Suffering

Thomas Mann wrote of Franz Kafka: “He was a dreamer, and his fiction is often conceived and fashioned

altogether along the lines of a dream. His works are a laughably precise imitation of the a-logical and

uneasy absurdity of dreams, those strange and shadowy mirrors of life.” Alred Doblin wrote: “What he

writes bears the stamp of absolute truth, not at all as if he had made it up. Curiously jumbled, to be

sure, but organized around an absolutely true, very real, center. . . . Many have said that Kafka’s novels

have the nature of dreams—and we can certainly agree with that. But what is ‘the nature of dreams’?

The spontaneous course they take, entirely plausible and transparent at every moment; our feeling and

awareness of the profound rightness of the things taking place and the feeling that these things concern

us very much” (quoted in Wagenbach, Franz Kafka, p. 144).

I would say that Kafka was not imitating the structure of dreams in his works but that he was

dreaming as he wrote. Without his realizing it, experiences from early childhood found their way into his

writing, just as they do into other people’s dreams. Looking at it this way, we get into difficulty: for

either Kafka is a great visionary who sees through the nature of human society and his wisdom

somehow “comes from on high” (in which case this can have nothing to do with childhood) or his fiction

is rooted in his earliest unconscious experiences and would then, according to popular opinion, lack

universal significance. Could it be, however, that we cannot deny the truth of his works for the very

reason that they do draw upon the child’s intense and painful way of experiencing the world, something

that has meaning for all of us? Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “I had never read a line by this author that I did

not find relevant or amazing in the most peculiar way.” In this chapter, devoted to Kafka’s suffering, I

cannot hope to do full justice to his work but shall only use some examples from it to show how the

writer, without knowing it, tells about his childhood in what he writes. Kafka scholars who are receptive

to my approach and do not try to apply ready-made psychoanalytic theories to this author will be able

to add an endless number of examples to mine. In any case, having read his letters, I see clear signs of

his childhood suffering on every page of his fiction.

In other words, this chapter is not to be understood as the application of psychoanalytic theory

to a writer of genius or as a literary interpretation of Kafka’s works. It owes its existence both to my oath

of professional secrecy, which prevents me from discussing what I know about the backgrounds of

writers who are still alive, and to the question that kept occurring to me as I was reading Kafka: What

would have happened if Kafka’s despair over not being able to bring himself to marry, over his

tuberculosis—whose psychological significance he saw with great clarity—and over the torments of

insomnia and numerous other symptoms had driven him to seek out an analyst who subscribed to

Freudian drive theory? I know that detractors of psychoanalysis who have had no experience with the

unconscious would smile at such a question and might say Kafka would have had the good sense, after

the first session, not to go back a second time to a situation in which he was so totally misunderstood. I

do not share this assumption at all; I am even convinced that a person like Kafka, who from childhood to

puberty never had the good fortune to find someone who understood him, would not have sensed this

same lack in his psychoanalyst all that quickly. He might have struggled with all his might to find

understanding, the way he did with his fiancée Felice nearly every day for five years. He would have had

equally little success, however, with a psychoanalyst who was of the opinion that Freud had uncovered

all the secrets of childhood and of the unconscious with his Oedipus complex and concept of “infantile

sexuality.” Thus, it is hard to say how quickly Kafka could have freed himself from such an involvement.

Yet I do not doubt that Kafka’s insomnia and his unrelenting anxiety would have abated or even

disappeared entirely if it had been possible for him to acknowledge and experience in analysis his

feelings from early childhood—especially his anger at not being understood, his feelings of

abandonment, and the constant fear of being rejected and manipulated—and to connect these feelings

with his original attachment figures. Neither do I doubt that his ability as a writer, rather than being

diminished, would even have been enhanced . . .


- The common belief that neurosis is an asset for art may possibly be rooted in an exploitative

attitude that is somehow understandable. We could, for instance, argue: What would the works of

Kafka, Proust, or Joyce be without their authors’ neuroses? Aren’t these the very writers who have

described our own inner perils and inner prisons, our compulsions and absurdities? Therefore, we

would not want them to have been mentally sound, to have written like a Goethe, because then we

would have been deprived of a significant experience and unconscious mirroring. In Kafka’s The Trial, for

example, we experience our own incomprehensible guilt feelings, in The Castle our powerlessness, and

in “The Metamorphosis” our loneliness and isolation; yet the portrayal of these existential situations

does not cause us to despair, for they apply only to Kafka’s “fictitious” characters. Such writers fulfill an

important function for us that we would not like to forgo—that of mirroring—and nothing is required of

us in return. We, as these authors’ posterity, take on, in a sense, the role of their parents, since we, too,

profit from their artistic gifts without having to deal with their actual suffering.

This thought first struck me when I read the letters written to Mozart by his father, quoted in

Florian Langegger’s fascinating study, Mozart—Vater und Sohn. The father wrote: “Above all you must

devote yourself with all your soul to your parents’ well-being, otherwise your soul will go to the devil. . .

. I can expect everything from you out of a sense of filial obligation. . . . I’ll live for another few years,

God willing, pay my debts—and then as far as I’m concerned you can go knock your head against a stone

wall if you’re so inclined” (pp. 86 and 92). These and similar passages don’t quite fit the image of the

loving father that history has handed down to us. But they show very plainly the narcissistic abuse of the

child, which in most cases need not exclude great affection and strong encouragement. After reading

Leopold Mozart’s “loving" letters selected by Langegger, it should come as no surprise to us that

the son outlived his father by only a short time, dying at the age of thirty-seven, and that before

his death he suffered from a fear of being poisoned. Yet how unimportant the tragic fate of this

human being seems to posterity when weighed against his outstanding achievement.


Although the subjective side of an artist’s tribulations usually is of no importance to

posterity, I should like to devote this chapter to the tragic personal life of the writer Franz Kafka.

I do this because I suspect there are numerous patients with a similar background; even though

they may turn to psychoanalysis, they are not helped, since traditional analysts, following in

Freud’s footsteps, generally believe that the work of art is “a substitute for healthy drive

fulfillment,” that is, a sign of neurosis, or, put differently, that as “a product of culture” it is the

result of “drive sublimation.”

If there should be someone like Kafka today (and I don’t doubt that we encounter many

similarly constituted people with a similar childhood history), what would happen if he

underwent an analysis based on the drive theory?

We can find possible answers to this question in the extensive literature about Kafka’s

Oedipal, pre-Oedipal, and . . . even homosexual drive desires. Gunter Mecke, for instance, writes

in “Franz Kafkas Geheimnis” (Franz Kafka’s Secret):


The central subject of The Trial is the test of Josef K.’s sexuality, which he does not pass,

either heterosexually (with Miss Burstner) or homosexually (with the “painter” Titorelli). As a

consequence, K. is finally punished by being sodomized by two bailiffs. [Psyche 35, 1981, p.

214]


From the particulars of this article we can gather what Kafka would have been up against

if Mecke had taken on his analysis. Mecke confesses:


Kafka’s writings have always been far more of a stumbling block for me than they have been

food for thought. . . . Heaven knows why I of all people was assigned the task of giving several

Kafka seminars in succession (beginning in 1970). I led them like a blind man leading the blind,

with growing dismay, finally with a feeling of shame. I positively didn’t feel up to the subject

matter and realized it was driving me to talk nonsense. I was stewing in my own juice and had to

admit—and be told by my very outspoken students—that I too had allowed myself to become an

intellectual counterfeiter with my “interpretations” of Kafka.

Initially, psychoanalysis as a method was of little help to me, sometimes it was a

hindrance; that is to say, with its preconceived constructs it tricked me into taking some leaps in

interpreting individual statements of Kafka’s. It doesn’t work. You have to have wandered

around in Kafka’s labyrinthine system for a long time before you can get your bearings in any of

its individual dead-end passageways. Then, to be sure, the master key can be deduced. . . . I took

to heart the advice of Gardena (in The Castle), who hates the land surveyor K. You have only to

listen to him carefully and then you are on to him. . . . That becomes the heart of my method. Not

infrequently this heart beat so wildly that I felt a kind of fury in me. [p. 215]


This fury can occur when a person is trying to understand something or someone and all

the available tools for understanding fail. That was also the situation Kafka must have found

himself in, and had he undergone analysis, he certainly would have transmitted this feeling to his

analyst, the same way his works sometimes do to his readers, who, after thinking they have

already understood something, are suddenly confronted with an absurd situation. Therefore, we

shouldn’t be surprised at Mecke’s “fury”; it could be reflecting—in the form of the counter-

transference, so to speak—the feelings of little Franz. But—and here is the big difference—

analysts need not put up with the desperate feeling of powerlessness the way a child or patient

must, for they can rid themselves of this unbearable feeling by offering the patient explanations

that ignore his or her plight. In this way they take revenge for their inability to understand and

are happy finally to have a patient under their control. Mecke, too, is triumphant after he is on to

the tricks of the cunning fellow Franz Kafka and describes him as a “poisoner,” who conceals his

“homosexuality” with “schizophrenic cunning” in a language “analogous to the slang used by

criminals.” In his long article, Mecke points out exactly those passages in the story where he

believes he has caught “Kafka the boy chaser” (p. 227) red-handed in his homosexual

fantasies and activities. Mecke is not lacking in thoroughness, but the information about the

homosexual abuse Kafka himself supposedly underwent is presented, without documentation or

support, in a footnote, which merely says: “Abundant evidence, which must be passed over here,

indicates that at the age of fifteen Kafka was homosexually seduced or—what is more likely—

raped.” Without any substantiation! In my supervisory work and in listening to case

presentations in analytic circles, I noticed countless times that no importance was attributed to

information of this nature, because all the emphasis was placed on describing the patient’s “drive

desires” (the child’s guilt).

One has every right to see in a work of literature what one must see in it, for however

contemptuous a reader’s attitude may be, it can have no deleterious effect on the finished work.

But the patient in an analyst’s office can easily become the victim of this type of attitude. Just as

Professor Mecke did not read Kafka voluntarily but was, as he says, obliged to teach a series of

Kafka seminars, so too an analyst may taken on a patient whose nature is totally foreign to him,

perhaps because at that moment he happens to need a case for economic reasons. If the patient

then unconsciously confronts him with certain absurdities from his, the patient’s, childhood, this

can easily lead the therapist to adopt an attitude not unlike Mecke’s toward Kafka and will thus

cause him to rely on complicated theories. Should the patient become aware of the therapist’s

powerlessness or complain that he is not being understood, he will be told that he is now

becoming aggressive because the analyst is not responding to his homosexual advances. In my

own training I often heard explanations like this, and it took me a long time to see through their

nature as a defense mechanism on the part of supervisors and other analysts. A well-trained

candidate will inevitably think, “Perhaps there is some truth to it.” And the patient, who sees the

godlike qualities of his or her first attachment figures in the analyst, cannot resist the powerful

grip of the interpretation given, especially if it is presented in a self-assured tone of voice

allowing no room for alternatives. If analysts could acknowledge and experience their

occasional despair over their lack of understanding, then they might gain important access to

their patients’ childhood. At least this has been my personal experience.

Mecke’s article is also characteristic of the psychoanalytic approach based on the drive

theory. One might assume that this approach is definitely a thing of the past and rarely

encountered today; similarly, we would like to believe that “poisonous pedagogy” has no place

in our day and age. Unfortunately, the opposite is true, and there are still frequent attempts to

label the patient (here Franz Kafka) a sly deceiver, whose underhandedness can fortunately be

exposed by using the right keys. Such attempts are a logical consequence of psychoanalytic

training that emphasizes the drive theory.

Of course, not all analysts proceed along these lines: Donald W. Winnicott, Marion

Milner, John Bowlby, Jan Bastiaans, Heinz Kohut, Massud Khan, William G. Niederland,

Christel Schottler, and many others have been able to help creative people substantially because

they were not compelled to trace their patients’ creativity back to drive conflicts and

systematically point out their “dirty fantasies”. Yet Mecke’s contemptuous, deprecatory, even

abusive attitude, reminiscent of the methods of “poisonous pedagogy,” is by no means an

exception; indeed, it is representative of the (unconscious and unintentional) prevailing

tendency in psychoanalysis today. The editorial comment introducing Mecke’s article is an

indication that the official advocates of this attitude regard it as perfectly normal and even as

something new:


Drawing on Kafka’s letters, Mecke reads Kafka’s stories and novels as cryptograms, as

encoded artistic messages about the experiences of someone who is on the borderline between

homosexuality and heterosexuality. This new way of interpreting Kafka is presented here by

using his story “The Hunter Gracchus” as an example.


This “new way” of looking at Kafka is not new insofar as someone else had already

treated him the same way Mecke does now. As Kafka’s Letter to His Father makes clear, the

father also rejected, scorned, and at times must have hated the little boy, whose questions he

didn’t understand and simply ignored. Most children whose parents feel threatened by their

child’s very nature suffer a similar fate. If this trauma is repeated at the beginning of

analysis, before an empathic inner object has been established, it can lead to an outbreak of

psychosis. Then we say the patient has encountered his “psychotic core,” failing to take into

account that in his analysis—that is, in the present—he has once again been subjected to a real

trauma. Because he is unable to endure this without a supportive companion, he succumbs to a

psychotic episode.

In the following pages I shall not apply any pat theories to Kafka but shall attempt to

set down what I learned about his childhood when I read his fiction and, above all, his letters.

By so doing I am also describing indirectly my analytic methodology, which I sum up as the

search for my patients’ early childhood reality without any attempt to spare their parents. The

difference between the psychoanalysis of a literary work and the psychoanalysis of a person is

that in the latter case the articulation of suffering occurs not in the work of art but in the

patient’s associations and reenactments within the transference and countertransference.

However, my attitude toward the child within the adult is the same in both cases.


The twenty-nine-year-old Kafka notes in his diary that tears came to his eyes when he

read aloud the conclusion of his story “The Judgment.” During the night following this

reading (between December 4 and 5, 1912), he wrote to Felice Bauer:


Frankly, dearest, I simply adore reading aloud; bellowing into the audience’s expectant and

attentive ear warms the cockles of the poor heart. . . . As a child—which I was until a few years

ago—I used to enjoy dreaming of reading aloud to a large, crowded hall . . . the whole of

Education sentimentale at one sitting, for as many days and nights as it required . . . and

making the walls reverberate. Whenever I have given a talk, and talking is even better than

reading aloud (it’s happened rarely enough), I have felt this elation, and this evening was no

exception. [Letters to Felice, p. 86]


These words do not go particularly well with the popular image of the modest and

reserved Franz Kafka. Yet how understandable they are, coming from the pen of someone who

had no one throughout his entire childhood in whom he could confide his real and deepest

concerns.

Max Brod writes in his biography that Kafka’s mother was a kindhearted and wise

woman. (The cliché “a kindhearted woman” still seems to fit biographers’ mother image.) When

we read this, knowing that no one was closer to Kafka than Brod, we realize even more clearly

how lonely Kafka’s life was. His mother, Julie Kafka, whose own mother and then grandmother

died when she was three years old, was essentially a good and submissive child all her life, first

for her father and then for her husband. She was constantly at the latter’s disposal, during the day

to help him in his business and in the evening to play cards with him (“for thirty years, which is

my entire life,” her son writes Felice). Franz was her first child; then in quick succession she had

two more sons, one of whom lived two years and the other only six months. Later, she gave birth

to three daughters when Franz was between the ages of six and nine.

All of Kafka’s writing, including his letters, gives us only an approximate idea of how

much a child of his intensity and depth of awareness is affected by these births and deaths as well

as by feelings of abandonment, envy, and jealousy if he has no one to help him experience and

express his true feelings. (There are parallels in the childhoods of Holderlin, Novalis, and

Munch, among others.) This alert, curious, highly sensitive—but by no means disturbed—child

was hopelessly alone with all his questions, completely at the mercy of the power-hungry

household staff. We often say with a shrug that it was normal in those days for wealthy people to

entrust their children to governesses. (As if what is “normal” were ever the criterion of what is

beneficial.) Certainly there have been many cases of a nurse or governess rescuing a child from

cold and unloving parents, but we must also keep in mind what satisfaction it must have given

oppressed household servants to pass the humiliation meted out to them from “above” on to the

little children in their charge. Since it is difficult for children to tell anyone about what is being

done to them, all the psychological cruelty they experience remains a well-kept secret.

How great, how irrepressible must have been Kafka’s hunger for a sympathetic ear in his

childhood, for someone who would respond genuinely to his questions, fears, and doubts without

using threats or showing anxiety, who would share his interests, sense his feelings, and not mock

them. How great must have been his longing for a mother who showed interest in and respect for

his inner world. Such respect, however, can be given a child only if one has learned to take

oneself seriously as a person as well. How could Kafka’s mother have learned to do this? She

lost her own mother at an age when a child can neither grasp nor mourn the loss. Without an

empathic surrogate it was impossible under the circumstances for her own personality—that is,

her genuine capacity to love—to develop. Inability to love is tragic, but it is not a culpable state.


There are signs of a growing awareness in our society that only a mother’s own growth

and vitality, not a depressing sense of duty, enable her to have warm and respectful affection for

her child. Men who take this awareness to be an invention of the women’s movement need only

look back a bit into the past. Goethe’s mother, for one, wrote her son letters that show clearly

how natural and spontaneous love and respect for one’s child can be. Not a single unauthentic

word is to be found here, no mention of sacrifice or fulfilling one’s duty. Julie Kafka, in contrast,

writes Brod that she would be ready to sacrifice her life’s blood for the happiness of each of her

children. Holderlin’s mother writes in a similar hypocritical vein. But after all, how much blood

does a mother have? And what is the child supposed to do with this blood, when all he needs is a

sympathetic ear?


Her son’s unstilled and desperate hunger for authenticity and understanding, a theme

which, by the way, pervades the six hundred pages of Letters to Felice, is expressed in the

dream referred to earlier: in place of his mother a crowd of people “with expectant and

attentive ear” have gathered for the express purpose of listening to him. And he is permitted to

go on reading, whole nights on end, until they have understood him. But since his doubts and

the tormenting force of his early experiences are just as strong as his hopes, it is Flaubert he

chooses to read aloud. In case his audience, despite his tremendous effort, should not

understand what he is attempting to communicate to them, then it is Flaubert whom they do not

understand—Flaubert, to whom he feels very close but who, after all, is not he. To expose

himself to the risk of meeting with indifference and incomprehension would be even more

painful and would leave him with the tormenting feeling of nakedness and shame. For a child is

ashamed if he has sought in vain for understanding; then he feels like a beggar who, after long

hesitation and a great inner struggle, finally brings himself to stretch out his hand, only to be

unnoticed by the passers-by.

That, too, is part of the human condition—for children to be ashamed of their needs while

adults are not even conscious of turning a deaf ear and often haven’t the vaguest idea of what is

going on right beside them in their child’s soul, at least not if their own childhood is emotionally

inaccessible to them.

Kafka was described by his nursemaid as an “obedient” and “good” child who “had a

quiet disposition.”


The child grew up under the supervision of the cook and the housekeeper, Marie Werner, a

Czech who had lived with the Kafka family for decades. . . . The cook was strict, the

housekeeper amiable but timid toward the father, to whom she always responded in an argument

with, “I won’t say anything, I’ll just think it.” A nursemaid was soon added to these two

“authority figures” and later a French governess, obligatory in the “better” families of Prague.

Kafka rarely saw his parents: his father had set up noisy living quarters on the premises of his

steadily growing business, and the mother always had to be on hand to help him and smooth

things over with the employees, whom the father referred to as “beasts,” “dogs,” and “paid

enemies.” Kafka’s formal training was restricted to being taught table manners and given orders,

for even in the evening his mother had to keep his father company and play “the usual game of

cards . . . accompanied by exclamations, laughter, and squabbling, not to mention whistling.”

The boy grew up in this “dull, poisonous atmosphere of the beautifully furnished living room, so

devastating for a child”; he found his father’s brusque commands incomprehensible and

mysterious, and he finally became “so unsure of everything that, in fact, I possessed only what I

actually had in my hands or in my mouth or what was at least on the way there.” The direction

taken by the upbringing his father gave him added greatly to the boy’s uncertainty. Kafka

describes this upbringing in Letter to His Father: “You can only treat a child in the way you

yourself are constituted, with vigor, noise, and a hot temper, and in my case this seemed to you,

into the bargain, extremely suitable, because you wanted to bring me up to be a strong, brave

boy.” [Wagenbach, Franz Kafka, p. 20]


Seen superficially, this is a description of a “sheltered” home life, a childhood no worse

than many others that have produced more or less prominent and undaunted adults. But Kafka’s

works reveal how a sensitive child can experience situations we still designate today as quite

normal and unremarkable, situations with which our children must live without ever being

able to articulate them like Kafka. If we can be empathic, refrain from trying to spare the parents,

and learn to understand that what Kafka wrote was a description of conditions in his early

childhood and of his reactions to them instead of the expression of his “neurasthenia,” his

headaches, his “constitution,” or his delusions, then we will also become more sensitive to the

burdens we are placing on our children here and now, often simply because we don’t know how

intensely a child receives impressions or what later becomes of them inside him. It may merely

be a matter of a harmless joke at the child’s expense, a trick one plays on him, or a threat one

never seriously intends to carry out but makes only in order to encourage better behavior. The

child, however, cannot know this; he waits, perhaps for days, for the threatened punishment

that never comes but that hangs over his head like the sword of Damocles. Such “harmless”

scenes were often enacted on Kafka’s way to school. In a letter to Milena he writes:


Our cook, a small dry thin person with a pointed nose and hollow cheeks, yellowish but

firm, energetic and superior, led me every morning to school. We lived in the house which

separates the Kleine Ring from the Grosse Ring. Thus we walked first across the Ring, then into

the Teingasse, then through a kind of archway in the Fleischmarktgasse down to the

Fleischmarkt. And now every morning for about a year the same thing was repeated. At the

moment of leaving the house the cook said she would tell the teacher how naughty I’d been at

home. As a matter of fact I probably wasn’t very naughty, but rather stubborn, useless, sad,

bad-tempered, and out of all this probably something quite nice could have been fabricated for

the teacher. I knew this, so didn’t take the cook’s threat too lightly. All the same, since the road

to school was enormously long I believed at first that anything might happen on the way (it’s

from such apparent childish light-heartedness that there gradually develops, just because the

roads are not so enormously long, this anxiousness and dead-eyes seriousness). I was also very

much in doubt, at least while still on the Alstadter Ring, as to whether the cook, though a person

commanding respect if only in domestic quarters, would dare to talk to the

world-respect-commanding person of the teacher. . . . Somewhere near the entrance to the

Fleischmarktgasse . . . the fear of the threat got the upper hand. School in itself was already

enough of a nightmare, and now the cook was trying to make it even worse. I began to plead, she

shook her head, the more I pleaded the more precious appeared to me that for which I was

pleading, the greater the danger; I stood still and begged for forgiveness, she dragged me along, I

threatened her with retaliation from my parents, she laughed, here she was all-powerful, I held

on to the shop doors, to the corner stones, I refused to go any further until she had forgiven me, I

pulled her back by the skirt (she didn’t have it easy, either), but she kept dragging me along with

the assurance that she would tell the teacher this, too; it grew late, the clock on the Jakobskirche

struck 8, the school bells could be heard, other children began to run, I always had the greatest

terror of being late, now we too had to run and all the time the thought: She’ll tell, she won’t

tell—well, she didn’t tell, ever, but she always had the opportunity and even an apparently

increasing opportunity (I didn’t tell yesterday, but I’ll certainly tell today) and of this she never

let go. [Letters to Milena, pp. 65-66]


There have been countless interpretations of Kafka’s The Trial, for this work reflects the

situation in which many people find themselves. Kafka’s profound awareness of this situation,

which made it possible for him to describe it as he did, is probably rooted in the child’s early

experiences, scenes similar to those just described on his way to school. Joseph K. is still in bed

one morning when he is notified that a lawsuit is being brought against him, the rationale for

which is as obscure to him, as illogical, as the attitudes of parents and care givers. He cannot

simply deny the justification of the suit out of hand, however, since there is always something a

child thinks he must conceal, something he feels guilty for and which he always has to face all

alone.

