Franz Kafka is one of the outstanding German-language writers of the 20th century. "The Castle" is the book that made him world famous. Like many of the writer’s works, the novel is imbued with absurdism, anxiety and fear of the outside world. Let's talk about this non-trivial creation in more detail.
About the product
Kafka began writing the novel The Castle in 1922, but that same year he decided to stop working on it. The work remained unfinished, and in this form it was published in 1926.
In a letter to his friend Max Brod, Kafka wrote that he deliberately gave up writing the book and no longer intended to continue it. In addition, he asked his friend to destroy all rough notes after his death. But Brod did not fulfill his friend’s last wish and kept the manuscript.
Franz Kafka, “The Castle”: summary. Welcome to the absurd!
The main character is a young man of about thirty named K. Late in the winter evening, he arrives in the Village and stops at an inn. K. goes to bed, but in the middle of the night he is woken up by Schwarzer, the son of the Castle caretaker. The boy reports that no one without the count’s permission can live in his domain, which includes the Village. The hero explains that he is a land surveyor and arrived here at the invitation of the count. Schwartz calls the Castle, where they confirm the guest's words and also promise to keep him at bay.
Kafka leaves his hero in absolute solitude. "The Castle" (the contents of which are presented here) immerses the reader in an absurdist reality that is impossible to resist.
In the morning K. decides to go to the Castle. But the main road does not lead to the goal, but turns to the side. The hero has to go back. There are already “assistants” waiting for him, who have absolutely no understanding of the work of land surveyors. They inform you that you can only enter the Castle with permission. K. starts calling and demanding that he be given permission. But the voice on the phone replies that he is denied this forever.
Guest from the Castle
Kafka conveys his worldview in his works. “The Castle” (the summary serves as proof of this) is permeated with gloom and hopelessness. Man is given the most insignificant place in it; he is powerless and defenseless.
The messenger Barnabas appears, differing from other local residents in his openness and sincerity, and conveys a message to K. from the Castle. It reports that K. was hired, and the head of the Village was appointed his boss. The hero decides to get down to work and stay away from officials. Over time, he will be able to become “one of his own” among the peasants and earn the favor of the count.
Barnabas and his sister Olga help K. get into the hotel where the gentlemen who come to the Village from the Castle stay. It is forbidden for outsiders to spend the night here, and the place for K. is only in the buffet. This time the hotel was visited by the official Klamm, about whom all the inhabitants of the Village had heard, but no one had ever seen him.
Franz Kafka gives his hero the same powerless allies as his assistants. “The Castle” (a brief summary will help you get a general impression of the work) describes the clash of powerless but reasonable people with representatives of the authorities, whose actions are completely meaningless.
An important person in the hotel is the barmaid Frida. This is a very sad and plain-looking girl with a “pathetic little body.” But in her gaze, K. read superiority and the ability to resolve any complex issues. Frida shows K. Klamm through a secret peephole. The official turns out to be a clumsy, fat gentleman with sagging cheeks. The girl is the lover of this man, and therefore has great influence in the Village. K. admires Frida's willpower and invites her to become his mistress. The barmaid agrees and they spend the night together. In the morning, Klamm calls Frida demandingly, but she replies that she is busy with a land surveyor.
No need for a land surveyor
Even love is given a depraved and absurd character by Kafka (“The Castle”). The summary illustrates this perfectly. K. spends the next night at the inn with Frida, almost in the same bed, along with assistants from whom it is impossible to get rid of. The hero decides to marry Frida, but first he wants the girl to let him talk to Klamm. But the barmaid and the hostess of the inn tell K. that this is impossible. Klamm, the man from the Castle, will not talk to a simple land surveyor, who is an empty place. The hostess is very sorry that Fritz preferred the “blind mole” to the “eagle”.
Gardena tells K. that about 20 years ago Klamm called her to his place several times. Since then, the Mistress has kept the scarf and cap he gave him, as well as a photo of the courier who invited her to the first meeting. With the knowledge of Klamm, Gardena got married, and for the first years she talked with her husband only about the official. For the first time, K. encounters such a close intertwining of personal and work life.
The hero learns from the headman that he received the news of the land surveyor’s arrival many years ago. Then the headman sent to the Castle and said that no one in the Village needed a land surveyor. The answer probably went to another department, but we can’t talk about this mistake, since mistakes don’t happen in the office. Later, the control authority recognized the mistake, and one of the officials fell ill. And shortly before K.’s arrival, an order finally came to refuse to hire a land surveyor. The appearance of the hero brought to naught the many years of work of officials. But the document cannot be found.
Elusive Klamm
Having served as an official himself, he saw the absurdity of Kafka's bureaucratic apparatus. The castle (the summary presented here describes it in some detail) becomes an image of merciless and senseless clerical power.
Frida forces K. to get a job as a school watchman, although the teacher tells him that the Village needs a watchman just like a land surveyor. The hero and Frida have nowhere to live, and they temporarily settle in a classroom.
