kafka literalization of metaphor

7/27/2019 Kafka Literalization of Metaphor

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Franz Kafka and Literary NihilismAuthor(s): Wilhelm Emrich, William W. Langebartel and Irene ZukSource: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 6, No. 3, Franz Kafka Special Number (Sep., 1977),pp. 366-379Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831181 .

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WILHELM EMRICHWEST BERLIN,GERMANY

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM W. LANCEBARTEL AND IRENE ZUK

Franz Kafka and

Literary Nihilism

Thatthe political movement known as Nihilism originated in Russia is awell-known fact of modern history. Literary nihilism, a much less con-sciously organized movement, also has its origins in Russia. The word"nihilism" first emerges in Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons (1862),where the young Bazarov, a representative of Western material ism andradical sceptical thinking, is described as a nihilist. In the followingviolent debate over this figure, after whom revolutionary groups in Rus?sia then called themselves Nihilists, although they had at first sharplyrejected the figure of Bazarov as a caricature of their own intentions,Dostoevsky, whose own novels and theoretical writings were primarilyconcerned with the struggle against Western material ism, atheism, andnihilism, had the following to say:

Nihilism came into existence among us Russians because we are allnihilists. We were only frightened by the new, original form of its appear?ance. The dismay and worry of our intelligent men, who sought to discoverthe origin of the nihilists, was funny. They actually did not come fromanywhere, but have always been with us, in us, and among us.1

With this, Dostoevsky utters a truth which is not limited just to theRussians and their specific ways of life, those ways of life that, evenbefore Turgenev, appear in drastic form, for example, in Goncharov'singeniously portrayed character of the idle, hopelessly melancholy Ob-lomov, who shied from and despised all social obligations (1859). Thefact that the nihilists have been with us, in us, and among us all the timeis rather a more comprehensive truth which holds for a very wide rangeof human reality and human consciousness.

1F. M. Dostoevsky,LiterarischechriftenMunich,1920),p. 359.366

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367

In his analyses of nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche saw the cause of thisphenomenon in the fact "that the supreme values"?belief in God, inimmortality, in ethical principles?"are being lost. A purpose is lacking:the answer to the 'why' is lacking."2 With this Nietzsche formulates, asdoes Dostoevsky, the fact that the majority of contemporary humanity,usually without knowing it, finds itself under the reign of nihilism be?cause the question of the highest meaning and purpose, the "why" ofhuman existence, is no longer answered within society, which concen-trates on purely material striving for possessions.

Nietzsche, however, went a step beyond Dostoevsky in proclaimingthat the heralds of the supreme values, the Christians, were in origin andessence also mhilists. Christianity is the actual cause of Westernnihilism, because it has depreciated the whole material world, has de-famed it as a world of sin, has transferred the supreme values into thenext world: "It is a mistake to point to 'social emergencies' of'physiological degenerations' or even to corruption as the cause ofnihilism. It is the most honest, most emphatic time. Need, spiritual,physical, intellectual need, is in itself by no means incapable of produc?ing nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning, and desira-bility). These needs still permit quite different interpretations. But:nihilism lies in a quite specific interpretation, in the Christian-moralinterpretation.''3

With this Nietzsche formulates a remarkable double aspect ofnihilism. Both the life and thought styles of man, restricted to purelymaterial things, know no supreme values, and the moral way of lifeoriented toward the pure beyond are covered by the concept ofnihilism.

Franz Kafka found himself exactly in this two-sided problematicalsituation, both in his literary creation and in his actual life situation,when he constantly speaks about the "struggle" between two "oppo-nents" in his works and in his personal preoccupation with his envi?ronment. These "opponents" either drive him out of worldly existenceon grounds of absolute moral commandments and demands or want torestrict him to a material life through reference to the duties of society,

2FriedrichNietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht: Versucheiner Umwertungaller Werte.ErstesBuch: DereuropaischeNihilismus,Absatz2t nFriedrich ietzsche,Werke:Auswahl n 2 Banden,withan IntroductionyCerhardLehmannStuttgart: roner, 939), II,318.3Nietzsche,p. 317.



