FRANZ KAFKA
419
sensational experience. Compared with a real house, of course, a blue–
print
is
a very unreal affair; but without it the house could not have
come into being, nor could one recognize the foundations and struc–
tures that make it a real house. The same imagination-namely
that imagination which in the words of Kant creates "another nature
out of the material that actual nature gives it"-is to be used for the
building of houses as for the understanding of them. Blueprints can–
not be understood except by those who are willing and able to realize
by their own imagination the real intentions and the future aspects.
This effort of real imagination is demanded from the readers of
Kafka's stories. Therefore, the mere receptive reader of
novel~,
whose
only activity is identification with one of the characters,
is
at a com–
plete loss when reading Kafka. The curious reader, who out of a
certain frustration in life look'l for ersatz in the romantic world of
novels where things happen whicQ do not happen in
his
life, will feel
even more deceived and frustrated by Kafka than by his own life.
For in Kafka's books there
is
no element of day-dreaming or wishful
thinking. Only the: reader for whom life and the world and man are
so complicated, of such terrible interest, that he wants to find out
some truth about them and who therefore turns to story-tellers for
insight into experiences common to us all, may turn to Kafka and
his blueprints, which sometimes in a page, or even in a single phrase,
expose the naked structure of happenings.
In the light of these reflections we may consider one of the most
simple of Kafka's stories, a very characteristic one which he entitled:
A COMMON CONFUSION
A common experience resulting in a common confusion. A. has to tran–
sact important business with B. in H. He goes to H. for a preliminary inter–
view, accomplishes the journey there in ten minutes, and the journey back
in the same time, and in returning boasts to his family of his expedition.
The next day he goes again to H., this time to settle his business finally.
As that by all appearances will require several hours, A. leaves very early
in the morning. But although all the. accessory circumstances, at least in A.'s
estimation, are exactly the same as the day before, it takes him ten hours
this time to reach H. When he arrives there quite exhausted in the evening
he is informed that B., annoyed at his absence, had left an hour before to
go to A.'s village, and they must have passed each other on the road. A. is
advised to wait. But in his ·anxiety about his business he sets off at once and
hurries home.
This time he achieves the journey, without paying any particular atten–
tion to the fact, exactly in a second. At home he learns that B. had arrived
quite early, immediately after A.'s departure, indeed that he had met A. on
the threshold and reminded him of his business; but A. had replied that he
had no time to spare, he must go at once.
In spite of this incomprehensible behavior of A., however, B. had stayed
on td wait for A.'s return. It is true, he had asked several times whether A.
was not back yet, but he was still sitting up in A.'s room. Overjoyed at the
