Kaj Bernhard Genell - Reflections on Aspergers

On Asperger´s syndrome with regard to Flaubert, Kafka and Wittgenstein.

Kaj Genell 2017.

I am often concerned with the problem of people who regard themselves as living in

some sort of bubble, in extreme loneliness, and those persons seem to have sometimes an

extraordinary literary talent.

Now we – you and me – all of a sudden often find ourselves in the midst of a huge,

complicated discourse. Of allegory, of analogy, of art, of the limits of our knowledge, of

psychic states and of conviction and entertainment, puzzle and deception, of ethics and

moral, which are two intertwined but still very different subjects, and of deepest interest in

the “subject matter” of living.

I was once in my youth sitting in a park in one of those sun chairs where you sit

“backwards” and your bottom is almost touching the ground. I was reading a book by Ray

Bradbury. After having finished the short story “The Day it Rained Forever” I laid down the

small paperback book onto the grass, gazed at the brilliant sun and thought:” Now I feel I

could easily die. I am completely happy.”. My calm in the moment after having finished

reading this small masterpiece ( it had to be a such ) in fact lasted the entire day. I noticed

this strange condition. I have never lived a day of my adult life without worrying, except for

this day. And I always have this moment – along with some other important moments – to

guide myself through difficulties. But: what was it that had happened?

It is of course a strange thing to let literature affect oneself so very much. If I am reading

a short story by Bradbury and am allowing it to make a decision upon whether I should live

or die, I have clearly passed way beyond sane living. I might have the feeling the “the rain

has come”, but I should be able to hold this experience at a certain distance. And I think I

can. But, I must admit this, the feeling of happiness certainly stayed with me. I could not at

all refrain from enjoying the story by referring to sound thinking. And this leads, in

conjunction with a thought raising from a glance upon my reasoning as a whole in this blog,

to a question which is almost equally big, and which certainly requires great strength to take

on. Namely this: “Would you ( I am referring to myself ) be able to reason about a bubble-

person the way you do without having to think of all the books you have read?” or :”What

does literature has to do with it? The bubble is a problem even to completely illiterate

humans!?”

OK, I am a bit shocked by this attack, I must say. It seems to me as if someone ( someone

inside of me ) is trying to say: “ Alas! Away with literature! There must be a solution to the

Problem of the bubble, no matter if we are talking about analogies or crap like that. There is

a substance behind words.”.

This objection is fair. More than fair. It points at something quite necessary to deal with.

But it has come far too early in my fairy tale. First we must try to sort out what kind of

bubble millions of people are living in.

We could only do so by introspection ( as we have concluded ) and since this is the case

we ought to take whatever help is offered. And here literature is of great help. I am referring

to great authors who themselves almost certainly were suffering (?) from Asperger’s, like

Flaubert, Wittgenstein and Kafka. Let us take a closer look on these to try to investigate the

nature of the Bubble. I will start out with Flaubert.

Let us (me) talk about Gustave Flaubert. This is not only important, but it is a very

enjoyable thing too. And remember: history is not an exact science! I am trying to find out

"the nature of the bubble". It may be so, that I am handling “historical facts” carelessly. But I

do my best. Reading is no exact science, and writing about authors have never been a

science at all.

Anyway, bluntly said, the young Gustave was a physically clumsy child. He was neglected

by his mother, but observed by a maid. He had fits of epilepsy. But he in fact in his twenties

moved to Paris (leaving Rouen) to study law. He had friends and he began to write short

stories and novels at an early age. Mesmerized by words as he was he in turn was

mesmerizing the woman in the Parisian saloons. Everybody was awaiting the upcoming of a

new Balzac. Flaubert, who had a round big head, was very interested in women (for sex) and

had in his early years been attracted to older women, but in Paris he met the young Louise,

with whom he ( twice) developed a strange relationship. Gustave never married, and Louise

learnt, that Gustave had a terrible temper.

Very soon Gustave left the study of law for literature. And he was to be known to his

friends; - he had such – as one who took endless time to finish his works. He wrote a whole

lot of letters, and in these letters he is mostly in a rage at other people and at the difficulty

of writing good books. The art of compromise was not his. He had from early years chosen

his own way, and it seems, as we will see, that he had a VISION of what good literature was.

This vision included some very odd features. Flaubert thought that art was enormously

important, and - apparently - that it should be regarded as a universe of its own. He was

inclined to the perception of synesthetic fantasies. Once he remarked that he with a giant

book ( the book on La tentation de Saint Antoine, a pre-surrealistic orgy ) had ( simply)

wanted to give to his reader the impression of … yellow. ( In an essay Charles Bernheimer

asserts that Flaubert never seemed to have understood that language is a means of

communication. B. claims that we in fact are facing – both in Kafka and Flaubert – a

psychopathology of language. Which might in fact be almost true.)

