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conducive to an interest in Kafka. Among the members of this movement
were authors like S.1. Witkiewicz , Schulz, and Witold Gombrowicz , who
represent three quite different artistic trends . All , like Kafka himself, were
seeking new paths and new modes of expression . Personally , I think Kafka
and Gombrowicz have a lot in common, although the world, which took
tragic forms in Kafka's fantasy, was transformed into the grotesque in
Gombrowicz's imagination.
I could give other examples, but it is enough if we say that the prewar
literary situation facilitated Kafka's acceptance in Poland and assured him a
readership which understood what he was trying to say. This natural process of
rapprochement was interrupted by the war and, after that , by the Stalin era ,
which made Polish intellectual life so barren.
But beginning with 1955 doors were opened in Poland to Western
authors , and eventually to Kafka too. Gradually translations of all his works
appeared , along with a considerable amount of critical writing. The Polish
Party leadership did not think there was any point in restricting the publica–
tion ofKafka' sworks . On the contrary, it favored any literature which did not
deal with politics directly. And it continues to do so . Extremely experimental
poetry enjoys the greatest sympathy among those who shape cultural policies
in Poland today . The less it has to communicate the better.
Liehm :
And in the Soviet Union?
Karst:
There Kafka had a more difficult time of it. The Khrushchev era
stimulated more interest in this author , who was practically unknown in
Russia, and this resulted in an anthology which was published in 1965 and
entitled
F.
Kafka- Novels, Ston'es, andParables.
As far as I know , this is all
that has been published from Kafka in the USSR, and it is certainly the most
extensive collection in Russian . Previously Kafka had been read only in very
limited circles, by those who could read him in German, French, or English .
There is a curious fact about this anthology. A book published in the Soviet
Union usually mentions how many copies of it have been published. In this
case the information was missing , an indication that the edition was probably
very small. In other words, almost inaccessible. I know that when Soviet
writers came to Warsaw they often tried to find a copy of this collection. I
donated my own copy to one of them .
The Soviet anthology was published more for reasons of prestige than
because the Russians were acknowledging Kafka's place in literature. It was
simply a matter of erasing a blemish which was the fact that Kafka had never
been published in Russian . The Soviet objections to him were both literary
and political , as the arguments on Kafka always are . To this day, the so-called
socialist-realist approach to the arts prevails in the USSR . This is the only
recognized artistic method . Any rapprochement between Kafka and this kind
