Plotinus

There is so much I haven’t read, so many books I’ll never be aware of, just sitting there on shelves, and I’ve so little time to even grab the tiny morcel that I’ve been able to tear off so far. So, to work! Termites doen’t think about any big pictures, they chew away at tiny bits of reality. Thus spake Farberthustra. I’m going to hop over Plotinus like a skipping stone. This is what I’m taking away from reading his essay on Beauty.

One goes through 3 stages in one’s quest for what seems like a Zen detachment from reality, into one’s self and through the door of the self to The One.. The quest will take one away from the world of sensations. The first step is to appreciate a beautiful person, or a beautiful object in the world. Appreciating a beautiful object entails one’s soul (which is pure and simple unless one allows it to become cluttered up in evil superfluous worldly sensuous existance- you can see why this man was an influence on Christian theology, Augustine, et al.) recognizing an object that shares its simple purity outside of itself. Objects outside the self are not inherently beautiful, beauty is not in their essence, but rather something that has been added to them. Plotinus demonstrates this by pointing out that if I look at someone’s face from one angle I am struck by it’s radient beauty, while a moment later I see it from another angle and the beauty has left it. Beauty is however inherent in some actions, according to Plotinus. Virtuous actions, honest dedicated work is beautiful in its very core.

After noticing something beautiful in the world, whether object or action, an obstacle must be overcome. One must be careful not to become too attached to the beautiful object lest one be chained to the world of sensation like Narcissus after he noticed his own beautiful image in the water. This metaphor works perfectly, as we are recognizing our own beauty (our soul’s beauty) when we admire objects outside of ourselves. Instead, one must look for the forms that beauty takes; one transcends the particular case of beauty and begins to search for how distinct cases of beauty come about; what is it that gives Botticelli’s Venere her beauty? What gives her her beauty, according to Plotinus, is, as mentioned above, that the beauty inside my soul, if it has been unfettered by the dirt of earthly (he uses the expression “down here” often) existence, recognizes its own beauty outside of itself, and is thereby attracted to itself.

Thus, one’s gaze moves from the object and turns within, where one can gaze upon one’s self. One should chisel away at one’s soul like a sculpter until all excess is removed, and then, only then, can one join The One. It strikes me as a kind of Pagan Christianity, and I can imagine Nietzsche labeling Plotinus a preacher of death, since the Plotinian enlightenment entails a kind of retreat from life.

If I transfer Plotinian ideas over to literature, I would say in the first stage one reads a book, and one is taken in by the beauty of it. One feels as though the book pierces through to a part of oneself that one never knew existed (Kafka compared literature to an ax that breaks open the frozen sea within us), or perhaps one feels as though one has pierced through the text to something that lies beyond it. However, one can take the act of reading to another level when one starts analysing texts, searching for beauty and imagining where the beauty of a text comes from. The third stage would entail me recognizing that what I find in books was already inside myself. I was thinking the other day about all the images that books create inside my head. Where did they come from? Certainly the words of the text didn’t create them.. It seems that they are agglomerations of images that have been floating around inside my consciousness or unconsciousness beforehand. When Tolstoy describes two of his characters meeting at a train station during a snowstorm, my mind constructs the image using a train station that I’ve seen in the past and has stayed in my subconscious, and for whatever reason seems like the most Russian or Tolstoyan of train stations compared with other train stations that I’ve seen, then covers the ground with snow, which I have of course seen plenty of, then inserts the characters, who all resemble people who have made an impression on me before. The strange part is I can’t remember where I’ve seen any of the people or places novels place in my head. This could be because my mind is actually constructing the people and places from much smaller parts, for instance the platform, the benches, the train itself, the ticket window, and the station building all coming from different sources. It could be the same for the characters; Alexei Karenin could be put together with the eyes of one of my acquaintences from college, the small sideburns of a man I happened to see on television the day before reading the novel, his skin the hew of a Russian man I happened to walk past on an avenue in Manhattan, and his stature that of a pallbearer of a funeral I drove past one day on my way to work. Actually, I’ve never driven past a funeral on my way to work. But you see what I’m saying.

So how is it that the mind chooses what the scene will look like? When I think of the Russian novels I’ve read, the German novels, the French novels, the African, they all paint different pictures, which all seem to fit into whatever context they’re supposed to be placed in, but I didn’t consciously choose them…And they all seem to just spring up from nothing when I begin to read, of their own accord.

L’avalée des avalés

Ceci est une analyse que j’ai faite il y a 6 mois.

Bérénice est la narratrice de L’Avalée des avalés de Réjean Ducharme, un écrivain québécois reclus qui évite la société. On a seulement deux photos de lui, le premier de son lycée, et le deuxième le montre dehors dans la neige. Sur les pages de cette oeuvre, Bérénice nous montre ses pensées intérieures. Ces pensées nous révèlent un univers sombre que son imagination construit. C’est probable que Ducharme parle à travers ce personnage. Il y a des chapitres qui consistent seulement en observations sur d’autres personnages (dans son imagination ou l’altérité), et qui expriment ses sentiments envers ces personnages. Dans d’autres chapitres elle s’embarque sur des monologues intérieurs philosophiques. Autrefois, elle décrit ce qui se passe dans sa vie. C’est toujours à travers elle qu’on apprend l’histoire, et qu’on connaît les autres personnages. Étant une narratrice créative qui aime manipuler la réalité qui l’entoure avec son imagination (« Il faut trouver les choses et les personnes différentes de ce qu’elles sont pour ne pas être avalée . . . Il n’y a de vrai que ce qu’il faut que je croie vrai, que ce qu’il m’est utile de croire vrai, que ce que j’ai besoin de croire vrai pour ne pas souffrir. » (33)[1]), il est tout à fait possible que tout se passe dans sa tête. Mais dans cette analyse je vais supposer que la plupart des événements se passent dans la réalité de l’œuvre. Je vais analyser le personnage de Bérénice et sa révolte, l’intertextualité dans l’œuvre, et finalement la présence ou l’absence de la québécité dans ce roman.

