Franz Kafka: The Castle

[DavidZ]

Hi,

It has been a few years since I visited this forum, but I've been busy reading authors such as Kafka, Tacitus, Livy, Nietzsche, Steven Pinker and Matthew Ridley.

Is Titania7 still here?

I submit here a review I just wrote of “The Castle” by Franz Kafka

A Review Of The Castle By Franz Kafka (unfinished)

Brief Biography

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was born in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to German speaking Jewish parents. Kafka's relationship with his father (Hermann) was troubled to say the least. The now published “Letter To My Father” portrays Hermann as a selfish, over-bearing, domineering ogre of a man. Franz Kafka first studied chemistry at university but switched to law after two weeks and ended up working as a clerk at a government insurance office where he gained first hand experience living under a stifling, oppressive bureaucracy that is a major theme of his oeuvre. Kafka contracted tuberculosis in 1917, the condition worsened and after seeking treatment in Kierling, Austria he died apparently from starvation as his condition rendered his throat too painful for him to swallow food and food tube technology had not been invented at that stage nor had antibiotics.

General comments

“The Castle” is a remarkable tale that is just as relevant today as it ever was and reinforces the view that in the game of life the cards are stacked against us. The novel begins with the protagonist known as K. arriving late one cold, snow-bound day at a settlement that resembles a medieval fiefdom and which consists of a central “Castle” inhabited by a secretive society of apathetic and insensitive aristocratic officials and their servants that apparently spend their time administering the affairs of the surrounding village. In this vivid instantiation of a darkly comic, Kafkaesque world K's ostensible goal is to get into the Castle and meet with a senior official known as Klamm. However his dogged attempts to reach his self-imposed goal are continually thwarted and frustrated, the metaphorical device of walking through deep snow used by Kafka is particularly apt.



Kafka paints a haunting picture of a world of uncertainty and ambiguity where there are no firm facts with which to ground oneself with, all knowledge is socially constructed. Throughout the narrative K. is met with distrust, mockery and at times, outright hostility. K is treated like a child by the peasantry because he doesn't have the good sense to accept his lot in life. The illogical assumptions of the village folk which K. meets are based largely on conjecture and an irrational reverence for the authorities residing in the Castle and when K. challenges the prevailing beliefs of the peasantry he is enervated by a futile dialogue which progresses no where. Each new acquaintance K. makes in the village only seems to frustrate him rather than inspire him. The sand continually shifts under K's feet, ultimately nothing can be achieved in such a world, that the novel was never finished only serves to reinforce it. K. is trapped in a social maze ultimately he finds himself back where he started betrayed by the fiancée he initially won and with the same undetermined social status, the only difference being is that he has been rendered utterly exhausted both mentally and emotionally, by his experiences.





I'm think I'm going to go into more detail and write a more comprehensive plot summary because in my view there is real gold in this novel.

[Eric]

Do write a more comprehensive plot summary, DavidZ. I read it years ago in English, even tried to start it in German more recently, but gave that up. I have forgotten a lot of the details of the people that the protagonist meets, and what sort of convoluted and futile situations he gets into. So it'd be nice to be reminded of some of the twists and turns.

[DavidZ]

Do write a more comprehensive plot summary, DavidZ. I read it years ago in English, even tried to start it in German more recently, but gave that up. I have forgotten a lot of the details of the people that the protagonist meets, and what sort of convoluted and futile situations he gets into. So it'd be nice to be reminded of some of the twists and turns.

Thanks for the reply and your interest Eric. I wish I could read German. I'd love to be able to read Nietzsche or Hesse in the original. Here in the antipodes foreign languages aren't really given the attention they deserve in schools.

Why did you give up reading it?

I have started my plot summary and will post some of it soon.

[Eric]

I gave up reading it because I had other things to do. My bookmark tells me that I'd read the first four chapters in German. No negative reason at all for stopping. I'll pick up the thread sometime, because I was just beginning to realise how humorous Kafka can be. Reading it in German was, admittedly, more difficult than the English. The dilemma is that you miss things because your German is imperfect, but you also miss things such as nuances reading an English translation, as the translator cannot always be relied upon 100% of the time.