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family, wife, and occupation. Kafka seeks to escape from both the an-nihilation of the material through the absolute and the annihilation ofthe absolute through a totally relativized material existence, abandonedto itself.4 With this he occupies?like Nietzsche?a special positionwithin the modern phenomenon of nihilism and our preoccupation withit. In order to be able to establish and articulate this more precisely, Imust delve a bit further. Dostoevsky's statement that nihilism has alwaysbeen with us, in us, and among us is all the more surprising, sinceDostoevsky himself was a devout Christian who awaited not only thesalvation of Russia, but that of mankind from the Russian OrthodoxChurch. He meant thereby that within religion itself a permanent strug?gle with "nothingness" is taking place, yes, that religions would not evenexist without knowledge of the nihilistic possibilities existing in all menand in all times. Even the Old Testament fights not merely againstidolaters, but also against atheists, who idolize their own bellies andderide all higher values, following their own material interests. And thetheological reflections on the relationship of being and nothingness ledamong Christian mystics even to a positive evaluation of nothingness,to its identity with God Himself.

This comes up again on the philosophical level with Hegel, whoequated absolute being with nothingness, because by its very nature itcan never appear, can never be assigned any concrete existence. InBuddhism nothingness is the supreme religious category.

"The spirit who always negates" is for Goethe inseparably tied upwith human existence itself. Without this spirit there would be noproductive activity, no striving for supreme values and perceptions.

No one, however, can or would want to assert that the Christianmystics, the Buddhists, Hegel, and Goethe were nihilists in the modernsense of the word. In today's linguistic usage, nihilism arises only asnothingness, comes to stand by itself, and makes everything nothing andworth nothing, both material phenomena and the higher spiritual,psychic, and moral values. Everything becomes "meaningless" and"disgusting," which is why concepts such as disgust, boredom,meaninglessness and absurdity are the central, constantly recurringterms in the nihilistic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth cen?turies.

4See,forexample,FranzKafka, riefe n FeliceundandereKorrespondenzusderVerlobungszeit,ds. ErichHellerandJurgenBorn Frankfurtm Main:Fischer,1967),pp.617-618, 756.



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KAFKA AND LITERARY NIHILISM 369

In his study, Experimentum suae medictatis? Walther Rehm showedthat literary nihilism in Germany arose at the end of the eighteenthcentury, for example, in Ludwig Tieck's novel William Lovell (1794-1796), in Jean Paul's dream-composition, "Speech of the Dead ChristFrom the World Structure, That There is No God," which was con?ceived about 1789-1790 and later incorporated into the novel Sieben-kas, and above all in the novel The Nightwatches of Bonaventura (pub?lished in 1805), author unknown. Ludwig Tieck and Jean Paul portrayednihilism as one possibility, among others, and described it as aphenomenon which had to be conquered. But their wrestling with thisphenomenon, rising almost to outbreaks of despair, shows how power-fully the awareness of impending doom was already present withinthem. Jean Paul criticizes figures like Roquairol in his novel Titan asfateful appearances of the Zeitgeist, becoming more and more powerful.At the very beginning of his Introduction to Aesthetics (1804), he de?scribes them as "poetic nihilists," who transform everything into a futileaesthetic "game" through their lawless phantasy. Poetic nihilism, hewrites here, "results from the lawless arbitrariness ofthe contemporaryZeitgeist?which is perfectly willing to selfishly destroy the world andthe universe just in order to clear a free playground for it in the resultantnothingness."6 Jean Paul did not originally put the complaint that Goddoes not exist into the mouth of the dead Christ, but into the mouth ofthe dead Shakespeare, obviously because of the conviction that alreadyin Shakespeare's tragedies the danger becomes apparent that the world,left to itself, as it were, remains in a state of permanent murderousself-destruction. "Take God out ofthe universe," writes Jean Paul, "andeverything is destroyed, every higher spiritual joy, every love, and onlythe wish for spiritual suicide would remain, and only the devil and thebeast could still ask to exist."7

But literary nihilism is perfect in the novel Die Nachtwaschen desBonaventura (The Nightwatches of Bonaventura). The author clearlyidentifies himself with it, which was probably also the reason why hewanted to remain unknown. The work ends with the word "nothing?ness" as the "Echo in the Ossuary." Men are puppets, dolls, masks, with

s WaltherRehm,"Experimentumuaemedietatis:EineStudiezurdichterischenGestaltung es Unglaubensbei jeanPaulundDostojewski,"ahrbuches FreienDeutschenHochstifts rankfurtm Main1936-40(Hallea. d. S.: Niemeyer,1940),pp.237-336.6jean Paul,Werke, d. NorbertMiller,V (Munich:Hanser,1963),p. 31.7Rehm,p. 243.