Bérénice a neuf ans quand l’histoire commence. Elle en a quinze à la fin. Il n’est pas clair si Bérénice est censée être une enfant qui regarde le monde des adultes ou un adulte qui regarde le monde des adultes à travers les yeux d’une enfant. Il y a un élément enfantin dans son style d’écriture. Il y a beaucoup de phrases courtes, et ses pensées suivent une tournure qui saute d’une idée à la prochaine sans soucis pour l’organisation logique. Elle montre un entêtement contre les conventions du monde des adultes, qui réfléchit les attitudes de quelqu’un qui n’a jamais été endoctriné par la société des adultes. Cependant, elle fait preuve d’une lecture colossale. Ses références littéraires sont prises d’Homère, Caton, Descartes, Voltaire, Edgar Poe, Rimbaud, Nelligan, et Sartre. Elle fait plusieurs choses avec la littérature. Elle arrache des phrases, et les utilise dans ses propres pensées. En faisant cela, elle se moque légèrement des auteurs qu’elle cite. D’autres fois elle ne manipule pas ce qu’elle a trouvé, mais l’intègre dans son texte. Ces phrases prennent des nouvelles signifiances dans leurs nouveaux contextes. L’intertextualité est donc une partie intégrale de cette œuvre.

Elle renverse l’axiome célèbre de Descartes : « Je suis, donc je pense… » (315) Après qu’elle est guérie d’une maladie dont je parlerai au-dessous, elle tire une citation de Candide : « Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes ! » (147) Après avoir expliqué à la classe pourquoi il fallait qu’elle détruise le monde pour éviter d’être avalée, elle déclare « C’est pourquoi, monsieur le professeur de chimie, il faut détruire Carthage ! » (265), à la Caton.

Brigitte Seyfrid-Bommertz trouve dans la lecture de Bérénice et surtout dans celui de Nelligan, un élément de la catharsis :

Cette poésie lyrico-tragique de Nelligan suscite l’effet cathartique décrit par Aristote : « Mes cils se mouillent, j’ai la chair de poule » affirme Bérénice, avant de constater, émerveillée : « C’est beau. ». Nelligan s’apparente, selon la belle expression de R. Borderie, à ces « sorciers » de la littérature qui, par les mots, présentent des événements qui nous concernent, nous impliquent et provoquent toutes sortes d’émotions beaucoup plus profondes que le simple plaisir du divertissement. Le lecteur n’est plus alors un simple spectateur mais un « pratiquant », lisant un texte magique ou sacré. (Seyfrid-Bommertz, 156)

Pour Bérénice, la littérature n’est pas seulement un passe-temps. Elle vit ce qu’elle lit, elle devient ce qu’elle lit. Quand elle lit, elle entre physiquement dans ses livres.

Je prends goût à lire. Je me mets dans tous les livres qui me tombent sous la main et ne m’en retire que lorsque le rideau tombe. Un livre est un monde, un monde fait, un monde avec un commencement et une fin. Chaque page d’un livre est une ville. Chaque ligne est une rue. Chaque mot est une demeure. Mes yeux parcourent la rue, ouvrant chaque porte, pénétrant dans chaque demeure. (107)

Un coup d’œil sur Berenice par Edgar Poe est utile ici. Voici l’incipit de l’ouvrage :

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But, as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. (Poe, 376)

Dans la dernière phrase de ce passage, Poe déclare que l’angoisse est inévitable. Il y a de l’angoisse si nous réussissons à trouver de l’extase, parce que cette extase disparaîtra éventuellement et elle nous manquera. Même si nous ne trouvons pas d’extase, nous connaissons le concept de l’extase et l’absence du souvenir de la vraie extase créera de l’angoisse. L’angoisse de Bérénice est similaire : « qu’appelle-t-on « beau » sinon ce qui produit de l’angoisse… ? » (289) L’angoisse est toujours présente dans le monde de Bérénice. Elle dit souvent qu’elle est seule avec son angoisse. Il y a plusieurs liens entre Berenice et l’Avalée des avalés. Bérénice recherche toutes les Bérénice de l’histoire et de la littérature pour trouver son identité, et elle mentionne la nouvelle d’Edgar Poe en particulier. Cette nouvelle raconte l’histoire d’Egaeus, qui va se marier avec sa cousine Berenice. Il souffre de ce qu’il appelle une monomanie :

To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer’s day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; (Poe, 379)

Le frère de Bérénice a une habitude similaire, mais au lieu d’étant considérée une maladie, c’est plutôt ce qui le rachète.

Christian a une façon d’aimer qui désarme. Il aime les petites choses, les choses qui n’ont ni force, ni forme, ni poids, ni beauté. Il se penche sur elles et, sous mes yeux, je les vois bientôt rayonner du meilleur de l’homme. Il les fouille, les découvre. Il n’a qu’à les désigner du doigt ou les prendre dans sa main pour qu’aussitôt, sous l’effet de son amour, elles deviennent merveilleuses. (45)

L’élément macabre est central dans la nouvelle de Poe. Berenice tombe gravement malade. Elle maigrit beaucoup, et Egaeus devient horrifié d’elle, malgré la pitié qu’il sent. Elle lui rend visite et Egaeus la décrit ainsi.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died! (Poe, 382, l’italique de Poe)

Quand un sourire devient les dents, il y a de la défamiliarisation très forte du corps humain. Quand on ajoute l’imagerie macabre (ses yeux n’ont pas de pupilles, ses tempes sont creuses) et le fait que Poe réfère à le front au lieu de son front, à les yeux au lieu de ses yeux, c’est comme il décrit un cadavre, et le lecteur voit Berenice qui semble transformer en squelette devant ses yeux. La Bérénice Ducharmienne tombe malade aussi. Sa description de son corps était peut-être influencée par sa lecture de Berenice par Poe.

J’ai un squelette. A travers ma chair plus mince de jour en jour je peux le toucher, le palper, faire sa connaissance. Je peux mettre mes doigts dans les grands trous qu’il a à la place des yeux. A la place de la jambe, il a un tibia. A la place de la joue, il a un zygoma. Ma main n’est qu’un gant passé à sa main d’os. Mes cheveux ne sont qu’une perruque collée à son crâne d’os. Mes yeux ne sont que deux petites ampoules électriques de couleur enfoncées dans les trous qu’il a à la place des yeux. Je ne suis que l’habit d’un squelette. Je maigris. (133)

Dans La Nausée de Sartre, le protagoniste Roquentin met ceci dans son journal :

Et moi – veule, alangui, obscène, digérant, ballottant de mornes pensées – moi aussi j’étais de trop. Heureusement que je ne le sentais pas,…(La Nausée, 182)

Bérénice utilise le présent pour décrire une sensation similaire : « Je sens bien que je suis de trop,… » (57) Bérénice est consciente du fait qu’elle est de trop. Mais c’est plutôt dans une situation sociale où elle s’en rend compte. Tandis que Roquentin s’est senti de trop par rapport à toute la réalité qui l’entourait pour des raisons philosophiques, Bérénice se considère de trop dans les vies de certains autres gens. Elle est en train de patiner avec sa cousine Mingrélie et son frère Christian, et elle constate qu’ils ont un « secret », qu’ils s’aiment, et qu’elle les importune. Ces deux trop exprime des sensations différentes, mais pour Bérénice, la littérature est quelque chose à exploiter. Ce n’est pas grave si les contextes ne sont pas harmonieux.

