Books
Observations on Kafka
For all things outside the physical world language can be
employed only as a sort of adumbration, but never with
even approximate exactitude.-Franz
Kafka,
Aphorism
55.
I
N
Metamorphosis,*
the father of Gregor Samsa, the insect-hero,
throws a little red apple which, piercing his son's skin, remains em–
bedded in the wounded flesh. In some such way, the work of a pow–
erful and unexpected artist strikes the social body, which then, with
a responsive mechanism more adequate than Gregor's, must seek to
adapt itself to the wound. Society, also, sends its phagocytes to the
breech, in order to destroy or neutralize the malignant organisms that
may have taken their chance to enter. New cells are mortised into a
wall of scar tissue that, though it cannot negate the wound's enduring
effect, will re-establish the functioning whole.
Of Kafka, we are, thus, first told by those who knew him that
he was a man, as we all are. He was a "scrupulously conscientious
employee" of the Bohemian state insurance trust, "and his fellow
workers liked him" (Kate Flores). Like most of us, "at one time
Kafka drew up a utopian plan for a workers' collective society."
However, he found office routine "monotonous" and "hateful." Seek–
ing usual relief, he "took up athletics . . . and became an excellent
swimmer, rider, and oarsman. He went boating on the Moldau,
and hiked in the woods with his friends." Difficulties with family,
work, and money-who has not had them?-led him to postpone and
finally break
1
off a project of marriage. The war, as wars always do,
for everyone, "shattered all
his
plans." "The privations of the war,
coupled with the strain of earning his living while writing ... told
on Kafka's health." He became seriously
ill,
and died.
*
METAMORPHOSIS.
By Franz; Kafka. Vanguard Press.
$2.75.
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
By Franz Kafka. Schocken Books.
$3.00.
THE KAFKA PRoBLEM.
Edited
by
Angel Flores. New Directions.
$5.00. (All
the references I make to critics of Kafka are based on essays published in
this book.)