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which an "insane world creator" stages a meaningless and monoto-nously unvarying absurd farce, which evokes only endless boredom anddisgust. The living are in reality dead, their movements merely illusion;in reality they are always treading only in the same place. But the deadare senselessly, repeatedly alive, continually celebrating their nonsensi-cal roles. Hamlet lives on and writes to Ophelia:

Everything is a role, the role itself and the actor who plays in it, and in himagain his thoughts and plans and enthusiasms and pranks?everything be-longs to the moment and escapes quickly, like the word from the lips oftheactor. Do you want to free yourself from the role, down your own self??Look, there stands the skeleton, throwing a handful of dust into the air, andnow it crumbles away itself;?but mocking laughter follows. That is theworld spirit, or the devil?or the echo of nothingness! To be or not to be!How simple I was then, when I raised this question with my finger on mynose, how much simpler were those who asked it after me, and had thewildest ideas of what itall meant. I should have first questioned being aboutbeing itself, then non-being would have made sense too. ln those days mytheory of immortality was still from that school and I applied it to allcategories. Indeed, I was truly afraid of death because of immortality?andby heaven, justly so, if after this boring comedie larmoyante another onelike it was to follow?I think it has nothing to do with it!8

With this both the content and the structure of nihilistic literaturewere anticipated and established. They appear in extreme form inBuchner and Grabbe, reappear again in Naturalism and Expressionism,in order finally to reach a new climax in lonesco and Samuel Beckett9:the world play as a meaninglessly revolving carrousel on which the endflows again and again into the beginning; man on the carrousel as au-tomaton, puppet, animal, or thing, caught up in an endless journey,which is actually standing still10; man as an eternally living-dead man,who can neither live nor die11; durable presence of catastrophe, whichbecomes a normal, permanent condition; cancelling out of the comic

8DieNachtwachen esBonaventura, ithanAfterwordyAdolfvonGrolmanHeidelberg:chneider, 955),pp. 134-135.9Formoredetailedrema^s ancjevidence for this thesis see WilhelmEmrich, GeorgBuchnerund diemodemeLiteratur,"nPolemik: treitschriften,ressefehdenndkritischeEssays mPrinzipien,Methoden ndMassstabe er Literaturkritik,hapter V:"Barockeristessem faschistischenZehaiter"Frankfurtm Main:Athenaum, 968),pp. 131-172, alsoChapterI:"Pressekampagne,"ections"Lamentierentattkonfrontieren"and"Warumwagensie so wenigi", pp.33-42.10Seetheinterestingxamples fanabgousphenomenanExpressionistyricpoetry nd innineteenth-centuryFrench ymbolismn KurtMautz,GeorgHeym:Mythologie ndCeseilschaftmExpressionismusFrankfurtmMain:Athenaum, 961).11See Kafka's HunterGracchus"igure,whichderives romanextensivenihilistradition.Evenphenomenalikethatof RichardWagner's"FlyingDutchman"re indebted o thistradition, lbeittheyareguidedby theintentiono finda "salvation"rom hisliving-dead ihilistic ormof existence.SeeMautz orfurtherxamples.Kafka, owever,did notclingto thistradition, s indicatedbelow.



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and the tragic through the grotesque, through which they become indis-tinguishably one in the indissoluble union of laughter and terror; and,finally, identity between formalized burlesque farce and immediatedespair.