Plot summary welcome; may spur me on to starting Chapter 5.

[DavidZ]

Yep. Kafka is very funny and meaningful at the same time. You wouldn't think such qualities could go together in a work of literature.

I see here that the Castle has been rated the 9th best German novel of the 20th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Ge...ntieth_Century

Well this is what I have done so far, I hope this refreshes your memory.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with the protagonist known as K. arriving late one cold, snow-bound day at a settlement that resembles a medieval fiefdom and which consists of a central “Castle”. K. makes his way to an inn where he is informed that there are no vacant rooms but he is allowed to sleep in the front bar next to a stove. Not long after K. falls asleep and incident occurs that sets the tone of the relationship between K. and the village community for the rest novel. K. is awakened by the son of a Castle sub-steward by the name of Schwarzer who informs K. that he must have permission to pass the night in the village. K. claims that he is a Land Surveyor that has been engaged by the Count. After a series of telephone calls to the Castle, K's apparent appointment is confirmed, though it appears this telephone confirmation is only a cynical ploy of the Castle and is never officially confirmed in writing. K. is finally left in peace to sleep.


The next day after breakfast K. affirms his individual sovereignty and asserts to the sheepish landlord that he is “not fearful of the Count”. However he later says that he does “have respect for power though he is not always willing to acknowledge it”. K. clearly lacks the reverence for the official that that peasantry have. K. leaves the inn and sets out for the Castle through the seemingly deserted village. Along the way K. has a tense, disconcerting encounter with a teacher who projects a demeanour of dominance, gentleness and disapproval all at the same time. K. becomes tired now feeling the effects of the long journey he has made to get to the village. K. continues along the road towards the Castle but the road is long and indirect. Eventually K's tiredness compels him to ask to take refuge in a random village cottage. K. is let in by an old peasant and after tripping over a washing tub he finds himself in a dimly lit kitchen. From one corner he can hear the sound of children crying loudly, from another steam is welling out further obscuring his vision, in another corner a listless woman suckles an infant, hectoring voice cries out “Who are you?” K. is invited to sit down and soon falls asleep.


On awakening K. is informed by two men that he cannot stay any longer in the cottage and is escorted back outside into the snow, much to the delight of the occupants. K. asks “who do I have to thank for sheltering me?” K. receives the reply that “no thanks” are necessary. The man seemingly is not even willing to acknowledge that any favour was done for K. Presumably the men are acting out of obligation not to K the stranger but in perceived obligation to the Castle. An ailing man called Gerstäcker from the cottage opposite gives K. a ride in a sledge back to the inn, though not out of friendliness but out out a selfish insistence to transport K. away from the vicinity of his house. K mockingly asks Gerstäcker “Are you allowed to drive me around the village in this sledge?” K is more than inclined to dish out his own mockery to those that (have the misfortune to) cross his path.


On arrival at the inn K meets his assistants who apparently know nothing about surveying and do not possess the apparatus that K supposedly had previously gave them. K. points out the obvious contradiction “But if you are my old assistants, then you must know something about surveying” which the assistants ignore thus accommodating K's initial artifice in which he claimed that he had assistants.

[Liam]

Just so we're clear though: a good review does NOT equal a good (= thorough) plot summary; in fact, quite the opposite. I was entirely satisfied with David's initial post about the novel, good job!

Speaking of not being able to read Kafka in the original: there's a new book coming out early next year called Kafka Translated: How Translators have Shaped our Reading of Kafka. Worth taking a look, I think, if you're interested in both the author and the problem of translation.

[Hamlet]

Thanks for the link to that book Liam,

I'd like to approach Kafka again, seriously, I've been putting it off. I'm some way off... I suspect. I'd mainly concentrated on reading Metamorphosis a number of years ago.

