Literature: Franz Kafka II: Dialogue, Humanism, God

I’m still trying to sort out Franz Kafka. He was the topic of this semester’s independent literature study–my second-to-last in the on-going project with the enigmatic German Professor, which began three semesters ago with Thomas Mann and Robert Musil. It’s the best thing I’ve done as a student here, this intensely personal investigation of tortuous novels that has expanded to include music, philosophy, aesthetics, and myth.

Franz Kafka is such a different figure than Mann or Musil. His obsessions are different, as are his questions and his solutions. His world is entirely opposed to Thomas Mann’s, all secular humanism and sparkling irony and the brilliant residue of 3,000 years of art–opposed, too, to Musil’s intensely private universe, where the glance shared between two people occupies a dozen pages of metaphor-laden prose. If Mann addresses the relationship between man and his intellectual heritage, and Musil the relationship between man and himself, then Kafka addresses the relationship between man and God. His spirituality is real and aching and, and Camus writes, the questions he poses are those of a soul in quest of its grace. What do we do when we are confronted with the Other-worldly? Is God cruel and absurd, or full of goodness? Can human wisdom and strength win a way to the Divine? Certainly, one can read Kafka as a critique of modern bureaucracy, the industrialization of mankind, etc. etc.–but to me it is the religious nature of his works that transcends.

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Leaving philosophy aside, what about the writing itself? To me, perhaps the most pressingly disturbing aspect of Kafka’s prose was its lack of a Bezugsrahmen–a frame of reference or allusion, an overt dialogue between the author and the art and thought of the past three millennia. Kafka’s world exists apparently in a vacuum, in a universe of isolation that is as cultural and intellectual as it is personal. His characters don’t hang pictures from Dürer or Caspar David Friedrich on their walls; they don’t read books by Schopenhauer or Plato. There are no direct references in the novels (Schloss, Prozess) to Shakespeare or to Nietzsche or Antiquity–as readers, we are hardly aware that such things exist. If there is a dialogue between Kafka’s figures and their intellectual forebears, it is hidden.

This utter lack of reference to a greater intellectual tradition is especially unsettling to me, because I revel in The Dialogue, locate great spiritual and intellectual meaning in my ability to connect to three thousand years of thought. To have these connections ripped out from under my feet is intensely disorienting. How different, again, from Thomas Mann! His books are dialogues in essence–long, heady, sometimes tortuous conversations between the ideas and worldviews and artworks of human civilization. And as a result, none of his figures are ever truly isolated. Certainly, they are sometimes despairing, desperate, lonely. In spite of it all, though, they always partake of and above all believe in an intellectual and artistic tradition that is greater than any individual–a tradition that offers, I think, a sort of transcendence, a consolation.

In Kafka there is no such consolation. There is none of Coriolanus’ there is a world elsewhere, no sense that Kafka’s figures can find redemption by situating their own struggles within a philosophical or aesthetic framework that has existed for millennia and will carry on after they are gone. Joseph stands before the court in The Trial and never thinks, “Ah, so it was with Socrates in Athens. I understand now; this is what I am to do.” K. fights unceasingly to gain entrance in the castle, but he does so without the great dictum of Goethe’s Faust: Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen. Whoever strives with all his might–that man can we redeem. He remains isolated, intellectually as well as physically.

But in the end, isn’t this lack of a Bezugsrahmen infinitely fitting to Kafka’s universe? The lack of a Dialogue, the emptiness, the intellectual silence all serve to emphasize aloneness of the characters. Their hermetic solitude is perhaps the tragedy of the novels.

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Kafka’s world is also disturbingly free of humanism. Humanism tells us that men and women can move forward on their own strength, can become wiser and better and more farsighted in ways that accomplish things, in ways that lead to creation or beauty or salvation. Kafka takes these ideas and turns them upside down.

He does this above all in Before the Law, the page-long parable at the end of The Trial. In the story, a nameless man seeks in vain to gain access to the Law (grace, God, heaven?). There are a series of gates in his way, and a door-warden who rebuffs all of his attempts to enter even the first. The man sometimes sees a gleam of light through the passageway beyond the door, but dies at the end of the story without ever having set foot inside.

The story, I believe, is fundamentally a-humanistic. The seeker doesn’t become stronger through all his questioning, striving, learning, believing–but rather the opposite.

Kafka becomes anti-Goethe. Whoever strives with all his might–that man dies of exhaustion.