In Buchner the characters are already dead when the curtain goes up.His play Danton's Death begins with the sentence, "Danton (to his loverJulie): No. listen! People say there is peace in the grave, and the graveand peace are the same thing. If this is so, then in your lap I am alreadylying under the earth. You sweet grave, your lips are bells of death, yourvoice is my funeral knell, your breast my grave mound and your heartmy coffin." In Act 3 he says, "The cursed phrase: Something can notbecome nothing! And I am something, that is the rub!?Creation hasspread so much that nothing is empty anymore. Everything is teeming.Nothingness has murdered itself, creation is its wound, we are its dropsof blood, the world is the grave in which it is rotting. We are all buriedalive and like kings laid in three?or fourfold coffins, under the sky, inour homes, in our coats and shirts. Indeed, only whoever could believein annihilation could be helped." And in Act 4 Danton summarizes hisdespair with the words, "The Universe is Chaos. Nothingness is thefuture god ofthe universe." This is exactly in accord with the theme andform ofthe contemporary plays of Samuel Beckett: the catastrophe anddeath are already present at every moment, but nevertheless we cannotdie. In Beckett's play End Game the world has already exploded, andthe characters perpetually reflect the inevitability and incompre-hensibility of their living-dead existence in monotonous repetitions.But also in such a totally different writer as Gerhart Hauptmann theworld creator god appears in almost all the dramas at the same time asthe eternal slayer, so that a way out of the killing can be hoped for onlyin "nothingness." His tragedy f/ectra ends with the words, "The worldshall finally die: it like us!" At the end of the tragedy Veland stand thewords, "In nothingness some day."12

Compared to this Franz Kafka represents a totally different positionwithin nihilism or vis-a-vis nihilism. In the sketches "Er" ("He") (1920),Kafka writes:

It is a question of the following: Many years ago Iwas sitting, certainly sadlyenough, on the slope of Laurenzius Hill. I tested the wishes that I had forlife. The wish that became the most important or most appealing was to

12WilhelmEmrich,"Der TragodientypuserhartHauptmanns,"n Protestund Verheissung:tudienzurKlassischen ndmodernenDichtung,3d ed. (FrankfurtmMain:Athenaum, 968),pp. 193-205.



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gain an attitude towards life (and?this was to be sure necessarily tied upwith it?to be able to convince the others of it in writing), in which lifewould actually keep its natural sharp ups and downs, but at the same timewould be recognized with no less clarity than a nothingness, than a dream,than a floating in the air. A nice wish maybe, if I had wished it correctly.Perhaps as a wish to hammer a table together with painstaking workman-ship and at the same time to do nothing, but in such a way that one couldsay "Hammering is nothing to him," but "Hammering is truly hammeringto him and at the same time also nothing"; whereby the hammering wouldhave become even more daring, more determined, more real, and, if youwant, still crazier. But he could not wish like this at all, because his wishwas no wish, it was just a defense, a bourgeoisization of nothingness, abreath of liveliness, that he wanted to give the nothingness, into which hehad then barely taken his first conscious steps, but that he already felt as hiselement. It was in those days a form of farewell, which he took from theillusory world of his youth; besides it had never directly deceived him, butonly allowed him to be deceived by the speeches of all surrounding au?thorities. The necessity of the "wish" had been produced in this way.13

Kafka's position, then, differs in a decisive point from the position ofthe nihilistic literature just depicted. With him nothingness is to be surealso "his element," into which he inescapably wandered as he left theillusory world of his youth, saw through the deceptions and lies of allauthorities around him. But he wants to "defend" himself against theabsolute annihilation of all existence. The hammering, material action,should remain a real hammering, a real, maybe even a meaningful andessential activity, although at the same time it is irrevocably a nothing?ness, an unique meaninglessness, so that this simultaneity of reality andnothingness takes on the character of "insanity."

Only when one has comprehended the paradoxical nature of Kafka'sposition do the structures and meanings of his enigmatic writings be?come clear. It is just this permanent self-contradiction, which he himselfalso always sees through as a self-contradiction and painfully bears, thatshapes the form and meaningful strength of these writings. For thisself-contradiction is necessary and indelible. It can never be honestlysolved in a world in which the supreme values have actually disap-peared, and therefore also concrete empirical existence with all its ac?tivities threatens to crumble into nothingness, into meaninglessness.Kafka is primarily concerned with the rescue of this concrete life, al?ready reduced to nothing, as improbable as this may appear upon first

13FranzKafka, eschreibunginesKampfes: ovellen,Skizzen,AphorismenusdemNachlass FrankfurtmMain:S. Fischer,1954),pp. 293-294, hereafter ited as B. Thefollowingabbreviations realso used for theworkscited below, which are all publishedby S. Fischer:FranzKafka,Erzahlungen1946) E;FranzKafka,HochzeitsvorbereitungenufdemLande ndandereProsa usdemNachlass1953)H;Gustavanouch,GesprachemitKafka1951)1;FranzKafka,DerProzess 1953)P;FranzKafka,Tagebucher 910-1923 (1951)T.



