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The
elements
of Kafka's world are taken from experience–
from where else could they come?-but, with the standard connec–
tions dissolved, it is as if the parts of a complex radio set had been
linked by a unique hookup, and the set tuned thereby to frequencies
outside the range of mass-production models. However, in the new
world that Kafka re-assembles, many of the familiar elements also
are missing, like the gears still outside the case of a watch which a
child has put back together.
John Urzidil observes how little of "nature" appears in Kafka's
writings. In many stories there is almost nothing material, solid, sub–
stantial-no trees or flowers or sky or hills, no houses or floors or
streets. Even where matter does appear, it is never filled in, merely
suggested or vaguely indicated, or covered with a dream haze as in
The Castle
or
The Trial.
The bodies of persons, whether human or
animal, are not described; often-as in
The Burrow
or
Metamor–
phosis--even
the species of an insect or beast is not made known.
Nor is there "character" in the usual sense. We never learn
more than severely abstracted planes of a psyche, objectified without
roots. No one in Kafka "develops"; what the persons are and do is
not caused or motivated in the manner either of real life or of the
novel of character and action.
This means, then, that Kafka makes no attempt to imitate, or
display, the material, the natural world-that is, the causal world .
Its most substantial elements are omitted. The very category of
causality, key ligament which binds together the natural world,
reality as we normally understand it, is reduced to a minimum strand.
This reduction contrasts entirely with the role of purely formal cate–
gories in Kafka's world. The formal categories-the axioms of logic
which, by itself, is empty of matter, is a connective for elements
purely of the mind, the spirit-are distended much beyond the nor–
mal. Everything in this absurd world of Kafka's is rational, tied by
syllogistic tendons that could, often, be translated into a most refined
and rigorous formal symbolism.
If
we now further add the fact that most of Kafka's writings
are either fragmentary or unfinished, it is plain that Dante's injunc–
tion cannot apply. The literal meaning in Kafka is not an adequate
starting point; it is not complete or sufficient in its own terms. The
truth is rather that, however resolutely we try to remain at the
literal in reading Kafka, we always find ourselves being driven and
teased and thrust beyond it. The most commonplace phrase, appear–
ing as it will in an irreconcilable context, compels the mind to spin
