TRANCE AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.

 

i.                 TRANCE AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS.

 

 

TRANCE.

 

K

afka started writing literary prose in his teens. He soon discovered his odd ability and tendency to put himself in a half dormant state, some trance, when writing. Without this ability, it seems unlikely that he could have written something close to what he did. Now, writing in this state of trance seems to connect to some form of ecstasy. Kafka: „My terrible calm takes my fantasy away.“ He thus seems to have used an almost pathological state in creation. If this state or condition was a hypnagogic or a hallucinated one, we do not know. What can be inferred from his biography is that creative periods coincide with periods of insomnia and severe headaches. Headaches did not torture him when he refrained from projects that appeared difficult to him, like, for instance, the completion of a novel. Kafka was well aware of this. It must have been a peculiarity to him and a horror noticing that the headaches had a connection to the large artistic projects. His body strongly revolted against his creations and his literary method! What again was this nightly “trance”? Was it a state of “double consciousness”? He was here, so to say, present in two worlds simultaneously, both awake and asleep, partly enjoying imagination, partly aware and writing, using several senses, in a kind of “stream of unconsciousness”? It also seems he loved to be in this state of mind. As if he was addicted to it.

 

         ”The main enemy of Don Quixote was not 

          his fantasy, but Sancho Panza.” (FK)

 

It was almost like he was using himself as a  ”medium.” Furthermore, FK's stories are about writing itself. These tales - or poems - do not just use writing as a pretext, but writing is displayed, in brilliant disguise, in a discourse of desire, sometimes quite like an erotic act. Kafka thus displays images for this, as in A Country Doctor, where Kafka uses the idea of riding for writing - riding on his pen -and maybe is naming the tales themselves “horses.”

 

HIEBEL.

 

One of the keys to understanding Kafka's writings can be found in the relationship between Kafka and psychoanalysis. Hiebel elaborates interestingly on this subject in his book Franz Kafka, Form und Bedeutung.  He has a lot to say about the presence of elements with traditional psychoanalytic color in several of Kafka´s works. Hiebel asserts that one has to discern those narrations by Kafka, that has a structure very much like that of the dream, in having inherent a kind of mechanic of the hieroglyphic kind like that of the dream, for example, A Country Doctor has, from works like The Trial, where there can be found an abundance of conventional dream elements, which almost seem to emerge from examples from the dream theory of Freud.  It is a good distinction to do, and necessary for further understanding of Kafka´s literary style. That FK did not align to psychoanalytical thinking,  but that he sooner, as a kind of protest, shaped his competitive theory and/or style, is also part of Hiebel´s view here. It seems reasonable. However, Kafka´s theory was not explicit as a theory, but is explicit only in the form of the art it aimed to create. In Kafka, it is not about dreams but about ”simulations of dreams,” Hiebel asserts. This idea seems rather undialectical, though. Hiebel is clarifying his view:

 

  ”/…../ and these again are not meant as dreams, but as realities, which are structured like dreams.”/……………../ ”It is apparent that Kafka well knows of the model of psychoanalysis and to a certain extent is accepting this, but sees it as pure ”modelings”, pictures, images of mind, myths, tales, and he disrupts from it every value of explanation as well as therapeutic value. From his explicit utterances one can understand that Kafka is comfortable in a psychological theory of his own, rejecting contemporary psychoanalysis.  This competing of theories is, however, restricted to his own literary works, in which his own psychology emerges. This comes about, like we have underlined several times, in a conscious manner, which carries the consequence, that psychoanalysis cannot be used as a ”method” on the works of Kafka and on Kafka as a person.”

                                                                         

It is a remarkable conclusion, that Kafka himself couldn´t be viewed through psychoanalysis because he was creating a competing theory!  Hiebel claims that the analyses made by Kaiser and Mecke concerning psychopathological problems in cases of presumed schizoid personality, infantilism, fear of sexuality, fear of homosexuality, etc., with Kafka himself, perceived through his stories, are absurd to undertake. Hibel´s view is that, to understand Kafka´s works, the understanding of the psychoanalytical mythology provides an essential layer within a broad symbolic and mythical interpretation. This seems evident.