Like The Trial’s Joseph K., who tries in vain to find out what his crime is, K., the land

surveyor in The Castle, worries night and day over the question of when he will finally be

accepted as a legitimate member of the community.

A child’s desperate attempts to adjust to his parents’ inconsistencies, to find meaning and

logic in them, can scarcely be better stated than in Kafka’s story of the surveyor K., who

struggled to gain entry to the castle. How can a child be expected to understand that the same

mother who continually professes her love for him is totally unaware of his true needs and that

he can never gain complete access to her, even though he is physically as close to her as K. is to

the castle.


Kafka is depicting here in essence a child’s unending efforts to gain understanding, which

will help him to escape loneliness and his isolation among the household servants (the villagers);

this is mirrored in K.’s attempt to see signs of the castle’s favor or rejection in insignificant

chance words and gestures of the village inhabitants as well as in his hope of one day finally

being able to discover a meaning in that absurd world—a meaning that will sustain him and

allow him to become integrated into the community of those living in the castle (the parents).


A child thinks: “The fact that I was born means that someone wanted me, but now no one

is paying any attention to me. Have they forgotten they had me? That can’t be. Sooner or later

they are sure to remember. What must I do to make it happen sooner? How should I behave, how

should I interpret the signals?” He will magnify infinitely the slightest sign of favor, reinforcing

it with many fantasies and wishes, until his hopes are again shattered under the impact of the

undeniable indifference of his environment. But not for long—a child cannot live without hopes

and fantasies, which help him to disguise his unbearable reality. Once again the surveyor K.

builds his castles in the air; again he tries to establish contact, if not with the count himself, then

at least with the count’s underlings.


We can only suppose that as a child Kafka, like the land surveyor in The Castle, was all

alone with his thoughts and speculations concerning the relationships of adults among

themselves and with him; paradoxically, this intelligent child, again like the surveyor K., was

not taken seriously by his family. He, too, was discredited, misled, not paid attention to, shunted

off with promises, humiliated, and ignored—without a single person who was sympathetic and

explained things to him. Only his youngest sister, Ottla, gave him love and understanding, but

since she was nine years younger than he, he had to spend his first years, the most crucial and

formative of his life, in the atmosphere he described in such minute detail in The Castle. The

surveyor K. (like the child Franz) feels that he is the victim of incomprehensible and inscrutable

underhanded treatment; he is continually being subjected to inconsistent behavior; he has been

summoned (is wanted), yet is useless; he is under someone’s total control or is completely

neglected and ignored; he is being humiliated and made fun of, or his hopes are being falsely

raised; vague demands are being made on him that he can only guess at; and he is constantly

unsure of whether he has done the right thing.


He tries to understand his surroundings, to ask questions, to find meaning in all this chaos

and disorder, but he never succeeds. When he thinks he is being made fun of, the others are

apparently in dead earnest; yet when he counts on their being serious, he is made a fool of. This

is what often happens to a child: the parents call it “playing” and are amused when the child tries

in vain to learn the rules of this “game,” which, like the pillars of their power, they will not

relinquish. Thus, the surveyor in The Castle suffers from his inscrutable surroundings, just like a

child without a supportive attachment figure; he suffers from the meaningless bureaucracy

(childrearing principles), the undependable nature of the women, the self-importance of the

employees, and above all from the fact that there seem to be no answers in this environment to

his most urgent existential questions.

Among this great array of people there is not one—with the exception of Olga, who is

also a victim of the system—who might explain to K. what is going on or might be able to

understand him. Yet he never speaks confusedly but always with clarity, simplicity, friendliness,

and conviction. The tragedy of never making any headway with even the simplest, most logical

ideas and always running into stone walls permeates all of Kafka’s works and is also perceptible

in the letters as a constant, suppressed lament. Although Kafka repeatedly gives poetic form to

this lament, and makes it a manifest theme of his fiction, for this very reason it remains

unconnected with its roots in his biography. The suffering caused the little boy by his mother,

who did not understand or even notice the child, is emotionally inaccessible for Kafka as an

adult, whereas the difficulties he had with his father, which fall in a later period, were something

he could grasp and could articulate much better.

Kafka’s friendship with Max Brod as well as his engagement to Felice Bauer left him

ultimately alone, just as he always was with his mother. He once wrote about his relationship

with Brod:


For example, during the long years we have known each other I have, after all, been alone with

Max on many occasions, for days on end, when traveling even for weeks on end and almost

continuously, yet I do not remember—and had it happened, I would certainly remember—ever

having had a long coherent conversation involving my entire being, as should inevitably follow

when two people with a great fund of independent and lively ideas and experiences are thrown

together. And monologues from Max (and many others) I have heard in plenty, but what they

lacked was the vociferous, and as a rule even the silent, conversational partner. [Letters to

Felice, p. 271]


A person who was as lonely as Franz Kafka as a child is unable, as an adult, to find a

friend or a woman to understand him, since he often seeks unconsciously to repeat his

childhood. From the kind of attachment Kafka had to Felice and she to him we can deduce

how he suffered in his relationship with his mother. Julie Kafka not only had no time for her

son, she also was insensitive to him, and when she concerned herself with his welfare she did it

with such tactlessness that she wounded him deeply without meaning to and without his being

able to put his feelings into words, for the child of an insecure mother is so concerned about her

wellbeing that he cannot be aware of his own wounds. The same pattern emerges with Felice.

Kafka’s levelheaded fiancée can understand a great many things but not the world of a Franz

Kafka. That he sought understanding from someone like her in vain and didn’t become aware of

his disappointment for a long time is not surprising when we consider that this man had (and

loved) a mother who had absolutely no access to his world.

He wrote to Felice:


My mother? For the last 3 evenings, ever since she began to suspect my troubles, she has

begged me to get married whatever happens; she wants to write to you; she wants to come to

Berlin with me, she wants goodness knows what! And hasn’t the remotest idea what my needs

are. [p. 312]


And to Felice’s father:


I live within my family, among the kindest, most affectionate people—and am more strange than

a stranger. In recent years I have spoken hardly more than twenty words a day to my mother,

and I exchange little more than a daily greeting with my father. To my married sisters and

brothers-in-law I do not speak at all, although I have nothing against them. [p. 313]


Language and the ability to speak meant everything to Kafka, but because it was not

permissible to say what he felt, he had to remain silent and suffered as a result.

In my reading of Kafka, his Letters to Felice and the novel The Castle provided the keys

to understanding both the man and his works. On the one hand, the letters helped me to grasp

better what was happening in the novel; on the other, the episodes in the novel and the

hopelessness of the hero’s situation shed light upon why Kafka tried for five long years to

explain himself to a woman who was ill equipped to respond to him. The effort he made to

communicate with a partner who, for reasons having to do with her own history, was neither able

nor willing to communicate on his terms would not be tragic if his efforts had not been

accompanied by the compulsion to keep repeating them and to refuse to give up hope at any

price. This absurd compulsion loses its absurdity when we picture a little boy who has no choice

but to attempt to communicate with his mother, since he cannot pick out another. I often had to

think of his predicament while I was reading Letters to Felice, in which, as in The Castle,

Kafka’s earliest relationship with his mother clearly emerges. Her presence was as necessary to

him as “air to breathe,” he wanted to cling to her, have her to himself, but the very thought made

him fearful, since he thought he was asking too much, for she couldn’t give him what he needed.

And so he feared more than anything else that his longing and his hunger for contact were wrong

or inappropriate, simply because his mother couldn’t still that hunger and perhaps for this reason

had difficulty tolerating it as well.

Kafka would have been able to break off with Felice after receiving her first letters had

this not been his first experience. This he cannot do; he is too familiar with the disappointment

he suffers even to recognize it as such. He therefore becomes engaged to her, ends the

engagement at a decisive moment, then later becomes engaged to her again. As the truth about

their relationship becomes increasingly clear and oppressive, he is saved from the engagement by

illness (tuberculosis).

Kafka recalls their first meeting in one of his letters to Felice:


That night you looked so fresh, even pink-cheeked, and indestructible. Did I fall in love with you

at once, that night? Haven’t I told you already? At the very first you were quite obviously and

incomprehensibly indifferent toward me and probably for this reason seemed familiar. I

accepted it as a matter of course. Not until we rose from the table in the dining room did I

notice to my horror how quickly the time had passed, how sad that was, and how one would

have to hurry. But I didn’t know how, or what for. [p. 81]


Although Felice Bauer lived in Berlin, Kafka met her for the first time in Prague at the

home of friends, where she was also a guest. This marks the beginning of a correspondence

almost ideally suited to the projection of long-pent-up feelings accumulating since early

childhood, for Kafka actually knows just as little about this woman as a very young child

knows about his mother. For the little child, the mother is not an autonomous person but the

extension of his own self. Her availability is therefore of crucial importance to him.

It did not take very long for Kafka to notice unconsciously the similarity between the

cool, levelheaded, and capable Felice Bauer and his mother (“you were quite obviously and

incomprehensibly indifferent toward me and probably for this reason seemed familiar”).

Sometimes such similarities can be sensed in the very first minutes after meeting someone. But

in the ensuing happiness of falling in love, all the long-buried hopes of finding a person who will

listen and understand and care can blossom forth. The return of suppressed hope can restore

vitality and bring a feeling of bliss never experienced before. It is comprehensible if the lover is

at first willing to overlook the initial signs of lack of understanding, of alienation, of uncertainty

in the beloved, or, when this is no longer possible, to blame himself for having too high

expectations, for being “complicated” and different. Of course, he will inevitably feel

disappointed in the partner, but the reasons he gives to explain this can enable him to postpone

admitting the truth for some time. Thus, Kafka begins by complaining about how infrequently

Felice writes (which is not the case at all) in order not to have to complain about the content of

her letters, for we can see from his answers that Felice, like his mother, often urges him to take

care of his health, has virtually nothing to say about his stories, recommends authors he doesn’t

like, is upset about the feelings he expresses, and probably is also afraid of their intensity. In

essence, she seems to be standing unsuspectingly at the edge of a volcano.

When we read the following passages we can easily imagine how upset and confused

Felice must have been by them:


It is now 10:30 on Monday morning. I have been waiting for a letter since 10:30 on Saturday

morning, but again nothing has come. I have written every day (this isn’t in the least a reproach,

for it has made me happy) but don’t I deserve even a word? One single word? Even if it were

only to say “I never want to hear from you again.” Besides, I thought today’s letter would

contain some kind of decision, but the nonarrival of a letter is also a little decision. Had a

letter arrived, I would have answered it at once, and the answer would be bound to have begun

with a complaint about the length of those two endless days. But you leave me sitting wretchedly

at my wretched desk! [Letters to Felice, p. 27]


Dear Fraulein Felice,

Yesterday I pretended to be worried about you, and tried hard to give you advice. But

instead what am I doing? Tormenting you? I don’t mean intentionally, that would be

inconceivable, yet even if I were it would have evaporated, faced by your last letter, like evil

faced by good, but I am tormenting you by my existence, my very existence. Fundamentally I am

unchanged, keep turning in circles, have acquired but one more unfulfilled longing to add to my

other unfulfilled ones; and a new kind of self-confidence, perhaps the strongest I ever had, has

been given to me within my general sense of lostness. [p. 30]


Dearest, don’t let me disturb you, I’m only saying good night, and to do so I broke off in the

middle of a page of my writing. I’m afraid that soon I shall no longer be able to write to you, for

to be able to write to someone (I must give you all kinds of names, so for once you must be called

“someone”) one has to have an idea of the face one is addressing. I do have a clear idea of your

face, that wouldn’t be the trouble. But far clearer than that is an image that now comes to me

more and more often: of my face resting on your shoulder, of my talking, partly smothered and

indistinctly, to your shoulder, your dress, to myself, while you can have no notion of what is

being said. . . .

And don’t fly away! This suddenly comes to my mind somehow, perhaps through the

word “adieu,” which has a certain soaring quality. I think one could derive extraordinary

pleasure from soaring to great heights, if this could rid one of a heavy burden which clings to

one as I cling to you. Don’t be tempted by the beckoning of such relief. Hold on to the delusion

that you need me; think yourself more deeply into it. It won’t do you any harm, you know, and if

one day you want to get rid of me you will always have the strength to do so; but meanwhile you

have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life. That’s how it is, even if in

your sleep you shake your head. [pp. 40-41]

Dearest, please don’t torment me! Please! No letter even today, Saturday—today when I felt

sure it would come, as sure as day follows night. But who insisted on a whole letter? Just two

lines, a greeting, an envelope, a card! After four letters (this is the fifth) I haven’t had a single

word from you. Shame, this isn’t right. How am I to get through these endless days—work, talk,

and do whatever else is expected of me? Perhaps nothing has happened, you just haven’t had

the time, rehearsals or conferences about the play may have prevented you, but please tell me,

who in the world could prevent you from going over to a small table, picking up a pencil,

writing “Felice” on a scrap of paper, and sending it to me? It would mean so much to me. A sign

of you being alive, a reassurance for me in my attempt at clinging to a living being. A letter will

and must come tomorrow, or I won’t know what to do; then all will be well and I’ll stop

plaguing you with endless requests for more letters. . . . [p. 44]

The night before last I dreamt about you for the second time. A mailman brought two

registered letters from you, that is, he delivered them to me, one in each hand, his arms

moving in perfect precision, like the jerking of piston rods in a steam engine. God, they were

magic letters! I kept pulling out page after page, but the envelopes never emptied. I was

standing halfway up a flight of stairs and (don’t hold it against me) had to throw the pages I

had read all over the stairs, in order to take more letters out of the envelopes. The whole

staircase was littered from top to bottom with the loosely heaped pages I had read, the

resilient paper creating a great rustling sound. That was a real wish-dream! [p. 47]



His clinging to her, his hopes, his pleas for her devotion alternate with his fear of being

abandoned and his self-reproaches. Only after some time does he dare to allow a reproachful

tone to creep into his letters, which is then followed by great fear of having now placed

everything in jeopardy.


. . . A letter to Max Brod written in mid-September 1917 reveals Kafka’s insight into the deeper

significance of his illness.


In any case I stand today in the same relationship to tuberculosis as a child does to his mother’s

skirts to which he clings. If the disease comes from my mother, this is even more appropriate,

and my mother with her infinite concern, far beneath the surface of her understanding of the

matter, would have done me even this service as well. I am constantly searching for an

explanation for my illness, for I certainly didn’t catch it by myself. Sometimes it seems to me as if

my brain and my lungs came to an understanding without my knowledge. “It can’t go on like

this,” said my brain, and five years my lungs agreed to help out. [Briefe: 1902-1924 (Letters), p.

161]


In his biography Brod tells what happened after Kafka bid farewell to Felice:


The next morning Franz came to my office to see me. To rest for one moment, he said. He had

just been to the station to see F. off. His face was pale, hard, and severe. But suddenly he began

to cry. It was the only time I saw him cry. I shall never forget the scene, it is one of the most

terrible I have ever experienced. I was not sitting alone in my office; right close up to my desk

was the desk of a colleague. . . . But Kafka had come straight into the room I worked in, to see

me, in the middle of all the office work, sat near my desk on a small chair which stood there

ready for bearers of petitions, pensioners, and debtors. And in this place he was crying, in this

place he said between his sobs: “Is it not terrible that such a thing must happen?” The tears

were streaming down his cheeks. I have never except this once seen him upset quite without

control of himself. (Franz Kafka, pp. 166-67]



On the basis of his letters, we have the choice with Kafka, as we do with patients, of

speaking and writing about his “narcissistic character,” his “intolerance of frustration,” his

“weak ego,” anxiety, hypochondria, phobias, psychosomatic disturbances, and the like, or of

looking for and finding in his life and works information about the kind of childhood he had; in

other words, of looking at his symptoms not as undesirable or wrong forms of behavior but as

visible links in an invisible chain.


If we do not take our patients’ suffering seriously, especially that of early childhood, our

diagnoses will remain in the realm of normative, moralizing value judgments. As long as

psychoanalysis is unable to free itself from these judgments, it is no wonder—and apart from

unconscious resistance and fear, there is probably good reason—that creative people are highly

suspicious of it.


Kafka, like Flaubert and Beckett, could not possibly know he was portraying what he

experienced in childhood in his novels and stories. His readers, too, regard his works as products

of his imagination, emanating from his brain, his talent, his artistic genius, or whatever one

chooses to call it. There is no doubt that Kafka was a writer of genius, and it is his ability to see

the universal in the concrete and yet portray it concretely that gives us the very special

experience that comes from reading his works. The form he gave to his writing seems to show

him to be a very conscious artist with words, but since its content stems from the depths of his

experience, it has the power to affect our unconscious deeply and directly. This is why his words

provide so many young people with their first confirmation that what they find in their interior

world is not necessarily madness.

The usually absurd situations portrayed by Kafka can easily be read as symbols of

“general conditions,” and the extensive Kafka scholarship is full of such interpretations, which

may indeed all be correct. We surely will not go wrong if we see in “A Hunger Artist” the

problem of the individual’s isolation in mass society, of spiritual hunger, of exploitation, of

so-called exhibitionism and the like; or if we speak of racial discrimination, the deceptiveness of

appearances, and hypocrisy in connection with “The Metamorphosis”; or understand “In the

Penal Colony” as an anticipation of the concentration camps or emphasize the primacy of the

religious problem in The Castle and the ethical one in The Trial. All this is

legitimate, but it ignores the fact that Kafka gained his knowledge about these deeply human

and essentially everyday situations by means of the stored-up memories and feelings the

world of his childhood produced in him. Like everyone else, he had to dissociate these

feelings from his initial experiences with his first attachment figures, but they were preserved

within, and like every great writer, he was able to transfer them in his imagination to

fictitious characters.


-- Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child by Alice Miller





- from Banished Knowledge by Alice Miller; p. 33: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who

loves him is diligent to discipline him,” we read in Proverbs. This so-called wisdom is still so widespread

today that we can often hear: A slap given in love does a child no harm. Even Kafka, who had a very fine

ear for spurious undertones, is supposed to have said, according to a witness, “Love often has the face of

violence.” I consider it unlikely that the witness quoted Kafka correctly, but Kafka forced himself, as we

all do, to regard cruelty as love.

Can there be such a thing as cruelty out of love? If people weren’t accustomed to the biblical

injunction from childhood, it would soon strike them as the untruth it is. Cruelty is the opposite of love,

and its traumatic effect, far from being reduced, is actually reinforced if it is presented as a sign of love.


- from The Trial by Franz Kafka (Translated by Breon Mitchell); pp. 49-53 (Initial Inquiry): The

people below conversed quietly but animatedly. The two parties, which had appeared to hold

such contrasting opinions before, mingled with one another, some people pointing their fingers at

K., others at the examining magistrate. The foglike haze in the room was extremely annoying,

even preventing any closer observation of those standing further away. It must have been

particularly disturbing for the visitors in the gallery, who were forced, with timid side glances at

the examining magistrate of course, to address questions under their breath to the members of the

assembly in order to find out what was happening. The answers were returned equally softly,

shielded behind cupped hands.

“I’m almost finished,” said K. striking his fist on the table, since no bell was available, at

which the heads of the examining magistrate and his advisor immediately drew apart, startled:

“I’m completely detached from this whole affair, so I can judge it calmly, and it will be to your

distinct advantage to pay attention, always assuming you care about this so-called court. I

suggest that you postpone your mutual discussion of what I’m saying until later, because I don’t

have much time, and will be leaving soon.”

There was an immediate silence, so completely did K. now control the assembly. People

weren’t shouting back and forth as they had at the beginning; they no longer even applauded but

seemed by now convinced, or on the verge of being so.

“There can be no doubt,” K. said very quietly, for he was pleased by the keen attention

with which the whole assembly was listening, a murmuring arising in that stillness that was more

exciting than the most delighted applause, “there can be no doubt that behind all the

pronouncements of this court, and in my case, behind the arrest and today’s inquiry, there exists

an extensive organization. An organization that not only engages corrupt guards, inane

inspectors, and examining magistrates who are at best mediocre, but that supports as well a

system of judges of all ranks, including the highest, with their inevitable innumerable entourage

of assistants, scribes, gendarmes, and other aides, perhaps even hangmen, I won’t shy away from

the word. And the purpose of this extensive organization, gentlemen? It consists of arresting

innocent people and introducing senseless proceedings against them, which for the most part, as

in my case, go nowhere. Given the senselessness of the whole affair, how could the bureaucracy

avoid becoming entirely corrupt? It’s impossible, even the highest judge couldn’t manage it,

even with himself. So guards try to steal the shirts off the backs of arrested men, inspectors

break into strange apartments, and innocent people, instead of being examined, are humiliated

before entire assemblies. The guards told me about depositories to which an arrested man’s

property is taken; I’d like to see these depository places sometime, where the hard-earned goods

of arrested men are rotting away, if they haven’t already been stolen by pilfering officials.”

K. was interrupted by a shriek from the other end of the hall; he shaded his eyes so that

he could see, for the dull daylight had turned the haze into a blinding white glare. It was the

washerwoman, whom K. had sensed as a major disturbance from the moment she entered.

Whether or not she was at fault now was not apparent. K. saw only that a man had pulled her into

a corner by the door and pressed her to himself. But she wasn’t shrieking, it was the man; he had

opened his mouth wide and was staring up toward the ceiling. A small circle had gathered

around the two of them, and the nearby visitors in the gallery seemed delighted that the serious

mood K. had introduced into the assembly had been interrupted in this fashion. K.’s initial

reaction was to run toward them, in fact he thought everyone would want to restore order and at

least banish the couple from the hall, but the first rows in front of him stood fast; not a person

stirred and no one let K. through. On the contrary they hindered him: old men held out their arms

and someone’s hand—he didn’t have time to turn around—grabbed him by the collar from

behind; K. wasn’t really thinking about the couple anymore, for now it seemed to him as if his

freedom were being threatened, as if he were being arrested in earnest, and he sprang from the

platform recklessly. Now he stood eye-to-eye with the crowd. Had he misjudged these people?

