Dichtung Und Wahrheit Three Versions of Reality in Franz Kafka 1957 PDF

Dichtung und Wahrheit: Three Versions of Reality in Franz Kafka
Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1957), pp. 20-31
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DICHTUN.G UND WAHRHEIT: THREE VERSIONS
OF REALITY IN FRANZ KAFKA
Des Menschen Leben ist ein iihnliches Gedicht;
Es hat wohl einen Anfang, hat ein Ende,
Allein ein Ganzes ist es nicht.
GOETHE
GEORGE GIBIAN
It is the purpose of this article to examine three works by
Franz Kafka, The Letter to His Father, The Judgment and The
Metamorphosis. Using The Letter as an example of autobiography
or Wahrheit, and the two stories as examples of Dichtung, we
shall attempt to throw some light on the differences between a
discursive, "factual" account, and two artistic representations of
similar material in the form of fiction.
Kafka wrote The Letter to His Father in November 1919
and gave it to his mother, who, however, never delivered it. There
is no indication that the letter was meant for publication. It
was intended to answer the father's questions why his son claimed
to be afraid of him, and it deals frankly and explicitly with the
relations between the father and son. The materials it contains
can be divided, first, into examples of the father's behavior
which caused his son to feel afraid of him: his father's carrying
him out on the balcony when he asked for water at night; his
unreasonable insistence that he was always right; his attacks
on all people, Czech, German and Jewish; ridicule heaped on
his son's friends, even when the father did not know them;
reduction of the son's relations with his fiancee to a crude mat-
ter of sex; his prohibition of certain behavior at the table, such
as drinking vinegar off a plate or chewing bones, which his
father permitted himself. These and many other points do not
in themselves differ markedly from the list which most Central
European children with an overbearing father could compile.
What difference there is consists in the manner in which they
are presented: Kafka narrates them with great conciseness and
precision, simply and unmelodramatically. But even that is
20
VERSIONS OF REALITY IN KAFKA 21
something of which many persons would have been capable; it
did not take a Franz Kafka to do it.
The second category of content is composed of passages of
analysis and evaluation, in which we discern a power of dis-
section reminiscent of Kafka's fiction. The analysis is mostly
psychological: he explains that he could have accepted his father
in other roles, as an uncle, friend or boss, but "as a father you
were too strong for me, especially since my brothers died when
they were little and the sisters only came much later, so that I
had to endure the first impact all alone; for that I was far too
weak" (p. 164).' The incident of being carried out on the bal-
cony is followed by the analytic comment: "I was not able to
make a right connection between the senseless asking for water,
which was something natural to me, and the extraordinary terror
of being carried out. Years later I was still suffering from the
torture of thinking that the giant, my father, the final authority,
could come for almost no reason and carry me at night from
my bed to the balcony, and that I was therefore such a nothing
to him" (p. 167). Kafka then proceeds to trace the development
of his sense of insignificance from the time of that incident.
The analysis of general issues is even keener than that of the
individual episodes. There are passages of what we might call
sociological interpretation. Kafka declares, for example, that his
father's main belief was "in the unconditional correctness of
the opinions of a certain Jewish social class," and tells him:
"Since these opinions were yours, you therefore really believed
in yourself" (p. 199f). The examination of the three means by
which Kafka attempted to escape his father's domination-im-
mersion in Jewish life, writing, and marriage-is brilliantly
penetrating. Kafka shows an awareness of what his father was
doing in first urging him to participate more in Jewish affairs
and then raising objections when his son really became very
much interested in Jewish life and thereby gained a measure
of personal independence. The passages dealing with the psy-
chological effects of his engagements and of his writing are cru-
cial to an understanding of Kafka's personality. They reveal
1 Page references following quotations from the Letter are to the text
in Kafka, Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande (New York, 1953); the
translations are mine.
22 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
self-knowledge as well as knowledge of his father and a re-
markable ability to stand outside of himself and to analyze him-
self objectively. Relevant to Kafka's fiction is his description of