K. goes to the hotel to meet Klamm. Pepi, Frida's successor, suggests where the official can be found. The hero lies in wait for him in the yard in the cold for a long time, but Klamm manages to slip past. The official’s secretary demands that K. undergo an “interrogation”, on the basis of which a protocol will be drawn up. But due to the fact that Klamm himself never reads such papers, K. refuses and runs away.
Barnabas conveys to the heroes a message from Klamm, in which the official approves of his surveying work. K. decides that this is a mistake and wants to explain everything. But Barnabas is convinced that Klamm will not even listen to this.
K. sees how his bride has changed over the days of their marriage. Closeness with the official gave Frida “insane charm,” but now she is fading. The girl suffers and is afraid that K. might give her to Klamm if he demands. In addition, she is jealous of the hero’s sister Olga.
Olga's story
Kafka clearly separates his heroes. “The Castle” (the brief summary partly allows us to convey this) is a work where two worlds are clearly drawn. This is the world of officials and ordinary people. The characters are similarly divided. Heroes from ordinary people have feelings, characters, they are alive and full-blooded. And those who are connected with the office lose their human features; there is something articulated and unreal in their appearance.
Olga undoubtedly belongs to the first group. And Kafka even introduces the reader to the story of her life. About three years ago, at a village festival, her younger sister Amalia was seen by the official Sortini. The next morning a letter came from him ordering the girl to come to the hotel. Amalia angrily tore up the message. But never before in the Village had anyone dared to push away an official. This offense became a curse on their entire family. Nobody came to my father, the best shoemaker, with orders. In desperation, he began to run after officials and beg them for forgiveness, but no one listened to him. The atmosphere of alienation grew, and eventually the parents became disabled.
People were afraid of the Castle. If the family managed to hush up the matter, they would go out to their fellow villagers and say that everything had been settled. Then the family was immediately accepted back. But the family members suffered and did not leave home, so they were excluded from society. Only Barnabas, as the most “innocent,” is allowed to communicate. It is important for the family that the boy officially works in the Castle. But there are no documents about this. Barnabas himself is not sure of this, so he performs the service poorly. Olga, in order to obtain information about her brother, is forced to sleep with the servants of officials.
Meeting with officials
Frida, tired of the instability and exhausted by uncertainty about K.’s loyalty, decides to return to the buffet. She invites Jeremiah, the hero’s assistant, with her, with whom she hopes to start a family.
Erlanger, Klamm's secretary, agrees to host K. in his hotel room at night. A whole line forms in front of his room. Everyone is glad to be here, since the secretary deigned to take personal time to receive them. Many officials receive petitioners during meals or in bed. In the corridor, our hero accidentally meets Frida and makes attempts to win her back. But the girl accuses K. of cheating with girls from a “shameful family”, and then runs away to Jeremiah.
After a conversation with Frida, the hero cannot find Erlanger’s number and goes to the first one he comes across. The official Burgel lives there and was delighted at the arrival of the guest. K., exhausted and tired, collapses on the official’s bed and falls asleep while the owner of the room discusses official procedures. But soon Erlangre calls him to his place. The secretary reports that Klamm cannot work normally when it is not Frieda who serves him beer. If K. can get the girl back to work at the buffet, it will greatly help him in his career.
Ending
The novel “The Castle” ends. Kafka did not finish it, so it is impossible to say how the author intended it to end; one can only describe the moment at which the story ended.
The hostess, having learned that K. was received by two officials at once, allows him to stay overnight in the beer hall. Pepi laments that Klamm did not like her. The hero thanks the Hostess for the overnight stay. The woman begins to talk about her outfits, remembers that K. once made a remark to her, which really hurt her. The hero maintains a conversation, revealing knowledge of fashion and good taste. The hostess shows interest and admits that K. can become her adviser in matters of wardrobe. She promises to call him every time new outfits arrive.
Soon the groom Gerstecker offers the hero a job in the stable. He hopes that through K. he himself will be able to achieve Erlanger’s favor. Gerstecker invites the hero to spend the night at his home. The groom's mother, reading a book, gives K. her hand and invites him to sit next to her.
Quotes
At the very center of the story, Kafka breaks off his work (“The Castle”). The quotes below will help you get an idea of the style and language of the novel:
- “Administrative decisions are timid, like young girls.”
- “The amount of work does not at all determine the degree of importance of the matter.”
- “He played with his dreams, dreams played with them.”
- “Man acts bolder in his ignorance.”
Analysis
This novel is considered among critics to be the most mysterious of all that Kafka wrote. “The Castle” (we will now consider the analysis) supposedly touches on the theme of man’s path to God. But since the work has not been completed, there is no way to be sure of this. The only thing that can be said for sure is the presence of bureaucratic satire. As for the genre specifics, this is more of an allegorical and metaphorical text than a fantastic one.
It is impossible to understand where exactly the events are unfolding. There is nothing that could even indicate a country. Therefore, it is generally accepted that the images of the Village and the Castle are also allegorical. The depicted world exists according to its own absurd laws. Kafka was a person “painfully experiencing his inability to establish beneficial contact with the outside world.” This gloomy feeling is reflected in all the writer’s works; we see it in “The Castle”.
The hero finds himself in a world in which he has no place, but he is forced to somehow adapt to the chaotic reality.
