Chapter VI.
KAFKA AND MYTH.
Once in a while we might read an article about Franz Kafka´s relation to
science. This might be an essential subject for those interested in the
connection between his life and works, since it is generally supposed that
Kafka´s work is an emblematic picture of Western society's transformation into
a modern one.
When writing about literature, it is almost impossible to avoid dealing
with myths not only concerning the author himself ( what Proust named the
method of Sainte-Beuve ) but myths contemporary to the works that are on the
subject. No literary text emerges without the author dealing with contemporary
values, concepts, and power structures. Moreover, in turn, these are almost
always based upon certain myths held in a certain very high reverence. Part of
the common myth in any society is science. Part of Modern society, as Kafka met
with it, around the year of 1910 in Europe, was A.) Science, B.) Romanticism, C.)
Symbolism, D. Freud. ( Religion had ceased to be an important myth, as it used
to be.)
A. SCIENCE as a
CONTEMPORARY myth ( to Kafka )
Kafka was ambivalent in his relation to science. On the one hand, he was
a born skeptic, but on the other hand, Kafka was mesmerized in an almost
childlike manner by the new technology of Modernism, and perhaps he did not
realize in the same way as Nietzsche did the dangers of this technology.
Nietzsche clarifies the human situation in modernity, how Man replaced God with
technology and with science, progress and Liberalism. It has, for N., thus come
a "revaluation of all values"... People in the West after
Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, and Marx may be seen as spiritually lost, as Blanchot
later formulates it. F. Kafka, however, did not react quite like Nietzsche. He
reacted more "unphilosophical." We might ourselves acknowledge how
these texts, through their "sympathetic-antipathetic" approach,
depicts the attitude of modern ambivalence. In the novels, one might find
critiques of civilization, for instance in The Trial and the Amerika. In
Amerika - a Dickens' pastiche, according to F.K. himself -, it is in the
details that this is most appalling.
Every technical device – technique, which is a derivate of science -
like a door, a telephone, a tram wagon, a telegraph, an airplane, a steamboat –
were all technical miracles to Kafka, and he had almost a religious fascination
for these things. Nevertheless, there were many things about science that he
did not embrace at all. Kafka was not impressed by doctors. He was struck by
tuberculosis but always claimed that there was just one human disease and that
this was a spiritual one. The one representative for science that Kafka took a
shot at was the expert.
In novels and drafts to short stories often – in the shape of the myth –
scientists, capitalists, geologists, historians, doctors, explorers and travel
writers appears. Kafka ridicules all these people. They almost always fail, and
FK pictures them as failed authorities. Authorities are creating mythological
chaos. Kafka contrasts chaos in mythology by order of literary form.
Kafka is an expert in putting in question authorities.
Kafka had a particular flair for movies. Movies are a subset within technique.
Movies, of course, has nothing to do with art but a lot with technique.
------------------------------------
B. ROMANTICISM as
a CONTEMPORARY myth
Romantic and Modernist fiction generally displays a strong and effective
underlying layer beneath the manifest content. There is a myth under the
explicit surface, serving as a contrast and a mediator of meaning. By putting a
myth as a background, counter-voice – we might like a reader with the hero
judge the myth, and we are thus also able to evaluate the hero through the
myth.
Myth is generally not at all created by the common man but is inserted
either by incredible inventive people or by the ruling class, the state's
executive power.
It is a false history, which the ruling power is good at creating, and
which the ruling class is perfectly willing to bouncing off. This history keeps
claiming that myth originates from the depths of the people, from the soul of
the ( most extra-ordinary ) People, and the inner depths of man ( or race ).
Throughout the ages, some gave the Myth a shimmer of being the Truth of Man,
but it has only served the power elite and the status quo. Myth is a
conservative invention. ( Most 20th Century famous writers on myth
were also conservatives, like Karen Armstrong, Aby Warburg, R. Graves, Eliade, Kolakowski, etc. )
The myth also can stand forth from facticity, letting a facticity become
a myth and a truth of its own.
------------------------
Romanticism had a flair for the Märchen, the romantic tale. This Märchen
generally does not stand in opposition to the actual ruling power, to society,
the King, or another ruler. The Märchen generally is in contact with a general
divine power of unknown origin, to which it is subordinate.