 

 

ii.)           THE KAFKAESQUE. A SPLIT UNIVERSE.

 

                                                                  

H

istory has really done a great job: it has created the concept of Kafkaesque! Even “Kafka” might almost be said to have become a concept. It is rare for a writer to be known partly through a concept molded after his or her name. What then, is the meaning of the concept of Kafkaesque? Interestingly enough, a small empirical investigation of the ”Kafkaesque” concept has been undertaken by D. Jakob. He has come up with the following characteristics, which should mark this concept:

 

   ”Anxiety, uncertainty, frustration, “Verfremdung,” exposure to a cruel fate, anonymous in shape, bureaucratically governed power, terror, dreadfulness, gloom, guilt, despair, judgment, meaninglessness,  the resortless, absurdity..”

 

The concept of “Kafkaesque” can never be fully defined since it belongs to the class of concepts of essence or concepts of style. We can only reflect upon these concepts in strict subjectivity and try to make our views probable. In making views liable, it is crucial to reach a certain consensus.

 

Regarding some distinctive points and in determining the “Kafkaesque,” I think that our conception regarding who the hero of Kafka´s works is, is of significant importance. The following has to be agreed upon: the relationship between the hero and the surrounding world is crucial for determining the content of the concept. The nature of this relationship is hard to formalize. However, determining this very relation seems to be the key to this concept. We might come near to a description by finding out what the Hero of a Kafka story appears to be able to execute and the configuration of the world surrounding the hero. The surrounding world is also an agent, a Spirit in disguise. In this, the works of Kafka are similar to those of symbolism but oddly exaggerated.

 

 

“In my dictionary, “Kafkaesque” is defined as a “vision of man’s isolated existence in a dehumanized world,´.” 

                                                                                                        ( Zadie Smith )

from my book "Kafka".

My New Novel!

Kaj Bernh. Genell was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1944, as the second son of a Sea Captain and his wife, a housewife. After an adventurous youth, he became interested in philosophy and, in 1983, published a book exclusively on Irony - “Ironi och existens.” Soon hereafter, Genell, who had a great interest in one of the giants of Modernism, Franz Kafka, wrote a series of papers at the University of Gothenburg related to Kafka. This would later result in “Kafka och det Kafkaeska” (2018), an essay in Swedish on the Literary Technique of Kafka, later also published in English as “Kafka” (2021). As a fiction writer Genell started out with several books in the Swedish language, such as “Pistolen”, “Tavelstölden”, “Tegelkrona och skönheten”, ”Höstdrama” and “Skjuta sig fri”. Under the pseudo “Bill Clactoe,” his first novel in English appeared in 2021,” Fell´s Point,” a small crime story set in Baltimore, USA. With “The Lion´s Disease,” Genell has created a psychological and philosophical comment on pandemics by describing an odyssey to Indonesia on a Bulk Cargo Carrier.

------------------------------

 CHAPTER ONE

 

LONDON  HARBOUR

 

 

“Et si le soleil ne revenait par

demain … N´est-ce pas, ajoute-t-il,

 le plus veille angoisse du Monde ? »

    G. Simenon, Le Roman de l´homme, p.27.

 

 

A

ll this took place only years after the horrendous pandemic, the Covid19, had paralyzed the world. Economy had been slowing down, and the tricky disease made a lot of people face death, sorrow, hunger, as well as homelessness.

 

In November of this year, Rattner & Rattner, the renowned and prosperous London Shipping Agency, had hired me as an officer onboard the Punjab, a Handysize Geared Bulk Carrier. Minutes after being appointed an officer at a visit to the Staff Employment Office, I set out to find my ship from Emmet Street, where the office building was situated. I was on foot, in light rain and some wind in the dusky remains of the Tuesday afternoon, out for the vessel, which was an immense one, lying at anchor outside the Northwest Pier of London Outer Harbor. I had been hired in an extreme hurry due to a mishap on a red London bus on the morning of the ship´s departure; the ordinary 3rd Mate – a man whose name I forgot - unprovoked got busted up by a drunkard, and, because of a broken arm, was brought to the hospital for surgery. The Company was in dire need of a replacement, and with a terse notice, I, who was then 1st Mate on another Carrier - the Swanee - of the same size, but an oil carrier, decided to jump in.