In this light, perhaps the most tragic sentence in the novels is the door-warden’s final statement to the man, in his last moments of life: “Der Eingang war nur für dich bestimmt. Ich gehe jetzt und schließe ihn.” The entrance was only meant for you. I am going now and closing it. That is our torture, our tragedy–that we are wise enough to know such an entrance exists, and wise enough to seek it with all our strength–but too limited, physically and spiritually, to ever gain entrance on our own strength. Humanity finds itself in an impossible position.

In this way, I think, Kafka’s is a world that the ancient Greeks would have recognized–where human beings are fundamentally weak, where their limitations are at the forefront of human existence. The divine realm exists, sends messengers, is tangible and present–but is ultimately careless and inscrutable.

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There is one more thing about Kafka’s characters, however, at the end of it all: wherever they are, in whatever circumstances, despite all confusion and weakness–they are always going to a window and opening it, and looking out. I like to imagine that this throwing-open of windows, repeated again and again throughout the novels, is itself a sort of human victory. It doesn’t matter that the world beyond the windows is often dark and snow-filled. It’s the action that counts.

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If I had finished this post five days ago, I would have ended it there. Kafka’s books are superb because they are so unbearably, unflinchingly bleak. Reading him is fascinating and compelling and cathartic in the same way reading Greek tragedy is, because we are presented with a world in which there is no out. A few open windows, a gleam of light through a impenetrable gate–what’s that, really? The works end with human limitation writ large.

Now, however, I’m entrenched in Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and it’s throwing all of Kafka into a very new light.

Per Kierkegaard, Kafka is drawing our attention not to human weakness, but to mankind’s incredible, defiant potential for perseverance, for real and tangible hope. His characters are the greatest of heroes because they are heroes of faith. They have looked into the absurd and comprehended the paradox and have chosen to believe.

But that’s all still half-formed, still confused in my own mind. There will be more to come later. In the end, Kafka is the sort of author who shifts over time–and that, I think, is why we read him.

Literatur: Franz Kafka und Theologie

Franz Kafka is completely and utterly compelling.

Unfortunately, I’ve been doing all the reading and discussing and thinking and writing about him in German, and most of my thoughts haven’t yet sorted themselves out into English. Strange, this business of finally beginning to know another language. It’s freeing, though, too–there are topics I can only really discuss in German, in this language that is so new to me and thus carries with it none of the baggage and associations of my mother tongue. At any rate, I apologize to any readers (Jim!) who have been waiting for thoughts on Kafka, and promise to get something up in English quite soon.

In the meantime, here is a small essay in German, on the potential of a theological interpretation of The Castle. I’m rather proud of it, actually–the enigmatic German professor, usually reticent in his praise, said it was good and well written. And if any of my German-speaking readers would like to correct my syntax and grammar, please have at it!

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       Es ist allzu leicht, glaube ich, Kafkas Werke als reine Allegorien zu deuten. Der Mangel an absichtlich ideologische Aussagen des Autors lädt dem Leser ein, selbst eine umfassende Bedeutung in einen Roman oder eine Novelle hineinzulesen. Allegorische Interpretationsweisen sind bestimmt wertvoll, aber nur insofern als sie nie als die einzige Deutung eines Werkes gelten. Vielleicht sind Kafkas Werke nur Träume, die wir einfach als ästhetische Ereignisse annehmen sollen.

       Wenn es aber eine allegorische oder symbolische Interpretation von Das Schloss gibt, dann ist sie mit dem Theologischen tief verbunden. Es ist einfach genug, eine religiöse oder metaphysische Deutung des Werkes zu entwickeln: das Schloss repräsentiert den himmlischen Bereich oder die Gottheit selbst und K. der Alltagsmensch, der dringend versucht, sich in dieser Welt (und in der Sicherheit, Gemeinsamkeit, und Verständnis, die sie ihrer Eingeweihten anbietet) einzuwurzeln. Aber wenn das Schloss ein Symbol für das Metaphysische oder Theologische ist–wenn K.s Kampf um Eingliederung in die Gesellschaft auch ein religiöser Kampf ist–dann ist das Porträt der Religion, das Kafka uns hinterlasst, sehr zynisch. Kafka zeigt uns die dunkle, unmenschliche Seite der Religion, und die Tragödie oder sogar die Qual eines Menschen, der vergebens nach einer sinnvollen Verbindung mit seinem Gott sucht.

