Full text of DOI:10.1111/1468-0483.00182

German Life and Letters 53:4 October 2000
0016–8777
ART AS RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT: KAFKA’S DEBT TO
KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS AND THEIR IMPACT ON HIS LATE
STORIES
Leena Eilitta
¨
abstract
Although Kafka’s reception of Kierkegaardian ideas has received much critical
attention the critics have so far paid little heed to similarities between Kierke-
gaard’s religious and Kafka’s aesthetic views. My intention in the following is to
show that in spite of Kafka’s critical remarks on his philosophy, Kierkegaard’s
definition of a religious person influenced his description of the artist’s existence
in Erstes Leid (1922), Ein Hungerkunstler (1922) and Josefine, die Sangerin oder das Volk
¨
¨
der Mause (1924). In these stories Kafka turns Kierkegaard’s ideas about spiritual
¨
inwardness and passionate attitude towards religious life into artistic inwardness
and passionate attitude towards art. He also describes how devotion that these
artists feel towards their art leads to their solitude and how their lives reflect suffer-
ing, doubt and despair which is similar to Kierkegaard’s description of religious
suffering. Kafka’s critical remarks on Kierkegaard’s philosophy should therefore
be understood as a clear rejection of Kierkegaard’s Protestant theology, although
these same ideas gave him inspiration to formulate his views on the artist’s exist-
ence.
Kafka’s relationship with Kierkegaard has been a source of constant
controversy in Kafka criticism during the recent decades. The most obvi-
ous similarities between them have certainly been found in their bio-
graphies. Both Kierkegaard and Kafka suffered in their childhood from
their authoritarian fathers, suffering of which Kierkegaard writes in his
journals and Kafka in his Brief an den Vater. During their lifetimes they
had similar difficulties in forming stable relationships with women and
neither of them married or had children. Kierkegaard writes about his
tragic relationship with young Regina Olsen in fictional form in several
of his works and describes the inner conflicts which this separation caused
him. Kafka’s attempts to marry Felice Bauer and to form close relation-
ships with other women, particularly with Julia Wohryzek and Milena
Jesenska, failed and left him with the damaged feeling that he was unable
´
to form a marital relationship, something he often regretted in his diaries
and letters.
A more controversial picture of Kafka’s and Kierkegaard’s relationship
has emerged among critics when they have attempted to define Kierke-
gaard’s possible influence on Kafka’s fiction. Max Brod emphasised in his
‘Nachwort’ to the first edition of Das Schloss (1926) Kierkegaard’s enor-
mous influence on Kafka when writing this novel. According to Brod the
Amalia-Sortini episode in the novel is ‘ein Parallelstuck zu Kierkegaards
¨
Buch’ Furcht und Zittern, a book which ‘Kafka sehr geliebt, oft gelesen und
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
in vielen Briefen tiefsinnig kommentiert hat’.1 Critics who wrote during
this early wave of Kafka-Kierkegaard debate often drew heavily on Brod’s
opinion and emphasised the similarities between Kafka’s and Kierke-
gaard’s views.2 A somewhat more diverse discussion on Kafka and Kierke-
gaard started among the French existentialists in the 1940s who, as Marthe
Robert has pointed out, looked for Kierkegaardian ideas in Kafka’s fiction
as a source of inspiration for their existentialist philosophy.3 Particularly
Camus’s essay ‘L’espoir et l’absurde dans l’oeuvre de Franz Kafka’, first
published in 1942, reveals that Kafka was considered as a mediator
between Kierkegaard’s early existentialist philosophy and French existen-
tialism in many crucial concepts of existentialist thought.4 In contrast to
these early critics who emphasised Kierkegaard’s influence on Kafka, the
critics from the 1950s onwards started increasingly to look for differences
between their views. Although the critics still usually acknowledged Kierke-
gaard’s inspiration for Kafka, they often aimed to show how different Kaf-
ka’s approach to religious, philosophical and stylistic matters was from
that of Kierkegaard.5 Since the 1970s this discussion has gone in two direc-
tions. Many recent critics have suggested that Kierkegaard was a more or
less irrelevant figure for Kafka, whereas some other critics have started to
analyse more deeply than before the extent to which Kafka might have
chosen Kierkegaardian ideas and assimilated them into his views.6
Although the latter have therefore begun to suspect that Kierkegaard’s
influence on Kafka is much more indirect than previously belived, the
extent of this influence on Kafka’s fiction still remains largely undiscov-
ered. My aim in this article is to contribute to the latter critical tradition
and to show how Kierkegaardian ideas influenced Kafka in his late stories.
To start with I will go back to Kafka’s remarks on Kierkegaard in his per-
sonal statements. After having surveyed Kafka’s often contradictory
remarks on his philosophy I will analyse how Kierkegaardian ideas gave
him inspiration to formulate his views about the artist’s existence.