Roger Caillois:
”Romanticism found itself essentially incapable of producing myths. Of
course, it produced tales and ghost stories willingly and lured itself into the
fantastic. In doing so, however, they more and more severed themselves from the
myth.”
Modernism transcends Romanticism in that it abandoned the exotic in
search of the heart of Power, and Modernism created a myth in the midst of the
contemporary, commonplace: in the middle of the new world, in the modern
super-capital.
Myth in Romanticism concentrates almost entirely upon the relation to
the Unknown. Furthermore, a lot of Romanticism's success is its understanding
of how to soothe the public's mind with the preoccupation of manners to deal
with fear.
As an example of a famous Gothic Romantic novel, we might cite the
conservative Victor Hugo. The following excerpt shows genuine Gothic Horror
drama, which probably entirely fell short of compliments on Kafka's part.
Hugo´s The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame de Paris 1831. On Quasimodo, the hunchback
himself:
“The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as
it were, a breath of life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral.
It seemed as though there escapedfrom him, at least according to the growing
superstitions of the crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the
stones of Notre-Dame, and made the deep bowels of the ancient church to
palpitate. It sufficed for people to know that he was there, to make them
believe that they beheld the thousand statues ofthe galleries and the fronts in
motion. And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature
beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it was
possessed and filled with Quasimodo,as with a familiar spirit. One would have
said thathe made the immense edifice breathe. He was everywhere about it; in
fact, he multiplied himself on all
points of the structure. Now one perceived with affright at the very top
of one of the towers, a fantastic
dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all fours, descending outside
above the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going to ransack
the belly
of some sculptured gorgon; it was Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again,
in some obscure corner
of the church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera,
crouching and scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one
caught
sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a
bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the
end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or
the Angelus. Often at night a hideous form was seen
wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns
the towers and borders the circumference of the apse; again it was the
hunchback
of Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole
church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths
were
opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the
gargoyles of stone, which keep watch
night and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws,
around the monstrous cathedral, barking. And, if
it was a Christmas Eve, while the great bell, which
seemed to emit the death rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight
mass, such an air was spread over
the sombre façade that one would have declared that
the grand portal was devouring the throng, and that
the rose window was watching it. And all this came
from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him for
the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him
to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.”
( V. Hugo, NddP, Livre IV, chap.III.. )
One might think that such a prolific symbolism and Hugo´s attempts to
create a feeling by adding spooky details and quantifying these, and not by
subtlety and layers, was dissatisfactory to highly sensitive Franz. Kafka very
early realized that the shallowness, overload, and desperation of Romantic
prose in general in the novel of Hugo are apparent. Romanticism was in the form
of the Gothic novel, quite abhorrent to Kafka. In Hugo´s Quasimodo, the search
for love is a prominent theme. Love, as salvation, is non-existent by Kafka.
The short story The Country Doctor is an exception. Romanticism was, to sum up,
in the form that openly referred to mysticism, foreign to Kafka. Nevertheless,
in its covert and subtle forms, he loved.
In the journal Ateneum, which was published around the millennium shift
of 1800, foreboding the magnificent Hegel and his Phänomenologie, Fr.
Schlegel´s pen is glowing from enthusiasm in the new ideas, and the new
landscape that is opened up by the Romantic Philosophers is inspiring to those
who want to indulge into poetics. Romanticism is in part Poetics itself.
Schlegel claims that contemporary poetry in Preussen does not have any
mythology and that it is, in essence, mythology that makes poetry work. The old
folk's ha mythology, Schlegel says. He is aware that, in his own country, they
cannot possibly muster a gang of old Greek gods and stuff them up as a myth
background or sub code. However, he sees it as necessary to have a layer like
that, to be able to reach the goal of Romantic Poetry. This goal is quite
another one from the classical goal because Romanticism above all wanted the
effect of Das Schweben. Schlegel then directs his mind to the new mythology,
which he thinks is the soul's mythology. The human soul.
Even modern Romantic writers in the U.S.A. would vividly agree with Fr.
Schlegel on this. For instance, the prolific authors of the Atlanta-school,
like Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and McCullers, know that it is essential to
have a resonance in myth to reach the layers of dream hallucination where
meaning is born. Without alluding to the secret symbols of the age, the
mythology, all epic is empty. One might call this mythology or something else.