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viewing his work, and as much as the self-critical sneering remark aboutthe "bourgeoisization of nothingness" seems to parody this rescue at?tempt and to lead to the absurd. He wants to give concrete humanexistence a "law" establishing form and meaning, a new "command,"a supreme court, although he knows that it is impossible, that such a lawwill always remain "unknown" and unattainable:

It's not idleness, bad will, clumsiness?even though something of all thismay be in it, because "vermin is born from nothingness''?which makes ordoesn't even make everything fail for me: family life, friendship, marriage,occupation, literature, instead it isthe lack of ground, air, commandment. Itis my task to create these, not that I can then catch up on the things missed,but so that I haven't missed anything, because this task is just as good asanother. It is actually even the most original task or at least a reflection of it,just as one can suddenly step into the light of the distant sun by reachingthetop of height in the rarefied air.14 This is also no exceptional task, it hascertainly already been frequently presented whether indeed to such anextent, I don't know. I haven't brought any of the demands of life along, asfar as I know, but only the most common human weaknesses. With thisweakness?in this respect it is a gigantic strength?I have strongly taken upthe negative aspect of my times, which is certainly very close to me, againstwhich I never have the right to fight, but to represent it in a certain sense. Ihad no inherited share in the slight positive element, as well as in theuttermost negative element, tilting over to the positive. Iwas not led into lifeby the already heavily sinking hand of Christianity, like Kierkegaard, and Ihaven't caught the last tip of fleeing Jewish prayer mantle like the Zionists. Iam the end or the beginning. (H 120f)

It is a decisive factor that Kafka here unreservedly clearly identifieshimself with the nihilism of his times, that he no longer sees the smallestpossibility of renewing religious traditions or even of establishing rela?tions with them. If one follows his thought trend to the end, then it evencritically rejects any chance to form today's world and society anew bymeans of a negative dialectic be it the modern dialectical Protestanttheology of a Kierkegaard or Karl Barth all the way to Paul Tillich, or thenegative, socio-critical dialectic of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W.Adorno. Their dialectic nevertheless hopes for a reversal ofthe negative"in extremis" into something positive, since that dialectic is perma-nently negating everything in existence which is socially calamitous,even if?exactly as with the dialectical theologians?this positive isnever formulated, may never appear materialized, is never reachable

14AllthroughKafka'sworkwe findthe symbolsof the questfor "breathableir" in a worldin whichonecannotbreathe,or"edible ood"whichcontemporaryocietydoes notpossess DerHungerkunstler,lso thereflectionsntheForschungenines Hundeson theoriginof "food"),ordwellable"soil,"whichexistsnowhere(Der Bau).Morepreciseanalysesof these symbolsmay be foundin WilhelmEmrich,FranzKafka,6th ed.(FrankfurtmMain:Athenaum, 970).



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through concrete actions,15 but can manifest itself only as "utopia," as apostulate, as an ever-present concept of true humanity, true happiness,or true undistorted humaneness out of the immanent dialectical move?ments and changes of human history and society.

Kafka opposes these collected possibilities of modern thought andhope. For him they are a long-lost play. His "battle" just is not valid tothe times. He is not a "critic of the times" neither in the sense of aconservative pessimistic critique of the times (as we practiced fromTocqueville through Oswald Spengler down to Arnold Gehlen, ErnstTopitsch and Toynbee), nor in the sense of the so-called progressiverevolutionary critique of the times. He feels himself rather to be a "rep?resentative" of this time which is criticized by everyone whose "nega?tive qualities" he has strongly absorbed. In the sketches "?r" ("He")Kafka writes:

He doesn't live for the sake of his personal life, he doesn't think for the sakeof his personal thinking. For him it's as if he were living and thinking underthe coercion of a family, which itself is teeming with life?and brain power,for which he however represents a formal necessity according to some lawunknown to him. He cannot be let off free because of this unknown familyand these unknown laws. (B 295)Therefore, Kafka wants neither to reform nor to revolutionize society.

