Page 81 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Whereas Job sees Yahweh in his mighty wrath and splendor, K sees Jesus in his frailty and twilight. When Josef K, a lapsed Christian,462 ascends to the cathedral’s altar and shines his own flashlight upon the altarpiece, he sees not a risen Christ, but an entombed Jesus, an immanent man, a man whose light was a light, and the truth, and a presence unto the world. If to Milton, Truth comes into the world with Christ, and after the crucifixion, it is hacked and scattered across the earth like Osiris,463 to Josef K the truth is Jesus the immanent universal man, the redeemer of guilt, the forgiver of sins, the lover of innocence’s idyll. His truth, Eden and the Kingdom Regained in the heart of man, renders Judaism and the Parable of the Law as a universal lie (T214). A crucified immanent Jesus-man, the bomb of power-temple ideology, prefigures Josef K in his de-construction of guilt ideology. Just as Milton and the “sadfriendsofTruthmustimitateIsisandseektheworldovertogatherupitsfragments,”464somustJosefK. IfJob is the first defiant against guilt, Christ is the second, Nietzsche the third, and Kafka the fourth.
Where Christ’s resurrection redeems and is the way and the light, Jesus’ entombment negates the reconciliatory light of the immanent Jesus. The ascending Christ is the redeemer, the immanent Jesus is the sinner by the Sanhedrin criminalized, in shame crucified. The first is transcendence, innocence and light, his other immanence, guilt and dark (to some), innocence and light (to others). The penumbra in the cathedral abysmally mirrors the darkness [that] came over the whole land” (Mk 15:33), the failing of the sun’s light (Lk 23:45) 3⁄4 symbolic of the sunset of the heath 3⁄4 after the crucifixion. If Jesus the man was an immanent light unto himself and unto the world, K is a symbolic part of that immanent light in the image of Jesus the man in the shining of his flashlight. Josef K’s theophany is the memory of Jesus abandonment in the cross, of Yahweh’s silence and indifference. Of the fragility of man. Job’s theophany is the memory of the impotence of man. It is a preamble to the Death of Yahweh, a mise en abyme of God’s death in K. Just as Yahweh abandons Jesus, God abandons K. If the Sanhedrin perceives Jesus’ flaws and guilt, tries him, and condemns him to death, so does the Court of Judaism perceive K’s flaws and guilt and tries him and executes him. If the Court of Yahweh unjustly tries Job’s innocence and restores Him, what does it say? That the High Courts are arbitrary and abuse their powers: dissenters are condemned (Jesus, K); penitents are rewarded (Job). The Legal, Religious and Criminal entwine, arbitrarily interfering, dominating and punishing. The Sanhedrin’s crime and punishment is conjugated in the cross, just as Josef’s K death is conjugated in the loss of Jesus’ immanence. The Sanhedrin predicates Christ’s sin, just as the Court predicates K’s guilt, and the cathedral depicts an entombed Christ. K crosses himself before the priest to render himself free from guilt in empathy with Jesus the immanent man. Josef K’s butchery, the thrusting of the knife into his heart and turning it there twice (T231), is the sanguineous engraving of the cross in his heart.
The two aslant tip-crossing golden crosses (T207) evoke the metaphor of the abysmal infinite as a crisscross. Omnipotence and impotence, the sacred and the profane, the moral and the criminal are entangled in Job, K and Christ. Yahweh’s praise is Satan’s malaise; Job’s piety is impiety; the cathedral is the Sanhedrin; the Prosecutor, the Hound; the non-sermon, the lethal guilt verdict; the Parable of the Law, Elihu’s words; 465 the priest, the prison
462 There are many references to Christianity in The Trial and to the cross. In addition to evident Christian elements 3⁄4 the cathedral, the artwork of Christ’s entombment, the aslant crosses, the divinized Judge Titorelli portrays 3⁄4 there are also Christian nuances. Karl, K’s uncle, tells K that if he loses the trial, he will be “crossed off” (T94). Josef K “crosses himself” at the cathedral in Chapter 9, and the Manufacturer reminds K that each one has his cross to bear (T134). See also Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991.
463 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. Areopagitica. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 549
464 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. Areopagitica. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 549
465 The priest-prison chaplain’s discourse on the Parable of the Law (T215-219) shares many similarities with Elihu’s four discourses in the Book of Job (32:1-
37:24).
—81—