Franz Kafka: A Critical Problem

FRANZ KAFKA: A .CRITICAL PROBLEM JoHN MARGESON T HE influence of Franz Kafka has been widely proclaimed in recent years, both in Europe and in America. But it has become increasingly clear that he is a victim of cults. Little groups of intellectuals who have followed the leaders, from the commissar to the yogi end of the spectrum, speak of Kafka as the true prophet for the modern world, the one who has revealed the mysteries of existence and who has pictured crude materialism for the nightmare it is. In fact, the reading of Kafka is often a prerequisite for admission to these groups. On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that his novels have stimulated important work by other writers. The allegorical novel is becoming an increasingly popular mode of expression, and writers like Rex Warner owe something to Kafka's books. If he has stimulated certain writers to a form of expression new to this generation, Kafka has done little to help along the state of criticism. Since his novels and stories have become known, a spate of articles and books has been written about them from political, psychological, theological, sociological , economic, and even literary points of view, and often various attitudes are tangled together in a single article. The problem of criticism now is to decide how much emphasis to put on biographical and other elements in his works in the attempt to present those works as symbolic structures with some form and completeness of their own. His novels and short stories oqviously represent his way of looking at life, the pattern which he saw running through life. Biographical materials tell us how he developed a mind that was to look upon the phenomena of life in this way. Agai~, the study of his aphorisms, his letters, and his diary reveals to us something of his fundamental religious beliefs and indicates the origin of certain theological elements in his novels. But the components do not explain the whole. His novels and short stories form a canon of work which represents his vision of life, the whole based upon his own experience, but modified and unified by his imagination. The psychologists, theologians, and others may object at this point that Kafka wrote not to present an imaginative ordering of life, but because of some inner necessity. To the psychologist, all Kafka's writings represent an attempted escape from his father. To the sociologist, Kafka wrote in order to portray the agonizingly clumsy and unjust bureaucracy of the Austrian Empire with which he became acquainted. He had to describe it intensely in order to release his hatred for it. But to the theologian, Kafka wrote in order to obey a religious impulse: "Writing is a form of prayer," is a remark attributed to him.1 From this point of view, Kafka wrote with the same 1Max Brod, Franz Kafka, a Biography (London, 1947), 75. 30 FRANZ KAFKA: A CRITICAL PROBLEM 31 motive as Bunyan's, in order to communicate his own religious experience to others and influence them by it. If these claims are justified, then Kafka's novels must be considered mainly as psychological material or perhaps as a record of religious experience. In order to answer these claims, we must look briefly at Kafka's life and experience, and then examine his chief works. The psycho-analysts are no doubt right when they emphasize the importance of Kafka's family life in relation to his later work. His early life was marked by hatred for the domination which his father exercised over him, and at the same time by admiration for his father's qualities of vigour and strength.2 Because he was unable at any time to measure up to his father's expectations or win his father's approval for any action of his own, he had a continual sense of failure and guilt, and the intensity with which he experienced this feeling is expressed in The Metamorphosis and The Trial. Kafka spent a large portion of his life attempting to escape from his father's influence and at the same time attempting to win his father's approval. He did not...