want to dismiss completely Max Brod’s opinion that the category of sainthood, not that of
literature, is the only one that can be applied to the understanding of Kafka’s writings.
Kafka was first of all an artist, and although it may be maintained that every artist is a
manner of saint (I feel that very clearly myself), I do not think that any religious
implications can be read into Kafka’s genius. The other matter that I want to dismiss is
the Freudian point of view. His Freudian biographers, like Neider in The Frozen Sea
(1948), contend, for example, that “The Metamorphosis” has a basis in Kafka’s complex
relationship with his father and his lifelong sense of guilt; they contend further that in
mythical symbolism children are represented by vermin—which I doubt—and then go on
to say that Kafka uses the symbol of the bug to represent the son according to these
Freudian postulates. The bug, they say, aptly characterizes his sense of worthlessness
before his father. I am interested here in bugs, not in humbugs, and I reject this
nonsense. Kafka himself was extremely critical of Freudian ideas. He considered
psychoanalysis (I quote) as “a helpless error,” and he regarded Freud’s theories as very
approximate, very rough pictures, which did not do justice to details or, what is more, to
the essence of the matter. This is another reason why I should like to dismiss the
Freudian approach and concentrate, instead, upon the artistic moment.
The greatest literary influence upon Kafka was Flaubert’s. Flaubert who loathed prettypretty
prose would have applauded Kafka’s attitude towards his tool. Kafka liked to draw
his terms from the language of law and science, giving them a kind of ironic precision,
with no intrusion of the author’s private sentiments; this was exactly what Flaubert’s
method through which he achieved a singular poetic effect.
The hero of “The Metamorphosis” is Gregor Samsa (pronounced Zamza), who is the son
of middle-class parents in Prague, Flaubertian philistines, people interested only in the
material side of life and vulgarians in their tastes. Some five years before, old Samsa lost
most of his money, whereupon his son Gregor took a job with one of his father’s creditors
and became a traveling salesman in cloth. His father then stopped working altogether, his
sister Grete was too young to work, his mother was ill with asthma; thus young Gregor
not only supported the whole family but also found for them the apartment they are now
living in. This apartment, a flat in an apartment house, in Charlotte Street to be exact, is
divided into segments as he will be divided himself. We are in Prague, central Europe, in
the year 1912; servants are cheap so the Samsas can afford a servant maid, Anna, aged
sixteen (one year younger than Grete), and a cook. Gregor is mostly away traveling, but
when the story starts he is spending a night at home between two business trips, and it is
then that the dreadful thing happened. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a
troubled dream he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect. He was
lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he
could see his dome- like brown belly divided into corrugated segments on top of which
the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His
numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, flimmered
[flicker + shimmer] helplessly before his eyes.
“What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream….
“Gregor’s eyes turned next to the window—one could hear rain drops beating on the tin
of the windowsill’s outer edge and the dull weather made him quite melancholy. What
about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not
be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he
could not turn himself over. However violently he tried to hurl himself on his right side
he always swung back to the supine position. He tried it at least a hundred times,
shutting his eyes* to keep from seeing his wriggly legs, and only desisted when he began