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PARTISAN REVIEW
direction of phyllogenetic development. Kafka's story is an allegory, but
Hamvas's idea should not be regarded in terms of figurative meaning. It is
unambiguously about a real hazard. Hamvas describes that hazard with the
sagacity of a mystical consecrator, and Kafka presages it with the strength
of his artistic imagination. By incessantly varying the theme that possess–
es him, one he tries to express in many stories, he makes us wonder
whether Samsa's mishap could, under certain circumstances, befall all
humanity.
Magicians claim there is a medicine for lycanthropy. In order to defend
himself from Circe's witchcraft, Odysseus has to taste the heated root of
Allium sativa, the same plant currently used for protection against the Evil
Eye. Among Native Americans, if one wishes to escape the temptation of
becoming a raven, it is necessary to avoid the obscure
brujo's
skill. Further,
a humble life will likely protect one from the possibility of becoming an
opossum in another incarnation. If one has firmly decided not to become
the ancestor of some subsequent millennium's Chirihau, an option still
remains. The power of the imagination and a generous artistic vision are
capable of reprogramming one's secret ideal. Except that, according to
Hamvas, in order to prevent evolutionary deviation, it is necessary to pro–
tect oneself from the activities of elementars, bastards, and similar psychic
bacterium as they crowd in from the lowest spheres of the astral world,
threatening to multiply wherever spiritual depravity prevails . Salvation lies
in practicing spiritual hygiene: attending to virtues, endeavoring to remain
a man and not to stray when tempted by the serpent or ant's sins.
In the end, it is a puzzle why the story about Samsa's transformation,
when it is so widely known, is not considered in depth in
The Secret Record.
Bela Hamvas had little interest in modern art. His assertion that "all of
modern art is merely the apotheosis of an insect" speaks volumes. He did
not perceive the germination of a new, more generous humanist ideal in
the art movements of the twentieth century; he was in conflict with his
time, which bore him a grudge and forced him to live out his life unrec–
ognized and unrewarded.
Our task here has been easy-it consisted mostly of putting together
similarities and pointing out things that are obvious.
It
would be naive to
conclude that all the pieces of the mosaic have been finally put into place,
or that Kafka's enigmatic parable has gained a perfectly expounded ratio–
nal component. What remains for critics is to pick further, fruitlessly trying
to subordinate Kafka's multi-signifying image to a rational idiom. But, this
effort has always testified to the strange power of artistic creation and its
entirely disputable ontological status. That power is not likely to be of this
world, where the intellect predominates, but of the world in which, thanks
to man's higher spiritual powers (if Hamvas's gloomy predictions do not