Franz Kafka, “The Castle”: reviews
Today the writer is very popular, especially among young people who read. Therefore, it is not worth talking about the relevance of his works - since interest does not fade, it means that the subject remains in demand. As for “The Castle,” the book is highly rated by readers. Many focus their attention precisely on ridiculing bureaucratic orders, which in our society sometimes reach the same absurd proportions as in the time of the writer. It is not surprising that this side of clerical life was described so well by Kafka, who worked in this field for a long time. “The Castle,” reviews of which are mostly positive, nevertheless leaves readers with a gloomy aftertaste and a feeling of hopelessness. Some misinterpret the novel, perceiving it as an “ode to bureaucracy” rather than a satire on the power of officials. The latter is not surprising, since the novel is quite difficult to interpret. And incompleteness only complicates understanding.
Summing up
Kafka (“The Castle”) raises the idea of the meaninglessness and absurdity of existence in his novel. A summary of the chapters further convinces us of this. By the way, such topics were very relevant for the literature of the 20th century. Many European writers turned to her, but only Kafka was so depressingly gloomy. The monologues and actions of his characters are often meaningless and illogical, and the chaos going on around them creates an oppressive feeling of the futility of existence. Nevertheless, Kafka's work is extremely popular among readers, and interest in him does not fade away. And we should not forget that the writer made a significant contribution to the development of such a well-known movement as existentialism.
You are not from the Castle, you are not from the Village. You are nothing.
Franz Kafka, "The Castle"
Franz Kafka's unfinished novel “The Castle,” recognized as one of the main books of the 20th century, remains a mystery to this day. Since its publication in 1926, a variety of interpretations have followed each other: from consideration of the conflict of the novel in a social key (the bitter struggle of the individual with the bureaucratic apparatus) to psychoanalytic interpretations of the plot, which, according to a number of researchers, reflects Kafka’s complex relationship with his father and fiancées and the surrounding world.
On a separate shelf is the novel by existentialists, who saw in Kafka a forerunner who first spoke about the tragedy of existence and the existential loneliness of man. To say that any of the interpretations is correct is to reduce the immense novel to a particularity. Thus, the French writer and philosopher Roger Garaudy wrote about Kafka’s novels:
At most, he can hint at a lack, the absence of something, and Kafka's allegory, like some of the poems of Mallarmé or Reverdy, is allegory of absence<…>. There is no possession, there is only being, being that requires the last breath, suffocation. His response to the assertion that it may have owned, but did not exist, was only a trembling and a beating heart<…>. Incompleteness is his law.
All this is generally understandable. But there is another way of looking at the novel, which considers the complex relationship between the hero K. and the Castle as a projection of a person’s relationship with God. It is this interpretation that he examines in his amazing book “Reading Lessons. Kama Sutra of the Scribe” by literary critic, essayist and profound critic Alexander Genis. Why do we suggest reading it? Genis is convinced that the question of God is somehow present in every literary work, even if God himself is not in it. It is through this prism that he looks at Kafka’s “Castle,” helping us look at the brilliant novel (and all literature) from a completely different angle. And it's interesting, I have to tell you. So go ahead.
But if you can’t write about God, you can read it. We can read Him into every text and subtract it from any<…>. Even the absence of God cannot prevent such tactics.
So, Franz Kafka, “The Castle” and the problem of God.
Talking about God
Reviewing the book "Mr. Fitzpatrick's Thoughts on God," Chesterton noted that it would be much more interesting to read "God's Thoughts on Fitzpatrick."
It’s hard to argue with this, because there’s nothing to write about God. After all, essentially nothing is known about Him, the only one with a capital “H”: He is on the other side of being. Since God is eternal, He has no biography. Because He is everywhere, He has no home. Since He is alone, He has no family (we will remain silent about the Son for now). Since God is obviously greater than our ideas about Him (not to mention experience), everything we know about the divine is human.
But if you can’t write about God, you can read it. We can read Him into every text and subtract it from any - as Salinger’s heroes did:
They sometimes look for the creator in the most unimaginable and inappropriate places. For example, in radio advertising, in newspapers, in a damaged taxi meter. In a word, literally anywhere, but always with complete success.
Even the absence of God cannot prevent such tactics. If it doesn’t exist for the author, then we want to know why and we won’t rest until the book explains to us the gap at the most interesting place. After all, literature, and indeed humans, have no more exciting activity than getting out of ourselves and getting to know the unknowable. Even without knowing anything about the otherworldly, we definitely use it. Like an ax under a ship's compass, it changes the route and abolishes maps. It is not surprising that, striving for inaccessible, and perhaps non-existent knowledge, we hope to find in books what we could not cope with in life.
In vain, of course. Everything that is possible has already been told to us, but those who know for sure always inspire doubt. It would seem that the easiest way to read about God is where it’s supposed to be, but I’ve never succeeded. At university, I did worst in scientific atheism, but only because the Law of God was not in the curriculum. God, like sex, avoids direct words, but every page, including the erotic one (“Song of Songs”), benefits from always speaking about Him and using equivocates.
