196
PARTISAN REVIEW
peculiar to Kafka. The same, in fact, that one breathes in the work
of Proust or in the landscape of Plotinus: the nostalgia for paradise
lost. "I become very melancholy," says Olga, "when Barnabas tells
me
in
the morning that he is going to the Castle; this journey which
will be probably useless, this day probably lost, this hope probably
vain." "Probably"--on this nuance Kafka stakes his entire work.
But it is all of no use, here the search for the eternal is meticulous.
And these inspired automata who are the characters of Kafka give
us the very image of what we would be if deprived of our diversions
2
and surrendered completely to the humiliations of the divine.
In
The Castle
this submission to daily life becomes an ethics.
The great hope of K. is to get the castle to adopt him. Being unable
to reach
this
end alone, his whole effort is to merit this grace by
becoming an inhabitant of the village, by losing this character of an
alien which everybody makes him feel. What he wishes is a profession,
a home, a normal and healthy human life. He is worn out with
his
madness. He wishes to be reasonable. He wishes to get rid of the
peculiar curse which makes him a stranger in the village. In this
regard, the episode with Frieda is significant.
If
he makes a mistress
of this woman who knows one of the functionaries of the castle, it
is because of his past. He draws from her something which transcends
his past-at the same time he is aware of what makes her forever
unworthy of the castle. One thinks here of Kierkegaard's singular
love for Regina Olsen. With certain men, the fire of eternity which
devours them
is
large enough to burn the heart even of those around
them. The fatal error of giving to God what is not God's
is
also
the
subject of this episode of
The Castle.
But for Kafka, it seems that this
is not an error. It is a doctrine and a "leap." There is nothing which
is not God's.
More significant still
is
the fact that the surveyor detaches himself
from Frieda in order to approach the sisters of Barnabas. For the
family of Barnabas is the only one in the village which
is
completely
abandoned by the castle and the village itself. Amalia, the eldest sister,
has rejected the shameful proposition made her by one of .the func–
tionaries of the castle. The immoral curse which followed this has
forever rejected her from the love of God. To be incapable of sacri–
ficing one's honor for God is to become unworthy of His grace. Here
2. In
The Castle,
it seems clear that the "diversions," in the sense of Pascal,
are represented
by
the assistants, who "turn" K. from his care.
If
Frieda ends
by becoming the mistress of one of these assistants, it is because she prefers
appearance to reality, everyday life to the sharing of dread.