the three worlds which were created for him by the discrepancy
between his father's orders and conduct-his own world, where
he was a slave subject to laws meant only for him but which
he was incapable of observing; his father's world of anger and
command, in which orders were issued; and the third world,
in which other people lived freely and happily without any com-
mands or obedience.
From the sections of the Letter mentioned thus far, we should
form a picture of a sensitive young boy's reactions to his father,
recollected and analyzed by him at the age of thirty-six, and
presented in a manner which would remind us of only a few
traits of Kafka's fiction: the over-life-size reasonableness-within-
unreasonableness of The Castle or The Trial; the precise, color-
less diction and phrasing; the rapier-sharp analysis. We might
even conclude that the writing was characteristic not of a novel-
ist's or short story writer's creation, but rather of a medical
report, a lawyer's brief, or a case record from a psychoanalyst's
files. In three important features, however, Kafka goes beyond the
detached, scientific manner. First of all, there are passages in
which he creates with a few deft strokes such a vivid picture of
his father in action that it can be compared to a brief sketch
in the tradition of the Theophrastian character or even to a
Dickensian thumbnail portrait. His main techniques here are
dramatic speech (words put into his father's mouth which make
him leap into life) and choice of the telling specific details sug-
gestive of a whole complex of behavior: the father's taunting
his daughter Ellie sarcastically for her table manners, "She
must sit ten meters away from the table" (p. 178) ; threatening
Kafka, "I'll tear you into pieces like a fish" (p. 177); or, on
the other hand, coming to see him when he was ill, looking in
from the threshold with his neck stretched out and waving to
him; and, during Kafka's mother's illness, shaking with weep-
ing and holding on to the bookcase (p. 180). Few fathers have
had the fortune, or misfortune, of being described by sons who
had such talents of observation, recollection and recreation of
the salient detail or characteristic word.
Secondly, there are a few powerful figures of speech, perhaps
all the stronger because of their small number: "My writing
dealt with you. In it I only complained about things about which
I could not complain on your breast. It was a deliberately drawn
out farewell from you" (p. 203). Here belong remarks such
as "You became for me the enigma which all tyrants are whose
justification is grounded in their person, not in their thinking"
(p. 169), the likening of his mother's role in the family to that
of a beater in a hunt, the observation about his writing: "Here a
piece of me really became independent of you, even if it re-
minds one a little of the worm whose rear end has been stepped
on and whose front end tears itself loose and drags itself off
to one side" (p. 202), and the image "Sometimes I imagine
the map of the world stretched out and you spread out over
it " (p. 217).
Thirdly, there is the greatest departure from direct, discursive
statement, the wonderful last three pages, in which Kafka comes
closest to the devices of his fiction. Even without this passage, we
should have understood that far from intending merely to blame
his father, Kafka also wanted to point out his father's--as well as
his own-innocence. But in the conclusion this point is clinched
by Kafka's switch from the essay form to dramatization. He has
his father deliver a rejoinder which accuses Kafka of wishing to
prove three things in the Letter, that he is innocent, that the
father is guilty, and that out of the greatness of his soul Kafka is
ready not only to forgive but even to prove and to believe that the
father is innocent. Kafka, then, shows his awareness of the possi-
bility of such an answer and includes this powerful counterattack
as part of his own attack. He goes on to put into the father's mouth
the description of his son as "the insect"2 which not only bites, but
immediately sucks the blood for its own nourishment" and the as-
sertion that "You are incapable of life, but in order to be able to
manage comfortably, without worries, and without self-reproaches,
you prove that I have taken from you all your fitness for life and
put it in my pocket" (p. 222). In a climax of drama and in the
very characteristic metaphor of the pocket, Kafka permits his father
2 Similar references to insects (cf. the image of a worm quoted above)
abound in the Letter, in Kafka's fiction, and also in numerous letters and re-
corded conversations.
to conclude that all his reproaches were justified by the Letter
itself, and that one more fitting accusation, of insincerity and
Schmarotzertum, had been missing and now is supplied by the
evidence of that same letter. Thereby he forestalls the father's
