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Abstract
This essay seeks to clarify and substantiate the following statements: 1. Das Schloß reflects the causes leading to divisions among people. 2. Das Schloß cultivates attitudes essential for the awareness of unity (above all, attention and empathy towards those who suffer). In the novel itself, the key role with respect to both of these statements is played by the following — linguistically and factually interconnected — motifs: The concealment of the assumed centre of the ontological, religious, or social structure of Das Schloß (in the language of Kafka’s novel one may say ‘die Verschlossenheit des Schlosses’); the exclusion (‘Ausschließung’) of a family, whose member separated herself from an officially sanctioned connection with this centre; the concealment (‘Verschlossenheit’) of the spheres one would need to know in order to understand the story unequivocally; especially the concealment of the inner world of Kafka’s characters, not only those spatially distant (Westwest, Klamm, or Sortini), but also those spatially close (mainly Amalia). The aim of this essay is to clarify and substantiate the above-mentioned statements by an interpretation of the novel (primarily the Amalia-Sortini episode), while taking into account the analyses by other scholars, especially Ritchie Robertson.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Ondřej Galuška, Hana Pavelková, Zuzana Prokopová, Petra Šebešová, the anonymous referee for Oxford German Studies, and the editor, Jim Reed, for their valuable comments and recommendations.
Notes on Contributor
Matěj Král received his PhD at Charles University in 2012. His doctoral dissertation focused on Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Kafka. Since 2009, Matěj Král has been teaching philosophy at North Carolina State University European Center in Prague (formerly North Carolina State University Prague Institute) where he continues with his research into the philosophical implications of Kafka’s fiction.
Notes
1 Ritchie Robertson, Kafka. Judaism, Politics, and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 226.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., pp. 236–41.
4 Ibid., pp. 240–41.
5 Ibid., pp. 243–62.
6 Franz Kafka, Briefe an Milena (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1986), p. 307 (January/February 1923).
7 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Das Schloß, ed. by Malcolm Pasley (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1983), pp. 104–05. Further references to this volume are given in the text as “S”.
8 Robertson, Kafka. Judaism, Politics, and Literature, pp. 226–27.
9 Ritchie Robertson, Kafka. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 93.
10 Elizabeth Boa, Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 258. See also p. 277.
11 Boa, Gender, Class, and Race, p. 259.
12 Ibid., p. 260.
13 Ibid., p. 261.
14 Stephen Dowden, Kafka’s Castle and the Critical Imagination (Columbia: Camden House, 1995), p. 93.
15 Dowden, Kafka’s Castle, p. 35.
16 Ibid., p. 68.
17 Ibid., p. 35.
18 Robertson, Very Short Introduction, p. 93.
19 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II., ed. by Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1983), p. 137. Further references to this volume are given after quotations in the text (as “NSF II”).
20 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente I., ed. by Malcolm Pasley (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer: 1993), pp. 352–56. Further references to this volume are given after quotations in the text (as “NSF I”).
21 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 253. Hans Dieter Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene (Munich: Beck, 2004), pp. 101–02 and p. 169.
22 Robertson, Very Short Introduction, p. 97.
23 Heinz Politzer, Franz Kafka. Parable and Paradox (New York: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 244.
24 František Kautman, Franz Kafka (Prague: Academia, 1996), p. 70.
25 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 237.
26 Jan Amos Komenský, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, trans. by Matthew Spinka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 1 (Chapter I).
27 Hans Dieter Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene (Munich: Beck, 2004), pp. 95–97.
28 Politzer, Parable and Paradox, p. 233; Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene, p. 99.
29 Komenský, The Labyrinth of the World, p. 3 (Ch. III); p. 83 (Ch. XXVIII).
30 Ibid., p. 73 (Ch. XXIII).
31 Ibid., pp. 90–97 (Ch. XXXII).
32 Zimmermann poses a partially similar question in relation to Der Verschollene. Cf. Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene, p. 104.
33 Komenský, The Labyrinth of the World, p. 104 (Ch. XXXVIII).
34 Ibid., pp. 51–60 (Ch. XVII–XVIII); p. 107 (Ch. XXXIX).
35 Ibid., pp. 110–11 (Ch. XLI).
36 Ritchie Robertson asks in connection with The Metamorphosis: ‘Supposing consciousness is always like this, so that no matter how much of the unconscious you expose, your true being always retreats further and eludes your introspective gaze?’ Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 86.