Had he overestimated the effect of his speech? Had they been pretending all the time he was

speaking, and now that he had reached his conclusions, were they fed up with pretending? The

faces that surrounded him! Tiny black eyes darted about, cheeks drooped like those of drunken

men, the long beards were stiff and scraggly, and when they pulled on them, it seemed as if they

were merely forming claws, not pulling beards. Beneath the beards, however—and this was the

true discovery K. made—badges of various sizes and colors shimmered on the collars of their

jackets. They all had badges, as far as he could see. They were all one group, the apparent

parties on the left and right, and as he suddenly turned, he saw the same badges on the collar of

the examining magistrate, who was looking on calmly with his hands in his lap. “So!” K. cried

and flung his arms in the air, this sudden insight demanding space; “I see you’re all officials,

you’re the corrupt band I was speaking about; you’ve crowded in here to listen and snoop,

you’ve formed apparent parties and had one side applaud to test me, you wanted to learn how to

lead innocent men astray. Well I hope you haven’t come in vain; either you found it entertaining

that someone thought you would defend the innocent or else – back off or I’ll hit you,” cried K.

to a trembling old man who had shoved his way quite near to him “—or else you’ve actually

learned something. And with that I wish you luck in your trade.” He quickly picked up his hat,

which was lying at the edge of the table, and made his way through the general silence, one of

total surprise at least, toward the exit. The examining magistrate, however, seemed to have been

even quicker than K., for he was waiting for him at the door. “One moment,” he said. K. stopped,

looking not at the examining magistrate but at the door, the handle of which he had already

seized. “I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact,” said the examining magistrate, “that

you have today deprived yourself—although you can’t yet have realized it—of the advantage

that an interrogation offers to the arrested man in each case.” K. laughed at the door. “You

scoundrels,” he cried, “you can have all your interrogations”; then he opened the door and

hurried down the stairs. Behind him rose the sounds of the assembly, which had come to life

again, no doubt beginning to discuss what had occurred, as students might.

[Absurd]

In the second vid Franz Kafka looks slightly better than I always imagined.

[HERO]

On a subjective note, I hate his writing.

[Absurd]

On a objective(?) "note", existentialism has never been my cup of tea, being quite foreign to me even though I haven't followed a set in stone way. It's not just Kafka, but Sartre. especially his dialectic criticism I find utterly crap, and so on. I would rather stick to Plato.

[Scapegrace]

On a subjective note, I hate his writing.

That's okay. Nicolas Spark and Dan Brown have written a lot of books, so you wont have to suffer the tedium of reading bad writers like Kafka.

[Kim]

That's okay. Nicolas Spark and Dan Brown have written a lot of books, so you wont have to suffer the tedium of reading bad writers like Kafka.

It doesn't have to be a case of good vs. bad writing. I hate reading Salman Rushdie and would still consider him a good writer.

[Amber]

ILI-Ni E5w4 sp/sx or so/sp (def contra-flow). I was very much into him during high school, but now I couldn't stand rereading him.

[strrrng]

I lean ILI > IEI

[xerx]

xSTj (ESTj > ISTj) for Franz

Just to clarify, I wasn't actually serious.

[HERO]

Franz Kafka: ILI-Ni? (Normalizing subtype) [INTp-INFj?]

- from The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld; p. 105:

A history of persecution can produce a variety of psychological reactions, including despair, paralysis, surrender, even shame. Another reaction, however, is a compulsion to rise, to get hold of money or power and cling to it—to be so successful that you either can’t be targeted or at least have the resources to escape. Franz Kafka, who was Jewish, wrote in a 1920 letter to a Catholic friend that the Jews’ “insecure position, insecure within themselves, insecure among people,” makes “Jews believe they possess only whatever they hold in their hands or grip between their teeth” and feel that “only tangible possessions give them a right to live.”




- From The Castle: The Definitive Edition by Franz Kafka; p. xxxi-xxxix (“Homage” by Thomas Mann):

Franz Kafka, author of this very remarkable and brilliant novel, The Castle, and of its equally extraordinary companion-piece, The Trial, was born in 1883 in Prague, son of a German-Jewish-Bohemian family, and died of consumption in 1924, at the early age of forty-one. His last portrait, done shortly before his death, looks more like a man of twenty-five than of forty-one. It shows a shy, sensitive, contemplative face, with black curly hair growing low on the forehead, large dark eyes, at once dreamy and penetrating, a straight drooping nose, cheeks shadowed by illness, and a mouth with unusually fine lines and a half-smile playing in one corner. The expression, at once childlike and wise, recalls not a little the best-known portrait of Friedrich von Hardenberg, called Novalis, the seraphic mystic and seeker after the “blue flower.” Novalis too died of consumption.


But though his gaze makes us conceive of him as a Novalis from the east of Europe, yet I should not care to dub Kafka either a romantic, an ecstatic, or a mystic. For a romantic he is too clear-cut, too realistic, too well attached to life and to a simple, native effectiveness in living. His sense of humor—of an involved kind peculiar to himself—is too pronounced for an ecstatic. And as for mysticism : he did indeed once say, in a conversation with Rudolf Steiner, that his own work had given him understanding of certain “clairvoyant states” described by the latter. And he compared his own work with “a new secret doctrine, a cabbala.” But there is lacking to it the hot and heavy atmosphere of transcendentalism; the sensual does not pass over into the super-sensual, there is no “voluptuous hell,” no “bridal bed of the tomb,” nor the rest of the stock-in-trade of the genuine mystic. None of that was in his line; neither Wagner’s Tristan nor Novalis’s Hymns to the Night nor his love for his dead Sophie would have appealed to Kafka. He was a dreamer, and his compositions are often dreamlike in conception and form; they are as oppressive, illogical, and absurd as dreams, those strange shadow-pictures of actual life. But they are full of a reasoned morality, an ironic, satiric, desperately reasoned morality, struggling with all its might toward justice, goodness, and the will of God. All that mirrors itself in his style: a conscientious, curiously explicit, objective, clear, and correct style, which in its precise, almost official conservatism is reminiscent of Adalbert Stifter’s. Yes, he was a dreamer; but in his dreaming he did not yearn after a “blue flower” blossoming somewhere in a mystical sphere; he yearned after the “blisses of the commonplace.”

The phrase comes from a youthful story by the writer of these lines, Tonio Kroger. That story, as I learn from his friend, compatriot, and best critic, Max Brod, was a favorite with Kafka. His was a different world, but he, the Jew of eastern Europe, had a very precise idea of the art and feeling of bourgeois Europe. One might put it that the “aspiring effort” which brought to birth a book like The Castle corresponded in the religious sphere to Tonio Kroger’s artist isolation, his longing for simple human feeling, his bad conscience in respect of the bourgeois, and his love of the blond and good and ordinary. Perhaps I shall best characterize Kafka as a writer by calling him a religious humorist.

The combination sounds offensive; and both parts of it stand in need of explanation. Brod relates that Kafka had always been deeply impressed by an anecdote from Gustave Flaubert’s later years. The famous aesthete, who in an ascetic paroxysm sacrificed all life to his nihilistic idol, “littérature,” once paid a visit with his niece, Mme Commanville, to a family of her acquaintance, a sturdy and happy wedded pair surrounded by a flock of charming children. On the way home the author of the Tentations de Saint Antoine was very thoughtful. Walking with Mme Commanville along the Seine, he kept coming back to the natural, healthy, jolly, upright life he had just had a glimpse of. “Ils sont dans le vrai!” [“They are in the truth!” or “They are right!”] he kept repeating. This phrase, this complete abandonment of his whole position, from the lips of the master whose creed had been the denial of life for the sake of art—this phrase had been Kafka’s favorite quotation.

D’être dans le vrai—to live in the true and the right—meant to Kafka to be near to God, to live in God, to live aright and after God’s will—and he felt very remote from this security in God and the will of God. That “literary work was my one desire, my single calling”—that he knew very soon, and that might pass, as being itself probably the will of God. “But,” he writes in 1914, a man of thirty-one, “the wish to portray my own inner life has shoved everything else into the background; everything else is stunted, and continues to be stunted.” “Often,” he adds at another time, “I am seized by a melancholy though quite tranquil amazement at my own lack of feeling . . . that simply by consequence of my fixation upon letters I am everywhere else uninterested and in consequence heartless.” This calm and melancholy perception is actually, however, a source of much disquiet, and the disquiet is religious in its nature. This being dehumanized, being “stunted” by the passion for art, is certainly remote from God; it is the opposite of “living in the true and the right.” It is possible, of course, to take in a symbolic sense this passion which makes everything else a matter of indifference. It may be thought of as an ethical symbol. Art is not inevitably what it was to Flaubert, the product, the purpose, and the significance of a frantically ascetic denial of life. It may be an ethical expression of life itself; wherein not the work but the life itself is the main thing. Then life is not “heartless,” not a mere means of achieving by struggle a goal of aesthetic perfection; instead the product, the work, is an ethical symbol; and the goal is not some sort of objective perfection, but the subjective consciousness that one has done one’s best to give meaning to life and to fill it with achievement worthy to stand beside any other kind of human accomplishment.

“For a few days,” Kafka says, “I have been writing. May it go on! My life has some justification. Once more I am able to converse with myself, and not gaze into utter vacancy. Only in this way can I hope to find improvement.” He might almost have said “salvation” instead of improvement. It would have made still clearer the religious nature of the tranquillity he felt when he worked. Art as the functioning of faculties bestowed by God, as work faithfully done—that is an interpretation not only in an intellectual but in a moral sense: as it heightens the actual into the true, it lends meaning and justification to life, not only subjectively but also humanly; thus the work becomes humanly conservative, as a means of living “in the right”—or at least of coming closer to it—and art thus becomes adaptable to life. Franz Kafka, late and doubting and almost desperately complicated representative of German letters, certainly felt the purest respect and reverence for Goethe; and from Goethe we have the great saying: “Man can find no better retreat from the world than art, and man can find no stronger link with the world than art.” A wonderful saying. Solitude and companionship—the two are here reconciled in a way that Kafka may well have admired, without being quite willing or able to admit it, because his productivity depended on the strife within him, and on his feeling of being “remote from God,” his insecurity. His joy and gratitude when he was able to write might have taught him that art “links” us not only with the world, but also with the moral sphere, with the right and the divine. And this in a double sense, by the profound symbolism inherent in the idea of the “good.” What the artist calls good, the object of all his playful pains, his life-and-death jesting, is nothing less than a parable of the right and the good, a representation of all human striving after perfection. In this sense Kafka’s work, born of his dreams, is very good indeed. It is composed with a fidelity and patience, a native exactitude, a conscientiousness—ironic, even parodistic in kind, yet charming to laughter—with a painstaking love, all proof that he was no unbeliever, but in some involved fashion of his own had faith in the good and the right. And the discrepancy between God and man, the incapacity of man to recognize the good, to unite himself with it and “live in the right,” Kafka took this for the theme of his works, works that in every sentence bear witness to a humorously, fantastically despairing good will.

They express the solitude, the aloneness, of the artist—and of the Jew, on top of that—among the genuine native-born of life, the villagers who settle at the foot of the “Castle.” They express the inborn, self-distrustful solitariness that fights for order and regularity, civic rights, an established calling, marriage—in short, for all the “blisses of the commonplace.” They express an unbounded will, forever suffering shipwreck, to live aright. The Castle is through and through an autobiographical novel. The hero, who should originally speak in the first person, is called K.; he is the author, who has only too literally suffered all these pains and these grotesque disappointments. In the story of his life there is a betrothal that is simply the essence of all melancholy miscarriages. And in The Castle a prominent part is played by similar spasmodic efforts to found a family and arrive closer to God through leading a normal life.

For it is plain that regular life in a community, the ceaseless struggle to become a “native,” is simply the technique for improving K.’s relations with the “Castle,” or rather to set up relations with it: to attain nearer, in other words, to God and to a state of grace. In the sardonic dream-symbolism of the novel the village represents life, the soil, the community, healthy normal existence, and the blessings of human and bourgeois society. The Castle, on the other hand, represents the divine dispensation, the state of grace—puzzling, remote, incomprehensible. And never has the divine, the superhuman, been observed, experienced, characterized with stranger, more daring, more comic expedients, with more inexhaustible psychological riches, both sacrilegious and devout, than in this story of an incorrigible believer, so needing grace, so wrestling for it, so passionately and recklessly yearning after it that he even tries to encompass it by stratagems and wiles.

The question is really an important one, in its own touching, funny, involved religious way: whether K. has actually been summoned by the estates authorities to act as surveyor, or whether he only imagines or pretends to others that such is the case, in order to get into the community and attain to the state of grace. It remains throughout the narrative an open question. In the first chapter there is a telephone conversation with “up above”; the idea that he has been summoned is summarily denied, so that he is exposed as a vagabond and swindler; then comes a correction, whereby his surveyorship is vaguely recognized up above—though he himself has the feeling that the confirmation is only the result of “lofty superiority” and of the intention of “taking up the challenge with a smile.”

More impressive still is the second telephone conversation in the second chapter; K. himself holds it with the Castle, and with him are his two aides, who possess all the fantastic absurdity of characters in dreams: whom the Castle sent to him, and in whom he sees his “old assistants.” And when you have read this, and listened with K. to “the hum of countless children’s voices” from the receiver, the rebuff given by the official up above, with the “small defect” in his speech, to the suppliant down below at the inn telephone, with his persistent appeals and tergiversations, you will not lay down this long, circumstantial, incredible book until you have run through and lived through the whole of it; until amid laughter and the discomfort of its dream-atmosphere you have got to the bottom of those existences up there, the heavenly authorities, and their overbearing, arbitrary, puzzling, anomalous, and entirely incomprehensible activities.


You get the best objective idea of them in the fifth chapter, from the mouth of the “Mayor”; likewise some explanation of the odd things that happen when one tries to telephone the Castle and finds out that the connection is entirely unreliable and illusory; that there is no central exchange to connect the call; that one can get a branch connection, only to discover either that the receivers have been left off or that such answers as one gets are entirely nonsensical and frivolous. I refer particularly to the amazing conversation between K. and the Mayor; but indeed the book is inexhaustible in its devices to explain and illustrate its central theme: the grotesque unconnection between the human being and the transcendental; the incommensurability of the divine, the strange, uncanny, demonic illogicality, the “ungetatable” remoteness, cruelty, yes, wickedness, by any human standards, of the “Castle”; in other words, of the powers above. In every shade and tone, with employment of every possible device, the theme is played upon. It is the most patient, obstinate, desperate “wrestling with the angel” that ever happened; and the strangest, boldest, most novel thing about it is that it is done with humor, in a spirit of reverent satire which leaves utterly unchallenged the fact of the divine Absolute. This is what makes Kafka a religious humorist: that he does not, as literature is prone to do, treat of the incomprehensible, the incommensurable, the humanly unassessable transcendent world in a style either grandiose, ecstatic, or hyper-emotional. No, he sees and depicts it as an Austrian “department”; as a magnification of a petty, obstinate, inaccessible, unaccountable bureaucracy; a mammoth establishment of documents and procedures, headed by some darkly responsible official hierarchy. Sees it, then, as I have said, with the eye of a satirist; yet at the same time with utter sincerity, faith, and submissiveness, wrestling unintermittedly to win inside the incomprehensible kingdom of grace, while employing satire instead of pathos as his technique.


The biography tells us that Kafka once read aloud to some friends the beginning of his novel The Trial, which deals explicitly with the problem of divine justice. His listeners laughed through their tears, and Kafka too had to laugh so hard that his reading was interrupted. Mirth of that kind is very deep-seated and involved; no doubt the same thing happened when he read The Castle aloud. But when you consider that laughter of such a sort, with such deep and lofty sources, is probably the best thing that remains to us, then you will be inclined, with me, to place Kafka’s warm-hearted fantasies among the best worth reading in the world’s treasury of literature.

The Castle is not quite complete; but probably not more than one chapter is missing. The author gave his friends a version of the ending by word of mouth. K. dies—dies out of sheer exhaustion after his desperate efforts to get in touch with the Castle and be confirmed in his appointment. The villagers stand about the stranger’s deathbed—when, at the very last moment, an order comes down from the Castle: to the effect that while K. has no legal claim to live in the community, yet the permission is nevertheless granted; not in consideration of his honest efforts, but owing to “certain auxiliary circumstances,” it is permitted to him to settle in the village and work there. So, at the last, grace is vouchsafed. Franz Kafka too, certainly, without bitterness, laid it to his heart when he died.


THOMAS MANN

Princeton, June 1940




- from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Translated from the German by Stanley Corngold); p. 3-19 (Chapter 1):

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human room, only a little on the small side, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out—Samsa was a traveling salesman—hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared.

Gregor’s eyes then turned to the window, and the overcast weather—he could hear raindrops hitting against the metal window ledge—completely depressed him. “How about going back to sleep for a few minutes and forgetting all this nonsense,” he thought, but that was completely impracticable, since he was used to sleeping on his right side and in his present state could not get into that position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side, he always rocked onto his back again. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to have to see his squirming legs, and stopped only when he began to feel a slight, dull pain in his side, which he had never felt before.

“Oh God,” he thought, “what a grueling job I’ve picked! Day in, day out—on the road. The upset of doing business is much worse than the actual business in the home office, and, besides, I’ve got the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate. To the devil with it all!" He felt a slight itching up on top of his belly; shoved himself slowly on his back closer to the bedpost, so as to be able to lift his head better; found the itchy spot, studded with small white dots which he had no idea what to make of; and wanted to touch the spot with one of his legs but immediately pulled it back, for the contact sent a cold shiver through him.

He slid back again into his original position. "This getting up so early," he thought, "makes anyone a complete idiot. Human beings have to have their sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I go back to the hotel before lunch to write up the business I've done, these gentlemen are just having breakfast. That's all I'd have to try with my boss; I'd be fired on the spot. Anyway, who knows if that wouldn't be a very good thing for me. If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I would have quit long ago, I would have marched up to the boss and spoken my piece from the bottom of my heart. He would have fallen off the desk! It is funny, too, the way he sits on the desk and talks down from the heights to the employees, especially when they have to come right up close on account of the boss's being hard of hearing. Well, I haven't given up hope completely; once I've gotten the money together to pay off my parents' debt to him--that will probably take another five or six years--I'm going to do it without fail. Then I'm going to make the big break. But for the time being I'd better get up, since my train leaves at five."

And he looked over at the alarm clock, which was ticking on the chest of drawers. "God Almighty!" he thought. It was six-thirty, the hands were quietly moving forward, it was actually past the half-hour, it was already nearly a quarter to. Could it be that the alarm hadn't gone off? You could see from the bed that it was set correctly for four o'clock; it certainly had gone off, too. Yes, but was it possible to sleep quietly through a ringing that made the furniture shake? Well, he certainly hadn't slept quietly, but probably all the more soundly for that. But what should he do now? The next train left at seven o'clock; to make it, he would have to hurry like a madman, and the line of samples wasn't packed yet, and he himself didn't feel especially fresh and ready to march around. And even if he did make the train, he could not avoid getting it from the boss, because the messenger boy had been waiting at the five-o'clock train and would have long ago reported his not showing up. He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone. What if he were to say he was sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious because during his five years with the firm Gregor had not been sick even once. The boss would be sure to come with the health-insurance doctor, blame his parents for their lazy son, and cut off all excuses by quoting the health-insurance doctor, for whom the world consisted of people who were completely healthy but afraid to work. And, besides, in this case would he be so very wrong? In fact, Gregor felt fine, with the exception of his drowsiness, which was really unnecessary after sleeping so late, and he even had a ravenous appetite.

Just as he was thinking all this over at top speed, without being able to decide to get out of bed--the alarm clock had just struck a quarter to seven--he heard a cautious knocking at the door next to the head of his bed. "Gregor," someone called--it was his mother--"it's a quarter to seven. Didn't you want to catch the train?" What a soft voice! Gregor was shocked to hear his own voice answering, unmistakably his own voice, true, but in which, as if from below, an insistent distressed chirping intruded, which left the clarity of his words intact only for a moment really, before so badly garbling them as they carried that no one could be sure if he had heard right. Gregor had wanted to answer in detail and to explain everything, but, given the circumstances, confined himself to saying, "Yes, yes, thanks, Mother, I'm just getting up." The wooden door must have prevented the change in Gregor's voice from being noticed outside, because his mother was satisfied with this explanation and shuffled off. But their little exchange had made the rest of the family aware that, contrary to expectations, Gregor was still in the house, and already his father was knocking on one of the side doors, feebly but with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor," he called, "what's going on?" And after a little while he called again in a deeper, warning voice, "Gregor! Gregor!" At the other side door, however, his sister moaned gently, "Gregor? Is something the matter with you? Do you want anything?" Toward both sides Gregor answered: "I'm all ready," and made an effort, by meticulous pronunciation and by inserting long pauses between individual words, to eliminate everything from his voice that might betray him. His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered, "Gregor, open up, I'm pleading with you." But Gregor had absolutely no intention of opening the door and complimented himself instead on the precaution he had adopted from his business trips, of locking all the doors during the night even at home.

First of all he wanted to get up quietly, without any excitement; get dressed; and, the main thing, have breakfast, and only then think about what to do next, for he saw clearly that in bed he would never think things through to a rational conclusion. He remembered how even in the past he had often felt some kind of slight pain, possibly caused by lying in an uncomfortable position, which, when he got up, turned out to be purely imaginary, and he was eager to see how today's fantasy would gradually fade away. That the change in his voice was nothing more than the first sign of a bad cold, an occupational ailment of the traveling salesman, he had no doubt in the least.

It was very easy to throw off the cover; all he had to do was puff himself up a little, and it fell off by itself. But after this, things got difficult, especially since he was so unusually broad. He would have needed hands and arms to lift himself up, but instead of that he had only his numerous little legs, which were in every different kind of perpetual motion and which, besides, he could not control. If he wanted to bend one, the first thing that happened was that it stretched itself out; and if he finally succeeded in getting this leg to do what he wanted, all the others in the meantime, as if set free, began to work in the most intensely painful agitation. "Just don't stay in bed being useless," Gregor said to himself.

First he tried to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part--which by the way he had not seen yet and which he could not form a clear picture of--proved too difficult to budge; it was taking so long; and when finally, almost out of his mind, he lunged forward with all his force, without caring, he had picked the wrong direction and slammed himself violently against the lower bedpost, and the searing pain he felt taught him that exactly the lower part of his body was, for the moment anyway, the most sensitive.

He therefore tried to get the upper part of his body out of bed first and warily turned his head toward the edge of the bed. This worked easily, and in spite of its width and weight, the mass of his body finally followed, slowly, the movement of his head. But when at last he stuck his head over the edge of the bed into the air, he got too scared to continue any further, since if he finally let himself fall in this position, it would be a miracle if he didn't injure his head. And just now he had better not for the life of him lose consciousness; he would rather stay in bed.

