198
PARTISAN REVIEW
tial novelists and philosophers, turned completely towards the Absurd
and its consequences, come out at the end with this immense cry
of hope.
They embrace the God who devours them. It is through humility
that hope is introduced. For the absurdity of this existence assures
them a little more of supernatural reality.
If
the path of this life
ends with God, there is, then, a way out. And the perseverance, the
stubbornness with which Kierkegaard, Shestov, and the heroes of
Kafka repeat their journeys are a singular guarantee of the exalting
power of this certainty.
8
Kafka denies his god moral grandeur, evidence, goodness, co–
herence, but only in order to throw himself more completely into
his arms. The Absurd is recognized, accepted, man resigns himself to
it and from that moment we know that he is no longer absurd. Within
the limits of man's condition, what greater hope than that which
permits one to escape this condition? I see it once again: existential
thought
in
this respect, and contrary to the common opinion, is shaped
by an enormous hope-the very same which, with primitive Chris–
tianity and the annunciation of good tidings, raised the ancient
world. But in this leap which characterizes all existential thought,
in this stubborn-ness, in this surveying of a divinity without surface–
how can one fail to see the mark of a lucidity being given up. One
wishes only that it be pride which abdicates in order to be saved.
This renunciation would be fruitful. But this fruitfulness would
not change that other. The moral value of lucidity is not diminished
in my eyes by pronouncing it as sterile as all pride. For a truth, too,
by its very definition, is sterile. Everything evident is sterile. In a
world where everything is given and nothing is explained, the fruit–
fulness of a value or of a metaphysic
is
a notion empty of meaning.
In any case, it is clear here under what tradition of thought the
work of Kafka is inscribed. It would be intelligent, in fact, to consider
the progress from
T he Trial
to
The Castle
a rigorous one. Joseph
K.
and the surveyor K. are only the two poles which attract Kafka.4,
I shall speak like him and say that his work is probably not
absurd. But that does not prevent us from seeing its grandeur and its
universality. These qualities derive from
his
ability to represent with
3. The only character without hope in
The Castle
is Amalia. It is to her that
the surveyor is most violently opposed.
4. On the two aspects of Kafka's thought, compare
The Penal Colony:
"The
guilt (i.e., of man) is never in doubt"; and a fragment of
The Castle:
"The
guilt of the surveyor
K. ..
is difficult to establish."
