Kafka Explained
FRANZ KAFKA is an example of an author who evolved an unusual method of his own ; who stuck to it for the excellent reason that no other was possible to him, and who now commands a degree of attention from many people which they might never accord to any Writer whose form and method were more conventional. To the critic the problem is to disentangle what is of abiding value in Kafka's work from its mere fashionable-literary-crossword-puzzle interest. Kafka was a neurotic, and 'neurotics have a peculiar fascination for many people who are disappointed by their own relatively dull normality. But Kafka was also an artist, and the fact that it is great fun to try to see what he was getting at tells us nothing about his artistic stature. Some light is thrown on this critical problem by the simultaneous publication of Franz Kafka : An Interpretation of His Works, by Herbert Tauber, and of Volume I of Kafka's diaries, edited by Max Bred.
The basis of Kafka's method was the use of the type of symbolism which has been made familiar by the development of psycho- analysis. Indeed, page after page of Kafka might be a typical patient's record of his dreams. Mr. Tauber plays the part of the analyst, and interprets those symbols for us. Further, he attempts to weld the whole together into a coherent theory of Kafka's ideas and (in a broad sense) intentions—of his efforts to "express some facts about Man, about the World, about Fate." That the book is not very satisfactory is only partly the fault of the author. The essence of an interpretation is that it should be dear, and Mr. Tauber's exact meaning, in translation at least, is not always easy to follow. Indeed, there are moments when Kafka seems less esoteric than his interpreter. Even on the vital question of the level of consciousness from which Kafka's symbolism springs—of whether he himself was fully conscious of the meaning of his symbols—I am still not sure of Mr. Tauber's opinion.
But there is a greater difficulty which is nothing to do with Mr. Tauber, but is innate in Kafka's methods. . Symbolism is always capable of various interpretations. The psycho-analyst who inter- prets and uses a patient's dreams does so on the basis of an intimate personal knowledge of the patient revealed during analysis. He would certainly not consider himself able to interpret them as things apart. Thus the most that we can say of many of Mr. Tauber's interpretations is that they may be accurate, but that they equally well may not. - For example, Mr. Tauber's view of the significance of Captain Lanz, "the man next door" in The Trial, is completely different from the perfectly reasonable and probable one which struck me when I first read the book. I am sure that Mr. Tauber has studied Kafka a great deal more carefully than I have, but there is very little to suggest that his interpretation is more accurate than mine, or indeed than half a dozen other obvious possibilities. In short, Mr. Tauber's detailed interpretations, and hence his general view of Kafka, are bound to be built up on a series of inter- related assumptions, hardly one of which is beyond reasonable dispute.
In this difficulty we naturally turn to the diaries, as the nearest approach most of us can have to the necessary knowledge of Kafka's private life and personality. Apart from the disputable details of interpretation, does the general impression that emerges support Mr. Tauber's view that Kafka's mind, though in some ways un- balanced, was a mind capable of wrestling with the ultimate problems of existence ; and in so far as it failed to solve •them, failing magnificently in pursuit of the impossible?
This is only the first volume of the diaries, and it carries us merely up to 1913, when Kafka was thirty. At that time neither The Trial nor The Castle had been published or even begun. But with this reservation I must confess that the diaries do not seem to me to give Mr. Tauber much support. They are obviously the writings of a sensitive, introspective neurotic, and they have all the neurotic's ability to turn the small change of personal experience into matters of great import and significance. But to me at least they show little indication of the size of mind (irrespective of its shape or texture) that Mr. Tauber seems to claim for his subject. The entry for May 3rd, 1913—" The terrible uncertainty of my inner existence" —is the neurotic's pathetic, incoherent and all-too-familiar cry. It is about as far as this first volume of the diaries carries us ; and while it has pathos for all, and interest for those who have not heard it too many times before, it is still a long way from the strange but great artist whom Mr. Tauber draws for us.
Criticism is always a presumptuous business and too often a mere expression of a critic's personal limitations. But the claims that have been made for Kafka are enormous, and far exceed what some of us have been able to get from a mere reading of his pub- lished work, fascinating as much of it is. After reading Mr. Tauber and this volume of the diaries, I still feel that the case for Kafka's artistic greatness is unestablished. Perhaps for most of us it must always remain so ; for Kafka's method left so much to the reader that any man, looking into him, is most likely to see a reflection of
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