La littérature est un outil qui la laisse voyager, et explorer l’univers. C’est pourquoi elle aime des auteurs qui écrivent sur le voyage réel ou imaginaire : Marco Polo, Homère, Virgile et Rimbaud. Rimbaud a exprimé le désir de voyager à d’autres parties du monde et à d’autres univers, et Bérénice, plus tard dans le livre réfléchit : « Est-ce que je ne suis pas en train de tout échapper ? « L’échappons-nous ? » se demandait ce cher Rimbaud. » (334) Bérénice veut échapper de sa vie d’esclave où elle se trouve n’import où qu’elle soit. Rimbaud s’est échappé de sa vie de poète bohème, et a disparu en Afrique.

Il est inouï qu’une petite fille de neuf ans ait lu autant, et qui utilise la littérature comme un outil pour s’exprimer mieux. Mais elle déclare que « les couteaux et les fourchettes n’attendent pas le nombre des années, […] les couteaux et les fourchettes sont aussi grands dans [les] petites mains que dans les mains de l’hercule de Crotone. » (95-96) Comme les couteaux et les fourchettes, la littérature n’attend pas le nombre des années, au moins dans l’imagination de Ducharme. Plus tard, quand Bérénice se rencontre avec Blasey Blasey, un pornographe, après avoir parlé avec lui sur le téléphone, il lui dit : « A entendre votre voix, je vous avais crue plus vieille, plus mûre. Mais la valeur n’attend pas le nombre des années. » (283) Elle est jeune, mais elle comprend quand même certaines facettes plutôt sombres de la vie sociale tel que quelqu’un qui a beaucoup d’expérience.

Bérénice se montre cynique dans ses opinions sur les autres personnages. C’est au lecteur de décider si ses impressions sur les autres personnages sont fiables ou seulement des constructions d’une tournure morbide. Si sa mère essaie de gagner son affection en faisant quelque chose qui serait d’habitude associée à l’amour maternel, elle voit ce que sa mère fait comme une attaque contre son individualité, et contre sa liberté. Elle est convaincue que sa mère veut l’avaler. Bérénice est consciente des jeux de pouvoir qui se passent derrière le discours des autres. Elle reconnaît les actions ostensiblement bienfaisantes comme la guerre pour la domination. Pour elle, la vie, c’est la guerre. Elle n’est jamais passive, elle nargue la réalité. Elle nargue les croyances des religieux, soit des Chrétiens, soit des Juifs, et toutes choses qui représentent le conformisme ou l’acceptation des choses telles qu’elles sont. Elle voit les religions de ses parents comme des manifestations d’une haine qui les poussent à prier pour une bonne place dans l’arène, d’où tous les gens qui prient pourront regarder brûler les impies.

Le rabbi Schneider ouvre son gros livre rouge à tranche dorée. Il lit : « Les impies seront brûlés comme paille » Dans ma tête, je vois Christian brûler comme de l’herbe morte. Priez Yahveh ! Plus vous prierez, meilleure sera votre place, plus vous serez près de l’arène. Si vous priez terriblement, vous risquez d’être aux premiers rangs quand les impies brûleront. (14-15)

Elle voit donc la religion organisée comme de l’hypocrisie. Elle hait aussi, mais elle n’invente pas de mensonges pour justifier ou pour cacher sa haine. C’est là une différence entre elle et ses parents. Cette différence est cependant un peu ambiguë. Elle constate quand elle est très jeune qu’elle et son frère ne sont que rejetons pour leurs parents. Un rejeton est un nouveau jet qui pousse sur la souche, le tronc ou la tige d’une plante ou d’un arbre, selon le Petit Robert. Un rejeton doit être une reproduction plus petite de l’arbre d’où il est venu. Être reproduction la terrifie. Elle veut changer qui elle est, mais elle n’est pas sûr que c’est possible.

Quand on a été fait indifférent, méchant et dur, on ne peut être sensible, charitable et doux. (191)

La haine est donc une partie de son identité, elle la reconnaît comme telle, et l’embrasse. Sa seule excuse pour sa haine est qu’elle est née pour haïre.

Je ne suis pas responsable de moi et ne peux le devenir. Comme tout ce qui a été fait, comme la chaise et le calorifère, je n’ai à répondre de rien. La balle qui frappe l’animal au cœur n’est pas criminelle. (191)

Sa haine lui a été donnée par celui qui l’a créée, et elle l’accepte. Cependant, il y a des paradoxes qui concernent cette idée dans le livre. L’idée qu’elle n’est pas responsable pour sa haine est en contraste avec son commentaire d’avant :

Ce qui compte, c’est se savoir responsable de chaque acte qu’on pose, c’est vivre contre ce qu’une nature trouvée en nous nous condamnait à vivre. (43)

D’abord, elle méprise ses sentiments naturels, qui ne sont que « puissances étrangères dont l’âme naissante est infestée. » (43)

Il faut se recréer, se remettre au monde. On naît comme naissent les statues. On vient au monde statue : quelque chose nous a faits et on n’a plus qu’à vivre comme on est fait. C’est facile. Je suis une statue qui travaille à se changer, qui se sculpte elle-même en quelque chose d’autre. (42)

Si on accepte passivement l’essence qui semble nous avoir été donné, on se laisse faire. Christian est son frère et son antithèse. Il accepte l’amour de leur mère, et il n’existe que pour elle. Il dit à Bérénice, en parlant de sa mère, « Elle parle de moi comme si j’étais elle. » (72) Sa mère avait réussi à l’avaler, et son langage révèle que c’était son but, même s’il était inconscient. Christian est faible, lâche, et tout franchement méprisable. Quand quelques hommes trouvent Christian avec Bérénice en train de sauver un rat de l’un de leurs pièges, il fuit, en laissant sa sœur toute seule. Bérénice le décrit ainsi :

Il est mou, inconsistant. C’est un parasite-né. Comme du chardon, il s’attache à tout ce qui le touche. Comme une plante, ses efforts sont tous de fixation ; ses bras ne peuvent ni le défendre ni attaquer. Comme une plante, on peut l’arracher et le planter ailleurs. Il essaie de se fixer où il tombe, où on le fait tomber. Il ne peut pas marcher, aller se fixer où il serait mieux. Christian fleurit et s’étiole dans le jardin du plus fort. Je ne suis pas jalouse…J’attends que mes forces soient faites, d’être assez forte pour l’arracher aux autres jardiniers. (95)

Ce passage démontre plusieurs caractéristiques des relations entre Bérénice, Christian, et leur mère. C’est dans la pensée de Bérénice après qu’elle s’est rendu compte que sa cousine Mingrélie essaie de prendre possession de Christian, qui appartenait auparavant à sa mère. Mingrélie réussit, à moitié. Même si Christian rit quand Mingrélie se moque de sa mère, dans la présence de la mère, pendant la nuit Christian entre dans la chambre de sa mère et lui demande pardon. Bérénice compare Christian à une plante. Elle admet le fait que son frère ne soit qu’un rejeton, après tout. Plus tard dans le livre, elle essaie plusieurs fois avec toutes ses forces d’arracher cette plante qui est son frère, sans succès. En fin de compte, ils restent seuls : Bérénice ne pouvait pas l’avaler.

