DIETER SCHREY FRANZ KAFKA, "The Trial" Life as a comprehensive displacement and rationalization process NEW: graphics "Kafka

texts,"

(A) rationalist and fantastic reality model The reader / the reader may see it when an interpretative essay on Kafka's "process" novel begins with a joke, a joke that is not even new, and is told to do only in order to be picked apart and then: So come 'n horse into the bar, sits down at the bar, ordered a beer, drinks, paid leaves. Gets a table over to the host of the tribe: Tell me that was not alittle bit strange? Says the host: Have I thought too. Otherwise it always drinks at least five! First As so happens the absolutely impossible, fantastic:

A horse breaks - spoken literary studies-pathetic - from the beyond in a certain way the animal world into the world of everyday life and acts there as an honest citizen: he drinks beer and uses in this context, the communications media "language" and "Money". The popular reality model no longer works. Second The narrator in the story now offers its listeners to a role model that represents their point of view there of ordinary reality assessment: A Stammtisch guest wonders about the "appearance" and asks the host. But the - 3 - Surprised at all: in fact, the model of the host range of the real surrounds obviously the unreal, fantastic. He wonders just about something that seems inappropriate given the fact but frightening collapse of the normal expectations of reality entirely marginal and also requires prior similar experiences unquestionably fantastic. 4th The fictional narrator of story in the joke story appears to be on the side of the Stammtisch score: When he run out the story to the point of surprising, ridiculous breaking the normal expectations of the host leaves, he is precisely the everyday life of his listeners current model of reality ahead as normal.

5th The discrepancy between the two expectations dissolves in laughter from the audience (at least tired smile). Your model of reality has not been called into question - after all, it was all a joke. And yet: 6: Strictly speaking this is one joke to fantastic literature, for the narrator distances himself from the initial statement anywhere, namely that a horse has entered the bar. If he wanted the story to continue the joke out, and spin out to a fantastic novel (compare for example the role of horses in Kafka's "The Country Doctor"), he would probably consider the objections by empirical-rational modern world view and any likely psychological explanations of strange "appearance" of the speaking horse offer. As the author of fantastic literature authentic, it would then explicable and inexplicable, rationalist and fantastic reality model from the beginning to the end to keep in abeyance. Just think of stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann and E. A. Poe or today e.g. on the bestseller by Stephen B. King. In a generalized graph that looks like this:

And now the jump to Kafka's "process." Three things to be achieved through the juxtaposition of simple wit and the great novel. Sacrilege - such a comparison? Anyway it's my first about trying from the beginning to the novel as possible get down from the pedestal on which he stands for a lot. It has the Kafka research only hurt that she has held for a long time for its object something absolutely Singular. Not only religious or existential-philosophical interpretations have seduced that readers have looked up reverently to Kafka's work and person. Even such interpretations, arising from either the complete Undeutbarkeit or indefinite, infinite ambiguity of its storytelling lift out Kafka and his work in the context of the history of literature. This is historically preposterous and hermeneutically an error. The comparison with the joke pursued a second goal: The plot of the stories and novels of Kafka can be understood always as funny - although (pass liberating and oppressive effect reciprocally Detlef Kremer, The eroticism of the letter writing as Siphon Life, Frankfurt. [Athenaeum] 1989, p 168). E.g. the first "scene" in the "process" is not even funny? Imagine: One morning appears on the bed of the Bank attorney Joseph K. instead of the usual cozy, probably knows pursed cook his landlady at breakfast time, a wiry-looking stranger in a strange tight-fitting black travel dress, initially denied any information about his identity and so acts as if his appearance would be the most normal thing in the world - and Josef K., instead relying on his normal reality model and throw out the cheeky intruder simply know nothing else to do but also to take the situation for even normal, in bed stay, think of nothing but his hunger (P 7, line 8 ***), the black-clad easy to take for the deputy to the cook and the brazen question are "rung you have?" behaved with "Anna me to bring the breakfast" answer. After the stranger has passed on this call in an ironic echo into the next room ("He wants Anna to bring him breakfast"), you will hear in the next room "a little laughter" (p 8). Relatively late Joseph K. himself comes the idea that "the whole thing as a joke to see [to], as a rough fun" even (P 9), but "it was a comedy, so he wanted to play" (P 10) - as a comic

figure in the grotesque, not as a director, to decide for themselves as to when and what laughed. I get to the third, decisive compared joke - Roman: Josef K. is similar at first glance, as the host of the joke of beer drinking and talking horse: There's really happening impossible, fantastic, in this case a successful forming out of the blue attack on privacy, which is output as arrest of the but simple certainties of law speaks scornfully, although K. "but in a constitutional state [lived]" (P 9) - and plays with Joseph K. ultimately. However, two major differences are remarkable:

First Unlike the host plays Josef K. with only in its actual behavior, but not - is to show how even - in its explicit thoughts, not necessarily in his utterances. This means that between the reality model that determined him his conscious thoughts, and for which he acts, there is a clear contradiction. Second The listener of the joke knows what reason the tavern owner in the everyday reality Possible assesses different from his customers in the bar: In contrast to them, the economy experienced the appearance or the "appearance" of the beer thirsty horse so many times - that he says and it is the narrator not revoked. For whatever reason, however Josef K. contrary to generally accepted and actually mandatory for him reality model, associated with the process of law as a matter of course, in a game predicated that is constituted by completely unrealistic, grotesque Spielregegeln remains unclear, and indeed to end of the novel. It remains - at least at the level of the novel explicitly expressed thoughts Ks - just as unclear as the question of the reason in the story "The Metamorphosis" Gregor Samsa is not immediately sets to defend and becomes active after "one morning [. ..] in his bed into a monstrous vermin transformed "looks, or why in the cathedral chapter of the" process "novel embedded parable" Before the Law, "the" man from the country ", they can ban by the doorkeeper, from here vorauszusetzender "rule of law", enter "in the law." (B) The absoluteness of the personal narrative I am going to describe the basic structure of the novel perspective, Kafka's recurrent narrative method. The action core of the "process" novel can perhaps be summarized as follows: A mysterious mythical power instance - apparently legally, scheinmoralisch, certainly authoritarian - breaks disturbing ultimately destructive in the personal and professional everyday life of a career officer. It is now crucial that the reader is offered in the novel's action does not identify with the opposite of the mythical and mysterious entity of the court plays his part - in contrast to that of the protagonist, a character so that, as the strain diner in the horse-and- the bar's history and how the opposing figures for other protagonists in fantastic literature, representing the non-fantastic, rationally determined reality model consistently.

