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Illuminating Kafka

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Illuminating Kafka Sosland Journal 25 ILLUMINATING KAFKA AN ANALYSIS OF JEWISH LITERARY CULTURE IN KAFKA’S WORK Joseph F. Allen While Franz Kafka’s dramatic stories have captivated audiences around the world with their strange imagery and curious, parable-like tales, the obscurity of their meaning has left scholars divided as to the intent and Jewishness of his texts. Many critics overlook an essential aspect of Kafka’s work by not addressing the connotative nature of his words. Here we will examine two of Kafka’s texts—The Trees and Jackals and Arabs—to demonstrate how he uses Jewish literary themes and techniques to embed several layers of meaning beneath his words. Although Judaism was not always a primary part of his life, its infl uence on Kafka runs through his entire career. Born into a German-speaking Jewish family, Kafka was brought up with an understanding of Jewish culture, yet during his childhood, he was apathetic to the traditions of his heritage (Sokel). At the age of 28, he discovered the Yiddish theater which prompted him to take an interest in his Jewish roots. History, tradition, culture, lore the theater showed him a side of his Jewishness that he had never experienced before. The humor and tragedy found throughout the plays were a way for the Jewish people to cope with the political, economic, and social issues of their day 26 Sosland Journal (Ausubel). The plays were written in the Yiddish language which is, according to Evelyn T. Beck, “especially rich in idiom and nuance,” (28). Beck explains the signifi cance of these linguistic traits: “because Yiddish is laced with Hebrew, the ‘holy’ tongue, the language can create layers of meaning and suggest ‘a world that exists beneath words’ ”(28). This style of layering is derived from the combination of Hebrew phrases, references to tradition or religious matters (via metonymy, idioms, metaphors, euphe- mism, synecdoche, etc.), and secular vocabulary. Critics have found that many of the Yiddish proverbs draw similarities with Kafka’s narratives, including, “What will become of the sheep if the wolf is judge?” and, “The hat is fi ne but the head is too small” (Furman). Through the Yiddish language, Kafka discovered how he could use words to fi ll his writings with the irony, paradoxes, and symbolism that characterized Jewish literary culture and the plays that he loved. With the motivation to create, and the infl uence of what he considered to be authentic Judaism, he wrote, eventually developing a style that was so distinctive the term Kafka esque was coined to describe it. Despite the abundant evidence to support the infl uence that Jewish culture had on Kafka, several literary scholars have questioned the role that it takes in his writing due to the “virtual absence of direct allusions” (Scott 7). Unfortunately, such state- ments arise from a lack of understanding of Jewish culture, and more importantly Jewish literary devices. These critics fail to recognize the multifaceted nature of the literary technique that Kafka employs. It is for this reason that much of Kafka’s work is shrouded in debate and mystery. As Clifford Geertz demon- strates in Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, culture is a semiotic concept; a set of signs and symbols that allow individuals in a society to communicate with one another. When an individual from another culture observes Sosland Journal 27 the symbolism, he or she may not recognize or understand the meaning that is associated with that symbolism. It is import- ant to note that many modern Jews have diffi culty interpret- ing and understanding traditional Jewish literature given the cultural shift that has naturally occurred over time. In the case of Kafka, the challenge becomes greater because he weaves multiple literary cultures together and presents them with a dramatic fl air of his own. Furthermore, depending on the text, Kafka evinces variation in the symbolism he uses and the cul- tural style dominates. In the case of The Trees, Kafka employs Jewish literary de- vices to speak to the plight of the Jewish people in an unfavor- able political and economic situation. He wrote the short work in Prague, during the early part of the eighteenth-century, when anti-Semitic mentality prevailed in the German-Czech society (Cohen). During this period, there was a great deal of uncertainty for the future of his people, his religion, and the way of life that he had grown to love. With that context in mind, he wrote: For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appear- ance they lie sleekly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can’t be done, for they are fi rmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only