KAFKA AND THE CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL PERFORMANCE Centenary Readings EDITED BY ALAN UDOFF INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS$38 KT Kil¢ © 1987 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kafka and the contemporary critical performance. Includes index. 1. Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924—Criticism and interpretation. I. Udoff, Alan, 1943— PT2621.A26Z757 1987 833'.912 85-45890 ISBN 0-253-31709-6 123.4 5 91 90 89 88 872 44 Gt BS230F6 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction: Kafka’s Question Alan Udoff Theory ‘ Kafka and the Interpretive Desire Rainer Ndgele Kafka’s Narrative: A Matter of Form Anthony Thorlby (Kafka’s Other Metamorphosis \. Stanley Corngold The Intertextual Loop: Kafka, Robbe-Grillet, Kafka Ingeborg Hoesterey The Margin in the Middle: Kafka’s Other Reading of Reading . Clayton Koelb On Death and Dying: Kafka’s Allegory of Reading Charles Bernheimer Praxis Kafka’s Beginnings: Narcissism, Magic, and the Function of Narration in ‘‘Description of a Struggle” Walter H. Sokel Kafka and the Aero-Trace Laurence A. Rickels [Devant la Loi \ Jacques Derrida, translated by Avital Ronell The Paranoid Reader and His Neighbor: Subversion in the Text of Kafka Ruth V. Gross Kafka’s Cage and Circus W. G. Kudszus vii 30 41 58 16 87 98 il 128 150 158vi Singing of Tales: Kafka’s Sirens Liliane Weissberg Before the Question of the Laws: Kafkan Reflections Alan Udoff Doing Kafka in The Castle: A Poetics of Desire Avital Ronell Kafka and the Hunger Artists Breon Mitchell The Nachlaf: Metaphors of Gehen and Ways toward Science Allen Thiher CONTRIBUTORS INDEX Contents 165 178 214 236 256 266 269ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Debts are best repaid under conditions of inflation. Perhaps, for this reason, the language of acknowledgment will often tend to excess and fully warrant suspicion. I trust that in this instance this will not be the case; for the appreciative remarks which follow are, in fact, but poor exchange for the wealth of benefits and kindnesses I have received. It is doubtful that this project would have ever reached fruition without the Participation of James Rolleston, Peter Heller, Walter H. Sokel, Peter Beicken, and Evelyn Torton Beck in the Kafka Centenary Conference held at the Baltimore Hebrew College under the auspices of the Louis L. Kaplan Chair of Philosophy. While the proceedings of that Conference may be read, for the most part, in Kafka’s Contextuality (New York: Gordian Press, 1986), no printed version can convey adequately the enthusiasm and earnestness which distinguished their actual presen- tation, and the way in which scholarship was made the beneficiary of graciousness and charm on that occasion. At this early stage, too, I had the opportunity to experience firsthand what I had known only through reputation—the extraordinary generosity of Jacques Derrida. His unhesitating support and the contribution of ‘“‘Devant la Loi” added immeasura- bly to the projected volume. For his role in making it possible to publish Derrida’s essay, I am particularly indebted to the unselfish efforts of Richard Klein. The advice and support of Peter Beicken, Stanley Corngold, James Rolleston, and especially Walter H. Sokel—who helped in so many ways—virtually insured that the Kafka ship, by then safely out of dock, would stay afloat. ‘Throughout navigation to the Kafkan port, the long hours of watch were passed more easily because of the encouragement and thoughtfulness of Liliane Weisberg. In bringing this conceit, mercifully, to a close, I must thank my two constant shipmates: Avital Ronell, who, undaunted by extreme circumstances, edited and translated ‘‘Devant la Loi,’’ and helped set a standard of excellence for this author by her brilliance and determination; and Rainer Nagele, whose patience, counsel, support, and exemplary scholarship have remained inexhaustibly available through- out. That he allowed his library to suffer my frequent raids, and our tennis game the distraction of my relentless Kafka-theorizing, are but two instances among many of his liberality and endearing friendship. I have been no less fortunate in being able to rely on the good cheer and enthusi- asm of those who have assisted me unselfishly in this project at the Baltimore Hebrew College. The day-to-day mobilization of phones, typewriters, word pro- cessors—often called up on less than the proverbial moment’s notice—fell to Pauline Hyatt, Pat lampieri, Diane Kempler, and especially, for years past, to Ray Hurwitz. Through the endless battles with texts, pretexts, and contexts, they re- mained the loyal friends of this work and its author.viii Acknowledgments During his tenure as Director of the College’s Library, Jesse Mashbaum provided me with every advantage of his assistance as well as the companionship of his confidence. Judy Meltzer, Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies, has been peerless in her devotion. At virtually every stage of its unfolding, the work behind this work has been the beneficiary of her sagacity, encouragement, and humor. At a time when ideological lines are becoming more deeply entrenched on the intellectual scene, and publications increasingly subject to the imprimatur of critical conservatism, the integrity, independence, and foresight of the editorial leadership displayed by Robert Mandel (formerly of Indiana University Press) have proven as rare as they are urgently needed. His personal interest in this book from its very inception, and his patient and resourceful support through its conclusion, have been crucial and will always be deeply appreciated. Sidney Breitbart has been a life-long student and patron of Jewish learning, and this book—made possible in large measure through his exceptional generosity— testifies, in part, to the reach of his intellectual interest and the depth of his commit- ment. Far more important for its author, however, has been the privilege of count- ing this compassionate and understanding man as his trusted friend. In closing, a more personal note: I still vividly remember the afternoon, more than twenty five years ago, in that strange and wondrous place called Brooklyn, when my friend David Bienstock (1943-1973) announced his discovery of ‘The Great Wall of China.’’ The ensuing days, perhaps more, passed under Kafka’s spell. At that time, as young adolescents, we did not realize that a certain innocence already, and irretrievably, had been lost. Nor would it have mattered. I hope that my children, Daniel and Ezra, should they one day read this work, will be led back to the writer whom it celebrates, and will experience for themselves the breaking of the frozen sea we bear in us. For reasons which are too personal to note, this inscription for my wife, Adele, is the closure of this text: promised ‘‘years ago. . . twenty years ago.””Kafka and the Contemporary Critical PerformanceINTRODUCTION KAFKA’S QUESTION Alan Udoff Writing on a different commemorative occasion, the tenth anniversary of Kafka’s death, Walter Benjamin observed that since ‘‘he took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings . . . one has to find one’s way in them circumspectly, cautiously, and warily”” [9:124]. Benjamin, of course, was not alone in issuing such warnings. W. H. Auden too was concerned with the reader and his need to be ‘‘wary of the way in which he . . . reads’’ Kafka [3:43]. These concerns express themselves, however, in instructively different ways: citing as exemplary “‘the directive in which Kafka ordered the destruction of his literary remains,” Benjamin conjectures—‘‘Perhaps Kafka, whose every day on earth brought him up against insoluble behavior problems and undecipherable communications in death wished to give his contemporaries a taste of their own medicine’’ [9:124]; Auden’s conjectures sound a darker note of caution—‘‘Perhaps when he wished his writing to be destroyed, Kafka foresaw the nature of too many of his admirers”’ [3:44]. The measure of the distance which sets these concerns apart is best taken by considering the following: when Benjamin attempts to get at the core of Kafka’s writing, at ‘‘many of the most ‘incomprehensible’ passages” of his oeuvre, he cites a text of Eddington’s—‘‘in all of literature,’’ Benjamin adds, ‘‘I know no passage which has the Kafka stamp to the same extent’’ [10:142]—which describes, from the vantage of moder physics, the paradoxical nature of physical reality: the illusion of solidity, the deceptiveness of privileged place, in sum, the incommen- surableness of what is now given and received in the order of experience. Auden situates Kafka’s work within the ‘‘formula of the heroic Quest’’ [3:39], within the subversion of its defining terms: from the start ‘*doomed to fail’’ [3:40], ignorant of the means which lead to salvation, guilty by reason of existence, the Kafkan hero is a prisoner in a ‘‘closed’’ and “‘intensely physical world’’ [3:41] whose ‘‘gnostic- manichean”’ tendency Kafka’s writings both suggest and “‘come perilously close to accepting’’ [3:43]. Hence the warning: 1 am inclined to believe that one should only read Kafka when one is in a eupeptic state of physical and mental health and, in consequence, tempted to dismiss any * scrupulous heart-searching as a morbid fuss. When one is in low spirits, one should probably keep away from him, for, unless introspection is accompanied, as it always was in Kafka, by an equal passion for the good life, it all too easily degenerates into a spineless narcissistic fascination with one’s own sin and weakness. [3:43]2 Katka: Centenary Readings Benjamin and Auden, then, in one respect, stand at opposite tangents to Kafka’s world, separated by an interpretive distance that points forward in one to the groundlessness which the truth of modern physics proclaims, and backward in the other to the vertiginous fall into the abyss of a theological fault. Still, the curvature of space in the Kafkan universe is able to accommodate this distance, if not collapse it altogether. Benjamin himself, in tracing the route along which ‘‘this most recent world of [physical] experience was conveyed”’ to Kafka, abridges the distance by locating its source in a ‘mystical tradition’’ whose own truth had submitted to “‘devastating processes’’ of re-vision. It was in the encounter with the latter, Ben- jamin argues, that Kafka confronted the incommensurability of the perceiving sub- ject and the content of the experiential order which, for others, ‘‘realizes itself, theoretically . . . in modem physics and practically in the technology of modern warfare”’ [10:142—43]. The differences which distinguish Benjamin's reflections from Auden’s for the present, then, are less important that the common edge of extremity on which their observations fall—the shared apprehension of the spiritual crisis on which the ec- centricity of Kafka’s work turns. There is no single word in English comparable to the Greek deinos by which the latter might be conveyed: neither in the breadth of its connotation (terror, strangeness, wonder, and craft), nor its fortuitous reach of historical resonance—for, through its rendition as ungeheuer (uncanny), a link is forged by Hélderlin! in the chain of intertextual descent which leads to Kafka. There, at Kafka’s hands, a de-familiarization of the human occurs which is so radical that the category of the Ungeheuer itself will be forced to undergo transfor- mation (Verwandlung) and seek its representation in the figures of the animal or insect. These figures, as in the paradigm case of Samsa (the ungeheueres Un- geziefer), are no longer allegorizations didactically expressing ultimate truths that ground the human reality but, rather, creations whose de-natured being casts into relief the unalleviated alienness of human existence itself and the groundlessness of its condition. In