PARTISAN REVIEW
of the work is hardly camouflaged by their pseudo-scientific interest in
it." It seems that Neider became one of these amateurs as a result of
reading Kafka. His Preface tells us that the dreamlike symbols of the
novels interested him in the psychology of dreams, and that this led him
to psychoanalysis, which thereupon obligingly explained Kafka. The
curious thing about his book is that its first five chapters do not read
like the work of a man insensible to aesthetic value and indifferent to
philosophic content, whereas the last three do. One gets the impression
that he hasn't digested all that Freud yet; swallow it he did, however. He
claims to have discovered a "secret key" to Kafka which reveals
The
Castle
as a "tale of the quest for the unconscious by someone who has
reached the preconscious, presenting in detail the dynamics of the
Oedipus complex," and
The Trial
as a symbol of the same quest, "pre–
senting in detail the dynamics of the castration complex." Maybe so;
but Neider's two chief conclusions about the general intent of Kafka's
work are typical of the tendency of psychoanalytic criticism to claim
e;xemption from the laws of evidence and the dictates of common sense.
One of these conclusions is that Kafka, having read some Freud, delib–
erately wrote the two great novels on a Freudian pattern, this being
the "secret cabala" to which he once referred in talking about his
books. The trouble with this is that there is not a shred of evidence
for it, external or internal, unless one were to dignify by that name
Neider's exhaustive analysis of sex symbolism in his texts. Such symbols
can be, and have been, found in equal abundance in many pre-Freudian
works-Pilgrim's Progress
and
The Inferno
offer good hunting-without
necessitating the inference that they constitute a code created by the
writer's conscious intelligence and will. Neider insists that Kafka
differs
from other writers in this deliberate design; but his arguments merely
establish that the results of that intent, if it existed,
resemble
those of
other writers' unconscious intents,
if
such they were. His other conclu–
sion is equally astonishing. "What is true on the plane of social sym–
bolism," he says, "is reversed on the subterranean level. As a result Kafka's
work is shot through with paradox." Translated into English, this says
that the secret meaning of Kafka's novels contradicts (this is a hard
word, I know, but what else is meant by "reverse"?) their patent
meaning. Well, then the novels mean nothing at all; since two con–
tradictory meanings cancel each other out. But perhaps this objection
is too naive, too Aristotelian. Perhaps the secret and patent meanings
are thesis and antithesis, and the synthesis is ... what? Neider not only
fails to answer this question; he doesn't even raise it. Nor does he explain
the "secret" meaning of Joseph K.'s execution-a considerable omission,
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