Est-ce qu’il y a de la québécité dans cette œuvre ? Je pense qu’on peut constater plusieurs similarités entre la question identitaire au Québec et celle de Bérénice. L’œuvre a été publiée en pleine Révolution tranquille, qui avait commencé à la fin des années cinquante, et a continué au moins jusqu’à la fin des années soixante, une période pendant laquelle le peuple québécois a cherché et formé son propre identité, en révoltant contre les traditions religieuses et sociales qui avaient jusqu’alors dominé leur culture. Seulement quelques années plus tôt, le peuple québécois s’appelait des Canadiens-Français. Un nom est censé représenter une identité, donc puisque leur nom contenait des noms qui appartenaient déjà à d’autres peuples, le peuple québécois était nommé par rapport aux Canadiens, et par rapport aux Français. Le peuple québécois se sentait menacé par les Canadiens-Anglais qui l’entouraient, et ne se considérait comme des Français nord-américains non plus. On peut dire qu’ils avaient peur d’être avalés par les Canadiens-Anglais qui les entouraient. Le Canada voulait (et veut toujours) inclure le Québec, mais il y a beaucoup de Québécois qui ne veulent pas être avalés par le Canada. En dépit des tentatives ostensibles du gouvernement canadien à préserver la langue française, en déclarant par exemple qu’il y a deux langues nationales, à peu près tous les Québécois avec qui j’ai discuté de l’état de la langue française au Québec croiraient qu’elle était en train d’être remplacée par l’anglais. Un homme a même insisté que la langue française n’existera point au Québec dans dix ans (et plus d’allemand en Allemagne !). Cependant, Ducharme n’a jamais donné son support à l’indépendance québécoise, ni pour aucune cause politique. Dans L’hiver de force, il s’est moqué du Parti Québécois. Le narrateur se fiche férocement de Roger, un journaliste qui s’occupe de travailler pour l’indépendance québécoise.

Ça ne connaît rien. Ça passe son temps à seriner que ça lutte contre la misère de l’homme québécois puis ça agit comme si la quhébétude (oui oui, c’est bien comme ça qu’ils appellent ça) était leur club select, le salon précieux de Madame Bufferine. (L’hiver de force, 68, il y a un peu de joual)

Il serait donc simpliste de dire que Bérénice est censée être une allégorie pour le Québec. Elle révolte, mais sa révolte est personnelle à l’extrême pointe. Elle est seule et elle veut rester ainsi. Les autres gens envahissent et embrouillent ses pensées. Sa révolte n’a rien à voir avec une révolte collective d’un peuple.

Se battre pour une patrie, c’est se battre pour un berceau et un cercueil, c’est ridicule et faux, ça sent l’excuse pourrie. Le seul combat logique est un combat contre tous. C’est mon combat. (L’Avalée des avalés, 330)

Il y a cependant d’autres liens possibles avec l’histoire québécoise dans le roman. L’église catholique avait une mainmise sur le Canada français jusqu’aux années soixante. Les auteurs qui ont critiqué l’institution de l’église ou la hiérarchie du gouvernement canadien-français (qui était toujours conservateur) ont été censurés. Il était impossible de publier un livre qui aurait questionné les valeurs traditionnelles de la culture canadien-français.

Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed, dans son article The Double, Its Double and the Multiple : The Carnivalesque Hero in the Québécois Novel, constate le suivant, qui concerne la littérature québécoise pendant la Révolution tranquille.

Les romans de la Révolution tranquille complètent la carnavalisation du héros. La hiérarchie traditionnelle est complètement renversée, les membres de l’élite sociale étant relégués aux rôles superflus. Ils apparaissent comme un groupe sans le privilège des monologues ; ils sont alliés à l’univers des animaux et ils représentent un espace de morale dévalorisé. Des enfants, des fous, des personnages insociables, les pauvres, toutes sortes de figures marginales, « les rois du rire du Carnaval » sont devenus les nouveaux héros.[2] (Hajdukowski-Ahmed, 144, ma traduction)

De cette manière, L’Avalée des avalés appartient à la littérature québécoise de cette période. Bérénice, une enfant, est le héros du roman, tandis que son père, qui représente la tradition religieuse, est ridiculisé. C’est l’envers, la carnavalisation de la formule traditionnelle qui met les élites aux premiers rangs, et marginalise les gens qui n’appartiennent pas à ce groupe.

Cependant, je pense qu’il y a une dimension internationale dans ce livre. La mère de Bérénice est polonaise, et son père est juif. Ils avaient déménagé au Québec après la seconde guerre mondiale. Ils habitent une île, et sont donc détachés de la société québécoise. Il y a des Québécois dans l’histoire, mais ils ne jouent pas des rôles centraux. Une autre fois, je pense qu’on simplifie si on réduit l’œuvre à sa québécité.

De toute façon, c’est une œuvre qui semble pulser avec du sang. Des torrents de mots sont violemment jetés vers le lecteur. Bérénice dit des choses qu’on ne veut pas qu’elle dise. Elle fait des choses qu’on ne veut pas qu’elle fasse. Mais elle est le héros du livre, et reste un personnage lancinant aussi bien qu’intrigant.

Bibliographie.

Ducharme, Réjean. L’avalée des avalés. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Ducharme, Réjean. L’hiver de Force. Paris: Gallimard, 1973. 68.

Hajdukowski-Ahmed, Maroussia. “The Double, Its Double and the Multiple : The Carnivalesque Hero in the Québécois Novel.” Yale French Studies 65 (1983): 144. 16 Oct. 2005 .

Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka. San Francisco: Rinehart P, 1950. 376-384.

“Rejeton.” Déf. 1. Le Petit Robert. 2004.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. La Nausée. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. 182.