Flaubert was well oriented in the subjects he liked. He knew history, biblical history and

he was familiar with the history of North Africa, where he also travelled, together with his

sister. And he was extremely careful with facts, using the young Guy Maupassant as a

detective, hiring him as a secretary.

Not only is it remarkable how much he was focused on his words, and how he was

using women for sex only, how his temper was a problem to each and everyone, but the

most trifling experience one may have, when reading the books he actually finished ( only

ten or so …; L´éducation sentimentale, Madame Bovary, Salammbô (1862) , La tentation de

Sainte Antoine (1874) November.(1842) and the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet, (1880, the

year he died.) is the fascination he had for the intense use of ... irony. ( Flaubert is known to

have created a motto:”Le style, c´est la vie.”. – The style is life. - This is a very complicated

assertation. To understand this sentence in its entirety it takes a lot. La poésie pure. (

Mallarmé ) .But is Flaubert serious? Or isn´t this utter irony. ). A person who uses irony must

have SOME relation to his fellow man. And if you read Madame Bovary you get a whole lot

of irony, which is making poor Emma Bovary and poor Charles, the country doctor, look like

helpless puppets on the stage set by a cruel fate. Flaubert seems to have very little, or no

empathy at all regarding these two people. ( In Mad. Bov. of Emma: ”Elle aurait voulu que ce

nom de Bovary, qui et le sien, fût illustre, le voir étalé chez les libraires, répété dans les

journaux, connu par toute la France. ») . And what was even more troublesome to the public

opinion: Flaubert had absolutely no understanding related to the institution of marriage. If

you buy a version of Madame Bovary in a French pocket version, you are prone to get a

version with an lengthy preface discussing the awe arousing lawsuit which followed the first

publication of this book.

The use of irony can be seen through the entire authorship. It is perhaps at its peak in

the small novel Herodias. We may perhaps return to this masterpiece.....

Flaubert´s relation to language has perplexed many commentators. And just as many

has been fascinated by his strange “credo”(?):” What seems beautiful to me, and what I

would like to write, it is a book about absolutely nothing, a book without the slightest

connection to the external reality, and which solely was to be held together by the force of

its own style. /…/ ... a book , that nearly would have no subject at all.” ( To Louise Colet, Jan,

16 , 1852.)

Maurice Blanchot once remarked that what is striking with Flaubert is the distance, the

urge from the narrator to appear as one who has not the slightest interest in what is going

on in the story. Thus we are as readers quite consumed with the interest ... in this very

uninterest, according to Blanchot.

We might note that the irony of Flaubert much was an irony of extreme contempt.

Flaubert: ”The world is the kingdom of Satan.”. He himself loathed society, Romantic verse,

conservatism, and maybe he loathed life and loved literature, but only literature in the

extreme form, a form he tried to shape all by himself. He is not known to have admired

much any other author at all. “The style is life. The style is the blood of the thought itself.”.

Thus, to Flaubert, art was - as it seems, perhaps by "inner necessity" - larger than life. And to

“poor” Louise, the girl from Lyon, life became hell. In fact, it is a wise thing to study Flaubert

as a human being through the eyes of this small, beautiful, energetic woman, who alone

with a child ( the father of this child was a famous professor at Sorbonne, V. Cousin, an

expert on Hegel (!) and Pascal. ) tried to support herself and the little girl. The letters to

Louise Colet are scornful. Gustave laughs - as if life was not real to him - at her. She in turn, is

publishing a book on contemporary life, and never reaches her goal, which is to get a loving

husband.

Sarte devoted a large portion of his life to the study of Flaubert. His work on Flaubert (

L´Idiot de la famille.) is of huge proportions. Sartre writes:

”How come that the lunacy of one single man came to develop into a lunacy of the mass,

or still worse, to develop into the esthetical norm of this epoque? /…/ We might claim that

the sickness om Gustave permitted him to in a representive way objectify Objective Spirit, as

if the sickness of Gustave in fact was what may be called the neurosis of Objective Spirit.”

neuros.” ( L´ idiot d.l.F. III., p.32.). By the concept ”Objective Spirit” ( Sartre in using hegelian

terminology here) he simply ( and actually ) refers to ….Marxism.

So. What kind of conception concerning the “bubble” can we draw out of our attention

to the works of Flaubert? We might say, that we are meeting a strange bubble, composed of

a life lived estethically, and in pure poetry, and one might think of with a certain horror of

what might have been the reaction of Sören Kierkegaard´s, had he ever read a book by

Flaubert. ( Kierkegaard died in 1855, and could - to illustrate the joys of SK - amuse himself

with reading Schopenhauer.) .But we will return to all this.

