64
PARTISAN REVIEW
of the disturbance at night which he describes obtained its dreadful
proportions in his child's eyes from an earlier interruption the mem–
ory of which was repressed. We would then regard the memory
which was retained in consciousness as a screen memory, that is
certain qualities of the repressed experience are displaced onto the
later, more innocent interruption at night, the one that survives in
memory.
But for our purposes here we can work best with the memory
which Kafka has given us, the crisis at night which led to the forceful
eviction of a small boy and the punishment of being locked out on a
balcony. For it is clear that Kafka has written into the Messner-Kette
story the scene of this childhood calamity, the disturbance at night
which provoked his father's anger. The details are there: the inter–
ruption at night, the student's plea to be heard, to deliver the message,
the merchant's angry refusal, the locking out of the intruder, the per–
sistent demands of the student, the menacing reappearance of the mer–
chant, with the command to leave, and the student's last protest.
With very few changes, the story of the childhood crisis is retold.
The conflict between a small boy and his father becomes a conflict
between two strangers, an older man and a student, aptly named Mess–
ner and Kette. It is a compact statement of the idea that the conflict
between father and son persists unchanged in the adult years of the
son. The story is unfinished. It breaks off when the merchant com–
mands the student to leave. " 'But I can't,' said the student and ran up
to Messner so surprisingly...." We are reminded of the dream now
which ends abruptly at the point, "I have probably caused a disaster,"
and with the dreamer's hasty apology.
Now I think we can understand the relationship between the
dream of the letter and the story.
It
is as if the dreamer takes up the
problem of the dream in the waking state, searches for its meaning,
and comes up with a memory, an association to one of the dream ele–
ments. It is probable that the dream details of the interruption by
the child, the cry "No!" and the observation "I have probably caused
a disaster," those details which are highly charged with feeling, lead
the dreamer's waking associations back to the event in childhood. The
story then makes use of the memory, recasts and resets it as the en–
counter between the merchant Messner and the student Kette.
But then we need to ask, "What is the motive in
writing
the