It was a commotion to try to reach the area. My beloved Swanee lay by an anchor in a whole different part of the port. I went by subway and by bus and on my way happened to end up on a small bridge, about a hundred yards tall, in one of the harbor areas, viewing a large portion of the London port from a distance. The harbor rested with thousands and thousands of ships, cranes, sheds, and piers in front of me. Stairs and viaducts, trains and carriages were seen everywhere, and miles of rails in grey and blue nuances, covered by smoky fog, were spotted in all directions. How strange are the cities, man built out in the plane and by the outpour of rivers! But they were part of work, of human endeavor.

Work, this rather primitive agreement between people, is often not entirely rational or logical, but still, the only meaningful agreement, precisely because it since primordial times stays based on reciprocity. This small mutual agreement is quite fundamental. There was since the earliest epochs no other decency to be found in the world of humans anywhere in the world than in the simple agreement of work. Some say that slavery was born the day after work was invented. I realize that. Maybe so… But that does not affect the nobility of Work itself.

The city, this immense organism, the actual big city, skyscraper City, was the predicament, the condition, and the very place of this decency and agreement, and in this decency, quite simply, marked by smoke, fog, and thousand smells, … marvelous. So this was the city of British decency, of the decency of civilization, I thought, as I folded my collar against the wind, which came in, gust after gust on this evening, from the West.

 

   “Of all the airts the wind can blow,

   I dearly like the West,

   `Cause there my lovely dearie lives,

   The girl that I loe´ best.”

 

I silently hummed. I always loved Robert Burns. My father was from Edenborough. But as for myself, I have mostly been living in New York.

Cooperation is beautiful. Capitalism is not. Collaboration is healthy and decent. Decency is beautiful. The most beautiful thing in life, next to love, is decency.

HÄMNAREN ( Roman av Kaj Genell )

 HÄMNAREN

KAPITEL ETT

 

D

ET VAR TIDIGT en vårdag i Maj när Nils Tidhafre slog igen fängelsegrinden bakom sig med en vid rörelse av höger arm.

”Inte en dag för tidigt!” ropade han ut i morgondimman, säkrade greppet om sin lilla grafitgrå portfölj, där han bar några böcker och diverse småsaker, som han velat ha med sig från anstalten ut i sin nya tillvaro. Han hade ingen brådska, men satte ändå klackarna i gruset på ett sätt som kunde fått en betraktare att tro att vi här hade att göra med en person som visste vad han ville och ämnade uppnå sina mål fortast möjligt.

Tidhafres omedelbara mål var en busshållplats, där en buss, som skulle ta honom till Uddevalla, skulle avgå om en halvtimme. Ljudligt visslande tog han sig fram på den dåligt asfalterade vägen, som slingrade sig fram genom ett stenigt jordbrukslandskap där våren nu kom den första grönskan att spira på björk och al. Nils var inte särskilt intresserad av natur, men blockade ändå en vitsippa från vägkanten och satte i ett litet mystiskt knapphål som fanns i kavajrockslaget.

Han log vid tanken på att han, om allt gick som det skulle om några timmar skulle befinna sig ombord på en båt på väg till Antwerpen.

Mån om sin personliga frihet, som han alltid varit, hade han suttit av hela maximistraffet för dråp, för att när han blev fri skulle slippa övervakning och kunna göra precis som han ville. Nils hatade allt vad kontrollsamhällen hette, och tillhörde en grupp människor som man skulle kunna kalla ”de stora föraktarna”. Således föraktade han allt möjligt, till höger och vänster, men mest av allt dem, som försökte beskära hans frihet. Om han inte fick leva totalt fri, och göra som han behagade, så kunde han lika gärna vara död. Så tänkte han ofta, minst en gång om dagen.

