Page 69 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
The Book of Job’s hound and archer motif is chase and siege, fright and death. Yahweh, the mighty warrior, archer, gangster402 and hunter, sharpens his eyes, claws and teeth to proudly hunt Job like a beast tearing him to pieces (10:16-17, 16:6-11), as his troops chase (16:14), close in, siege (19:13) and pierce Job to death (6:3-4, 16:13). His friends do not pity him and betray him (6:14-9, 19:21-22; T230-1). During desert heats (6:15) they disappear, and he is left alone, estranged, repulsed, despised, abhorred, objectified and gossiped about (6:14-19, 18:13-20; T5, 15-6, 77, 90-1, 134-5). Surrounded by unwise, abusive and miserable comforters (19:1-3; T106 [Leni], 157 [Titorelli], 189 [Huld], 214 [Priest]), he is obsessively and aggressively slandered against (19:21-22; T3). They also tread behind: they hound, siege, and accuse. It is Job’s evil and neglect of kinsmen, widows, orphans and the poor that ensnare him (22:5-7, 22:9-10). It is Job’s heroic stubborn pride against God that traps him (15:26). The rabid hellhounds chase and close him in from every side, and Job cannot turn about (18:5-21). Kafka’s hound motif is the same: chase and betrayal, claustrophobia, abandonment and shame.403 Titorelli’s divinized Judge, sitting on his illusory golden-lit butcher throne (T146)404 in wrathful gaze and terrifying pose, criss-crosses with Yahweh, as Sokel suggests.405 The warrior Judge and his clawed hounds arrest, patrol and chase K in his home, office and attics. Hounded, he is trapped (T210-14). Immobilized, he is killed “like a dog” on a wilderness night (T231). His friends too betray: he must confess his guilt. Their handshakes cease, or are proffered.406 Marginalized like Job, K joins the world of outcasts: dogs.407
There 3⁄4 Josef K is brother to dogs just as Job is a brother to ostriches and jackals (30:29). Job’s bones burn with heat, his lyre mourns, his flute laments (30:30-31). In Job’s burning flesh, K’s flesh burns. Trapped in scorching corridors or ash heap, in desolated deserts they dwell amidst two imaginary frail trees as frail as Job and K. If Job’s
When Josef K associates the Doorkeeper to a dog, he is suggesting he is a corrupt priest because he has humbled himself to the point that he does not question the system, which has been made into system of universal lies. In addition, most dogs in the bible are stray dogs (except for a few domesticated and sheepherding dogs [Job 30:1]). The scavenger sort, unclean and vicious, haunts the streets and refuse dumps. Hence, an enemy is also called a “dog” (Pss. 22:16, 20; H 22:17; 21; 59:6, etc.) suggesting Josef K perceives the doorkeeper as an enemy. In Kafka’s The Trial, there is a powerful metaphor transferring the sound of hounds to the words of priests, lawyers and to the corrupt authorities. In other words, the powerful are hounds. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Dog.” By Turner. Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume I. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 862 See also Hart, George. The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. “Am-Heh.” London: Routledge, 2005. 12
400 The King of Terrors in this passage is Death (18:11-13), the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dead. See footnote 14. Peake, A.S. The Century Bible. Job. Ed. By Walter F. Adeney. Edinburgh: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904. 182. The hellhounds close in upon him from every side, “yet as he seeks to escape them, he meets others as ghastly.” Peake, A.S. The Century Bible. Job. Ed. By Walter F. Adeney. Edinburgh: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904. 181
401 Peake, A.S. The Century Bible. Job. Ed. By Walter F. Adeney. Edinburgh: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904. 43
402 Job compares Yahweh, says Terrien, to a bullying gangster or hatap. See G. Fohrer, Das Buch Hiob, 206 on the argument from authority, and Terrien on argument ad baculum. Terrien claims that Job even compares God to a gangster (hatap) and speaks of his immorality. See Terrien’s Job, p. 95: “L’amoralité de l’omnipotence. Les normes humaines ne s’appliquent pas a la conduite de Dieu, que Job compare a un gánster:. His evidence for this he gives in a footnote, where he says, “Le verbe htp, saisir comme une proie, est un hápax legomenon, mais des mots dérivés de sa racine s’emploient pour désigner le rapt, le vio, la violence.” Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 73
403 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 29
404 When Titorelli paints, he abides by the Court’s precise secret rules and instructions (T149-51). The Judge’s throne motif is a dirty kitchen stool covered by a horse blanket (T106) emphasizing the union of law, war and also High Priestly sacrifice in sharp contrast with the good shepherd motif. It suggests the Warrior is the Judge and Lawgiver eager to battle to kill enemies. When K confronts the Judge, he is hounded, and implicitly whipped just as if a stubborn horse unwilling to cooperate. His guilt is assumed proved (T212) because he defies, disobeys, does not file petition. For whipping stubborn horses, see parallels in Ps 32:9 and Prov 26:3. Throughout Israel’s history, Yahweh annihilates the Pharaoh’s horses and chariots. He also defeats the Canaanite coalition with its hordes of horses and chariots. See “Horses” in Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Ed. By Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III. Illinois: InterVarcity Press, 1998. 400-1
405 Sokel argues that Titorelli, the artist, mythologizes, and in so doing, simultaneously deflates. Kafka offers a radical criticism of the artist’s ability to illuminate Judges and Magistrates in the divine likeness of Yahweh. In this way, Yahweh’s invisible form, always a forbidden representation in itself, partakes in the reality of the divinized Court. Titorelli subtly depicts the memory of Israel’s sacred history not only through its Judges and Magistrates and Priests, but also when he represents the Heath Landscapes as a memory of Eden Lost. Bloom, Harold. Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Modern Critical Interpretations. See Sokel, Walter. The Three Endings of Josef K. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 89
406 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 30
407 Kafka, Franz. The Complete Stories. “Investigations of a Dog.” Ed. Nahum Glatzer. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. 278-316
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