About such a contrasting figure to the protagonist out of Kafka's missing novel for the reader, who in the face of the inexplicable looking orientation, the figure of the independent of the contradictory, uncertain perspective of the protagonist narrator, completely or nearly completely - this is the fundamental characteristic of Kafka's storytelling. Beiner spoke of "einsinnigem" telling, we call it today probably figure or personal perspective. From the first sentence of the novel in almost every sentence contains only perceptions or thoughts of Josef K.: "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one morning." This might seem at first glance as the summary, accent translated report of an authorial narrator, who has carried an inside view of the thoughts of his protagonist, and at the same time the past knows: he knows, it seems that K. has "done nothing wrong". But many signs point to the fact that even this first movement represents a complex thought in the context of Josef K. head and that the sentence says more than he says explicitly. This is supported First the choice of words "done evil" that is reminiscent of a kind of religious understood confession, Second ultimately acting suspiciously syntax with the same intricate, safe-unsafe phrase "must have ..." begins and rejecting "without-that"-clause can follow with pluperfect subjunctive, Third the effort strictly syllogistic structure of the statement: a) fact 1: the arrest, b) prsupponierte basic rule: no "evil" / Oscar (in general) do not arrest, c) Fact 2: no evil, d) Conclusion: libel (the apparent logic here present I will come) to speak, 4th which obviously aimed at concealing the facts rhetoric of the argument: at first Location: recrimination ("It was someone else!") at 2nd Point: self-defense ("He has done nothing wrong!") and only last: finding of fact ("He's been arrested."). From the outset, it is obviously with great emotional involvement with the question of possible guilt from a subjective view. (The set also has at least 4 authorial elements, I pass.) The second sentence sounds initially to authorial, but the deictic time of "time" then reveals, however, that here Josef K. in his mind the present situation comparable earlier into the comparison. So it goes from set to set. Kafka uses inter alia the Flaubert (!) accepted method of free indirect narrative on. The personal narrative leads to the reader down the barriers between the inner world and the outer world of perspective figure disappear. In this way, he can not make the protagonist the question of truth: there is no romance in the subject independent of the protagonist, may be ensured by an objective narrator object world more. On the other hand makes such absolute of single subjective perspective on the reader a strong

impression of credibility, finally, it all represented thoughts and perceptions of Josef K. meet unfiltered, so surely "real". In any case, the reader is left with one person and their world. The uncertainty and inconsistency of this single perspective, in the context of unexplained happenings frightening some mythical character - that's what makes the helplessness of the reader toward Kafka texts, even compared to the "process" novel. Everything that is in the text is mentioned, not vague, ambiguous, unidentifiable, on the contrary, Kafka's texts are characterized by most as syntactic semantic precision. No detail e.g. in the court offices encounter any difficulties in understanding, anything is unclear or even nonsensical - "What's up with the court to be" if not just to be a question that can be divided into two questions that Josef K. at the beginning is: "Who are you?" and "And why?" (P 7/8) But these are the questions of Josef K., and no one else in the novel it is. If we as readers so helpless against these questions remain, it is only because and as long as we embark on this one perspective - so not so much because Kafka had his novel with very many or even an infinite number of so-called "indeterminacy" equipped and enigmatic, as it has been said time and again the literature. (C) The double hermeneutics: conscious - unconscious - contradictions Now this is a perspective that the novel offers the reader, though "unidirectional", but not at all one-dimensional. I have already pointed out the contradictions between Josef K. thought, speech and action: he gets involved in a game whose impossibility is really aware of him, not to mention the privilege entirely. It will confirm the definitive release of his arrest (P 8) lightly with a seemingly amused, dissenting in the depths but "how it looks" - instead of calling protest "The arrest unfounded" or "Because I was someone slandered". A closer look at the first sentence of the novel has already devoted suggestive why K. maybe when he was arrested and then continue to play along in his process: pressing from the start, on the suspicion that he himself has a vague sense of guilt that he without, realizing it, carefully hidden from his consciousness, which is squeezed into it but indirectly but in his thought and spoken sentences, then - as choice of words and in the excessive rhetorical and logical effort of the first set - comes to the fore and can be noticed by the attentive, once readers become suspicious and interpreted. Who actually should not be suspicious if a novel begins with a unique logical errors? The first movement is indeed in the use of causal conjunction "because" requires that anyone who is arrested or is unjustified in his arrest is aware of any wrongdoing, is "slander" was, no, be defamed "must". Other possible explanations are omitted here easy! Once become suspicious, I continue to read. K. So there is something "never already happened" happened (line 5) - but it can happen every day: breakfast is not brought him to the bed - so that is where the action, long before the appearance of the men in black. It throws the already off track, so you could say that, in a modification of the last sentence of the story "The Country Doctor": "Once the lack of waitress followed - it's never make up"? Anyway done by "a while" (line 5) again something supposedly "quite unusual" (Z. 7), but also can actually happen every day, "the old lady" of over watching him - not "with unusual curiosity , "but" with her very unusual curiosity. " What is behind this observation Josef K.s? Has he already been interested in that old woman? For he seems just "her" usual, ie to know their characteristic behavior morning. On the other hand he knows of it but probably just that she has not been interested in him, so he just its present "Curiosity" strikes. What is today but then the "very unusual" when he is the subject of their own curiosity? Has anything changed about