But when, once again, after the same exertion, he lay in his original position, sighing, and again watched his little legs struggling, if possible more fiercely, with each other and saw no way of bringing peace and order into this mindless motion, he again told himself that it was impossible for him to stay in bed and that the most rational thing was to make any sacrifice for even the smallest hope of freeing himself from the bed. But at the same time he did not forget to remind himself occasionally that thinking things over calmly--indeed, as calmly as possible--was much better than jumping to desperate decisions. At such moments he fixed his eyes as sharply as possible on the window, but unfortunately there was little confidence and cheer to be gotten from the view of the morning fog, which shrouded even the other side of the narrow street. "Seven o'clock already," he said to himself as the alarm clock struck again, "seven o'clock already and still such a fog." And for a little while he lay quietly, breathing shallowly, as if expecting, perhaps, from the complete silence the return of things to the way they really and naturally were.

But then he said to himself, "Before it strikes a quarter past seven, I must be completely out of bed without fail. Anyway, by that time someone from the firm will be here to find out where I am, since the office opens before seven." And now he started rocking the complete length of his body out of the bed with a smooth rhythm. If he let himself topple out of bed in this way, his head, which on falling he planned to lift up sharply, would presumably remain unharmed. His back seemed to be hard; nothing was likely to happen to it when it fell onto the carpet. His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.

When Gregor's body already projected halfway out of bed--the new method was more of a game than a struggle, he only had to keep on rocking and jerking himself along--he thought how simple everything would be if he could get some help. Two strong persons--he thought of his father and the maid--would have been completely sufficient; they would only have had to shove their arms under his arched back, in this way scoop him off the bed, bend down with their burden, and then just be careful and patient while he managed to swing himself down onto the floor, where his little legs would hopefully acquire some purpose. Well, leaving out the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call for help? In spite of all his miseries, he could not repress a smile at this thought.

He was already so far along that when he rocked more strongly he could hardly keep his balance, and very soon he would have to commit himself, because in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven--when the doorbell rang. "It's someone from the firm," he said to himself and almost froze, while his little legs only danced more quickly. For a moment everything remained quiet. "They're not going to answer," Gregor said to himself, captivated by some senseless hope. But then, of course, the maid went to the door as usual with her firm stride and opened up. Gregor only had to hear the visitor's first word of greeting to know who it was--the office manager himself. Why was only Gregor condemned to work for a firm where at the slightest omission they immediately suspected the worst? Were all employees louts without exception, wasn't there a single loyal, dedicated worker among them who, when he had not fully utilized a few hours of the morning for the firm, was driven half-mad by pangs of conscience and was actually unable to get out of bed? Really, wouldn't it have been enough to send one of the apprentices to find out--if this prying were absolutely necessary--did the manager himself have to come, and did the whole innocent family have to be shown in this way that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be entrusted only to the intellect of the manager? And more as a result of the excitement produced in Gregor by these thoughts than as a result of any real decision, he swung himself out of bed with all his might. There was a loud thump, but it was not a real crash. The fall was broken a little by the carpet, and Gregor's back was more elastic than he had thought, which explained the not very noticeable muffled sound. Only he had not held his head carefully enough and hit it; he turned it and rubbed it on the carpet in anger and pain.

“Something fell in there,” said the manager in the room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether something like what had happened to him today could one day happen even to the manager; you really had to grant the possibility. But, as if in rude reply to this question, the manager took a few decisive steps in the next room and made his patent leather boots creak. From the room on the right his sister whispered, to inform Gregor, “Gregor, the manager is here.” “I know,” Gregor said to himself; but he did not dare raise his voice enough for his sister to hear.

“Gregor,” his father now said from the room on the left, “the manager has come and wants to be informed why you didn’t catch the early train. We don’t know what we should say to him. Besides, he wants to speak to you personally. So please open the door. He will certainly be so kind as to excuse the disorder of the room.” “Good morning, Mr. Samsa,” the manager called in a friendly voice. “There’s something the matter with him,” his mother said to the manager while his father was still at the door, talking. “Believe me, sir, there’s something the matter with him. Otherwise how would Gregor have missed a train? That boy has nothing on his mind but the business. It’s almost begun to rile me that he never goes out nights. He’s been back in the city for eight days now, but every night he’s been home. He sits there with us at the table, quietly reading the paper or studying timetables. It’s already a distraction for him when he’s busy working with his fretsaw. For instance, in the span of two or three evenings he carved a little frame. You’ll be amazed how pretty it is; it’s hanging inside his room. You’ll see it right away when Gregor opens the door. You know, I’m glad that you’ve come, sir. We would never have gotten Gregor to open the door by ourselves; he’s so stubborn. And there’s certainly something wrong with him, even though he said this morning there wasn’t.” “I’m coming right away,” said Gregor slowly and deliberately, not moving in order not to miss a word of the conversation. “I haven’t any other explanation myself,” said the manager. “I hope it’s nothing serious. On the other hand, I must say that we businessmen—fortunately or unfortunately, whichever you prefer—very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for business reasons.” “So can the manager come in now?” asked his father, impatient, and knocked on the door again. “No,” said Gregor. In the room on the left there was an embarrassing silence; in the room on the right his sister began to sob.

Why didn’t his sister go in to the others? She had probably just got out of bed and not even started to get dressed. Then what was she crying about? Because he didn’t get up and didn’t let the manager in, because he was in danger of losing his job, and because then the boss would start hounding his parents about the old debts? For the time being, certainly, her worries were unnecessary. Gregor was still here and hadn’t the slightest intention of letting the family down. True, at the moment he was lying on the carpet, and no one knowing his condition could seriously have expected him to let the manager in. But just because of this slight discourtesy, for which an appropriate excuse would easily be found later on, Gregor could not simply be dismissed. And to Gregor it seemed much more sensible to leave him alone now than to bother him with crying and persuasion. But it was just the uncertainty that was tormenting the others and excused their behavior.

“Mr. Samsa,” the manager now called, raising his voice, “what’s the matter? You barricade yourself in your room, answer only ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ cause your parents serious, unnecessary worry, and you neglect—I mention this only in passing—your duties to the firm in a really shocking manner. I am speaking here in the name of your parents and of your employer and ask you in all seriousness for an immediate, clear explanation. I’m amazed, amazed. I thought I knew you to be a quiet, reasonable person, and now you suddenly seem to want to start strutting about, flaunting strange whims. The head of the firm did suggest to me this morning a possible explanation for your tardiness—it concerned the cash payments recently entrusted to you—but really, I practically gave my word of honor that this explanation could not be right. But now, seeing your incomprehensible obstinacy, I am about to lose even the slightest desire to stick up for you in any way at all. And your job is not the most secure. Originally I intended to tell you all this in private, but since you make me waste my time here for nothing, I don’t see why your parents shouldn’t hear too. Your performance of late has been very unsatisfactory; I know it is not the best season for doing business, we all recognize that; but a season for not doing any business, there is no such thing, Mr. Samsa, such a thing cannot be tolerated.”

“But sir,” cried Gregor, beside himself, in his excitement forgetting everything else, “I’m just opening up, in a minute. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, prevented me from getting up. I’m still in bed. But I already feel fine again. I’m just getting out of bed. Just be patient for a minute! I’m not as well as I thought yet. But really I’m fine. How something like this could just take a person by surprise! Only last night I was fine, my parents can tell you, or wait, last night I already had a slight premonition. They must have been able to tell by looking at me. Why didn’t I report it to the office! But you always think that you’ll get over a sickness without staying home. Sir! Spare my parents! There’s no basis for any of the accusations that you’re making against me now; no one has ever said a word to me about them. Perhaps you haven’t seen the last orders I sent in. Anyway, I’m still going on the road with the eight o’clock train; these few hours of rest have done me good. Don’t let me keep you, sir. I’ll be at the office myself right away, and be so kind as to tell them this, and give my respects to the head of the firm.”

And while Gregor hastily blurted all this out, hardly knowing what he was saying, he had easily approached the chest of drawers, probably as a result of the practice he had already gotten in bed, and now he tried to raise himself up against it. He actually intended to open the door, actually present himself and speak to the manager; he was so eager to find out what the others, who were now so anxious to see him, would say at the sight of him. If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, then he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o’clock. At first he slid off the polished chest of drawers a few times, but at last, giving himself a final push, he stood upright; he no longer paid any attention to the pains in his abdomen, no matter how much they were burning. Now he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair, clinging to its slats with his little legs. But by doing this he had gotten control of himself and fell silent, since he could now listen to what the manager was saying.

“Did you understand a word?” the manager was asking his parents. “He isn’t trying to make fools of us, is he?” “My God,” cried his mother, already in tears, “maybe he’s seriously ill, and here we are, torturing him. Grete! Grete!” she then cried. “Mother?” called his sister from the other side. They communicated by way of Gregor’s room. “Go to the doctor’s immediately. Gregor is sick. Hurry, get the doctor. Did you just hear Gregor talking?” “That was the voice of an animal,” said the manager, in a tone conspicuously soft compared with the mother’s yelling. “Anna!” “Anna!” the father called through the foyer into the kitchen, clapping his hands, “get a locksmith right away!” And already the two girls were running with rustling skirts through the foyer — how could his sister have gotten dressed so quickly? — and tearing open the door to the apartment. The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

But Gregor had become much calmer. It was true that they no longer understood his words, though they had seemed clear enough to him, clearer than before, probably because his ear had grown accustomed to them. But still, the others now believed that there was something the matter with him and were ready to help him. The assurance and confidence with which the first measures had been taken did him good. He felt integrated into human society once again and hoped for marvelous, amazing feats from both the doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing sharply between them. In order to make his voice as clear as possible for the crucial discussions that were approaching, he cleared his throat a little—taking pains, of course, to do so in a very muffled manner, since this noise, too, might sound different from human coughing, a thing he no longer trusted himself to decide. In the next room, meanwhile, everything had become completely still. Perhaps his parents were sitting at the table with the manager, whispering; perhaps they were all leaning against the door and listening.

Gregor slowly lugged himself toward the door, pushing the chair in front of him, then let go of it, threw himself against the door, held himself upright against it—the pads on the bottom of his little legs exuded a little sticky substance—and for a moment rested there from the exertion. But then he got started turning the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed that he had no real teeth—what was he supposed to grip the key with?—but in compensation his jaws, of course, were very strong; with their help he actually got the key moving and paid no attention to the fact that he was undoubtedly hurting himself in some way, for a brown liquid came out of his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the floor. “Listen,” said the manager in the next room, “he’s turning the key.” This was great encouragement to Gregor; but everyone should have cheered him on, his father and mother too. “Go, Gregor,” they should have called “keep going, at that lock, harder, harder!” And in the delusion that they were all following his efforts with suspense, he clamped his jaws madly on the key with all the strength he could muster. Depending on the progress of the key, he danced around the lock; holding himself upright only by his mouth, he clung to the key, as the situation demanded, or pressed it down again with the whole weight of his body. The clearer click of the lock as it finally snapped back literally woke Gregor up. With a sigh of relief he said to himself, “So I didn’t need the locksmith after all,” and laid his head down on the handle in order to open wide [one wing of the double doors.]

Since he had to use this method of opening the door, it was really opened very wide while he himself was still invisible. He first had to edge slowly around the one wing of the door, and do so very carefully if he was not to fall flat on his back just before entering. He was still busy with this difficult maneuver and had no time to pay attention to anything else when he heard the manager burst out with a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like a rush of wind—and now he could see him, standing closest to the door, his hand pressed over his open mouth, slowly backing away, as if repulsed by an invisible, unrelenting force. His mother—in spite of the manager’s presence she stood with her hair still unbraided from the night, sticking out in all directions—first looked at his father with her hands clasped, then took two steps toward Gregor, and sank down in the midst of her skirts spreading out around her, her face completely hidden on her breast. With a hostile expression his father clenched his fist, as if to drive Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room, shielded his eyes with his hands, and sobbed with heaves of his powerful chest.

Now Gregor did not enter the room after all but leaned against the inside of the firmly bolted wing of the door, so that only half his body was visible and his head above it, cocked to one side and peeping out at the others. In the meantime it had grown much lighter; across the street one could see clearly a section of the endless, grayish-black building opposite—it was a hospital—with its regular windows starkly piercing the façade; the rain was still coming down, but only in large, separately visible drops that were also pelting the ground literally one at a time. The breakfast dishes were laid out lavishly on the table, since for his father breakfast was the most important meal of the day, which he would prolong for hours while reading various newspapers. On the wall directly opposite hung a photograph of Gregor from his army days, in a lieutenant’s uniform, his hand on his sword, a carefree smile on his lips, demanding respect for his bearing and his rank. The door to the foyer was open, and since the front door was open too, it was possible to see out onto the landing and the top of the stairs going down.

“Well,” said Gregor—and he was thoroughly aware of being the only one who had kept calm—“I’ll get dressed right away, pack up my samples, and go. Will you, will you please let me go? Now, sir, you see, I’m not stubborn and I’m willing to work; traveling is a hardship, but without it I couldn’t live. Where are you going, sir? To the office? Yes? Will you give an honest report of everything? A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that’s exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacle has been removed, he’s bound to work all the harder and more efficiently. I’m under so many obligations to the head of the firm, as you know very well. Besides, I also have my parents and my sister to worry about. I’m in a tight spot, but I’ll also work my way out again. Don’t make things harder for me than they already are. Stick up for me in the office, please. Traveling salesmen aren’t well liked there, I know. People think they make a fortune leading the gay life. No one has any particular reason to rectify this prejudice. But you, sir, you have a better perspective on things than the rest of the office, an even better perspective, just between the two of us, than the head of the firm himself, who in his capacity as owner easily lets his judgment be swayed against an employee. And you also know very well that the traveling salesman, who is out of the office practically the whole year round, can so easily become the victim of gossip, coincidences, and unfounded accusations, against which he’s completely unable to defend himself, since in most cases he knows nothing at all about them except when he returns exhausted from a trip, and back home gets to suffer on his own person the grim consequences, which can no longer be traced back to their causes. Sir, don’t go away without a word to tell me you think I’m at least partly right!”

But at Gregor’s first words the manager had already turned away and with curled lips looked back at Gregor only over his twitching shoulder. And during Gregor’s speech he did not stand still for a minute but, without letting Gregor out of his sight, backed toward the door, yet very gradually, as if there were some secret prohibition against leaving the room. He was already in the foyer, and from the sudden movement with which he took his last step from the living room, one might have thought he had just burned the sole of his foot. In the foyer, however, he stretched his right hand far out toward the staircase, as if nothing less than an unearthly deliverance were awaiting him there.

Gregor realized that he must on no account let the manager go away in this mood if his position in the firm were not to be jeopardized in the extreme. His parents did not understand this too well; in the course of the years they had formed the conviction that Gregor was set for life in this firm; and furthermore, they were so preoccupied with their immediate troubles that they had lost all consideration for the future. But Gregor had this forethought. The manager must be detained, calmed down, convinced, and finally won over; Gregor’s and the family’s future depended on it! If only his sister had been there! She was perceptive; she had already begun to cry when Gregor was still lying calmly on his back. And certainly the manager, this ladies’ man, would have listened to her; she would have shut the front door and in the foyer talked him out of his scare. But his sister was not there, Gregor had to handle the situation himself. And without stopping to realize that he had no idea what his new faculties of movement were, and without stopping to realize either that his speech had possibly—indeed, probably—not been understood again, he let go of the wing of the door; he shoved himself through the opening, intending to go to the manager, who was already on the landing, ridiculously holding onto the banisters with both hands; but groping for support, Gregor immediately fell down with a little cry onto his numerous little legs. This had hardly happened when for the first time that morning he had a feeling of physical well-being; his little legs were on firm ground; they obeyed him completely, as he noted to his joy; they even strained to carry him away wherever he wanted to go; and he already believed that final recovery from all his sufferings was imminent. But at that very moment, as he lay on the floor rocking with repressed motion, not far from his mother and just opposite her, she, who had seemed so completely self-absorbed, all at once jumped up, her arms stretched wide, her fingers spread, and cried, “Help, for God’s sake, help!” held her head bent as if to see Gregor better, but inconsistently darted madly backward instead; had forgotten that the table laden with the breakfast dishes stood behind her; sat down on it hastily, as if her thoughts were elsewhere, when she reached it; and did not seem to notice at all that near her the big coffeepot had been knocked over and coffee was pouring in a steady stream onto the rug.

“Mother, Mother,” said Gregor softly and looked up at her. For a minute the manager had completely slipped his mind; on the other hand at the sight of the spilling coffee he could not resist snapping his jaws several times in the air. At this his mother screamed once more, fled from the table, and fell into the arms of his father, who came rushing up to her. But Gregor had no time now for his parents; the manager was already on the stairs; with his chin on the banister, he was taking a last look back. Gregor was off to a running start, to be as sure as possible of catching up with him; the manager must have suspected something like this, for he leaped down several steps and disappeared; but still he shouted “Agh,” and the sound carried through the whole staircase. Unfortunately the manager’s flight now seemed to confuse his father completely, who had been relatively calm until now, for instead of running after the manager himself, or at least not hindering Gregor in his pursuit, he seized in his right hand the manager’s cane, which had been left behind on a chair with his hat and overcoat, picked up in his left hand a heavy newspaper from the table, and stamping his feet, started brandishing the cane and the newspaper to drive Gregor back into his room. No plea of Gregor’s helped, no plea was even understood; however humbly he might turn his head, his father merely stamped his feet more forcefully. Across the room his mother had thrown open a window in spite of the cool weather, and leaning out, she buried her face, far outside the window, in her hands. Between the alley and the staircase a strong draft was created, the window curtains blew in, the newspapers on the table rustled, single sheets fluttered across the floor. Pitilessly his father came on, hissing like a wild man. Now Gregor had not had any practice at all walking in reverse, it was really very slow going. If Gregor had only been allowed to turn around, he could have gotten into his room right away, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by this time-consuming gyration, and at any minute the cane in his father’s hand threatened to come down on his back or his head with a deadly blow. Finally, however, Gregor had no choice, for he noticed with horror that in reverse he could not even keep going in one direction; and so, incessantly throwing uneasy side-glances at his father, he began to turn around as quickly as possible, in reality turning only very slowly. Perhaps his father realized his good intentions, for he did not interfere with him; instead, he even now and then directed the maneuver from afar with the tip of his cane. If only his father did not keep making this intolerable hissing sound! It made Gregor lose his head completely. He had almost finished the turn when—his mind continually on this hissing—he made a mistake and even started turning back around to his original position. But when he had at last successfully managed to get his head in front of the opened door, it turned out that his body was too broad to get through as it was. Of course in his father’s present state of mind it did not even remotely occur to him to open the other wing of the door in order to give Gregor enough room to pass through. He had only the fixed idea that Gregor must return to his room as quickly as possible. He would never have allowed the complicated preliminaries Gregor needed to go through in order to stand up on one end and perhaps in this way fit through the door. Instead he drove Gregor on, as if there were no obstacle, with exceptional loudness; the voice behind Gregor did not sound like that of only a single father; now this was really no joke any more, and Gregor forced himself—come what may—into the doorway. One side of his body rose up, he lay lop-sided in the opening, one of his flanks was scraped raw, ugly blotches marred the white door, soon he got stuck and could not have budged any more by himself, his little legs on one side dangled tremblingly in midair, those on the other were painfully crushed against the floor—when from behind, his father gave him a hard shove, which was truly his salvation, and bleeding profusely, he flew far into his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, then at last everything was quiet.


- p. 44-55:

The family itself ate in the kitchen. Nevertheless, before going into the kitchen, his father came into this room and, bowing once, cap in hand, made a turn around the table. The roomers rose as one man and mumbled something into their beards. When they were alone again, they ate in almost complete silence. It seemed strange to Gregor that among all the different noises of eating he kept picking up the sound of their chewing teeth, as if this were a sign to Gregor that you needed teeth to eat with and that even with the best make of toothless jaws you couldn’t do a thing. “I’m hungry enough,” Gregor said to himself, full of grief, “but not for these things. Look how these roomers are gorging themselves, and I’m dying!”

On this same evening—Gregor could not remember having heard the violin during the whole time—the sound of violin playing came from the kitchen. The roomers had already finished their evening meal, the one in the middle had taken out a newspaper, given each of the two others a page, and now, leaning back, they read and smoked. When the violin began to play, they became attentive, got up, and went on tiptoe to the door leading to the foyer, where they stood in a huddle. They must have been heard in the kitchen, for his father called, “Perhaps the playing bothers you, gentlemen? It can be stopped right away.” “On the contrary,” said the middle roomer. “Wouldn’t the young lady like to come in to us and play in here where it’s much roomier and more comfortable?” “Oh, certainly,” called Gregor’s father, as if he were the violinist. The boarders went back into the room and waited. Soon Gregor’s father came in with the music stand, his mother with the sheet music, and his sister with the violin. Calmly his sister got everything ready for playing; his parents—who had never rented out rooms before and therefore behaved toward the roomers with excessive politeness—did not even dare sit down on their own chairs; his father leaned against the door, his right hand inserted between two buttons of his uniform coat, which he kept closed; but his mother was offered a chair by one of the roomers, and since she left the chair where the roomer just happened to put it, she sat in a corner to one side.

His sister began to play. Father and mother, from either side, attentively followed the movements of her hands. Attracted by the playing, Gregor had dared to come out a little further and already had his head in the living room. It hardly surprised him that lately he was showing so little consideration for the others; once such consideration had been his greatest pride. And yet he would never have had better reason to keep hidden; for now, because of the dust which lay all over his room and blew around at the slightest movement, he too was completely covered with dust; he dragged around with him on his back and along his sides fluff and hairs and scraps of food; his indifference to everything was much too deep for him to have gotten on his back and scrubbed himself clean against the carpet, as once he had done several times a day. And in spite of his state, he was not ashamed to inch out a little farther on the immaculate living-room floor.

Admittedly no one paid any attention to him. The family was completely absorbed by the violin-playing; the roomers, on the other hand, who at first had stationed themselves, hands in pockets, much too close behind his sister’s music stand, so that they could all have followed the score, which certainly must have upset his sister, soon withdrew to the window, talking to each other in an undertone, their heads lowered, where they remained, anxiously watched by his father. It now seemed only too obvious that they were disappointed in their expectation of hearing beautiful or entertaining violin-playing, had had enough of the whole performance, and continued to let their peace be disturbed only out of politeness. Especially the way they all blew the cigar smoke out of their nose and mouth toward the ceiling suggested great nervousness. And yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was inclined to one side, sadly and probingly her eyes followed the lines of music. Gregor crawled forward a little farther, holding his head close to the floor, so that it might be possible to catch her eye. Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light. He was determined to force himself on until he reached his sister, to pluck at her skirt, and to let her know in this way that she should bring her violin into his room, for no one here appreciated her playing the way he would appreciate it. He would never again let her out of his room—at least not for as long as he lived; for once, his nightmarish looks would be of use to him; he would be at all the doors of his room at the same time and hiss and spit at the aggressors; his sister, however, should not be forced to stay with him, but would do so of her own free will; she should sit next to him on the couch, bending her ear down to him, and then he would confide to her that he had had the firm intention of sending her to the Conservatory, and that, if the catastrophe had not intervened, he would have announced this to everyone last Christmas—certainly Christmas had come and gone?—without taking notice of any objections. After this declaration his sister would burst into tears of emotion, and Gregor would raise himself up to her shoulder and kiss her on the neck which, ever since she started going out to work, she kept bare, without a ribbon or collar.