37 Kafka was working on the novel from January to the end of August 1922. Waldemar Fromm, ‘Das Schloss’, in Kafka Handbuch, ed. by Manfred Engel and Bernd Auerochs (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010), pp. 301–02.
38 Franz Kafka, Briefe 1902–1924 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1989), p. 385 (July 5, 1922). Walter H. Sokel writes in connection with this letter: ‘Multiplication of characters in the literary work does not change the self-reflection at its basis, but merely intensifies it. Since fictional characters are self-projections of the author in varying degrees, “vanity” simply becomes “a solar system” instead of being confined to a single star.’ Walter H. Sokel, The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), p. 77.
39 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, pp. 228–35.
40 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Drucke zu Lebzeiten, ed. by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch, and Gerhard Neumann (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1996), p. 377. Further references to this volume are given in the text as “DL”.
41 Max Brod, Nachwort, in Franz Kafka, Das Schloß (Munich: Wolff, 1926), p. 500.
42 Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (Jena: Diederichs, 1911), p. 79. Further references to this volume are given in the text as “KzT”.
43 Helge Miethe, Sören Kierkegaards Wirkung auf Franz Kafka (Marburg: Tactum, 2006), p. 5 and pp. 41–42.
44 Miethe, Sören Kierkegaards Wirkung auf Franz Kafka, p. 5 and p. 42.
45 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 243. Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene, p. 167.
46 Wiebrecht Ries, Transzendenz als Terror: eine religionsphilosophische Studie über Franz Kafka (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1977), p. 64.
47 Miethe, Sören Kierkegaards Wirkung auf Franz Kafka, pp. 139–40.
48 Ries, Transzendenz als Terror, p. 135.
49 Miethe, Sören Kierkegaards Wirkung auf Franz Kafka, p. 18.
50 Olaf Peder Monrad. Søren Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke (Jena: Diederich, 1909), p. 59.
51 Monrad, Søren Kierkegaard, p. 60.
52 Ibid., p. 60.
53 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken (Frankfurt a.M.: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), p. 26. Further references to this volume are given after quotations in the text as “PB”.
54 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 114.
55 Kavka (jackdaw) in Czech.
56 Thorben Päthe, ‘Judentum und Christentum — Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede’, in Franz Kafka zwischen Judentum und Christentum, ed. by Gernot Wimmer (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012), pp. 100–01.
57 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 256.
58 Ibid., p. 238.
59 Max Brod, ‘Eine Bemerkung zu Kafkas “Schloß”’, in Max Brod, Über Franz Kafka (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1993), pp. 373–74.
60 Božena Němcová, The Grandmother, trans. by Frances Gregor (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1891), p. 172.
61 Ries, Transzendenz als Terror, p. 64.
62 Němcová, The Grandmother, p. 170.
63 Dowden, Kafka’s Castle, p. 75.
64 Boa, Gender, Class, and Race, p. 251.
65 Ibid., p. 286.
66 Zimmermann, Kafka für Fortgeschrittene, p. 165.
67 Dowden, Kafka’s Castle, pp. 108 and 128.
68 Ibid., p. 119.
69 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 189.
70 Ibid., p. 201.
71 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Der Verschollene, ed. by Jost Schillemeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1983), pp. 196–202.
72 Robertson, Judaism, Politics, and Literature, p. 62.
73 Walter Benjamin, ‘Zur zehnten Wiederkehr seines Todestages’, in Benjamin über Kafka: Texte, Briefzeugnisse, Aufzeichnungen, ed. by Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), p. 32.
74 Brod, ‘Franz Kafkas Glauben und Lehre’, in Über Franz Kafka, p. 298.
75 Ibid., p. 272.
76 Ibid, p. 267.
77 Ibid, p. 223.
78 Boa, Gender, Class, and Race, p. 248.
79 Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe: Briefe 1900–1912, ed. by Hans-Gerd Koch (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1999), p. 28.
80 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: 1979), p. 194–201.
81 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 291.
82 Ibid., p. 293.
83 Ibid., p. 293.