Seyfrid-Bommertz, Brigitte. La rhétorique des passions dans les romans d’enfance de Réjean Ducharme. Saint-Nicolas: Les Presses de l’université Laval, 1999. 156.

[1] Toutes les citations qui ne sont pas autrement marquées sont de L’Avalée des avalés.

[2] Hajdukowski-Ahmed, 144. Le passage original est ceci :
The novels of the Quiet Revolution complete the carnivalization of the hero. The traditional hierarchy is totally overthrown, members of the social elite being relegated to roles of mere supernumeraries. They appear as a group without the privilege of monologues; they are allied to a zoomorphic universe and they represent a devalorized moral space. Children, madmen, unsociable characters, the poor, all kinds of marginal figures, the “kings for laughter’s sake of the Carnival,” have become the new heros.

The Birth of Kafkan Prose

The Birth of Kafkan Prose: The Judgment
Daniel Richter

On the night between the 22 and the 23 of September 1912, Franz Kafka sat at his desk for eight hours, recording a deluge of words springing forth from what he would later call a “complete opening out of the body and soul.”[1] Kafka’s first successful literary creation, entitled The Judgement, was produced that night. In this paper, I will investigate exegetic possibilities for the triangular relationship of power which exists between Georg, his father, and his friend in Russia. Much has been written about this relationship, and I will examine ideas which I have gleaned from critical literature, as well as put forward some of my own. This relationship has intriguing links to Kafka’s relationship with his own father and with himself. After some preliminary remarks about the narrative style, the method used will be to pull out small parts from the text and examine their relationship to the text as a whole, to Kafka the man, how this specific part of the text has been interpreted by critics in the past, and relationships with other texts by Kafka.

If one were to read the story for the first time starting from the middle, one would probably not be able to predict the tone of the first half of the story, which apart from several small clues, seems to paint a hopeful enough picture for the protagonist Georg’s future. It is in the second half of the story where Kafka departs from the path where one would predict the story to go and embarks into the dark oneiric dimension of what critics call the Kafkaesque. It is Georg’s entering his father’s room which triggers the second phase of the story. Heinz Politzer goes so far as to say “The way to his father’s room leads Georg into the interior of his house as well as of his own mind.”[2] One could see a similarity in the narrative structure of Description of a struggle, where the story seems conventional enough until the character falls and hurts his knee, from which moment the story takes on almost surreal qualities.

Like most of Kafka’s other work, the narration of The Judgment is in the third person. Kafka seems to have appreciated the third person narrative point of view because it gave him the ability to hover just outside his main character’s consciousness, telling the story in the chronological order of the experience of the character, switching off between descriptions of the environment, usually the objects as they appear in the consciousness of the protagonist, comments about the thoughts of the protagonist regarding their environment and situation, and dialogue.

It was a Sunday morning in the very height of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young merchant, was sitting in his own room on the first floor of one of a long row of small, ramshackle houses stretching beside the river which were scarcely distinguishable from each other in height and coloring. (77)[3]

Thus begins Kafka’s breakthrough. The story begins at the very height of spring, and at what seems at this point to be the height of Georg’s life. Spring is the season associated with creation and procreation, youth, the triumph of hope over despair and life over death. Georg is soon to be married, and has a promising future in the business world to look forward to. This apparent success has come about because Georg has proven to be an adept businessman. With his accomplishments, he has not only won himself a marriage with a girl “from a well-to-do family,” but he has catapulted himself from the dependant son to the head of the household and family business. Kafka stresses that Georg is not just sitting in his room, but in his own room. He has become part of property-owning bourgeois society. His goals in life seem to be perfectly consistent with the bourgeois ideal of what a successful life entails.

The second sentence gives the first hint that Kafka may be a bit skeptical about the itinerary of Georg’s life. Georg is living in one of a long row of small, ramshackle houses…which were scarcely distinguishable from each other in height and coloring. The society Georg is planning on becoming a part of apparently does not prize the unique or the exception over the general. Georg is planning on living a life of conformity, and his neighborhood of replicating houses is a kind of prolepsis because it suggests that the author may not share Georg’s uninhibited enthusiasm for the future he has chosen. It is doubtful that Georg gave much thought to the fact that his house looked exactly like the other houses in his vicinity, and the metaphorical implications of living in such a neighborhood.

The Judgment makes for a somewhat disturbing first reading, especially because of the fact that it seems to approach the autobiographical. When the story begins we learn that Georg is engaged to be married to a girl named Frieda Brandenfeld. Franz had met Felice Bauer a little over a month before he wrote The Judgment, and Georg’s bride-to-be shares her initials. And as if to clear away any ambiguity that still remained, he dedicated the story to Felice Bauer.

Kafka was tormented by the choice he had to make between getting married and having a family on the one hand and remaining a bachelor and writing on the other. He knew he had to make a choice between procreation or natural creation of human beings and literary creation. He was haunted by the feeling “that if I had ever been happy apart from writing and all that went with it, it was precisely then that I was incapable of writing.”[4] Family responsibilities would have made it impossible for him to become Kafka the writer.

In his “Letter to his father,” Kafka described himself thus: “I, to put it in a very much abbreviated form, a Löwy with a certain Kafka component, which, however, is not set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business, and conquest, but by a Löwyish spur that impels more secretly, more diffidently, and in another direction, and which often fails to work entirely.”[5] His relatives on his mother’s side (the Löwys) were better educated, more cultured, and more intellectual than Kafka’s father’s side of the family. Kafka identifies two “components” to his identity. It is significant that Kafka wrote the letter in 1919, seven years after the writing of The Judgment. He stresses in the above quote that the more secretive and diffident part of himself was the dominant part of his personality. He had by that point come to grips with the fact that he was more a Löwy than a Kafka. In 1912, he was perhaps still torn between the two sides of himself; it still was not clear which side would win out over the other regarding a major choice he was going to make.

However, Kafka spoke reverently of married life; the sword of bachelorhood was indeed double-edged. He was able to write because of the solitude it presented him; however, he was frightened by the prospects of growing old as a bachelor. In a fragment he wrote entitled Bachelor’s Ill Luck, the narrator muses thusly:

It seems so dreadful to stay a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one’s dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in company,…never to run up a stairway beside one’s wife,…having to carry one’s supper home in one’s hand…(Kafka, 395)

He longed for a wife, and spoke of marriage as “the proper fulfillment for a man.”[6] Family life certainly contained within it a possibility of fulfillment and perhaps even long-sought happiness. By forming a family, Kafka would become a link in the generational cycle of humanity. He would carry on his father’s name, and contribute to human civilization in a practical way. As we shall see, the ambivalence Kafka felt toward this choice plays a central role in The Judgment.

