|
|
As a man and a writer, Franz Kafka incarnated several dominant contradictions. His friends and close associates saw him as a man with an indubitable wit and sense of humour who was generous and full of high spirits. On the other hand, the image of Kafka that emerges from his diaries and other intimate writings is one of a man overcome by self-doubts, self-hatred, intensely alert to his deficiencies. He was fully aware of the fact that he had been endowed with literary talent; at the same time he had serious doubts about the merits of what he had written. DistinctionKafka made no distinction between his life and writing. Indeed his radical ambition was to transform his life into a literary work. As he once claimed, ‘I have no literary interests, but am made of literature. I am nothing else, and cannot be anything else.’ These contradictions serve to deepen the mystery surrounding Kafka. Hence, it is hardly surprising that different literary commentators have opted for different paths of interpretation of his writings. I would like to identify eight such approaches. The first is the biographical approach. Given the mystery surrounding his life and works, it is only natural that many literary critics were drawn inexorably towards this approach. They examined very carefully his diaries, his published letters, the testimony of friends and associates and girl friends to gather as much information and insights as they could in the fond hope that they would serve to illuminate better his creative writings. When examining Franz Kafka’s body of writing from a biographical perspective, two prominent themes, it seems to me, stand out. The first is his complicated relationship with his father. The second is his precarious existence as a German speaking Jew in Prague. Indeed, he was as a result, doubly marginalised. StructuralismIn recent times, with the rise of structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism, with their emphasis on linguistic productivity rather than authorial inventiveness, the biographical approach has suffered a serious set back. Even so, many commentators have been drawn to this approach in order to make greater sense of Kafka’s writings. For example, some critics have found his letters extremely useful. Reading private letters, which were meant to remain private, can leave us with a sense of unease. However, in the case of Kafka, they are extremely illuminative in that they occupy an intermediate space between the inward struggles depicted in the diaries and the so-called objective descriptions contained in the biographies. As Paul Auster accurately pointed out his letters enable us to understand his relations with the world and give us a context in which we can penetrate his character. Kafka’s letters to his friends contain much valuable information regarding his interests and investments as a writer and his outlook on the world of words. For example, in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollack, he memorably says that, ‘I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading it for? ….But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone who loved more than ourselves, like a 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 stated earlier that one of the themes in his writings that biographically-oriented critics have fastened on to his complicated relationship with his father. He saw his father, rightly or wrongly, as an excessively intimidating figure, and he extended this counter-productive paternal authority to include the adverse effects of law and bureaucracy. His novels such as The Castle and The Trial bear testimony to this fact. In a letter titled ‘Letter to His Father’, Kafka sought to explain the fraught relationship between his father and himself. Kafka asserts that as a child he was incessantly dwarfed by his father’s imposing physical presence; at the same time he was proud of him. He recalls how he was totally defenseless against his orders. Consequently he was rapidly losing his self-confidence and overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. Some critics claim that Kafka’s obsession with law, bureaucracy and authority emanate from this unhappy encounter with his father. ImaginationSimilarly, his Jewishness, his minority status, according to some commentators, activated his imagination and led to his literary creations. Once again, the biographically-oriented critics are quick to pursue leads contained in his diaries, his letters as well the testimony of his friends and acquaintances to explore this theme. The biographical approach, it seems to me, despite it being somewhat old-fashioned, has yielded valuable results. However, not all are happy with this approach. For example Kafka’s fellow-countryman and the eminent writer Milan Kundera scorns biographical criticism that draws on letters, diaries and other documents to illuminate Kafka’s literary creativity and inventiveness. The second important approach to Kafka’s writings that I wish to identify can be termed the philosophical approach. Many critics seem to favour this mode of interpretation. For example, the well-known writer Erich Heller contends that the key to Franz Kafka’s novels and short stories is to be found in Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy. He advanced a philosophy that can be described as the philosophy of the universal will. It was Schopenhauer’s belief that all beings are foredoomed to a life of suffering; their suffering is that of the will he argued that this will which generates suffering is the blind and unconscious ground of all being. (Schopenhauer, it needs to be remembered, was influenced by Asian traditions of thought). Erich Heller is of the opinion that this idea permeates Kafka’s writings. His characters display a propensity to fall victim to a sense of guilt. This guilt arises, according to Heller, not from anything that they have done but from the fact of their very being. For example, Joseph K. in the trial, is forced to suffer not because he has committed any objectionable act but because he is a human being.