KAFKA’S ZURAU APHORISMS Michael Cisco NUMBER ONE Der wahre Weg geht über ein Seil, das nicht in der Höhe gespannt ist, sondern knapp über dem Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden.1 The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along. [Kaiser/Wilkins] The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY Interpreting aphorisms is stupid because you can’t exhaust their meaning and reducing them to “meanings” destroys them. They are aphorisms because they make meaning by standing apart 1 Kafka extracted these aphorisms himself, from journals he wrote between 1917 and 1919. The order and numbering are Kafka’s. Eight of the aphorisms were written later, in 1920 or so, and do not occur in the original notebooks. Kafka took up residence with his sister Ottla in Zurau, a small town in northern Bohemia, shortly after being diagnosed with tuberculosis in early September, 1917. It seems likely most of the aphorisms were composed at Zurau, even though some material does originate later. By all accounts, this sojourn of eight months was the happiest period in Kafka’s life. Sources: The Zurau Aphorisms, trans. Geoffrey Brock & Michael Hofmann (New York: Schocken, 2006); The Blue Octavo Notebooks, ed. Max Brod, trans. Ernst Kaiser & Eithne Wilkins (Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 1991). 1 GLOSSATOR 8 and intimating a context, and that only to the extent as is necessary for them to be at all intelligible. But refusing to interpret aphorisms is stupid too, because this is to refuse to read them at all. Aphorisms have to be played like pieces of music. In this case, the point seems to be that there’s a way to know whether or not you are on the true path, whatever that is supposed to be or wherever it’s supposed to be leading you. If the pathway feels shaky, it’s the right one. Why is the rope low? If it where high, you would have to stay on it, whereas a low rope you can walk away from whenever you like or, more importantly, by an oversight. You can also blunder over the true way by oversight, tripping and falling over it rather than from it. Perhaps the true way is often misperceived as an obstacle? Or do people trip over it because they’re looking for it in the wrong place, up high? NUMBER TWO Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache. All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing. [Kaiser/Wilkins] All human errors stem from impatience, a premature breaking off of a methodical approach, an ostensible pinning down of an ostensible object. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY Impatience is the only cause of human error. This means no human error cannot ultimately be traced back to anything but impatience. Impatience is a topic Kafka returns to throughout the aphorisms. Why be impatient? It suggests the desire to be done and to move on is greater than the desire for the correct result; and that, as a method becomes more thorough, and therefore presumably more accurate, it becomes correspondingly more exasperating to use. Method is designed to exhaust the possibilities, to miss nothing; taking absolutely everything into account is the key to 2 CISCO – KAFKA’S ZURAU APHORISMS reasonable planning and understanding, and at the same time it’s a maddening exercise in frustration. You begin to realize people don’t use words like “exhaust” just by chance when they talk about this. But then, doesn’t the thinker care at all about the result? He must, and yet he seems too content to plod methodically on—unless of course he really only loves the method, and is disinclined to set much stock in results. Ostensible objects—they may be illusory or they may be able to be constituted in a variety of ways: the flower and the bee may be two objects from one point of view and only one object from another. It isn’t just a matter of labelling an object, but of distinguishing the boundaries of each object. Kafka seems preoccupied with methodical procedures, especially with all the ways they can go wrong, but nothing ends. The error isn’t an end nor does it finish anything, but it marks the point in the development of a line of inquiry beyond which nothing useful can be expected. The method defines what constitutes an error, but in general, error is abandoning method (usually without noticing, like falling off the rope in Number One). But how well does the method do when it comes to providing a satisfactory notion of success? The method is designed to identify and avoid error, and it may be that it can only define success in terms of scarcity of error; that minimization of error (accuracy) is equivalent to truth is taken for granted. Error is breaking off method prematurely, but how do you know when to break off method maturely? Error arises when one breaks off method prematurely, because this leads to an inessential understanding based on mere appearances. One settles for what seems to be true, and then reasons from that appearance. Kafka’s fiction is replete with examples of this. From this, we may infer that truth, for Kafka, is less a result and more a way of remaining true, by patient application of method. NUMBER THREE Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem 3 GLOSSATOR 8 Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück. There are two main human sins, from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return. [Kaiser/Wilkins] There are two cardinal human vices, from which all the others derive their being: impatience and carelessness. Impatience got people evicted from Paradise; carelessness kept them from making their way back there. Or perhaps there is only one cardinal vice: impatience. Impatience got people evicted, and impatience kept them from making their way back. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY Kafka cancelled this aphorism, perhaps in favor of Number Two, which seems to be an extension of the line of reasoning evident here. Impatience means being unwilling to wait, but the fruit of the tree of knowledge wasn’t prohibited for a limited time only; it was forbidden forever and altogether, so how is the Fall a crime of impatience? If we assume the Fall was a crime of impatience, wouldn’t we also have to assume that Adam and Eve mistook God’s permanent ban for a temporary delay? If so, then that mistake sets up the impatience which leads to the transgression, making that confusion, rather than the act of disobedience, the origin of sin. However, it is for the disobedience they were punished, unless we assume that the confusion is included somehow in the punishment as well, even if it isn’t mentioned. This doesn’t seem to be Kafka’s point, so perhaps he cancelled this aphorism not only because of the superfluity of indolence to his idea, but also because the Fall is out of place in it as well. Perhaps, by impatience, Kafka means taking the rules too lightly. Adam and Eve had only one rule. You would think they could have remembered it. But, if you have to live with many rules, while you may not remember them all in particular, you are 4 CISCO – KAFKA’S ZURAU APHORISMS constantly aware of the existence of rules, and so you might develop a reflex causing you to check for a rule before undertaking certain kinds of actions. Someone with only one rule to follow doesn’t really live according to rule in the usual sense, and might well be more likely to forget it than someone bound by many rules. In the second aphorism, impatience is failure to follow method. Methods are caught in a double bind; on the one hand, they have to take all relevant possibilities into account, while, on the other hand, in order to function, they have to reach a conclusion that isn’t arbitrary. Where the possibilities are very numerous, it becomes more and more difficult not to set an arbitrary end to methodical operations. Then—going back. This means that the expulsion from paradise is not permanent. But, from identifying impatience as the main, the only, human sin, it doesn’t follow necessarily that patience will restore paradise. In this aphorism, Kafka only says that impatience and paradise are mutually exclusive. The first aphorism speaks of a “true way;” if that isn’t also the “way back,” I don’t see what else it could be. Perhaps the first aphorism explains that patience is the true way, the true way back; this would make going back the non-arbitrary result of the method, unless patience itself is paradise. Paradise is not endless procedure, unless paradise is the trial. Is Bloch patient? Or is he no longer waiting for anything? Is faith just waiting? Is patience possible where there is no anticipation of a result? Or perhaps patience is only the refusal to act, despite a strong impatience. NUMBER FOUR Viele Schatten der Abgeschiedenen beschäftigen sich nur damit, die Fluten des Totenflusses zu belecken, weil er von uns herkommt und noch den salzigen Geschmack unserer Meere hat. Vor Ekel sträubt sich dann der Fluß, nimmt eine rückläufige Strömung und schwemmt die Toten ins Leben zurück. Sie aber sind glücklich, singen Danklieder und streicheln den Empörten. Many shades of the departed are occupied solely in licking at the waves of the river of death because it flows from our direction and still has the salty taste of our seas. Then the river rears back in disgust, the current flows the opposite way and brings the dead 5 GLOSSATOR 8 drifting back into life. But they are happy, sing songs of thanksgiving, and stroke the indignant waters. [Kaiser/Wilkins] Many of the shades of the departed busy themselves entirely with lapping at the waters of the Acheron, because it comes from us and still carries the salt tang of our seas. This causes the river to coil with revulsion, and even to reverse its course, and so to wash the dead back to life. they are perfectly happy, and sing choruses of gratitude, and caress the indignant river. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY This one I find both especially troubling and especially mystifying. The river of death comes from us. It would not be inconsistent with what seems to me to be the tenor of Kafka’s thinking to think of mourning and grief as a way of driving the dead off and emphasizing the barrier between life and death, for all that they appear to originate in a desire to avoid a separation. One the one hand, no one wants to be separated from the lost one, but retaining the corpse can only increasingly underscore the loss; the body has to be put away in order to set the memory free for safekeeping. The topic of the aphorism seems specifically to be the nature of the difference between alive and dead. I’m reluctant to think of the river as death itself because it seems to be only a part or element of death. Hofmann translates “Totenfluss” as Acheron; the underworld has rivers, or one crosses rivers to reach it, but the underworld is not just a river. The barrier between life and death is not hard in all places; in some ways the barrier is hard, like the surface of the earth between the domain of mortals and the classical underworld. In other ways, however, the barrier is soft, more like water, in that someone believed dead for one or another reason, absence or catalepsy, may turn out to be alive after all. People frequently continue to see their lost ones, owing to a kind of psychological persistence of vision. We have the avidity of the dead, the bathetic miracle of their restoration, a kind of stunt, and the indignation and disgust of the river. The river carries the dead away from life, no matter how people may cling to the dead; then it carries the dead back again, not in response to the petitions of the living, but in disgust and indignation. 6 CISCO – KAFKA’S ZURAU APHORISMS The river seems to be giving the dead what they want, but their activity seems mindless. Only the reservation that many, but not all, engage in licking the river suggests otherwise, and the suggestion seems unimportant to me. If the river is giving the dead what they want, they receive it not because they deserve it, but because the river is exasperated with them and it rejects them in a spasm of impatience. The yearning of the dead for life is unseemly. I don’t think this is because Kafka thinks it is unseemly to love life, but only to cling to half-measures, the dead licking the river for the taste of life, and so it’s better to restore them to life entire. NUMBER FIVE Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr mehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen. Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. [Kaiser/Wilkins] From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY Hofmann makes the second sentence a distinct imperitive, while Kaiser/Wilkins allows for the idea that this point is not stumbled across, that it has to be reached, which might mean it will not come to you. This is certainly one of the most important and well-known of the aphorisms. It is interesting to think of this as an extension of the previous aphorism; it brings to mind those other dead, not included among the “many,” who do not lap at the river of life and are not brought back ... rückläufige Strömung und schwemmt die Toten ins Leben zurück ... the particle rück repeats here and in Rückkehr above. Perhaps they’ve reached that point. In the third aphorism, Kafka writes that mankind is not allowed to go back to paradise, kehren sie nicht zurück. This split verb is the same noun as is employed above: Rückkehr. The point of no return is not passed, but only reached. There’s no indication that one goes on past this point, but the point is not reached if one can still go back. From one point of view, this 7 GLOSSATOR 8 point could be like the South Pole; leaving in any direction one goes North. Leaving this point in any direction would be going back, which would mean one must remain. On the other hand, it might be possible simply to leave that point without going back. Going back is possible up to this point, but not beyond. It may be the moment of unbreakable commitment, but I think the meaning is less occasional and more fundamental to experience than that. He may be discussing the genesis of the present moment as an irreducible difference from the past. In that case, this would be the moment the new appears, or a sort of natural selection. So the path would be like Herakleitos’ river, with an added imperitive and the possibility of not quite managing to reach this becoming. NUMBER SIX Der entscheidende Augenblick der menschlichen Entwicklung ist immerwährend. Darum sind die revolutionären geistigen Bewegungen, welche alles Frühere für nichtig erklären, im Recht, denn es ist noch nichts geschehen. The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened. [Kaiser/Wilkins] The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct— because as yet nothing has happened. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY The stinger is in the last clause, which seems to deflate everything that comes before it. However, the spirit of the aphorism is plainly in sympathy with revolution, so that deflation doesn’t seem to be the intended effect. I think this is a statement of the messianic point of view; everything is preparatory to the arrival of the judgement, which is not happening yet, but which might happen at any moment. If the decision hasn’t come yet, it is not because the moment has been withheld. It is always the right time for the decision. Time never resists or impedes it. 8 CISCO – KAFKA’S ZURAU APHORISMS If human error is always impatience, and impatience is understood to mean acting prematurely, then—assuming that the ideas of one aphorism are meant to carry over into another (and we shouldn’t assume that, because it shouldn’t be taken for granted that Kafka had a system in mind)—that would mean human error is the attempt to act decisively, or simply stated, to act. This would mean all human activity is error. What about animal activity? Many of Kafka’s characters are animals, and their activity seems no less erroneous, so it doesn’t seem that his choice of animal characters should be considered an escape from error. If all activity is error, and action is unavoidable, then error is unavoidable. I don’t think this is Kafka’s meaning. The real crux of this aphorism is Kafka’s affirmation of the idea that the past is not relevant where change is concerned. The moment in which things change is now. What is called the routine operation of things is not change but the circulation of a set of familiar variables from a closed repetory. Change is the appearance of a new variable, and nothing new can arise merely by the extension or rearrangement of the old. NUMBER SEVEN Eines der wirksamsten Verführungsmittel des Bösen ist die Aufforderung zum Kampf. One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. [Kaiser/Wilkins] One of the most effective seductions of Evil is the call to struggle. [Hofmann] COMMENTARY The Hofmann translation appends the eighth aphorism, “It is like the struggle with women, which ends up in bed,” to the seventh, but I want to look at the seventh alone. It is interesting to note that both translators chose to retain the capitalization of Evil. The struggle with evil, the idea that evil must be struggled with, is part of its seduction. The image of the good that this implies is that of effortless innocence. It does not seem that Kafka believes one can become innocent, at least, not by any effort with 9 GLOSSATOR 8 innocence for a goal. His protagonists struggle with the Court and the Castle, but they invent much of the struggle, and much of it is a matter of opinion, or point of view. This may be why so much of Kafka’s fiction describes a pantomime of conflict by a solitary figure. Struggle could be a kind of sloth: the struggle appears to act or to work, but achievements in a struggle are always mysterious. This idea of struggle couldn’t be more diametrically unlike Hitler’s “kampf.” Someone struggles, but the situation keeps changing. Who can determine winners and losers? If all human sin is impatience, then Evil might mean the inclination to impatience. If so, then impatience and struggle may be the same thing. The messiah doesn’t come to struggle, but to end struggle. NUMBER EIGHT Er ist wie der Kampf mit Frauen, der im Bett endet. It is like the struggle with women, which ends in bed. [Kaiser/Wilkins] COMMENTARY Hofmann’s translation is identical, except that he chooses to begin less formally—“it’s.” The most conspicuous thing in this brief line, “struggle,” is not the most important thing about it. I don’t think Kafka is putting on a worldy, caddish air, suggesting that women seduce men they’ve already decided they want to sleep with by putting up false resistance. Evil doesn’t seduce people by offering them phoney struggles; the struggle is real. A cad would say that the struggle is won when the woman is bedded, but I think Kafka is saying that the struggle is the end, that is, the intention, and the bed. It’s not that the struggler becomes evil as he struggles, resorting to cheating or becoming increasingly ruthless; it’s that the struggle is the evil. NUMBER NINE/TEN A. ist sehr aufgeblasen, er glaubt, im Guten weit vorgeschritten zu sein, da er, offenbar als ein immer verlockender Gegenstand, immer mehr 10