introducing Kafka, then, especially on a centenary occasion (the very nature of which tends to domesticate the material of re-collection and lend totalizing as- surance to the act itself), it may be best, mindful of what Kafka’s texts are, to offer some additional words of caution for the reader. Since this reader is the contempo- rary reader, the warning is best given in keeping with the circumstances which frame today’s reception of Kafka’s texts, the sign of the times under which their reading proceeds. The sign of the times—that is to say, the time of the sign. The power of Kafka's writing is indisputable. Dissenting opinions belong, with Edmond Wilson’s, either to the curiosities of literary criticism (e.g., Diderot’s elevation of Richardson to the level of Moses and Homer; or Bloom’s prediction that Eliot and Pound “‘may prove to be the Cowley and Cleveland of this age, and a puzzle therefore to future historians of our sensibilities’’ [11:v]) or the ideological (chiefly Marxist) factions whose underlying a priorism proscribes curiosity itself. Beyond this basic consensus, however, the question of the nature of that power remains intensely controversial. The arguments deploy themselves on many fronts and against entrenchments on a variety of literary and critical terrains. Increasingly,Introduction 3 though, the lines of opposition have narrowed to the issue of whether the power of Kafka’s work resides in its symbolic or allegorical construction (the two not always clearly distinguished), or in its abandonment or deconstruction of the latter as a rhetoric of reference. A classic product of the first reading was Max Brod’s theolog- ical interpretation: Kafka’s work depicts the anguish and perplexity of modern man in search of God; the inscrutability of the Law and the remoteness of the Castle symbolize the measure of the distance, the space of alienation which separates want from fulfilment in the quest for salvation. Recent attempts to mine this vein have yielded—depending on one’s view—the richness of Kafka’s actual intent or the fool’s gold of a costly free association.? However materially interpretations of this kind may differ, they tend to be informed by a common principal: there is a symbolic or allegorical code of reference which lies at the core of Kafka’s work and actuates its power. The meaning of Kafka’s writings becomes, if not transparent; transparency being held as a criterion of the effectiveness of a symbol, at least concretely accessible. It is precisely this line of interpretation and the hegemony of its reading which have begun to break up under a succession of assaults, representa tive of which are the views of Giinther Anders and Theodor Adorno. Anders, arguing from the fragmentation of modem existence, believes that the writer is cut off from ‘‘that community of belief which gives birth to and sustains symbols . . . for symbols can be used only by a writer whose sense of the totality of things, of the innate bonds, the ‘sym’ which links them, and of the place of his own experience within a divine or natural scheme, remains intact’’ [2:43]. The acute angle of vision which Anders opens up onto Kafka’s writing is even more incisively drawn by Adorno in his re-view of the essence of Kafka’s art. “If the notion of the symbol has any meaning whatsoever in aesthetics’’ Adorno observes, then it can only be that the individual moments of the work of art point beyond themselves by virtue of their interrelations, that their totality coalesces into meaning. Nothing could be less true of Kafka. . . . [1:245] For him, Each sentence is literal and each signifies. The two moments are not merged, as the symbol would have it, but yawn apart and out of the abyss between them blinds the glaring ray of fascination. Walter Benjamin rightly defined it {i.e., Kafka’s writing) as parable . . . a parabolic system the key to which has been stolen. [1:246] The transposition to a parabolic mode of discourse, i.e., a mode of discourse which ‘‘expresses itself not through expressions but by its repudiation, by breaking off’’ [1:246], is utterly fundamental. In effect, this transposition enucleates from the tissue of Kafka’s art a new center which, in contrast to the transcendent character of symbolic reference, draws the text and reader inward around an immanent locus of signification. It is this irresistably inward force which nourishes Kafka's writing and delineates the function of signs within its narrative structure. In categorically oppos- ing the associative or literal function of these signs to their supposed symbolic teference, Anders and Adorno foreground the central distinction on which current4 Kafka: Centenary Readings semiotically informed readings contest their counterparts in Kafka criticism. The radical implications of this distinction have been presented with masterful concision in Roland Barthes’s essay, ‘‘Kafka’s Answer’’ [7]. The essay is both an epitome and an elucidation of Marthe Robert’s own seminal work on Kafka. According to Barthes, Robert’s identification of Kafka’s meaning with his tech- nique introduces ‘‘a brand new argument, not only in relation to Kafka, but in relation to all our literature’’ {7:141]. The significance of the argument alone is, in Barthes’s view, sufficient to raise her ‘apparently modest commentary”” to the level ~ of a profoundly original essay”’ [7:41]. The equation of the meaning of a work with ~ its technique signifies for Barthes a horizon-constituting shift in the evolution of literature and a fundamental re-vision of its being-in-the-world. Behind that shift is the total disengagement of literature from any cosmic design or humanly redemptive end. Freed from the shaping force of final causation, literature reveals itself wholly in the elemental, unmediated proximity of the word as ‘ta means, devoid of cause ~and purpose” [7:41]. With the liberation of the word from external sanction—in the sense of both approbation and intimidation—a radically new literature is unfolded. “Imitating the world and its legends’’ [7:142], and bound by their indeterminancy, literature assumes an ‘‘essentially interrogative function in place of its traditionally assertive role’’ [7:143]. Semantically expressed, the distinction between these — modes of self-presentation corresponds to the distinction between the signification of a term in the openness and equivocation of its sheer, factive givenness, and that which possibly may be signified by it: the ‘‘concealed’’” symbolic referent which transfixes the sign with ‘‘certitude’’ as it renders it accessory [7:142]. Aesthetically expressed, the distinction corresponds to the categorical opposition ~ of symbol and allusion. It is in this crucial opposition that Barthes locates the premise on which Robert's reading of Kafka advances: ‘‘Kafka’s narrative is not woven of symbols, as we have been told so often, but it is the fruit of an entirely different technique, the technique of allusion. All Kafka,”’ Barthes insists, ‘‘is in the difference’’ [7:142]. By isolating these instrumentalities, it becomes possible to ~penetrate the front line of textuality and expose the forces which impel the literaliza- tion of narrative form itself. Barthes elucidates their difference in the following manner. ‘‘The symbol (Christianity’s cross, for instance) is a convinced sign, it affirms a (partial) analogy between a form and an idea, it implies a certitude. . . . Allusion is another matter altogether’’ [7:142]. It too ‘‘refers the fictive event to —something besides itself’ [7:142]. In contrast to symbolization, however, allusion consists in a ‘‘defective force” which ‘undoes the analogy as soon as it has posited it”’ [7:142]. Barthes cites as an example of this undoing the situation of Joseph K. in The Trial: K. is arrested on the orders of a tribunal: that is a familiar image of justice. But we eam that this tribunal does not regard crimes as our justice does: the resemblance is delusive, though not effaced. In short, . . . K. feels he has been arrested, and every- thing happens as if K. were really arrested. [7:142] From this, Barthes distills the principal characteristic of Kafka’s art: ‘Kafka creates his work by systematically suppressing the as ifs: but it is the internal event which becomes the obscure term of the allusion’? [7:142].Introduction 5 Central to this stage of Barthes’s analysis is his formulation of allusion as a ‘‘defective force’’ which ‘‘undoes the analogy as soon as it has posited it.”” The formulation recalls Adorno’s account of parable as that which ‘‘expresses itself not through expression but by its repudiation, by breaking off.’ Although both state- ments reveal a common basis for distinguishing their subject’s referential character from the reference of symbols, the equation of parable with defection cannot be made without certain qualifications. The case of biblical parable is exemplary on two counts. First, the essence of these narrations consists in its very instruction, its deliberate advocacy of a moral or spiritual certitude on behalf of whose entailments they rhetoricize. Second, in accomplishing the latter, they confirm that the specific- ity and authority of symbol play decisive roles. Parable, therefore, cannot be op- posed unreservedly to symbol and its overarching frame of reference. In order for the opposition to obtain legitimacy, the parabolic form must be methodically re- vised so as to exclude the patency of symbol’s referential code and the compelling rhetoric of its certainty. To denominate this new form of parable as Kafkaesque, i.e., as ‘‘a parabolic system the key to which has been stolen,”’ is thus derivative and critically imprecise. The structure of latency in the parable must be semiotically revised, replaced by a fundamentally different form of reference, one which medi- ates the extremes of literalism and symbol. The resulting aesthetic form expresses itself, in Barthes’s idiom, through the trope of allusion. It is the voice of allusion, then, which addresses the reader through Kafka’s writings and opposes the counter- point of symbolic speech. Irrespective of how that voice articulates itself in Kafka’s work (i.