------------------------

Den unge, blekansiktade busschauffören på den gröna, dammiga bussen log försiktigt när han släppte på den ende väntande passageraren vid busshållplatsen. Chauffören såg nästan mer ut som en exfånge än Nils, vars ansikte var mer rundlagt och dessutom hade en rödaktig färgton. Chauffören var 100 % -igt medveten om att män som steg på bussen vid den hållplatsen om måndagsförmiddagarna med en mindre portfölj i handen, med 99%-ig säkerhet kunde antas vara frisläppta bedragare eller ogärningsmän. Nils log vänligt och betalade med ett SMS och gick sen längst bak i den tomma bussen och satte sig i vänstra hörnet. När bussen med ett ryck satte igång, lade han huvudet bakåt mot huvudstödet och njöt av bussens gungande.

Vad chauffören inte visste var att Nils tillhörde den farligare brottskategorin, dråparna, som inte visat någon ånger. Men det är ju å andra sidan så, att folk generellt inte vet så mycket om sina medmänniskor; vad vet jag om dig, och du om mig? Egentligen. Som man säger….

Snart sov Nils. Han hade lätt för att sova, även på de mest stökiga ställen och i de obekvämaste ställningar. Kanske hade han allmänt en neutral inställning till sin omgivning, så länge den nu bara var i samklang med hans frihetsideal. Kanske betydde friheten allt, och resten var bara som krusningar på ytan. Hur som helst så var Nils trygg i sig själv. Detta var – i sig – en egendomlighet, eftersom hans uppväxt varit ett helt sammelsurium och ett litet helvete, för honom, då han uppfostrats av en faster, den skenheliga faster som han slutligen slagit ihjäl med en yxa.

Men så följer inte psykologiska skeenden alltid de manualer och mönster som lärs ut på universiteten. Det mänskliga psyket är aningen mer komplicerat än kärnfysikens objekt. Med det mänskliga psyket är det som med de saker om vilka man ofta hör kloka människor säga: ”Det där känner man inte till!”

Dessutom var inte Tidhafre bara en psykologisk profil, nej, han var inte alls TYPEN, som slår ihjäl fastrar. Allt var lite krångligare än så. Han hade nämligen vid tillfället varit manipulerad av en kemisk substans. Men vi återkommer till det.

Att Nils Tidhafre var trygg i sig själv var ett mysterium, som så mycket mänskligt. Låt oss bara stanna vid det så länge.

Att folk har lätt att sova på bussar, särskilt i dimmigt väder, är ju inte direkt ett mysterium. Det är ju nära nog en empirisk sanning. Eftersom tankar går väldigt fort när man sover, så kan man lätt inbilla sig att massor av tankar som rörde Nils´ förflutna rörde sig i hans guppande huvud, när bussen nu närmade sig Uddevalla.

 

KAPITEL TVÅ

 

Kanske drömde Nils om sin uppväxt hos moster Cecilia.

Rasistiska swebbtvs kommentar till kriget: Bolsonaros syn på saken.

 Allt rasistiska swebbtv kan komma på att kommentera beträffande kriget är att referera Bolosonaros syn på saken: att 90% av ukrainarna skulle vilja tillhöra Ryssland. Bojkotta rasisterna på swebbtv, som vägrar stödja demnokrati och antirasism någonstans i världen. 

Bojkotta swebbtv. Dra ner byxorna på alla som stödjer swebbtv ( "avloppskanalen", som den nu kallas i folkmun...!!!!!)

BAN RUSSIA!

 BAN RUSSIA! PUTIN IS MAD! 

Varje morgon satte jag mig vid mitt lilla skrivbord i

 1. Han går därnere i dalen, djupt i skuggan av de höga bergen och samlar sina hökärvar o. ropar, till vem vet man icke: Jag kämpar och kämpar!”. Men dalen och bergen är så egendomligt formade så att ljuden som kommer upp ifrån mannen låter: ”Jag ger upp och jag ger upp!”. (Vem vet alls hur ens eget rop i världens stora instrument låter? Varför alls försöka kommunicera?)