A step towards what generally is called "World irony" Flaubert took late in life with his

Herodias, (in Trois Contes), which is a crisply written story, full of correct and incorrect facts

from the time of Jesus , and which looks upon the world from a bantering bird's eye view,

supremely accomplished by playing with the "religious sentiment", the innate fear, which

the "only God" evoked in the hearts and minds of the Christian reader of Flaubert's

contemporaries of this era. His play with different spheres: 1) worldly power, 2) sexual drives

4.) the joys of eating and 4.) the surreal Meta level, - all this is just eminently effective, and

to this day, 150 years later. The spontaneity of this story will sometimes quite close to that,

contained in his many letter, where impatience, anger, invectives ( it is almost a pathological

swearing in those letters ) and senselessness will flower freely side by side with social

criticism.

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Parenthetically - quite parenthetically can be cited a style variant and an irony with which

Flaubert probably not (what I know) came in contact with, namely Jane Austen. Perhaps

another person with Asperger traits.... Although of course not to the extent that we see

those in Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickinson, to choose two women of the pen of utmost

importance .... Her early novel Northanger Abbey (1818) - written at the coffee table, which

is all she wrote, in the pauses between household chores - begins with the following "hard to

beat" elegant sentence:

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland on her infancy would have supposed her to

be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person

and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being

neglected or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard, and he had

even been handsome. He had a considerable independence, besides two real good livings,

and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman

of Useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good

constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and, instead of dying in Bringing

the latters into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on - lived to have six

children more - to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A

family of ten children will always be called a fine family, where there are heads, and arms,

and legs enough for the number; But the Morlands had little other right to the word, for

They were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any." (

Jane Austen, NA, p.1).

The book is actually Austen's first novel. The irony is fresh. Already in 1803 the script was

sold to a publisher for 10 pounds, but was bought back by the author in 1816 for the same

amount when the book was announced, but not issued. It is a satire on the Gothic ( id est:

Romantic) novel, on Elisabeth Gatskell, Walpole and others. Austen here uses "le style

indirect libre" which was so appropriate also for Flaubert in the use for satirical purposes.

The small part referred above contains such a vast number of implications, winks, etc.

even to a person only half awake - or nearly unconscious - reader, that already at this initial

suspect that one of world literature's great is born ... right here!!! One of history's greatest

ironies. So neglected because of modern totally stupid movies based on the plots of her

novels. The peculiar thing – or one of them - with Austen's writing, not more than a handful

of novels, is that these take place within a limited sphere. In almost all these novels dealt

with (supposedly, allegedly) a single major subject: for a woman to get married. In the

satire's character, a limited sphere, a miniature universe. This universe is so small that one

can easily read her novels in an absurdistic tradition. ( Yes, yhere are absurdistic prose

before Jane Austen too.). Her universe can be read like one is reading Kafka, much the same

as Don Quixote almost can be read as a “kafka tale” – in “retrospect”. It had been said of

Jane Austen´s novels that several characters in them display “Asperger traits”. But the

heroine is always a superheroine, looking upon the universe (!) with great rationality and

wisdom, while her sisters ( for example ) often seem rather helpless in the world. But isn´t

the portrait of women with Asperger traits maybe still part of a self portrait ? Flaubert

exclaimed:” Emma Bovary, c´est moi!”. What might Jane Austen could have cried out to her

fellow universe?

From the brief sketch I have made of Gustave Flaubert we can assume that he was

utterly persistent in his striving to write the books he wanted to write. And when we come

to Ludwig Wittgenstein we are meeting another stubborn ( "eigensinnig" or even "einsinnig"

in the terminology of Otto Weiniger... ) man, who walked his own way through life, but he

was not so stubborn, though, that it was impossible for him to change his philosophy. He did

so. Because of this one is in philosophy referring to both Wittgenstein I. and Wittgenstein

II..( But Wittgenstein II was born posthumously. When he died in 1951, from cancer, most of

his works had not yet been published.)

Ludwig was in some other respect just like Gustave. He was regarded as stupid by his

parents. His birth took place in Vienna in the 1880ies and he had brothers, who got very

sophisticated educations. The Wittgensteins were extremely rich people, - maybe belonging

to the top 100 richest people in town. Ludwig´s father, a Jew like the entire family, had

among other things built railways in Russia. One of the Wittgenstein brothers became a very

good pianist too. The sisters stayed wealthy. But Ludwig only went through more simple

schooling, and after having served in the army ( on a boat, which is rather original for an

Austrian ) he for some years became a schoolteacher in a small village in the alps.

But we are running a bit ahead now. Because during the World War I. young Ludwig ,

who had studied philosophy in Vienna, and looked up the famous philosopher Frege, who

was a famous author known for his skill with concepts, wrote a small book that soon would

make him very famous. He not only became very famous: the book was an enigmatic book (

in parts ) and a rather good one, and he also changed the picture of what it “was” to be a

philosopher in the 20ieth century.

The Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is a very unusual book for being a renowned book on

philosophical matters. It has a buildup in layers, hierarqies, and it contains both crystal clear

things and completely obscure ones. What Wittgenstein had set out to do, in the midst of his

life as a soldier, was to solve every problem once and for all. This book was a definite one.