He does not want to commend to it any historical-philosophical recipeor even a panacea through which it could be freed from its sicknessesand crises. He much rather wants simply to recognize society and todescribe it as it is, or, as he formulated it in a letter to Max Brod, "... it ismy endgoal to sean the whole human and animal kingdom to recognizetheir basic preferences, desires, moral ideals. . . . in summary I am,therefore, concerned only with the human and animal court of jus-tice."16 For him the human and animal community is at the same timethe human and animal court of justice. For in this kingdom there isincessant motivation, judgment, seeking for justice or injustice, themeaning or absurdity of an occurrence or of a thought. Our reflectionsand inner monologues are nothing more than attempts to motivate ourown and others' lives, to justify or accuse and condemn. "Everythingbelongs to the court" it says in the novel The Trial (181). But this humanand animal court of justice is also totally disoriented. Its court proce-

15See TheodorW.Adorno'sharp riticism f the activepolitical nvolvement f his own socialrevolutionarystudents,who hadbeen influencedbyhim,inhis"Marginalienu TheorieundPraxis,"nStichworte:KritischeModelle2, Suhrkampdition No. 347 (Frankfurtm Main:Suhrkamp,969).16FranzKafka,Briefe1902-1924 (Frankfurtm Main:Fischer,1958),p. 178.



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dures and records continually run in all directions in a disaster or disor-der and absurdities. No one knows the definitive lawbook, the highestcourt. But in ancient, religiously oriented times there seemed to be still asupreme judge and, correspondingly, also a clearly organized andfounded order of justice, even though it might be dreadful and pitiless,17like the old commander's order of justice in "The Penal Colony." Butunder the modern, new and ever so human and "always cheerful"commandant every form of courtly justice is finally destroyed. There-upon production goes on with chaotic cheerfulness: "For miles the mostambitious pounding started. No pause was permitted, only a change ofhands. The arrival of our snake was already announced for the evening,till then everything had to be pounded to dust, our snake tolerates noteven the smallest pebble" (T 525f). Mankind disintegrates into dust. Theworkers themselves become "snake feed," the food of the devil snake,whose arrival is announced at the end of each workday, indeed, forwhich in the final analysis all earthly work in modern times is beingaccomplished.

The nihilistic degree of this vision of Kafka's can no longer be out-done. The whole modern workaday world is invalid, produces nothing?ness with pauseless work, the total pulverization of all meaning in thename of evil, which has become absolute.

Still Kafka feels responsible and directly obligated to this workingworld that is being pulverized into nothingness. He feels himself tied tounknown laws which could form this workaday world; indeed, he alsoseeks the "unknown family" of this new human race, that is, for a stillundiscovered, meaningful order within this self-annihilating society.Despite his despair he clings firmly to his own writing, because thiswriting, as he formulates it, represents a formal necessity for modernsociety according to some law unknown to him.

What does this mean? Wherein lies this formal necessity? Again andagain, Kafka has felt and thoroughly reflected on his exceptional posi?tion within modern literature and society; thus already in his sketches of1910, in which he says that he has stepped out of the "current of thetimes" (T 22), he no longer is swimming in this stream like all the others.This extreme critical distance excites extreme despair to be sure, theinability to live and to think like everybody else. But it also providesextreme clarity, because "the man," as Kafka writes in 1921, "who

17See Kafka's iaryentry:"WutenGottesgegendie Menschenfamilie. ie zwei Baume.das unbegrundeteVerbot"T502).



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doesn't come to grips with life alive, needs one hand to ward off despairover his fate a little?it happens very imperfectly,?but with the otherhand he can gather in what he sees among the ruins, because he seesother things and more than the others do, after all he is dead in hislifetime and the real survivor" (T 545).

Here in an extremely disconcerting manner, yet sharply markingKafka's particular position, the old nihilistic topos of the living-deadis reversed into its opposite. The living-dead man no longer circleswithout purpose in the carrousel of time, but becomes a man whorealizes its meaning and becomes the survivor.18

In the sketch "At Night" Kafka describes contemporary humanity as asleeping mass which imagines itself sleeping in "Houses," "In securebeds, beneath a secure roof," while in reality, it lies "in a desolateregion . . . under a cold sky on cold earth, thrown down where formerlyone had been standing." And he closes with a question to himself:"Why are you awake? One person must be awake, it is said" (B 116).Mankind has been sleeping unsuspectingly, without consciousness, sur-rendering to "nothingness," for wasteland and cold are unambiguouspictures of nihilism. Remember Nietzsche's words: "The wasteland isgrowing." But Kafka himself is the lone waking watchman, the only onewho, like no other, has, through this nihilism, totally swept away the lastremainder of illusions, hopes, utopias. But just this is what his formalneed for the human and animal community signifies: "Only forward,hungry animal, does the way lead to edible sustenance, breathable air,free life, even if it be beyond life. You are leading the masses, great tallgeneral, lead the despairing through the mountain passes lying underthe snow, which no one else can discover. And who will give you thestrength? He who gives you the clarity of vision" (T 572).