Another reference to Kafka’s life is the role the father plays in the story. ““My father is still a giant of a man,” said Georg to himself”(81), when his father stands up to greet him. As a child, Franz was terrified of his enormous father. In Kafka’s “Letter to his father,” he refers to him as “a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice…” Kafka, who lived with his parents well into adulthood, was constantly confronted by his father’s enormity and his intimidating personality.

In The Judgment, after completing a letter to be sent to his friend, Georg enters his father’s room to inform him of his decision to send the letter. As soon as he enters the room the darkness the father has been living in gives him a disagreeable sensation.

“It’s unbearably dark here,” he said aloud. “Yes, it’s dark enough,” answered the father. “And you’ve shut the window, too?” “I prefer it like that.” (81)

Georg, who is associated with the spring weather, clashes with the father’s insistence on living in darkness and with the window closed. Georg seems to be in harmony with the Eros part of his psyche, whereas the father would be associated with Thanatos, since he seems to be trying to perpetuate the winter weather in his room, which is the season of cold, darkness, and death. Later on in the story, the father will confirm himself in his role as Thanatos.

Georg apparently associates his father with his friend, and the father does in fact share many characteristics with the friend. Both he and the friend crave darkness and solitude. The death of Georg’s mother means his father has regained his bachelor status, which links him to the friend who is “resigning himself to becoming a permanent bachelor.”(77) In the letters that Georg writes to his friend and in his conversations with Frieda, he seems to be at least unconsciously afraid that his friend will come between himself and his fiancée if he attends their wedding. This is true in his three letters in which he mentions as an aside an ‘unimportant’ marriage, as well as in his final letter in which he admits that he is getting married to Frieda, but still gives his friend every opportunity to excuse himself from coming to the wedding. Kafka had something to say regarding this association: “The friend is the link between father and son, he is their strongest common bond…”[7] And again: “The story is perhaps an inspection tour around father and son, and the changing figure of the friend is perhaps the perspectivistic change in the relations between father and son.”[8]

What is the meaning of the link between Georg and his friend, who, John J. White points out, do not only “correspond” by exchanging letters?[9] They seem to correspond to each other antithetically. Everything we learn about the friend is the negative of an attribute of Georg: he is absent while Georg is present, he is nameless while Georg is “Georg”, he is resigning himself to permanent bachelorhood while Georg is soon to be married, he is unsuccessful while Georg’s career is taking off, and he is unhealthy while Georg seems to be (at least physically) in perfectly good health.[10]

Several critics, including Kate Flores, Ronald Gray, and Walter Sokel, see Georg and the friend to be representations of two parts of Kafka’s personality. These two parts could correspond to the two components Kafka described of his identity in his “Letter to his father,” discussed above. Ronald Gray quotes Kate Flores as identifying Georg with the “outer” Kafka, “a normal enough young man, affable and debonair, suave, self-contained, decisive, the favored son of a well-to-do merchant,” and the friend as the “inner” Kafka, “a reserved, silent, unsocial, dissatisfied person.”[11] If this is true, as Gray points out, several non sequiturs in the text are given meaning and begin to make sense within the chain of events of the plot.

Georg’s “soliloquy” [on whether to write to his friend or not] is Kafka’s inner debate regarding which path to take with his life. “Alone—do you know what that means?” Kate Flores points out that Georg is evidently a man who is sensitive to what being alone entails.[12] By getting married, he will flee from solitude and in a way flee from himself, in the opposite direction of the flight of his friend, which was away from family, friends, and society: “He was thinking about his friend, who had actually run away to Russia some years before, being dissatisfied with his prospects at home.” (77)

[Frieda speaking] “Since your friends are like that, Georg, you shouldn’t ever have got engaged at all.” “Well, we’re both to blame for that; but I wouldn’t have it any other way now. And when, breathing quickly under his kisses, she still brought out: “All the same, I do feel upset.” (80)

Frieda’s mysterious comment becomes charged with meaning for Kafka the man. If Kafka has a side of him that craves solitude, books, quiet reflection and writing, then it would indeed be a terrible idea to get married. But instead of recognizing this, Georg tries to smother the problem with kisses. Perhaps if he does not directly confront the problem, but simply expresses his sexual desire—which is his main motivation for getting married, if his father’s accusations are to be taken seriously—the problem will disappear!

Walter Sokel compares Georg’s feeble attempts to deal with the problem of his friend with Sartre’s concept of bad faith. Sartre gives the example of a young woman on a first date:

The goal of the man, as is the case with most romantic encounters, is sexual. The woman chooses to ignore this as the man compliments her physical appearance. She mentally delays the inevitable decision. At some point in the evening she will either go to the man’s apartment and engage in sexual activity or go back to her home leaving the man sexually unsatisfied. Even as the man takes the woman’s hand, an obvious symbol of things to come, the woman chooses to deny the underlying significance. She refuses either to return the gesture or to revoke it, by letting her hand rest limply in his. She considers her hand just a thing in the world, and does not acknowledge the implication of her hand resting in his.[13]

Throughout the text, Georg is denying the underlying significance of things, in some ways like the woman in Sartre’s example. Instead of making a choice as a free human being and either cutting off the friendship or embracing it by honestly telling his friend about his life, Georg tries to do neither. Like the woman who lets her hand dangle without making the choice of either grasping the man’s hand or pushing it away, Georg tries to take a middle path by writing to his friend about the marriage of “an unimportant man to an equally unimportant girl.” Georg has been delaying his inevitable decision of what to do about his friend. This delay is a kind of betrayal of the friend.

Sokel calls the mention of the “unimportant” couple a Freudian slip:

Georg’s behavior toward the friend resembles the quasi-ludicrous character of Freudian “slips” or accidents. Georg cannot bring himself to tell the friend of his engagement. He conceals the fact from the friend, thus acting like the repressive Freudian “censor.” Yet he cannot help writing to him three times in a row about the “engagement of an unimportant girl” until the friend, made curious by this “slip,” begins to show interest.[14]

This is one of the rare places in Sokel’s essay where I take issue. The fact that Georg wrote three letters with the comment about the couple shows that he made a conscious choice to bend the truth, whereas Freudian slips are not consciously intentional, and usually reveal the truth in an embarrassingly accurate manner. Sokel seems to be forcing a Freudian concept onto the text.