Despite its smallness as a physical volume (25000 words.).( I myself have a copy of it in a

bookshelf. )

The book was not completed during the war, but afterwards, and he sent it to Great Britain,

to Bertrand Russell, who later became his friend, so to say. Russell became very impressed.

Why so ? is the immediate question, - at least to a philosopher ( like me [smile], Russell and

Wittgenstein ). Now B. Russell was an open-minded character, a womanizer and in

philosophy an eclectic. ( We have to linger a bit here on Russell.). He had been a Hegelian

and he tended to become a Marxist, he was a mathematician and wrote tons of books on

matters of daily life, on marriage and – more important – of peace. Russell – I think - became

very impressed by the range of discoveries and important notes contained in the Tractatus.

And Russell liked very much broad knowledge. Much because he himself had an enormous

knowledge in different areas, and knowledge was a great part of his life, - knowledge and

enjoying knowledge and intellect. Russell had published the extraordinary book on

mathematics ( Principia Matematica ) together with Whitehead ( which was taking to the

printing factory in a roller by Whitehead) . This book became widely discussed later. Among

people admired by Russell Wittgenstein certainly stood out, at least for a while, but No.1 to

Russell was always John Maynard Keynes, who was probably the only person who Russell at

the same time admired despite he had not been able to grasp the content of the doctoral

thesis, presented by the man. Keynes thesis was on probability, and Keynes mainly earned

his money by cleverly placing more money in stocks, and he loved men and art. Thus Russell

became interested in a young man like Ludwig who both seemed to be a great logician ( in

Tractatus Wittgenstein presented a theory of truth values, that would come very handy to

people who later was to build computers ) and a mystic ( Wittgenstein presented a complete

mystical view of philosophy as a whole, and – as if this is not enough – Tractatus contains a

rather inspiring theory of Meaning, the so called “image-theory” of meaning. This theory of

meaning says that every sentence, every proposal ( he uses another word, but I cannot find

the book… ) is an image of a “Sachverhalt” ( or “Sachlage”, - the book was written in German

) state of things. Thus language was picturing reality. And this meant, according to

Wittgenstein, that language was very important to what we could know. In fact reality = the

logical though of … reality, som to say, to Wittgenstein. Some things, though, who could not

be said, they could be “shown”. Thus there are things we can know of and communicate and

still not talk about. All the same Wittgenstein´s language philosophy in its early form often is

summoned up with the following words:” The limits of your language is the limits of your

world.”.The Tractatus meant much to philosophy and to logical positivism, and Wittgenstein

became a professor in Cambridge ( in Great Britain).

Wittgenstein settled in Britain - Tractatus had been accepted as his doctoral thesis - and

was a very strange character. He was restless, made enemies, and was often very depressed.

He had problems in daily life, because of his homosexuality. During the Second World War

he took up his engineering skills from earlier years ( he had for a while studied jet engine

construction ) and while working in a hospital he invented all sorts of technical aid for people

wounded in the war.

Tractatus had a logical structure in itself, set in series of paragraphs and subparagraphs, and

thus was thought of as the final word on logical positivistic problems. The final paragraph

became famous:

“ Wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss mann schweigen”. ( approx.: Whereof

you cannot talk, thereof you have to be silent.). The important thing – here - is that the

structure of the book is both aspergerian and not. It is persistent, but it also has some

mystical traits. In fact Wittgenstein suffered from a deep “Lichtenberg-complex”. He felt

inferior to the superb aphoristic and professor in Physics Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who

was a great artist in the field of formulating a world view with very few words. Wittgenstein

wanted to be an artist. And he was probably very disappointed that all he had come up with

was this poor last sentence in his Tractatus. He did not look back, but created a theory of

language games, and of how language is a mean of communication and is born in the

interplay between people who try to understand each other´s inner life and urges. ( Russell

hated this kind of reflection, since it was obvious to him that this kind of thinking could

never be formalized into any philosophy that he liked, if into any philosophy at all. So the

two of them drifted apart. Wittgenstein was not silent in parting. He scorned Russell´s books

on daily matters.). Much like Russell never wanted to discuss the Principia Mathematica

when objections came concerning the logical foundations of it, Wittgenstein did not want to

discuss Tractatus after 1921, but very soon came up with another view of language and

reality, thus leaving the logical positivists of old Vienna behind, both R. Carnap and M.

Schlick struggling with the formalization of language and analytic approaches to ethics.).

The new philosophy of Wittgenstein had the structure of an endless undertaking. And

why would anybody begin a work like that? Russell had his answer to this: simply because of

lazyness. Intellectual lazyness. But Wittgenstein was persistent again. Now he would prove

that philosophy was really a much more complex thing than anybody hitherto had been able

to fancy.

