Getting Nowhere: Images of Self and The Act of Writing in Kafka's "Der Dorfschullehrer." (original) (raw)
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2017
In recent years, 'writing' has become a keyword in Kafka research. Deconstructivist critics argue that Kafka's primary aim was not the creation of completed works; rather, writing, the continuous transformation of life into Schrift (meaning text or scripture), was for him an aim in itself-and, at the same time, the real and only subject of his texts. 1 Such claims should not remain uncontested. Though writing for Kafka was obviously better than not being able to write, it was definitely no substitute for the production, and indeed the publication, of finished works. Such debates aside, it is clear that Kafka developed a very original and unorthodox way of writing, which in turn had important consequences for the shape of his novels and shorter prose works. This chapter discusses the main features of Kafka's personal version of écriture automatique ('automatic writing'-writing which bypasses conscious control); his techniques for opening a story, continuing the writing flow and closing it; the purpose of his self-corrections; and the consequences that this mode of literary production had for Kafka's novels. Writing in Perfection: 'The Judgement' Kafka was notoriously critical of his own work, but there is one text that even to him appeared faultless: 'Das Urteil' ('The Judgement', 1912). Strangely enough, his main reason for approving of the narration was the way in which it had been written: This story 'The Judgement' I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. .. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing in water. Several times during this night I carried my own weight on my back. How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. .. At two I looked at the clock for the last time. As the maid walked through the anteroom for the first time I wrote the last sentence. .. The conviction verified
The Novelist's Predicament Today
英文学評論, 1970
There may have been times in the past when the serious novelist's proper subject and concern were, in more ways than not, compatible with the commonculture, when his creations could further the creative processes of the society he lived in, but that unfortunately for the serious novelist at least, is not now the case. At his best the novelist today is undermining the concerted efforts of his society. He is the reader's enemy, seeking it often seems to annihilate good with bad indiscriminately. His best work is subversive, and yet it is to the best in his work, the act of sabotage, that his readers must be won. The fact that contact between the serious novelist and the reading-public has broken down so badly in this century seems to me plain evidence that the price in cultural revolution demanded
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