I found White to have a more convincing interpretation of the letters. He points out that the friend is living in St. Petersburg.[15] Names are often clues or hints for interpreters of Kafka’s texts, and Peter was the apostle who betrayed Jesus three times by denying his association with him. One of the father’s accusations is that Georg has tried to betray his friend by writing his “lying little letters.” If we continue using Georg and his friend as two diametrically opposed parts of Kafka, we could infer that Kafka felt he would be betraying a part of himself if he married Felice Bauer, and the betrayal takes on the gravity of Peter’s betrayal of the Christian savior.

However, Sokel does bring Freud to bear on the text in more legitimate ways. Freud wrote Totem and Taboo at about the same time as Kafka wrote The Judgment, and Kafka had Freud in mind as he was writing the text. We can fit the roles Georg and the friend play into the Freudian framework of the Primal Horde. Georg would represent one of the sons who rebel against the father and attempt to take his place in his pursuit of sexual fulfillment. The friend on the other hand would be the wifeless son whom the father drives away into the wilderness.[16] This would work well with the friend’s having “run away” (77) to Russia, which suggests a fleeing.

Another of the many interesting parts of Sokel’s essay is where he points out that The Judgment was not the first time that the two parts of Kafka’s self played roles in his literary creations. Sokel sees The Judgment as a continuation of Description of a Struggle.

In the frame story of [Description of a Struggle], an engaged young man comes to grief under the influence of a bachelor. In the inner story, the Fat Man is separated from the girl he dates by the appearance of a weird, solitary figure, the Praying Man. He comes under the latter’s spell and is subsequently drowned—a striking anticipation of Georg Bendemann’s fate.[17]

This fate is yet to be discussed in this essay. However we can see the resemblance between on the one hand the bachelor narrator of Description, who has the power to create and distort reality in a similar fashion to an artist at work on his canvas or a writer at work on a story, and Kafka the writer, and on the other hand the socialite who spends his time at the social gathering flirting with girls (instead of sitting alone at a table like someone resigned to remaining a permanent bachelor), and Kafka the man who longs to get married.

Upon first reading this text, the ending seems to be illogical, unnecessarily harsh, and morbid to boot. The father condemns Georg to death by drowning because he has betrayed his mother by becoming engaged, trying to “cover up” his father while taking the business over from him, and sending his friend letters full of manipulations of the truth. However, upon a close inspection of the words used by the father, one can look at the story in a different light.

“But your friend hasn’t been betrayed after all!” cried his father, emphasizing the point with stabs of his forefinger. “I’ve been representing him here on the spot.” (86)

In the translation that Heinz Politzer quotes, the last comment made by the father in this citation is actually “I have been his representative here on the spot!” The German word Kafka used in the original text was Vertreter, which means “traveling salesman” along with representative. The use of this word suggests that the father is actually the subordinate of the friend in Russia. This has implications for the interpretation of the text. The fact that the father claims to be the “representative” of the friend suggests that the hierarchy of power which was previously taken to be centered around the father may actually be centered around the friend. The judgment could be seen as having been made by the father on behalf of the friend, and the bachelorhood that Georg has betrayed by becoming engaged.[18] While after a superficial reading one may harbor some revulsion at what seems to be an unfair condemnation of Georg by his father, if one reads the story metaphorically, the text becomes a coup d’état on behalf of Kafka the writer. Kafka must “stamp out” (another connotation suggested by Vertreter) the part of him who wishes to engage with life if he is to become a writer. Therefore, we have the impulse that drove Kafka to have the father condemn Georg to death to thank for the fact that we are reading The Judgment.

Georg, being a practical man who is oblivious to the underlying truths that hide behind what people say to him, only comes close to the truth about his friend once:

“he [the friend] knows everything a thousand times better!” [his father] cried. “Ten thousand times!” said Georg, to make fun of his father, but in his very mouth the words turned into deadly earnest.” (87)

In this case, Georg does seem to have uttered a kind of Freudian slip. He meant to make a sarcastic remark to his father, but after he makes the remark he realizes that what he has said actually contains within it a profound truth. Unconsciously Georg apparently credits the friend with extraordinary knowledge of his life and its motivations.[19] This flies in the face of the impression the reader had of the friend after Georg’s musings about how to censor the truth in order not to offend the friend. If the friend is supposed to represent Kafka the writer, this could also be seen as a kind of extra-textual reference, since Kafka did indeed know all about Georg’s life, psyche, and motivations!

Another extra-textual node between the friend and Kafka the writer can be found in the friend’s letter to Georg following the death of Georg’s mother. The friend “had expressed his sympathy in a letter phrased so dryly that the grief caused by such an event, one had to conclude, could not be realized in a distant country.” (78) In Kafka’s stories, many terrible things happen to characters, including loss of one’s job, bodily transformations, and one of the most perversely intricate executions in the history of literature. However Kafka never conveyed sympathy for the plight of his characters in the texts themselves. He wrote as if he were emotionally detached from the woes of his creations, and writing letters while remaining in a faraway land could be an allegory for his style of writing. He may have been introduced to this style in his readings of Flaubert, who, in one of his letters to Louise Colet, wrote “Buffon’s saying is blasphemy, but it has been contradicted too often; modern literature will bear witness to that. Control your emotional enthusiasms…Fever saps the mind, and there is no strength in anger; it is just a giant that trembles at the knees, and does more harm to himself than to others.” Buffon’s “blasphemous” remark came from his Discours sur le style, where he claimed that emotion was an integral part of one’s literary style.

Kate Flores points to another source of Kafka’s abilities to remain detached from the stories he was writing.

“[Kafka’s prose was cultivated] evidently, in writing accident reports for his insurance office, in which he would describe the most awful mishaps as ordinary matters of course, in faceless tones devoid of any trace of sympathy for the unfortunate victims. Yet the lean narrative related in this detached, seemingly casual style is obviously only the tip of a huge hidden iceberg of which one is aware the more keenly because of the care with which all mention of it is avoided.”[20]

One is aware the more keenly, that is, unless one is Georg Bendemann, who decides that his friend lacks sympathy because he did not allow sentimentality to gush forth in his letter.

