Kafka and the kafkaesque
Kaj Bernhard Genell, Recito (2017)
THE uniqueness of the works of Franz Kafka and the perplexing historical accuracy of the
concept of the Kafkaesque are both phenomena that over the years have been
noticed by many readers and scholars. This book sets out to unravel the
enigma of this very concept, by reference to the process of creation,
and to Kafka´s implicit use of two unconscious levels within the universe
of discourse of his most important works. Always a fruitful
explanation of the uniqueness of these works has been missing.
Scholars
have ever since the 1930s been noticing the extraordinary
qualities of
the Kafka text. Strange - Kafkaesque - features have been
attributed
to the short stories and the novels of Kafka. The Kafka
hero has -
rightly - been seen as a mere figure, and the
" dream-like " landscape-universe
has been seen as characteristic, and one has
frequently been looking
upon these entities, together with a few
stylistic features, as
technical dominants in the shaping of the
concept of the Kafkaesque.
This book displays a model, together
with a biographical
survey and a historical perspective
on possible influences, that,
quite reversely, forms a hermeneutic
explanation to these features,
as well as to what is denoted by the concept. This is achieved
from the perspective of a dynamic contextual center, explained
in a model containing three levels, levels steadily forming
the discourse, typical of Kafka.
The veil of mystery may never
be lifted when it comes to Kafka´s classics of Modernity.
It might be essential to know about the technique behind
the Kafkaesque to be able to reflect upon the Self-consciousness
of Modern Man of the 20th century, a century so intensely
marked by a dialogue between society and the works and
ideas of Sigmund Freud.
Self-consciousness of Man, as it
appeared with St. Augustine, the great Italian Renaissance
writers, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Montaigne, the German secular
Romantics and Hegel, swiftly developed into something even
much more complex with the appearance of Freud and the
publication of his Traumdeutung in the year of 1900,
and, more so, with the creation of the Kafkaesque, with
the works of Kafka, around 1912.
The work
of mine displays a distinct answer to the question regarding the uniqueness of Kafka and regarding the concept of the kafkaesque and how Kafka managed to achieve this very effect of the Kafkaeasque through his special technique. My work is an attempt to look for the meaning of the use of the kafkaic style. The uniqueness of the kafkaesque is noticed by many others but here it is explained by reference to the process of creation of the kafkaesque. Through the years this explanation has been missing.
Kafka´s uses two unconscious levels in his major works.
Sholars like W. Benjamin, Th. Adorno, M. Walser and H.
Hiebel have noticed the extraordinary experienced qualities
of the kafka text, the strange features owned by the hero,
the hero as a mere figure and the “dream-like” universe.
But I am displaying a model that can bring these features
into a dynamic scheme, explained from an author´s
( albeit unconscious ) view.
It is in fact essential for Modern Man - FOR US - to be aware of
this technique, to be able to reflect on the picture
of Modern Man. Kafka was part of the creation of THE
Self-conscience in the 20ieth century, marked by a
constant dialogue with Freud and his works. Self-conscience
as Man knew it since St. Augustine, the Italian
renaissance writers, Erasmus, Shakespeare and
Montaigne and later with the secular Romantics
and Hegel, swiftly in Modrnism developed into
something much more complex with the appearance
of Freud and the publication of the Traumdeautung
in the year of 1900. And Kafka fulfilled it all.
The works of Kafka appeared as a reaction to
1.) Modern times, to 2.) his own personal
alienation and to 3.) Freud.
Kafka´s answer
to Modernity – to the modern condition –
was an astonishingly complex one, but it
turned out to be very accurate and accomplished
right from the very beginning. When other
reactions to the modern condition, like Dada,
displayed a picture of a chaotic and a rebel
attitude to reason and morals, Kafka,
like Rimbaud, showed a far more complex
ability to encompass the soul of humans
in relation to the Modern society in a
universal form.
Kafka´s relation to Freud was somewhat
like that of a relation of a son to the
father. Thus Kafka did not acknowledge
Freud´s discoveries, interpretations, methods
and notions as truths. But he saw them –
ironically – as facts. And in a sense they
were. Freud´s views were historical facts
in their deep influence on mind and society
of the century. Hence Kafka used Freud
as part of the Modern Myth.
Kafka did not “believe in” Freud, but he was
fascinated by him. He did not study Freud
at great extent, but he had – like many others –
acquired a sort of immediate understanding of his
ideas, through a kind of everyday osmosis.
Kafka started out as a writer of lyrical prose,
short prose poems. But his dream was to write
a novel, and it should be a novel like the one
Flaubert ( Kafka´s literary idol ) wanted to
write: a very beautiful book about nothing
at all. It also seems as he wanted to develop
the style of Tieck and the Romantics. So it
turned out that Kafka now developed a technique
for writing novels where he was extending a
sole situation into a perfectly static ( i.e. nothing )
drama displaying a struggle between conscious and unconscious.
Using his extraordinary ( perhaps autistic )
sensibility his technique, the kafkaic,
miraculously was born in 1912 with the
writing of the short story of The Verdict.
He asked his fiancée Felice for the meaning
of it.
Later, with the writing of the unfinished The Trial,
his technique of displaying the Kafkaesque was already
full-fledged. Here he – almost FORCE by his own personal
and social catastrophe - introduced a pseudo plot in a
kind of pseudo novel displaying a story of a split, a
struggle of a conscious instance of a person, shown as
a hero-figure battling this person´s OWN unconscious.
As it turned out, this battle originated – caused - a
second unconscious part to appear in the universe of
this fiction. It seems that the hero-figure, devoid
of his unconscious, HAD TO develop such an unconscious
to be able to handle his surrounding world, which was
his original unconscious. Here we thus are having a
triadic structure and a strange meeting of two
unconscious instances.
This fictional condition primarily results in a
double exposure of the unconscious and secondly
in a strange transcendence of the Ego, which
cannot easily be reflected upon, since it has
no equivalent in reality.
As a result of this kafkaic technique, which
probably was unconscious (!) to Kafka himself,
we are also – apart from the nausea of double
unconscious, a kind of the self-consciousness
of the unconscious - experiencing a very
intense poetry displaying utter loneliness
and in a framwork : a sad pseudo-protest
against the super power of civil organization
and law in general as well as a melancholy
beauty of existence. The like of which never
again has been created.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Quite early in life - I was born in 1944 in Gothenburg, Sweden - I got interested in reading books of high
literary value.
I later
discovered Kafka, and the literature of ambiguity.
It was around 1968 when I already had studied at the
University in Gothenburg for some time, History
of Arts, Philosophy and General Literature. I
lived in a small cold flat in the centre of the
town and my eyes had fallen upon a small torn used
volume by Kafka in German, the novel Amerika .
I earlier was damiliar with The Metamorphosis , and
then in Swedish. Anyway, since I had read German
in school, I started out with my small pocket version of
Amerika , and I was immediately struck by the
immense and very odd beauty of the first sentences in this
book, in its original shape, in the language
it was written in. I read the whole book through,
without even once consulting any lexicon.
I guess I must have missed a detail or two,
since my German was far from exquisite. I
was hooked up by Kafka. I read all he had
written, and in the University I wrote small
essays and subject papers on Kafka ( The Metamorphosis ).
There was one major problem that soon became central to me. How
did Kafka do, to acquire this formidable effect,the Kafkaesque ,
an effect that scarcely ever anybody, but some of the German
Romantics of the early 19th century, had managed to
create anything even remotely similar to? I think I did find the answer to that question.
The result is: Kafka and the kafkaesque.
I sincerely hope you do enjoy!
Kaj Bernhard Genell.