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The Parabolic Kafka
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10240 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1986 |
5,714 Words |
| Author
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William Kluback
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Among Franz Kafka's parables and paradoxes, we discover meanings that move past one another going in different directions. These are not mutually exclusive meanings but ones that belong to different levels of meaning. There is a communication, but it is not communicable to the one to whom we believe we are communicating. There is a noncommunicating communication. There is a questioning that is not heard as questioning. The questioner questions and the hearer fails to comprehend what he hears. In other words, he hears but does not hear. The vagueness of these remarks bears within it a concreteness, but this latter is realized only if we move from our preliminary observations to parables where the abstractions find literary concreteness. Kafka exemplified a reality that is significant for our study of questioning in his parables. In the parable "My Destination," the master gives orders that his horse be brought from the stable. He says: "The servant did not understand me. I myself went to the stable, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard a bugle call. I asked him what this meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing." The opening descriptions are at first difficult to unveil. The servant does not understand why the master should have saddled his own horse; he hears a bugle call but it is not heard by the servant. Why does the servant not understand, and why has he not heard? Does the servant understand only when the conditions are suitable for his understanding; does he hear only that reality that his conditions have made it possible for him to hear? The master commands only those who are capable of being commanded by him and who hear only because they have been prepared to hear what the others cannot. The master knows that only some can hear those whose hearing has been prepared by his command.
The first remarks lead to the serious question:
"Where are you riding to, master?" "I don't know," I said, "only away from here, away from here. Always away from here, only in doing so can I reach my destination." "And you know your destination?" he asked, "Yes, " I answered, "Didn't I say so? Away-from-Here, that is my destination."
The master knows his destination but it is not like the destination the servant could grasp. This is an Abrahamic destination that demands a vision the ordinary man cannot share. But it is a destiny the master also knows little about. For him the destiny is the command: Away-from-Here. Questions are asked but they do not tie the servant to the master; they reveal a gap that is so radical that what one says has no meaning for the other. The servant has a more immediate problem. He is concerned with the provisions his master should have for the journey.
"You have no provisions with you," he said; "I need none," I said, "the journey is so long that I must die of hunger If I don't get anything on the way. No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey."
The master is speaking about a metaphysical journey that puts aside the needs of our physical one. In that journey we need provisions, and this the servant understood, but he does not comprehend the metaphysical one. His master's activity no longer belongs to those he knows. He is cut off from his master. They speak to one another but they speak in different directions, to unrelated realities. We find this absurd. We call it nihilistic, but we are aware that two realities confront each other, speak to
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