in appearance. (Kafka, Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, Glatzer 382) In the fi rst sentence, two interpretations may be de- rived from the symbolism behind the trees: (1) The trees represent man in the general sense, as in, any human being; or, (2) they represent the Jewish people. Given the context in which Kafka wrote the text, the latter may be a more favored interpretation. Trees as symbols for people is common throughout 28 Sosland Journal Jewish literature, and its origins can be found in reli- gious texts as is the case with most Jewish symbolism. The fi fth book of the Torah, Devārīm (Deuteronomy), uses trees as an idiom for man (20:19). This metaphor comes from the parallels that the holy text draws be- tween human beings and trees; both require nourish- ment, room to grow, fi rm ground to stand on, and roots that run deep (Yerimiyahu [Jeremiah] 16:8; Tehilim [Psalms] 1:3). The Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers), a section of the Mishnah that is fundamental to Jewish oral law, states: A person whose wisdom exceeds his good deeds is likened to a tree whose branches are numerous, but whose roots are few. The wind comes and uproots it and turns it upside down. But a person whose good deeds exceed his wis- dom is likened to a tree whose branches are few but whose roots are numerous. Even if all the winds of the world were to come and blow against it, they could not budge it from its place. (Avot 3:22) In this passage, trees are symbolic of human beings, and like Kafka’s text, the rooting of the tree is the focal point of the message. Given the prominence that the Pirkei Avot holds in Judaism, it is plausible that Kafka may have read this text before writing The Trees. Throughout the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), roots and branches symbolize a single person and all their descen- dants. “And a shoot shall spring forth from the stem of Jesse, and a twig shall sprout from his roots” (Yisheyah (Isaiah) 11:1-2), “for like the days of the tree are the days of My people…for they are seed blessed by the Lord” (Yisheyah 65:22, 65:23). It is for this reason that one may Sosland Journal 29 view the trees in Kafka’s text as a reference to the Jew- ish people. The fact that these trees stand in the “snow” serves to indicate the location where the people in Kaf- ka’s narrative reside. We are left to ask why he did not use a term that relates to the earth, soil, or ground. Why snow? It is reasonable to consider that Kafka is using the snow as a metaphor for the Austro-Hungarian Empire or in a general sense, Europe. Its northern latitude gives the cold climate a distinctive feature. Whether or not this is his intended connotation, I do not know. But, this reading certainly fi ts with the theme of the narrative. Thus, the fi rst sentence gives us the character and the setting, and from that we can understand the context in which we are meant to view the rest of the text. The last three sentences of The Trees offer an inter- esting paradox by stepping back and forth between the trees being rooted or unrooted. A simple chiastic struc- ture can be seen in the way that Kafka returns to the initial idea in the last sentence, completing the symme- try. This technique is used throughout Jewish literature to add emphasis through repetition. By including this structure, Kafka is indicating that the instability of the trees is the crucial aspect of their nature. From this, we are able to conclude that Kafka is speaking about the diffi cult situation that the Jewish people are facing in the German-Czech society. The Jewish people inhabit the Austro-Hungarian Empire, yet only in appearance; the anti-Semitism that exists throughout the region has prevented them from setting roots. The discord that Kaf- ka witnessed between the Jews and the German-Czechs is further perpetuated in his short work, Jackals and Arabs. 30 Sosland Journal Jackals and Arabs was published in the periodical, Der Jude (The Jew), in October of 1917 (Rubinstein). Many early critics of the work were reluctant to recog- nize Der Jude’s nationalistic Jewish leaning, instead electing to interpret the story without a Jewish-based context (Shumsky). Because of this, controversy has sur- rounded the meaning of the text as well as the identity of the characters involved. One such critic, Herbert Tau- ber, said, “in the character of the Arab the unalterable, inexorable law of the World is opposed to all vain dreams of [humanity’s] redemption” and later he states that the jackals’ desire for cleanliness is “a parody of the human dream of light and cleanliness.” Walter Sokel claimed that the confl ict between the jackals and the Arabs cor- relates to aspects of Kafka’s relationship with his father.
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