“Mr. Samsa!” the middle roomer called to Gregor’s father and without wasting another word pointed his index finger at Gregor, who was slowly moving forward. The violin stopped, the middle roomer smiled first at his friends, shaking his head, and then looked at Gregor again. Rather than driving Gregor out, his father seemed to consider it more urgent to start by soothing the roomers although they were not at all upset, and Gregor seemed to be entertaining them more than the violin-playing. He rushed over to them and tried with outstretched arms to drive them into their room and at the same time with his body to block their view of Gregor. Now they actually did get a little angry—it was not clear whether because of his father’s behavior or because of their dawning realization of having had without knowing it such a next-door neighbor as Gregor. They demanded explanations from his father; in their turn they raised their arms, plucked excitedly at their beards, and, dragging their feet, backed off toward their room. In the meantime his sister had overcome the abstracted mood into which she had fallen after her playing had been so suddenly interrupted; and all at once, after holding violin and bow for a while in her slackly hanging hands and continuing to follow the score as if she were still playing, she pulled herself together, laid the instrument on the lap of her mother—who was still sitting in her chair, fighting for breath, her lungs violently heaving—and ran into the next room, which the roomers, under pressure from her father, were nearing more quickly than before. One could see the covers and bolsters on the beds, obeying his sister’s practiced hands, fly up and arrange themselves. Before the boarders had reached the room, she had finished turning down the beds and had slipped out. Her father seemed once again to be gripped by his perverse obstinacy to such a degree that he completely forgot any respect still due his tenants. He drove them on and kept on driving until, already at the bedroom door, the middle boarder stamped his foot thunderingly and thus brought him to a standstill. “I herewith declare,” he said, raising his hand and casting his eyes around for Gregor’s mother and sister too, “that in view of the disgusting conditions prevailing in this apartment and family”—here he spat curtly and decisively on the floor—“I give notice as of now. Of course I won’t pay a cent for the days I have been living here, either; on the contrary, I shall consider taking some sort of action against you with claims that—believe me—will be easy to substantiate.” He stopped and looked straight in front of him, as if he were expecting something. And in fact his two friends at once chimed in with the words, “We too give notice as of now.” Thereupon he grabbed the door knob and slammed the door with a bang.

Gregor’s father, his hands groping, staggered to his armchair and collapsed into it; it looked as if he were stretching himself out for his usual evening nap, but the heavy drooping of his head, as if it had lost all support, showed that he was certainly not asleep. All this time Gregor had lain quietly at the spot where the roomers had surprised him. His disappointment at the failure of his plan—but perhaps also the weakness caused by so much fasting—made it impossible for him to move. He was afraid with some certainty that in the very next moment a general debacle would burst over him, and he waited. He was not even startled by the violin as it slipped from under his mother’s trembling fingers and fell off her lap with a reverberating clang.

“My dear parents,” said his sister and by way of an introduction pounded her hand on the table, “things can’t go on like this. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I do. I won’t pronounce the name of my brother in front of this monster, and so all I say is: we have to try to get rid of it. We’ve done everything humanly possible to take care of it and to put up with it; I don’t think anyone can blame us in the least.”

“She’s absolutely right,” said his father to himself. His mother, who still could not catch her breath, began to cough dully behind her hand, a wild look in her eyes.

His sister rushed over to his mother and held her forehead. His father seemed to have been led by Grete’s words to more definite thoughts, had sat up, was playing with the cap of his uniform among the plates which were still lying on the table from the roomers’ supper, and from time to time looked at Gregor’s motionless form.

“We must try to get rid of it,” his sister now said exclusively to her father, since her mother was coughing too hard to hear anything. “It will be the death of you two, I can see it coming. People who already have to work as hard as we do can’t put up with this constant torture at home, too. I can’t stand it anymore either.” And she broke out crying so bitterly that her tears poured down onto her mother’s face, which she wiped off with mechanical movements of her hand.

“Child,” said her father kindly and with unusual understanding, “but what can we do?”

Gregor’s sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the bewildered mood that had now gripped her as she cried, in contrast with her earlier confidence.

“If he could understand us,” said her father, half questioning; in the midst of her crying Gregor’s sister waved her hand violently as a sign that that was out of the question.

“If he could understand us,” his father repeated and by closing his eyes, absorbed his daughter’s conviction of the impossibility of the idea, “then maybe we could come to an agreement with him. But the way things are—”

“It has to go,” cried his sister. “That’s the only answer, Father. You just have to try to get rid of the idea that it’s Gregor. Believing it for so long, that is our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that it isn’t possible for human beings to live with such a creature, and he would have gone away of his own free will. Then we wouldn’t have a brother, but we’d be able to go on living and honor his memory. But as things are, this animal persecutes us, drives the roomers away, obviously wants to occupy the whole apartment and for us to sleep in the gutter. Look, Father,” she suddenly shrieked, “he’s starting in again!” And in a fit of terror that was completely incomprehensible to Gregor, his sister abandoned even her mother, literally shoved herself off from her chair, as if she would rather sacrifice her mother than stay near Gregor, and rushed behind her father, who, upset only by her behavior, also stood up and half-lifted his arms in front of her as if to protect her.

But Gregor had absolutely no intention of frightening anyone, let alone his sister. He had only begun to turn around in order to trek back to his room; certainly his movements did look peculiar, since his ailing condition made him help the complicated turning maneuver along with his head, which he lifted up many times and knocked against the floor. He stopped and looked around. His good intention seemed to have been recognized; it had only been a momentary scare. Now they all watched him, silent and sad. His mother lay in her armchair, her legs stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost closing from exhaustion; his father and his sister sat side by side, his sister had put her arm around her father’s neck.

Now maybe they’ll let me turn around, Gregor thought and began his labors again. He could not repress his panting from the exertion, and from time to time he had to rest. Otherwise no one harassed him, he was left completely on his own. When he had completed the turn, he immediately began to crawl back in a straight line. He was astonished at the great distance separating him from his room and could not understand at all how, given his weakness, he had covered the same distance a little while ago almost without realizing it. Constantly intent only on rapid crawling, he hardly noticed that not a word, not an exclamation from his family interrupted him. Only when he was already in the doorway did he turn his head—not completely, for he felt his neck stiffening; nevertheless he still saw that behind him nothing had changed except that his sister had gotten up. His last glance ranged over his mother, who was now fast asleep.

He was hardly inside his room when the door was hurriedly slammed shut, firmly bolted, and locked. Gregor was so frightened at the sudden noise behind him that his little legs gave way under him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had been standing up straight, ready and waiting, then she had leaped forward nimbly, Gregor had not even heard her coming, and she cried “Finally!” to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.

“And now?” Gregor asked himself, looking around in the darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all. It did not surprise him; rather, it seemed unnatural that until now he had actually been able to propel himself on these thin little legs. Otherwise he felt relatively comfortable. He had pains, of course, throughout his whole body, but it seemed to him that they were gradually getting fainter and fainter and would finally go away altogether. The rotten apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, which were completely covered with fluffy dust, already hardly bothered him. He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

When early in the morning the cleaning woman came—in sheer energy and impatience she would slam all the doors so hard although she had often been asked not to, that once she had arrived, quiet sleep was no longer possible anywhere in the apartment—she did not at first find anything out of the ordinary on paying Gregor her usual short visit. She thought that he was deliberately lying motionless, pretending that his feelings were hurt; she credited him with unlimited intelligence. Because she happened to be holding the long broom, she tried from the doorway to tickle Gregor with it. When this too produced no results, she became annoyed and jabbed Gregor a little, and only when she had shoved him without any resistance to another spot did she begin to take notice. When she quickly became aware of the true state of things, she opened her eyes wide, whistled softly, but did not dawdle; instead, she tore open the door of the bedroom and shouted at the top of her voice into the darkness: “Come and have a look, it’s croaked; it’s lying there, dead as a doornail!”

The couple Mr. and Mrs. Samsa sat up in their marriage bed and had a struggle overcoming their shock at the cleaning woman before they could finally grasp her message. But then Mr. and Mrs. Samsa hastily scrambled out of bed, each on his side, Mr. Samsa threw the blanket around his shoulders, Mrs. Samsa came out in nothing but her nightgown; dressed this way, they entered Gregor’s room. In the meantime the door of the living room had also opened, where Grete had been sleeping since the roomers had moved in; she was fully dressed, as if she had not been asleep at all; and her pale face seemed to confirm this. “Dead?” said Mrs. Samsa and looking inquiringly at the cleaning woman, although she could scrutinize everything for herself and could recognize the the truth even without scrutiny. “I’ll say,” said the cleaning woman, and to prove it she pushed Gregor’s corpse with her broom a good distance sideways. Mrs. Samsa made a movement as if to hold the broom back but did not do it. “Well,” said Mr. Samsa, “now we can thank God!” He crossed himself, and the three women followed his example. Grete, who never took her eyes off the corpse, said, “Just look how thin he was. Of course he didn’t eat anything for such a long time. The food came out again just the way it went in.” As a matter of fact, Gregor’s body was completely flat and dry; this was obvious now for the first time, really, since the body was no longer raised up by his little legs and nothing else distracted the eye.

“Come in with us for a little while, Grete,” said Mrs. Samsa with a melancholy smile, and Grete, not without looking back at the corpse, followed her parents into their bedroom. The cleaning woman shut the door and opened the window wide. Although it was early in the morning, there was already some mildness mixed in with the fresh air. After all, it was already the end of March.

The three boarders came out of their room and looked around in astonishment for their breakfast; they had been forgotten. “Where’s breakfast?” the middle roomer grumpily asked the cleaning woman. But she put her finger to her lips and then hastily and silently beckoned the boarders to follow her into Gregor’s room. They came willingly and then stood, their hands in the pockets of their somewhat shabby jackets, in the now already very bright room, surrounding Gregor’s corpse.

At that point the bedroom door opened, and Mr. Samsa appeared in his uniform, his wife on one arm, his daughter on the other. They all looked as if they had been crying; from time to time Grete pressed her face against her father’s sleeve.

“Leave my house immediately,” said Mr. Samsa and pointed to the door, without letting go of the women. “What do you mean by that?” said the middle roomer, somewhat nonplussed, and smiled with a sugary smile. The two others held their hands behind their back and incessantly rubbed them together, as if in joyful anticipation of a big argument, which could only turn out in their favor. “I mean just what I say,” answered Mr. Samsa and with his two companions marched in a straight line toward the roomer. At first the roomer stood still and looked at the floor, as if the thoughts inside his head were fitting themselves together in a new order. “So, we’ll go, then,” he said and looked up at Mr. Samsa as if, suddenly overcome by a fit of humility, he were asking for further permission even for this decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded briefly several times, his eyes wide open. Thereupon the roomer actually went immediately into the foyer, taking long strides; his two friends had already been listening for a while, their hands completely still, and now they went hopping right after him, as if afraid that Mr. Samsa might get into the foyer ahead of them and interrupt the contact with their leader. In the foyer all three took their hats from the coatrack, pulled their canes from the umbrella stand, bowed silently, and left the apartment. In a suspicious mood which proved completely unfounded, Mr. Samsa led the two women out onto the landing; leaning over the banister, they watched the three roomers slowly but steadily going down the long flight of stairs, disappearing on each landing at a particular turn of the stairway and a few moments later emerging again; the farther down they got, the more the Samsa family’s interest in them wore off, and when a butcher’s boy with a carrier on his head came climbing up the stairs with a proud bearing, toward them and then up on past them, Mr. Samsa and the women quickly left the banister and all went back, as if relieved, into their apartment.

They decided to spend this day resting and going for a walk; they not only deserved a break in their work, they absolutely needed one. And so they sat down at the table and wrote three letters of excuse, Mr. Samsa to the management of the bank, Mrs. Samsa to her employer, and Grete to the store owner. While they were writing, the cleaning woman came in to say that she was going, since her morning’s work was done. The three letter writers at first simply nodded without looking up, but as the cleaning woman still kept lingering, they looked up, annoyed. “Well?” asked Mr. Samsa. The cleaning woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had some great good news to announce to the family but would do so only if she were thoroughly questioned. The little ostrich feather which stood almost upright on her hat and which had irritated Mr. Samsa the whole time she had been with them swayed lightly in all directions. “What do you want?” asked Mrs. Samsa, who inspired the most respect in the cleaning woman. “Well,” the cleaning woman answered, and for good-natured laughter could not immediately go on, “look, you don’t have to worry about getting rid of the stuff next door. It’s already been taken care of.” Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent down over their letters, as if to continue writing; Mr. Samsa, who noticed that the cleaning woman was now about to start describing everything in detail, stopped her with a firmly outstretched hand. But since she was not going to be permitted to tell her story, she remembered that she was in a great hurry, cried, obviously insulted, “So long, everyone,” whirled around wildly, and left the apartment with a terrible slamming of doors.

“We’ll fire her tonight,” said Mr. Samsa, but did not get an answer from either his wife or his daughter, for the cleaning woman seemed to have ruined their barely regained peace of mind. They got up, went to the window, and stayed there, holding each other tight. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair toward them and watched them quietly for a while. Then he called, “Come on now, come over here. Stop brooding over the past. And have a little consideration for me, too.” The women obeyed him at once, hurried over to him, fondled him, and quickly finished their letters.

Then all three of them left the apartment together, something they had not done in months, and took the trolley into the open country on the outskirts of the city. The car, in which they were the only passengers, was completely filled with warm sunshine. Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they discussed their prospects for the time to come, and it seemed on closer examination that these weren’t bad at all, for all three positions—about which they had never really asked one another in any detail—were exceedingly advantageous and especially promising for the future. The greatest immediate improvement in their situation would come easily, of course, from a change in apartments; they would now take a smaller and cheaper apartment, but one better situated and in every way simpler to manage than the old one, which Gregor had picked for them. While they were talking in this vein, it occurred almost simultaneously to Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, as they watched their daughter getting livelier and livelier, that lately, in spite of all the troubles which had turned her cheeks pale, she had blossomed into a good-looking, shapely girl. Growing quieter and communicating almost unconsciously through glances, they thought that it would soon be time, too, to find her a good husband. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when at the end of the ride their daughter got up first and stretched her young body.

[yeves]

introverted, Reinin "farsighted" type: “Kafka: Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”
ILI doesn't seem too wild of a guess.

[Olimpia]

He strikes me rather as being EII 4w5 Sp/Sx (similar to Edgar Allan Poe).
The stronger 5 wing may make him seem more like a Logical type.

Personally, I find it more reasonable to see him as someone with both 4D Ni and Fi, with a Te-seeking component.

His work was deeply personal, with a heavy emphasis on internal emotions and sensations, which reminds me rather of Fi-Si than Ni-Fi.

 

And this is just anecdotal and may not mean much, but I found it interesting that my LSE father did read his "Metamorphosis" when I suggested it to him a couple of years ago, considering he's only read a handful of fictional books at most. (As a kid he preferred encyclopedias, comics; as an adult, he reads the newspaper, but nothing more.)
He actually enjoyed it, or at least he did not complain about having to finish the book. He was done reading it in two days... or was it one? I can only remember it was surprisingly fast.

[darya]

ILI - Ni base at least,

[Aylen]

ILI - Ni base at least,

I agree. Just reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka made me lean ILI>IEI

I have read "The Metamorphosis" three times all the way through and have read excerpts many times. I always felt thoroughly disgusted each time I read it. I don't know why I kept reading it other than looking for clues that would allow me to see what made an ILI, sp/sx, I knew tick. He had a weird fascination with Kafka. He was the one who insisted I read it. I am starting to think he liked grossing me out like that. He had a very dark sense of humor. It would be kind of funny if that was his only intention since I took it to mean I would connect to some deep, dark, part of his psyche, that he subconsciously wanted me to reveal, by reading it.

I never heard of the concept of an ILI the first couple of times I read it. I was linked to it by a forum member not long after I joined and took it as I sign I should read it one last time, given the timing of losing that ILI. I will never read it again.

[Sol]

N

[The Reality Denialist]

It's totally baffling to read descriptions about person's surroundings as some sort of basis for narrative.

Te creative describing actions and movements possibly trying to see personal feelings when it comes to different things.

Makes it very hard to follow as the content can be squished in fraction of it's size.

[Aylen]

 

And this is just anecdotal and may not mean much, but I found it interesting that my LSE father did read his "Metamorphosis" when I suggested it to him a couple of years ago, considering he's only read a handful of fictional books at most. (As a kid he preferred encyclopedias, comics; as an adult, he reads the newspaper, but nothing more.)
He actually enjoyed it, or at least he did not complain about having to finish the book. He was done reading it in two days... or was it one? I can only remember it was surprisingly fast.

It took me less than an hour to read it. Probably 45 minutes, give or take, but it is not the kind of book I would put down and then finish later. I almost convinced myself that I actually liked it, the first time, because the ILI did and I wanted that connection on an "intellectual" level. I was also really young and wasn't as aware of his influence on me. It made me feel intelligent to say I had read, understood the symbolism and enjoyed it. I grasped the ILI's analysis of the book and accepted, outwardly, his take on it. He was pretty Te and concrete when interpreting the symbolism which made me feel like I was out of my element. I kept my own opinions and doubts, to myself so I didn't look "dumb".

I just checked my goodreads account. I see I gave it two stars in contrast to Naked Lunch (another buggy book ) which I gave 4 stars. I guess I can handle bugs if presented in certain ways but not in other ways. I am sure some people would find Naked Lunch as disturbing and gross as I found The Metamorphosis.

[Pallas]

I hope this isn't a necro but I found it on Google and wanted to comment on basically how wrong I think absolutely everyone here is

Kafka is an ESFj for sure and you guys are all way wrong. I'm tired now (despite my horrid insomnia) but I used to be obsessed with Kafka and I know this guy went around talking to random people, giving dramatic presentations of his stories for his (many) friends, dressing like a dandy, and romantically fawning on various women. The whole "schizoid, tortured artist" thing was just him trying to fit the image of his society's vision of an artist. Also, did you guys read anything besides the intro? This is the giveaway IMHO:

"Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both writers had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details.^[79] Brod thought Kafka was one of the most entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing humour with his friends, but also helped them in difficult situations with good advice.^[80] According to Brod, he was a passionate reciter, who was able to phrase his speaking as if it were music.^[81] Brod felt that two of Kafka's most distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" (absolute Wahrhaftigkeit) and "precise conscientiousness" (präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit).^[82][83] He explored details, the inconspicuous, in depth and with such love and precision that things surfaced that were unforeseen, seemingly strange, but absolutely true (nichts als wahr).^[84]" [sic]

Honesty and conscientiousness I associate with ExFj, not xxTp. Advice (as opposed to hugs and kisses) is also pretty Fe. The last sentence is a very strong emphasis on Si/Fe. Ni/Se prefers conspicuous details and unseemingly (but actually) strange things, and tends to put more emphasis on the things than the details. In fact, details are mentioned over and over. Did Max Brod mention the details?

I think a huge number of writers are various types of extravert with a Creative subtype honestly. A lot are also Si/Ne or Ne/Si, not always the "it's fantastical, therefore Ni/Se" reaction people give. Remember that art thread where I put someone as ISTp? There's a lot of weird surrealism there, but it gets smuggled in with the emphasis on Si because the subject matter is not the focus. Also, most of the biggest Kafka fans I know are Alphas and/or Fe leads. Just because he didn't finish his novels doesn't mean they're xxxp. Look at the structure of the stories he did finish. Don't ExFj tend to find it easier to start than finish things in general? I know people think Exxj are not very creative but I think this is the most likely. I think it's really F and/or S leads that are attracted to the arts, not the whole INxp or IxFp stereotype. I think Si/Ne and Ne/Si stacks tend to be really well represented by H. R. Giger and Max Ernst respectively in the visual arts, and in people trying to draw "eldritch" things.

Also, look at ESE here: http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...ortraits-Alpha

Also, @HERO, you know he wrote in German, right? A lot of English translations of him are very, very awkward, especially the popular ones. To quote someone else on the Internet, "Kafka in English is hard to follow and obscure. Kafka in German is very concrete." I think the people here who only read him in English are missing the concreteness that everyone characterizes his writing by in German (and is alluded to on Wikipedia and elsewhere).

[someoneaskedmetofly]

He strikes me rather as being EII 4w5 Sp/Sx (similar to Edgar Allan Poe).
The stronger 5 wing may make him seem more like a Logical type.

Personally, I find it more reasonable to see him as someone with both 4D Ni and Fi, with a Te-seeking component.

His work was deeply personal, with a heavy emphasis on internal emotions and sensations, which reminds me rather of Fi-Si than Ni-Fi.

 

And this is just anecdotal and may not mean much, but I found it interesting that my LSE father did read his "Metamorphosis" when I suggested it to him a couple of years ago, considering he's only read a handful of fictional books at most. (As a kid he preferred encyclopedias, comics; as an adult, he reads the newspaper, but nothing more.)
He actually enjoyed it, or at least he did not complain about having to finish the book. He was done reading it in two days... or was it one? I can only remember it was surprisingly fast.

Anything more you can elaborate on (on Poe and Kafka, not your dad ;P )?

[Jake]

ILI, one of my favorite writers

[Delilah]

He came up in a conversation recently,typing-wise I'd only got so far as process (reinin dichotomies) and negativist

On a objective(?) "note", existentialism has never been my cup of tea, being quite foreign to me even though I haven't followed a set in stone way. It's not just Kafka, but Sartre. especially his dialectic criticism I find utterly crap, and so on. I would rather stick to Plato.

^ i'd rather Plato too

[Guillaine]

He strikes me rather as being EII 4w5 Sp/Sx (similar to Edgar Allan Poe).
The stronger 5 wing may make him seem more like a Logical type.

Personally, I find it more reasonable to see him as someone with both 4D Ni and Fi, with a Te-seeking component.

His work was deeply personal, with a heavy emphasis on internal emotions and sensations, which reminds me rather of Fi-Si than Ni-Fi.

 

And this is just anecdotal and may not mean much, but I found it interesting that my LSE father did read his "Metamorphosis" when I suggested it to him a couple of years ago, considering he's only read a handful of fictional books at most. (As a kid he preferred encyclopedias, comics; as an adult, he reads the newspaper, but nothing more.)
He actually enjoyed it, or at least he did not complain about having to finish the book. He was done reading it in two days... or was it one? I can only remember it was surprisingly fast.

I tend to agree, for sure 4w5, just he was so still in himself, so intense, so willing to suffer that the 5 is strong. This quote is typical him and his unique perspective.

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

I see Fi and Ne in that he is always going for something beyond, his "blood relative" as he calls him was Dostoyevsky, he loved Soren Kierkegaard, and Robert Walser, all of whom are usually typed EII I believe. He has this incredible uncompromising belief in his direction that EIIs can have, while always remaining modest. He also has a wonderful sense of humour and balance, which I find in EIIs. His diaries and letters are emotional but repressed too, because of the 4w5 and because of his upbringing. Ne subtype strengthens his Ti. I'm sure he's a harmonizer.

