538
PARTISAN REVIEW
It
may be the case that Kafka's work is composed in such a way that it
resists the discovery of any keys to fully understanding it, and that its
meaning surpasses the most expansive frames of criticism. But, Bela
Hamvas, a Hungarian philosopher and writer, wrote a stimulating text,
The
Secret Record,
published in the late 1980s, which is valuable for understand–
ing Kafka's literary preoccupations. By following the trail left by this
significant author, who never received the acknowledgment he deserved
during his lifetime, we shall see that Kafka's story is an important mile–
stone in a long-standing tradition of works that have come out of
European civilization since the dawn of the modern age. Let us examine
several ideas presented in
The Secret R ecord.
First, we face a reconsideration of the traditional Darwinian theory of
evol ution, which states that the interconnected, genealogical tree of beings
evolved from monocellular organisms into mankind. Hamvas's dispute
concentrates on the assertion that all species move forward and that some
don't evolve at all. "There are those that move slowly, and those that move
suddenly, even jump. There are species that stagnate, and species in retro–
grade movement." The wisdom of ancient peoples contained the
knowledge that certain species actually represent the retrograde evolution–
ary stages of man. As a consequence of retrograde mutation, part of
mankind might have separated from the rest and gone "backwards."
Hamvas mentions that the ancient inhabitants of Iran regarded serpents
and ants as human groups that had become separated. In that society, the
ritual killing of ants was prescribed as a punishment for individuals who
committed the sins against the community of becoming too fanatically
devoted to gaining wealth and having no interest in free time and
entertainment.
These people maintained that ants were part of a community of beings
that had taken a different direction, one devoted to rough technology and
pure material reproduction. Also, this community had lost its sense of love,
art, and companionship. Finally, as a certain accumulation of features
occurred, a mutation emerged that determined the future development of
this species. The original being was degraded, darkened, and stooped. As a
result of its mutation, it gained six legs, a feeler, and a proboscis and
dropped into the form we know today.
The concept that streams of life are not determined by intelligence or
will, but by imagination-at least, by the germ of spiritual strength in
beings on other levels of the evolutionary scale-is basic to Hamvas's the–
ory. For instance, a new form of life always appears first as an ideal, as a
picture that exists in the subconscious of certain members of the commu–
ni ty, to which members of that communi ty are unknowingly being
adapted. When the first seedling of this ideal appears, it slowly grows