 

En gång föll en sten från Guds hjärta. Det är vår jord

 

2. Filosofi är endera att slå in öppna dörrar eller att måla dörrar på väggen.

 

3. En människa med få önskningar har litet att ge.

 

4. Allt är som bekant främmande.

 

Varje morgon satte jag mig vid mitt lilla skrivbord intill fönstret för att skriva något följdriktigt. Ty det var åtminstone två saker jag visste om konsten att skriva romaner. Den första var att man måste börja meddetsamma när man vaknade om morgonen, helst före första toalettbesöket. Den andra saken var att det är med förnuft och följdriktighet som man med sina ord snärjer läsaren att fortsätta läsa. Och detta snärjandet är själva det väsentliga med att skriva romaner. Har man bara skaffat sig den kvalitén på sin penna, så att läsaren aldrig ens kommer på tanken att sluta läsa, då har man – nästan per definition – blivit en stor författare.

Det där med att starta med detsamma man kommit upp ur sängen, det har att göra med att man vill utnyttja den fräschhet i sinnet, som nattdrömmarna har skapat åt en.

Kanske kan man rent av starta med ett drömfragment som ännu inte bleknat i hjärnbarken.

Men annars behöver man alls inte ha mycket till ämne, men det räcker med följdriktigheten samt ett mord eller en fartygskatastrof.

För den som skyggar inför stora ämnen och det dramatiska ( många författare blir nervösa av att skriva om t.ex. mord ) kan jag rekommendera SUBSTITUTIONTEKNIKEN.

Denna går helt enkelt ut på att man skriver om något enkelt och vardagligt, som man väl känner och helst nyligen varit med om, så att man har alla detaljer livligt i sitt närminne, som till exempel en titt in i skafferiet eller en färd nerför trapporna med soporna, för att när man väl är klar med den lilla redogörelsen byta ut nyckelorden mot något mer dramatiskt. Som så här:

”Klockan var fem på morgonen. Jag gick ner för trapporna med den hopknutna påsen i handen och sen ut på gården för att slänga den i den gröna containern. Dagen hade knappt grytt och katten stirrade på mig från sin vrå bakom cykelstallet som låg lite längre bort.”

”Klockan var fem på morgonen. Jag gick nerför trapporna från båthuset med det ihoprullade liket i ett rep efter mig för att slänga det i pråmen. Dagen hade knappt grytt och katten stirrade på mig från sin vrå i fören på den lilla segelbåten som låg vid ankar ett femtontal meter från land.”

Kaj Bernhard Genell "Kafka", Amazon, (2021)

 The book "Kafka" is an analysis of Kafka's novels and short stories. The book deals with the means contributing to the famous Kafka effect, or - the kafkaesque. These means are partly all technical. Thus, in this book, the author shows how Kafka uses a narratological split of consciousness and a split unconscious of the hero to create the Kafkaesque by a rare trick. In turn, This Kafkaesque generates an interrogation that scrutinizes the contemporary myth of the Freudian theory. This new book shows how Kafka became one of the most prominent artists to create and define Modernity. Kafka took part of the thrilling creation of Self-conscience of the 20ieth century, marked by a constant dialogue with Freud and his works. Self-conscience as Man knew it since St. Augustine, the Italian renaissance writers, Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Montaigne and later with the secular Romantics and Hegel, swiftly developed within Modernism into something much more complex with the appearance of Freud´s "Traumdeutung" in the year of 1900. And Kafka then set out to complete it all.

The works of Kafka appeared as a reaction to 1.) Modern times, to 2.) his own personal alienation and to 3.) Freud.

Kafka's answer to Modernity – to the modern condition – was an astonishingly complex one, but it turned out to be very accurate and accomplished right from the very beginning. When other reactions to the modern condition, like Dada, displayed a picture of a chaotic and rebel attitude to reason and morals, Kafka, like Rimbaud, showed a far more complex ability to make the human soul in Modern society understandable to itself, in a universal form.