¢., the variations of plot and narrative), the technique of allusion achieves a singular end—one with profound consequences for literature. Confronted by the mystery and equivocality of being, literature typically has existed for the sake and assertion of a transcendent purpose which it materializes in and through its own symbolic narratives. Now, freed at last from its term of service, literature may begin to question the ends to which, until this time, it has been answerable. With literature finally liberated from its subject status, its ownmost subjectiveness may now emerge. The shift from symbol to allusion is the technical means, then, through which the epochal shift from assertion to interrogation is to be achieved (i.e., it provides the technique by means of which interrogation may ‘‘persist throughout an essentially assertive narrative’) [7:142]. It is technique, therefore, which con- stitutes Kafka’s answer to the question of whether literature can have ‘‘a proper place in this world’ [7:140]. Barthes formulates that answer for Kafka in the following way: Kafka's technique says that the world’s meaning is unutterable, that the artist’s only task is to explore possible significations, each of which taken by itself will be only a (necessary) lie but whose multiplicity will be the writer's truth itself. That is Kafka’s paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisible, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie, Thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies: a work's authority is never situated at the level of its esthetic, but only at the level of the moral experience which makes it an assumed lie. . . . (7:143] In sum, the categories of assertion and interrogation are conceived by Barthes as two irreducibly fundamental and exclusive ways of responding to the being of the6 Kafka: Centenary Readings world. Literature is an aesthetic expression of these ways of response and shares in their fundamentality and exclusivity. Literature, thus, constitutes a way of orienta- tion to the world, a mode of comportment toward the mystery of its being. The being of modern literature consists, then, in its interrogative posture, i.e., in the allusive technique through which interrogation is achieved. Under Kafka’s master- ful direction, Barthes writes, this ‘technique implies first of all an agreement with the world, a submission to ordinary language, but immediately afterwards, a reser- vation, a doubt, a fear before the letter of the signs the world proposes”’ [7:143]. In the end, the resulting ‘‘allusive system functions as a kind of enormous sign to interrogate other signs” —the perfect expression of art semiotically conceived, i.e., allusion as the ‘‘pure technique of signification’ [7:143]. Barthes’s analysis places the reader at once on the high tide of contemporary Kafka criticism, on the crest of what promises to become its new orthodoxy. If one is not to be swept away altogether by the persuasive force of such readings, some words of caution must be passed along, something in the way of fragments to shore up the ruins in which other readings would now appear to lie. Given the economy which an introduction demands, the caution must limit itself accordingly. Under the circumstances, it is best to remain within the orbit of Barthes’s discussion, where a single issue—although it is one that stands at the crossroads of any serious reading of Kafka—may be emphasized. The motive power of Barthes’s argument is generated at key points by certain definitions, premises, and relations, some of which are advanced as virtually axiom- atic. The following syllogism, central to Barthes’s essay, is exemplary: (1) “The symbol . . . is a convinced sign” (i.e., “it implies a certitude” —"‘we cannot differ as to the meaning of a symbol, or else the symbol is a failure”). [7:142] (2) ‘“Kafka’s narrative authorizes a thousand equally plausible keys—which is to say it validates none."* [7:142] Therefore: (3) (Since Kafka’s writings cannot be dismissed as failure—his own judgments notwithstanding)—Kafka’s narrative cannot be counted symbolic. Barthes’s position, as stated here, rests on a stipulation of the symbol’s referential nature which, even on the face of it, is extremely problematical.> The subtlety of Barthes’s analysis notwithstanding, it does not appear that the categorical divisions upon which it rests can be maintained with the rigor he intends. The borders separating assertion and interrogation, the primary opposition which literature for- malizes in the techiques of symbol and allusion, are themselves dialectically pene- trable at key points along the periphery of meaning. Assertion is a linguistic act whose positive force is structurally exclusionary. This element of limitation ag- gressively informs its own metaphoric depiction: in making an assertion, one is said to take up or advance a position, maintain a posture, or stake out a territory. Contemporary philosophy has revealed the extent to which this exclusivity, re- flected in the metaphors of speech, is itself a condition of an assertion’s cognitive meaningfulness and frame of verifiability. To assert, then, is to make a claim which intends a meaning and, by strict implication, negates or calls into question theIntroduction 1 circumstances and counter meanings which it excludes. A corresponding relation is apparent in the structural analysis of question. The interrogative element implied in assertion has its parallel, as Wittgenstein demonstrated, in the essentially focused nature of questions, a nature which ordinary language expresses in the idiom of raising or putting a question. The focus sustains itself even at the extreme at which assertion and self-negation become seamlessly interwoven, i.e., at the point where certitude passes into defection. It is particularly evident in questions whose purpose is to expose (i.e., assert) the delimitation or impossibility of reply. The assertive force behind these interrogations achieved its classic perfection in the Zen Koan, its modem form in Wittgenstein (who seriously considered the possibility of a philo- sophical treatise consisting entirely of questions without answers) [19:29]. The confluence of assertion and interrogation, as it appears in the open texture of discourse, cannot be reduced to opposing spheres of monadic independence, to a binary opposition of presence and absence. Similar difficulties arise when the op- position is extended to the techniques of symbol and allusion. The factors on which this opposition turns have already been noted: the hallmark of symbolism appears in its certitude, in ‘‘the tiered arrangement’ [6:206] through which the signified (the other, ultimately comprehended in terms of the universal or transcendent) determines the signifier; allusion, in contrast, posits no such refer- ences, supports no supplementary praxis [8:267], leaves, as it were, no rack behind. It achieves its interrogative goal through a defection which “undoes the analogy as soon as it has posited it."’ As long as they are considered as pure or ideal types, “‘utopian projects’’ [21:200], these figures of reference are as separate in goal as they are contradictory in attribute. The critical issues at stake are nourished by such purity, which provides in effect laboratory conditions for the culture of criticism to grow. Barthes, of course, is fully cognizant that ideality in literature is but rarely attained; that texts, as well as their agents (writer/écrivant: author/écrivain), will move ‘‘more or less openly between the . . . postulations’’ [5:149] which form the square of opposition for works and their production. The example of Kafka stands out, thus, as a critical exception. In it, Barthes finds the disjunction of an either (symbolism) or (allusion) fired to a kiln-like brilliance which throws the necessary critical light on the countless shadings of equivocation that comprise literature. The level of rigor at which the general opposition is valorized, and its specific applica- tion to Kafka, make it possible, then, to get at the heart of the underlying issue: the referential nature of Kafka’s technique, i.e., the essence of what Barthes calls the “‘system’’ of his literature [7:143]. Barthes’s position, as set forth in ‘‘Kafka’s Answer,”’ is both an exposition and affirmation of Robert’s views—consequently, it is subject as well to their criticism: ‘The question of interpretation is a major one, but it is continually obscured by false problems. For example, Marthe Robert, who has done some excellent French transla- tions of Kafka’s work, feels it necessary to write: ‘Treated as true symbols, Kafka's images are, in fact, open to so many opposing, contradictory, even irreconcilable meanings, that one must choose arbitrarily among them or accept them all in disregard for any coherence.”” Wishing at all cost to save coherence in Kafka, Marthe Robert can find no other way of doing so except to support the fantastic thesis that Kafka is an anti-symbolist.8 Kafka: Centenary Readings This position is based on the old confusion, forever discredited and forever reasserted, between symbolism and allegory. Allegory, being artificial and intentionally prefabricated, can by definition have only one meaning—and this in exactly the same way as a thesis novel. Once its intended meaning is extracted, allegory remains an empty shell. The symbol, on the contrary, being alive and spontaneous, goes beyond the thor’s intentions, even if he is partially aware of what is coming to life within him. The symbol is a live force of what is coming to life within him. The symbol is a live force of the imagination; it is loaded with a multiplicity and a plenitude of meanings so that it is never reducible to a single interpretation or even to any given number of interpretations. In opposition to allegory, which represents a predetermined line of thought that could have been formulated in other terms, the symbol expresses directly that which could not have been expressed without it. Does this multiplicity of meanings produce an incoherent spectacle? Certainly not. It merely reflects a multiplicity of levels and perspectives that do not negate but complement one another. They seem incoherent only insofar as one confuses symbol- ism with allegory, whose two-dimensional flatness can never represent more than one single pattern. (12:192] Carrouges’s criticism, it scarcely needs to be emphasized, develops only a single strand in the densely woven fabric of the symbol.‘ Even that strand, it may be objected, fails to run the length of Barthes’s reflections. Nevertheless, as ‘‘Kafka’s Answer’’ indicates, Barthes concurs with Robert’s conclusion as represented by Carrouges and, in doing so, commits himself to a position which falls within the legitimate range of his criticism. To what extent this criticism, which argues gener- ally for a certain view of symbols, compels assent cannot be examined in detail at present. It is not necessary, however, to do this in order to address the specific issue of the signifier in Kafka’s referential ‘‘system,”’ i.e., the issue against which all the interpretations in question ultimately must measure themselves. Kafka himself, in a letter to Grete Bloch (June 6, 1914) in which he comments on her brother’s writing and the dryness of the entire allegory which he employs, suggests how that measure might be applied. It is instructive to observe Malcolm Pasley’s remarks on this passage: ‘There is a good deal of understandable resistance to the idea that his work contains any riddling element at all, any hidden references to definite things. For we know that his normal literary method is symbolic rather than allegorical, that he neither admired nor practised ‘allegory which is nothing but allegory, which says all there is to say without ever delving deeper or drawing one deeper into it.’ We know, in other words, that his images are typically hints, or suggestions, not signs that simply correspond to things. Any attempt to interpret Kafka by a more rational decoding of his imagery is doomed from the start. On the other hand, we should not allow the notorious excesses of some “‘translators’’ to drive us into an extreme position on the opposite side. Because a decoding approach is usually inappropriate in Kafka’s case, and because it can never by itself provide an interpretation of imaginative works, this does not mean that it is always futile. There are a few cases (¢.g., “Eleven Sons,"” discussed below) in which a whole story must remain obscure unless specific allusions are taken, In other cases allusions are introduced as occasional clues, which can set us on the right path or confirm that we are on it; certainly they cannot ensure that we reach the goal ofIntroduction 9 the treasure-hunt, which in any case always lies beyond the end of the stories, but they can at least serve as a check that we are not chasing off in the wrong direction. (20:18) When set alongside Barthes’s text, Pasley’s own illustrates the extent to which such basic elements in the vocabulary of criticism as symbol and sign continue to lack uniform application. Far more important, however, is the way in which the traditional distinction between allegory and symbol permits Pasley to argue for a structure of allusion in Kafka whose correspondences are neither strictly univocal signs nor indecipherably evasive riddles. Numerous other texts could be cited here as witnesses for the defense of this distinction. Thus, Peter Hutchinson, invoking the same distinction as Pasley (Kafka’s ‘method of working is ‘symbolic’ rather than ‘allegorical’**) [15:210], and identifying in the “‘ ‘multivalency’ nature’’ [15:212] of Kafka’s symbols a number of key techniques of allusion, as well as some of the different hints, clues, and suggestions which they authorize, might be called to good account. Nor should it be assumed that the extension of these proceedings would result in simple repetition. With the succession of character witnesses (it is the character of Kafka’s writing that is on trial), surprise testimonies would be heard that, indeed, bear hearing. Thus, taking the prosecution at its word (‘This is Kafka’s truth, this is Kafka’s answer [to all those who want to write): the being of literature is nothing but its technique’’) [7:135], Fletcher could be relied upon to argue that the sheer fact of “rhythmic encoding” in the opening paragraph of ‘The Hunter Gracchus’’ “‘communicates an allegorical intent’’ [14:172-73]. Nevertheless, a limit is in order, and the few texts cited must suffice for the contrast which is intended. The difference between Barthes, on the one hand, and Pasley et al., on the other, is not simply terminological, i.e., it is not simply a case of arguing that Kafka eschews an allegorical mode of reference (one to one correspondence) in favor of an allusive system whose referential unit, regardless of the term by which it is desig- nated, has multivalency as its defining characteristic. When Barthes rejects the symbol (i.e., the “‘convinced sign”’) as inappropriate for Kafka’s purposes, his own purpose is to argue for an allusive system in which the writer ‘‘can show only the sign without the signified”’ [7:142], i.e., a system which, founded on a radical immanence, ‘functions as a kind of enormous sign to investigate other signs”’ [7:143]. The intent, then, is to argue for a particular form of multivalency, one that is ontologically rooted in a world which is itself *‘not finished’’ and repeats that incompletion through the sheer ‘‘rigor’” of its technique [7:143]. The privileging of a certain form or technique is linked, then, to the valorizing of a certain interpreta- tion—an interpretation which Barthes, apparently, relies upon Robert to substan ate. Unless one is prepared to accept this interpretation without significant qualifica- tion, it must not be conceded that this one form is exhaustive, that another— symbolical—form, one which is free from the entailments that Barthes assigns, may not express the nature of Kafka’s writing as, or more, faithfully. Nor must it be conceded that the argument for re-instating the (multivalency of the) symbol begin defensively or apologetically, for Barthes himself fails to make the case which would warrant its exclusion:10 Kafka: Centenary Readings ‘The symbol (Christianity’s cross, for instance) is a convinced sign, it affirms a (partial) analogy between a form and an idea, it implies a certitude . . . we cannot differ as to the meaning of a symbol, or else the symbol is a failure. (7:142) Is Christianity’s cross, in fact, a ‘convinced sign’’ about which ‘‘we cannot differ as to the meaning’? Even limiting the cross to its Christian symbolism, does the requisite univocity for Barthes’s position hold? Or is it not rather that the Christian cross speaks in many voices—symbolically spanning the tree of knowl- edge, the ladder of salvation, the world, even the seven heavens beyond, associat- ing a Galilean’s sacrificial death and the sign of conquest in Conquistadores’s hands. Does not the symbol, even this symbol, remain then, in the absence of compelling reasons to the contrary, a viable interpretive option within an allusive system of reference, an alternative form of multivalency? To bring this issue di- rectly within the system of Kafka’s oeuvre, what is the status of the bloody cross incised on the hand of the priest in ‘‘The Judgment?’’ How does its referent figure allusively in the story itself? Would it figure in the story at all if it were not a symbol and, as such, intentionally deployed? Consider the following. “The Judgment”’ is a story, as is well known, that is built up structurally on sets of correspondences—principally, it is most often argued, between Georg and his unnamed friend. This structure of correspondence between the two young men must be extended, however, to include the two fathers in the story: Bendemann Sr. and the unnamed priest. One linkage above all others binds these fathers together, organizing the frame of correspondence: both bear wounds, both are identifiable by disfiguring marks on their flesh—or, following the logic of “In the Penal Colony,”” the body of each has become a text in which fateful sentences may be read. To inquire into the nature of their correspondence means, in effect, to attempt to decipher the signs which comprise these patriarchal texts. In the case of the priest, the mark is unmistakably symbolic—allowing him, through its intentional display, to abet the passions of the mob bent on overturning the patriarchal tyranny it has so long submissively endured. This complex of relations structurally parallels, in patterns of reversal and opposition, the presenta- tion of Bendemann Sr. Bendemann’s distinguishing sign, the scar from the war wound on his thigh, is shown inadvertently and, in further contrast to the priest, in the course of repelling his son’s attempt to overthrow his dominion. These negative correspondences are superseded, however, by the grounding similarity that is shared: the wounds of both characters are exhibited or, more exactly, called forth, in the face of a common revolt against authority, a common rejection of the rule of patriarchy. Where that rule has been threatened, the deepest, most violent forces are unleashed in Kafka’s works—forces which, so to speak, are never merely skin deep. (Superficial differences must not obscure the common ground shared by the priest and Bendemann in this respect. The priest’s stand against authority is enacted through a primordial identification with authority, the incised cross signifying, in part, the covenanted line of descent from which his power originates, the circle of blood to which he belongs through the intermediacy of his wound.) The structure of correspondence observed thus far points anticipatorily to Bendemann’s defense of patriarchy, i.e., it points to his wound, however different in detail and situation, asIntroduction 1 a signifier of similar intent. Here, the line of covenantal descent suggests the patriarchy of Jacob, identified by the battle wound on his thigh—Jacob, usurper of birthrights, whose descendent’s fate one day (the day of emancipation into self- hood) will be linked to the decree of death by drowning. May Bendemann’s wound, the text of his body, be read in this vein—Bendemann, patriarchal usurper of his own blood’s birthright, God-like executioner by decree of drowning? Can *‘The Judgment,”’ on one level, if not its deepest level, be read as scar tissue is ‘‘read’’— at once revealing and concealing an underlying wound, the wound whose disfigura- tion symbolically reveals Bendemann’s patriarchy at the same time that Bendemann disfigures the form or person of the patriarch? To suggest such a reading is incompatible neither with its omission from Kafka’s own interpretive remarks on ‘The Judgment’? [17:278-80] nor with the singular passage in his works which analytically sets out the axis on which Bendemann’s relation to his son turns [18:176]. Nor is it necessary to accept reading as if it were the sole argument on behalf of (one type of) symbolical activity in Kafka and the way in which the latter stabilizes the indeterminate signifiers that proliferate throughout his exploratory narrations.6 The argument, in fact, could have been made on the basis of other texts (e.g., Titorelli’s representation of Justice in chapter seven of The Trial and its own stabilizing relationship to the work as a whole), where the interpretive associations are developed with conscious design. Rather, whatever attention it merits, it includes, in effect, a surplus value—i.e., it returns the insistent question of Kafka’s technique and its implications to the text which Kafka himself privileges as his beginning. The evidence of this beginning and of its succession in the works which follow is, to be sure, insufficient to establish Kafka as a symbolist in any conventional sense or, certainly, as an allegorist. Nor, however, has its submission here before the bench of criticism had that end as its intent. Rather, continuing the judicial meta- phor, it has constituted the gesture of a plea whose purpose is not the exoneration of a reading of Kafka loosely denominated symbolist, but a stay of execution for the latter, the chance for it to prepare its case anew, with the hope for a fair hearing before texts which place reading itself on trial. Readers of Kafka, at any time, become, by virtue of reading, participants in these proceedings. Contemporary readers, however, must weigh evidentiary claims par- ticular to their own time. The complexity of these claims, although enhanced on all s by the rhetorical and investigative skills of contemporary theory, tends to diminish in proportion to their elevation to positions of orthodoxy. Since custom allows, even decrees, that the recess which precedes judgment be prefaced with a word of caution, perhaps it is best, under the circumstances, to remind readers of the complexities which they must try and be tried by in turn. The word of caution follows. Writing on the tenth anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death, Walter Benjamin ob- served that since “he took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings . . . one has to find one’s way in them circumspectly, cautiously, and warily’ [9:124]; i.e., Kafka’s readers must read Kafka as Kafka himself wrote.12 Kafka: Centenary Readings Through this disciplined effort, one may overcome the ‘‘precautions”’ taken by Kafka ‘‘against the interpretation of his writings,”’ i.e., one may be able to ‘‘find one’s way in them.”’ This metaphor expresses with precision and economy the nature of the act of reading Kafka. To read Kafka is to attempt to “‘find one’s way’" within a textual space and the world which it re-presents. This mode of re-presenta- tion, as noted by Auden, belongs to ‘‘one of the oldest literary genres’’: the quest [3:47]. In the essay entitled ‘‘Kafka’s Quest,’’ Auden analyzes Kafka’s contribution to this genre, comparing it with its earlier, archetypal forms. Auden’s description of these forms may be divided into three categories. The first category involves the search for or recovery of a sacred object either stolen by evil powers or lost through sin. The former, which Auden designates as the “fairy story”’ [3:47], has its literary exemplars in the epical quest for the Water of Life or the Golden Fleece. The latter finds its classical expression in the story of the search for the Holy Grail. The second category reflects a profound shift in the center of gravity around which the quest enfolds. The three examples which Auden discusses, the dream quest of The Divine Comedy, Pilgrim’s Progress, and the figurations of Faust and Peer Gynt, have in place of an object the attainment of “spiritual knowledge’’ as the central ‘purpose of the journey”” [3:48]. The tonality of the quest, as modulated in the succession of these works, reveals decisive changes in the inflection of the emerging modern voice—a gradual secularization, guided by the twin stars of subjectivity and doubt, and culminating in the teaching of the will to power. The third category comprises the Quest for Innocence in the variant of the detective story [3:50]. It is against this variant that Auden foregrounds Kafka’s own distinctive contribution to the genre of the quest [3:50-52]. Auden’s interpretation of the detective story as a form of quest and his association of this interpretation with Kafka have become, subject to variation, and most often without Auden’s actual influence, fairly commonplace. Thus, Hutchinson—al- though somewhat self-consciously (‘It may seem frivolous to compare Kafka’s fiction to the detective story . . .’’ [15:209])—finds in this genre the expedient for explaining the fascination of Kafka’ 's writing. The comparison is, indeed, quite apt. The detective story is quintessentially the literature of signs and mystery. These elements suggest themselves at once as a basis for reduction by which the text, no longer about the realm of the mysterious, itself becomes the mystery as signs interrogate each other in endless profusion. The complexities of this profusion are well known, In certain quarters, the technique which inscribes them, which fortifies them against interpretive assaults, constitutes Kafka’s answer ‘‘to all those who want to write’ [7:141]. To all those who want to write? Gustav Janouch records the following conversation: When Kafka saw a crime novel among the books in my briefcase, he said: “There is no need to be ashamed of reading such things. Dostoievski's Crime and Punishment is after all only a crime novel. And Shakespeare's Hamlet? It is a detective story. At the heart of the action is a mystery, which is gradually brought to light. But is there a greater mystery than the truth? Poetry is always an expedition in search of truth.’ (16:93—4]Introduction 13 At the root of the questions that proliferate through Kafka’s writings, then, there lies an expeditionary striving for the truth—the truth that is ‘‘perhaps life itself” [16:94]—whose complexity the reader would be ill counselled to ignore. NOTES 1, The reference is to Hélderlin’s translation of lines 308-309 from Antigone. 2. A recent interpretation of the parable of the doorkeeper reads: ‘Kafka is clearly playing on the climax of the service held on the Day of Atonement, where the prayer is intoned to the Almighty: ‘Open a gate for us at a time of the closing of the gate’ "* [23:52, emphasis added]. 3. It is not possible, at present, to deal with many—perhaps even the most important—of the problems arising from Barthes’s position. The strategic relationship between its minor premise, as sketched above, and the criterion of falsifiability is a case in point. 4. The fabric is spun with a master’s hand by de Man. Cf. [13]. 5. Thus, Hutchinson has suggested a novel and genuinely important approach to these questions by distinguishing between clues and red herrings. 6. The most comprehensive technique of stabilization employed by Kafka is the intertex- tual network which he establishes between his writings, allowing one to stand as a commen- tary on the other. Thus, for example, Gregor Samsa (‘“The Metamorphosis"") and Rotpeter (‘A Report to an Academy”’) both undergo metamorphoses which require that they decide— with mortal consequences—on the extent to which their past lives will be allowed to carry over into the present. The contemporary approach to Kafka has tended, increasingly, to reject this open texture of reference and its interpretive claims. Thus, not only are such references ‘opposed, but they are opposed from the vantage of utmost extremity, i.e., that the radical defectiveness of Kafka’s works, their dysfunctionality, parodistically constitutes the different texts’ actual themes. Cf., [22]:560. WORKS CITED [1] Adomo, Theodor W. Prisms. Translated by Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982. [2] Anders, Giinther. Franz Kafka. Translated by A. Steer and A. K. Thorlby. London: Bowes and Bowes, 1960, [3] Auden, W. H. ‘‘Kafka’s Quest,”” in The Kafka Problem. Edited by A. Flores. New York: New Directions Press, 1946. [4] ——. “The I Without a Self,"" in Franz Kafka. Edited by L. Hamalian. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., n.d., 39-44. {5] Barthes, Roland. ‘Authors and Writers,"’ in Critical Essays. Translated by R. Howard. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1981, 143-50. [6] ——. “‘The Imagination of the Sign,"” in Critical Essays, 205-11 fi} “Kafka’s Answer,” in Franz Kafka. Edited by L. Hamalian. New York: New Directions Press, 140-43. 18] iterature and Signification,” in Critical Essays, 261-79. [9] Benjamin, Walter. ‘Franz Kafka,” in Illuminations. Edited by H. Arendt. Translated by H. Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1973, 111-40. [10] ——. “*Some Reflections on Kafka,”’ in Illuminations, 141-45. {11] Bloom, Harold. Yeats. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. (12] Carrouges, Michel. Kafka versus Kafka. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1968.14 Kafka: Centenary Readings [13] De Man, Paul. “The Temporality of Rhetoric,"" in Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983, 187-228. [14] Fletcher, Angus. Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca: Corel! University Press, I ss, 1964, [15] Hutchinson, Peter. “Red Herrings or Clues?” in The Kafka Debate. Edited by A. Flores. Staten Island: Gordian Press, 1977, 188-205. [16} Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. Translated by G. Rees. New York: Freder- ick Praeger, 1953. [17) Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka: 1910-1913. Edited by M. Brod. Translated by J. Kresh. New York: Schocken Books, 1965. [18] ———. “The Village Schoolmaster,”” in Franz Kafka: The Complete Short Stories. Edited by N. Glatzer. Translated by E. Muir, et al. New York: Schocken Books, 1971, 168-82. [19] Malcolm, Norman. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. [20} Pasley, Sir Malcolm. ‘Semi-Private Games,”’ in The Kafka Debate. Edited by A. Flores. Staten Island: Gordian Press, 1977, 188-205. [21] Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Authoritarian Fictions. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. {22} Thiher, Allen. ‘‘Kafka’s Legacy,"* in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1980-81), 343-561. [23] Yudkin, Leon Israel. Jewish Writing and Identity in the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.THEORYKAFKA AND THE INTERPRETIVE DESIRE Rainer Ndgele der Vater aber liebt Der iiber allen waltet Am meisten, daB gepfleget werde Der veste Buchstab und Bestehendes gut Gedeutet. —Hilderlin, *‘Patmos’’ Another interpretation, another essay, another book on Kafka? The voluminous body of writing that feeds and grows year after year on Kafka’s texts seems like the gigantic figure of the father which, in Kafka’s eyes, is stretched over the flattened map of the earth and covers almost the whole surface, leaving very little space to the writer.! And yet another text, another volume added to the voluminous monster? Will there be a time when the surface of the map has been covered completely, when there is nothing left to say and to write? And should there be such a time? Is that what we desire? Indeed, there seems to be such a desire. The typical legitimating opening of a scholarly article is to point out a gap—‘‘eine Liicke in der Forschung’’—in order then to proceed to fill that gap. But what would be the ultimate goal? That there will be no gaps, that there will be a whole body of knowledge, that the map will be covered to the last inch, and that there will be no voice except the authoritative voice of a gigantic library condensed in one monstrous volume? It is apparent that such is the phantasy of mastery and control, the phantasy that forms and informs the disciplines. And yet if the phantasy were ever fulfilled, the discipline, its dream come true, would be at its end. As in Hegel's dialectic of the master and slave, the master cannot be master without the slave, and yet they are involved in a deadly struggle. But who is the master and who is the slave? There is a venerable tradition of philology and a rhetoric of humility according to which philology is the humble servant of the text, and the philologist the selfless ascetic who sacrifices his life in the humble service of the letter and the word. Wilamowitz, a master philologist if 16Kafka and the Interpretive Desire 7 ever there was one, evoked in his devastating critique of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy the pathos and ethos of ““Germany’s philological youth who must learn to work in the asceticism of self-denial.’’? But already his fictional predecessor, ‘Wagner in Goethe’s Faust, the humble servant and searcher for the sources, utters the desire for total knowledge, which is also total power: ‘‘Mit Eifer hab’ ich mich der Studien beflissen; / Zwar wei8 ich viel, doch mécht’ ich alles wissen’’ (‘‘I have devoted myself eagerly to my studies; and although I know much, I want to know everything””).? Wagner repeats the desire of his master Faust and perhaps surpasses it, certainly radicalizes it, because the concentration of all his energy is devoted to the one goal. It would be all too easy to create comic effects of the contrast between the philological rhetoric of humility and the majestic master-gestures and power of the academic philologist, particularly strong in the German Ordinarius. The comic, effects of such a constellation are so easy because, like all comic effects, they give in to the temptation to laugh away that which is too uncomfortable to deal with. The discomfort in this case arises from a familiar pattern: an opposition between two separate entities or identities turns out to be interiorized within each of these en- tities, threatening their identity. No longer is it a simple question of whether the master is the text or the interpreter, because mastery and submission are inscribed as a conflictual constellation in each. It seems that almost all of Kafka’s writing could be collected under the title he wrote over one of his earliest narratives, ‘‘Be- schreibung eines Kampfes’’ (‘Description of a Battle”). The battles or struggles . described in these texts always concem hierarchy, authority, mastery, and submis-_\ sion. Is that perhaps why philologists and literary critics are so attracted to this / battlefield: because it is their battleground, i.e., our battleground? But let us not jump ahead too fast. Perhaps we have simplified our problem too much by choosing the discipline of philology and literary criticism as a paradigm for our search for the nature of the interpretive desire. As such, it is already a disci- plined desire. Is there any other? At least there are other disciplines and other fields where interpretation constitutes the shape of procedure. The best known, because it touches our lives most evidently, is the legal profession. Legal hermeneutics, the particular reading of the letter of the law, will literally decide over fates and lives of people. The philologist and the lawyer share a paradoxical position with regard to the letter: they are both supposed to be guardians of the firm, unchangeable letter, and they are also supposed to be good interpreters. These two demands are in conflict with each other. For if the letter were firm and unchangeable, no interpreta- tion would be needed. The need for interpretation is a symptom that the letter is not firm and that its identity is under debate. The act of interpretation, whatever else it might be, is first of all literally a change of the letter, saying something in other words and thus other letters. If I would not say ‘‘it’’ in other words, I could merely repeat the text letter by letter, word by word. But even such a repetition could not reproduce the selfsame text, as readers of Borges well know, because the mere act of repeating a word, a sentence, a text, displaces them in another context and thus changes the meaning, and might even turn it around. Repetition and revolution are not mutually exclusive; they reproduce each other. But if they do not exclude each other, they are nevertheless processes of exclusion and inclusion, as such bat-18 Theory tlefields of conflict and struggle. But where precisely does the battle take place, what is it about? In the case of legal hermeneutics, at least the place of the battleground seems to be clearly determined, namely before the law and in the courts, places where also some of Kafka’s most tenuous struggles are performed. It is, however, remarkable that from the very beginning on, interpreters of these texts displaced the scene to another realm, preferably to a metaphysical and theological sphere. As questionable as such moves are, they cannot be denied a certain immanent logic, because the law before which we stand, before which we are equal, and some more equal than others, cannot forget, even in its most secularized versions, the origins of its formulation in the realm of the sacred and of theology. I say ‘‘the origins of its formulation,”’ not ‘‘its origin,’’ because the latter is the matter of a much more knotted genealogy. In order for the law to be the law, it must be invested with a legitimating power of authority. The more brutal that power is, the more it has to be formulated in another sphere, the more sacred it has to become. The latter formulation, however, also belongs to an interpretive sphere. Its slightly malicious, iconoclastic gesture cannot deny a certain debt to a reading of Freud and an exposure to psychoanalysis. It might perhaps be open to debate to what degree psychoanalysis is an interpretive process, but certainly interpretation has some part in it. Freud called the interpretation of dreams the ‘‘via regia,’’ the royal road to the knowledge of the unconscious.