him from their observable, that he himself has not noticed? Or projected Josef K. in him only a day to itself in active observation urge outward to the "old woman"? That would be understandable if it the object of his intrapsychic introspection worried so much that he would not let him move into his consciousness and therefore to the woman at the window bertrge. But what would be the disturbing him? After the first sentence of the novel has put the reader on the track of the debt issue, and after it already the suspicion has arisen on a hidden, was concealed with great linguistic effort guilt, now that suspicion is reinforced. In the first chapter are all together to understand the essential elements of the whole novel. For this reason, even here is both methodical distrust of the wording and the exact spelling detective instincts and then required an intensive effort to foreign understanding. The point is that the reader / readers trial entirely on a single, defining the novel perspective of Josef K. at some point the action predicated of Josef K. as a man whose inner feelings and actions difficult or as easily understandable as those of a people that we encounter in everyday life and you want to be in their own judgment and their own actions justice. The observing gaze should mainly depend on two levels, the conscious level, of the thoughts, actions and speeches explicitly intended, and to the level of the unconscious. Its displaced from the surface of thought contents are to reconstruct only from what the dialogue and the thoughts speech on closer inspection does not seem obvious and noticeable. Of course, such things do not fall or not immediately - and not necessarily just what stands out after intensive preparation in the eyes. It is important, as soon as possible to work with the indispensable for the Kafka-understanding "double hermeneutics" (Gerhard Kurz, dream-terror. Kafka's literary analysis of existence, Stuttgart [Metzler] 1980), the conscious the contradictory interplay of the two discourses of and of the unconscious, to purchase. A special form of round-Herspielens between conscious and unconscious discourse finds itself where - is also the protagonist, after he has taken a thought or said something deliberately subsequently myself that it's something for unknown reasons - now and in any case is undermined uncontrolled. So says e.g. K. - Even on the first page - to the men in black: "I want to see what people in the next room for [...]" and he knows immediately "He does not say that that would have loudly and in a sense that he recognized one legal supervision of foreign". When he is later driven by the guards to the interrogation rooms in Miss Brstner calculated its "Black Rock" to attract (p. 13), K. tries to resist at first "He was not sure in what sense he said it - 'It's still not the main trial.'" (P. 14) On an unconscious level of his heart he apparently already anticipated the inevitable, deathblack end of the process, although he has at the surface of his statements do not even accept its beginning. Even more telling is a different mental slip that he noticed while himself, whose meaning he does not understand: left alone for a short time before the hearing in his room, wonders K. about this apparent generosity of the guards, "At least from the thought of the guards it surprised him, [...] where he still had ten times the possibility of suicide. At the same time, however, he asked himself, this time from his train of

thought, what reason he might have to do it. [ ...] It would have been pointless to kill himself that he can do, even if he had wanted to, because of the futility would not been able to do. " (P. 13) (D) The idea of self-punishment underivable Why suddenly arises in Josef K., just in a lull after the horrors of the "arrest", the thought of suicide? And what is this idea? These questions are among the most crucial for the interpretation of the novel questions. The behavior and statements of the guards so far have not given the slightest reason to think of suicide, such extensive consideration can only occur from Ks own inside - as it unconscious imposition of himself to kill himself. His room is well for him here the same place as later in the dream of his own death - in the classified under the narrative text "A Dream" - [as there so] the grave in which he puts himself eventually volunteered to die . It was only in the place of the real execution (in the tenth, the last chapter) of unconscious suicidal desire as such reaches the surface of consciousness, when he the knife-ceremonial of extermination duo as an invitation to suicide feels as "his duty" "the knife, as it passed from hand to hand above him hovering to take himself and einzubohren". While he has denied earlier this "duty" from the unconscious ever penetrate into consciousness, he refuses finally to implement the "mandatory" awareness into action - other than he dreamed it, otherwise even than in the narrative "The sentence" the son Georg Bendemann after the verdict of his father ("I condemn you now to death by drowning") does. When Joseph K. is finally becomes "the shame" - the guilt-consciousness, from the beginning to the alleged or actual self-inflicted death sentence for one's own existence is not completed, to have the death-"duty" is not recognized. There remains the question of the origin of guilt consciousness that is so eminently that it is not any punishment, but the death penalty seems to be adequate. Before there further clarifications are possible, I will briefly summarize the contents of the indicated by Josef K. repressed and indirectly stumbling into surface representations: K. displaced First a vague sense of guilt, 2a) in any case an inner acceptance of coming from outside of future punishment 2b) may also come from the inside (then probably masochistic) desire for punishment, Third a deep-seated "knowledge" of its real, it imposed "duty" of self-punishment, 4th the idea that only the death penalty can be the adequate punishment, either by execution or by suicide, 5th a glimpse of the fateful inevitability of punishment, the judgment. He confesses to the reported speech in experienced thoughts "yet he was free" (p. 10, start of 2nd paragraph), a lack of freedom, the inevitability of his future, and even where he can retreat to his room in an escape attempt prefers, and then this (p. 12, end of 2nd paragraph) is expressed that he would prefer it "before the security of the solution, as they had to take the natural course", then it goes to a deep knowledge of the inevitability of the arrest order - Process - Case - sentencing.

