A.J. LIEHM
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ofwriting is impossible, of course, even if we'd stand on our heads. To admit
Kafka into the Soviet literary consciousness would mean recognizing either
openly or covertly the existence of a plurality, in literature at least. The first
moves toward recognizing Kafka in the USSR came during the waning days of
the Khrushchev era, but they never amounted to much because cultural policy
froze up again as soon as Khrushchev disappeared from the scene.
Liehm:
How do you explain this allergy to Kafka? Why not to Joyce, for
instance?
Karst:
We mustn't exaggerate the problem of Kafka in Russia. I don't
know whether there is a complete translation of
Ulysses
in Russian, but I do
know that there is a general tendency to translate primarily those foreign
authors who are felt, in Soviet opinion, to be socially' 'progressive" -writers
like Laxness, Pablo Neruda, and Howard Fast, until he became a heretic. Or
else those who could be called "realists," like Hemingway , Boll, Steinbeck,
Caldwell, Martin du Gard, Moravia , and the like . Kafka doesn't fit in either
category. In addition, there is something else which plays a part. In Kafka's
works , every sensitive reader can feel the revulsion against totalitarian atti–
tudes, against manipulation and mystification , against totalitarianism in
general. Kafka often expressed this revulsion in conversations with his friends .
I remember what he once said to Gustav Janouch:
Some kind of Napoleon always emerges at the end of every revolu–
tion .
. The farcher a flooding river overflows its banks , the dirtier and
muddier its waters become. The revolution dries up coo, and all that 's
left is the mud of a new bureaucracy . The shackles of tormented
humanity are made of typing paper. ... Secretaries, clerks, and profes·
sional politicians now stand behind the workers who once were masters of
the streets and who paved the way co power for these modern sulcans.
Liehm:
The third country where Kafka has had a stranl!:e fate is the
German Democratic Republic. ...
Karst:
Kafka's story in the GDR is so full of paradoxes that it's hard to
believe. Until the Liblice Conference one of the greatest writers in the German
language was virtually unknown in that country. I was often told that the atti–
tude of the West German publisher who controlled his rights was a major
obstacle to publishing Kafka in the GDR-along with his insistence that
Kafka be published with Max Brod's introduction . This was rejected in the
GDR. But that is only part of the truth. Later, when the East Germans finally
decided to publish Kafka after all , a way was found
to
get around all these
obstacles . The real reason is simply that Kafka was a bogie man. They were
terrified of him .
This is clear from what happened at the Liblice Conference. The East