[HERO]

Franz Kafka: SEE-Fi (Normalizing subtype) or EII-Ne; or ILI?














- From The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka (translated by Christopher Moncrieff); pages 35-48 [“The Sentence: A Story” (For F.*)]:

*Felice Bauer (1887-1960), who would later become Kafka’s fiancee.


It was a Sunday morning on the most beautiful spring day. Georg Bendemann, a young businessman, was sitting in his room on the first floor of one of the low, flimsily built houses that stood in rows beside the river, and which could only really be told apart by their height and colour. He had just been writing to a childhood friend who now lived in Russia; he sealed the letter slowly and almost playfully, then rested his elbows on the desk and gazed out of the window at the river, the bridge and the pale-green of the hills on the other side.

He remembered how, not holding out much hope for his prospects here, his friend had packed his bags and gone to live in Russia. He now ran a business in St Petersbrg, which, after a promising start, had for quite some time seemed to have ground to a halt, a fact that his friend would always bemoan on his increasingly rare trips home. So he was slaving away in vain on foreign soil, and the full, Russian-style beard that he now wore failed to conceal the face that Georg had known since they were children, and whose yellowish tint seemed to indicate some undiagnosed illness. As his friend admitted in his letters, he had very little contact with the expatriate community there and didn’t socialize much with the natives and their families, and as a result seemed to be heading for permanent bachelorhood.

What could you say to someone like that, who had clearly gone astray, whom you could feel sorry for but were unable to help? Ought you to suggest that he should come home, pick up life where he had left off, re-establish former ties—which was perfectly possible—and essentially rely on his friends to help him? But that meant telling him in terms that would be humiliating, however delicately it was phrased, that his plans had come to nought, that he ought to give up and come home, let everybody stare at him, “the one who had to come back”, that his friends were the only ones who knew what they were doing and that he was just an overgrown schoolboy who should follow their example, the people who had stayed at home and made a success of their lives. And yet was there any guarantee that all the troubles that were going to be inflicted on him would serve any purpose? Perhaps it wouldn’t succeed in making him come back—after all, he said himself that he no longer understood how things worked in his native country—and so he would stay abroad come what may, increasingly estranged from his friends and embittered by all their advice. But if he followed their advice and allowed himself to be forced to come back—not by his own volition, of course, but by force of circumstances—and wasn’t able to cope either with or without his friends, felt ashamed and found that he now had neither homeland nor friends, then wouldn’t it be better if he stayed in the foreign country? Because, in such circumstances, did anyone really believe that he would get on any better here?

It was for this reason, assuming that Georg still wanted to keep in touch with him by letter anyway, that he couldn’t really share any news worthy of the name with him, as you wouldn’t hesitate to do with even your vaguest acquaintances. It was more than three years since his friend had been home, something that he always tried to explain, although not very convincingly, by the uncertain political situation in Russia, saying that it effectively prevented a small businessman from leaving the country for even a short period of time, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Russians managed to travel the globe without losing any sleep over it. During the last three years, however, there had been a great many changes in Georg’s life. When his mother had died two years earlier, since when he had been living with his elderly father, his friend, on hearing the sad news, had expressed his condolences by letter in a detached tone that could only have been due to the fact that it was impossible for someone living abroad to imagine the grief and sorrow that such an event could cause. Since then Georg had taken everything in hand, including the business, with increasing determination. Perhaps his father, while his mother had been alive, had probably run things only as he saw fit, preventing Georg from taking on any real responsibility, and since his mother’s death, his father, while still working in the company, had kept more in the background; or perhaps—and this was a more likely explanation—lucky coincidences played a much larger part in it. Whatever the case, in the last two years the business had grown beyond all expectations. They had had to double the size of the workforce, the turnover had increased fivefold, and there was little doubt that it stood to develop even further.

But his friend knew nothing of all these changes. In the past—although the last time might have been when he wrote to him after the death of his mother—he had tried to persuade Georg to come to Russia, and had waxed lyrical about the possibilities that existed for a business like his in Petersburg. But compared with the increased capacity that Georg’s firm had now taken on, the figures that he quoted were derisory. Yet Georg hadn’t had the heart to tell his friend about his commercial success, and if he were to do so now, after the event, it would seem rather odd.

So when he wrote to his friend he restricted himself to the kind of insignificant incidents that spring to mind in no particular order when you are daydreaming in the peace and quiet of a Sunday morning. He didn’t want to say anything that might spoil the image that his friend had probably retained of their hometown over all these years, and to which he had no doubt grown accustomed. Thus it was that, in three separate letters written at quite long intervals, Georg had told him about the engagement between an unnamed young man and an unnamed young woman, until suddenly, and quite contrary to what he had intended, his friend began to take an interest in this extraordinary fact.

Georg far preferred writing to him about things of this kind to admitting that it was he himself who, a month earlier, had become engaged to a certain Fräulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a young woman from a well-to-do family. He often talked to his fiancee about this friend of his and the correspondence that they maintained. “He almost certainly won’t come to our wedding,” she said, “although I have every right to meet all your friends.”

“I wouldn’t want to put him to the trouble,” Georg replied. “There’s something you need to understand: he probably would come, at least I think so, but he might feel that was being forced to, that it was to his detriment, he might envy me and be unhappy—and then, unable to overcome his unhappiness, he would just go back to Russia all alone. Alone—do you realize what that means?”

“Of course, but won’t he find out that we’re getting married via some other source?”

“It’s true that I can’t stop him from coming, but given the life he leads I think it’s unlikely.”

“With friends like that, Georg, perhaps you shouldn’t have got engaged in the first place.”

“Maybe so—the blame for that can be laid at both our doors, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And when, breathless from his kisses, she again objected: “It still upsets me,” he was convinced that it would do no harm to write to his friend and tell him everything. “That’s simply the way I am, and so that’s how he will have to take me,” he thought. “I can’t make myself into something I’m not just for the sake of our friendship.”

And so, in the long letter that he wrote to his friend that Sunday morning, he told him that he had got engaged: “I’ve kept the best news until last. I’m engaged to be married to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a young woman from a good family who moved here quite some time after you left, so you would be unlikely to know her. I’ll tell you more about my fiancee at some other time, but for now all you need to know is that I’m perfectly happy and that the only thing that has changed between us is that where once you just had a friend, you now have a happy friend. Not only that, you will have acquired in my bride-to-be, who sends you her warmest wishes and will write to you herself very soon, a most sincere friend, which for a single man is no small thing. I know that there are many things that prevent you from coming back to see us; but might my marriage not be the ideal opportunity to thrust those obstacles aside? Still, whatever the case, don’t worry about me but do whatever suits you.”

For quite a long time Georg sat at the desk with the letter in his hand, staring out of the window. An acquaintance had just waved to him as he walked past in the street outside, and he smiled at him distractedly.

Eventually he got up, put the letter in his pocket, walked out of his room and along a small side passage that led to his father’s room, where he hadn’t set foot for months. Not that there was any real need, since they saw each other constantly at the office and had lunch together in a restaurant, although in the evening they made their own arrangements. But they would usually both sit and read their respective newspapers in the living room for a while, unless Georg was entertaining some friends or, as was now more often the case, he went to visit his fiancee.

He was surprised to find his father’s room plunged in darkness on such a bright, sunny morning, although it was shaded by the high wall at the far end of the small courtyard. His father was sitting by the window, in a corner of the room that was filled with mementoes of his late mother, reading the paper, which he was holding up at an odd angle because his eyesight was getting weak. On the table were the remains of his breakfast, which he seemed to have hardly touched.

“Ah, Georg!” he said, getting up and walking towards him. His heavy dressing gown fell open and fluttered round his legs. “I see my father is still a giant,” thought Georg.

“It’s terribly dark in here,” he said.

“Yes, it is dark,” his father answered.

“And you’ve closed the window.”

“I prefer it that way.”

“It’s very warm and sunny outside,” said Georg, as if to follow on from what he had said a moment ago, and then he sat down.

His father cleared away the breakfast things and put them on a chest of drawers.

“Actually,” Georg went on, following the old man’s movements with a distracted gaze, “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve written to St Petersburg with news of my engagement.” He pulled the letter half out of his pocket, then let it slide back down again.

“To Petersburg?” his father queried.

“To my friend there,” replied Georg, trying to catch his father’s eye. “He’s not like this at the office,” he thought. “Look at him, ensconced in his armchair with his arms folded.”

“Oh yes, your friend,” said his father, emphasizing every word.

“You know very well that at first I didn’t want to tell him that I had got engaged, Father. Out of consideration, no more than that. You know he can be difficult. I told myself that I couldn’t prevent him from finding out about my engagement from someone else—although with the solitary life he leads that’s not very likely—but that he ought not to hear it from me.”

“And you’ve had second thoughts?” asked his father, laying the newspaper on the window sill, his glasses on top of it and his hands on his glasses.

“Yes, I’ve had second thoughts. I told myself that if he really is my friend, then he’ll be just as happy about my engagement as I am. So I no longer have any reservations about telling him. But before I send the letter I just wanted to let you know.”

“Listen to me, Georg,” said his father, his toothless mouth becoming wider. “You’ve come to see me about this and to ask my advice. That reflects well on you, undoubtedly. But unless you tell me the whole truth then it means nothing, less than nothing. I don’t want to go raking up matters that have no place here. Since the death of our dear Mama, some less than pleasant things have happened. The time may come to talk about them, and it might be sooner than we both think. A lot of things pass me by in the business nowadays, although I don’t think people are hiding anything from me—at least I prefer to assume that no one is hiding things from me—but I’m not as strong as I was, my memory is going. I can’t keep an eye on everything like I used to. Obviously it’s just nature taking its course, although the death of our dear mother affected me far more than it did you. But since we’re on the subject of this letter, I’d ask you not to deceive me. It’s just a trifling little thing; not worth wasting my breath on, so please don’t try to lead me up the garden path. Do you actually have a friend in St Petersburg?”

Embarrassed, Georg stood up. “Never mind about my friends for now. A thousand of them could never replace my father. Do you want my opinion? You don’t take enough care of yourself. Of course, at your age you’re perfectly within your rights. You’re indispensable to me in the business, you know that very well, but if it’s going to damage your health, then I’ll shut up shop permanently tomorrow. This simply won’t do. We need to change your way of life—and I mean completely. You sit here in darkness, while the living room is sunny and bright. Instead of eating properly you just pick at your breakfast. You leave the window shut when some fresh air would do you good. No, Papa! I’m going to call the doctor and we’ll follow his advice. We’ll swap rooms, you can move into the one at the front and I’ll have this one. It won’t be too much of an upheaval for you, we’ll move all your things in there. But that can wait, you just stay in bed for the moment, you need plenty of rest. Here, I’ll help you get undressed, I know what I’m doing, you’ll see. Or if you would prefer to move to the other room straight away, you can use my bed for now. That might be a sensible thing to do.”

Georg was now standing beside his father, whose head, with its shock of tousled white hair, had sunk onto his chest.

“Georg,” he said softly, not moving.

Georg knelt down next to his chair; in the weary face he could see his father’s dilated pupils fixed on him from the corner of his eyes.

“You don’t have any friends in Petersburg. You’ve always been one for playing practical jokes, including on me. How could you possibly have a friend there? I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Don’t you remember, Father?” said Georg, helping him out of his chair and, as he just stood there feebly, slipping off his dressing gown for him. “It was almost three years ago that my friend came to see us, and I remember that you didn’t really take to him. I disagreed with him at least twice while you were there, even though he was sitting right next to me in my room. I can understand why you disliked him, he has his little peculiarities. But in the end you got on quite well. It made me proud how you listened to what he had to say, nodded your head and asked him questions. If you think back, surely you must remember! He had all those incredible stories about the Russian Revolution—like when he was in Kiev on business for example, and in the middle of a riot he saw an Orthodox priest standing on a balcony; he had gouged a cross into the palm of his hand and was holding it up and appealing to the crowd. You dined out on that story for quite some time afterwards.”

As he was speaking, Georg had managed to get his father to sit down again, and had carefully pulled off the woollen trousers that he wore over his underwear, and then his socks. Seeing that they weren’t very clean, he reproached himself for neglecting his father. He definitely ought to have made a point of checking that he always had a change of underwear. He hadn’t yet had a specific conversation with his fiancee about the arrangements that they might make for his father’s future, although there was a tacit assumption between them that he would stay on in the old house. But now he made a decision: as soon as they were married, his father would come and live with them. In fact all things considered, it seemed as if the care and attention that he ought to have had already might be coming too late.

He picked him up in his arms and carried him the short distance to the bed. As he did so, he noticed with horror that his father was playing with the watch chain that hung from his lapel. He was holding on to it so tightly that he was only just able to get him to lie on the bed.

But once he was there, everything seemed fine. His father arranged the sheets over himself, and pulled the covers right up to his neck. Then he looked at Georg in a not unsympathetic way.

“So you do remember him then?” said Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.

“Am I properly covered up?” his father asked, as if he weren’t able to see for himself that his feet were under the quilt.

“Yes, you’re nice and comfortable,” said Georg, tucking him in.

“Am I properly covered up?” his father repeated, apparently attaching great importance to the answer he got.

“Don’t worry, you’re properly covered up.”

“No!” cried his father, almost before Georg had time to reply. Then he threw back the covers with all his might, so violently that they flew into the air and hung there for a second, and then he got up and stood on the bed, with one hand just touching the ceiling. “I know you want to cover me up again, you good-for-nothing, but I’m still not covered up. So is this last effort as much as you can manage, is it too much for you? Yes, I remember your friend very well. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been deceiving him all these years. What other reason could there be? Do you think I haven’t shed tears for him? That’s why you lock yourself away in your office—do not disturb, the boss is busy—just so you can write those perfidious letters to Russia. It’s lucky that fathers don’t need lessons in how to see through their sons. And now, when you think you’ve laid him low, so low that you can plant your backside on him and he won’t bat an eyelid, His Lordship my son decides to get married!”

Georg stared at this nightmare vision that was his father. His friend in St Petersburg, whom his father suddenly seemed to know intimately, seized hold of his imagination like never before. He saw him, lost in the vast depths of Russia. He saw him in the doorway of his shop, now empty after being looted, among the remains of the shelves, the smashed and mangled goods, the gas lamps that had been ripped from the walls, barely able to stand up himself. Why had he had to go so far away?

“Look me in the eye, why don’t you!” shouted his father, and, still lost in thought, Georg hurried towards the bed to get everything tidied up, but stopped halfway and stood in the middle of the room.

“Because she lifted her skirts,” his father went on in a falsetto voice. “Because she lifted her skirts like this, the repulsive little goose.” And by way of demonstration he pulled up his nightshirt so far that the scar from an old war wound at the top of his thigh was exposed. “It’s because she lifted her skirts just like this and like that that you made up to her, and so you could satisfy your desires in peace you defiled our mother’s memory, betrayed your friend and fixed your father to his bed so he couldn’t move. But he can still move, can’t he? And how!”

And he stood there, as free as a bird, waving his legs about, his face lit up by the shrewdness of his observations.

Georg stood in the corner, as far away as possible from his father. He had decided some time beforehand to pay extremely close attention to everything, so as not to be caught unawares in any way whatsoever, whether from in front, behind or even above. He remembered having made this resolution, which had promptly slipped his memory, rather like pulling a short piece of thread through the eye of a needle.

“But your friend hasn’t been deceived at all!” cried his father, wagging his finger as if to reaffirm this statement. “Because I’ve been acting as his representative here.”

Before he could stop himself, Georg burst out: “Clown!” He was immediately overcome with shame, and, his eyes glazed, he bit his tongue very hard—but it was too late.

“Yes, I admit I’m a clown! That’s exactly the right word! What other consolation does an ageing widower have? Tell me—and for the time it takes you to answer you are still my living, breathing son—tell me what else I’ve got left, sitting in my back room with my old man’s bones, constantly harassed by a disloyal staff? While my son goes his merry way, signs deals that I’ve negotiated, turns somersaults of delight and walks past his father wearing the expression of an honourable man! Do you think that I’ve never felt any love for you, the fruit of my loins?”

“He’s going to lean forward,” thought Georg. “What if he falls over and breaks a limb?” And the idea went whizzing through his mind like a skyrocket.

His father did lean forward, but he didn’t fall over. Yet when Georg didn’t come over to him as he had expected, he stood up again.

“Stay where you are, I don’t need your help! You think you’re still strong enough to come over here, and that the only reason that you don’t is because you don’t want to. Well how wrong you are! I’m still by far the strongest. If I’d been on my own then perhaps I might have weakened, but your mother passed on her strength to me, and I set up a handsome arrangement with your friend—in fact I’ve got all his clients right here in my pocket!”

“So he’s even got pockets in his nightshirt!” thought Georg, as if he could use this one remark to make his father look ridiculous the whole world over. But the thought was soon forgotten, much as he forgot everything else.

“Yes, you hang on to your fiancee’s skirts and come over here! I’ll soon send her packing, just you see if I don’t!”

Georg pulled a face to show that he didn’t believe a word of it. As if to assert the truth of what he had said, his father simply nodded in the direction of the corner where Georg was standing.

“It really amused me just now when you came and asked whether you ought to write to your friend and tell him about your engagement. He knows everything, you stupid boy, everything! You forgot to take my writing case away from me, so I’ve been in contact with him by letter. That’s why he hasn’t come back all these years, he knows a hundred times more than you do. He’ll screw your letter up unread with one hand while he reads mine with the other!”

And, carried away by his own words, he waved his arm above his head and cried: “He knows a thousand times more!”

“Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to make fun of his father. But no sooner had the words come to his lips than they took on a fatal tone.

“I’ve been waiting for years for you to come and ask me that question! What else do you think I’ve got to occupy myself with? Do you think I read the papers? Here!” And picking up a newspaper that had somehow ended up in his bed, he threw it at Georg. It was an old newspaper, whose name Georg didn’t recognize.

“You’ve taken your time to grow up! Your mother had to die first, she would never have survived this happy day; your friend has gone to wrack and ruin in Russia, even three years ago he was so yellow that it looked as if he was on his last legs; while I—well, you can see how it is with me. Haven’t you got eyes in your head?”

“So you’ve been spying on me!” Georg exclaimed.

“You might have been able to say that to me before,” replied his father in a pitying yet incidental tone of voice. “But now it’s completely unacceptable.”

Then he went on, speaking louder: “Now you know what exists in the world around you; so far all you’ve known about is yourself! You were certainly an innocent child, although it would be more accurate to say that you were a fiend—which is why I am sentencing you to drown yourself!”

Georg felt as if he were being hounded out of the room; as he left, the sound of his father collapsing onto the bed was still ringing in his ears. As he flew down the stairs, his feet barely touching the steps, he ran into the cleaning lady, who was on her way up to do the housework, as she did every morning. “Lordy!” she cried, covering her face with her apron, but Georg was already long gone. He hurtled out of the front door, impelled unstoppably across the road towards the river on the other side. In an instant he was grasping the railings like a starving man does food. He vaulted over them with the same gymnastic skill that had made his parents proud of him when he was young. He was still holding on tightly, although his grip was getting weaker and weaker, when through the bars he caught sight of a bus approaching; the sound of its engine would easily drown out that of his fall. “Dearest parents,” he called out in a faint voice, “I did love you really,” and then he let go.

Just at that moment an unending stream of traffic was pouring across the bridge.






http://sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/02/111.shtml

Kafka and Dostoevsky as "Blood Relatives" (by Roman S. Struc)

The romance of German literature with the giants of Russian letters is an affair of long standing. Its inception reaches back to the mid-eighteenth century, though the most intensive involvement of German writers has been with Russian authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unlike the other countries of the West, Germany's interest in Russian letters had not been limited to the "classics" of Russian literature. The German reading public is conversant with all the major figures of Russian literature from Pushkin to Leskov, Merezhkovskij, Bunin, Gorkij, Majakovskij, Pasternak, and Bulgakov, as well as contemporary Soviet writers. This interest has at no time decreased; the romance still goes on.

If in passing only, it should be pointed out that the affair had not been one-sided: the influence of German Idealism, especially in its Hegelian forms, and of German Romanticism (Schelling, Herder-Belinskij, Schiller-Dostoevsky, Goethe-Bulgakov must suffice as random examples) is a well-documented chapter in the intellectual history of Russia. Thomas Mann claimed that it was Germany's central position in Europe which made her a natural and eager recipient, mediator and disseminator between East and West in all matters of spiritual culture. This speculative view is surely not without considerable merit.

The broad span of German interests in Russian matters notwithstanding, it can be safely claimed that Dostoevsky has been the focal point of that curiosity and fascination. Such luminaries as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rilke, Döblin, Werfel, Bergengrün, and the somewhat unjustly forgotten Jakob Wassermann stood under the spell of the Russian writer. The preceptor of modern German thought, Nietzsche, acknowledged his affinity with Dostoevsky's analysis of the modern predicament which he found in his "Notes from Underground", as have many others who concerned themselves with the crisis of European consciousness.

Franz Kafka has been considered in all respects an exception. He entered the consciousness of both the European and North American reading public as a great loner, a man thoroughly alienated from his environment and tradition, the original inimitable genius. Even in his own assessement of his situation, Kafka thought of himself as either the beginning or the end. Still, even early in his posthumous career Kafka's name had been linked with men such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky as thinkers and hоmines religiоsi. In those early studies Kafka had been viewed as one of their company. Notwithstanding some virtue of this perception, these studies had been ahistorical and often impressionistic, seeing Kafka primarily if not exclusively as a purveyor of ideas, a prophet of doom rather than a man of letters; their tone was one of homage rather than of historically accurate assessments. Only in the late fifties and especially quite recently Kafka scholarship began shaking off certain hasty and unwarranted claims on behalf of its hero and, as an example, his affinity with Kierkegaard has been subjected to close critical scrutiny resulting in a more sober and objective view of the Dane's influence on Kafka's thought. The same has occurred with other figures frequently linked with Kafka. In this process of discriminating reassessment, however, Kafka's affinity with Dostoevsky gained in currency. In the last decade some very creditable ground work has been accomplished, and one can now safely speak of more than either very general or incidental connection between those two, at least at first glance, diverse figures.

In what follows, an attempt will be made to summarize these foci of affinity or even influence, as the case may be, in a systematic fashion.

1. Kafka's private library, unfortunately recorded a decade after his death, contained Dostoevsky's "Letters", "The Brothers Karamazov", "Crime and Punishment", and a one volume collection of shorter works with the title "The Gambler". In 1914 a German translation of Dostoevsky's "Complete Works" had become available. On the basis of Kafka's Letters and Diaries we know that he read many other works besides those in his library, including Nina Hoffmann's Dostoevsky biography and Strachov's introductory essay to Dostoevsky's "Collected Works". Further it will become obvious that, although unmentioned, Kafka was familiar with "The Double". As early as 1913, in a letter to his fiance Kafka wrote: "the four men, Grillparzer, Dostoevsky, Kleist and Flaubert, I consider to be my true blood-relations". This statement expresses not only his affinity with those men as writers, but also an identification with their existential complexion. In the one case, Kafka might have had in mind Dostoevsky's epilepsy, paralleled in his own life by tuberculosis and, perhaps even more so, the complex and ambiguous relationship with their respective fathers. In their writings this culminated for Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov", for Kafka in "The Judgment" and the notorious "Letter to His Father". As for their illness, both viewed it as release and punishment, both were aware of the complex and secret workings of mind and body, both cursing and blessing it at the same time.