That in all the conceptual and linguistic "mistakes" and self-contradictions of Josef K. really a matter of life and death, it is clear, if he - not knowing what he is doing - so require, with the dubious representative of a dubious authority much trouble, after not certifiable strong "cyclists legitimacy", just his "birth certificate" herauszukramen (p. 10), that on his 30th Birthday - on that day is the action a yes! - To provide the notarized by the fact the erstwhile birth legitimacy of today's existence proof. (E) allegory: the self-dramatization of birth and death - from birth than death A well even deeper psychological dimension enters Ks action between arrest and interrogation to the surface again in the retreat situation in his room, which also evokes the suicide. It says: "He threw himself on his bed and took the Vanity *** a beautiful apple, which he had prepared last night for breakfast." (P. 12) Here are two traditional metaphors are combined: "Vanity", out of context on the denotative level of meaning, an object, intended for the prefinite wash, which - has finished an old, decrepit, schmutzigmachenden day, and for the morning wash, which in a fresh, new, "- metaphorically-konnotierend should initiate zero "incipient day; "Apple", determined on the denotative level of meaning for the morning breakfast, which will allow a new day physically. Connotations of this combination as a metaphor to represent the mind of the attentive reader in relation to the topic of repressed feelings of guilt on the one hand and in the context of the birth and birthday motif on the other hand necessarily the meanings "Purification / catharsis" and "new beginning / Lebensneubeginn" one. Moreover penetrates here but also the level of a collective in a certain way unconscious to the surface, which makes the interpretation of allegory, namely the Judeo-Christian-I deeply embedded processing of human guilt problem with the Biblical fall of man-myth (in the apple motif) and the specifically Christian baptismal symbolism (at birth and in the wash, / cleaning design, coupled with the apple fall motif). *** The older Kafka research has made use of the method of allegory very eagerly, with results that neutralize each other so to speak, because - as others Horst Steinmetz in his book ". Suspensive interpreting the example of Franz Kafka" (Gttingen [Oxford University Press] 1977) critically points out - in the interpretations of almost all the respective "world models" accurately reflect the artist (p. 29). By contrast, then, turned cleverly made through knowledge of modern reception psychology, a younger generation of Kafka performer who argue for restraint, just "suspension", which then - go too far when they made the - I think undoubtedly "very solid coding of [Kafka] texts" a "hermetic unity against all non-literary and traditional literary codes" make (p. 61). For now, the Kafka research - just a positivist working - such as the accuracy of the knowledge of the Kafkaesque semantics and their literary, philosophical and theological, and especially their biographical conditions ensures that it is possible to elicit within a fairly accurately determined frame of uncertainty, such as what connotations mitgemeint are really in the apple metaphor. The Kafka research for some time to know the

danger of constitutional and a particular interpretation approach, but does not shy away in the face of "uncertainties" back before determination. I am thinking in particular of the excellent, very different works by Gerhard Kurz "dream terror. Kafka's literary analysis of existence" (1980) and Hans Helmut Hiebel "The sign of the law. Law and power in Kafka" (1983, 2nd ed . 1989). I return to the observations and examples intentioned attempts at interpretation for the first chapter of the novel: Josef K. - it says so "Threw himself on his bed and took the vanity a beautiful apple, which he had prepared last night for breakfast." Crucial at this point seems to me to be the fact that "prepares" the highly significant combination of washing facilities and apple on the eve of Josef K., been so arranged more or less consciously, is also in a more or less conscious consideration of the 30th Birthday the next day. That is, in the context of the previously identified repression of guilt: Joseph K. unconsciously staged the day he was born (or the 30th repetition) as a day on which I will be discussing the cleaning of his guilt and a new birth - what is it then to the day a year later 31 at its . Birthday, the day of his death, to go again to and perhaps even go when death understood as the death "penalty" for what caused the sense of guilt, the only way a catharsis and a - of course then paradoxical - "rebirth "is - I will come back later. A manner of speaking: Joseph K. ultimately initiated and directed himself, of his own accord before his 30th Birthday and, in the scheduled execution, from the first moment of awakening with each action. The process, the game of his birth and death (F) knowledge - Fall - Displacement The motive of the apple is not yet exhausted its meaning: Joseph K. staged by eating the apple not only the desire for purification and new beginnings. "Catharsis" could be a mere magical process, but K. also creates the desire for consciousness, for knowledge, for the "knowledge of good and evil," the food of the apple is to mythic understanding addition, yes, and because it in apple eating allegorically comes to finding emerges in consciousness Ks when he is alone in his room (P 12/13), the thought of suicide and the potential willingness to do so. Then he has to start "hungry" was, but before he had even scared when the cook is not the usual breakfast appeared, for now he could not help but take the "prepared" apple breakfast of knowledge itself. The reason is, but for the fear of all in the fact that the facility offered by the apple of knowledge of good and evil - again the myth accordingly - also the same as the "original sin" is, which could also be well understood first as an awareness of the " sin ", ie the latent sense of guilt and culpability. The content of Josef K. critical knowledge may be formulated as follows: "About me, my life is talked to death." Joseph K. himself formulated but his basic insight, however, different: First First he pushes it immediately - as he says himself - "the thought of the guards" to, so he distances himself from her. Second He uses it as not really realize is not discuss its possible content and meaning, but claims equal to their non-sense, their "futility".