(There are many critics who disagree with this viewpoint forwarded by Heller) Another line of philosophical thinking that has been advanced to make greater sense of Kafka’s writings is that of Existentialism. It is hardly surprising that stalwarts associated with existentialism such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus estimated Kafka so highly. Existentialism advocates the view, as opposed to rationalists and empiricists who believed that the universe is pre-determined, and that it constitutes an ordered system intelligible to the reflective observer; he or she can come to know the natural laws that regulate human beings and appreciate the importance of reason as the force shaping human actions. Existentialists, on the other hand, stress the chaos, disorderliness and absurdity that mark human existence. Clearly, Kafka’s writings are closer to the second view than the first. ExistentialistsThe existentialists argue that the problem of being must take precedence over that of knowledge in philosophical inquiry. They contend that it is not possible to make being the subject of objective investigation; the individual arrives at an understanding of being through reflections on his or her distinctive and specific existence. An important facet of their belief-system is that human beings are enveloped in a condition of anxiety emanating from the realisation that life in meaningless. Writers and thinkers such as Albert Camus subscribed to this mode of thinking, and t is evident that Kafka’s worldview overlaps with this. It’s no surprise, therefore, that existentialists like Sartre ad Camus thought so highly of Kafka’s work. The third approach to Kafka’s work that I wish to identify is the psychological approach. This is, in many ways, connected to the philosophical approach that I discussed in the earlier paragraphs. Kafka, in his writings, focused on issues of paranoia, tense relationships between father and son, inner conflicts between ego, id and super ego, the suppressive impact of civilization on human fulfillment and so on. All these themes have clear Freudian resonances. Some critics have sought to invoke the formulations and concepts of Sigmund Freud to make greater sense of Kafka’s novels and short stories. The idea of dream narrative is central to Kafka’s efforts. It can be said that he found his way to dream narratives more through introspection than any deployment of Freud’s ideas. He was, no doubt, familiar with Freud’s work, but it was the observation and reflections on his own mental activity that urged him along this path. Like Freud, Kafka believed that dreams were a way of allowing the unconscious to make its presence amidst the imperious authority of the conscious. There are other parallels. Martin Greenberg says that, ‘Freudian ideas undoubtedly influenced Kafka and may have helped him to find himself as a writer in 1912. Kafka’s subjective world of apparent irrationality hiding a heart of meaning is Freudian through and through. His literal and mythopoetic quality is Freudian. His conception of the dream is in the larger sense the same as Freud’s; both understood it as an expression of unconscious experience.’ Franz Kafka’s relationship to Freud was complex. He followed Freud’s writings closely, and wrote after completing one of his short stories, ‘thoughts about Freud, of course.’ He also, at one moment in his life, hoped to publish an anti-patriarchal journal with one of Freud’s disciples. At the same time, he had his antipathy to psychoanalysis; and felt that therapy would have the effect of destroying conflict fundamental to his creative writing. There are several critics who have sought to make use of Freud to shed light on Kafka’s endeavours. In more recent times, the psychoanalytic writings of Jacques Lacan have inspired commentators who are more inclined towards postmodernism. PsychoanalystsSpeaking of psychoanalysts, I would like to propose the name of Donald, Winnicott as one who would be able to illuminate Kafka’s literary endeavors in interesting ways. I don’t know whether this connection between Winnicott and Kafka has been made previously, but I would like to make it now. Winnicott was an object-relations psychoanalysts. In works such as Playing and Reality he made a case for the importance of what he termed the potential space or the transitional space. This space occupies an intermediate position between the inner world and outer world and combines the vitality of both. Works of literature, cinema, music and so on can be most profitably understood when seen in relation to the power of this third space. Kafka’s writings, it seems to me, end themselves more easily than those of many others to be examined in relation to Winnicott’s ideas. This is indeed a line of inquiry well worth pursuing in depth. Fourth, there are critics who are determined to explore Kafka’s work not in terms of psychological features but in terms of social factors. These commentators are keen to explain Kafka’s writings as critiques of industrial society, of bureaucratisation, of exploitation, of social fragmentation, of totalitarianism and the ever expanding power of capitalism. There are others who choose to examine the portrayal of gender and sexuality in Kafka’s work in relation to the tensions and contradictions generated within capitalist societies. They seek to investigate the crises depicted in Kafka’s novels and short stories in terms of the problems unleashed by modernity. A recent writer who has cogently argued for this approach is Elizabeth Boa. EmancipationShe says that, the emancipation of both Jews and women need to be understood as features of the process of social modernisation. It is her contention that the discourses of race and gender as those of nationalism, imperialism, class do not merely coexist but interfuse and provide us with contexts for understanding Kafka’s fiction. Elizabeth Boa says that, ‘Kafka’s work offers a profoundly political vision of society and of individual subjectivity as sites of struggle in action and thought.’ She also makes the important point that Franz Kafka started to write at a time when the new century was seen as ushering in an age of freedom as well as new threats and challenges to stable identity. The perception of change was promoted by the economic processes of industrialisation, the rise of the stock market, and the expansion of international trade by means of transport and communication and the changing balance between the urban and rural sectors. There was a contradiction within capitalism. It sought to promote liberal individualism; at the same time, it resulted in the callous disregard for the effects of the modernising process leading to class inequalities, unfulfilled aspirations of the new proletariat, sprawling urban growth ushering in disease and prostitution, generational tensions etc. it is against these social experiences, critics like Elizabeth Boa argue, that Kafka’s writings need to be examined. It is in this light that she in her book, Kafka: Gender, Class and Race in the Letters and Fictions offers us fascinating readings of The Trial and The Castle. The fifth critical approach to Kafka’s writings that I wish to identify can be termed the political approach and it is, to be sure, closely linked to the social approached that I discussed earlier. In this regard, I wish to single out the book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature by the distinguished French writers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattarii. In their book, they counter the widespread notion that sees Kafka’s work as a case of Oedipalised neurosis and a flight into transcendence, guilt and inwardness. They maintain that Kafka was a man of joy who promoted a radical politics and challenged established hierarchies in this book, Deleuze and Guattari propose the concept of minor literature in relation to Kafka’s writings. By minor literature they refer to the use of a major language by a minority writer to subvert it from within. They argue that Kafka writing as a Jew in Prague in German becomes a stranger within it and sought to subvert it from within. It is their contention that Kafka’s work serves as a model for comprehending all critical language that must function within the parameters of a dominant language and culture. InfluentialThis book by Deleuze anf Guattari has been most influential and has generated a great deal of discussion. Post-colonial theorists picked up their concept of minor literature and deployed it in their respective interpretations to great advantage. For example, they wanted to examine the English writings of Indian or Nigerian writers in the light of these subversive intentions. While there have been many who welcomed Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature as an insightful work, there are others who dismissed it as based in a misunderstanding. For example the influential scholar of German literature, Prof. Stanley Corngold of Princeton university says that their thesis is aberrant because what, after all, is the subversive Prague German literature that Kafka wrote? Corngold complains that Deleuze and Guattari provide no philological descriptors at all. The sixth interpretive approach to Kafka’s writings that I wish to highlight is what I term the parabolic approach. Kafka wrote several short parables that I referred to in my earlier columns. In addition, his major works such as The Trial, and The Castle contain many parabolic elements. He encouraged allegorical readings of his fiction. The isolation of the individual was a central concern of his; to portray, ‘completely unsure of my footing in the world, in this town, in my family.’ In order to enhance this effect of alienation, he eliminated the distinctive cultural signs that had conventionally served to situate works of fiction in a specific time and place. As Mark Anderson points out, ‘almost all place names, dates, proper names, and other references to a world outside the text were effaced.’ The physical laws and social norms that guided the activities of this external world were also ignored. For example, a salesman turns into a large insect. A number of critics have sought to make use of a framework of parable to get to grips with Kafka’s fiction. The brilliant German cultural critic Walter Benjamin also favored a similar approach. He talked about the work of Kafka being an ellipse with foci far apart and are determined by mystical experience; at the same time, the experience and sensibility of the modern urban-dweller impinges on it Benjamin goes on to say that the reality precipitated by modernity can no longer be experienced by the individual, and that Kafka’s world with its playfulness and interventions of angels is the exact complement of his times. The two celebrated European thinkers Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben were also interested in pursuing the idea of the parable in discussing Kafka’s work. For example, Derrida and Agamben disagreed regarding the best way of reading Kafka – in fact, Agamben’s views of the parable by Kafka, Before the Law, was exactly the opposite of Derrida’s. To be continued
|
|