Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Gregor Samsa’s Wings
Steve considers the appeal of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’:
Blanchot says Gregor's story "carries the reader off in a whirl where hope and despair answer each other endlessly". This might explain the extraordinary longevity of the story, of all great modern stories. We can never choose between hope or despair.
It’s not a reading I recognise. Even “whirl” is wrong, with its intimations of rapidity and dizzying motion. ‘Metamorphosis’ is a cool, slow story. A hideous condition is dealt with bit by bit. Blanchot, I suspect, was unconsciously thinking of that final scene with the charwoman, who is last seen “whirling off violently”. That Blanchot should substitute abstraction for her presence in the text is really quite revealing, I think.
In ‘Metamorphosis’ concealment is of the essence. Compartmentalisation is involved – thematically and structurally. ‘Metamorphosis’ is not a single fast-flowing river of prose but, like the body of an insect, divided into segments – three chapters. Gregor dies on the stroke of three. There are three doors to Gregor’s room: three ways in, three ways out. Not one way. There is no single way in and out of this story. You cannot exclusively capture it for a metaphysical reading. It slips free. In its multiplicity – in its totality – it resists the net of exegesis. The jacket cover on my edition calls it a ‘haunting parable on human reaction to suffering and disease’ which is both true and horribly limiting.
The reaction of everyone in the story to Gregor’s transformation is, surely, the exact opposite to despair. There is no despair. On the contrary, the story gives us characters learning to cope with an extreme situation, as humans do. One or two of the characters shun Gregor and depart; most stay. Their responses range from disgust, fear and irritation to compassion, curiosity and breezy acceptance. Nobody finally gives up on Gregor; nobody sinks into paralysis. Everyone grudgingly accepts his presence. No one despairs, not even Gregor. Everyone bravely, absurdly, comically, maintains the rigmarole of everyday life.
Kafka's stories "are among the darkest in literature, the most rooted in absolute disaster" because they "torture hope the most tragically, not because hope is condemned but because it does not succeed in being condemned."
Again, I don’t recognise Blanchot’s formulation. Though the story measures life against the reality of death it’s not a dark narrative. Everyday life becomes a series of stiffly unfolding comic mishaps as the struggle to maintain appearances goes on. I’m reminded of the farcical misadventures that crop up in silent comedies. ‘Metamorphosis’ is not a lugubrious tale of sorrow. To say it ‘tortures hope’ is far too forceful and singular. The power of ‘Metamorphosis’, I think, resides not in something as abstract as a dialogue between hope and despair but elsewhere. Its continuing resonance as a narrative is surely because Gregor Samsa’s awful family is instantly recognisable. Those philistines, those bourgeois values, those absurd efforts to muffle what is going on – family life as a grotesque farce is a theme which surely strikes a chord with many, many readers. The clash between children and their parents is a guerrilla war which never ends.
In representing a sensitive individual as a giant insect Kafka puts flesh on a metaphor. Those who are persecuted, whether by individuals, societies or states, are sometimes identified as vermin. Dehumanising the Other licenses inhuman treatment. Kafka makes it real. The image of a person turned into a giant insect is a very hard one to get out of your mind. That hideous and unforgettable image of the apple embedded in Gregor is definitely the stuff of nightmares. The world is turned upside down: normality is brilliantly represented as repellent. Such everyday items as milk and an apple become objects of disgust. Kafka reproduces that revulsion in the reader while rendering Gregor sympathetically. We get the vermin’s point of view.
Kafka brilliantly roots his nightmarish narrative in a tangible reality. Patent leather boots creak. It rains. The characters are recognisable types. The dialogue is as banal, revealing and ironic as in a Jane Austen novel. Even Gregor’s new identity becomes monstrously plausible. And there is even joy in his grotesque transfiguration: ‘He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling’. But the real always looks back toward nightmare. The unidentified city resembles ‘a desert waste’
Steve says:
It is, as we know still today, a world of fierce taboos resisting the forces of change, of decay, illness and death. Gregor has, in effect, died but not left the building. His death stains the parents' starched clothing, stinks out the flat. This is how he might be read from a Marxist perspective: Gregor is the harbinger of the social problems inherent to early modern capitalism. But change also afflicts Marxists. The hope of political redemption is soon also faced by despair.
But that kind of vulgar sociological criticism is surely long dead. There was a God that died but his first name was Joseph, not Karl or Vladimir. ‘Redemption’ is a religious not a Marxist category. Steve’s description better fits the disappointed generation of 1968, whose retreat from engagement span off in numerous directions – everything from despairing quietism to the ardent embrace of neo-liberalism. The French intelligentsia’s despair after 1968 and the intellectual shapes it took (indeed Blanchot’s own complicated political trajectory) is a large story. And long before the publication of Saturday, Alex Callinicos dryly observed that in less-theoretically-inclined Britain the favoured substitute for political engagement was… cookery. That said, it’s worth noting that specific and recurring material anxieties – the word ‘capital’ even appears – are part of that tangible world in which Kafka’s nightmare is grounded. And I think I’m right in saying that Kafka only uses the word ‘despair’ once in the story, with reference to the past – the collapse of the family business.