        In Kafkas Universum wird das Schloss (und der religiöse Bereich, den sie repräsentiert) immer unbestimmter, je näher man sie anschaut. Am Anfang des Romanes scheint das Schloss ein Teil einer handfesten, vertrauenswürdigen Welt zu sein. Das Gebäude liegt “deutlich umrissen in der klaren Luft und noch verdeutlicht durch den alle Formen nachbildenden, in dünner Schicht überall liegenden Schnee” (486).  Es wird ganz leicht sein, glaubt K., direkte Kontakt mit so einer Institution herzustellen–er hat schon einen Aufnahmebrief von Klamm und die telefonische Zusage des Schlosses selbst. Nach und nach aber wird das Schloss immer unerreichbarer. Das Gebäude verschwindet in der Dämmerung (568) und K. findet endlich heraus, dass alle Verbindungen mit den Schlossbeamten höchst betrügerisch sind. Auch der Telefonanruf des ersten Kapitels war vielleicht nicht mehr als der bedeutungslose Scherz eines “übermüdeten Beamter” (544). Es wird K. immer klarer, dass das Schloss für ihn nur auf unverständliche Weise zugänglich sei, wenn überhaupt. Jedem menschlichen Versuch, Eingang zu finden, setzt es sich wider.

        Die Welt des Schlosses steht dem Humanismus entgegen. Ihr Bereich liegt außerhalb (oder jenseits?) der Vernunft und des Verstandes. K.s Humanismus und Demokratie nutzen hier nicht. Er will als Mensch behandelt werden, sagt er, er will “immer frei sein” (485), er will sein Recht (546). Er will Antworten auf seine Fragen bekommen, und sofort. Er hat keine Zeit für Aberglaube und Zeremonie und haltet es als Gewinn, “frei vor einem Mächtigen [ie. Klamm] gesprochen zu haben” (524). Sinnvolle Forderungen–aber in Kafkas Welt hat der Weg nach oben, die Verbindung mit der Gottheit, nur wenig mit Vernunft und Rationalität zu tun. Hier gibt es nur Tyrannie und Verwirrung und Ambiguität. Die offizielle Vertreter des Schlosses gehören auch zu dieser Welt–der Sekretär Klamms ist sinnlos und verwirrend, die Gehilfen absurd und lächerlich, Klamm selbst geheimnisvoll und unerreichbar. K. erkämpft seine Autonomität, gewiss, aber nur, als er endlich zugibt, “als gäbe es gleichzeitig nichts Sinnloseres, nichts Verzweifelteres als diese Freiheit, dieses Warten, diese Unverletzlichkeit” (575).

       Vielleicht der tragischste Moment K.s Suche findet sich im achtzehnten Kapitel, als K. endlich zu einem Sekretär gerufen wird. Im Herrenhaus trifft er zufällig auf einen Beamten namens Bürgel, der anscheinend bereit ist, K.s Fragen zu beantworten. K. hat zum ersten Mal eine wirkliche Chance, echte Erklärung zu gewinnen–aber hier, fast am Ende des Romanes, ist er zu müde, diese Gelegenheit zu nutzen. Er schläft in Bürgels Buro ein, “abgeschlossen gegen alles, was geschah” (721), und verpasst völlig seine Rede. Scheinbar hört K.–der bisher nie nachgegeben hat–völlig auf, weiter zu kämpfen. Er hat kompromisslos nach einer Verbindung mit dem Schloss gesucht und jetzt ist endlich imstande, Hilfe und Antworten zu finden und etwas Echtes zu erreichen. Aber wenn er eine echte Möglichkeit hat, sich seinem Ziel wirklich zu nähern, ist er zu schwach, seiner eigenen Erschöpfung zu entgehen. Der menschliche Körper versagt ihm. Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, sagt Kafka, stirbt an Entkräftung.

       Kafkas Darstellung der theologischen Welt ist am Ende völlig pessimistisch: die Gottheit ist unbestimmt und unnahbar, ihre Methoden liegt im Bereich der Irrationalität, und der Weg nach oben führt zur Erschöpfung. Wenn es Gnade irgendwo gibt, dann ist sie dem normalen Menschen scheinbar nicht zugänglich. K. wird gerufen–oder mindestens glaubt er, dass er gerufen worden ist–aber dann ist es ihm unbegreiflicherweise nicht erlaubt, weiter zu gehen und etwas aus diesen Ruf zu machen. Der Mensch, oder das Wesen, oder die Täuschung, die ihn gerufen hat, bleibt vollkommen unkennbar, unbestimmt, und fabelhaft. Und weiterhin endet der Versuch, diese Verwirrung zu überwinden, mit Erschöpfung und Versagen. In Kafkas Welt ist der Mensch gleichzeitig weitsichtig und schrecklich limitiert–er ist klug genug, eine Verbindung mit dem Schloss zu suchen, aber zu beschränkt, sowohl geistig als auch physisch, den richtigen Weg dahin zu finden.

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Zitate aus Franz Kafka: Die Romane, S. Fischer Verlag, 1966.

