Page 82 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
chaplain; lawyers, priests; the doorkeeper, the other man-hound; and innocence or flaw, guilt. Between the ash heap, Golgotha and the stone quarry, an infinitely divisible distance in concepts cannot be traversed. Crossed words, words cross:
c r i s s
the inword crosswording r
o
s
s
i
n
g
crisscrossing crosswording
Christ’s entombment prefigures K’s brutal execution. Crucifixion and trial are embedded as Josef K’s implicit critique and rebellion against Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, against injustice and absolutist moral-criminal and political Courts, and against Judaism and Christianity’s failure to genuinely fulfil Jesus’ theological liberalism: the uprooting of guilt. If Job grasps he cannot escape his sin or guilt even in righteousness because Yahweh stands guard over it shaming him (10:14-16), K, less righteous than Job, cannot escape it either.
This is the double meaning of the two aslant crosses: one is the symbolic crucifixion of Job and K during their trials, the other, of Christ’s. The two frail crosses criss-crossing; the cross that crucifies (OT) and the cross that redeems (NT) sustaining each other in their fall. The cathedral speaks of divine absence. It is the antithesis of the glory cloud, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, the Temple. It is the antithesis of Jesus the man and Jesus the Christ. It does not reflect the return to innocence and to divine presence, but to divine absence in guilt and punishment: to Jesus’ cry of dereliction (Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34), and to the sepulchre of Jesus. There is no rendering of the veil, no glorified Jesus, no promise of the gift of baptismal innocence, only the Old Testament guilt consciousness succeeding Christ’s passion. If Jesus’ death destroys the old order, the new order in his rising never comes to pass in the altarpiece. Temple and Paradise are antithesis: the cathedral is profane; Eden is holy. Its rivers are the rivers of the parting waters between guilt and innocence, condemnation and baptism; its holy ground, the island of Paradise K sees; and the liberty of man, the light of Jesus the innocent immanent man. In the cathedral darkness does not become light. The Temple remains a shadow: its candles dim in guilt morality.
The dimming of the cathedral lights, the attic corridors, the doubts K casts on Biblical Law, the figure of the crucifixion and entombment of Christ, the desolation of the surroundings, its empty pews, posit the final dimming of
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