Around the year 1800, it was hard for the Romantics to set mythology for
the entire human soul. Such mythology is an impossible project.
Mythology has to be a kind of description, a tale of something, a system
explaining something, rasterization. Mythology is a relation.
Romanticism sought to create a mythology for the Soul, for the heart of
the heart's human understanding, using Romanticism itself as an object. With
the Self deeply invested in silent Nature, in dreaming Nature, using symbols
inspired from the philosophy of Schelling, where elves, blowers, Aurora, and
Der Blaue Blume, ( Novalis ) play roles, and where everything is referring to
Romanticism itself, and Romanticism AS art. Romanticism, and Romantic love an
understanding, is thus mainly all about itself. The underlying myth is
mythology rooted in the pure ideas of Romanticism itself.
In Romanticism, the poets also used the fact that Christianity just was
won over, surpassed, ad the poets of this school hence might use their
mythology ambiguously, and the readers of Romantic Poetry might be all
delighted by the vision of a world beyond, without often realizing that the
vision they thus had gotten a hint to, was not the Christian paradise at all,
but something else. Romanticism was an atheist but used their freedom to allude
to anything they wanted to. They stood free to every belief, but without saying
so.
Idealism traditionally is a denomination for a philosophical view
according to which reality is determined by the ( human ) conception of it.
Transcendental Idealism, like, for instance, that of Hegel´s, claims that
everything is spiritual. The origin of Philosophical Idealism was Jena and
Tübingen in former Preussen. For six years, Jena was the birthplace and
growing-pot for these ideas, and the majority of those men, who were to become
leaders of this movement, gathered here or had intense contact with people who
studied here. Those who later became known as ”the Romantic Movement” were:
Fichte, Shelling, A. and Fr. Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Fr. Schleiermacher,
Steffens, Hegel ( after leaving Frankfurt, where Friedrich Hölderlin had deeply
influenced him.) Later, J.W. von Goethe and Friedrich Shiller, (Uber naive und
sentimental Dichtung.). They were active in Jena between 1798 och 1804, the
year of Imm. Kant´s death. These years Europé was transformant. Napoleon became
Tzar of France. The Jena-group's main interests – apart from the revolutionary
events, the upraising of nationalist movements, and Dichtung in general - were
the philosophy of the professor of Königsberg Immanuel Kant. Kant´s Kritik der
Reinen Vernunft, Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft och Kritik der Urtheilskraft, had
an enormous influence and spurred the younger philosophers to try to go „beyond
Kant, “ or to “serve the premises to Kant´s conclusions,” as Schelling put it.
Schelling would later become a keystone to Romanticism and its poets, but to
all the real Romantic theorist philosophers, the most vital voice was Hegel´s.
Hegel´s breakthrough in the academic world of Prussia came with the
enormous dissertation ( Theil I ) of Phänomenologie des Geistes. (1807 ). It
was finalized ( but worked upon since 1804 )
while the Prussian and French armies had set up their camps before
Jena's battle. The French defeated the Prussian army.
The masterpiece was written at a tremendous pace, and Hegel feared he
would go all insane from exhaustion.
Hegel´s, Fichte´s, Schelling's, and Hölderlin´s dialectics did span, not
just over logic, but also over the universe, over nature, philosophy, and art.
Schelling´s concept of “Ur-Bild” was to become archetypical for more than a
century ahead. The prefix of “Ur” was constructed to nominate or designate a
presupposition for the idea and the idea's concept. ( We might notice the
influence of this thinking in poetry, but all kinds of science, including
psychology and psychoanalysis. In a way, Freud was the child of Schelling. )
The boundaries between art and science were like in a simple stroke rubbed out.
Romantic came, through the miracle of terminology, to be able to aspire upon
scientific status. In this magical idealism, which like magic, often saw itself
as an object, ideas similar to the psychic life of the philosophers of the day
would, in inspired clothing, reach the land of the beyond. Nature is a
petrified wand of an unknown witch, and Nature also was an “encyklopedic index”
to the soul. Sensibility took to the scene, and water was declared to be “a
moist flame.” In a couple of years in the midst of Europe, the old poetry of
Sappho had been accentuated into eternity.
