SECOND READING:
The Trial,
By Franz Kafka
'SOMEONE MUST have been telling
lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was
arrested one fine morning." The opening sentences of Kafka's
surreal, symbolist parable set the scene and the tone for a vividly
developed nightmare about life in an increasingly inhuman modern
society, writes
Eileen Battersby.
It is as terrifying as it is funny, and timeless. Poor Joseph K., a relatively successful bank clerk, is an Everyman at the mercy of cruel logic, the cold logic which dominates an unnervingly calm narrative that is undoubtedly strange as well as obliquely erotic - Joseph K. thinks women can help him.
Written in that flat, deadpan, un-literary German that Kafka uses to such brilliant effect, The Trial, is a fable. It is interesting that although Joseph K. has been arrested he is then free to go to work. Although he is innocent, this does not prevent him feeling guilty. Alienation was one of Kafka's prevailing themes and as a German-speaking Jew in Prague he was born into a minority within a minority. His poor health also set him apart. Yet in addition to his complex personality and multiple insecurities he was also living in a time of great change. In the August of 1914 when he began writing The Trial, the culturally labyrinthine world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing, while Europe was staring at world war. Joseph K. is far less passive than Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis (1912), whose most pressing concern on having been turned into a huge insect, is being unable to get to work. Joseph's initial dilemma is that his landlady's cook has failed to bring his breakfast. Instead of the cook carrying the expected tray, a man wearing a black suit "like a tourist's outfit" walks into Joseph K.'s bedroom. The intruder has a companion. Together they delight in informing our hero of his arrest. They also eat his breakfast.
Kafka ensures that Joseph K. remains outraged and bewildered. On returning to his boarding house after his day's work, Joseph K. feels compelled to inform his fellow lodger, Fräulein Bürstner, that he had earlier been interrogated in her room. They discuss his alleged guilt. Although reluctant to offer an opinion, she says, "Yet as you are still at large - at least I gather from the look of you that you haven't escaped from prison - you couldn't really have committed a serious crime." With the arrival of his uncle, Joseph K. begins a crazy search for good legal advice. Through a hall of distorted mirrors, satirising the law as well as bureaucratic persecution, he stumbles looking for reasons but finds logic. The heir of Dostoyevsky, Kafka understood the essential ordeal of daily existence. Joseph K.'s quest culminates in an encounter in the cathedral with a priest who turns out to be the prison chaplain who reveals the mythic core of the book. The priest also belongs to the court. By the end, Joseph K. knows - logic does win.
Published in 1925, the year following Kafka's death at 41, The Trial had a difficult history on the way to becoming a modern masterpiece. Banned by the Nazis, it was then in turn, disregarded by Communist regimes throughout Europe. Kafka remains a writer's writer - particularly for Beckett, who knew Kafka had grasped the ironies, terrors and ambivalence of being alive.
This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon