28
PARTISAN REVIEW
though they lived at the same time, never heard of one another. Their
special precision in description, their love of detail, their meticulous–
ness; the obsession of both with the family circle, a certain similarity
in their racial make-up (Proust's mother was a Jewess) and even in
their outward lives-all this encourages comparison, though of course
the difference between Proust's cosmopolitan environment and Kafka's
bourgeois Prague led to important divergences in their work.
In dealing with cases such as Proust, Kleist and Kafka who, as
long as they lived, never tore themselves away from the domination
of family and family tradition, psychoanalysis sets up its theory of
subconscious erotic attachment to the mother and subconscious
hatred for the father. But there is also a simpler explana–
tion for this attachment to the infantile (though it does not entirely
exclude the psychoanalytical). This explanation is that the parents
are the first problem confronting the child, the first resistance he has
to deal with; his conflict with them is the model of all his life strug–
gles to come.
The seriousness and intensity with which this first conflict (with
parents and family) may be felt is shown by the career of a typically
infantile poet: Kleist
*.
All his life Kleist was haunted by the thought:
what will my family (the extended family circle) say to my omis–
sions and commissions? Will they trust me? There was bound to be
an unbridgeable
gulf
between Kleist's old Prussian family, which
saw fame exclusively in the spheres of warfare and government, and
the delicate, emotional, erratic poet. Kleist was literally terrorized
by the most elevated ethical principles. He knew that in the eyes of
his iamily his verses and dramas were not much better than a base
and contemptible debauch. Kafka read Kleist's letters with especial
sympathy, underlined passages telling how Kleist's family regarded
the poet as "an utterly useless members of human society, unworthy
of further consideration." With silent irony Kafka noted in the
m'lrgin that on Kleist's hundredth birthday the family had laid a
wreath on the poet's grave with the words: "To the best of our race."
It has often been noted that Franz Kafka's works, especially
in their prose style, show a considerable resemblance to Kleist. This
resemblance cannot be attributed to mere influence. To my knowledge,
no one has yet pointed out the similarity in their basic attitudes. This
attitude is, in the truest sense of the word, "incarnate" in both men.
Even their portraits show a resemblance, at least in the boyishness
*
H einrich von Kleist, born 1777, committed suicide 1811. Most important of
German Romantic dramatists. Chief dramas are
Penthesilea, .Das K iithchen von
Heilbronn, Der Z erbrochene Krug, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg.
It is his long
short story,
Michael Kohlhaas,
which most directly influenced Kafka, both in his
prose style and his treatment of the problem of justice.
(tr.)