So what Kafka is after is the discovery of the passes lying under thesnowy wastes of our century and hidden from all which lead to a freelife, to breathable air, to edible nourishment, that is, to a purpose, to anexistence worthy of a human being. We know that icy cold snowywastelands are also in other writings of Kafka, such as in The Castle or in"The Country Doctor," symbols of the "frost of our most wretchedtime" (E 153). In the middle of this snow?or, more accurately, under

18HereKafka akesup again,froma criticalpointof view,the nihilisticmotifof "senselesswalking,"hat sreallya "continualreading n theverysamespot";KurtMautznote10above)has horoughlyocumented ndanalyzed hismotif,whichcan be traced rom he nihilistic iteraturef the nineteenth enturyhroughExpres?sionismdown to SamuelBeckett.



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this snow?Kafka wants to find the ways which lead out of it, of course;and this testifies to the illusionless clarity of his vision, in the completeconsciousness that such a free life lies "beyond life": therefore, it isunattainable here on earth.

Nevertheless he escapes neither into the beyond nor does he regressinto the unsuspecting life, gaily splashing on its way, which?somewhatas in the novel The Castle?amuses itself in the steaming baths in thevillage huts, almost buried beneath the masses of snow. Rather, he holdssteadfastly to the permanent self-contradiction, to ways to a free lifewhich is and remains unattainable. The search itself is his task, hisinescapable duty, even if he knows that it is fruitless, will lead to notangible result, even if it is clear to him that he will "perish in thesearch," as is stated in his early work, "Description ofa Fight" (B 59).

The search, the examination, the research, the experiment?these arethe decisive categories which determine the form and content of hisworks. All his works are basically one large experiment. In the story"Researches of a Dog" all possibilities are questioned and experimen-tally tested through the means and methods of science, of art (musicaldogs), and also of religious meditation and practice to come over to thetruth out of this world of lies, where no one is found from whom one candiscover truth "to ascend into lofty freedom" (B 256), to arrive at"another science" "than the one practiced today, a final science, whichmade freedom honored more highly than anything else" (B 290). In thestory "The Building" all possibilities are investigated, in endless reflec?tions and experiments, of erecting a building in which one can livefearlessly and securely. In the stories of the Building of the ChineseWall the problems arising through the attempt to erect a structure ofhumanity or a heavens-storming structure, in which mankind can existwith a meaning, are unfolded and reflected upon. The "laws," accord?ing to which people live are reviewed, and a compulsory empire issearched for which could guarantee a lasting order worthy of mankind.In the novel The Castle, the earthly land in which we all live in our loverelationships, our profession (K.'s activity in the village school), or in theconfusion of the officials, who incessantly register and seek to regulateeverything we think, feel, and do, although it never seems to succeedwith reason and insight, is measured in the painfully grinding question-ing by the surveyor K.

Kafka could never be freed, "let go" from these researches, becausehe, in spite of all the defeats and absurdities which must necessarilyalways develop out of such questions and experiments aiming at theultimate and most extreme points, was firmly convinced that an abso-



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378 WILHELM EMRICH

lute "law," an indestructible court, exists, that nihilism therefore cannotbe the last word of our times, not the final pitiless truth: "Man can notlive without a lasting trust in something indestructible within himself"(H 44). He felt it to be the real obligation of his writing to make thisindestructibility within ourselves conscious as an existence?in spite ofits unknown nature. It cannot become conscious without the destruc?tion, free of illusion, of all false laws and orders in which we findourselves, without unmasking the "choir of lies" (H 343), and especiallythose lies which promise escapes out of the nihilistic chaos.

