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Monday, June 18, 2012

Possible meanings of Kafka's stories

Franz Kafka's story "An Ancient Manuscript" purports to be just that - the conceit is that we're reading a surviving fragment from a civilization long gone. The fragment tells a very simple and horrific story: outside the emperor's palace, soldiers from invading tribes or villages are becoming and ever-greater and more powerful presence, to the point where the homeowners and shopkeepers in the neighborhood live in terror. The invaders don't speak the local language and in fact seem to be incapable of speaking any language. They grab from shopkeepers whatever possession or food they need. They particularly set upon the butcher. In one horrible scene, he tosses them a bone, and the people watch as one of the soldiers chews on one end of the bone and a horse eats the other - this doesn't seem to bother the savage invaders at all. In the most terrifying scene in the short story, the butcher decides to forgo preparing the meat at all and brings a live oxen into the street and leaves it there - the soldiers literally tear it apart alive, cutting slices of raw meat off the sides, flaying the beast, and eating the flesh raw - while the dying ox screams in pain and terror. The emperor's men peak out at the scene and retreat - there's nothing they can do to control this invasion. So what's this story about? Again, as in so many Kafka stories, it's in part about the helplessness of an individual before a failed authority, and, on a deeper level, about the suffering in a world abandoned by an god who has disappeared or who maybe has never existed. Could it also be about the early fears of a Nazi or fascist control of European cities? Could it also be about the demons and fears and terrors of the unconscious mind, rising up and overcoming the silent, weak, diminished superego?

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