I agree with Steve that ‘cockroach’ is quite wrong. And it’s an error which has been around for a long time. In the second volume of his Nabokov biography, Brian Boyd describes a day in 1954:
In his next lecture Nabokov announced that a new translation of the book had arrived in the morning mail. He shuddered and grimaced as he held up the expensive new illustrated edition “whose translator had substituted ‘cockroach’ for ‘giant insect’ in the famous opening sentence. ‘Cockroach!’ Nabokov repeated . . . ‘Even the Samsa maid knows enough to call Gregor a dung beetle!’ ”
Nabokov has been kicked around a bit in this discussion, so let me spring to his defence. His discussion of what kind of insect Gregor was appears in his Lectures on Literature. These are unrevised, unpolished lecture notes published posthumously (I’m not sure he would have been pleased). They are notes to a performance. His discussion of Gregor’s beetlehood is whimsical, hootingly funny and brief. Nabokov ends by noting that such efforts are pointless: Gregor ‘is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor not Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)’ Nabokov also wrote:
Beauty plus pity – that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.
Is even identifying Gregor as a beetle an identification too far? I think not. There is one character in the story whose ‘strong bony frame’ is suggestive of an insect (the other characters, those who scuttle and scurry, are more like rodents). But whereas Gregor passively accepts his condition, this other character – the old charwoman – represents resistance. She is the only character who isn’t revolted by Gregor. She is not afraid of him, either. She is on the side of life – garrulous, comical, a force of nature. The last we see of her she has a story to tell but nobody wants to hear it (another surrogate for the author, perhaps). Gregor fades away in ‘vacant and peaceful meditation’, whereas the charwoman departs with convulsive force, shouting her farewell, angrily slamming doors. She does not go gentle into the night.
And then that last sunlit tram ride. What does that final sentence mean? One possibility is obvious. This is that the daughter will be crushed by the bourgeois existence her parents are keen to impose upon her. We can all understand what ‘a good husband’ means in their terms. That desirable young body will be traded for wealth. At a darker level, there is a faint hint that she will share the fate of her brother. When you stretch your body you change your shape: perhaps one morning the daughter will also wake up as a giant insect. But is that the only metamorphosis that is possible? Is hope pathetic? Do dreams never come true? Is another shape possible?
Vladimir Nabokov, Ithaca, 1954:
Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.)
Blanchot says Gregor's story "carries the reader off in a whirl where hope and despair answer each other endlessly". This might explain the extraordinary longevity of the story, of all great modern stories. We can never choose between hope or despair.
It’s not a reading I recognise. Even “whirl” is wrong, with its intimations of rapidity and dizzying motion. ‘Metamorphosis’ is a cool, slow story. A hideous condition is dealt with bit by bit. Blanchot, I suspect, was unconsciously thinking of that final scene with the charwoman, who is last seen “whirling off violently”. That Blanchot should substitute abstraction for her presence in the text is really quite revealing, I think.
In ‘Metamorphosis’ concealment is of the essence. Compartmentalisation is involved – thematically and structurally. ‘Metamorphosis’ is not a single fast-flowing river of prose but, like the body of an insect, divided into segments – three chapters. Gregor dies on the stroke of three. There are three doors to Gregor’s room: three ways in, three ways out. Not one way. There is no single way in and out of this story. You cannot exclusively capture it for a metaphysical reading. It slips free. In its multiplicity – in its totality – it resists the net of exegesis. The jacket cover on my edition calls it a ‘haunting parable on human reaction to suffering and disease’ which is both true and horribly limiting.
The reaction of everyone in the story to Gregor’s transformation is, surely, the exact opposite to despair. There is no despair. On the contrary, the story gives us characters learning to cope with an extreme situation, as humans do. One or two of the characters shun Gregor and depart; most stay. Their responses range from disgust, fear and irritation to compassion, curiosity and breezy acceptance. Nobody finally gives up on Gregor; nobody sinks into paralysis. Everyone grudgingly accepts his presence. No one despairs, not even Gregor. Everyone bravely, absurdly, comically, maintains the rigmarole of everyday life.
Kafka's stories "are among the darkest in literature, the most rooted in absolute disaster" because they "torture hope the most tragically, not because hope is condemned but because it does not succeed in being condemned."
Again, I don’t recognise Blanchot’s formulation. Though the story measures life against the reality of death it’s not a dark narrative. Everyday life becomes a series of stiffly unfolding comic mishaps as the struggle to maintain appearances goes on. I’m reminded of the farcical misadventures that crop up in silent comedies. ‘Metamorphosis’ is not a lugubrious tale of sorrow. To say it ‘tortures hope’ is far too forceful and singular. The power of ‘Metamorphosis’, I think, resides not in something as abstract as a dialogue between hope and despair but elsewhere. Its continuing resonance as a narrative is surely because Gregor Samsa’s awful family is instantly recognisable. Those philistines, those bourgeois values, those absurd efforts to muffle what is going on – family life as a grotesque farce is a theme which surely strikes a chord with many, many readers. The clash between children and their parents is a guerrilla war which never ends.