answer and can emphasize triumphantly in the last paragraph that
it was, after all, Kafka the son who had invented the father's ideas.
The objections were of his own composition. "Your distrust of
others is not even as great as my own distrust of myself which you
bred into me" (p. 223), Kafka proclaims, and reaffirms that the
explanations in the Letter are at least an approximation of the
truth, even after his father's objections have been taken into ac-
count.
This conclusion creates a dialectical situation between the au-
thor's attack, his father's rebuttal, and the author's re-rebuttal,
which gains additional effectiveness through the fact that all of
it, including the father's attempt at counterattack, is the creation
of Kafka's mind. It is a piece of dramatic dialogue inside a lengthy
monologue.
Yet even with this conclusion and with its occasional important
characterizations and figurative passages, the Letter remains ex-
pository, discursive prose, not a belletristic work. It contains bril-
liant psychological insights; it is perfectly constructed; but its
constructions and its insights are those of the exemplary essay.
The Letter concerns Kafka and his father and tries to add to the
father's understanding of his son's attitude, but lacks an applica-
tion wider than that.
Let us look at our first chosen work of fiction, The Judgment,
written during the night from September 22 to 23, 1912. Most of
the story consists of a dialogue between the son, Georg Bendemann,
and his father, and its theme is the relationship between them.
Unlike the Letter, in which the basic idea is immediately and ex-
plicitly stated, The Judgment begins obliquely. Its nonchalant
opening is neutral and deliberately conventional in its rendering
of the setting and of Georg's ruminations about his friend in St.
Petersburg. Indirectly and insidiously, under the guise of describing
the friend, Georg himself is characterized for us in a way which
will find its confirmation later: he is "wearing himself out to no
purpose in a foreign country," does not "understand conditions
in his own country any longer," and even if he returned, he would
still remain "in a foreign country" (pp. 53-54).' We are also
casually and unobtrusively informed that his father used to insist
on having everything his own way in the business. Yet the open-
ing pages are on the whole a model of normality. The first note
of something unusual is struck with the references to Georg's re-
luctance to inform his friend of his engagement. The lengthy
justification of his hesitation is not convincing; on the contrary,
the excessive stress on it is disturbing.
The second part of the story begins with Georg's entrance into
his father's room. Again, the first few conversational exchanges
are almost ominously and obtrusively flat. The mention of the letter
brings the sense of strangeness into the open: " 'Yes. To your
friend,' said the father with emphasis" (p. 58). Vague accusations
are insinuated by the father in negative statements which suggest
the truth of that which they ostensibly reject: "Many things
escape my notice in the business, nothing is perhaps being kept
concealed from me, I do not now at all wish to assume that it is
being kept concealed" (p. 59). Then like a sudden hammer blow
comes the question, "Do you really have this friend in Peters-
burg?" 'The reader begins to realize that the apparently secure
world in which the story is set is in reality very uncertain; almost
anything might happen from now on. Georg also reveals some
feeling of guilt towards his father, for he had not discussed with
his fiancee what arrangements should be made for his father in
the future.
The father is laid in his bed and covers himself with blankets,
but the apparent withdrawal is really a preparation for a violent
assault on his son. Having thrown the son (and the reader) off
guard, the father resumes the initiative by accusing the son of
wishing him "covered up," buried, insists that he sees through
him, and refers to his bride in coarse terms: "Because she lifted
up her skirts . . . the nasty goose ... you have disgraced your
mother's memory" (p. 63; cf. the similar reference to Kafka's
fiancee in the Letter: "She probably put on some kind of a well
chosen blouse, as the Prague Jewesses know how to do, and you
naturally decided to marry her," p. 213). Completely irrational
things now begin to happen. The father is suddenly well and
8 Page references to The Judgment and The Metamorphosis are to the
text in Kafka, Erziihlungen und lceine Prosa (Berlin, 1935).
stands up, radiant and unsupported. Far from denying the exist-
ence of the Petersburg friend, he states that the friend has not been
betrayed; on the contrary, he, the father, is the friend's repre-
sentative. He admits having played a comedy, attacks his son
directly, boasts of his own strength ("I have your customers here