1 Max Brod, Nachwort, in Franz Kafka, Das Schloss, Munich 1926, pp. 500–1.
2 Among others, Herbert Tauber, Franz Kafka. An Interpretation of his Works, London 1948, pp. 138–
42; and John Kelly, ‘Franz Kafka’s Trial and the Theology of Crises’, The Southern Review, 5 (1940),
766–84.
3 Marthe Robert, ‘Kafka in Frankreich’, Akzente, 13 (1966), 317.
4 Albert Camus, ‘L’espoir et l’absurde dans l’oeuvre de Franz Kafka’, in Oeuvres Completes d’Albert
`
Camus, ed. Roger Grenier, Paris 1983, pp. 241–52.
5 Among others, Fritz Schaufelberger, ‘Kafka und Kierkegaard’, Reformatio, 7–8 (1959), 379–400,
451–6; Brian Edwards, ‘Kafka and Kierkegaard: A Reassessment’, GLL, 20 (1966–7), 218–35; and
Wiebrecht Ries, Transzendenz als Terror: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Studie uber Franz Kafka, Heidel-
¨
berg 1977.
6 Fritz Billeter, Das Dichterische bei Kafka und Kierkegaard: Ein typologischer Vergleich, Winterthur 1965;
Wolfgang Lange, ‘Uber Kafkas Kierkegaard-Lekture und einige damit zusammenhangende
¨
¨
¨
Gegenstande’, DVjs, 60 (1986), 286–308; and Richard Sheppard, ‘Kafka, Kierkegaard and the K’s:
¨
Theology, Psychology and Fiction’, Journal of Literature and Theology, 5 (1991), 277–96.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
KAFKA’S COMMENTS ON KIERKEGAARD
501
Judging by Kafka’s remarks in his letters and diaries his preoccupation
with Kierkegaard went through two phases. First, around the years 1913–
16 Kafka was interested in Kierkegaard’s personal life and looked for paral-
lels between Kierkegaard’s difficulties with Regina Olsen and those that
he himself was experiencing at that time with Felice. After having read
in 1913 a collection of Kierkegaard’s diaries, Das Buch des Richters, where
Kierkegaard confesses his painful intellectual and physical difficulties with
his fiancee, Kafka feels the relationship to be so similar to his own with
´
Felice that he writes: ‘Er bestatigt mich wie ein Freund’ (T 578).7 More
¨
important for my present topic than Kafka’s early remarks on Kierke-
gaard’s personal life are his remarks on Kierkegaard’s philosophy in the
correspondence with Max Brod between November 1917 and March 1918.
At this time Kafka was on sick-leave in Zurau after the diagnosis of acute
¨
tuberculosis in September of the same year. Kafka’s first reference to Kier-
kegaard in October 1917 as ‘ein Stern, aber uber einer mir fast unzugang-
¨
¨
lichen Gegend’ (Br, 190),8 reveals his lack of familiarity with Kierkegaard’s
philosophy, with which, however, he soon became familiar in the coming
months in Zurau where he read Entweder-Oder, Furcht und Zittern, and Wie-
¨
derholung. His first reading of Entweder-Oder results, however, in disappoint-
ment and in his letter to Brod towards the end of January he suggests that
Entweder-Oder should be read only ‘in der Weise, dass man wenigstens eine
9
¨
Spur wirklicher Uberlegenheit uber sie hat’ (Br2, 228). From this letter
¨
onwards Kierkegaard becomes a major topic of discussion between Kafka
and Brod. In his letter of 20 January 1918 Brod compares Kierkegaard’s
and Kafka’s personal decisions not to marry from a religious point of view.
He suggests that Kierkegaard’s decision not to marry reflected his negative
Christianity whereas Kafka’s similar decision was based on his positive
Judaism and Brod doubts ‘sollte das auf den Gegensatz christlich-judisch
¨
hinauslaufen?’(Br2, 238). In his response, Kafka criticises Brod’s opinion
of Kierkegaard’s negative Christianity and defends Kierkegaard’s interpret-
ation of the Abraham legend as presented in Furcht und Zittern. He main-
tains that, in contrast to Brod’s view, Kierkegaard’s religiosity is extremely
positive when he portrays Abraham as somebody whose trust in God is so
vast that he is willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, knowing that God will give
him back: ‘Aber negativ kann man ihn gewiss weder hier noch dort
nennen, in “Furcht und Zittern” (das du jetzt lesen solltest) geht seine
7 References in this form are to Franz Kafka, Tagebucher in der Fassung der Handschrift, ed. Hans-
¨
Gerd Koch, Michael Muller and Malcolm Pasley, Frankfurt a.M. 1990.