How Kafka did it. He created the agnostic canon, on which I have been growing my doubts since the fifth grade. I remember the day my father returned with the spoils - a plump black volume with stories and "The Trial". In 1965, getting Kafka was more difficult than getting a trip abroad. Although we didn't yet know that they were one and the same, the aura of mystery and halo of prohibition inspired awe, and I gasped when my father swung his signature on page 17, intended, he explained, for the library stamp. Since then, he may not have opened Kafka, but he certainly never parted with him. This fetish of the old - bookish - time was inherited from me, and now the volume stands next to the others.
Now buying Kafka is not a trick, the trick is always to figure it out. However, judging by how many books have been written about him, this is not so difficult. Like any parable, Kafka's text is fruitful for interpretation. One thing is said, another is meant. The difficulties begin with the fact that we do not fully understand not only the second, but also the first. As soon as we become confident in the correctness of our interpretation, the author turns away from it.
Under Soviet rule, it was easier for the reader: “We were born,” as Bakhchanyan said, “to make Kafka come true.” I knew this aphorism long before I became friends with its author. Then everyone thought that Kafka wrote about us. It was a well-known world of a soulless office that demanded compliance with rules known only to it.
On the eve of the death of the USSR, I came to Moscow. There were two Americans standing in line to meet the customs officer—a newbie and an experienced one. The first one came too close to the window and was shouted at.
“Why,” he asked, “not draw a line on the floor so that you know where you can stand and where you can’t?”
“As long as this trait is in the heads of officials,” said the second, “it is in their power to decide who is guilty and who is not.”
Kafka talks about it this way: It is extremely painful when you are governed by laws that you do not know.
What we (and certainly I) didn’t understand was that Kafka didn’t think the situation was fixable or even wrong. He did not rebel against the world, he wanted to understand what it was trying to tell him - through life, death, illness, war and love: In a person's struggle with the world, you must be on the side of the world.. At first, in this duel, Kafka assigned himself the role of a second, but then he took the side of the enemy.
Only after accepting his choice are we ready to begin reading a book that tells as much about God as we can bear.
Lock, - Auden said, our Divine Comedy.
K. heads to the Village to hire himself into the service of Duke Westwest, who lives in the Castle. But, although he was hired, he was never able to start it. Everything else is the intrigue of K., trying to get closer to the Castle and gain its favor. In the process, he meets the residents of the Village and the employees of the Castle, which neither the first nor the second helped him get into.
In the retelling, the absurdity of the enterprise is more noticeable than in the novel. While describing the twists and turns extremely accurately and in detail, Kafka omits the main thing - motives. We don’t know why K. needs the Castle, or why the Castle needs K. Their relationship is an initial reality that cannot be disputed, so we just have to find out the details: who is K. and what is the Castle?
K. – land surveyor. Like Adam, he does not own the earth, like Faust, he measures it. A scientist and official, K. is superior to the villagers, their works, worries and superstitions. K. is educated, intelligent, understanding, selfish, self-centered and pragmatic. He is overwhelmed by his career, people for him are pawns in a game, and K. goes to the goal - albeit unclear - without disdaining deception, temptation, and betrayal. K. is vain, arrogant and suspicious, he is like us, but you never like an intellectual.
It's worse that we see the Castle through his eyes and know as much as he knows. And this is clearly not enough. You are terribly ignorant of our affairs here,- they tell him in the Village, for K. describes the Castle in the only system of concepts accessible to him. Having adopted Christianity, European pagans could not recognize God as anyone other than the king. Therefore, they even painted Christ in royal robes on the cross. K. is a hero of our time, so he portrays the higher power as a bureaucratic apparatus.
No wonder the Castle is disgusting. But if he is hostile to man, then why does no one except K. complain? And why does he strive for it so much? Unlike K., the Village doesn't ask the Castle questions. She knows something that is not given to him, and this knowledge cannot be conveyed. You can only come to it yourself. But if there are many roads from the Castle to the Village, there is not a single one to the Castle: The more closely K. peered there, the less he saw and the deeper everything sank into darkness.
The castle is, of course, Heaven. More precisely, like Dante’s, the entire zone of the supernatural, otherworldly, metaphysical. Since we can understand the unearthly only by analogy with the human, Kafka supplies the highest power with hierarchy. Kafka wrote it out with that scrupulous care that amused his friends so much when the author read chapters of the novel to them. Their laughter did not offend Kafka at all.
“His eyes smiled,” recalled Felix Welch, a close friend of the writer, “humor permeated his speech. It was felt in all his comments, in all his judgments.”
We are not used to thinking of Kafka's books as funny, but other readers, such as Thomas Mann, read them that way. In a certain sense, "The Castle" is truly divine comedy, full of satire and self-irony. Kafka laughs at himself, at us, at K., who is able to describe the highest reality only through the lower and familiar.
The career ladder in the “Castle” begins with obedient laymen, among whom the righteous rescuers from the fire department stand out. Then come the servants of the officials, whom we call priests. Having divided their lives between the Castle and the Village, they behave differently at the top than at the bottom, because the laws of the Castle in the Village are no longer applicable. Above the servants is an endless series of angelic officials, among whom there are many fallen ones - too often they limp, as befits demons.
