KAFKA: FATHER AND SON
23
not for any particular qualities but for everything at once, and in the
end there was no one left but you. For me you became imbued with
the mysterious something that is proper to all tyrants whose right is
based not on thought, but on their own person."
Here we might recall the prominent role played in Kafka's works
not only by the concept of human dignity or democracy, but also by
the principle of authority (see
The Trial, The Castle,
and all the
stories and fragments that make up
The Great Wall of China.)
Why did Kafka need his father? Or, more correctly, why was he
unable to free himself from his father despite his critical attitude
toward him; why did he not, like so many children, build a protective
wall between himself and his parent? Or rather, since he actually
did create such a barrier and in later years almost ceased to speak
to his father: why did he suffer so deeply from the coldness between
them? Must he not have known that between characters so diverse
as himself and his father an intimate relationship was simply impos–
sible? Franz in any case was able to understand his father; he was
more than fair in his loving admiration of him-but the father by
his very nature, and of course without any blame, as the letter re–
peatedly emphasizes, was hopelessly closed to any understanding of
his son's peculiar character. , Even in my friend's lifetime, when I
had no knowledge of
his
diaries, I realized how deeply this wounded
him, but it was vainly that I tried to convince him how foolish he
was in overestimating
his
father and belittling himself. The swarm of
arguments on which Kafka based
his
case (when he did not, as fre–
quently happened, prefer to say nothing) actually did succeed in
shaking me for the moment.
The life and death of all his own aims and desires-says Kafka
in the letter-depended on his father's judgment (see
The Judgment).
He writes: "My courage, decision, confidence, joy in a thing did not
endure if you were opposed to it, or if your opposition could even be
surmised; and I surmised it in almost everything I did ...
In
your
presence I developed a halting, stuttering speech-you are an excel–
lent speaker as long as you are speaking of the things that interest
you-but even my halting speech was too much for you, and ulti–
mately I stopped talking altogether, at first for spite, and then because
I could neither talk nor think in your presence. And since you were
my actual teacher, this affected everything in my life." Here we en–
counter an interesting parallel: Kleist is also said to have stuttered.
Kafka's stuttering, indeed, can only be applied to his relations with
his father; otherwise, whenever he opened his mouth at all, he spoke
freely, easily, elegantly, often humorously, with a charming, over–
flowing fantasy and disarming naturalness.