2. For the sake of this discussion only, I will deal separately with ideas, themes and motifs on the one hand, and on the other, with the more formal aspects of their respective works.


Dostoevsky's and Kafka's views of man are predicated on the notion of a basic ineffability of man. As an example I would like to refer to the discussion surrounding Raskolnikov's motives for his crime. To this day, as we know, there is no consensus on this matter. In effect, therefore, Raskolnikov remains in a certain sense a mystery and, in all likelihood, consciously or not, Dostoevsky wanted it this way. No two studies on "Crime and Punishment" are in agreement on either the motives or the exact nature of Raskolnikov's conversion at the end of the novel. The same holds true for Joseph K. in "The Trial": has K. committed a crime? If he has, does he consider it a crime? If not, why does he voluntarily subject himself to the harassment of the authorities and finally accept his execution as if he deserved it? If, for the present purposes, we leave out the contentious "Epilogue" in "Crime and Punishment", we are left in similar perplexity. Does Raskolnikov consider his deed a crime? If not, why does he play into the hands of the police and with relief accept the judgment? Conventional psychology does not supply unequivocal answers. Yet both writers are acute psychologists—Dostoevsky as a precursor of depth psychology, Kafka well-versed in its Freudian variety; still both recognize its limitations. Dostoevsky ironically calls psychology a stick with two ends—in "The Brothers Karamazov”—and most vociferously denounces it in "Notes from Underground", and Kafka angrily records in his "Meditations," “I am through with psychology!” Nonetheless both go on exploring the mystery of man, frequently delving into the mythic dimensions of the human condition. The curious relationship between Prince Myshkin and Nastasia Filipovna in "The Idiot", for instance, can be seen as a variety of masochistic behaviour but also, as Mochulski ingeniously shows, a re-enactment of the Amor-Psyche [Cupid and Psyche] myth. Kafka's "The Judgment" is both an exemplary paradigm for the Oedipal complex as well as a retelling of Job's struggle with a cruel God. Man remains for both authors an irreducable mystery.

3. The problem of human culpability is shared by both authors. The summa of Dostoevsky's thought on this is set forth in "The Brothers Karamazov": all men are responsible, all are guilty. The acceptance of responsibility and guilt leads to suffering and potentially to redemption. In short, the problem of guilt emerges as a kind of felix culpa.

All protagonists of Kafka's feel guilty. Their guilt feelings are the fountainhead of their actions and suffering, of their meekness as well as their aggressiveness and, ultimately, of their failure as functioning human beings. While Dostoevsky places universal culpability in a comprehensive metaphysical and religious context, Kafka's protagonists reject the notion in seemingly uncompromising terms. K. says in "The Trial": "How can anyone be guilty at all; we are all men here, one as much as the other". Kafka's protagonists act out their destinies denying the reality of guilt, yet they are all guilt-ridden. Martin Buber, in a contrastive study on guilt and guilt feelings using Dostoevsky and Kafka as his crown witnesses, perceptively distinguished between guilt and a conscious acceptance of responsibility—a concept so prominent in Dostoevsky—and the predicament of Kafka's characters who exhibit merely the residue of a guilt morality though in entirely negative terms, namely, as crippling guilt feelings. In Dostoevsky the realization of guilt is a first step toward redemption; in Kafka guilt feelings lead only to despair. To be sure, Dostoevsky's gallery of characters contains persons—like the protagonist of "Notes from Underground”—who seem to be beyond rehabilitation; yet even those are capable of momentary dreams of the genuine "Crystal Palace", holding out hope and relief from the torment of relentless questioning and self-doubt. Kafka denies his characters even the luxury of such dreams. His own situation as well of that of his protagonists is an unrelieved "sea sickness on firm land".


4. Dostoevsky studies man by placing him in extreme situations. Goljadkin is studied through his paranoia and schizophrenia. Raskolnikov takes the search for his identity into his own hands, as it were, by committing a capital crime. In his pursuits "for the man in man," Dostoevsky resorts to the confrontation of the hero with his "double". Thus he proceeds from a relatively simple relationship in "The Double", to infinitely more sophisticated contrastive correspondences: Raskolnikov-Svidrigajlov-Sonja; Myshkin and Rogozhin; Ivan Karamazov and his cheesy understudy, Smerdjakov, as well as the shabby devil. Kafka's uses of the double are not unlike those of the Russian. The emergence of the insect in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" allows him to explore the hidden aspects of Gregor Samsa's personality. To put it simply, through the insect Kafka dramatizes the unknown and secret life of his protagonist. In "The Judgment", for instance, the protagonist's willingness—almost enthusiasm—to carry out his father's death sentence can best be grasped by the role his double, the elusive friend in St. Petersburg, plays in the story. The two cases I am quoting are by no means isolated occurrences.

The most striking similarity in the use of the double occurs in "The Metamorphosis" in comparison with Dostoevsky's "The Double". It has been shown that the respective openings of both works are quite similar. Both Goljadkin and Samsa awaken from uneasy dreams, both are reluctant to enter the humdrum reality of their everyday lives, both confuse dream and reality, both are trying to opt out of their pedestrian existence. A study of both texts, (Dostoevsky's in the German translation) leads to an incontrovertible conclusion that Kafka used parts of "The Double" to write his story. Even the structure of the story supports this conclusion. Both narratives come to an end in a tragicomic catastrophe: in "The Double" it is the banquet at Olsufij Ivanovich's, in "The Metamorphosis" a party at which the family entertains the three boarders. These events in both works serve as tragic denouements for the respective protagonists.

5. Moving on to the formal aspects of Kafka's writing, it can be noted that one of the devices used by him is the reification of metaphor. What it amounts to is a kind of retranslation of ordinary circumlocutions containing a simile or metaphor into its original components. For example, the German phrase "We come to learn it with our own body", reappears in the story "In the Penal Colony" when the criminal sentenced to death is not told of his punishment verbally: it is inscribed on his back with needles. "To live in the public eye", is an idiom for lack of privacy: in "The Castle", while K. is making love to Frieda, the villagers stand around them passing comments. The reader of Russian literature will be familiar with a similar technique in Gogol, especially in "Dead Souls". It is not out of the question that Kafka, who knew Gogol well, modelled his technique on Gogol's grotesque practice. As far as Dostoevsky is concerned it has been noted that he uses insect imagery to emphasize the unsavory, ugly, and morally depraved. Not infrequent are such idioms used as "Am I a man or a louse?" or "Many times I have tried to become an insect". It can be said that Kafka draws his radical consequences by translating the metaphorical insect into a real one. Kafka's "Metamorphosis" as a symbolic statement seems to be saying: "I am an insect". Dostoevsky's metaphor becomes Kafka's reality.

6. Since the republication of Bakhtin's book it has become impossible to speak of Dostoevsky's narrative techniques without referring to it. One of the relatively recent major insights of Kafka scholarship has become the discovery that Kafka's narratives are not genuine third person stories or novels but rather they are told from a single point of view, not that of a fictitious or real narrator, but one totally identical with that of the protagonist. Everything conveyed in those narratives is negotiated exclusively through the protagonist's consciousness, though presented in a conventional third person manner.

Even though I am not always convinced by Bakhtin, I do see that much of what Dostoevsky does is to let his characters engage in a kind of interior monologue, without making it entirely obvious to the reader that this is the case. Thus Dostoevsky creates perceptions of the external world and persons, without being explicit that those are perceptions of one character's consciousness. Nor does he correct such impressions, but allows them to stand as they are. This creates, according to Bakhtin, a kind of open-endedness which by and large remains unresolved. If one accepts this view, Kafka's practice of the so-called "Einsinnigkeit" or "one-sighted-ness" shows some distinct similarity with Dostoevsky's. I would like to pursue this speculation a little further. Although the first part of "Notes from Underground" is technically a monologue, Bakhtin claims that its solitary anti-hero is endowed with an ability to enter into dialogue with other consciousnesses. For this reason and purpose he creates such characters as the man of action or the romantic idealist with whom he conducts his polemic. These self-made characters, or rather mental attitudes, retain their intellectual and psychological independence. The result, as Bakhtin sees it, is not a dialectical resolution but a polyphony of unresolved voices.

"Notes", both as a thematic and technical construct, can be profitably compared with Kafka's last and bleakest story "The Burrow". There, an unidentified animal, who voluntarily banishes himself underground, describes in a monologue of some forty pages his efforts to construct a perfectly secure burrow. His monologue, unlike that of the Underground Man's, remains technically and literally a single voice of a single consciousness. It is a cry of fear and total isolation. He does not enter into an intercourse with even an imaginary world or audience. If the Man from Underground is isolated, Kafka's protagonist's isolation is absolute: there is no dialogue, no other consciousness, no other world but that of anguish and fear within. The end of the story is neither a symphony nor polyphony but monotony.

7. In the early forties, a well-meaning but somewhat naive champion of Kafka's bestowed in his hero the honorific appellation of "Dostoevsky of the West". Notwithstanding a substantial affinity and a number of quite specific similarities that show definite influence, such a claim shows a misunderstanding of both authors. A witty critic once remarked that Kafka's writing could be compared to a violin concerto played by a master, but only on the deep G-string. The view that Kafka's writings offer us a view of the world seen through a key hole, as it were. He shows the reader the adventures of a totally unhinged consciousness, thoroughly isolated from others, a kind of windowless monad. Even though Dostoevsky has such similar characters in his repertory, they are never as isolated as the characters created by Kafka. Dostoevsky without exception supplies many other dimensions of the human condition. The social, political, historical, metaphysical, and religious dimensions of man's existence are explicit in his anthropology. Dostoevsky's world is infinitely richer than Kafka's. This is not a judgment, this is a statement for which it is easy to adduce historical reasons. Man of the twentieth century is certainly more alienated than his ancestors in the 19th. Dostoevsky's unhinged monomaniacs did not make up the core of the social fabric; they were still hiding out in the basements of the underground. In Kafka the unhinged man has become less of an exception and more of a rule; Kafka's K.'s are our mutual acquaintances.

Can the affinity between Dostoevsky and Kafka be reduced to a single valid formula? Hardly. Most of the points I have tried to make stress certain similarities; in a number of cases Kafka's indebtedness is unmistakable. But, if by implication only, I have tried to point to rather essential differences.

In conclusion, however, I would like to quote from a letter Kafka wrote in reply to a friend:

"If the book we are reading does not wake us like a blow of a fist on the skull, why do we read the book? So that it shall make us happy, as you tell me? My God, we would be happy even if we had no books, and such books that make us happy we could write ourselves if need be. But what we need are books that affect us like ill-fortune causing pain, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being exiled in a deep forest away from all men, like a suicide; a book must be an axe to break the frozen sea in us. This I believe.”

Both Dostoevsky and Kafka have created such books. Both possessed the cruel talent and the ruthlessness of vision necessary to write them. This, I think, is the background against which Kafka's relationship with Dostoevsky must be seen: the similarity of their spiritual complexion.



- From The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka (translated by Christopher Moncrieff); pages 35-48 [“The Sentence: A Story” (For F.*)]:

*Felice Bauer (1887-1960), who would later become Kafka’s fiancee.


It was a Sunday morning on the most beautiful spring day. Georg Bendemann, a young businessman, was sitting in his room on the first floor of one of the low, flimsily built houses that stood in rows beside the river, and which could only really be told apart by their height and colour. He had just been writing to a childhood friend who now lived in Russia; he sealed the letter slowly and almost playfully, then rested his elbows on the desk and gazed out of the window at the river, the bridge and the pale-green of the hills on the other side.

He remembered how, not holding out much hope for his prospects here, his friend had packed his bags and gone to live in Russia. He now ran a business in St Petersbrg, which, after a promising start, had for quite some time seemed to have ground to a halt, a fact that his friend would always bemoan on his increasingly rare trips home. So he was slaving away in vain on foreign soil, and the full, Russian-style beard that he now wore failed to conceal the face that Georg had known since they were children, and whose yellowish tint seemed to indicate some undiagnosed illness. As his friend admitted in his letters, he had very little contact with the expatriate community there and didn’t socialize much with the natives and their families, and as a result seemed to be heading for permanent bachelorhood.

What could you say to someone like that, who had clearly gone astray, whom you could feel sorry for but were unable to help? Ought you to suggest that he should come home, pick up life where he had left off, re-establish former ties—which was perfectly possible—and essentially rely on his friends to help him? But that meant telling him in terms that would be humiliating, however delicately it was phrased, that his plans had come to nought, that he ought to give up and come home, let everybody stare at him, “the one who had to come back”, that his friends were the only ones who knew what they were doing and that he was just an overgrown schoolboy who should follow their example, the people who had stayed at home and made a success of their lives. And yet was there any guarantee that all the troubles that were going to be inflicted on him would serve any purpose? Perhaps it wouldn’t succeed in making him come back—after all, he said himself that he no longer understood how things worked in his native country—and so he would stay abroad come what may, increasingly estranged from his friends and embittered by all their advice. But if he followed their advice and allowed himself to be forced to come back—not by his own volition, of course, but by force of circumstances—and wasn’t able to cope either with or without his friends, felt ashamed and found that he now had neither homeland nor friends, then wouldn’t it be better if he stayed in the foreign country? Because, in such circumstances, did anyone really believe that he would get on any better here?

It was for this reason, assuming that Georg still wanted to keep in touch with him by letter anyway, that he couldn’t really share any news worthy of the name with him, as you wouldn’t hesitate to do with even your vaguest acquaintances. It was more than three years since his friend had been home, something that he always tried to explain, although not very convincingly, by the uncertain political situation in Russia, saying that it effectively prevented a small businessman from leaving the country for even a short period of time, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Russians managed to travel the globe without losing any sleep over it. During the last three years, however, there had been a great many changes in Georg’s life. When his mother had died two years earlier, since when he had been living with his elderly father, his friend, on hearing the sad news, had expressed his condolences by letter in a detached tone that could only have been due to the fact that it was impossible for someone living abroad to imagine the grief and sorrow that such an event could cause. Since then Georg had taken everything in hand, including the business, with increasing determination. Perhaps his father, while his mother had been alive, had probably run things only as he saw fit, preventing Georg from taking on any real responsibility, and since his mother’s death, his father, while still working in the company, had kept more in the background; or perhaps—and this was a more likely explanation—lucky coincidences played a much larger part in it. Whatever the case, in the last two years the business had grown beyond all expectations. They had had to double the size of the workforce, the turnover had increased fivefold, and there was little doubt that it stood to develop even further.

But his friend knew nothing of all these changes. In the past—although the last time might have been when he wrote to him after the death of his mother—he had tried to persuade Georg to come to Russia, and had waxed lyrical about the possibilities that existed for a business like his in Petersburg. But compared with the increased capacity that Georg’s firm had now taken on, the figures that he quoted were derisory. Yet Georg hadn’t had the heart to tell his friend about his commercial success, and if he were to do so now, after the event, it would seem rather odd.

So when he wrote to his friend he restricted himself to the kind of insignificant incidents that spring to mind in no particular order when you are daydreaming in the peace and quiet of a Sunday morning. He didn’t want to say anything that might spoil the image that his friend had probably retained of their hometown over all these years, and to which he had no doubt grown accustomed. Thus it was that, in three separate letters written at quite long intervals, Georg had told him about the engagement between an unnamed young man and an unnamed young woman, until suddenly, and quite contrary to what he had intended, his friend began to take an interest in this extraordinary fact.

Georg far preferred writing to him about things of this kind to admitting that it was he himself who, a month earlier, had become engaged to a certain Fräulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a young woman from a well-to-do family. He often talked to his fiancee about this friend of his and the correspondence that they maintained. “He almost certainly won’t come to our wedding,” she said, “although I have every right to meet all your friends.”

“I wouldn’t want to put him to the trouble,” Georg replied. “There’s something you need to understand: he probably would come, at least I think so, but he might feel that was being forced to, that it was to his detriment, he might envy me and be unhappy—and then, unable to overcome his unhappiness, he would just go back to Russia all alone. Alone—do you realize what that means?”

“Of course, but won’t he find out that we’re getting married via some other source?”

“It’s true that I can’t stop him from coming, but given the life he leads I think it’s unlikely.”

“With friends like that, Georg, perhaps you shouldn’t have got engaged in the first place.”

“Maybe so—the blame for that can be laid at both our doors, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And when, breathless from his kisses, she again objected: “It still upsets me,” he was convinced that it would do no harm to write to his friend and tell him everything. “That’s simply the way I am, and so that’s how he will have to take me,” he thought. “I can’t make myself into something I’m not just for the sake of our friendship.”

And so, in the long letter that he wrote to his friend that Sunday morning, he told him that he had got engaged: “I’ve kept the best news until last. I’m engaged to be married to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a young woman from a good family who moved here quite some time after you left, so you would be unlikely to know her. I’ll tell you more about my fiancee at some other time, but for now all you need to know is that I’m perfectly happy and that the only thing that has changed between us is that where once you just had a friend, you now have a happy friend. Not only that, you will have acquired in my bride-to-be, who sends you her warmest wishes and will write to you herself very soon, a most sincere friend, which for a single man is no small thing. I know that there are many things that prevent you from coming back to see us; but might my marriage not be the ideal opportunity to thrust those obstacles aside? Still, whatever the case, don’t worry about me but do whatever suits you.”

For quite a long time Georg sat at the desk with the letter in his hand, staring out of the window. An acquaintance had just waved to him as he walked past in the street outside, and he smiled at him distractedly.

Eventually he got up, put the letter in his pocket, walked out of his room and along a small side passage that led to his father’s room, where he hadn’t set foot for months. Not that there was any real need, since they saw each other constantly at the office and had lunch together in a restaurant, although in the evening they made their own arrangements. But they would usually both sit and read their respective newspapers in the living room for a while, unless Georg was entertaining some friends or, as was now more often the case, he went to visit his fiancee.

He was surprised to find his father’s room plunged in darkness on such a bright, sunny morning, although it was shaded by the high wall at the far end of the small courtyard. His father was sitting by the window, in a corner of the room that was filled with mementoes of his late mother, reading the paper, which he was holding up at an odd angle because his eyesight was getting weak. On the table were the remains of his breakfast, which he seemed to have hardly touched.

“Ah, Georg!” he said, getting up and walking towards him. His heavy dressing gown fell open and fluttered round his legs. “I see my father is still a giant,” thought Georg.

“It’s terribly dark in here,” he said.

“Yes, it is dark,” his father answered.

“And you’ve closed the window.”

“I prefer it that way.”

“It’s very warm and sunny outside,” said Georg, as if to follow on from what he had said a moment ago, and then he sat down.

His father cleared away the breakfast things and put them on a chest of drawers.

“Actually,” Georg went on, following the old man’s movements with a distracted gaze, “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve written to St Petersburg with news of my engagement.” He pulled the letter half out of his pocket, then let it slide back down again.

“To Petersburg?” his father queried.

“To my friend there,” replied Georg, trying to catch his father’s eye. “He’s not like this at the office,” he thought. “Look at him, ensconced in his armchair with his arms folded.”

“Oh yes, your friend,” said his father, emphasizing every word.

“You know very well that at first I didn’t want to tell him that I had got engaged, Father. Out of consideration, no more than that. You know he can be difficult. I told myself that I couldn’t prevent him from finding out about my engagement from someone else—although with the solitary life he leads that’s not very likely—but that he ought not to hear it from me.”

“And you’ve had second thoughts?” asked his father, laying the newspaper on the window sill, his glasses on top of it and his hands on his glasses.

“Yes, I’ve had second thoughts. I told myself that if he really is my friend, then he’ll be just as happy about my engagement as I am. So I no longer have any reservations about telling him. But before I send the letter I just wanted to let you know.”

“Listen to me, Georg,” said his father, his toothless mouth becoming wider. “You’ve come to see me about this and to ask my advice. That reflects well on you, undoubtedly. But unless you tell me the whole truth then it means nothing, less than nothing. I don’t want to go raking up matters that have no place here. Since the death of our dear Mama, some less than pleasant things have happened. The time may come to talk about them, and it might be sooner than we both think. A lot of things pass me by in the business nowadays, although I don’t think people are hiding anything from me—at least I prefer to assume that no one is hiding things from me—but I’m not as strong as I was, my memory is going. I can’t keep an eye on everything like I used to. Obviously it’s just nature taking its course, although the death of our dear mother affected me far more than it did you. But since we’re on the subject of this letter, I’d ask you not to deceive me. It’s just a trifling little thing; not worth wasting my breath on, so please don’t try to lead me up the garden path. Do you actually have a friend in St Petersburg?”

Embarrassed, Georg stood up. “Never mind about my friends for now. A thousand of them could never replace my father. Do you want my opinion? You don’t take enough care of yourself. Of course, at your age you’re perfectly within your rights. You’re indispensable to me in the business, you know that very well, but if it’s going to damage your health, then I’ll shut up shop permanently tomorrow. This simply won’t do. We need to change your way of life—and I mean completely. You sit here in darkness, while the living room is sunny and bright. Instead of eating properly you just pick at your breakfast. You leave the window shut when some fresh air would do you good. No, Papa! I’m going to call the doctor and we’ll follow his advice. We’ll swap rooms, you can move into the one at the front and I’ll have this one. It won’t be too much of an upheaval for you, we’ll move all your things in there. But that can wait, you just stay in bed for the moment, you need plenty of rest. Here, I’ll help you get undressed, I know what I’m doing, you’ll see. Or if you would prefer to move to the other room straight away, you can use my bed for now. That might be a sensible thing to do.”

Georg was now standing beside his father, whose head, with its shock of tousled white hair, had sunk onto his chest.

“Georg,” he said softly, not moving.

Georg knelt down next to his chair; in the weary face he could see his father’s dilated pupils fixed on him from the corner of his eyes.

“You don’t have any friends in Petersburg. You’ve always been one for playing practical jokes, including on me. How could you possibly have a friend there? I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Don’t you remember, Father?” said Georg, helping him out of his chair and, as he just stood there feebly, slipping off his dressing gown for him. “It was almost three years ago that my friend came to see us, and I remember that you didn’t really take to him. I disagreed with him at least twice while you were there, even though he was sitting right next to me in my room. I can understand why you disliked him, he has his little peculiarities. But in the end you got on quite well. It made me proud how you listened to what he had to say, nodded your head and asked him questions. If you think back, surely you must remember! He had all those incredible stories about the Russian Revolution—like when he was in Kiev on business for example, and in the middle of a riot he saw an Orthodox priest standing on a balcony; he had gouged a cross into the palm of his hand and was holding it up and appealing to the crowd. You dined out on that story for quite some time afterwards.”