The pyramid is crowned by God, but Kafka mentions Him only on the first page of the novel. Count Westwest and I no longer meet. And, as the most radical – Nietzschean – interpretation of the novel says, it is clear why: God died. Therefore, the Castle, as K. first saw it, did not make itself felt by the slightest glimmer of light. That's why flocks of crows circled above the tower. Therefore the Castle none of the visitors like it, and the locals live poorly, sadly, in the snow.
The death of God, however, did not stop the activities of his apparatus. The castle is like the city of St. Petersburg in the middle of the Leningrad region: the former government has died, but this news has not yet reached the provinces from the capital. And it’s not easy to accept. God cannot die. He can turn away, withdraw, become silent, limiting himself, as the Enlightenment persuaded Him, to creation, and leaving its consequences to the mercy of our difficult fate. We don't know why this happened, but Kafka knows and explains the disaster.
The causes of the disaster are revealed by the inserted episode with Amalia, from K.’s point of view, but central to the history of the Village. She rejected the Castle's claims to her honor and insulted the messenger who brought her the good news. By refusing to connect with the Castle, Amalia rejected the share of the Virgin Mary, did not accept her martyrdom, did not submit to the Castle’s higher plan for the Village, and thereby stopped divine history, depriving it of a key event. Amalia's terrible punishment was the silence of the Castle and the revenge of the villagers left without grace.
K., preoccupied with his trade with the Castle, cannot appreciate the tragedy of the world, which missed the chance of salvation. But Kafka, acutely aware of the depth of our fall, considered it retribution for an unmade sacrifice.
Probably we - he said - suicidal thoughts born in the head of God.
Is it possible to learn more about God from Kafka than we knew before reading him?
Certainly! But not because Kafka multiplies theological hypotheses, changes established interpretations, updates theological language and gives the eternal actual names and nicknames. Kafka's main thing is the provocation of truth. He questions her, hoping to snatch from the world as much truth as it can reveal to him.
You are stroking the world, - he said to the young writer, instead of grabbing it.
Franz Kafka (lived 1883-1924) worked on his last work, the novel The Castle, for several months in 1922. The book was published in 1926, after the death of its creator, and remained unfinished. The story of a certain K., who declared himself a land surveyor and for six days wandered through the labyrinth of roads of the Village, which never led him to the Castle, has no ending. The seventh day for K. will never come, despite the attempt of Max Brod - interpreter, publisher, executor and friend of Kafka - to offer a version of the end of this work, allegedly told to him by the writer himself: on the seventh day, the hero, exhausted from a fruitless struggle, overtakes death on that the moment when news was received from the Castle that he was allowed to remain in the Village.
The very attempt of the publisher to offer some kind of ending to an unfinished book is nothing out of the ordinary. There are examples of this in world literature. However, in the case of Kafka and the novel “The Castle,” recognized as one of the main books of the 20th century, such an intention is inevitably connected with the central problem of the work of the Austrian writer - with the problem of its understanding, interpretation, the problem of finding the road that leads to the Castle. The plot of the work is very simple and at the same time complex - not because of the twisted moves and intricate stories, but because of the parable-like nature, parabolism, and symbolic ambiguity. The dreamlike unsteady artistic world of Kafka absorbs the reader, drawing him into a recognizable and unfamiliar space. Each new reading of “The Castle” is a new drawing of the path along which the reader’s consciousness wanders through the labyrinth of the novel.
Kafka’s work in general is extremely difficult to systematize in any way and to the desire to give “final”, “final” answers to the questions posed in it.
The diversity and diversity of approaches to his books is surprising and even sometimes annoying; What seems strange and inexplicable is the inability of Kafka’s interpreters to “converge” on one point, to at least in some approximation indicate the semantic core of the novel.
Professional readers of Kafka have long noted the metaphorical essence of “The Castle” and its increased allegorical quality.
The situation in which the residents of the Village find themselves is not clear to the reader from the point of view of the laws of the real social structure, has no visible origins, and stems rather from some kind of implicit fear, even horror of the Castle, of its absolute power.
Not only is the behavior of K. and other characters in the story illogical, but the conversations they have are also illogical. The semantic relationship between question and answer is constantly broken: K. is surprised that in this Village there is “a Castle” at all, and immediately announces to his interlocutor that he is “the surveyor whom the Count called to him.” He introduces himself over the phone as “the old assistant surveyor,” and when the telephone voice from the Castle does not accept this explanation, he tries to find out: “So who am I?”
Kafka himself, with all his numerous self-testimonies about the painstaking and thoughtful work on his works, emphasized that it was precisely “clairvoyant” creativity, writing-insight (the short story “The Verdict” was written over several night hours, as if under the dictation of “voices”) and there is true writing. As you know, the clairvoyant artist is largely addressed not to the modern reader, but to the reader of the future. The readership and professional art criticism, in turn, often respond to this challenge from the clairvoyant artist with denial, rejection, or complete inattention to his art. A similar thing happened to a large extent with Kafka, although famous and recognized during his lifetime by many prominent German-speaking writers (he was known and appreciated by Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse), but completely unnoticed by a wide readership and literary criticism. There is no prophet in his own country, but there is no prophet in his own time, in his own era. Prophecies and clairvoyant revelations of the artist are often perceived by contemporaries either as foolishness, eccentricity, madness, as baseless claims to sacredness, or as unprofessionalism, falling outside the range of tasks and forms of the artistic convention of a given era.