* Since the road leads to ‘‘knowl- edge,’” the authoritative royal figure traveling this road might be thought of as consciousness claiming its domination in the realm of the other. Thus interpretation presents itself again as a question of authority and domination, carried out in the form of a battle. Just before he declares the Traumdeutung the “‘via regia,’’ Freud lets another voice speak: ‘‘Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo"’ (“‘If I cannot bend the higher powers, I will move the underworld’’). It is the voice of Juno speaking in the seventh book of Vergil’s Aeneid (v. 312), serving also as the motto for the whole of the Traumdeutung. Juno’s voice is that of a traumatic hatred of the Trojans and Aeneas, based in an original insult. Thus Juno mobilizes every- thing to prevent Aeneas from establishing his reign, although she knows that ul- timately she cannot prevent it: ‘‘non dabitur regnis—esto—prohibere Latinis”” (VII, 313). But nevertheless, she will invoke Alecto, the daughter of night, the most terrible of the Furies, at least to prolong the deadly struggle to the utmost degree. One of Alecto’s specialties is the splitting of that which is one and unanimous: ‘‘tu potes unanimos armare in proelia fratres’’ (VII, 335—“‘you are able to arm unan- imous brothers for battle against each other’’). Thus she is the exact opposite force of Aeneas, whose goal it is to unify under one reign that which is disparate. It is easy to see how such a constellation would offer itself to Freud for an allegorical reading, in which Juno and Alecto are the voices of the repressed waging its battle against the ego’s will for unity and power. If we follow Freud on this allegorizing path, we not only repeat a long and abundant hermeneutical tradition, but we also repeat the gesture of the ‘‘original’’ itself, which has already inscribed in itself an allegorical reading of the Homeric Epics. If we then follow this long chain of readings to the point where Juno's voice speaks in Freud’s text, but also before it, whose voice are we reading then? If Juno’s voice is the motto to the text,Kafka and the Interpretive Desire 19 does that mean that it is the voice of the text? The voice of Freud? But then, in whose name does Freud, the interpreter, speak? Does he speak in the name of Juno, of the repressed, or does he speak in the name of Jupiter, the king and father of the gods, the master of history, who wants to establish his reign and imperium through Aeneas? Freud’s own answer is a split one; he speaks in the name of the royal I that wants to establish its reign over the unconscious, and wants knowledge and power, but he also knows that the only authoritative voice to be heard is that of the unconscious, and that the authority of the I is rooted in It. But if Freud’s voice is thus split, the voice of Juno is too. At the moment when she speaks her deepest desire (‘‘regnis . . . prohibere’’—“‘to hinder, to prohibit the reign’’), her utterance is literally split by the emphatic affirmation of the negated: (non dabitur) esto: ‘‘so be it.”” When a god or goddess says “‘so be it,” it is so: ‘‘non dabitur regnis— esto—prohibere.”’ Thus it is written. Freud’s motto, a pretext to the text and inscribed in it, spells the violence implied in the desire for interpretation: to bend and to move heaven and hell and whatever is necessary—for whom, for what? The agency of this desire seems strangely un- decidable. But then, I have my own pretext, my own motto. The final verses of Hélderlin’s Patmos not only offer a legitimation for interpretation, but they also pronounce it as a desire located in the highest agency: . . . der Vater aber liebt Der iiber allen waltet Am meisten, da8 gepfleget werde Der veste Buchstab und Bestehendes gut Gedeutet. The father loves the care for the letter and good interpretation, and he loves it most of all. Thus, when I interpret, it is not so much my desire that I indulge as it is the desire of the father. And it is not just my father and yours, but the father who reigns over all. The name of the father is the name of the law, the name of authority—and our name, the name we have inherited from him, the name with which we sign our checks and credit cards, the name that gives us credit, even if our father has none. It is the name which the Credo invokes: ‘Credo in unum deum, patrem omnipo- tentem .. . ,”” and therefore the name that gives credibility. Indeed, what cred- ibility would my interpretation have if it were written or spoken only in my individ- ual name, without the legitimation of some other authority, the authority, for example, of the interpretive community, into which we generally enter with the help and guidance of a Doktorvater, who makes sure that we know the laws and rules before we are offered our accreditation to the alma mater. IL It seems, then, that there is no legitimate way to Kafka except in the name of the father. If we accept that, however, we are put on the spot, because the father is not a neutral agency in Kafka’s texts, but one of the combatants in the deadly struggle. If20 Theory that is true, we as interpreters of Kafka are confronted with a rather uncomfortable thought: as legitimate interpreters we have to speak in the name of the father, that is, in the name of authority, and thus side with those agencies in whom that authority has been invested. As literary critics, we exercise the execution of judgment. As interpreters, we sit together with the dubious figures of the court in judgment over K. And that judgment has been spoken: ‘The guilt is always doubtless.’5 It is equally doubtless that such a statement will encounter some resistance, including my own. Therefore, I would like to pursue it. The first and most obvious form this resistance might take would be a simple empirical argument pointing at the mass of secondary literature in defense of Kafka’s poor, tortured heroes. Count- less pages have been written denouncing the rottenness, absurdity, and evil of the authority agencies, from the father figures of the earlier stories to the bureaucratic powers of the courts and the castle. And yet, there seems to be none that can avoid taking the position of these agencies and siding with them, if it is only for a moment, sitting with them in judgment over the hero. Of course, I have not read the whole of the monstrous body of literature spreading out over the map of Kafka’s world, but my observation holds true for what I have read, and I would venture to predict that it holds true for any interpretive attempt to find an authoritative mean- ing. What is at stake is not a flaw of this or that interpreter but the principle of interpretation as an authoritative statement, and the desire of any interpreter to be in the position of that authority. Indeed, a brief glance at some of the authoritative Kafka-commentaries con- firms what might seem an outrageous generalization. If we ascribe the status of authoritative commentary to those interpretive projects which have become ‘‘stan- dard’ works on Kafka and which will appear in every serious bibliography and study of Kafka, probably three names would easily find a consensus among Kafka scholars: Wilhelm Emrich,® Heinz Politzer,’ and Walter Sokel.® The differences in their interpretive methods as well as in their readings of individual texts are so great, sometimes demonstrating incompatibility, that the point where they converge is all the more striking: K’s guilt. To be sure, the accents are different, the economy of guilt and innocence varies among the three; none works with a simplified opposition of a sacred, intact authority vs. a guilty individual, and yet all three pronounce at some point—actually at several points—the guilty verdict. Politzer and Sokel each have an explicit chapter devoted to K’s guilt: ‘‘Die Schuld Josef K’s’’ in Politzer’s book is trippled in Sokel’s book as “‘Die dreifache Schuld Josef K’s.”” In Emrich’s study the verdict seems less manifest. Although Kafka’s heroes cannot escape the judgment of guilt, that is not Emrich’s major concern. His project is centered around an epistemological question in which Kafka’s work is seen as the most intense probing of the possibilities and conditions of signification and repre- sentation in the 20th century. Thus Emrich was one of the first Kafka-interpreters who confronted the question of the mode of signification in Kafka’s writing. To say "that his reading is centered around this question is also to say that it is emphatically logocentric. The name of the Jogos in Emrich’s book is the universal, which is both that which is lost and that without which no truth is possible. Thus Kafka’s writing is a staging of this loss and yet the emphatic assertion of the necessity of the universal, the history and story of that which is and was, known by all and yetKafka and the Interpretive Desire 21 forgotten. Kafka’s texts thus become universal stories as fragments of a universal history. In this interrelation of fragment and totality, they form a new mode of signification which is neither the classical symbol with its postulated immanence of the universal in the living world, nor the traditional allegory with a nameable, transcendental signifier. If the guilt of the individual hero seems to have paled under the force of this condition, it is only to open our eyes to the condition of universal guilt, which appears as ignorance and lie. Emrich’s book is the most explicit formulation of the condition under which we make judgments. And there is no longer any possibility to contain the act of judgment either to a purely epistemological or to the moral sphere: it is always a legal act, that is, an act requiring legitimation in the name of some authority, ultimately the highest authority of the universal law. That is exactly the point which is affirmed through interpretive performance by an interpreter who otherwise would not want to agree with Emrich. It is not by chance that such a confirmation is given in an essay which wants to establish once and for all the interpretability of Kafka’s work. In an article of 1967, Ingeborg Henel attempted to give an account of the results and the progress of previous Kafka research with the explicitly stated aim in the title to assert the interpretability (Deutbarkeit) of these texts.? Even if we would read the title *‘The Interpretability of Kafka’s Works” as the opening of a question, the opening of the essay makes it clear that this question is already decided by the fact that out of the various interpre- tive attempts a line of development emerges. Development implies coherence, progress, and a goal to be reached. That goal is indicated a few paragraphs later: to find a stable point ‘‘once and for all’’ (‘‘ein fiir allemal’’). Henel credits Bei8ner with finding precisely such a point; his analysis of narrative perspective ‘should undercut once and for all any attempt to ascribe any other than an inner reality to Kafka’s world’’ (p. 408). The point ‘once and for all’’ has two remarkable quali- ties: first of all, it is a point of interdiction, prohibition, taboo. Something is blocked, once and for all. The German word here is ‘‘unterbinden,’’ which is a medical term for tying off a limb to block the flow of blood, usually in order to prevent a poison from reaching the heart. Today the term is used most frequently in the general sense of blocking something out, for example, in a discussion or debate, where certain topics are blocked out to prevent them from bringing disarray into the order of discourse. Henel’s point ‘‘once and for all’’ blocks out certain interpretive attempts, certain moves of writing. This blockage literally treates a map of the world with a clear boundary excluding another world: *‘to ascribe any other than an inner reality to Kafka’s world.’’ The interdiction thus becomes the condition for mapping Kafka’s world. Therefore, the author is now able to state authoritatively in the next para- graph what Kafka wants to say in a certain place: ‘Kafka will an dieser Stelle sagen. . . .’’ And she can now state with equal certainty what this place does not mean: ‘‘Die Stelle bedeutet nicht. . . .’’ The interpretive performance thus repeats in a precise chiastic inversion the structure of the condition: interdiction of place— assertion of place: assertion of meaning—interdiction of meaning. Meaning thus emerges from a topological structure whose major boundary sepa- rates an interior from an exterior space. Interpretability is clearly linked to a firm2 Theory placing of Kafka’s world in a realm of interiority. Although this seems to be a move oriented towards the specific nature of Kafka’s writing, it articulates a much more general hermeneutical condition. It is the hermeneutics of identificatory and psy- chologizing reading which has become the dominant mode of reading since the 18th century.'° Understanding in this hermeneutical tradition implies a penetration into the other. The flatness and the surface of the written page has to open up to an imaginary space into which we can enter. Interpretation should preferably be ‘im- manent”’; narrative figures should not be ‘‘flat’’ but ‘round’ and ‘‘three dimen- sional,’’ i.e., they should have a volume with some interior space we can enter into. Interiority, however, poses some problems to the interpreter. It is the privileged space of subjectivity,!! and as such it threatens the objectivity demanded of a legitimate interpretation.!2 Henel is quite aware of the problem and faces it directly. The first move is defensive and prohibitive: Bei8ner’s analysis—not without some fault on his side—has led to the misunderstanding that Kafka describes ‘‘purely subjective experiences” (p. 410). But Kafka’s style becomes increasingly objec- tive. The step leading beyond BeiBner and pure subjectivity is offered by Martin Walser, in whose “Description of a Form’’!3 a difference is introduced within identity and identification. It is this difference which allows Henel to fend off pure subjectivity and thus reintroduce objectivity and legitimacy. Because narrator and hero are not identical but congruent, the reader can split her/his identification with the hero and take a position with the narrator outside of the hero. At this point, the topology of interior/exterior becomes entangled. Strictly speaking, congruence does not yet decide whether the position is inside or outside. But since Bei8ner has found the point ‘‘once and for all’’ as an interior world, we cannot leave it. And yet, if we want to be objective, legitimate interpreters, we have to find a difference to the subjectivity that occupies the interior space. Thus, another interiority has to be found, which differs from subjectivity: Kafka’s world is an ‘‘inner world,’’ ‘*but this interiority is not a subjective one, not an illusionary dream world, as many interpreters believe, but an intrasubjective one’’ (p. 411). Intrasubjective: thus an interior has been created within the interior and with a difference to it. This new space, the interior of an interior, seems to be a place of absolute knowledge; it is described as a position of knowledge of oneself, and the person who knows her/his situation, we are told, knows the human situation in its totality (‘‘schlechthin’’). It is thus an absolute place in a double sense: it is absolute as a totality and absolute because it is ‘independent of the subjectivity which created it” (p. 412). How is such an interior of an interior possible? What is that intrasubjective space which is not the subject? In regard to the subject, it seems to be in the position of superior knowledge which turns the subject into an object and is able to judge. It seems thus like a powerful exterior introjected into the most intimate interior. Indeed, a few pages later, the absolute interior of the intrasubjective space appears as the point of an absolute exterior, namely, the Archimedean point. Henel refers to a note by Kafka: ‘He has found the Archimedean point but used it against himself; apparently, he could find it only under this condition”’ (p. 418). Henel translates this point immediately into a point of judgment. The absolute point has been found, from which Kafka and Kafka’s heroes can be judged; interpretability has been established. But what about the condition in Kafka’s note? Henel seems to accept it in its mostKafka and the Interpretive Desire 23 generalized form: only he who judges himself from this point can find it. Thus Kafka narrates from the point of view of the hero and yet stands as judge above him. The point of the introjected exterior in the interior is also a point ‘‘above””: the topological congruence with Freud’s Uber-Ich (superego), which is also the product of an introjected exterior, the father within the I, as the omnipresent eye that watches the I is clear enough.' But if the condition for finding this super-I/eye is true, i.e., that it can only be found as a point against and within oneself, the critic has found nothing for herself. The critic’s ‘‘he”” is not Kafka’s “he,” because Kafka’s ‘‘he’” has a semi-reflexive function: I speak about and against myself in His name. The critic’s “‘he’” has nothing to do with her: it is a parasitic pronoun, occupying a space belonging to another, and speaking in the name of Him who covers the map of the interior space almost completely. Thus the repetition of Kafka’s phrase in the generalized form of the critic’s phrase is not the same phrase, but a paraphrase which fakes authoritative identity with the original phrase. The topological peculiarity of Kafka’s point of judgment allows no generalization of the judgment, only parasitic parroting of the voice of the father. mm And yet, the interpretation that parrots the voice and the judgment of the father will be invested with the authority of that voice. But is that the voice of the text? To the degree that the text has a voice, perhaps yes. But the text is not a voice; it is mute writing. As such, it invites a voice to speak it, and it pretends to be the trace of a voice. A voice, however, needs a figure through which it speaks. The most apparent, although not necessarily visible, voice figure in Kafka’s texts is usually the hero. That voice, however, is not one voice but the split voice of a figure who speaks for and against itself, because the voice of the father speaks through it from that interior of the interior, the intrasubjective space. And no matter how much the subjective voice protests, the voice from the other space is the more powerful one and thus the more powerful figure. But what about the status of writing, which is also the status of the law? It has often been observed that there is a development in Kafka’s writing which shifts the agency of authority from the father figure to more abstract, collective and anony- mous agencies such as the courts of The Trial and the bureaucracies of The Castle. It is a development that fits neatly into a simplified psychoanalytical model accord- ing to which the development of the moral law is based on the internalized voice of the parents. This genealogy of morality and of the taw finds a parallel in the popular genealogy of writing as the codification of a primary authoritative voice. In a similar» way, the interpretive desire, at least of modern hermeneutics, tends towards the, restoring of an original voice codified in the written text. It is not my intention here to repeat the recent theoretical and empirical problema- tizations of such a genealogy of writing except to the point where our appearance before the law of Kafka’s writing will lead us. The question will be whether the writing and the letter of the law are indeed just the codification of an authoritative voice, or another authority, or perhaps a subversive other. On January 24, 1915, about a month after he had written ‘Before the Law,"*24 Theory Kafka wrote in his diary about a meeting with Felice Bauer. It was the first meeting after the breaking up of the engagement in July of the previous year, and a kind of epilogue to the ‘‘trial’’ in the ‘‘Askanischer Hof"’ in Berlin which led to the decision to terminate the engagement. The epilogue turns out to be almost as painful as the trial. In this situation, Kafka reads to Felice the story ‘‘Before the Law”’ and notes, “Only now, the significance of the story dawned on me” (‘‘Mir ging die Bedeutung der Geschichte erst auf’’). ‘The belatedness in which the significance makes its appearance before the author points out his belated appearance on the horizon of his writing. Writing for him is not a codification of already known meaning and intention, but the tracing of something that might or might not assume at some time the shape of significance. Yet, the note also implies that the writing indeed does have a specific significance (die Bedeutung). Kafka then generalizes this phenomenon as typical of his mode of thought and expression: ‘The difficulties, probably hard to believe for other people, I have in speaking with people are caused by the fact that my thinking, or more precisely, the content of my consciousness is completely nebulous. . . .’” Thus, the temporal hierarchy of thought, speech, and writing is dissolved. What is supposed to be first, content of consciousness, is an amorphous, nebulous entity. Only in writing, in that slow process of tracing, shapes of significance might appear and become thought. Kafka’s aim for precision through and in writing shows itself in the formulation: he first names “thinking” (Denken) as the nebulous pre-entity of speech but corrects it immediately to ‘‘content of consciousness”’ (Bewuftseins- inhalt). What he negates as pretext is not thinking as a process but fixed content and meaning. Thinking might indeed take the shape of writing and writing the shape of thinking which produces significance as an aftereffect, if we are lucky. Speech might very well be the last phenomenon in this chain, the reproductive act of that which has been written and thought, as when I speak in public what I have written here. What is written is written. Even my notes of yesterday have to be interpreted by me today when I search not so much for what I said yesterday but for what it says in the note. It is perhaps not by chance that Kafka’s most explicit statement on the belated- ness of significance was made in regard to the story ‘‘Before the Law.’’ More than any other text by Kafka, this ‘‘legend,’’ as he called it himself, raises the problem of interpretation implicitly and explicitly. The problem begins already with the question: what is the text? To be sure, the story has a first and last sentence, but then it is also a story within the novel The Trial. It has been said that this piece can only be understood fully in the context of the novel.'5 This presupposes that there is a full understanding, and it raises the problem of the status of a text which Kafka, after all, did publish as an independent story. It does not take long to find out that the referral to the context of the novel is at best a temporal deferral with the promise of full understanding. Once we have read the novel, we will be told that, in order to understand it fully, we have to see it in the context of Kafka’s other writings; and if we have done that, there will certainly be someone to tell us that in order to understand Kafka’s writing, we have to know something about the cultural context. The deferral of full understanding will have no end, since each new context willKafka and the Interpretive Desire 25 demand another one to understand it ‘‘fully."’ What we encounter here is the metonymic character of the sign, which carries its meaning not in itself but is determined by its differential relation to another sign. The interpretive desire is driven on and on by this endless deferral, and at the same time it wants to spot it, once and for all, in a totalizing, metaphoric substitution which says: this is that. The title of the legend and the opening phrase establish the law in a metonymic setting of contiguity: Before the Law. The desire of the man from the country, however, seems to be not to stand or sit before the law but to enter into it. Since he never achieves that goal, most interpreters agree that this poor and foolish man has wasted his life, and he is even pronounced guilty by some for not having done the right things. But how do we know that sitting before the law is such a foolish thing? Both in English and German, to be before the law is the most idiomatic position in relation to the law: we are equal or not equal before the law; we appear before the law; we are guilty or innocent before the law; we are never in the law. Why, then, does the man from the country want to enter into the law, and why do the inter- preters want to be in it? Perhaps because there is a doorkeeper; and where there is a doorkeeper, there is a door; and where there is a door, there is a building; and where there is a building, there is an interior; and interiors are places where we imagine ourselves to be we as human subjects. This is what the metonymic chain of language suggests to us. It is the doorkeeper then on whom everything hinges. Indeed, the man from the country does not come ‘‘to the law’’ but “‘To this doorkeeper.’’ The whole story now revolves around the quiet and yet persistent struggle between the man from the country and the doorkeeper. It is the description of a struggle between two figures, but the duality is possible only in relation to a third agency, before which it takes place, by which it is shaped. It is the most basic configuration of Kafka’s stories: all dual relationships and battles are shaped by a silent third agency. Kafka’s triadic constellation has the structure that Freud discovered in the joke; and many of his stories, particularly ‘Before the Law’ with its pointed surprise at the end, indeed can have the effect of a joke. The law enters the story no more than the man enters the law. But what about the interior of the law? No doubt, there seems to be an interior. But the status of that interior is strange: it only appears in the speech acts and intentionality of the figures, never as an object of the narrative or descriptive discourse. At the only point where the “‘interior’’ is mentioned as such and as a potential object to be seen, it is immediately blocked off by the laughter of the doorkeeper: Since the door to the law is open as always, the man bends down in order to look into the interior. As the doorkeeper notices this, he laughs and says, why don’t you try it and enter despite my prohibition. . . . Perhaps the interior of the law, as the laughter of the doorkeeper suggests, is a joke. The glance that supposedly penetrates the open door remains void. Only the speech of the doorkeeper threatens with other doorkeepers and with room after room. Even the light (‘‘Glanz’’) that the weak eyes of the man seem to recognize at the end, does not come from the interior but ‘‘from the door’’ (‘‘aus der Tiir’’).26 Theory Instead of an interior, the man from the country sees a surface in detail: The man from the country has not expected such difficulties; the law should be accessible to everyone and at any time, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, at his big pointed nose, at the long, thin, black tartar beard, he decides to wait... . In an odd syntactical move, the abstract status of the law, whose essence is a “‘should’’ (soll) located in thought, clashes with the singularities of an individual _ Surface. The syntax condenses an allegorical structure: the unmediated confronta- {tion of singularities with the generality of the law. There is no mediation through a \ particular, as Lukécs posits for the symbolic mode of representation. There is no exemplary case, as in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, which would offer an ideal reconciliation and particular precedent for future mediations between the law and a singularity. Even if the man from the country could and would make his entrance through the door of the law, that would not be of any relevance for any future man from the country, because this door is a singular one meant only for the one man. And yet, he remains before the law and studies the surface of the doorkeeper. If the interpretive desire to understand the legend fully turns to that which sur- rounds it, the pages in the The Trial, where the story is told by the priest in the cathedral, and if we cling to the words of the priest and argue with him like K in order to understand the story and find our entrance into its meaning, we find ourselves in the precise position of the man from the country before the law, before the text. The interpreters who promise us full understanding of the story if we look at it in the context of the novel, promise us that we will be able to bribe the doorkeeper. Let’s try it! Our doorkeeper will be the priest. It is he who tells the story, and he tells it explicitly as a story about deception: ‘* ‘You deceive yourself about the court,” the Priest said, ‘in the introductory writings to the law it says of this deception: . . .”""; and now follows the story, ‘“Before the law."’ ‘‘Before the law’’ thus literally i is a text before the law, as it is found in the introductory writings to the law. K, however, is not so much interested in the law but in the priest, from whom he wants help and sympathy. The priest tells him the story instead; he is the narrator, but not an immanent narrator, rather one coming to the text, standing before it and reciting it. Thus the priest has no immanent authority over the text. The authority of the text consists only in its being written and in its position before the law. Such an authority creates a problem for an interpretive desire, which is a desire to enter into another, to empathize with another and to attract his sympathy; in short: a desire for trans- ference. Authority of meaning, for such a desire, is tied to an author as a person or a narrator. '© This is precisely K’s immediate response to the story: ‘‘ “The doorkeeper, then, has deceived the man,’ K said, immediately very strongly attracted by the story.” K makes a double transference from the textual to the personal sphere. By interpreting the story as a story of deception, he accepts the priest’s introductory interpretation; he makes him into the authority of meaning in the hope of getting sympathy from him; at the same time, he immediately identifies with the man from the country in “™\Kafka and the Interpretive Desire 2 the story, in whose position he sees himself. The identification is engendered by a parallel desire: what is said about K's strong attraction to the story seems to be true for the man’s attraction to the law. The man from the country is not forced to come to the law; he comes and spends his life there as one who is attracted by an obscure object of desire, tantalizingly open, inviting and yet inaccessible. If some critics think this is a waste of one’s life, one might ask what better way there is to spend one’s life. But whatever our judgment might be, we have to recognize that the law, the text before the law, and the text before and in front of us have the qualities of an object of desire. This undercuts all attempts of creating a simple opposition between the authority of the law and desire: the two are radically entangled with each other. The priest distances himself from K’s interpretive attempt as well as from his own: ‘‘ ‘Don't be overhasty,’ the priest said, ‘do not take over without examination the foreign opinion. I told you the story in the wording [Wortlaut] of the scripture. It says nothing there of deception.’ Indeed, it says nothing in the wording of the story about deception; but in the wording of the novel, the priest says explicitly: “‘of this deception, it says in the introductory writings to the law. . . ."” Who is deceiv- ing whom? The empathetic interpreter might be tempted to accuse the priest of deception, just as K accuses the doorkeeper of deception. Yet the priest is literally right; deception does not occur in the story, only in the interpretive remark. The priest does not say that his interpretation is false; he only says that, for K, it is a “foreign opinion’’ (‘‘fremde Meinung’’) which he should not take over untested. The German word Meinung, etymologically a cognate of the English ‘“‘meaning’” but semantically closer to ‘opinion,’ i.e., subjective meaning, makes the objec- tivity of the written text clash with the subjectivity of the interpretive reading as “‘opinion.’’ Where K talks of ‘‘interpretation’’—‘‘your first interpretation [Deu- tung) was right,”’ he insists—the priest talks of opinion. It becomes clear that K and the priest operate within two radically different and perhaps mutually exclusive interpretive models, which could be paralleled roughly with the two major hermeneutical traditions of.‘‘grammatical’’ vs. ‘‘allegorical”” interpretation. If the grammatical interpretation primarily Cares for the letter and the wording, the allegorical interpretation seeks to save the meaning of the text by making it accessible to ever-new horizons of historical and individual experiences. In order to do the latter, the allegorical interpretation has to penetrate the surface of the letter and find a meaning ‘‘behind’’ the literal meaning. Thus K wants to understand the text he heard by integrating it into the horizon of his experiences with the courts. The doorkeeper’s duty is seen as a duty towards the man from the country, whose situation seems to fit K’s experiences best. Against this identifica- tory reading, the priest insists on literalness: the duty of a doorkeeper is to be a doorkeeper, i.e., to guard the door; thus ‘‘as such”’ (‘‘als solcher’’), he has fulfilled his duty. The literal interpretation can only be tautological; anything else changes the story and is thus open to the same reproach the priest makes to K: “‘you don’t’ have enough respect for the scripture (Schrifi].’” Yet the priest also enters into interpretation. He opens the story with an interpre- tive move and engages in a subtle interpretive exegesis of the story in his debate with K. The pure grammatical interpretation is a contradiction in terms: to the degree that there is interpretation, the grammatical literalness has already been