About Wittgenstein as a private person there are lots of stories. By listening to these

stories and by reading the millions of papers he left behind by the time of his death, and a by

reading a few of his few letters we can learn of the originality and the depth of this person,

and come to know what kind of skeptic he was, because it is, lime in the case of Flaubert, as

a great skeptic he will be remembered, more than anything else. So next time we will talk

about the skepticism ( or: scepticism ) of Wittgenstein, and of skepticism in general and of

Wittgenstein and literature, music and figurative art.

Through the intensity in their persistent strivings both Flaubert and Wittgenstein thus

filled the void of their respective bubble-person. And the bubble at the same time was (!) the

intensity of their persistence! They never tried anything but to use their position as, and

their comprehension of themselves as complete strangers. They never tried to adjust in any

formidable manner. ( Alas! [smile].) But they managed to contribute to our understanding of

the world by being sceptics. They got much of their own happiness in being sceptics,

although this never led to them being rich and wealthy persons. They never discussed

wealth. ( Now Wittgenstein did, since he was born wealthy, and he claimed that money was

a hindrance to any persons, so he – almost maliciously, one might think, gave his money

away to his sisters in Vienna! [smile].)

It seems that both Flaubert and Wittgenstein were extremely self-absorbed persons. They

were no philanthropists. Indeed. But Wittgenstein thought it was perfectly rational to leave

philosophy during WWII and Flaubert thought freedom of speech and freedom to be

different and freedom to seek happiness was worth fighting for. ( The big fight in the times

of both Wittgenstein and Flaubert was that against Romanticism, which was the great

suppressing force of the time in the spiritual field alongside the church.). It was worthwhile

to show to the world the secrets in Emma Bovary´s heart, although the conservatives in

France were horrified. They did not want to know about such secrets. ( Later, in the year of

1900, Sigmund Freud should show the world other secrets in his Traumdeutung – a book

that sold very poorly, but still was eagerly discussed at every coffee table in Central Europe

during the years to come - , but then in the liberal climate in Vienna, where almost nothing

was forbidden, except for smearing the Kaiser, the nearly invisible head of the Habsburg

dynasty.)

Through the history of philosophy and literature skepticism runs as a red ribbon. Ever

since Homer, Socrates, Sophocles and Sappho skepticism is just as important as is passion.

The nature of a good authorship is its skeptical wholeheartedness. Both Flaubert and

Wittgenstein had huge amounts of energy, and they managed to trust their ability to

navigate in new, undiscovered, unsure waters.

Wittgenstein lived a simple life in Cambridge, and he enjoyed being worshipped by his

students. Sometimes he was on tour with one or two of them. He liked climbing mountains.

And he went to the movies and was especially fond of Hollywood western films. While

lecturing he was an improviser, and it seems – to the now living onlooker – to have been

more like a standup comedy than anything else. But there were also big quarrels like on the

occasion when Popper was visiting. ( Cf. the book "Wittgenstein´s poker".). The philosophical

quarrel was about the nature of the concept of philosophy.

In Vienna the Wittgensteins had been very wealthy, like I said. Wittgenstein´s mother

was an extremely beautiful woman, and very gifted. She was an excellent piano player. She

had had a good education on this instrument ( although she had not, like the wife of Charles

Darwin had Chopin as a teacher…), and she insisted upon that her children should have good

education in music too. But Ludwig was omitted from this schedule. It is unclear why his

parents looked upon him as almost retarded. Later in life he played the clarinet, and he

became … a master whistler. Once in a small pension in Norway ( where he had a short love

affair with Alan Turing, which led to no happiness on either side ) he announced, together

with a piano player, a whistle concert, - I think it was an entire symphony by Mozart – and

he whistled the entire symphony through. And in his papers are notes on music, on good and

bad composers. Now Wittgenstein also turned to sculpture, but mostly his joys were reading

books. And he classified authors in his own way. To Wittgenstein very many authors, of

whom we think they fit into secular branches – were mystics! Wittgenstein liked to look

upon much in the world as puzzling, and mystical. He thus not only read the usual mystics

and enjoyed reading the works of theirs, like Juan de la Cruz, ( please read Juan´s beautiful

lines on Aminadab, peeping ...) but almost every author became under his eyes transformed

to something they themselves never at all tried to be, or appear as.

Thus life became a giant adventure to Wittgenstein. And it was not only the works and

habits of other people who stood out to him as purely mystical. He also looked upon himself

as a strange person. On the eve of turning forty years old he wrote:” 40 years old and still an

idiot.”.

Thus the world to Wittgenstein seemed topsy-turvy, but he had the strength and honesty

to make this topsy-turvy look extremely interesting, and to make the very interest and

onlook seem rational. Because – that is true … - both Flaubert and Wittgenstein were very

honest people! They were rational and honest. ( Yes, it can be rational to regard things as

"mystical" I think, very much the way Wittg. himself thought it was. This in turn can be seen

as matching his fideism, because this is a skeptical way of looking at religion. Both

Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard were stern fideists.But Wittgenstein was no fiedeist in such a

way that he preached fideism the way Kierkegaard actally did.). Both of them were all their

life met both by suspicion and by applause, but they did not let this make an impact on their

own thinking, not of the world or of themselves. This was also the case with our next fellow

bubble-person, the Czech sceptic and great manufacturer of new spiritual glasses: Franz

Kafka.

