Page 77 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
In between the absence of actual acquittals, and the existence of apparent and protracted ones (T154) dwells humanity: an actual acquittal is immortality’s yearnings for presence; an apparent one is the eternal return to banishment’s sin and guilt. Thus both Courts, religiously, politically and ontologically entwined, construct with superb artistry the schemes of domination and subjugation, and like a thief in the twilight, eternally rob innocence in the midst of arborescent realities, one of sin, the other of life; one real, the other turned mirage, assuming the guilt of the accused as an incontrovertible fact.443 The Law thus attracted by guilt and sin is immutable, and eternally returns to original guilt. Kafka of the arid heaths yearns for its banishment in the heath’s sunset.
As the sun sets, the Law sets, yet something ineffable insists itself in the disquietude of heath replications. The numberless duplication of desolations is solicitude to solation. Each replication is a “companion piece” (T163) to all and all to one. If they are one and many, the many are in the one, and the one in the many. Kafka’s metaphysical desire for unity is redemption towards innocence. If Josef K sees a window open like a light (T230) and rages for the Judge and the High Court he never saw (T231), he desires divine light, justice and redemption. Just as Josef K’s longings are forever engraved in Kafka’s writings, Job’s yearnings to engrave his words in an everlasting monument (19:23-24) remain hewn in rock. Job longs for His redeemer and witness (16:19; 19:23-27), yet in his very flesh he sees, and beholds God with his own eyes (19:24). If the Judge is ‘unseen’ in K, God is ‘seen’ in Job (42). Job knows God exists though He has abandoned him, whereas K knows the Judge must exist. His immutable Law444 exists even if it cannot be accessed anywhere (13:24, 23:8-10; T214-16). Kafka’s heroes, says Heller, are aware of two things: that there is not a God, and that there must be a God.445 Job and K yearn for God’s justice and communion and companionship in an innocent paradise. Thus, Kafka, bewildered, gets nearer “the clearing in some wood,”446 yet he does not find anything, only the memory and the spiritual clash of weapons.447
The arborescence of good and evil’s dualism withers away, the heaths announce its dusk, and a desire for light and a justice ‘beyond’ appears. It is a guilt liberation theology in the form of Octavio Paz’s Resurrection, filled with presences of innocence.448 If in Job there is hope for a dead tree to sprout again at the “mere scent of water” (14:7-9), so there are traces of hope in the foliage of trees crowded together amidst the parting waters in K’s last vision (T229). There 3⁄4 K returns in a brief glimpse to the primordial innocence: the purity of waters, the parting rivers of salvation and of Eden, emblems of satiation, innocence and liberty, the last vision of Paradise before banishment and apostasy. The echo of guilt and original sin fades away renouncing an ancient morality that empowers masters and submits slaves. K does not heed his uncle’s earlier advice to run to the countryside (T91). It empowers the masters of the countryside of guilt, the scribes of Paradise Lost. It is to be incriminated by universal guilt (T91, 213) from the Fall of
443 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 35
444 Indeed, as Cox posits, soon after Josef K begins his quest for vindication, the law becomes the Law with a majuscule, suggesting an entity in itself. In footnote 91. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 95. This suggests that Kafkabel’s Law is a mise en abyme of Judaism’s Law. Before the Whirlwind speeches, Job knows God commands the Laws of Nature in Creation and Chaos.
445 Heller, E. The Disinherited Mind. Cambridge, University Press, 1952. 180. This quote appears in Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 95
446 Brod, Max. Franz Kafka. A Biography. Trans. By G. Humphreys Roberts (Chapter I to VII) and by Richard Winston (Chapter VIII). New York, Schocken Books, 1937. 173
447 Brod, Max. Franz Kafka. A Biography. Trans. By G. Humphreys Roberts (Chapter I to VII) and by Richard Winston (Chapter VIII). New York, Schocken Books, 1937. 173
448 Paz, Octavio. La Otra Voz. Poesia en Fin de Siglo. Madrid, España: Seix Barral, 1990. This concept of poetry as “resurrection” (once alluded to in Dante’s Divina Commedia) appears in another of Paz’s works that posits, “Poetry is not truth; it is the resurrection of presences, history transfigured in the truth of undated time.” excerpt from San Ildefonso Nocturne. Paz, Octavio. Obra Poética. Spain: Seix Barral, 1990. 193
—77—