There is only one phenomenon, Kierkegaard once wrote, that is unconditionally good, and that is to make free. This is what Kafka does. Kafka, in exploring the unconscious, and in doing this with the use of a Romantic "Ästhetik des Schwebens", he is the discoverer of the marvels of mind, and is, in this, equal to Freud.

Kafka's relation to Freud was somewhat like a son's relation to the father. Kafka hence did not at all acknowledge Freud's discoveries, , methods, and notions as truths. But he saw them – ironically enough – as facts. And in a sense, they were. Freud's views were historical facts in their deep influence on mind and society the century. This is why Kafka used Freud as part of the ( revealing ) Modern Myth. Kafka used Freud, but Kafka added on top of Freud another split to human consciousness in his own literary universe. The book "Kafka",by me, is about this split. Kafka thus did not "believe in" Freud, but he was fascinated by him. Freud suited Kafka. He did not at all Freud to a great extent, ... did not own several books by Freud ... but he had – like many others – acquired a sort of immediate understanding of Freud´s ideas through a kind of everyday osmosis. Kafka started out as a writer of lyrical prose, short prose poems in the style of Goethe, Kleist and Flaubert. But his dream was to write a novel, and it ought to be a novel like the one Flaubert once said he wanted to write: a very beautiful book about nothing at all. It also seems as he wanted to develop the style of Tieck and the Romantics. So it happened that Kafka developed a technique for writing novels where he was extending a sole situation into a perfectly static ( i.e. nothingy ) drama displaying a struggle between conscious and unconscious.
Using his extraordinary ( perhaps autistic ) sensibility, Kafka´s technique miraculously was born on one evening in 1912, with the writing of the short story, "The Verdict".
On the fololowing day he asked his fiancée Felice for the meaning of it.
Later, in 1912 with the writing of "The Metamorphosis" and, in 1913, the unfinished The Trial , his technique of displaying the Kafkaesque was already full-fledged. Here he – almost FORCE by his own personal and social catastrophe - introduced a pseudo plot in a kind of pseudo novel displaying a story of a split, a struggle of a conscious instance of a person, shown as a hero-figure battling this person's OWN unconscious.
As it turned out, this battle caused a second unconscious part to appear in the universe of this fiction. It seems that the hero-figure, devoid of his unconscious, HAD TO develop such an unconscious to be able to handle his surrounding world, which was his original unconscious. Here we thus are having a triadic structure and a strange meeting of two unconscious instances.

This fictional condition primarily results in a double exposure of the unconscious and secondly in a strange transcendence of the Ego, which cannot easily be reflected upon, since it has no equivalent in reality.

This is NOT EASY TO UNDERSTAND.

As a result of this kafkaic technique, which probably was unconscious (!) to Kafka himself, we are also – apart from the nausea of double unconscious, a kind of the self-consciousness of the unconscious - experiencing a very intense poetry displaying utter loneliness and in a framwork : a sad pseudo-protest against the super power of civil organization and law in general as well as a melancholy beauty of existence. The like of which never again has been created:

The concept of "Kafkaesque" has been created upon the experience of the works of FK by the Collective Mind, and in some way it has extended our way of perception. I think that the concept is vital for both the being and the understanding of our culture and being and maybe even a necessary one! My questions regarding this concept, which despite its frequency and importance is rather elusive, are mainly two: [ 1. ]: what IS the kafkaesque? And [ 2. ]: how did Kafka DO to create this, the" kafkaesque"?

We are dealing not only with ideological, cultural and psychological matters, but with tacit knowledge, as well as with difficult matters concerning the ontology of fiction. Perhaps the concept of "kafka" is an ongoing question in Modernity itself, that will prevail no matter how much I - and others - are trying to sort out the problem? My intent is to discuss the place of his works in the literary tradition and the place of the troubling Kafkaesque, refuting the not at all uncommon almost childish views of Kafka as ... a "magical realist", or a "religious mystic", or for that matter a "writer of Jewish parables".

Go ahead and BUY my book "Kafka (2021)", available on Amazon!!