When Franz Kafka grew up – born 1883 and named after the emperor Franz Josef of the

Austrian-Hungarian empire - in the centre of Prague near the town hall ( by Altstädter Ring )

he was not looked upon by anybody in his surrounding as a peculiar boy, like young Ludwig

Wittgenstein and Gustave Flaubert certainly was, but as just a normal boy. Yes, it was even

told a biographer of Kafka´s by a man, who had been classmate, that: “If I should say

something characteristic about Kafka, it would be, that it was nothing special with him at

all.” ( The words of Emil Utitz.).

Franz´s father Herman had a store, selling women´s clothing, and he made pretty well.

This all Jewish family was not rich, but they managed to have a nice flat and to put their

children in good schools. In Prague in those years around 1900 Prague was run by a German

speaking aristocracy and Appollinaire, who then visited Prague, remarked that the Czechs

often were hostile to the “ruling class”. Despite this situation Prague was in all respects a

much calmer city than Vienna was at the time, and antisemitism (experienced by

Wittgenstein and Freud at this time in history) was not often a problem in Prague. But all his

childhood years young Franz was all the same taken to school by a maid. But Franz had

trouble in school. He was not good in math. He in fact never thought he would pass the final

college exam and be able to go to university. But he did in 1901. And he even managed to go

through years of study of law and even get the doctor´s degree ( Dr.Jur.) in 1906 at the

Prague University.

From very early years he had begun to write short stories. He exchanged stories with a

schoolfellow, and all his life he actually had friends with whom he discussed literature. But

he often did not take part in any discussion at all, if there were more than one person plus

himself. He could not handle groups. Already as a teenager Franz and his father did not get

along very well, - Herman Kafka was perplexed when young Franz declared that he had

become a vegetarian. Franz, who was of week physical constitution, began to exercise and

he was often seen swimming in Moldau, or rowing a small boat. He was a hypochondriac.

And he feared marriage, when he became older. In fact, the romances of this very handsome

young man, when he grew up, were few. In school he had in 1902 met a very alert fellow

with whom he discussed Nietzsche, and they became friends all through Kafka´s life. It was

Max Brod. Through Brod and through the letters of Kafka to various women, which he never

married, we can learn much of Kafka as a person and very much of his attitude towards

literature in general and his own writing in particular. And one thing we soon are observing

is his enormous delight in reading Flaubert.

From early years Franz – the only son of Herman Kafka - had had a gouvernant ( among

several ) - Mlle Bailly - who taught him French. And Kafka´s favorite book all through his life

was Flaubert´s first novel L´Education sentimentale, (Sentimental education) a book that to

people, who does not read French, generally seems extraordinary boring. The young hero of

this book is a person who indulges in daydreaming. Flaubert´s own words from later in life

gives a very good hint of the content of the book: "I wanted to write the moral history of the

men of my generation—or, more accurately, the history of their feelings. It's a book about

love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays—that is to say, inactive.” The

marvels of the book are the poetry around each and every hesitation described in it. And this

Kafka liked. (Kafka could through his entire life almost never make up his mind about

anything at all. We will discuss this later.)

Kafka admired Flaubert as a person ( he had read the letters to Louise C.) and he

admired and agreed to the poetics of Flaubert. (Cf. §.9.). Kafka often read Flaubert aloud to

his friends. In fact, if he was not permitted to read his favorite writer aloud, he would often

not turn up at all. ( Based on what we already have said about Franz reluctance to speak with

more than one person at a time, we might also suppose that this was kind of a strategic

step.).

Franz was through his young years writing short texts, almost prose poems. And in 1907

his small collection Betrachtung appeared.

Franz became more and more tortured by the thought of marriage. Two of his sisters rapidly

married. But to Franz now hell began. He could not sleep at night. And we still are not at all

sure of the reason of his fear of marriage. Thus in the autumn of 1912, after having met a girl

named Felice, who he started to think of as his future wife, his masterpieces took form in an

explosion of creativity, and with a method, that was all his own. Because Kafka had some

years before discovered that he only was able to write what he wanted, if he put himself

into a certain state of trance. And in such a state he now was able in September this year to

bring to the world his first masterpiece, Das Urteil, (The Judgment). And after two months he

then wrote, using the same technique, Die Verwandlung, eine Erzählung, (The

Metamorphosis). These two stories are very strange, and most of you have read one of them

or both. They do not look like anything else written neither before nor since. These stories

are “kafkaesque” and the search for the key to the Kafkaesque has been hitherto in vain. The

man is a mystery, through and through, with his astonishing capacity of dividing himself into

two, and using himself and his consciousness and his meticulous observation as tools for a

truly stupendous art.

