On Kafka
Demonstrating the ways that the term "Kafkaesque" has been skewed in the modern parlance, and how we can help to correct its usage.
“Hier konnte niemand sonst Einlaß erhalten, denn dieser Eingang war nur für dich bestimmt. Ich gehe jetzt und schließe ihn”
Even when those in pop culture circles hold him in the highest regard, Franz Kafka is an often misinterpreted figure. The Metamorphosis ranks among the shortest works in the modern section of the western literary canon. This, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men are often taught in the average American high school because of their relative brevity when compared to other masterworks of literature. Not only is The Metamorphosis by far the hardest to understand out of this list, but I further do not consider it to be Kafka’s best work. In order to explain why, we must dive deeply into the minutiae for the former and fill out one’s understanding of his oeuvre for the latter.
“Die Verwandlung,” or “The Metamorphosis,” opens with an immediate dilemma for the English-speaking reader. The thing that Gregor Samsa has transformed into is, in German, an ungeheuren Ungeziefer. Plugging both words into Google Translate will give the reader “tremendous” and “vermin” as a result. We receive a few other hints towards Gregor’s new corporeal form throughout the text. Kafka uses the word “Insekt” to describe him, ruling out rats or mice, and a cleaning lady that the family hires calls him a “Mistkäfer,” which narrows it down to the beetle family. The famous novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov insisted that this latter term ought not be taken literally; no species of dung beetle has wings. Podcasters can fill hours with speculation and students of literature can write dissertations on the precise entomological intent of this creature, but to do so misses the point of the story. The reader can map a “tough armored back” with “crescent shapes” and “numerous legs” onto their mental image of our traveling salesman, but no known insect on the earth has eyelids. Kafka calls Gregor an “Ungeziefer” because his presence is disgusting to his family and he calls him “ungeheuren” because there are social, moral, and especially physical dilemmas in his removal. Contemporary German reception to the story lends credence to this interpretation. The wikipedia page in our language lists a dozen different translations of the opening sentence in addition to a lengthy paragraph of the problem of the bug. The closest that the German page gets to this dilemma is mention of the ostrich feather that may or may not point to a deeper connection to Egyptian mythology. Dung beetles and scarabs are in the same genus, after all.
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