Even in science, nothing was the same. A science of evolution was
developed before that of the concise and empirical Darwin. Comparative anatomy
was born, and Carus presented ideas of a plan according to which life evolved.
Lorenz Oken marked that plants and animals were born from a giant “Ur-slime.”
None of these thoughts had emanated if Schelling in 1797-99 had not shaped the
terminology and the vision of enthusiastic Nature.
In contrast to Hegel, Schelling was stuck in teleology. He assumed that
the development of the world had a purpose, set by God. “Nature is becoming
Nature. Nature is unconscious Sense in the process of becoming a Self.” Nature
had an urge, a “Treib.”
Parallel to Romanticism in The Netherlands, Spinoza ( in Prussia
promoted by Jacobi ) had refused to see any difference between organic and
inorganic. Spinoza had a principle of universality, much like what was proposed
by Schelling et consortes.
Later Schopenhauer, in his Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung gave his
answer to both Kant and he Romantic philosophers, presenting his ambiguous
concept of "Das Ding an sich." Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung was published in 1818, just a few years after Hegels Logik I
& II ( sequels to the Phenomenology ), books that made Schelling stop
publishing anything at all. Schopenhauer concentrates on the mysterious psychic
entity of the Will.
“Hence the subject of the will is immediately
given for Self-consciousness, it cannot be defined or described what Will is;
it is rather the most immediate of all we know of, yes, it is so immediate,
that it will have to through light on everything else. Everything else is
mediate ( mediating ) entities.”
Without knowing anything of Schopenhauer´s work, until 1854, the year of
his death, S. Kierkegaard would present a philosophy concentrated upon the Will and upon personal choice ( the essence
of Will ) and upon Innerlighed, (Da.) i.e., Sincerity of Heart.
Thus Romanticism slowly, through wise and more prosaic thinkers like
Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard and others, was marginalized from the general
consciousness. Nevertheless, Romanticism still would stay, like an echo, and
like a myth, in the realm of the common UN-conscious.
When Fr Schlegel puts forth his theory of the myth's importance, he is
probably aware that myth is a means for power. Romanticism was a rebel, itself.
Furthermore, Romanticism was a question mark. Moreover, it was lust to
Schweben.
Romanticism was sidelining religion, and it created a place for symbols
about life and Man and served as a catalyst for freedom, emanating from Freud's
ideas.
Like Hegel and several of the Romantics, Freud created his new paradigm
in the midst of a haze and a crisis.
Later on, or simultaneous with Freud, Kafka, like he was mirroring him
and his time, was able to create a universe of art, using Freud and Romanticism
and myths.
Kafka himself was also a Romanticist, insofar as he admitted the view of
art as vitally important to personal truth, but he also was a Romanticist in
his view and action, that art is the joy of the heart. The play with the myth
has to be a joy of the heart. Furthermore, it is crucial to notice that the
play with the myth with Kafka is in no way a protest towards Freudianism.
C. Symbolism as a
Contemporary myth.
During the early 20th Century a row of French writers, drawing
upon ideas from Schiller and Medieval mysticism claimed that poetry and
literary should catch the soul of objects, of events of life as a whole. Literature
was seen as the highest mean to get to the truth about reality. Among these
poets were: Jean Moréas, Charles Morice, Laurent Tailhade, Maurice Barrès,
Charles Viguier, Félix Fénéon, Gustave Kahn. René Ghil, Francis Jammes, Jules Laforgue, Pierre Louÿs, Stuart Merrill Francis
Vielé-Griffin, Henri de Régnier, Émile Verhaeren and Maurice Maeterlinck.
Kafka did not like mysticism. The beauty and essence of art should not,
according to him, rely upon anything else than art itself. Kafka was a sceptic,
through and through. He was a “purist” and among Modern Art he could not stand
were both Dada – which he saw as puerile - and Symbolism, which was to him far
to sentimental, and sentimentality was not cherished by FK.
D.
FREUD and FREUDIANISM as a CONTEMPORARY myth
Kafka was open to Freud's ideas, although he did not ever – as far as we
know - confirm them. Kafka both mocked Freud and asserted the truth of his
ideas! That he did both these things is a strange fact that gives Kafka´s work
a striking richness, originality, and a contrast effect.