Kafka was all his life quite satisfied with these two stories. And maybe he had been famous

worldwide even if he had written no more than these two stories. We do not know. But

Borges read The Metamorphosis just a couple of years after it was published. And fan fiction

was written on it very soon. Kafka was amused at a try in a newspaper by a certain young

Karl Brand to write an alternative ending to The Metamorphosis.

Kafka left a lot of notes concerning himself. He wrote:” I am nothing but literature.” .

What kind of person was Franz Kafka, and how did he look upon himself? Let us investigate

these two things.

Dora Dymant, Kafka´s last love, once wrote of Kafka:

“He spoke lively and happily. He then developed a wealth of images like when he wrote. I

often got the impression that he felt an almost artisanal satisfaction when he managed to

express himself well.”

Now: to discuss who another human being was, it is not very nice and it is not fair, since

I did not think Kafka himself would approve of it at all. There are other people whose life

were such, as if they already in their life were very keen to being scrutinized in all respects

for an eternity. Kierkegaard was such a man. But Kafka was not, I think. Kafka was a man of

rich intelligence and great knowledge: He managed to do his job at as assurance lawyer very

effective and with skill. He had nearly no enemies. He had great self-control. It is suspected

that he had a to himself troublesome sexual orientation, the nature of which is unknown to

us. He was ashamed of his body and admired perfect bodies. He felt an extreme outsider. He

often talked about this. Even to people he had not known for very long. He could identify

himself with other people who were known to have been loners, like Kierkegaard, Kleist,

Dostoyevsky and Grillparzer.

Even if he often spoke of himself, he seldom discussed (!) his own person. He never had

friends with whom he earnestly could discuss personal matters, and he never sought any

psychologist, psychoanalyst or doctor to talk about his loneliness or other deep problems of

life. (As a matter of fact Kafka always bore a deep mistrust towards doctors.). Thus he said to

some Milena Jesenská ( another “love” of his), that he had never in his entire life had an

earnest conversation with his friend Max Brod. It is - apropos “love” it is highly questionable

if he ever in his life had fallen in love with anybody. Kafka was a sceptic and he was partly an

anarchist and it may be so, that his relation to his father, Herman, had something to do with

this. It is not evident, but it seems clear from many passages in his books that he, even as an

adult yeaned for a father. The relation between Herman and Franz was indeed a double one.

I think personally that the two of them loved each other very much, but that they never

showed it.

When it came to literature, it was certainly almost overshadowing everything else in life,

except life itself. His life was literature. And to make this life even greater, I think Kafka

inserted dialectic into the works, where he used the thoughts and theories of the early

Freud, and played with these. Writing was an intense play with his own soul, and I doubt he

was aware of what the play meant and what it did with him, but I think he was well aware of

that he played with his soul. Kafka never changed his trance-method of writing, and never

changed style from the style that can be found in The Judgment. Since Kafka never

understood the art of making decisions and thus never understood people in general and

how they managed to live their life, he could not either make plots for novels. Thus the big

novels are extended, giant, prose poems, and they have simple, unfinished plots. Strange

thing is that this author managed to be almost an inaugural figure for Modern Life and

modernity. Kafka did question nearly everything in real life, and he questioned by his art too.

And the heroes of his novels are completely helpless figures trying to question their way

forward.

The loneliness of the “in Kafka´s works “figures” is monumental. But the “figures” should

not be seen as complete human beings. The complete human beings in the works of Kafka

are the implicit narrators of these stories. These narrators are different self-portraits of

Kafka, and they are as such, as self-portraits unique, because normally self-portraits suffer

from lack of desire in them, whilst with Kafka there is a hot desire for some sort of unity of

some sort, a coming together of parts, and of the coming to some sort of paradise. It is very

rare that books on alienated figures can come under the skin of the reader in the same way

as the works of Franz Kafka. Other authors when presenting lonely characters normally

produces tragedies. But with Kafka they are more like surrealistic, erotic escapades into a

sore consciousness. The importance of Kafka is enormous to the picture of Modern Man,

and he forms a solid point of reference when we are discussing the New World. It will take

time to get perspective to see his work clearly. It will – so to say – take another “Kafka” to

accomplish the necessary conditions for doing so, and for looking at a more modern man

than Kafka´s modern man.

But to Kafka this would be a surprise. He knew he could write. But I am almost sure that

he did not know what his writings meant, and still less what they would mean to posterity.

He was just (!) a good, extremely lonely poet, desperately trying to survive, who happened

to be marvelous to us.

Kafka´s view of the law, as perceived by me in reading Kafka´s In the penal colony, The

Process and The Castle.