However the correct or best copy seems important to me, especially when considering such an abstract writer as Kafka... especially so!

And for most writers I guess.

(A full-bodied review btw, David-)




edit to add-
If I was part of a desert island plane crash I'd probably include the following writers as my "washed-ups" :-
Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, the King James Bible, and Kafka... in that surviving crate half-buried in the sand.


Or perhaps just hope to have somethingwith a title like:-
Wilderness Survival for Beginners, by whomever!

[Eric]

The book that Liam mentions (which I have not yet seen for obvious reasons) seems to be one of those desperate attempts to put literary translation on the map, by fair means or foul. As a literary translator myself, I want our profession to get a better status among all those monolingual intellectuals of the English-speaking world. We should be better respected and get better pay. But name-dropping is not necessarily the right way to go about doing so. Ultimately it's ordinary readers that count. Kafka was a genius and his works should not be used to state the bleedin' obvious, i.e. that he had to be translated to reach that part of the world (most of it) that doesn't speak German.

One big problem with the English-speaking world is that the wrong aspects of translation are becoming trendy, i.e. talking about translation - instead of doing much more. If that figure of 3% is roughly true, the English-speaking world is starved of translations of authors often available in German, French, Spanish and otther smaller languages. People in Britain, the USA, Ireland, etc., are too eager to descfribe translation, while there are still so desperately few translations available in the average bookshop.

[Hamlet]

Absolutely Eric, most of us are monolingual lazyites when it comes to languages on this shore, it was discussed recently on Radio 4 as a serious issue in language teaching dating back to the 70s, and seemed to highlight method/approach as a key issue, and a whole generation of illiterates was the result, at least as far as languages are concerned.

The attitude of "why should I bother and most of the world speaks English now" is still the rule and far too prevalent over here as you will already know.

I've dabbled in Italian, French, German, Spanish and Ancient Greek and Latin, but still consider my efforts pretty pathetic.

[Hamlet]

Oh, I also speak a little English, just not very much, and certainly not very clearly at all!

[Eric]

Hamlet, I think the word "monomoronic" should be invented. You cannot survive intellectually in our modern world of myriads of international contacts if you are so handicapped that you cannot reach out to, for instance, the rest of Europe and do something on their language terms, i.e. speak one of their languages well. Even if you then continue the conversation in English, it is at least a gesture towards other cultures.

What I would do is stop dabbling in five languages and learn one properly. That, by way of the grammatical and vocabulary-gleaning skills will mean that the next one is easier for you. I know all this from experience, because I've dabbled and stopped, and started again, and lost interest, and so on. So there are some languages I only half-know. And that feels frustrating. However, I do know Swedish and Dutch well, so I can cope with most of the grammar, have a large vocabulary, and can handle a conversation in those two languages. But the other languages I know are only for reading really (sometimes for translating, too).

By the way. Although Kafka, the author of the novel here, was a native-speaker of German, he knew enough Yiddish to watch plays staged in it, and also spoke Czech. Most major European authors have had at least a reading knowledge of a few languages, and some could speak pretty fluently in a couple too. Brits are the sad exception. A few British authors that have a second house in France can no doubt give the plumber instructions in French, but I wonder how many British novelists, playwrights and poets can speak languages at what might be termed "Kafka level" and read novels in them with no difficulty at all.

*

DavidZ: how far into the story were you, when you wrote the last Plot Summary?

[Hamlet]

It's a fair point, and regarding "gesture" - completely agree. As to pleasure and satisfaction, even more so as a reason to learn.

I'm pleased that I've looked over a number of languages as it seems to help on some level with appreciation of how languages cope with the same problems, structures, patterns...

[Liam]

You cannot survive intellectually in our modern world of myriads of international contacts

In regards to the US, that's not really true; people either have to learn English in order to deal with us, or fuck off; and since most people can't afford to fuck off, they prefer to learn English. An American businessman sealing a deal in Helsinki with a Finnish company will be speaking English to them, and they will be speaking English to him; there's not even the shadow of a doubt that he, god forbid, should say a word or two in Finnish! Why bother with dumb languages, anyway--there's so MANY of them, .