Kafka began to be revered and read as a prophet, a clairvoyant only after a considerable time had passed. Due to the special polysemy of his art, oriented towards symbols, towards “meaningless transcendence”, several generations of readers “read” in his works the meaning that is revealed to them in application to the problems of their own era, potentially, probably contained in artistic images, but sometimes implicit and for the artist himself. And in this sense, the perception of the novel “The Castle” as Kafka’s prediction of power practices and hierarchical relations of a totalitarian state of a fascist or communist type was one of the extremely common reader approaches to the work.
A number of interpretations of the novel are directly related to those systems of ideas about the world that, as one can assume with some degree of certainty, were not the basis for Kafka’s worldview - we are talking primarily about different versions of the psychoanalytic explanation of “The Castle”.
When looking at the novel “The Castle” in the context of the work of the Austrian writer in the early 1920s. it is possible to turn to one of the metaphorical series, which Kafka occupied precisely in these years as part of his understanding of his own creative position and is actively used (in contrast to his previous works) in his short stories. We are talking about the artist’s metaphor, about Kafka’s characters, which he places in the situation of an art producer, and this situation is presented as quite
grotesque (the short stories “The Singer Josephine, or the People of Mouse” and “The Artist of Hunger”, in another Russian translation - “The Hunger”), and as potentially containing many of Kafka’s important meanings and opinions about art in general.
Josephine, the chief singer of the Mouse People, is endowed with all the habits and rules of behavior of a bohemian creature, and although her voice is extremely weak - she squeaks rather than whistles - due to the existing unspoken agreement among the Mouse People, her squeaking is recognized as an outstanding art of singing, with all associated sociocultural functions and conventions. Extremely curious in this short story, which is also quite “autobiographical” and testifies to Kafka’s constant doubts about the meaning and significance of his work, is the metaphorical situation of stirrup art - for example, new painting of the beginning of the last century (Malevich’s Black Square) - in which the mitral The convention of artistry begins to play a role, in its extreme expression it says: “A work of art includes any work that, along with its author, is perceived and recognized as such by at least one other person.”
In the short story “The Artist of Hunger,” the central character demonstrates to the world the amazing art of fasting for many days and even weeks. The special gift of this person constitutes for him his only asset and the complete meaning of life. The hungry man is constantly improving in his art, reaching amazing heights in it, but the longer he is able to abstain from food, the less he arouses interest among the public, to whom art becomes boring and seems overly monotonous due to its extreme “purity”. In the moment before his death, sulfur reveals to the horsemaster of the circus in which he performed the meaning of the existence of the “art of hunger”: “I will never find food that suits my taste.” No other activity in this world is suitable for an artist, not to his taste.
Writing and creativity for Franz Kafka are an absolute life task. “I have no literary interests. I consist entirely of literature,” he wrote. The story of the land surveyor in the novel “The Castle” from this perspective can also be viewed as the story of an artist in modern myrtle, or rather, a metaphor, a myth about the artist and the world around him. The land surveyor's relationship with the Castle, with the authorities, as well as with the Village, with the crowd, is a relationship of incessant struggle, and a struggle doomed to defeat. The hero fights both against the Castle and for his existence in this environment.
The action takes place in Austria-Hungary, before the November Revolution of 1918.
K., a young man of about thirty, arrives in the Village one late winter evening. He settles down for the night at an inn, in a common room among the peasants, noticing that the owner is extremely embarrassed by the arrival of an unfamiliar guest. K., who had fallen asleep, is awakened by the son of the Castle caretaker, Schwarzer, and politely explains that without the permission of the count - the owner of the Castle and the Village, no one is allowed to live or spend the night here. K. is at first perplexed and does not take this statement seriously, but, seeing that they are going to kick him out in the middle of the night, he explains with irritation that he came here at the count’s call to work as a land surveyor. His assistants should arrive soon with instruments. Schwarzer calls the Central Office of the Castle and receives confirmation of K’s words. The young man notes to himself that they work in the Castle, apparently, conscientiously, even at night. He understands that the Castle has “approved” the title of land surveyor for him, knows everything about him and expects to keep him in constant fear. K. tells himself that he is clearly underestimated, he will enjoy freedom and fight.
In the morning K. goes to the Castle located on the mountain. The road turns out to be long, the main street does not lead, but only approaches the Castle, and then turns somewhere.