Kafka thinks a law grows out of the ruling class ( the power ), just like Montaigne

thought, and that law then becomes more and more refined, often refined not through

clarification, but through obscuration, by COMMENTATORS, who in turn are very often

concealed behind the concept of "tradition", and sometimes these commentators do not

even know what they are doing. Kafka believes that the commentators are very close to, or

is part of the "nobility", the ruling upper class, the power, and that it is precisely the work of

the commentators, that makes law possible, that allows law to survive as well as it does.

Nothing remarkable in this: lawyers are processing the law. The commentators/lawyers are

thus close to the power, but they are not in their own eyes the power; they are supporters

of the power. How could THEY be the power? The power is the small institution at the top,

how knows that the real power IS the commentators, which in turn, as we already have said,

does not know this at all, thinking they are servants. The commentators are these "small

geniuses", who formulate law in such a way that it is working, and at the same time is out of

reach for reason: it is effective precisely because it is inaccessible to reason, and it works - by

the work of commentators - all the time in its inaccessibility. The most powerful processing

of law is the small comment. The process of preserving the Law by minimal changes – i.e.

lots of small comments - is the main process that in reality is the dominating force within the

commenting, - invisibly overshadows everything. For the law in a legal process, where a

citizen is accused for a criminal offense, the most important aspect of the law is not to

ensure that citizens receive a judgment that is in proper relation to the law from the citizens'

point of view, but that the judgment is in such proportion to the law that law survives. Every

judgment, which could threaten this, must be avoided. Thus, every single judgment above all

has to strengthen the law. The process what judicial teams perform, to strengthen

themselves, in carrying out fallen verdicts, and at the same time in making additions to the

Law, which are comprised by elaborations of comments and of actual reports of the cases

themselves, all which is undertaken by commentators. Then comes other commentators,

who writes the history of law, the legends, which are introduced parallel to the comments

themselves, and then of incidence in these, and you have created the a treasure, which

settles in time, and constantly recreates Law. The law has an intrinsic value, but only if you

look upon it from the outside.

Subordinate are both the judiciary and citizens. The law is the power. Power is the state.

The judiciary is thus only slightly more upscale victims than the "victims" , those convicted.

The commentators may well be people who belong to the judiciary or standing close to this,

but they are always anonymous. This strengthens the law. Commentators are important,

and they are too important as commentators to be allowed to appear as individuals. As

individuals, they could possibly be held responsible for any errors. Commentators should

remain outside of the discussion of right or wrong. Without commentators there was no

Law. Therefore, the law and the commentators are regarded as something which cannot be

touched or really seen. Commentators and their writings, interpretations and legends (

which may be in some cases legends of commentators – themselves -, and of other legends )

must be kept out of touch of the law.

The law will never be complete. It is merely built upon a vision. This is something which

ordinary people do not know. That's why the best servants of the Law are not rigid people,

as one might perhaps think, but flexible ones, open to every solution, to the unfinished, yes,

to all kinds of whims and fancies, and even to small, or great, briberies. A person fully

trained in logic, and sticking to this logic, would break the certainty that the persistent state

of flexibility brings. The best servants of law in all societies thus are flexible, beyond logic, as

far as they can restrict their thought within the boundary of paradox. They will always be

able to add something to the law, making the law stronger, more difficult to understand for

ordinary people, often then by adding an extra bi-conditional rule, extracted from a peculiar

case from the outskirts of the country which is governed by the law in question, inserted

between existing rules, which has been proved durable. Or by adding an explanation of

profound wisdom, of the kind of Pythia. To understand a law should not under any

circumstances be possible, if it is a good law, not even to the commentators. You should only

be able to realize simple consequences, be able to understand the meaning of the actual

verdict, the sentence. Had anyone been able to understand the entire law, he would not

only been able to question it, but also had to question it, or maybe he had to through it

away completely.

And one might note that a view like this, which easily ( and in a much more concise way

than I have been able to ) might be extracted from Kafka´s works, bears a strong

resemblance not only to Max Weber´s ( one of Kafka´s contemporaries ) theories on

organizations, but also to the esthetic of Flaubert, ( Cf. §. 9 ) where he wanted to write a

book that was only held together by its own force. L´art pour l´art is just as dynamic and

“anarchistic” as the view of law, met with in Kafka, which may be a view applicable on art

too, thus presented by one of its main protagonists, himself being a lawyer by profession, in

one of his major works.

Writing of life is quite like writing of Rimbaud, I think. Do you follow me?

What is this thing called loneliness, this most extreme solitude? The loneliness of

Flaubert was probably an investigation of maladjustment, whereas to Wittgenstein

loneliness was a mystery and to Kafka it was a disaster, to be writing elegies about. ( As for

Rimbaud it was a thing that must be fled, at any cost. Thus he abandoned poetry for trading

in gold in northern Africa, which caused him a sore back, and he finally winded up at a circus

in Europe.Kafka wrote story after story about animals, animals striving to keep themselves

alive.

This sometimes breaks my heart.

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Kaj Genell 2017.