¨
8 References in this form are to Franz Kafka, Briefe 1904–1924, ed. Max Brod, Frankfurt a.M. 1989.
9 References in this form are to Max Brod and Franz Kafka, Eine Freundschaft. Briefwechsel, ed. Mal-
colm Pasley, Frankfurt a.M. 1989.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
Positivitat ins Ungeheuerliche und macht erst vor einem gewohnlichen
¨
¨
Steuereinnehmer halt’ (Br2, 240).
In the succeeding letter to Kafka on 19 March Brod suggests further
that Kierkegaard’s resigned Christianity leads to misunderstandings about
the role of the religious person in life. He stresses that Kierkegaard’s con-
ception of God differentiates between religion and physicality in contrast
to the Jewish God who ‘kann eventuell mit Sinnlichkeit parallel gehen’
(Br2, 244). Kafka’s response to Brod’s letter reveals his further interest in
Kierkegaard’s ideas about the religious person. When defending Kierke-
gaard, Kafka suggests that Kierkegaard’s concept of God is not negative
but eludes any definition: ‘das Verhaltnis zum Gottlichen entzieht sich
¨
¨
zunachst fur Kierkegaard jeder fremden Beurteilung’ (Br2, 247). Kafka
¨
¨
maintains that in Kierkegaard’s philosophy the religious state of a human
being is not decided in this life but only after death (‘eine Frage des
jungsten Gerichtes’) so that his present religious state cannot be determ-
¨
ined. The religious person finds himself in constant opposition to the
world since his religiosity constantly looks for ways to express itself:
Nun will sich allerdings das religiose Verhaltnis offenbaren, kann das aber
¨
¨
nicht in dieser Welt, darum muss der strebende Mensch sich gegen die Welt
stellen, um das Gottliche in sich zu retten oder, was das gleiche ist, das
¨
Gottliche stellt ihn gegen die Welt, um sich zu retten. (Br2, 248)
¨
Judging by his remarks on Kierkegaard, Kafka grew interested in Kierke-
gaard’s conception of the religious person and defended it against Brod’s
critical views. A very different picture of Kafka’s approach to Kierkegaard
emerges when we look at some other remarks on the Abraham figure,
which he wrote from Zurau. In often very sarcastic terms Kafka describes
¨
Abraham merely as a greedy character who is not in harmony with his
spiritual world. He maintains that the everyday world, ‘die vergangliche
¨
Welt’ (N2, 102),10 is not enough for Abraham but he also does not have
the capacity to enter the realm of spirit and he therefore remains stuck
with his material possessions, in his ‘Mobelwagen’, on the way there. In
¨
his later letter to Robert Klopstock, written in June 1921, Kafka further
questions, often in a very imaginative way, the basic assumptions of Kierke-
gaard’s Abraham legend and concludes that the legend belongs to ‘alte
Geschichten, nicht mehr der Rede wert’ (Br 333).
Kafka’s comments on Kierkegaard’s religious person are obviously very
contradictory. In his letters to Brod he expresses his fascination for Kierke-
gaard’s portrayal of the religious person, whereas his further comments
reveal his disbelief in these same ideas. I would therefore suggest that
although Kafka was fascinated by the qualities which Kierkegaard gave to
the religious person, his originality and divine powers, he remained distant
10 References in this form are to Franz Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, ed. Jost Schille-
meit, Frankfurt a.M. 1992.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
503
from the basis of Kierkegaard’s religious ideas, his Protestantism. I intend
to show in what follows that although Kafka remained detached from Kier-
kegaard’s Christianity, he drew inspiration from Kierkegaard’s description
of the religious person with regard to his own views about the artist’s exist-
ence.
PARALLELS BETWEEN KAFKA’S AND KIERKEGAARD’S VIEWS
In his personal remarks Kafka throughout his life emphasised the impor-
tance of literature to him. As early as in 1913 the thirty-year-old Kafka
wrote that his job was ‘unertraglich’ since it kept him away from writing,
¨
‘meinem einzigen Beruf’ (T 579). His further statement, in which he
emphasised that ‘ich nichts anderes bin als Literatur und nichts anderes
sein kann und will’ (T 579), indicates how consciously he chose literature
to be the most important part of his life. This decision only strengthened
when he was reflecting upon his possible marriage to Felice. He wrote in
the letter to Felice’s father in February 1913, in which he explained his
difficulties about marrying, that literature was such an essential part of
him that if he were separated from it his entire existence would lose its
meaning. ‘Mein ganzes Wesen ist auf Literatur gerichtet, die Richtung
habe ich bis zu meinem 30sten Jahr genau festgehalten, wenn ich sie ein-
mal verlasse, lebe ich eben nicht mehr’ (BrF, 456).11 Kafka’s firmness in
choosing literature and writing to be the most important part of his life
resembles Kierkegaard’s definition of a choice in spiritual development.