Above all, he interprets them third, as she shows up in his mind, as the idea that he had the "ten-fold way", "suicide" (p. 13), he is so cocky as a profiling option against the Guardians even if only in thought. He refreshes not only in response to the obvious weakness of the victim of violence, to be battered self-confidence, he also operates clearly - as later again, the most problematic would be with the other victims of power, the merchant block -. Overcompensation That means that in a course of action to the exclusive Anxiety rises to the ego, on the one hand the weak ego, on the other hand the fear away Josef K., who actually turned up in his knowledge, the chance to opt deliberately to an action that the knowledge correspond. This seems so such a thing as a "real" "sin to be present." Kafka wrote in the third octavo book on the topic of human "capacity for knowledge of good and evil," "since the Fall": "No one can be content with the knowledge alone, but must endeavor to act in accordance with her. But for him the power is not given [...]." (H 76) Under its content aspect is the knowledge of good and evil, it seems, "step to [new] life" under their relationship, their I-aspect but rather "an obstacle in front of him" (H 78 [= Wedding Preparations in the Country and other prose from the estate, ed. by Max Brod, New York / Frankfurt am Main, 1953]). (G) Power = Right / weak ego and ego-splitting As before, the question is not answered, what the possible causes may be that Joseph K. cherishes such strong feelings of guilt, that he interpreted the dawning in him finding a necessary and possible new beginning after the catharsis as a necessity of suicide and this knowledge then fearing immediately redundant. The novel answers that question until the end not, and it is important that these agonizing openness as such and not determine wegzudeuten. The reader will probably suffer. Nevertheless, I believe that my students with such a weighty question is not, in any case should be dismissed not only in openness and lack of it, not particularly because I myself remain not even in it, but the agony of uncertainty would dissolve. So I am methodically one step further and refer to broaden the understanding of the novel, an autobiographical text Kafka with a: Kafka's "Letter to His Father," which the 36-year old wrote after his third unsuccessful engagement, without ensuring that the letter to the addressee, his own father, has actually achieved is a truly harrowing document of the terrible, life indelible, on psychosomatic ways - after Kafka's own understanding - ultimately fatal guilt that when the civil authority instance of "father" in a child can produce so-called "best of intentions" - with the "success" that this child as an adult nor exculpated his father and himself while also accused of any wrongdoing, but it does not get rid of the ineradicable guilt. In "Letter to His Father" Kafka reports: "I whimpered once a night continually by water, certainly not thirsty, but probably partly to anger, sometimes to entertain me. After some strong threats had not helped, you took [father] me out of bed, on carried me the Pawlatsche [the balcony] and left me there alone in front of the closed door for a while in the shirt stand. [...] I was afterwards probably already obedient, but I had an inner harm. The self-evident to me of the senseless Ums Water-begging and the

extraordinary horror of addition Worn becoming I could my nature never to bring in the right combination. Years later I suffered from the painful idea that the huge man, my father, the last instance, are almost without reason, and me in the night was carried out of the bed on the Pawlatsche and that I was such a nothing for him so. " (H 122 f) I just Comment: The process stops suddenly in upon the young child, "almost without reason," "the final authority" exercises just from their seemingly absolute power. Right is what the power authority says and does. Do: "Be confident as we adults do not make any noise in the night!" In the "nature" of the child - Kafka says elsewhere: in his "peculiar", his own "material" - is another desire, created a different direction of interest that could be grown and sovereign, the = but of the "power legal entity "is discarded completely. The result is "that I often dominant feeling of nothingness" (H 123), and a terrible sense of guilt. Elsewhere in this letter from Kafka speaks of "intellectual supremacy" of the father in the family: "You had you alone by his own efforts raised themselves so high, therefore you had unlimited confidence in your opinion. [...] From your armchair you ruled the world. Your opinion was correct, every other was mad, extravagant, bonkers, not normal . " . (P. 124) "The Scolding You verstrktest with threats [...] was terrible to me as this: >> I tear you like a fish <<, but I knew that the worst thing succeeded (as a small child I knew that though), but it almost equal to my expectations of your power that you were also been the able. Horrible as it was, if you screaming to the table herumliefst to take a, take obviously not wanted, but but so were doing and the mother a finally rescued. Again they once had, so it seemed to the child to keep the life, by your grace and carried it further than your undeserved gift. " (H 129 f) I again Comment: This is a model for double bind, for the so-called in Psychiatry "double bond", this paradoxical, leading to psychotic disorders parenting behavior: In the same breath, "I will tear you" and "I pardon you," court-martial, and clemency , the victim in the same sensation moment agony and boundless admiration for the cause of the fear of death, this sovereign people who "raised themselves by their own strength so high" is real and is now prevented by the "height" of that another "in his own way up can work. " The consequences are ego-splitting and weak ego as masochistic or sadistic behavior - how far humans Kafka that we may not be interested here. I think the two little longer quotes from the "Letter to His Father" were useful in that they provide a model for from the novel itself is not understandable behavior of Joseph K. in the 'process' novel: As one finally wants to, he was 30 Birthday - Make a new beginning, that is: - Out of a subconscious impulse which, do what he has legitimacy since its birth: be confident, - From "I" "I" do, - His "nature", his "peculiar" to bring his "material" to develop, - Delivering the desire of the fundamental will to live in the reality, - To recognize the truth of his life come - Expressed collectively, philosophically, to constitute itself as a subject. But another, the first completely run counter movement of the same unconscious led him to condemn the pursuit of autonomy absolutely and immediately punished with the death penalty

