MYTH OF SISYPHUS
197
is a theme fan:llliar in existential philosophy: truth contrary to moral–
ity. Here, matters go further. For the road taken by Kafka's hero,
from Frieda to the sisters of Barnabas, is the very road which leads
from trusting love to the deification of the absurd. Here again, Kafka's
thought rejoins Kierkegaard. It is not surprising that the "narrative
of Barnabas" is placed at the end of the book. The final attempt of
the surveyor is to find God through what denies Him, to recognize
Him,
not according to the categories of goodness and beauty, but
behind the empty and hideous faces of His indifference, His injustice
and His hatred.
The stranger who asks the castle to adopt him is, at the end of
his
voyage, a little more exiled since, this time, it is to himself that he
is unfaithful and because he abandons morality, logic, and the truths
of the mind, in order that he may try to enter, rich only in his mad
hope, the desert of divine grace.
The word hope is not ridiculous here. On the contrary, the more
tragic the condition narrated by Kafka, the more austere and pro–
voking becomes this hope. The more
The Trial
is truly absurd, the
more the exalted "leap" of
The Castle
appears moving and illicit. We
find here in its pure state the paradox of existential thought as
Kierkegaard, for example, expresses it: "One must strike dead earthly
hope, it is only then that one is saved by true hope"; which can be
translated: "One must have written
The Trial
to understand
The
Castle."
Most of those who have spoken of Kafka have, in fact, defined
his work as a despairing cry in which no recourse is left to man. But
this needs to be revised. There is hope and hope. The optimistic work
of M. Henri Bordeaux seems to me singularly discouraging, because
it permits nothing to hearts which are a little difficult. The thought
of Malraux, on the contrary, always remains a tonic. But in the two
cases, it is not a question of the same hope and the same despair.
I see only that the absurd work itself can lead to the unfaithfulnesc;
which I wish to avoid. The work which was only a narrow repetition
of a sterile condition, a clairvoyant exaltation of the perishable,
becomes here a cradle of illusions. It explains, it gives a form to hope.
The creator can no longer separate himself from it. It is not the
tragic game that it ought to be.
It
gives a meaning to the life of
the author.
It is singular, in any case, that works of an inspiration so kindred
as those of Kafka, Kierkegaard, or Shestov, those, in short, of existen-
