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PARTISAN REVIEW
suddenly came back to this essay. The transition to it, somewhat abrupt
and breakneck, was effected by the comment that I too could not be
entirely absolved from the reproach of a diarist's style of writing, in the
manner of Nietzsche. My Kafka essay, for example (Brecht was con–
cerned with Kafka merely from the phenomenal aspect) took the work
as something that had grown by itself, severed all its connections, even
that with its author.
It
was always the question of
essence
that finally
interested me. Whereas such a matter ought to be approached by asking
the question of Kafka: what does he do? how does he behave? And by
looking in the first place rather at the general than the particular.
It
then emerges that he lived in Prague in a bad
milieu
of journalists and
self-important
literati;
in this world literature was the main if not the
only reality. With this attitude Kafka's strengths and weaknesses are
connected; his artistic value, but also his manifold futility. He is a Jew–
boy-as one might also coin the term Aryan-boy-a skinny, unlikeable
creature, a bubble on the iridescent morass of Prague culture, nothing
more. Nevertheless, he also has certain very interesting sides. They
could be brought out; one would have to imagine a conversation
between Laotse and his disciple Kafka. Laotse says: "Well now,
disciple Kafka, the organizations, the leaseholds and other economic
forms in which you live make you uneasy? Yes. You can't cope with
them any more? No. A share-certificate worries you? Yes. And now you
are looking for a leader to hold on to, disciple Kafka?" That is of course
despicable, says Brecht. I reject Kafka. And he goes on to talk of a
parable of a Chinese philosopher on "the pains of usefulness." In the
forest there are various kinds of tree-trunks. From the thickest, beams
for ships are cut; from less thick but still respectable trunks box lids
and coffin sides are made; the very thin ones are used for rods; but
nothing comes of the stunted ones-they escape the pains of usefulness.
"In what Kafka wrote you have to look round as in such a forest. You
will then find a number of very '.lseful things. The images are good.
But the rest is obscurantism. It is sheer mischief. You have
to
ignore it.
Depth takes you no further. Depth is a dimension of its own, just
depth-which is why nothing comes to light in it." I explain to B. in
conclusion that plumbing the depths is my way of going to the
antipodes. In my essay on Kraus I did indeed come out there. I know
that the one on Kafka was not so successful: I could not rebut the
charge that it consisted of diary-like notes. Discussion within the
frontier zone designated by Kraus, and in another way by Kafka, did
indeed interest me. I had not yet, I said, explored this area in Kafka's
case. That it contained a good deal of rubbish and detritus, much real
obscurantism, I fully realized. Nevertheless, olher aspects were more