- but how in the end (P 194) out, is not "torn fish" as, but as a " dog to "be tapped. The weak I responded the morning of the birthday of both mutually exclusive impulses and staged - in his necessarily split state - two opposing games that require but each other - and then decides the order over everything else: The first starts of course, the " Power = right "instance obeying the process tragedy with the disaster at the end and the" arrest "in the very first scene - even though the" original sin "to be going the punishment it has not yet occurred, but only "prepared", is planned. Significantly, it was not until the second game allowed the start of what should happen as a "comedy", but in its original meaning no longer allowed now, the "comedy" is now rather in the fact that the sovereign be ending "subject" whose birth actually to be celebrated, as it knows, in effect, uses hopeless positions against the deadly intentioned attack to defend and thereby, in a defensive ego weakness, before the representatives of power and, unfortunately, from themselves "bonkers" lists and ridiculous. No wonder then that in the end the tragedy interspersed. (H) The plot: dream-projection or external reality A key question for the understanding of the "process" novel: When Joseph K., based on its the novel's action ahead of socialization, the play of power from the beginning really himself staged as paradoxical-masochistic self-punishment, then have not all the Court related phenomena merely illusory character - and "it's all part of the court", as it is later? It could be: On the morning of his 30th Birthday Josef K. 'wake up' then not from sleep into the daily life, but - if you sleepless at Kafka, through signed nights thinking - from a conscious-unconscious "Nightlife" in a really unconscious daydream that persists throughout the novel on. For such a view, the fact that Joseph K. The plot of the novel from the bed, from the place of sleep, more precisely, the "pillow", or "ringing" from the place of dreaming of one, with the result that he then an "appearance", a vision that is has. It could also be that the novel events would interpret as a half awake projection of dream content to the outside world, the external, independent existence of the protagonist and only he believes to be true. This view may rely on the of perspective of the novel, the "unidirectionality" of storytelling, from the beginning of the speech was. And obviously yes corresponds to the whole course of the process, twice a paradoxical game, just the internal organization of the protagonist, even the three figures triads appear in the first chapter - as historians have noted - as unconscious, each triple projections of the unconscious, the old three Observers in the house opposite as embodiments of agonizing introspection Josef K., the three arrested officials. as realizations of self-condemnation, the three bank officials as an expression of will that K. transferred his unconscious sense of guilt on his career at the Bank It could be so, it may remain in limbo. But clearly, that is not the narrator tells mere dreams, hallucinations or projections of Josef K., but frightening and deadly lethal reality. He leaves no doubt that everything up to the execution by the butcher knife, authentic, "realistic" is encountered reality and all individuals have their own existence in the real world outside. With all uncertainty and fantasy, with all surreality of individual scenes, eg the Prglerszene in the lumber room of the bank, the "Court" presented as a part of everyday life in the outside world existing totalitarian power, which is on the level of action of the novel is always the actual, erschreckenmachende power of initiative, and Joseph K. is her victim.

This finding is very important for the interpretation, then, would the process of Joseph K. ultimately play only in its interior, the novel reflect only a dream events or the result of a projection, so hardly a broadly political interpretation would be plausible that eg - I believe correctly - out of it reads the horror of the totalitarian power structures in modern society, the horror of brutal exercise of power by the State or through authoritarianism in social institutions or on the basis of social institutions - Kafka's example is the "Banker" - and of course about the institution of the bourgeois family, through socialization as the exercise of power. (I) The ubiquity of "power = right" - Structure It is now, however, very interesting and highly relevant to the interpretation of the "process" novel that here the issue of "family" explicitly only marginally comes to language - as opposed to the two grand narratives "Judgment" and "The Metamorphosis" , in 1912, two years before the "process", Kafka's birth as a writer meant and in the context of social authority "family" the indissoluble mesh-Verschrnktsein of power and law, the necessary self-constitution in overturning the self-destruction of human activity. Although I am of the opinion that an adequate understanding of the "process" novel is only possible in the context of family and socialization issues. But be just, if this view is correct, clearly defined needs that the plot structure of "process" novel boils down to something else: Kafka takes over the story "The Judgment" in the novel, two important changes: First He occupied the position of "tribunal" in the "judgment" is clearly a person who holds namely the Father,. Not with a person but with an institution 1a) This institution is acting anonymously, out of obscurity. 1b) It is therefore not certain identifiable, is particularly remote and inaccessible. 1c) Instead, it diffuses into a myriad of lower organs occurs in the form of many small official in appearance, which - as it turns out - are hidden everywhere in the living world and then may suddenly appear ("registries are yet almost every attic" says the painter Titorelli [p 141]). 1d) Ultimately, "all part of the court", i.e. the whole world has life judicial nature. 1e) In fact, all members of society know of the trial court, apparently not only the protagonist. 1f) is not only the protagonist, but also others, probably many, if not all, are involved in a lawsuit. That is the interpretation: it Apparently Kafka with this change from the earlier stories about just the ubiquity of the "power = right" structure in all living processes demonstrate the system-defining structural importance of the master-servant relationship, the battle of ego or I-absolutization destruction - with the formula Nietzsche, Kafka has read like the other young intellectuals of his time, even as a high school student - the formula of the will to power, the insatiable will that life ever makes. Literature is "Description of a Struggle" - is the title of an early story of Kafka - and on the portrait of the painter Titorelli has been made by a coroner, is the "Goddess of Justice" also "the goddess of victory in a" and then sees even "perfect as the goddess of the hunt" of (P 126): right = power = persecution ("rush" it says later in the novel) and = submission! (J) The refusal of the Enlightenment

Second The second structural change in the arrangements for action in the "process" against the "judgment" is as basic as the first: The narrator denies the reader the radical genesis of the case, which is treated in the one-year process. He could indeed the history of the process, perhaps Josef K. 'sad or horrific childhood, his own childhood of the author comparable tell, not in the authorial process of explicit flashback, but in the personal narrative approach by reproducing the reflections of themselves justifying to themselves protagonists. But such psychologizing - because the process would lead to even out - is strictly avoided, namely the fact that the protagonist whose perspective is not really exceeded themselves not backwardlooking insight and analysis power is applied. In itself, Josef K. is indeed the starting point of the novel's action in the classic situation of Oedipus, is undergoing a relentless self-analysis, to the point, which means his own destruction. The figure of Joseph K. is still in the tradition of the Enlightenment critical self-reflection of the self, like the first movement of his thoughts speech - the first sentence of the novel - is a related to the past, their own history reconnaissance effort - but already with her tilts to use education in disguise. Instead, Joseph K. is completely under the spell of the initiatives of the court, yes, he goes further and further into the orbit of power, despite the associated anxiety. At the beginning of the seventh chapter, he has still the best informative intentions, as he reflects on the appropriateness of a self-created "defense" for the court: "He wanted to provide a brief biography and each somehow more important event to explain the reasons why he had done so, whether to declare the action after his current sentence or to approve was and what reasons he could cite for this or that." (P 98) A truly radical rationalistic analysis program - it stays at the intent of Josef K., perform this brainwashing - not with a single thought, he is first. Not justification but combative defense he has in mind. What is being called the "process" that arises in the first place so without specific reference back to earlier lived and gradually analytically unregenerate life, as life, as the life of Joseph K. in the process. An exemplary year between the two birthdays The process revolves around no other material than that which accumulates K. himself this year as a trial before the court. Life in this way has no meaning in itself It is clear that such a teleological conception of action structure of the novel, such as classic Bildungsroman, a real development of a beginning to an end, and that's not even a reading voltage, permits, and it is only logical that a novel fragment produced. The outlined denial of all psychological-analytical elements, despite the straight particularly longing for analysis and explanation of inconsistency in the behavior and thinking of the protagonist, has more important consequences: With the absence of a history of missing the character of the protagonist and all biographically specific, all singular . The Josef K. makes the "man without qualities". The Profillosigkeit out but also to a parabolic, allegorical figure to be interpreted: Josef K. is the man who is the unalterable fate of death fallenness subject. This fate is removed from life history and social history conditionalities, it is not derivable, since, on 30 or 31 Birthday of Josef K. as already at birth. The family father-son relationship, as well as social master-servant relationships give only models for an ontological condition. His life is for Kafka, Verurteiltsein to death. So that the Verurteiltsein applies to death as an ontological fact is, for Kafka told simultaneously that there is no morally relevant fact. Connected to the Verurteiltsein guilt can