in my pocket, " p. 64, in a figure similar to that in the Letter),
asserts he will sweep the fiancee from Georg's side-an open refer-
ence to his superior prowess with women-and, to the accompani-
ment of nightmarish details (the newspaper he has in bed with
him turns out to be an old paper with a name entirely unknown
to Georg-nothing can be trusted to remain such as one expects it
to be in a familiar solid universe), accuses his son of selfishness
and devilishness, and declares to him: "I now sentence you to
death by drowning!"
The third scene of the story is only some twenty lines long,
and surpasses the phantasy and terror of the culmination of the
preceding scene. Georg immediately obeys his father's verdict. He
rushes downstairs, vaults over the railing of a bridge like "the
excellent gymnast who in his youth had been the pride of his
parents" (p. 65f.), and throws himself into the river with the
words, "Dear parents, I have always loved you, all the same" (p.
66). While he drowns, the indifferent world continues its rounds
of everyday business, like the busy world in Breughel's "Fall of
Icarus," ignorant and careless of the young man's death ("At
this moment an unending stream of traffic was moving across the
bridge ").'
The similarities between The Judgment and the Letter are
clear. In both, the guilt feelings of the son are stressed, the strength
of the father (in the story even in his old age and illness) is
overpowering, there is conflict between them, and the son, despite
some effort at independence, is impelled to obey the father's com-
mands.
The Letter, however, is a work of explanation; the events are
narrated to illuminate Kafka's feelings and thoughts about his
father. Hence its form follows the logic of the intellect. Kafka
begins by stating his thesis and proceeds systematically to take up
4Heinz Politzer, "Franz Kafka's Letter to His Father," GB (1953),
XXVIII, 173, makes an interesting comparison between this sentence and the
third, happy world in Kafka's cosmography, referred to above.
one subtopic after another, concluding with a section which is
dramatic, but still confined to the realm of rhetorical exposition.
In the story, drama predominates. There is a great deal of
dialogue, and the plot is constructed climactically. A deceptively
quiet, slow and banal opening leads by several steps to the grand
scene in which the father passes the verdict on Georg, and the story
rushes with breathtaking speed to its denouement, which conveys
the precipitateness of Georg's suicide and prevents the power of
the climactic scene from being dissipated by a lengthy wind-up.
The form of the story is set by the logic not of reasoning, but of its
plot and symbolic meaning. Each scene is closely connected with
the next, and the order of the various sections, unlike that in the
Letter, could not possibly be reversed.
The perspective on time is also different in the two works. The
Letter is told from the vantage point of the writer's present, from
which he surveys the past, ranging over it freely, back and forth,
for his examples. The -end of the Letter does not imply the end of
the situation described; on the contrary, the relationship will con-
tinue to exist in the future. In the story, the reader moves along
with the fictional time of the events narrated, never running ahead
nor lagging behind. This gives the impression of an unfolding of
events which are still taking place. Hence a sense of immediacy
and necessity prevails in The Judgment in contrast to the Letter,
where the reader feels a larger body of material has been surveyed
by the author, who selected from it certain illustrations to which
he now ex post facto draws our attention. One result of this differ-
ence is tbat the emotional impact of the story is far greater than
that of the Letter.
In the fictional piece, Kafka has also been able to play on
different modes of tone or speaking voice, ranging from the calm
beginning, through a gamut of varying moods and intonations, to
the hurried, commanding, prophetic, Old Testament tone of the
father's command, and then to the swift conclusion with its note
of panic, followed by the return of everyday normalcy in the
final sentence.
Kafka limits the number of details much more in The Judgment
than in the Letter. Instead of heaping up examples, he presents us
with a few significant ones-creating the person of the friend in
Petersburg, the engagement and the letter as the external objects
which are to carry the theme. Moreover, the whole subject of
father-son relations, stretching as it does into the past, is conveyed
in a story the events of which only last a few minutes. In addition
to the concentration and intensification brought about by this
double condensation of content and time, there is another conse-
quence: it becomes impossible to limit one's interpretation of the