Unless Kafka was feigning naïveté, it does not seem as though he himself even understood the full implications of his story, given that he asked Felice how she interpreted the story. Stanley Corngold quotes Adorno as saying about The Judgment, “Each sentence of Kafka’s says ‘interpret me…’…He demands a desperate effort of the allegedly ‘disinterested’ observer of an earlier time, overwhelms him, suggesting that far more than his intellectual equilibrium depends on whether he truly understands; life and death are at stake.”[21] Corngold claims that the text begs for interpretation. Based on the number of interpretations that have been put forward by critics on such a small text, and one that moreover stands in the shadow of The Metamorphosis, which was written soon after, I would concur with Corngold that there is something about this text which inspires the reader to interpret it. If one takes the text at face value, one risks falling in the same pitfall as Claude-Edmonde Magny, who had to resort to declaring the father insane in order to preserve the story’s realism[22]. This is a decidedly unsatisfying interpretation, and an underestimation of Kafka’s abilities as a writer. Ronald Gray said it best when he pointed out that “the story is a cryptic account of the gaining of self-knowledge by Kafka through a waking dream.”[23] All of Kafka’s best work is exactly that—cryptic, and it is that cryptic quality that gives his texts their ability to “demand interpretation.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Corngold, Stanley. “The Hermeneutic of “The Judgment”" The Problem of “The Judgment” Ed. Angel Flores. New York: Gordian P, 1977. 39-61.

Flores, Angel, ed. 1946. The Kafka Problem (New York: New Directions).

Flores, Kate. “The Pathos of Fatherhood.” The Problem of “The Judgment” Ed. Angel Flores. New York: Gordian P, 1977. 168-192.

Gray, Ronald. “Through Dream to Self-Awareness.” The Problem of “The Judgment” Ed. Angel Flores. New York: Gordian P, 1977. 63-72.

Kafka, Franz. “Franz Kafka’s Letter to His Father.” Franz Kafka Home Page. Trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins. Copyright Schocken Books Inc. 28 Apr. 2006 .

Kafka, Franz. “The Judgment.” Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken Books, 1995. 77-88.

Politzer, Heinz. Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox. London: Cornell UP, 1966. 48-65.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Essays in Existentialism. Cidatel Press,1993.160-164

Sokel, Walter H. The Myth of Power and the Self. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2002. 9-34, 181-215.

White, John J. “Georg Bendemann’s Friend in Russia: Symbolic Correspondences.” The Problem of “The Judgment” Ed. Angel Flores. New York: Gordian P, 1977. 97-113.

[1] Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories. Page 468. Quoted from Kafka’s Diaries, September 23, 1912.
[2] Politzer, 1966. Page 54.
[3] All unlabelled citations are from The Judgment, from Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories, 1995.
[4] Politzer, 1966. Page 54.
[5] Kafka, Letter to his Father.
[6] Gray, 1977. Page 63.
[7] Quoted from Politzer, 1966. Page 62.
[8] Quoted from Sokel, 2002. Page 182.
[9] White, 1977. Page 99.
[10] Politzer, 1966. Page 55.
[11] Gray, 1977. Page 67.
[12] Flores, 1977. Page 168.
[13] Quoted from Wikipedia, from Sartre’s Essays in Existentialism, Cidatel Press. 1993, p. 160-164
[14] Sokel, 2002. Page 189.
[15] White, 1977. Page 110.
[16] Sokel, 2002. Page 185.
[17] Ibid. Page 181.
[18] Politzer, 1966. Page 58.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Flores, Kate, 1977. Page 169.
[21] “Notes on Kafka,” in Theodor Adorno’s Prisms. London: Spearman, 1967, 246. Quoted from Corngold’s The Hermeneutic of “The Judgment”.
[22] Cited by Sokel in Perspectives and Truth in “The Judgment.” Flores, 1946, The Kafka Problem 85-106.
[23] Gray, 1977.

Kafkan Kronos

Chronos hides behind the Maya of many of Kafka’s texts. For example, we’ll take The Judgement. In this text time can be the helper or the destroyer. The story begins at the most brilliant time of the year, the “very height of spring,” a parallel with the protagonist Georg’s position in life. The profits of his business are growing exponentially, and he is soon to be married to “a girl from a well-to-do family.” The spring weather suggests that Chronos is working for him at this point in the story. The narrator mentions that profits have taken off since Georg has taken over the business from his father, who seems to have grown senile. The father’s room is dark, and he keeps his windows shut to keep out the vernal weather, which he is at odds with. The springtime of his life is over, and he is approaching the winter of his life. Chronos has in fact rendered him helpless and pitiful–Georg must help him dress and undress, and carry him around his room when he needs to move. While Georg carries his father to his bed, his father starts playing with Georg’s watch, grabs onto it, and holds onto it so tightly it is hard for Georg to lay him down in his bed. This toying with his watch gives Georg “a dreadful feeling.” The watch belongs to Georg just as time now belongs to Georg. His father resents his son becuase time is now Georg’s. Georg is placing his father in bed just as time will soon place him in the grave. His father rebels against time at the last moment, and there is a reversal of roles. He condemns Georg to death by drowning, a punishment that Georg faithfully carries out by throwing himself into a river: “At this moment an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge.” “Unending” suggests an infinitely large amount of time, and is condensed into an infinitely small amount of time, a “moment.” Georg hurls himself into death, where time ceases to have meaning, and a moment can contain the infinite.

Ante oculos ponite hanc imaginem emblemae

Look at this mosaic.
Seeing entails light bouncing off the object and piercing your pupils, producing a pattern which, assuming you wish to lead a practical life, you must take to be the object itself.
You have never really seen.
But there is another sort of seeing.
Your open oculi oggling said olden opus, an Italian, who finished it on a day which has become like all other days obliterated by Chronos, whispers the following to you:
“Ecco due uomini.”
You see one man is carrying a basket on his back, and another climbing a ladder which is placed precariously against an olive tree.
The man on the ladder is reaching up to a branch with his right arm, and looking back over his shoulder, gazing at the other man, just as you were a moment ago, just as you are now.
Perhaps he is admiring the weather.
“Senti il vento fresco!”
Or he could be cursing it.
“Porca Madonna!”
Admiring or cursing the weather is one of humanity’s oldest pastimes.
But Romanticism is as dead as God, and the grotesque banality of quotidian affairs no longer makes good copy.
Proposition:
The tiles of a mosaic are to the mosaic what the words of a work of literature are to the work, which is what a receiving consciousness and the five senses are to who a person perceives themself to be.
Elaboration:
A solitary tile is meaningless, but among other tiles, can create an image.
A solitary word is meaningless, but among other words, can create an image that talks.
A solitary consciousness is meaningless, but taken together with the five senses, can create an image that talks about perceiving itself.
Counter-argument:
While regarding a mosaic one can take in the image in one quick glance.
While reading, one must plod along like a husbandman in some bucolic medieval mosaic, cultivating, sowing, harvesting, and storing away.
Chronos is more involved, in other words, and we all know what he does with his children.
The attempt to perceive one’s self is akin to attempting to reach the center of a perfect shell which infinitely winds and recedes.
The windings are curling out of a point so infinitesimally small as to become a void.
Additional consideration:
How can an entity follow a spiral which leads to its own self?