be neither imposed on himself, accusations of guilt - Josef K. is right: "There was no guilt" (P 109) - even those directed against other individuals or institutions such as the court or the bank is. An "acquittal" of Josef K. is not because of a moral fault, but basically impossible "who have such a process is already lost," says the uncle (P 85). "Sinful is the state in which we find ourselves, regardless of guilt." (H 74) It says so in the aphorisms of the octave books from Ziirau time, and it is important that this concept of "sin" in Kafka not misunderstand: If Kafka repeatedly of "sin" and "sin" speaks, he uses the terms. than mythological quotations used to help him to avoid the moral concepts and deal with a moral interpretation of human death "duty" (K) Kafka's death metaphysics And now again the basic question still not answered after Kafka's understanding of death "duty" of Josef K. What the world and of man is behind this strange for the "normal" readers conception of life as being unto death? This formula is to say yes more than the obviousness of the statement "All men must die." Again, I quote from the octavo book, Kafka's aphorisms. In these short, often pointed to a paradoxical statement texts shows that "death" for Kafka is ambiguous and doppelwertig, ambivalent: "The cruelty of death is that he brings the real pain of the end, but not the end [-] The cruelest death:.. One caused [only] an apparent end a real pain [-] The action at the deathbed is actually the lament that there has been no death in the true sense. Still, we must be content with this death, we still continue to play the game. " (H 90) Kafka thus distinguishes between the "natural death", which of course also includes murder and suicide, and a real, authentic "end" state, an "In-true-meaning-being dead." Natural death, death is part of life "in this world", whose characteristic feature is the "suffering". Kafka is in this thought obviously strongly influenced by Schopenhauer. (For more details on this can be read short in the book by Gerhard: pp. 141 ff) The Schopenhauer's death metaphysics accordingly, creates suffering in the world inherent through all being selfish, insatiable desire, this restless propulsive, combative desire. Even the suicide offers no alternative. The "suicide" of the Kafka speaks in Oktavheften (H 77), is mistaken when he says, "break away" from the "prison" of life, this cycle of suffering and pain-inflicting, to - well, he is driven, and he covets selfish. In this respect, Josef K. 'knowledge in the apple-breakfast scene, where he. Of the "futility" of self-Umbringens proceeds (P 13), at a deeper level of understanding, but more important than it had initially appeared But what would be the alternative to the painful death Gregor Samsa, suicide Bendemann George, to execution of Josef K.? What would be their true, authentic being dead? "The essential characteristic of this world is its transience" (H 85), Kafka wrote in the Fourth octavo book, "this world [is] only a transition" (H 87). Human life is a movement from nowhere to nowhere. Many diary and letter Kafka's remarks show his peculiar intimacy with nothing. The way the people in the world is now a way of suffering, understood as incessant dragged away by the desire to become, by the desire for individuation, the will to power. On the other hand "the suffering of the positive element of

this world" is because the knowledge of suffering contains indeed the truth about the world. It leads directly to the decision not to run again and again to the suffering, since it is impossible to escape from it, and by attempts to escape the unrest will only grow. It's about stopping to cope with suffering, to accept it as "the most positive element of this world." There "Two options. Make infinitely small, or it may be the second [infinitesimal be] is perfection, the first [more] beginning [...]" (H 78). Going a step further in the third octavo book an aphorism goes: "No one can be satisfied with the knowledge alone, but must endeavor to act in accordance with her. [...] It must therefore be [the active, confident his willing subject] destroy [...], he has no other left but this last attempt. " (H 76) Thus Kafka is also able, as in "Letter to His Father" is, the bad "feeling of nothingness", the ruined personality that the father has caused in him, "even [as a] noble and fruitful feeling" to feel. (H 123) And understanding of death? "Our salvation is death, but not this." (H 123, short 145) "Not as though the suffering which here will be [equivalent such as a traditional Christian beyond understanding] increases elsewhere because of this condition, [there is no elsewhere!] But in such a way that what is suffering in this world, a another world, unchanged [remains] and only freed [is] is opposed by his [its opposition to real life], [and then] salvation. " (H 80) Kafka speaks in this context of the "truth [not] the people", the restless, striving towards the goal, but of the "truth of the Resting" that is "by the tree of life" represented "" because the truth of a One such Died paradoxically in the first "life" in an emphatic sense. (H 80) "Still," we play [but] the game Died this one, but it is Kafka's - probably too but metaphysically Calling - longing. Above all, his letter he knows well as anticipating the Desired: At Felice he wrote a week before his 30th Date of Birth: "I need to write my seclusion, not 'like a hermit' that would not be enough, but as a corpse. Letter in this sense is a deep sleep, that death [...]." (FB 412) But both longing for death and "death letter" change the fact: "This life seems unbearable, another unattainable." (H 60) To sum up, called Without this "thanatology," as Gerhard Kurz Kafka's death metaphysics is, in my opinion, "The Trial" is not to be understood. I want to check for final authorization of such an understanding again, following by clicking the so-called "Legend" "Before the Law" from the cathedral chapter eingehe and the figures of the "put man from the country" and Josef K. side by side: When the "man from the country", standing before the "law" of todverfallenen life, would not be distracted and reject, knowing that "evil is [...] that distracts" (H 62),