Franz Kafka was the most radical nihilist of our time, however, not inthe sense of those literary nihilists who fell prey to nihilism, becomingits mouthpiece, as it were, but in the sense of a critically observing manwho continuously fights it by unmasking it, who uncovers its roots?thatis what the word "radical" means. His statement, "I am the end or thebeginning," exactly denotes his position. He is the end because herepels all consolations which come from the past, it matters not whetherthey be religious or social revolutionary consolations and hopes, some?what in the sense of Ernst Bloch's "Hope of Principle," for example; heis the beginning, not because he conquered nihilism. He has not con-quered it and also did not want to conquer it. For nothingness was hisown "element," and he forcefully represented the negative elements ofhis time. But because Kafka, comprehending nihilism in its core andscope, enticed the knowledge out of his researches that nihilism is notthe final, definitive truth and reality of our human existence, that buriedunder the masses of snow there are passes at hand which lead to free?dom, that in us there exists a court which is ineradicable, the "unknownlaw," and with it an "unknown human family."

This instance is no longer God, can no longer be a transcendentalreality. This is the abyss which separates us from the past. It lies withinourselves as the indestructible element that we do not know and thatnevertheless remains present within us, ever demanding. It could orshould also form the "beginning" for a new formation of the concreteman?and animal-community?after all other religious and social re?volutionary forms have failed. "The fact that nothing else exists, exceptthe spiritual world, takes hope away from us but gives us certainty" (H46). The material world is totally annihilated and dissolved into dust.The so-called intellectual world of world-views and ideologies is, asHegel already shrewdly remarked on in his "Phenomenology of theSpirit," in truth a "spiritual animal realm," enveloped in animal inter?ests and power-fights, and because of this at the same time is totallyannihilated. Kafka's statement that there exists nothing but the spiritual



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world signifies?also in Hegel's and Kant's sense of categorical, lawgiv-ing imperative?that, on the contrary, the remaining, indestructible sub?stance of man can never be touched by nihilism and relativism, but isour only real imperishable reality, even if we ourselves do not know it. It"takes hope away from us," it robs us of illusions, of being able toconstitute a realm of freedom and justice in the jungle fight of history. It"gives us the certainty" that in the midst ofthis jungle fight?not beyondit?nothing else counts and exists except the spiritual world, that every?thing else inevitably remains prey to nihilism.

Exactly in this sense did Kafka remain true to his Judaism, when in hisconversation with Gustav Janouch about the latter's plan to write a play,Saul, he declared:

The correct word leads; the incorrect one misleads. It is no accident that theBible is called scripture. It is the voice of the Jewish people, which is notsomething belonging historically to yesterday, but something totally con?temporary. In your drama it is however treated as an historically mumifiedfact, and this is false. If I understand you correctly, then you want to bringtoday's masses onto the stage. They have nothing in common with theBible. This is the core of your drama. The people of the Bible are thesummary of individuals through a law. The masses of today, however,oppose every summary. They strive apart on grounds of inner law-lessness.This is the driving force of their restless movement. The masses hurry, run,go storming through time. Where to? From where do they come? No oneknows. The more they march, the less they reach a goal. They uselessly useup their strength. They think that they are going. In so doing they onlyplunge?marching in place?into empty space. That's all. (J 103f)

Kafka had asked before, "And the center of gravity? Where is thecenter of gravity of the world in this drama?" Janouch answered:

"It lies down below in the mass basis of the people. In spite of the singleindividual figures it is a drama of the anonymous multitude." Franz Kafkadrew his thick eyebrows together, pushed his lower lip out a bit, wet his lipswith the tip of his tongue and said, without looking at me: "I think that youare proceeding from premises. Anonymous means the same as nameless.But the Jewish people has never been nameless. On the contrary! It is thechosen people of a personal God, that can never sink to the low level of ananonymous, and therefore spiritless mass, if it holds fast to the fulfillment ofthe law. Only through the fall from the form-giving law can mankind be?come a gray, formless and, therefore, nameless mass. But then there is nolonger an above and below; life flattens to mere existence; there is nodrama, no fight, just the using up of material, decay. This, however, is notthe world of the Bible and Judaism." I defended myself. "I'm not con?cerned with Judaism and the Bible. The biblical material is just a means ofrepresentation of today's masses for me." Kafka shook his head. "Exactly!What you want is not right. You can't make life into an allegory of death.That would be sinful!" "What do you call sin?" "Sin is the backing awayfrom your own mission. Misunderstanding, impatience and indolence?this is sin. A writer's task is to carry over his isolated mortality into immortallife, the accidental into the lawful. He has a prophetic task!" (j 102f)

kafka literalization of metaphor

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