Nevertheless, now one question nearly poses itself. What was Kafka´s
using of Freud as a myth like? How was the bot lifting the importance of Freud,
as well as highlighting a problem with Freudianism?
This problem might be fancifully rephrased thus:
The problem with the reverence regarding the Freudian Censor.
Amnesia is regulated from our innermost realm, or more precisely, for
Freudian analysts, from the Censor. Nevertheless, our inmost inner is never
such that it asserts that amnesia ought to be permanent. It is planned to be
temporary. Our inner world does not have absolute censorship by the type: ”Such
thing must not happen!” Thus it ought to be erased from the protocol!” No, our
inner has – and we do not know why – kind of an absolute demand for truth.
Curiously enough, it has an insight in that everything a: has a value of its
own, an innate value, a value per se ( in sich ), AS OCCURRED. Moreover, b.) it
also has a mediating – instrumental – value, insofar as all events can
contribute to creating the most honorable possible human being, for every
possible length of any life, where this inner subject is serving.
It is thus possible to imagine that the Censor always has Death in view.
Because the innermost inner spot, IS not the individual, is not identical with
the individual, but the Censor is an essential and mysterious part of the scary
and intricate system that composes Man. Furthermore, the Censor is omniscient.
He knows almost everything.
Certain phenomena in this picture of Man makes everything quite
uncertain. What? Well, we do not know the exact agenda of the Censor? Who is
THE MASTER of the Censor? It most certainly is primarily not me ( in my case ).
The answer is: we do not know.
The Censor seems to have unlimited memory. Furthermore, the Censor seems
to be extraordinarily bright. Even in service with the dumbest person on earth,
the Censor has a clear head. The Censor seems to possess almost supernatural
wisdom.
We do not.
How does the Censor know that A.: We cannot stand to remember the first
day in school when we tripped on a threshold and hit a tooth so bad that we
lost the tooth. Moreover, how does the Censor, or the Censor´s cousin know,
that it is any method in that we always get nausea when seeing an amissing
tooth or spotting a first-grader?
Alternatively, has the censor nothing to do with nausea. Do the Censor
and those who are responsible for nausea have responsibility for two different
departments?
Before we continue, we should let ourselves remember that the Censor is
not an instance with any knowledge of anything else than our person's history
and the experiences that we have made.
OR HAS HE?
Maybe he has been much more observant than I have. When I have been busy
looking only at beautiful girls, HE might have taken time to observe all kinds
of things, like furniture, clothing, weather, manner of speech, yes, God only
knows! Maybe our Censor and we do not have very much in common. Maybe our
Censor has LEARNT things that we have not?
Maybe the Censor was the one who picked up things from the books we read
when we just were having the trouble of figuring out what meanings of the words
were that we thought we knew…..
Maybe the Censor and we have not at all the same background? Maybe he is
the wise guy that we always dreamt of being? The Censor also knows what is best
for us. Of course, if he is that clever. Maybe our Censor is like Einstein?
BUT!
Moreover, THIS is the important thing. Even if the Censor is the most
competent person in the world, he STILL only is human. He does not have
anything to do with universal, absolute truth.
This is important. Freudian or other psychoanalysts claim that it is as
if the messages from the dream and the Censor, which sometimes are referred to
in art and literature, these symbols, in conjunction to events, CARRY UNIVERSAL
TRUTH.
Art might rightly refer to our amnesia and point at the truth of, but
seldom the limitation of, the Censor. As Freud put him forth, a Romanticist,
who does not know a thing about the Censor, might believe that there inside
every person is truth. The Romanicist, who is eager to create a myth out of a
person's kernel, sometimes thinks he has the truth. Furthermore, when Schlegel
wants to create a myth based upon Man's inner kernel, it is this dedicated
inner area he is referring to. This
inner kernel might make us come to think of the Censor. Or not.
Schlegel´s vision is, in short, built upon a vision of universal
knowledge of the soul.
Now, back to the tooth and the schoolboy. We might scrutinize how on
earth the Censor can know about what the boy can stand to remember. The actual
case with the tooth.
