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Southern Winds: Handout.

Story
“A bark glided [schwebte] silently into the little harbour, as if it were being borne [getragen] over the
water.”
• Question: Like the bark, Gracchus’ case is schwebend, “suspended,” “(im)pending,” “undecided;” or, as
the German idiom puts it, he is zwischen Leben und Tod schweben (“hovering between life and death.”) The
reason for this is that, just as we do not know who or what carries the boat across the water (as the passive
participle of tragen implies), it is fundamentally unclear who “bears the blame” (trägt die Schuld) for its
passenger’s fate.1 But can we know anything more specific about the impersonal force?
• Since Riva the earthly port is at the northernmost point of the Garda, and Gracchus locates the
Afterlife’s door in an superior position (oben),2 whether the story takes place in a symbolic landscape or in
actual geography—and we, like Gracchus, are trapped in this question—it is clear that the impersonal force
carrying the boat into the small harbour must be coming from Below (symbolically) or from the south
(geographically).

Goethe’s Italian Journey.

One September 12, 1786, sitting on a hill overlooking the Garda in Torbole, the small village
immediately to the east of Riva, Goethe wrote:
After midnight the wind blows from north to south. Anyone who wishes to travel down the lake must
travel at this time, for some hours before sunrise the air current [Luftstrom] turns, and moves northward.
Now it is the afternoon and it blows strongly [wehet er stark] against me… Volkmann teaches me that
this lake was formerly called Benacus and quotes from Virgil a line in which it was mentioned:
“Fluctibus et fremiter resonans, Benace, marino” [“You, Benacus, waves building with the surge and rush
of the sea!”]3 This is the first Latin verse the subject of which I have seen with my own eyes. Now, when
the wind is blowing stronger and stronger [der Wind immer stärker wächst], and throws [wirft] higher
billows the landing place, the verse is as true as it was many centuries ago. Much indeed has changed, but
the wind still roars [stürmt] about the lake.4

Since Goethe was traveling south and knew, as he wrote on the 12th, that “anyone who wishes to travel
down the lake” had to do so after midnight, he hired a boat with a couple of rowers and left Torbole the next day

1The expression is a favorite of the Burgomaster’s (NSF I, 310). Drawing attention to the story’s different uses of tragen,
Haase ingeniously argues that when Gracchus responds to the Burgomaster that the blame is borne by the boatman, he is
implying he himself should be identified with guilt. Donald P. Haase, “Kafka’s ‘Der Jäger Gracchus’: Fragment or Figment
of the Imagination?,” Modern Austrian Literature 11.3/4 (1978): 325.
2 SEE PREVIOUS ARTICLE.
3Georgics II, v 159-60. Virgil, Virgil’s Georgics, trans. Janet Lembke (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press,
2007), 26.
4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise, ed. Karl-Maria Guth (Berlin: Hofenberg, 2016), 20; Italian Journey
(1786-1788), trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, Penguin Classics 16 (London: Penguin, 1970), 41-42. The Virgil is
also quoted in the handbook for traveler that Kafka used puts it: “Der See ist selten ganz ruhig, bei Stürmen dem Meere
gleich aufbrausend, wie schon Virgil (Georg. II. 160) ihn schildert.” Karl Baedeker, Italien: Handbuch Für Reisende, vol. 1
(Leipzig: Verlag von Karl Baedeker, 1886), 167.
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at 3 a.m. “At first the wind was favorable and they could use the sails.” With sunrise, the wind dropped, but they
were able to continue slowly along the eastern shore. Then, “the wind suddenly veered right round and blew
northwards, as it usually does during the day. Against its overwhelming force [übermächtige Gewalt], rowing was
of no avail and we were compelled to land at the harbour of Malcesine, the first Venetian town on the east of the
lake. When one has water to deal with, there is no point in saying: ‘Today I shall be in this place or that.’”

Gracchus on the Wind.

Durch eine Luke der Seitenwand kommt die warme Luft der südlichen Nacht und ich höre das Wasser an die alte
Barke schlagen.(NSF I, 312)
[Through a porthole in the side come the warm airs of the southern night, and I can hear the water
slapping against the old bark.]

The second is the last thing he says in our story:

Mein Kahn ist ohne Steuer, er fährt mit dem Wind der in den untersten Regionen des Todes bläst. (NSF I, 311)
[My boat has not rudder, it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death].

