Kafka on art : Josephine the Singer

I'd never read Franz Kafka's "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk," the last story in the Modern Library "Selected Stories," and was moved by it reading it yesterday in a totally incongruous beach setting - an apt summation of the great stories in this collection - and possibly K's most direct presentation of the role of the artist in society. The title character sings for her people particularly in times of distress, and when she sings the word gets around and they gather around her - even though, as the narrator notes, they're pretty sure she's not really that great of a singer - and in fact they gather around to hear her out of a sense of loyalty of civic responsibility, sometimes she starts to sing and they crowd has to be herded together by officials of some sort; at times, she goes on a protest strike, once eliminating the grace notes from her songs, but nobody could tell the difference. Then she asks to be relieved of the responsibility of working, because she's an artist - this does not stand her in good stead. As with so much of Kafka, the meaning or significance is right before us but elusive: are great artists unappreciated? or are there a lot of phony artists beloved by the masses because their work is so ordinary and palliative? Reading the brief Philip Rahv intro to this edition, or in fact any work on Kafka, will tell you that he was oppressed by his tedious employment and wrote in what extra time he could find, sometimes in frantic all-night bouts of composition: of course he would sympathize with an artist who wants to be free of the responsibilities of work: but of course that's not really the point - for Kafka and for other great artists their artistry is a completely consuming form of work, a burden far greater and a responsibility far more profound than any conventional employment. All of these ambiguities course through this story, one of his best. (Funny that Rahv's 1952 introduction suggests it's too soon, at that time, to evaluate Kafka's work - even in the 1950s, readers were still just beginning to understand his profound influence and significance.)