K. returns to the inn, where two “helpers”, young guys unfamiliar to him, are waiting for him. They call themselves his “old” assistants, although they admit that they do not know land surveying work. K. is clear that they are attached to him by the Lock for surveillance. K. wants to go with them on a sleigh to the Castle, but the assistants declare that without permission there is no access to the Castle for outsiders. Then K. tells the assistants to call the Castle and seek permission. Assistants call and instantly receive a negative answer. K. picks up the phone himself and hears strange sounds and buzzing for a long time before a voice answers him. K. mystifies him, speaking not on his own behalf, but on behalf of his assistants. As a result, a voice from the Castle calls K. his “old assistant” and gives a categorical answer - K. is forever denied access to the Castle.
At this moment, the messenger Barnabas, a young boy with a bright, open face, different from the faces of the local peasants with their “as if deliberately distorted physiognomies,” hands K. a letter from the Castle. The letter, signed by the head of the office, states that K. has been accepted into the service of the owner of the Castle, and his immediate superior is the headman of the Village. K. decides to work in the Village, away from officials, hoping to become “one of his own” among the peasants and thereby achieve at least something from the Castle. Between the lines, he reads a certain threat in the letter, a challenge to fight if K. agrees to the role of a simple worker in the Village. K. understands that everyone around him already knows about his arrival, spying on him and taking a closer look at him.
Through Barnabas and his older sister Olga, K. ends up in a hotel intended for gentlemen from the Castle who come to the Village on business. It is forbidden for outsiders to spend the night in the hotel; the place for K is only in the buffet. This time, an important official, Klamm, is spending the night here, whose name is known to all residents of the Village, although few can boast that they have seen him with their own eyes.
The barmaid Frida, serving beer to gentlemen and peasants, is an important person in the hotel. This is a plain-looking girl with sad eyes and a “pathetic little body.” K. is amazed by her gaze, full of special superiority, capable of solving many complex issues. Her gaze convinces K. that such questions concerning him personally exist.
Frida invites K. to look at Klamm, who is in the room adjacent to the buffet, through a secret peephole. K. sees a fat, clumsy gentleman with cheeks sagging under the weight of age. Frida is the mistress of this influential official, and therefore she herself has great influence in the Village. She made her way to the position of barmaid straight from the cowgirls, and K. expresses admiration for her willpower. He invites Frieda to leave Klamm and become his mistress. Frida agrees, and K. spends the night under the buffet counter in her arms. When in the morning Klamm’s “imperiously indifferent” call is heard from behind the wall, Frida twice defiantly answers him that she is busy with the land surveyor.
K. spends the next night with Frida in a room at the inn, almost in the same bed with the assistants, whom he cannot get rid of. Now K. wants to quickly marry Frieda, but first, through her, he intends to talk to Klamm. Frida, and then the owner of the Garden inn, convince him that this is impossible, that Klamm will not, cannot even talk to K., because Mr. Klamm is a man from the Castle, and K. is not from the Castle and not from the Village, he is “ nothing”, alien and superfluous. The hostess regrets that Frida “left the eagle” and “contacted with the blind mole.”
Gardena admits to K. that more than twenty years ago Klamm summoned her three times, but the fourth time did not follow. She keeps as the most expensive relics the cap and scarf given to her by Klamm, and a photograph of the courier through whom she was called for the first time. Gardena got married with Klamm’s knowledge and for many years at night she talked to her husband only about Klamm. K. has never seen such an intertwining of professional and personal life as here.
From the headman, K. learns that he received the order to prepare for the arrival of the land surveyor many years ago. The headman immediately sent a response to the Castle office that no one needed a land surveyor in the Village. Apparently, this answer went to the wrong department, an error occurred that could not be admitted, because the possibility of errors in the office is completely excluded. However, control authorities later admitted the error, and one official fell ill. Shortly before K.'s arrival, the story finally came to a happy end, that is, to the abandonment of the land surveyor. The unexpected appearance of K. now nullifies all the many years of work. The Castle's correspondence is kept in the headman's house and in the barns. The headman's wife and K.'s assistants shake out all the folders from the cabinets, but they still fail to find the necessary order, just as they fail to put the folders back in place.
Under pressure from Frida, K. accepts the headman's offer to take the place of the school watchman, although he learns from the teacher that the Village needs a watchman no more than a land surveyor. K. and his future wife have nowhere to live, Frida is trying to create a semblance of family comfort in one of the school classes.
K. comes to the hotel to find Klamm there. In the buffet he meets Frida's successor, the blooming maiden Pepi, and finds out from her where Klamm is. K. lies in wait for the official in the yard in the cold for a long time, but Klamm still escapes. His secretary demands that K. go through the “interrogation” procedure and answer a number of questions in order to draw up a protocol, filed in the office. Having learned that Klamm himself does not read the protocols due to lack of time, K. runs away.
On the way, he meets Barnabas with a letter from Klamm, in which he approves of the land surveying work carried out by K. with his knowledge, K. considers this a misunderstanding that Barnabas must explain to Klamm. But Barnabas is sure that Klamm will not even listen to him.
K. with Frida and assistants sleep in the school gymnasium. In the morning, teacher Giza finds them in bed and causes a scandal, throwing the remains of dinner off the table with a ruler in front of the happy children. Gisa has an admirer from the Castle - Schwarzer, but she only loves cats and tolerates the admirer.
