WALTER BENJAMIN
177
decisive, and I had touched on a number of them in my essay. B.'s
critical approach must, after all, prove itself in the interpretation of the
particular. I open "The Next Village." At once I was able to observe the
conflict produced in B. by this suggestion. Eisler's remark that this
story was "worthless" he rejected emphatically. On the other hand he
was equally unable to explain its value.
"It
would need close study," he
thought. Then the conversation broke off; it was ten o'clock and the
radio news was on the air from Vienna.
31st August.
The day before yesterday we had a long and heated
debate on my Kafka article. Its basis: the accusation that it advanced
Jewish fascism. It increased and propagated the obscurity surrounding
this author instead of dispersing it. Whereas it was of crucial impor–
tance to clarify Kafka, that is, to formulate practicable proposals that
can be derived from his stories. That proposals were derivable from
them could be supposed, if only from the serene calm of their stance.
However, these suggestions would have to be sought in the direction of
the great general abuses afflicting present-day humanity. Brecht tries to
show their imprint in Kafka's work. He confines himself chiefly to
The
Trial.
There above all, he thinks, we find the fear of the unending and
irresistible growth of cities. He claims to know from personal experi–
ence the crushing weight of this phenomenon on human beings. The
inexplicable mediations, dependencies, entanglements besetting men
as a result of their present form of existence, find expression in these
cities . They find expression in another way in the desire for a "Leader,"
who for the petty-bourgeois represents the man whom-in a world
where blame can be passed from one person to the next so that everyone
escapes it-he can hold accountable for all his misfortunes. Brecht calls
The Trial
a prophetic book. "What can become of the Cheka ... you
can see from the Gestapo." Kafka's perspective is that of the man who
has gone to the dogs. Odradek is characteristic of this: the care of the
father of the house Brecht interprets as the caretaker. Things must go
wrong for the petty-bourgeois. His situation is Kafka's. But whereas
the type of the petty-bourgeois current today-that is, the fascist–
decides in face of this situation to exert his iron, indomitable will,
Kafka hardly resists; he is wise. Where the fascist imposes heroism, he
poses questions. He asks for guarantees of his situation. But the latter is
so constituted that the guarantees would have to exceed all reasonable
measure. It is a Kafkaesque irony that the man who seemed convinced
of nothing more than of the invalidity of all guarantees was an
insurance official. Moreover, his unrestricted pessimism is free of any
tragic sense of fate. For not on ly has his expectation of misfortune a
solely empirical foundation-albeit a perfect one-but he places the