[Heteronym]

I read The Castle recently, and it's an extraordinary novel. It wasn't the bleakness and sinister bureaucracy that impressed me so much, but the humorous lightness with which Kafka deals with the occult powers thwarting K's attempts to enter the castle, and the absurdist view of reality, with every truth turn into a lie from chapter to chapter, as K's picture of reality constantly changes.

I was also fascinated by the many double images in the novel: the prestigious castle inn vs. the more modest village inn; Brunswick and Barnabas' father, both shoemakers; Frieda and Gardena, both in love with Klamm; the professional Sordini vs. the sordid Sortini; even Barnabas' father's attempt to contact the castle authorities foreshadows K's own failure. Why? I don't know, perhaps just to reinforce the strangeness of the village, but I thought it was an interesting touch.

[Eric]

I think Heteronym has hit the nail on the head, regarding "The Castle".

As for the USA, we only need it in Europe to smite dark empires, but not necessarily to teach us culture. So you keep training all those GIs and special forces bods to kill the enemy, while we in Europe can indulge in Chinese translations of Proust, and other cultural things.

As for Finnish, it is a language that some novelists exploit for effect (Marani). But the real thing is not quite as easy. The Maranis of this world can go on to writing "A New Catalan Grammar", "A New Lëtzebuergesch Grammar", "A New Breton Grammar", and a hundred other trendy novels about languages that the author doesn't quite know.

[Hamlet]

Heteronym's post hs me eager to read The Castle... sooner rather than later, I may have to pick up a collected works of Kafka.

[Liam]

As for the USA, we only need it in Europe to smite dark empires, but not necessarily to teach us culture.

Yeah, would explain why you guys were killing each other left and right and burning people in crematory ovens and making lampshades out of human skin a mere five or six decades ago. And the reverberations of the Balkan conflict are still felt today, with people being put on trial, etc.

Europe is SO cultured, omg, I am breathless.

[Eric]

We Europeans do distinguish between genocide and civilised behaviour. Guantánamo Bay does not represent all the United States of America, nor does some school or shopping mall shooting where a crazy student kills umpteen people. (We've had them over here too in Germany, Finland, Scotland). The Balkans has always been an area of danger, as Bismarck pointed out, not himself a mass murderer or lunatic.

My point about the military might of the USA is that it's a good thing for us to be under its umbrella and that of NATO, but that culture in the narrow sense is not lacking in Europe. We need to keep some people to the east of Central Europe from invading the rest. So we too need the military. But our everyday life is not dominated either by soldiers, uniforms, paranoia, and revanchism as it is east of Poland.

[DavidZ]

DavidZ: how far into the story were you, when you wrote the last Plot Summary?

Hi Eric,

Sorry for the delayed reply, I didn't get notified.

I had read the Muir's translation in its entirety. I had only read up to the place where Kafka met the "assistants" in the Harman translation.

[DavidZ]

I read The Castle recently, and it's an extraordinary novel. It wasn't the bleakness and sinister bureaucracy that impressed me so much, but the humorous lightness with which Kafka deals with the occult powers thwarting K's attempts to enter the castle, and the absurdist view of reality, with every truth turn into a lie from chapter to chapter, as K's picture of reality constantly changes.

Yes, good point. A "normal" person would have succumbed to a mental illness or lost his temper after enduring K's ordeal.

I was also fascinated by the many double images in the novel: the prestigious castle inn vs. the more modest village inn; Brunswick and Barnabas' father, both shoemakers; Frieda and Gardena, both in love with Klamm; the professional Sordini vs. the sordid Sortini; even Barnabas' father's attempt to contact the castle authorities foreshadows K's own failure. Why? I don't know, perhaps just to reinforce the strangeness of the village, but I thought it was an interesting touch.

Yes another adroit observation.