In representing a sensitive individual as a giant insect Kafka puts flesh on a metaphor. Those who are persecuted, whether by individuals, societies or states, are sometimes identified as vermin. Dehumanising the Other licenses inhuman treatment. Kafka makes it real. The image of a person turned into a giant insect is a very hard one to get out of your mind. That hideous and unforgettable image of the apple embedded in Gregor is definitely the stuff of nightmares. The world is turned upside down: normality is brilliantly represented as repellent. Such everyday items as milk and an apple become objects of disgust. Kafka reproduces that revulsion in the reader while rendering Gregor sympathetically. We get the vermin’s point of view.
Kafka brilliantly roots his nightmarish narrative in a tangible reality. Patent leather boots creak. It rains. The characters are recognisable types. The dialogue is as banal, revealing and ironic as in a Jane Austen novel. Even Gregor’s new identity becomes monstrously plausible. And there is even joy in his grotesque transfiguration: ‘He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling’. But the real always looks back toward nightmare. The unidentified city resembles ‘a desert waste’
Steve says:
It is, as we know still today, a world of fierce taboos resisting the forces of change, of decay, illness and death. Gregor has, in effect, died but not left the building. His death stains the parents' starched clothing, stinks out the flat. This is how he might be read from a Marxist perspective: Gregor is the harbinger of the social problems inherent to early modern capitalism. But change also afflicts Marxists. The hope of political redemption is soon also faced by despair.
But that kind of vulgar sociological criticism is surely long dead. There was a God that died but his first name was Joseph, not Karl or Vladimir. ‘Redemption’ is a religious not a Marxist category. Steve’s description better fits the disappointed generation of 1968, whose retreat from engagement span off in numerous directions – everything from despairing quietism to the ardent embrace of neo-liberalism. The French intelligentsia’s despair after 1968 and the intellectual shapes it took (indeed Blanchot’s own complicated political trajectory) is a large story. And long before the publication of Saturday, Alex Callinicos dryly observed that in less-theoretically-inclined Britain the favoured substitute for political engagement was… cookery. That said, it’s worth noting that specific and recurring material anxieties – the word ‘capital’ even appears – are part of that tangible world in which Kafka’s nightmare is grounded. And I think I’m right in saying that Kafka only uses the word ‘despair’ once in the story, with reference to the past – the collapse of the family business.
I agree with Steve that ‘cockroach’ is quite wrong. And it’s an error which has been around for a long time. In the second volume of his Nabokov biography, Brian Boyd describes a day in 1954:
In his next lecture Nabokov announced that a new translation of the book had arrived in the morning mail. He shuddered and grimaced as he held up the expensive new illustrated edition “whose translator had substituted ‘cockroach’ for ‘giant insect’ in the famous opening sentence. ‘Cockroach!’ Nabokov repeated . . . ‘Even the Samsa maid knows enough to call Gregor a dung beetle!’ ”
Nabokov has been kicked around a bit in this discussion, so let me spring to his defence. His discussion of what kind of insect Gregor was appears in his Lectures on Literature. These are unrevised, unpolished lecture notes published posthumously (I’m not sure he would have been pleased). They are notes to a performance. His discussion of Gregor’s beetlehood is whimsical, hootingly funny and brief. Nabokov ends by noting that such efforts are pointless: Gregor ‘is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor not Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)’ Nabokov also wrote:
Beauty plus pity – that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.
Is even identifying Gregor as a beetle an identification too far? I think not. There is one character in the story whose ‘strong bony frame’ is suggestive of an insect (the other characters, those who scuttle and scurry, are more like rodents). But whereas Gregor passively accepts his condition, this other character – the old charwoman – represents resistance. She is the only character who isn’t revolted by Gregor. She is not afraid of him, either. She is on the side of life – garrulous, comical, a force of nature. The last we see of her she has a story to tell but nobody wants to hear it (another surrogate for the author, perhaps). Gregor fades away in ‘vacant and peaceful meditation’, whereas the charwoman departs with convulsive force, shouting her farewell, angrily slamming doors. She does not go gentle into the night.
And then that last sunlit tram ride. What does that final sentence mean? One possibility is obvious. This is that the daughter will be crushed by the bourgeois existence her parents are keen to impose upon her. We can all understand what ‘a good husband’ means in their terms. That desirable young body will be traded for wealth. At a darker level, there is a faint hint that she will share the fate of her brother. When you stretch your body you change your shape: perhaps one morning the daughter will also wake up as a giant insect. But is that the only metamorphosis that is possible? Is hope pathetic? Do dreams never come true? Is another shape possible?
Vladimir Nabokov, Ithaca, 1954:
Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.)
# posted by Ellis : 12:30 PM