Being: Spring Semester

It is the coldest of Februarys, all frozen mud and raw mid-western sleet. Der Wind, der Wind, das himmlische Kind–no matter which way you walk, it blows in your face.

This semester is full of Robert Musil, and you love him. You try to talk in German about the part of human existence that lies outside of words. You fail.

Latin. You start admiring secondary literature for the first time in your life, thanks to the young Classics professor who gives you as much literary theory and crazy feminist interpretations of Ovid as you could wish for. She is new to the department, and the adulation of the female Latin and Greek students is only slightly veiled. An article by Foucault on the death of the author derails the seminar and her office hours for half a week.

 
What if the author didn’t matter? You are still debating this point days later, with the vanload of bright-eyed 19-year-old Classicists on the way to teach Latin to third graders.

And Eros, from Plato’s Symposium, in Greek, with Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig added in for good measure. Everything is thrown open. There is more here than you ever thought. Eros as possession and procreation. Eros as philosophy and the philosopher together. Eros as the mediator transcendent, halfway between foolishness and wisdom, poverty and wealth, appearance and reality. Eros as a way of being–give and take, presence and absence, the tension and release at the root of all scholarship and of all being-in-love-with. It is the idea of the semester.

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Elsewhere. Being a good Nietzschean and nagged by the fear that you just might turn into Hesse’s Steppenwolf, you resolve to learn to dance. You find out that you are more horrible at it than you thought. This is a great disappointment not only to yourself, but also to whatever poor sap ends up partnering with you in Social Dance 101.

Young Goethe from last semester has grown out his sideburns and entirely ruined his looks.  You decide that he amply compensated, though, by simultaneously darning his own jacket and reciting Auden last Friday.

The other weekly readers of poetry and singers of songs have fixated on medieval chant. Crucem Sanctam Subiit–there are a dozen verses, and everyone must learn them all so you can sing them thirty-five voices strong, pounding on the floor, the faces of the young men transfigured in some sort of spiritual ecstasy. They all want to be monks someday.

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Photograph from my sister, ever-talented.

Being: Fall Semester

It is the brightest of Septembers, all frigid mornings and sun-through-windows and hot tea.

The German Literature course is reading Kleist, who writes like a post-post-modernist out of a permanently fractured universe. In 1811 he shot a woman, and then himself, barely 34. Suicide. “Should we read his works, then?” asks the German Professor on the loveliest of afternoons. “Nein,” says Herr Catholicism, who is currently shredding papers and glaring across the classroom. “Wir können nichts von ihm lernen–we can’t learn anything from him.” The German Professor, immaculately dressed and eternally, intensely enigmatic, comes around to stare from the front of the desk. He takes off his glasses and leans all the way over the first row of students. “But does art always have to teach us something?” Such fervor. You think that this professor, who loves Nabokov and the craziest melismas of Baroque opera, would probably answer no. You suspect he believes in Beauty the way his colleagues believe in God.

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You truck up to the German department and down to Classics, exasperate both and yourself as well. Why can’t I write on that? Who says? And what happened to humanism? All future plans are up in the air.

Philosophy. The professor looks like Aristotle. Socrates is our contemporary, he says–to care for your soul is the most radical thought in Western civilization. You like the Pre-Socratics, too, who thought themselves out of time.

Music. There are dozens of old scores to be memorized– plainchant, Gregorian chant, trouvere, organum, motet. These earliest of Western melodies are utterly strange, haunting, shockingly modern. You think the idea of organum is exceptionally fascinating, this concept of voices in polyphony over a sustained drone. The melodies only had to be consonant with the bass line, not with each other, so the music is sometimes as chromatic and dissonant as modern atonalism. But it didn’t sound that way in 1,200! Then, organum was the most reverent of sounds, written for the Church and the glory of God.

You listen until you are entirely saturated with it all, with pure voices that bring out the echo of ancient cathedrals even through cheap computer speakers.

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The philosophy chap who looked like Poe all last semester has undergone a remarkable transformation (less mustache, more hair) and now bears a striking resemblance to the young Goethe in, say, 1773–bright manic eyes,  cravat, waistcoat. You think the change is an exceeding improvement, because the 20-something Goethe pretty much rocked. Ironically, the 2012 version is writing his thesis on 19th-century Germany and the East, and you try to persuade him to include Wagner’s Parsifal.

It’s suit-jacket weather. Goethe, and everybody else, is wearing them, tweed, patched at the elbows, wool, fitted. You are certainly not at all adverse to the fashion, but wear yours with pearls.

On the night before classes started, someone made a gigantic bonfire and read Eliot’s Four Quartets, shouting, standing too close to the flames. Shadow on light.