story to its literal meaning. The Judgment is a phantastic riddle,
evidently absurd on a literal level and hence inviting a parabolic
reading. Kafka himself, of course, put down in his diary comments
about the story's relevance to himself (February 11, 1913);5 but
the reader's primary interest will not be in what the story shows
exclusively about Kafka's relation to his father (the center of the
interest of the Letter), but in what it says about the relations of
fathers and sons in general and about a widening circle of related
topics: the relations between those in authority and those below
them and various possible situations of rebellion and suppression,
self-subjugation and self-punishment, even if we do not feel
justified in going so far as to apply it to the relation of God and
man, as several commentators have done.
In the opening of The Metamorphosis, written in 1912, we find
the reverse of the technique of The Judgment. We do not start in
a comforting, reassuring world and then gradually find ourselves
in a universe in which anything is possible. Instead, the very first
sentence ("As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy
dreams, he found himself in his bed metamorphosed into a huge
insect," p. 69) propels us into phantasy. From then on we are in
a world the apparent reasonableness of which clashes with the basic
impossibility of the situation, parodies the cautious, normal concerns
of our life, and points up the horror of the transformation. Through
Gregor's reminiscences and his reactions to his present condition
5 Kafka frequently stressed the autobiographical nature of much of his
writing. E.g. his Diary for Aug. 6, 1914: "The sense for the representation of
my dream-like inner life has pushed everything else to the side. . ... Nothing
else can ever satisfy me." Politzer ("Kafka's Letter," pp. 165-179) and
many other writers have commented on the autobiographical elements in the
Letter and on its similarities with The Judgment and The Metamorphosis,
without, however, noting the basic differences between the forms of the dis-
cursive letter and the artistic stories-the central concern of this article. In
his otherwise excellent discussion, Politzer fails to consider this distinction
when he calls the Letter "a literary rather than a personal document" (p. 172).
we gather what the family situation has been: Gregor's feeling of
duty towards his family, his concomitant resentment of them, the
father's harsh impatience, and the sister's gentle sympathy. Instead
of a suddenly commanded and precipitately executed suicide, we
have here a protracted process of gradual dying, a mixture of
murder and suicide through lack of will to live, articulated by
the various stages of Gregor's being chased back into his room,
painfully pushed through the doorway, his failure to eat, and the
illness caused by the apple sticking in his body. What the son
feels he is doing to his father and what his father is doing to him
is not expressed analytically, as in the Letter, nor even directly and
dramatically, as in The Judgment, but through, first, the parable
underlying the whole story and, secondly, all the minor, incidental
parables which pervade it: the lodgers, for example, who seem to
be parasites established in the family through Gregor's fault (his
metamorphosis) and of whom the father can rid the family as soon
as Gregor dies, or the warm sunshine and the various other indica-
tions of his family's rebirth after Gregor's death, such as looking
for a new apartment, going for a walk and planning to marry off
their daughter.
The elements of phantasy, nightmare and fear are much stronger
in The Metamorphosis than in The Judgment. The horror of wak-
ing up transformed into an insect brings in its train all our subcon-
scious fears of transformation (discussed among others in Freud's
essay on The Uncanny). In The Judgment, we are at least tem-
porarily in a normal world, and nothing ever happens which is
completely impossible; in The Metamorphosis we are never placed
in an everyday world. The narrative has the tone of carefully
evaluating all evidence, but the family's reaction to Gregor's
transformation-their effort to behave in the most rational and ac-
ceptable way-only strikes us as a frightening incongruity. It sug-
gests to us that our own accepted world may be as unreal as that
of the Samsas, and that painstaking reasonableness and conven-
tionality may be as misplaced and vain as Gregor's and his
family's. The failure of the characters to question the possibility
of Gregor's metamorphosis, which is the most surprising thing of
all and the basis of the action, makes the readers insecure in re-
gard to things we consider so certain that we seldom even feel the
need to think about them.
More clearly than The Judgment, The Metamorphosis moves
from a beginning which ought to be a renewal of life (the awaken-