K. notices that in four days of living together with his bride, a strange change occurs. Closeness to Klamm gave her “crazy charm,” and now she “fades” in his arms. Frida suffers when she sees that K. dreams only of meeting Klamm. She admits that K. will easily give it to Klamm if he demands it. In addition, she is jealous of Olga, Barnabas' sister.
Olga, an intelligent and selfless girl, tells K. the sad story of their family. Three years ago, at one of the village festivals, the official Sortini could not take his eyes off his younger sister, Amalia. In the morning, the courier delivered a letter to Amalia, written in “vile terms,” demanding that she come to Sortini’s hotel. The indignant girl tore the letter and threw the pieces in the face of the messenger, an official. She did not go to the official, and not a single official in the Village was pushed away. By committing such offenses, Amalia brought a curse on her family, from which all the inhabitants recoiled. Father, the best shoemaker in the Village, was left without orders and lost his income. He ran after the officials for a long time, waiting for them at the Castle gates, begging for forgiveness, but no one wanted to listen to him. It was unnecessary to punish the family; the atmosphere of alienation around her did its job. Father and mother, out of grief, turned into helpless invalids.
Olga understood that people were afraid of the Castle, they were waiting. If the family had hushed up the whole story, came out to their fellow villagers and announced that everything had been settled thanks to their connections, the Village would have accepted it. And all family members suffered and sat at home, as a result they found themselves excluded from all circles of society. Only Barnabas is tolerated as the most “innocent.” The main thing for the family is that he be officially registered in the service in the Castle, but even this cannot be known for sure. Perhaps a decision on it has not yet been made; there is a saying in the Village: “Administrative decisions are timid, like young girls.” Barnabas has access to offices, but they are part of other offices, then there are barriers, and behind them again offices. There are barriers all around, just like officials. Barnabas does not dare to open his mouth, standing in the offices. He no longer believes that he was truly accepted into the service of the Castle, and does not show zeal in transmitting letters from the Castle, doing so late. Olga is aware of the family’s dependence on the Castle, on the service of Barnabas, and in order to get at least some information, she sleeps with the servants of the officials in the stable.
Exhausted by uncertainty in K., tired of an unsettled life, Frida decides to return to the buffet. She takes with her Jeremiah, one of K.’s assistants, whom she has known since childhood, hoping to create a family home with him.
Klamm's secretary Erlanger wants to receive K. at night in his hotel room. People are already waiting in the corridor, including K.’s acquaintance, the groom Gerstecker. Everyone is happy about the night call, they realize that Erlanger is sacrificing his night’s sleep of his own free will, out of a sense of duty, because there is no time in his work schedule for trips to the Village. Many officials do this, holding a reception either in a buffet or in a room, if possible over food, or even in bed.
In the corridor, K. accidentally runs into Frida and tries to win her again, not wanting to give her to the “unappetizing” Jeremiah. But Frida reproaches him for betrayal with girls from a “disgraced family” and for indifference and runs away to the sick Jeremiah.
After meeting Frieda, K. is unable to find Erlanger's room and goes to the nearest one in the hope of taking a short nap. There is another official, Burgel, dozing there, who is glad to listen. Invited by him to sit down, K. collapses on his bed and falls asleep while the official talks about the “continuity of official procedure.” Soon Erlanger demands him. Standing at the door and about to leave, the secretary says that Klamm, who is accustomed to receiving beer from Frida’s hands, is being interfered with by the appearance of the new maid Pepi in his responsible work. This is a violation of habit, and the slightest interference in work should be eliminated. K. must ensure Frida's immediate return to the buffet. If he lives up to his confidence in this “little business,” it may prove beneficial to his career.
Realizing the complete futility of all his efforts, K. stands in the corridor and watches the revival that began at five o’clock in the morning. The noisy voices of officials outside the doors remind him of “awakening in the poultry house.” Servants carry a cart with documents and distribute them to officials from room to room according to the list. If the door does not open, the documents are piled on the floor. Some officials “fight off” the documents, others, on the contrary, “pretend”, snatch them, and get nervous.
The owner of the hotel drives K., who has no right to walk around here, “like cattle in the pasture.” He explains that the purpose of the night calls is to quickly listen to the visitor, whose appearance during the day is unbearable for the gentlemen officials. Having heard that K. attended a reception with two secretaries from the Castle, the owner allows him to spend the night in the beer hall.
The red-cheeked Pepi, who replaced Frida, laments that her happiness was so short. Klamm did not appear, but she would have been ready to carry him to the buffet in her arms.
K. thanks the hotel owner for the overnight stay. She starts a conversation with him about her dresses, remembering his random remark that hurt her. K. shows a certain interest in the appearance of the hostess, in her outfits, and discovers taste and knowledge of fashion. Arrogantly, but interestedly, the hostess admits that he can become an indispensable adviser for her. Let him wait for her call when new outfits arrive.
The groom Gerstecker offers K. a job in the stables. K. guesses that Gerstecker hopes to achieve something with Erlanger with his help. Gerstecker does not deny this and takes K. to his house for the night. Gerstecker's mother, reading a book by candlelight, gives K. a trembling hand and sits him down next to her.
Retold
