200
PARTISAN REVIEW
Faust and Don Quixote are outstanding creations of
art,
it
is
because
of the uruneasured greatness they show us with their earthly hands.
A moment always comes, however, when the mind denies the
truths
that
its
hands can touch. A moment comes when the creation is no
longer taken as tragic: it
is
taken only as serious. Man then busies
himself with hope. But
this
is
not
his
business. His business
is
to turn
away from subterfuge. Now, it
is this
which I find at the end of
the vehement trial which Kafka brings against the whole universe.
His incredible verdict is this hideous and overwhelming world in
which the mice themselves get entangled in hope.
6
(Translated
by
William Barre'!!)
5. What is proposed in the foregoing is obviously an interpretation of Kafka's
work. It is just to add that nothing prevents our considering it, apart from
every interpretation, from the purely aesthetic angle. For example, B. Groethuysen
in his remarkable preface to
The Trial
limits himself, with more wisdom than
we, to following in it only the sorrowful imaginations of what he calls, in a
striking phrase, a wakened sleeper. It is the fate, and perhaps the greatness, of
this work to offer us everything and to confirm nothing.
