The literary "TRICK". Kafka. Kaj Genell´s book "Kafka" 2021.

 

THE LITERARY WORK.

 

THE TRICK

 

It is a long tradition to deal with literature as if we are dealing with pure description. When we are talking about literary works, it is as if we assume that a literary work – and the fictive universe of a literary work – is composed through the description. This is not always true, or not at all true in many cases.

Among theorists, only some - like, for instance, Umberto Eco - have realized that in literature, in poetry as well as prose, we might be rewarded with greater insight if we stop talking about descriptions and instead concentrate on literary grips, devices, perceivable by a formalist eye, and upon the troublesome fact, that literature most often deals with deception and mischievous TRICKS. ( Dylan Thomas knew this.)

Never has it been more accurate than in Kafka's case to assert that a short story or a novel forms itself by a massive TRICK. Perhaps to Kafka, the TRICK is more important than anything else.

To some people, this structural and formalist notion is not a very welcome insight. It makes it much harder to interpret and evaluate literary work, and for some people, who have an AGENDA, to explain Kafka´s technique out of the effect that their particular interpretation of the works of Kafka leads them. It is much harder to discuss a literary piece's supposed philosophy if this philosophy works inside a literary structural TRICK, much like inside a magician's mirror.

Noting the use of a TRICK in a literary work does not diminish the piece of  art in question. On the contrary:

It takes enormous skill, craft, and talent to seamlessly use a TRICK IN  A LITERARY WORK, SO THAT ALMOST NOBODY CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE USING ONE.

We cannot easily discuss anything that seems to be set in a universe with other dimensions than our familiar universe. Moreover, to the typical person, or the ordinary reader of a literary work, any technical reasoning concerning how a novel is built results in almost totally obscuring the experience of the work and is hugely tiresome. It is, as we have hinted at, even to the expert reader, troublesome. How could we comment explanatorily, fruitfully, on something made out of a HOAX? Still, we have to do this if we want to comment upon Kafka, however uneasy this might make us.

Many an earth-bound comment or existence-philosophical argument will have absolutely no ground to stand upon if it turns out that the discourse in question is a mere literary device and based upon a paradoxical construction outside every tangible human experience of the world.

A question like: ”What is the meaning of the work?” only has got an answer on a meta-level. We need to shatter innocence. If we should subtract meaning, this will have to happen through the mediation of structural reasoning around literary tricks. Furthermore, this WILL also be extremely hard.

A Literary work is not mainly ABOUT some particular thing, but it instead WORKS, functions, in a certain way. To reveal this, we will have to use a formalist method and – in this very case – a Freudo-Structuralist approach since the universe of Kafka is built upon the notion and existence of a Freudian Unconscious.