The Tooth. The Censor does notice
from his central spot that we are hurt and losing the tooth. The Censor knows
that we are a small child and that we are getting terrified and shameful.
The Censor concludes in a matter of seconds, that it is not the case,
that such a small boy can stand this amount of scariness and shame. The Censor
realizes that SOME children, who are brave and tough, might stand it, but not
this very child, as a person.
It seems like the Censor might think that if the boy forgets this, he
might be a better adult. But of course, the Censor thinks, or have thought long
ago, that erasing of every unpleasantness might not be a proper thing to do.
After all, one never knows if this child NEEDS this memory in the future. It is
no way of knowing that. Perhaps it would be a solution if we did it like this:
we hide the memory behind a riddle. IF the child is very eager to know what
happened on the first day in school, IF HE IS DEAD EAGER, let him know. He must
solve a puzzle, however. Thus the Censor is letting the memory of the tooth
remain and does not erase it. Not at all. The Censor also constructs a series
of LEADS to the precarious memory of the tooth. For the emergency rescue.
By any connection to something white, and at the same time a little
edgy, the Censor lets the individual, who now grows up to a man, experience
discontent. So the Censor is exceptionally smart in his plan, based upon
fairness, justice, and thoughtfulness. The Censor lets the adult experience
this uneasiness, and then somebody says it is a riddle in it. He is looking at
some mountains with snow on. Rocky mountains. What makes him so uneasy?
Suppose the adult man, who as a boy tripped and hurt himself, now
remembers and can come to grips with the old event. Moreover, free himself from
the terror and shame? Because to realize all this by experiencing Rocky
Mountain was a good thing.
Now, let us ask the Censor what he thinks of why the memory was kept!
Well, it is not easy to say.
“I am not an innocent bystander exactly.” says the Censor, watching,
ogling, and looking sly… “Maybe,” continues the Censor,”I have not much of
choice. Maybe the system could not be arranged – for TECHNIVSAL REASONS - so
that some memories are set to delete. An erase system would be tricky to
construct. “Somebody probably arranged beforehand so that I, the Censor, HAD TO
exist and had to HIDE the unpleasant memories.” the Censor says.
I had to be. I am, as a matter of fact, a tragic hero. “Lots of
intelligent people are trying to outsmart me, all the time.”, the Censor
complains. Amazingly no human being has ever asked himself ( or any other
person ) if possibly his Censor is lying! Nevertheless, maybe it would be too
tricky a thought to think. We cannot easily imagine a person with a Censor
being a liar.
Let us return to our main subject, Franz Kafka, or more accurately,
Kafka´s novels. Say that Kafka is investigating, through his MYTHICAL use, the
Freudian theory and the Censor. Now, we thus have a set of truth values linked
to symbols. Through the use as a symbol system, these truth values are
questioned. Nevertheless, Is the Freudian Censor questioned as a.) a simple
Abwehr-mekanism, or as b.) a VERY CLEVER organizer of the human psyche ( the
Einstein-Censor ) or maybe the all wrong picture of c.) the Censor, that he
knows everything, and that he is in connection with God or someone like that?
Another thing of interest with the mythical overt layer in Kafka´s work
is that the way/pattern of ABSORBTION and of interpretation, typical when
reading Kafka, tends to spread.
As many others have pointed out, it is possible to read texts not
written by Kafka as Kafka texts, like Don Quixote.
Kafka´s discourse also contains, as a myth, Symbolism. Symbolism deals
with universal symbols. Freud´s theory is a diagnostic manual, where symbols
only refer in some cases while they do not do so in other. The symbolist canon
and the Freudian enlighten each other ironically. Hence a bi-mythicality
appears. Furthermore, the bi-mythical situation dominates the Kafka universe.
This complexity is what makes the mythical sphere by Kafka so alive!
Because we do not know which Censor is referred to. We only observe the product
of a Censor working ( just like in everyday life ). However, the nature of the
myth about the Censor – which may not be mythical at all – varies, which makes
the Myth scary! We do not know the amount of doubt with which Kafka regarded
the Censor. Moreover, this is good for the Kafka novel.
Here Kafka has two myths as underlying layers, or three: The Romantic,
the Symbolistic, and the Freudian.
------------------------------------------
