Thursday, November 15, 2018

Kafka's creativity - everything written down bit by bit is inferior

Kafka wrote little paradoxical parables, and he wrote longer stories built on big, blatant symbols, and he wrote numerous scenes in those stories about interpretation.  He resists interpretation, but he also demands it.  The impulse to allegorize has the drawback of making any story, especially the longer ones, about anything.  The Castle is God; start there and start shoving the various pieces into place.

I was surprised, on this long visit with Kafka, how much writing there was in his stories, how many of them were directly about writing in some way.  His diaries make it clear enough that the stories are often about his own writing, his own creativity.  This is my totalizing allegorical contribution to the interpretation of Kafka.

I think there is only one late story, “Eleven Sons,” which Kafka actually declared to be about his writing.  “The eleven sons are quite simply eleven stories I am working on this very moment” (The Complete Stories, pp. 474-5).  Normal practice for Kafka.  From his diaries, January 18, 1915:

Headache, slept badly.  Incapable of sustained, concentrated work.  Also have been in the open air too little.  In spite of that began a new story; I was afraid I should spoil the old ones.  Four or five stories now stand on their hindlegs in front of me like the horses in front of Schumann, the circus ringmaster, at the beginning of the performance.

Kafka struggled to enter a state of uninterrupted concentration in which he could write for hours on end.  This rarely happened, but when it did he felt creatively satisfied.  It is at these moments that he gets a glimpse of the world beyond the veil.

Again I realized that everything written down bit by bit rather than all at once in the course of the larger part (or even the whole) of one night is inferior, and that the circumstances of my life condemn me to this inferiority.  (Dec. 8, 1914)

The struggles of the protagonists of The Trial and The Castle have some resemblance to Kafka’s creative agony.  The character in The Trial even spends the middle of the novel thinking about but not writing the “memorial” that will save him; of course it is never written.  In The Castle, it is his “plea.”  See “In the Penal Colony,” where writing is literally torture – the metaphor made literal.

Much of the last writing of Kafka’s life was directly about creativity – “The Hunger Artist,” “Investigations of a Dog,” “The Burrow,” and “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.”  Curiously, they are all from the point of view of animals, giving the Hunger Artist, in his circus cage, honorary animal status.  He is the greatest faster in the history of the art, but never allowed to do anything really great, meaning to fast until he disappears, at least not until no one cares.  The burrowing animal has built his masterpiece – Kafka is showing us The Castle from the inside – but it is never perfect, always threatened, and the snuffling artist’s life is full of fear and second-guessing.  Then, finally, “Josephine,” almost too sad to quote.

Kafka was preoccupied, at the end of his life, with the purpose of what he was doing.  He did not seem to doubt it, exactly, but wanted to understand it.  Soon enough he, like Josephine the singer, “will happily lose herself in the numberless throng of the heroes of our people, and soon, since we are no historians, will rise to the heights of redemption and be forgotten like all her brothers.”

I will now go register this post with German Literature Month, now in its eighth year, which is something.

10 comments:

  1. I think with the passing of The Japanese Literature challenge,German Literature Month is the longest running such book blog event. As you observed certainly an accomplishment.

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    1. Not to kidnap Tom’s post, just to mention there is talk of the Japanese Literature Challenge again in January. Gnoe, on Instagram, wishes it to be brought back, and I would love to do so (especially after my recent trip there).

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  2. It is funny in a way because it is so arbitrary - I hereby declare February to be French Literature Month - but people really value the coordination mechanism, if that is not too social-sciencish of a way to put it, and appreciate Lizzy and Caroline's enthusiasm.

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    1. Plus, I have gained so much by reading the books in translation themselves, not to mention the posts published for the event. Would I have come to Buddenbrooks without German Lit Month? Would I pick up Kafka on my own without it? Possibly not.

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  3. I like The establishment of traditions in The International Book Blog World. Helps create a sense of unity.,

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  4. I have never read Kafka, something to amend. I think he intimidates me.

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  5. Hi Tom, I like this interpretation of Kafka's work. I hadn't thought about the link between the agonies of The Trial and The Castle and the writer's own creative agonies. Those later works sound interesting too!

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  6. What tipped me off to the link to writing was reading about how writing, for Kafka, was sometimes a transcendent experience. Mystical, maybe. Intense beyond his normal life, at least. Then the search for the entry into The Castle, where Truth is found, maybe, began to look suspicious. And then lots of stories began to look suspicious.

    The later stories are terrific. Confident, clear, in their Kafkaish way. Kafka even liked them, which was rare, publishing some of them. Kafka was about to die, and knew it. Maybe that made a difference.

    Some aspects of Kafka are intimidating. He can be gnomic. He can be frustrating, with some of his circular stories, the logic-chopping.

    On the other hand, do try "Metamorphosis." It is warm, Gregor is a full, round character. It is short, which does not hurt. As I argued a couple of posts ago, there is no need to "interpret" the story if you do not want to. It is quite wonderful taken literally, as a fantastic event that for some reason happens to a real person.

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  7. I haven't read any Kafka for a while now - it's probably worth revisiting his work, especially as I rather glossed over his stories. As for blogging events, I certainly build my year around them (Shadow International Booker, WIT Month, German Literature Month). I would love to have kept up my January in Japan, but I'm just too busy at that time of year (although I always try to read some Japanese books at that time). Happy for anyone else to pick it up, though ;)

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  8. Ah, the stories. In English, that Collected Stories book is worth a lot of time. Full of treasures. I suppose in German Kafka is now published every which way.

    Lining up the diaries with the stories is a worthwhile exercise, too.

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