Page 13 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Inter Weavings
Many of Kafka’s splendid writings, and singularly The Trial, interweave with the Book of Job.3 To Ms. Susman, Kafka’s work profoundly shares the traits of Job’s dispute with God.4 The Trial, says Mr. Frye, is a “a kind of ‘midrash’ on the Book of Job.”5 “The Court, in The Trial actually affirms,” says Mr. Lasine, “the same set of moral values...in the Book of Job and in Biblical Law.”6 Indeed, both literary jewels annunciate their affinities in the mystery of evil7 and trial metaphors.8 The infinite abysmal as a mise en abyme,9 arises as a palace or hall of inter- textual and self-referential mirrors that crisscross to and from the Book of Job, Biblical Law and The Trial as if in a Wittgensteinian overlapping game.10
Sinless Job and flawed Josef K, innocent to himself,11 flawed to all and guilty to some, are suspected and accused, tried12 and persecuted. Neither knows why. Uprooted and groundless, both exculpate themselves and openly rebel,
3 Please see Lasine note 2. “Cf. H. Fisch: ‘The Trial is surely very Jobian (166).’ Critics Kartiganer (31) and St. Leon (29-33) suggest that Kafka was consciously influenced by Job when he wrote his novel, even though Kafka never mentioned this Biblical Book in his diaries, notebooks, or extant letters (see Glatzer, Dimensions 48). Such claims of affinity are muted in Suter’s 1976 study, which is considerably more cautious than the Job/Trial chapter (133-67) in Wilk’s more recent book. Suter’s analysis, the most exhaustive to date, makes references to some of the research on legal terminology in the Book of Job available at that time.” See Fisch, Harold. A Remembered Future: A Study in Literary Mythology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Kartiganer, Donald M. “Job and Josef K.: Myth in Kafka’s The Trial.” Modern Fiction Studies 8 (1962): 31-43. St. Leon, R. “Religious Motives in Kafka’s ‘Der Prozeß’: Some Textual Notes.” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 19 (1963): 21-38. Glatzer, Nahum N. The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings. New York: Schocken, 1969. Suter, Rudolf. Kafkas ‘Prozeß’ im Lichte des ‘Buches Hiob.’ Europäischen Hochschulschriften 1. Vol. 169. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1976. All references from Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990). 196-98
4 Please see Lasine 195, Note 1. Susman 49. Lasine says “Brod also discusses Kafka’s work in terms of “die uralte Hiobsfrage” (155), concluding that “die Haltung Kafkas [ist] der Haltung Hiobs verwandt 3⁄4 und doch in manchen Punkten eine ganz andere” (159).” Lasine also cites theologians Buber, Scholem, and Rosenzweig. He says that Buber emphasizes that Kafka’s work is fundamentally a contemporary Job commentary (see Glatzer, Dimensions 48). “Scholem (212- 13), says Lasine, counseled Walter Benjamin to begin any inquiry into Kafka with the Book of Job. Rosenzweig declared that, “The people who wrote the Bible seem to have thought of God much the way Kafka did (qtd. In Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig 160).” Lasine also adds that literary critic Northrop Frye too asserts that Kafka’s writings “form a series of commentaries on the Book of Job (Anatomy 42).” Susman, Margarete. “Das Hiob-Problem bei Franz Kafka.” Der Morgen 5 (1929): 31-49. Brod, Max. Über Franz Kafka. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1966. Scholem, Gershom. Walter Benjamin 3⁄4 die Geschichte einer Freundschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. All references from Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of JobandKafka’sJosefK.” TheGermanQuarterly,Vol.63,No.2,Focus:JewsandGermans/Jewish–GermanLiterature(Spring,1990),195,197-98
5 Please see Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt, 1983. 195. Quoted in Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990). 196
6 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990). 187
7 Gordis, Robert. The Book of God and Man. A Study of Job. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965. 7
8 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990). 187. Lasine also posits that both trials are testing ordeals. See Lasine, Stuart. “Job and his Friends in the Modern World: Kafka’s The Trial.” In The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book ofJob, ed. L. G. Perdue and W. C. Gilpin. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992. 147-48
9 A mise en abyme, a literary device coined by Andre Gide, is a mirroring narrative or structure that suggests the abysmal in infinite regressions, inter-textuality, and self-referentiality. Kafka’s The Trial, abysmally and infinitely, reflects as a mirror the Book of Job’s trial narrative. Both mirror Job and Josef K, omnipotence and impotence, inaccessible Judges and unjust accusations, persecutions and dispossessions, alienation and lack of genuine vindication. See J.A., The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. “Mise en Abyme.” London: Penguin, 1977. 513
10 To Wittgenstein strict definitions are not possible. Hence, he posits, all things are complex language games which crisscross with other games, just as board games have many points in common with card games, which share, too, some similarities with football. “There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally — and dogmatically — for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word's uses through "a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing" (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form — be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance.” Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Article “Ludwig Wittgenstein” by Anat Biletzski. First published Nov. 8, 2002; substantive revision Dec. 23, 2009. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein, December, 2012. Wittgeinstein. Philosophical Investigations (PI). G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (eds.), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.) Oxford: Blackwell, 1953. Wittgeinstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP). C.K. Ogden (trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922. Originally published as “Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung,” in Annalen der Naturphilosophische, XIV (3/4), 1921.
11 At The Trial’s Court, whether the Judge notices goodness or evil in Josef K, we do not know. But we know K is a suspect. Justly or unjustly, he is arrested by the Court and not told why. We only know that “someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning” (T3). He “can’t think of the slightest offense of which he might be accused” (T14, 29).
12 Cox argues that, “In the second cycle of speeches, Job’s position crystallizes into something very closely resembling that of Josef K, the innocent accused in The Trial. Job’s first speech Chapters 16-17 is dominated by the double theme of legal dispute and lamentation. This sets the tone for the second movement, thethemeoftheinnocentmanbroughttotrialbeforeajudgewhoneverappears. In16-23,Jobclearlyfeelsheisontrial,thathislifeassuchisoneendlesslegal
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