Entryway to the Afterlife <—Riva—> a northern shore

Ocean <—See—> lake
Underworld/Death <—Desenzano—> a southern shore
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Explains
• Up and Down.
• Stair Metaphor.
• “Upswing” to the Gate: when Gracchus speaks of “the greatest upswing” (den größten Aufschwung) that he
‘takes’ or ‘picks up’ (nehmen) when he is able to see the gate atop the staircase, he is referring, not to some
“supreme effort” of the will—as this would have no effect—but to the sudden feeling of upward momentum
created by an extraordinarily powerful gust of southern wind that finally carries the sailboat close to Riva.
• The bird comes, with the wind, toward midnight.

Kafka in Desenzano (Sept 21, 1913): Three notes to Felice.

• Sept 21, 1913. “My view is bordered by the peninsula of Sirmione on the right, on the left by the banks of
the lake as far as Manerba; sunny, nearby two workmen have just stretched out in the grass. The fact that no
one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just
than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness. Now for an island,
with nobody on it, instead of the sanatorium.These complaints, however, do not relieve me; I remain entirely
unmoved, am like a great stone at the very center of which there flickers a tiny soul.”
• Oct 29, 1913. “I was at Desenzano at the time, lying in the grass waiting for the steamer that was to take me
to Gardone, and I wrote to you. I didn’t mail the letter, I may still have it somewhere, but don’t ask to see it;
it was pieced together, I even had to invent the conjunctions, it was frightful; that day at Desenzano I had
really come to the end.”
• Dec 29, 1913. “A girl far less remarkable than she could have captivated me at that time in my empty,
hopeless state; you’ve got my notes from Desenzano, they were written about 10 days before.”
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Catullus to the Sirimio promontory on the southern end of the Garda.

»O du, der Inseln und Halbinseln Augenstern, [Oh you, shinning star/eye of islands and of peninsulas,
O Sirmio, so viele in den Landseen auch [Oh Sirmio, as many [peninsulas/islands] as Neptune bears
Und draußen auf dem weiten Meer Neptunus trägt, [in the lakes and in the open sea
Wie gerne kehre ich, wie fröhlich heim zu dir. [How gladly and how happy I see you,
Will kaum mir glauben, daß ich schon Bithynien [Scarcely myself believing myself that I have left behind
Und Thynien verlassen, dich im Sichern schau. [Thynia and the Bithynian fields and that I see you in safety.
O was ist süßer als das Ende aller Pein, [O what is sweeter than the end of pain/cares,
Wenn ihre Last die Seele abwirft, endlich heim [When the soul puts down its burden,
Von ausländischer Arbeit abgemattet kommt [And we tired from foreign labor come finally home(wards)
Und schön sich ausstreckt auf dem langersehnten Bett.5 [and stretch out nicely in the long awaited bed
Das ist für so viel Mühe doch der einzige Lohn.”6 [For so much trouble/hassle/toil, that’s the only wage.

From the Soliloquy.

I still remember how happily I stretched myself out here on the planking for the first time. The
mountains have never heart me singing the way these four still shadowy walls did then. I had been happy to be
alive and was happy to be dead. Before I came on board, I gladly threw away my rag-tag collection of guns and
bags, even the hunting rifle which I had always carried so proudly…

Ich erinnere mich noch wie fröhlich ich mich hier auf der Pritsche ausstreckte zum erstenmal, niemals
hatten die Berge solchen Gesang von mir gehört, wie diese vier damals noch dämmerigen Wände. Ich hatte gern
gelebt und war gern gestorben, glücklich warf ich, ehe ich den Bord betrat, das Lumpenpack der Büchse, der
Tasche, des Jagdrocks von mir hinunter, das ich immer stolz getragen hatte…

From the Story.

The bearers took up their burden [Last] and carried it through the low but gracefully pillared gate.
[Die Träger nahmen die Last auf und trugen sie durch das niedrige aber von schlanken Säulen gebildete
Tor.]

5 Ich  erinnere mich noch wie fröhlich ich mich hier auf der  Pritsche ausstreckte zum erstenmal, niemals hatten die  Berge
solchen Gesang von mir gehört, wie diese vier damals noch dämmerigen Wände. (NSF I, 312).
The connection is noted by Binder in Kommentar, 200.
6 Valerius Catullus, Gedichte. Vollständige Ausgabe. Deutsch von Max Brod, mit teilweiser Benützung der Übertragung von
K. W. Ramler, München u. Leipzig 1914, S. 49. Kafka had the book: Klaus Wagenbach, Franz Kafka: Eine Biographie Seiner
Judgend, Rowohlts Monographien (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1958), 253.