ing in the morning), but actually is moribund and catastrophic, to
a conclusion which brings the death of the protagonist, accompanied
by the promise of an improved life for the survivors. When we look
at the line of development from Gregor's point of view, it is a
steady decline leading to Gregor's extinction. When we look at it
through the family's eyes, it is a long effort to contain and to
eliminate Gregor and the evils he has brought about-the lodgers,
the cleaning woman's attitude-a struggle which is crowned with
success in the end when he dies and his body is disposed of. The
Judgment had a similarly tight structure, with a sharply marked
beginning, middle and end, but the death of the son lacked the
counterpoise which it has in The Metamorphosis, the brightening
future of the rest of the family, which shows still more clearly the
son's guilt and worthlessness."
The still broader parabolic meaning of The Metamorphosis is
its greatest point of difference from The Judgment. If the Letter
applies only to Kafka and his father, and The Judgment to the
father-son relationship in general with overtones implicating other
power-to-subject relations, then The Metamorphosis has strong
suggestions of many possible interpretations. Some of the situations
to which it can be taken to refer are: man and the state; man and
his subconscious feelings of guilt and inadequacy in general; tote-
mistic fears of metamorphosis; the Jew in a Gentile society; man
6 It should be pointed out that in contradistinction to the two stories dis-
cussed here, most of Kafka 's writing, his novels as well as stories, is char-
acterized by the absence of a clearly marked conclusion. This, however, does
not mean that such works are inconclusive. Their construction, unlike that of
The Judgment and The Metamorphosis, is multicellular, and each cell bears
its own conclusion within itself. The series as a whole therefore needs none,
since each unit composing it conveys the message of the unending series. This
is the point missed by those who criticize Kafka for the frequency with which
he left his works unfinished. Giinther Anders, Kafka: Pro und Kontra (Munich,
1951), pp. 34-36, has an interesting discussion of the cyclical and repetitive
nature of Kafka's scenes, but errs in condemning Kafka's philosophy, besides
other reasons, on the ground of his failure to complete his works. Wilhelm
Emrich, "Franz Kafka," in Hermann Friedmann and Otto Mann, Deutsche
Literatur im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1954), p. 231 and passim,
discusses interestingly the infinitely continuable series of Kafka's episodes,
and Paul Goodman, The Structure of Literature (Ohicago, 1954), pp. 173-183,
analyzes the cellular structure of The Castle.
and grace; or man and God. The mood of the story is precise, but the
references made by it parabolically are multiple.
As we moved from the Letter through The Judgment to The
Metamorphosis we have found several differences. The range of
technical means used in the Letter varies greatly from the stories: it
consists of illustrations, analyses, generalizations, concessions, logi-
cal summaries, with some figures of speech and dramatic fictions.
In the stories, Kafka employed changes of tone (modulations, con-
trasts between tone and subject matter, sudden shifts of speaking
voice), development of plot (crescendo, climax, conclusion), and
a narrative time synchronized with the time of the fictional events,
all serving to heighten the emotional impact. Remarkable is also
the contrast between the logical, discursive mode of discourse in the
Letter and the phantasy and dramatization in the stories, par-
ticularly in The Metamorphosis. One of the most significant char-
acteristics of the fictional works is the overriding importance as-
sumed by the various symbolic details (characters, actions, objects)
within them, as well as by the total image presented by the story.
The greater unity and closer focus (including narrower physical
setting) paradoxically accompany the broadening of the range of
possible symbolic interpetations.
The epigraph quoted from Goethe at the beginning of this ar-
ticle might apply to the Letter; its subject is a relationship in life
which has not yet ended, in the presentation of which finality has
not been achieved. One distinction between a work of fiction and an
autobiographical letter is that the literary piece completes and
imposes order upon the raw materials of life. Kafka's stories are
the fulfillment of artistic potentialities, not through the creation
of beauty in a narrow sense, but through the presentation of a
concentrated, patterned picture of human guilt and fears. In their
high degree of organization and in their symbolic structure, The
Judgment and The Metamorphosis exemplify several ways in which
Dichtung is superior to Wahrheit.
Smith College
Northampton, Massachusetts