As he was speaking, Georg had managed to get his father to sit down again, and had carefully pulled off the woollen trousers that he wore over his underwear, and then his socks. Seeing that they weren’t very clean, he reproached himself for neglecting his father. He definitely ought to have made a point of checking that he always had a change of underwear. He hadn’t yet had a specific conversation with his fiancee about the arrangements that they might make for his father’s future, although there was a tacit assumption between them that he would stay on in the old house. But now he made a decision: as soon as they were married, his father would come and live with them. In fact all things considered, it seemed as if the care and attention that he ought to have had already might be coming too late.

He picked him up in his arms and carried him the short distance to the bed. As he did so, he noticed with horror that his father was playing with the watch chain that hung from his lapel. He was holding on to it so tightly that he was only just able to get him to lie on the bed.

But once he was there, everything seemed fine. His father arranged the sheets over himself, and pulled the covers right up to his neck. Then he looked at Georg in a not unsympathetic way.

“So you do remember him then?” said Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.

“Am I properly covered up?” his father asked, as if he weren’t able to see for himself that his feet were under the quilt.

“Yes, you’re nice and comfortable,” said Georg, tucking him in.

“Am I properly covered up?” his father repeated, apparently attaching great importance to the answer he got.

“Don’t worry, you’re properly covered up.”

“No!” cried his father, almost before Georg had time to reply. Then he threw back the covers with all his might, so violently that they flew into the air and hung there for a second, and then he got up and stood on the bed, with one hand just touching the ceiling. “I know you want to cover me up again, you good-for-nothing, but I’m still not covered up. So is this last effort as much as you can manage, is it too much for you? Yes, I remember your friend very well. He would have been a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been deceiving him all these years. What other reason could there be? Do you think I haven’t shed tears for him? That’s why you lock yourself away in your office—do not disturb, the boss is busy—just so you can write those perfidious letters to Russia. It’s lucky that fathers don’t need lessons in how to see through their sons. And now, when you think you’ve laid him low, so low that you can plant your backside on him and he won’t bat an eyelid, His Lordship my son decides to get married!”

Georg stared at this nightmare vision that was his father. His friend in St Petersburg, whom his father suddenly seemed to know intimately, seized hold of his imagination like never before. He saw him, lost in the vast depths of Russia. He saw him in the doorway of his shop, now empty after being looted, among the remains of the shelves, the smashed and mangled goods, the gas lamps that had been ripped from the walls, barely able to stand up himself. Why had he had to go so far away?

“Look me in the eye, why don’t you!” shouted his father, and, still lost in thought, Georg hurried towards the bed to get everything tidied up, but stopped halfway and stood in the middle of the room.

“Because she lifted her skirts,” his father went on in a falsetto voice. “Because she lifted her skirts like this, the repulsive little goose.” And by way of demonstration he pulled up his nightshirt so far that the scar from an old war wound at the top of his thigh was exposed. “It’s because she lifted her skirts just like this and like that that you made up to her, and so you could satisfy your desires in peace you defiled our mother’s memory, betrayed your friend and fixed your father to his bed so he couldn’t move. But he can still move, can’t he? And how!”

And he stood there, as free as a bird, waving his legs about, his face lit up by the shrewdness of his observations.

Georg stood in the corner, as far away as possible from his father. He had decided some time beforehand to pay extremely close attention to everything, so as not to be caught unawares in any way whatsoever, whether from in front, behind or even above. He remembered having made this resolution, which had promptly slipped his memory, rather like pulling a short piece of thread through the eye of a needle.

“But your friend hasn’t been deceived at all!” cried his father, wagging his finger as if to reaffirm this statement. “Because I’ve been acting as his representative here.”

Before he could stop himself, Georg burst out: “Clown!” He was immediately overcome with shame, and, his eyes glazed, he bit his tongue very hard—but it was too late.

“Yes, I admit I’m a clown! That’s exactly the right word! What other consolation does an ageing widower have? Tell me—and for the time it takes you to answer you are still my living, breathing son—tell me what else I’ve got left, sitting in my back room with my old man’s bones, constantly harassed by a disloyal staff? While my son goes his merry way, signs deals that I’ve negotiated, turns somersaults of delight and walks past his father wearing the expression of an honourable man! Do you think that I’ve never felt any love for you, the fruit of my loins?”

“He’s going to lean forward,” thought Georg. “What if he falls over and breaks a limb?” And the idea went whizzing through his mind like a skyrocket.

His father did lean forward, but he didn’t fall over. Yet when Georg didn’t come over to him as he had expected, he stood up again.

“Stay where you are, I don’t need your help! You think you’re still strong enough to come over here, and that the only reason that you don’t is because you don’t want to. Well how wrong you are! I’m still by far the strongest. If I’d been on my own then perhaps I might have weakened, but your mother passed on her strength to me, and I set up a handsome arrangement with your friend—in fact I’ve got all his clients right here in my pocket!”

“So he’s even got pockets in his nightshirt!” thought Georg, as if he could use this one remark to make his father look ridiculous the whole world over. But the thought was soon forgotten, much as he forgot everything else.

“Yes, you hang on to your fiancee’s skirts and come over here! I’ll soon send her packing, just you see if I don’t!”

Georg pulled a face to show that he didn’t believe a word of it. As if to assert the truth of what he had said, his father simply nodded in the direction of the corner where Georg was standing.

“It really amused me just now when you came and asked whether you ought to write to your friend and tell him about your engagement. He knows everything, you stupid boy, everything! You forgot to take my writing case away from me, so I’ve been in contact with him by letter. That’s why he hasn’t come back all these years, he knows a hundred times more than you do. He’ll screw your letter up unread with one hand while he reads mine with the other!”

And, carried away by his own words, he waved his arm above his head and cried: “He knows a thousand times more!”

“Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to make fun of his father. But no sooner had the words come to his lips than they took on a fatal tone.

“I’ve been waiting for years for you to come and ask me that question! What else do you think I’ve got to occupy myself with? Do you think I read the papers? Here!” And picking up a newspaper that had somehow ended up in his bed, he threw it at Georg. It was an old newspaper, whose name Georg didn’t recognize.

“You’ve taken your time to grow up! Your mother had to die first, she would never have survived this happy day; your friend has gone to wrack and ruin in Russia, even three years ago he was so yellow that it looked as if he was on his last legs; while I—well, you can see how it is with me. Haven’t you got eyes in your head?”

“So you’ve been spying on me!” Georg exclaimed.

“You might have been able to say that to me before,” replied his father in a pitying yet incidental tone of voice. “But now it’s completely unacceptable.”

Then he went on, speaking louder: “Now you know what exists in the world around you; so far all you’ve known about is yourself! You were certainly an innocent child, although it would be more accurate to say that you were a fiend—which is why I am sentencing you to drown yourself!”

Georg felt as if he were being hounded out of the room; as he left, the sound of his father collapsing onto the bed was still ringing in his ears. As he flew down the stairs, his feet barely touching the steps, he ran into the cleaning lady, who was on her way up to do the housework, as she did every morning. “Lordy!” she cried, covering her face with her apron, but Georg was already long gone. He hurtled out of the front door, impelled unstoppably across the road towards the river on the other side. In an instant he was grasping the railings like a starving man does food. He vaulted over them with the same gymnastic skill that had made his parents proud of him when he was young. He was still holding on tightly, although his grip was getting weaker and weaker, when through the bars he caught sight of a bus approaching; the sound of its engine would easily drown out that of his fall. “Dearest parents,” he called out in a faint voice, “I did love you really,” and then he let go.

Just at that moment an unending stream of traffic was pouring across the bridge.





“He had a number of unsuccessful relationships with women. He couldn’t marry or raise a family and was tormented by the strength of his sex drive which made him constantly turn to brothels and pornography.”

[Guillaine]

Myabe it's helpful to read the letter he wrote to his father in which can be heard his own voice more clearly than possibly his fiction in order to decide his type. These are the first four pages pasted and the link is under them to read in full.

Dearest Father,
You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to yourquestion, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fearwould mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking. And if I now try to giveyou an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete, because, even in writing, this fear and its consequences hamperme in relation to you and because the magnitude of the subject goes far beyond the scope of my memory and power ofreasoning, to you the matter always seemed very simple, at least in so far as you talked about it in front of me, andindiscriminately in front of many other people. It looked to you more or less as follows: you have worked hard all your life,have sacrificed everything for your children, above all for me, consequently I have lived high and handsome, have beencompletely at liberty to learn whatever I wanted, and have had no cause for material worries, which means worries of anykind at all. You have not expected any gratitude for this, knowing what "children's gratitude" is like, but have expected atleast some sort of obligingness, some sign of sympathy. Instead I have always hidden from you, in my room, among mybooks, with crazy friends, or with crackpot ideas. I have never talked to you frankly; I have never come to you when youwere in the synagogue, never visited you at Franzensbad, nor indeed ever shown any family feeling; I have never takenany interest in the business or your other concerns; I saddled you with the factory and walked off; I encouraged Ottla inher obstinacy, and never lifted a finger for you (never even got you a theater ticket), while I do everything for my friends.If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don't charge me with anything downrightimproper or wicked (with the exception perhaps of my latest marriage plan), you do charge me with coldness,estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, asthough I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, whileyou aren't in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me.This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in thematter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what wouldbe possible is—not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that—but still, a kind of peace; no cessation, but still,a diminution of your unceasing reproaches.Oddly enough you have some sort of notion of what I mean. For instance, a short time ago you said to me: "I have alwaysbeen fond of you, even though outwardly I didn't act toward you as other fathers generally do, and this precisely because Ican't pretend as other people can." Now, Father, on the whole I have never doubted your goodness toward me, but thisremark I consider wrong. You can't pretend, that is true, but merely for that reason to maintain that other fathers pretendis either mere opinionated nests, and as such beyond discussion, or on the other hand—and this in my view is what it reallyis—a veiled expression of the fact that something is wrong in our relationship and that you have played your part in causingit to be so, but without its being your fault. If you really mean that, then we are in agreement.I'm not going to say, of course, that I have become what I am only as a result of your influence. That would be very muchexaggerated (and I am indeed inclined to this exaggeration). It is indeed quite possible that even if I had grown up entirelyfree from your influence I still could not have become a person after your own heart. I should probably have still become aweakly, timid, hesitant, restless person, neither Robert Kafka nor Karl Hermann, but yet quite different from what I reallyam, and we might have got on with each other excellently. I should have been happy to have you as a friend, as a boss, anuncle, a grandfather, even (though rather more hesitantly) as a father-in-law. Only as a father you have been too strongfor me, particularly since my brothers died when they were small and my sisters came along only much later, so that Ialone had to bear the brunt of it—and for that I was much too weak.Compare the Twoof us: I, to put it in a very much abbreviated form, a Löwy with a certain Kafka component, which,however, is not set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business, and conquest, but by a Löwyish spur that impels moresecretly, more diffidently, and in another direction, and which often fails to work entirely. You, on the other hand, a trueKafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presenceof mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on a grand scale, of course also with all the defectsand weaknesses that go with these advantages and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper driveyou. You are perhaps not wholly a Kafka in your general outlook, in so far as I can compare you with Uncle Philipp, Ludwig,and Heinrich. That is odd, and here I don't see quite clear either. After all, they were all more cheerful, fresher, moreinformal, more easygoing, less severe than you. (In this, by the way, I have inherited a great deal from you and takenmuch too good care of my inheritance, without, admittedly, having the necessary counterweights in my own nature, as youhave.) Yet you too, on the other hand, have in this respect gone through various phases. You were perhaps more cheerfulbefore you were disappointed by your children, especially by me, and were depressed at home (when other people camein, you were quite different); perhaps you have become more cheerful again since then, now that your grandchildren andyour son-in-law again give you something of that warmth which your children, except perhaps Valli, could not give you. Inany case, we were so different and in our difference so dangerous to each other that if anyone had tried to calculate inadvance how I, the slowly developing child, and you, the full-grown man, would behave toward one another, he could haveassumed that you would simply trample me underfoot so that nothing was left of me. Well, that did not happen. Nothingalive can be calculated. But perhaps something worse happened. And in saying this I would all the time beg of you not toforget that I never, and not even for a single moment believe any guilt to be on your side. The effect you had on me wasthe effect you could not help having. But you should stop considering it some particular malice on my part that I succumbedto that effect.I was a timid child. For all that, I am sure I was also obstinate, as children are. I am sure that Mother spoiled me too, butI cannot believe I was particularly difficult to manage; I cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, afriendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me. Now you are, after all, basically a charitableand kindhearted person (what follows will not be in contradiction to this, I am speaking only of the impression you made onthe child), but not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness thatlies beneath the surface. You can treat a child only in the way you yourself are constituted, with vigor, noise, and hottemper, and in this case such behavior seemed to you to be also most appropriate because you wanted to bring me up tobe a strong, brave boy.Your educational methods in the very early years I can't, of course, directly describe today, but I can more or less imaginethem by drawing conclusions from the later years and from your treatment of Felix. What must be considered asheightening the effect is that you were then younger and hence more energetic, wilder, more primitive, and still morereckless than you are today and that you were, besides, completely tied to the business, scarcely able to be with me evenonce a day, and therefore made all the more profound impression on me, one that never really leveled out to the flatnessof habit.There is only one episode in the early years of which I have a direct memory. You may remember it, too. One night I kepton whimpering for water, not, I am certain, because I was thirsty, but probably partly to be annoying, partly to amusemyself. After several vigorous threats had failed to have any effect, you took me out of bed, carried me out onto thepavlatche,* and left me there alone for a while in my nightshirt, outside the shut door. I am not going to say that this waswrong—perhaps there was really no other way of getting peace and quiet that night—but I mention it as typical of yourmethods of bringing up a child and their effect on me. I dare say I was quite obedient afterward at that period, but it didme inner harm. What was for me a matter of course, that senseless asking for water, and then the extraordinary terror ofbeing carried outside were Twothings that I, my nature being what it was, could never properly connect with each other.Even years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, wouldcome almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and thatconsequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.*Pavlatche is the Czech word for the long balcony in the inner courtyard of old houses in Prague. (Ed.)That was only a small beginning, but this feeling of being nothing that often dominates me (a feeling that is in anotherrespect, admittedly, also a noble and fruitful one) comes largely from your influence. What I would have needed was alittle encouragement, a little friendliness, a little keeping open of my road, instead of which you blocked it for me, though ofcourse with the good intention of making me take another road. But I was not fit for that. You encouraged me, forinstance, when I saluted and marched smartly, but I was no future soldier, or you encouraged me when I was able to eatheartily or even drink beer with my meals, or when I was able to repeat songs, singing what I had not understood, orprattle to you using your own favorite expressions, imitating you, but nothing of this had anything to do with my future. Andit is characteristic that even today you really only encourage me in anything when you yourself are involved in it, whenwhat is at stake is your own sense of self-importance, which I damage (for instance by my intended marriage) or which isdamaged in me (for instance when Pepa is abusive to me). Then I receive encouragement, I am reminded of my worth,the matches I would be entitled to make are pointed out to me, and Pepa is condemned utterly. But apart from the factthat at my age I am already nearly unsusceptible to encouragement, what help could it be to me anyway, if it only comeswhen it isn't primarily a matter of myself at all?At that time, and at that time in every way, I would have needed encouragement. I was, after all, weighed down by yourmere physical presence. I remember, for instance, how we often undressed in the same bathing hut. There was I, skinny,weakly, slight; you strong, tall, broad. Even inside the hut I felt a miserable specimen, and what's more, not only in youreyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things. But then when we stepped out ofthe bathing hut before the people, you holding me by my hand, a little skeleton, unsteady, barefoot on the boards,frightened of the water, incapable of copying your swimming strokes, which you, with the best of intentions, but actually tomy profound humiliation, kept on demonstrating, then I was frantic with desperation and at such moments all my badexperiences in all areas, fitted magnificently together. I felt best when you sometimes undressed first and I was able tostay behind in the hut alone and put off the disgrace of showing myself in public until at last you came to see what I wasdoing and drove me out of the hut. I was grateful to you for not seeming to notice my anguish, and besides, I was proud ofmy father's body. By the way, this difference between us remains much the same to this very day.In keeping, furthermore, was your intellectual domination. You had worked your way so far up by your own energies alone,and as a result you had unbounded confidence in your opinion. That was not yet so dazzling for me, a child as later for theboy growing up. From your armchair you ruled the world. Your opinion was correct, every other was mad, wild, meshugge,not normal. Your self-confidence indeed was so great that you had no need to be consistent at all and yet never ceased tobe in the right. It did sometimes happen that you had no opinions whatsoever about a matter and as a result everybe in the right. It did sometimes happen that you had no opinions whatsoever about a matter and as a result everyconceivable opinion with respect to the matter was necessarily wrong, without exception. You were capable, for instance,of running down the Czechs, and then the Germans, and then the Jews, and what is more, not only selectively but in everyrespect, and finally nobody was left except yourself. For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whoserights are based on their person and not on reason. At least so it seemed to me.Now, when I was the subject you were actually astonishingly often right; which in conversation was not surprising, forthere was hardly ever any conversation between us, but also in reality. Yet this was nothing particularly incomprehensible,either; in all my thinking I was, after all, under the heavy pressure of your personality, even in that part of it—andparticularly in that—which was not in accord with yours. All these thoughts, seemingly independent of you, were from thebeginning burdened with your belittling judgments; it was almost impossible to endure this and still work out a thought withany measure of completeness and permanence. I am not here speaking of any sublime thoughts, but of every littlechildhood enterprise. It was only necessary to be happy about something or other, to be filled with the thought of it, tocome home and speak of it, and the answer was an ironic sigh, a shaking of the head, a tapping on the table with a finger:"Is that all you're so worked up about?" or "Such worries I'd like to have!" or "The things some people have time to thinkabout!" or "Where is that going to get you?" or "What a song and dance about nothing!" Of course, you couldn't beexpected to be enthusiastic about every childish triviality when you were in a state of vexation and worry. But that was notthe point. Rather, by virtue of your antagonistic nature, you could not help but always and inevitably cause the child suchdisappointments; and further, this antagonism, accumulating material, was constantly intensified; eventually the patternexpressed itself even if, for once, you were of the same opinion as I; finally, these disappointments of the child were notthe ordinary disappointments of life but, since they involved you, the all-important personage, they struck to the very core.Courage, resolution, confidence, delight in this and that, could not last when you were against it or even if your oppositionwas merely to be assumed; and it was to be assumed in almost everything I did.This applied to people as well as to thoughts. It was enough that I should take a little interest in a person—which in anycase did not happen often, as a result of my nature—for you, without any consideration for my feelings or respect for myjudgment, to move in with abuse, defamation, and denigration. Innocent, childlike people, such as, for instance, the Yiddishactor Löwy, had to pay for that. Without knowing him you compared him, in some dreadful way that I have now forgotten,to vermin and, as was so often the case with people I was fond of, you were automatically ready with the proverb of thedog and its fleas. Here I particularly recall the actor because at that time I made a note of your pronouncements abouthim, with the comment: "This is how my father speaks of my friend (whom he does not even know), simply because he ismy friend. I shall always be able to bring this up against him whenever he reproaches me with the lack of a child'saffection and gratitude." What was always incomprehensible to me was your total lack of feeling for the suffering andshame you could inflict on me with your words and judgments. It was as though you had no notion of your power. I too, Iam sure, often hurt you with what I said, but then I always knew, and it pained me, but I could not control myself, couldnot keep the words back, I was sorry even while I was saying them. But you struck out with your words without much ado,you weren't sorry for anyone, either during or afterward, one was utterly defenseless against you.But your whole method of upbringing was like that. You have, I think, a gift for bringing up children; you could, I am sure,have been of help to a human being of your own kind with your methods; such a person would have seen thereasonableness of what you told him, would not have troubled about anything else, and would quietly have done things theway he was told. But for me as a child everything you called out to me was positively a heavenly commandment, I neverforgot it, it remained for me the most important means of forming a judgment of the world, above all of forming ajudgment of you yourself, and there you failed entirely. Since as a child I was with you chiefly during meals, your teachingwas to a large extent the teaching of proper behavior at table. What was brought to the table had to be eaten, the qualityof the food was not to be discussed—but you yourself often found the food inedible, called it "this swill," said "that cow"(the cook) had ruined it. Because in accordance with your strong appetite and your particular predilection you ateeverything fast, hot, and in big mouthfuls, the child had to hurry; there was a somber silence at table, interrupted byadmonitions: "Eat first, talk afterward," or "faster, faster, faster," or "There you are, you see, I finished ages ago." Bonesmustn't be cracked with the teeth, but you could. Vinegar must not be sipped noisily, but you could. The main thing wasthat the bread should be cut straight. But it didn't matter that you did it with a knife dripping with gravy. Care had to betaken that no scraps fell on the floor. In the end it was under your chair that there were the most scraps. At table onewasn't allowed to do anything but eat, but you cleaned and cut your fingernails, sharpened pencils, cleaned your ears witha toothpick. Please, Father, understand me correctly: in themselves these would have been utterly insignificant details, theyonly became depressing for me because you, so tremendously the authoritative man, did not keep the commandments youimposed on me. Hence the world was for me divided into three parts: one in which I, the slave, lived under laws that hadbeen invented only for me and which I could, I did not know why, never completely comply with; then a second world,which was infinitely remote from mine, in which you lived, concerned with government, with the issuing of orders and withthe annoyance about their not being obeyed; and finally a third world where everybody else lived happily and free fromorders and from having to obey. I was continually in disgrace; either I obeyed your orders, and that was a disgrace, forthey applied, after all, only to me; or I was defiant, and that was a disgrace too, for how could I presume to defy you; or Icould not obey because I did not, for instance, have your strength, your appetite, your skill, although you expected it of meas a matter of course; this was the greatest disgrace of all. This was not the course of the child's reflections, but of hisfeelings

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-co...is-father1.pdf

[khcs]

Franz Kafka - INFJ - Dostoyevsky

Franz Kafka1.jpg

[WVBRY]

Franz Kafka - Balzac.

[Kernel]

I tend to agree, for sure 4w5, just he was so still in himself, so intense, so willing to suffer that the 5 is strong. This quote is typical him and his unique perspective.

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

I see Fi and Ne in that he is always going for something beyond, his "blood relative" as he calls him was Dostoyevsky, he loved Soren Kierkegaard, and Robert Walser, all of whom are usually typed EII I believe. He has this incredible uncompromising belief in his direction that EIIs can have, while always remaining modest. He also has a wonderful sense of humour and balance, which I find in EIIs. His diaries and letters are emotional but repressed too, because of the 4w5 and because of his upbringing. Ne subtype strengthens his Ti. I'm sure he's a harmonizer.

I only read one of his books, the impression I got is EIE. He is similar to Dostoyevsky who I also type as EIE. Just wanted to say this, there is this kind of ENFj that is often typed as INFj (which is normal because cotrary types are quite similar), there is a clear Ni and Ti in the way he writes, and I think many ENFj like to think themselves as thinkers and not feelers (especially guys). I also think existentialism or nihilisme is very Ni theme, especially in the case of EIE and ILI.