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this is the archive of a discussion on the franz kafka discussion list. one person posted questions about the story (message 1), some else replied (message 2), and then went back and forth for a fewmore messages. this is the chronological account of their dialoge (just follow the "next" and "previous" buttons to navigate), and the messages have not been edited or altered in any way. on a similar note, though, because of this discussion, i wrote my own interpretation of "before the law". check it out if you like.
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First of all, I have to apoplogize for the fact that I may make some mistakes in writing in English, since I am Portuguese and English is not my mother language.
I am very glad to have found a place - here - where one can exchange ideas about reading Kafka. I have studied philosophy, and it may be that I come to make my PhD about "him".
I am reading (again!, how many times have I done it before?) "Vor dem Gesetz" (how is it translated into english? Before the Law? In face of the Law?), and it is obvious that I have interpretation problems. I refuse several types of approches, such as:
1) To approach Kafka's works as a disguised biography. It is clear that Kafka's prose has autobiographical reminiscences. So what? It is clear that all literary processes have it either. How could it be otherwise? Kafka's life was not, objectively speaking, more miserable than thousands of others, although I am not sure that one such affirmation makes in itself any sense. Lifes are not objectively comparable, since lifes are not objects, things. One should not presuppose an autonomous reality - Kafka's life - behind what he has written and take it for granted as a key to fathom his literary riddles.Kafka did not write to be as incomprehensible and inacccesible as the world and the Lords of the Castle he felt the impusle to depict. Life and writing are in a much more complex relationship in Kafka's work as it is suggested by the kind of approach to his stories which feigns to be able to read them "from" his life. Kafka is dead, those who were by himself are dead as well, and from him remains amongst us nothing but part of what he has written. Kafka should not be approached as an odd fellow, protagonist of an eccentric life, which he tried to transpose into art as literature. His art is not the symptom of an eccentricity. His art is what we have before - and nothing else.It does not disguise. At it's best, it illuminates. It illuminates us, if it is true that his art has an universal value, if it is true that he is our "Representative Man". Besides the error of principle in approaching art - whatever - as a manifestation of an idiosyncrasy located out of it - in an autonomous life process, for instance - there is, in Kafka's particular situation, something that makes ir more strikingly absurd: first, we feel the need to go into his life, since his stories are enigmatic and we surmise autobiographical reminiscences in it; we explore his biography, but to do do it we have little more than his work, in which are included his diaries and correspondence. To explain the work we turn to life, and to gain an insight into it we have... the work available, and less more. Doesn't it sound a bit too much kafkaesque?
2) Kafka's work is full of parables, metaphors. Should we take such modes as deficient modes of pointing out to concepts, notions? Are we to translate them into a clearer language? Interpreting is to be assumed as retroversion of images? No.
My questions are: what is the meaning of the word "law" in "Vor dem Gesetz"? How are we to legitimately enter in the process of sense giving to an image such as "law" in "Vor dem Gesetz"? Naturally what I am really looking for is an answer to the first question. The second is pointless, if we lose from sight the first.
Is there anybody rading "Vor dem Gesetz"?
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