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Dichtung und Wahrheit: Three Versions of Reality in Franz Kafka

OF REALITY IN FRANZ KAFKA

Des Menschen Leben ist ein iihnliches Gedicht;

Es hat wohl einen Anfang, hat ein Ende,

Allein ein Ganzes ist es nicht.

It is the purpose of this article to examine three works by

Metamorphosis. Using The Letter as an example of autobiography

or Wahrheit, and the two stories as examples of Dichtung, we

shall attempt to throw some light on the differences between a

discursive, "factual" account, and two artistic representations of

similar material in the form of fiction.

Kafka wrote The Letter to His Father in November 1919

is no indication that the letter was meant for publication. It

to be afraid of him, and it deals frankly and explicitly with the

relations between the father and son. The materials it contains

can be divided, first, into examples of the father's behavior

unreasonable insistence that he was always right; his attacks

on all people, Czech, German and Jewish; ridicule heaped on

reduction of the son's relations with his fiancee to a crude mat-

ter of sex; his prohibition of certain behavior at the table, such

as drinking vinegar off a plate or chewing bones, which his

father permitted himself. These and many other points do not

in themselves differ markedly from the list which most Central

European children with an overbearing father could compile.

What difference there is consists in the manner in which they

are presented: Kafka narrates them with great conciseness and

precision, simply and unmelodramatically. But even that is

something of which many persons would have been capable; it

did not take a Franz Kafka to do it.

The second category of content is composed of passages of

analysis and evaluation, in which we discern a power of dis-

section reminiscent of Kafka's fiction. The analysis is mostly

psychological: he explains that he could have accepted his father

in other roles, as an uncle, friend or boss, but "as a father you

cony is followed by the analytic comment: "I was not able to

make a right connection between the senseless asking for water,

which was something natural to me, and the extraordinary terror

torture of thinking that the giant, my father, the final authority,

could come for almost no reason and carry me at night from

my bed to the balcony, and that I was therefore such a nothing

to him" (p. 167). Kafka then proceeds to trace the development

of his sense of insignificance from the time of that incident.

The analysis of general issues is even keener than that of the

individual episodes. There are passages of what we might call

sociological interpretation. Kafka declares, for example, that his

father's main belief was "in the unconditional correctness of

the opinions of a certain Jewish social class," and tells him:

"Since these opinions were yours, you therefore really believed

in yourself" (p. 199f). The examination of the three means by

which Kafka attempted to escape his father's domination-im-

mersion in Jewish life, writing, and marriage-is brilliantly

penetrating. Kafka shows an awareness of what his father was

doing in first urging him to participate more in Jewish affairs

much interested in Jewish life and thereby gained a measure

of personal independence. The passages dealing with the psy-

chological effects of his engagements and of his writing are cru-

cial to an understanding of Kafka's personality. They reveal

in Kafka, Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande (New York, 1953); the

translations are mine.

self-knowledge as well as knowledge of his father and a re-

markable ability to stand outside of himself and to analyze him-

self objectively. Relevant to Kafka's fiction is his description of

between his father's orders and conduct-his own world, where