when Joseph K. would be consistent with the thirtieth anniversary of his "birth"-experiment, with his unconscious death wish paradoxically coupled life and truth attempt so, what would it be? A brief parable of the "wicked leaves" shows (H 255), unlike the novel, and the legend, not only the "truth of [uneasy] people", but the alternative "Resting the truth": "Do you run constantly forward pltscherst further in the balmy air, the hands sideways like fins, see volatile half asleep the rush of everything, what are you over come, you will once and the car can pass roll on you. Will you but states can with the power of the gaze, the roots grow deep and wide - nothing can eliminate you and there are still no roots, just the power of your targeting gaze - then you will also see the unchanging dark distance, can come out of nothing more than just once the car, he approached rolls is growing steadily, is the moment in which he arrives at you, world-fulfilling, and you sink into it like a kid in the cushions of a tour car driving through storm and night. " (H 255) The man from the country "to be many trials, embedded [in the law]" with his behavior, just as restless as the "you" person addressed in the first part of the car-parable that "runs forward constantly." Pre-Rolling cart and entry into the law be missed. Would the man from the country, however, as the parabolic "you" in the second part of the car-parable, "stand firm", decide to act on his will to knowledge of, and superior to the gatekeeper by entering the "law" - because the "law "" but should be accessible to everyone and always "(P 182), He would then in the depths of the "law", in the depths of truth as the "you" raise the car parable of the "power of the gaze" then he would the "vision" of "inextinguishable glory" of experience, but "not tolerate" can, that is, he would - capitalized words - "to destroy", as called for in the Third octavo book, and liabilities expressed in the imagery of the car-parable: he would be overwhelmed by the "world-fulfilling" cars, he would then be truly dead, "like a child in the cushions of a travel trailer" in the death rest of the redeemed life ichschwach nervous-autonomy movement. The difference from the "Legend" reported sequence at the end after all, even the death of the man is from the country would be to that of life or death process of the man not to go through a decade-long stay in the world of illusion and the lie - even the tall tales! - Would take, not "abducted" would, but just in truth, the "law" depended. And the same would apply to Josef K., he set aside for the apple enjoyment in his room in the upcoming launch of his death wish him not rationalisierend, distract yourself, but it would give way. The once and for all about life in "this world" spoken death sentence would not change - but not "carry-over" of the process, nor repeatedly concluded coming mainly through the help of the women 'apparent acquittal "had taken place. (Of these two alternatives to "definite acquittal" yes persuaded the court painter Titorelli in the Seventh Chapter [P 131 et seq.]) (L) The novel as staging deportation process This does, however: there, in the case of the undeflected protagonist's search for truth is no action and no romance novel "The Trial", perhaps a short, concise parable, but the "great

shape" of the novel would not be possible. For Kafka's novel as a novel is nothing but the representation of the "evil", "distraction" from the actual, the "spread" of the true, necessary, "natural history". Yes, he is not even the appearance of a process of deportation, but the outer and inner meaningless phrases about the abduction. To put it bluntly: The novel as a novel is due to an anxious and nervous, operated with differentiated syntactic, logical and argumentative effort (not pejorative understanding) talkativeness given the TOP inevitable, with just this inevitability and hence the drag character is not the protagonist deliberately be. Herein lies the reason for the actionlessness the "process" novel. Finally: Just filling the meaningless void of 200 pages, expiring in thought and dialogue carryover talk of Joseph K. makes the eminent worldliness of novel fragment: Kafka wrote in the third octavo book, "the whole world" is full of "motivations", and he means: full of meaningless and purposeless strained reasoning tests in the field of not from individual understood contradiction between unconscious death wish and conscious death prevention, and Kafka continues: "Yes, the whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than a motivation for a moment calm willing man." (H 76) The whole of human life-world as the result of a global repression and rationalizing power of man, the "modern man" (?), Who is in his heart has always been to the final "end" and the rest in the "end" of the road, but eventually get to the "detour" of subjectivity and the striving for knowledge is autonomous and now from fear of death and deportation backup systems built that make today's "world"! The author shows that Kafka deportation process, cold, sine ira et studio, he staged with the pen on the paper as the game of black letters in nothingness. He has participated in the process, which is the world, "as if he had not." This is neither life nor death - perhaps staging of life than death? or: death than life? The *** for the origination date of issue of this statement used the "process" was the fitabu Fischer paperback 676th The wording is there not match the handwriting as the HistoricalCritical Edition of the Complete manuscripts, prints and typescripts, ed. identifies by Roland Reuss and Peter Staengle in publishing Stroemfeld / Red Star, Basel / New York: Instead of "vanity" it says "bedside". (Franz Kafka, someone had to have slandered Josef K., 1997, pp. 24/25) In this respect, the interpretation towards "rebirth" (cleaning metaphor "Vanity / Wash") problematic. In the next sentence, however, is talk that the apple breakfast "much better" than the breakfast "by the grace of the Guardians" - its own staging of the apple fall from grace "much better" than the possible pardon by the court / his representatives. So it's not just about the selfdirected repeal of "sin", but the unconscious rejection of a possible pardon - which underlies the unconscious rejection of the real, "life" necessarily connected (great-) debt. - This interpretive thought should be carried out more accurately. (Nov. 2007) The reference to the text of the manuscript I owe Sibille cooking.