In Entweder-Oder Kierkegaard distinguished three modes of existence, the
aesthetic, the ethical and the religious, and defines these modes in terms
of making the right choice. In the lowest mode of existence, the aesthetic
mode, the human being lives ‘ins Blaue hinein’, in the state of ‘Entweder-
Oder’ where he explores all the possibilities of life without committing
himself to any binding decisions about it. By contrast, in the ethical state
a human being consciously wills his own development and has undertaken
a binding decision about his life. As a result, his actions are no longer
determined by outer circumstances like those of an aesthetic individual.
When entering the highest state, the religious state, a human being makes
the most significant choice possible, since in the religious state he chooses
himself, his true and essential self. Kierkegaard emphasises that the person
who is to achieve the religious state has to be able to experience despair
and to withdraw from the temporal world. He stresses that religious with-
drawal does not mean mere passive surrender to existence but a state in
which a person actively renounces temporal matters with a view to eternity.
When describing the religious state, moreover, Kierkegaard suggests that
the precondition for this state is the suspension of ethical norms. He
11 References in this form are to Franz Kafka, Briefe an Felice und andere Korrespondenz aus der Verlo-
bungszeit, ed. Erich Heller and Jurgen Born, Frankfurt a.M. 1967.
¨
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
recalls that Abraham was only able to perform his ‘leap of faith’ after
having sacrificed the ethical norms upon which his life had depended, i.e.
his duties as husband and father.
Kafka’s decision to write made him drop everything else in his life. He
recalled ironically in his diary as early as January 1912 that when he
devoted himself to literature he deprived himself of ‘die Freuden des
Geschlechtes, des Essens, des Trinkens, des philosophischen Nachden-
kens, der Musik’, and that he soon ‘magerte nach allen diesen Richtungen
ab’ (T431). When he rejected everything else in his life, writing began
to acquire deep value in Kafka’s spiritual development. In the following
aphorism, written in 1917, Kafka equates writing with praying: ‘Schreiben
als Form des Gebetes’ (N2, 354), which implies that for him writing was
as essential a part of his spiritual development as religious life was for
Kierkegaard. When discussing this spiritual development Kafka introduced
his concept of ‘das Unzerstorbare’ which refers to the hidden and
¨
unbroken spiritual core of a person which allows a person to live and
find spiritual satisfaction in life: ‘Der Mensch kann nicht leben ohne ein
dauerndes Vertrauen zu etwas Unzerstorbarem in sich, wobei sowohl das
¨
Unzerstorbare als auch das Vertrauen ihm dauernd verborgen bleiben
¨
konnen’ (N2, 124). Kafka maintained that ‘das Unzerstorbare’ is some-
¨
¨
thing which is possessed by every single individual and is simultaneously
shared by all mankind: ‘Das Unzerstorbare ist eines: jeder einzelne ist es
¨
und gleichzeitig ist es allen gemeinsam, daher die beispiellos untrennbare
Verbindung der Menschen’ (ibid.). Kafka stated that one way of misunder-
standing ‘das Unzerstorbare’ is to believe in a personal God: ‘Eine der
¨
Ausdrucksmoglichkeiten dieses Verborgen-Bleibens ist ein Glaube an
¨
einen personlichen Gott’ (ibid.). Since Kafka himself did not possess a
¨
belief in a personal God, it is quite likely that for him spirituality did not
find expression in any religious categories but in the aesthetic realm,
through literature and writing. As for Kierkegaard, Kafka’s devotion to the
aesthetic life meant not only the renunciation of worldly life, but some-
times even conscious destruction of oneself and therefore suffering in the
world. Kafka emphasised this suffering as an essential part of writing in
the following diary entry, written in June 1913, in which he states that,
when writing, his aim is to liberate his creative potential and, if necessary,
even voluntarily destroy himself in the process: ‘Die ungeheuere Welt,
die ich im Kopf habe. Aber wie mich befreien und sie befreien, ohne zu
zerreissen. Und tausendmal lieber zerreissen, als sie in mir zuruckhalten
¨
oder begraben. Dazu bin ich ja hier’ (T 562). Kafka’s view of the artist’s
life also resembles Kierkegaard’s definition of the religious person as
being outside ethical life. In the letter to Brod in July 1922, he defined
his writing as ‘ein susser wunderbarer Lohn fur Teufelsdienst’ (Br2, 377).
¨
¨
Through his writing Kafka was able to approach dark, unconscious powers
within himself of which he would otherwise remain unaware. Kafka further
emphasised the writer’s irrational powers by describing him as a ‘Sunden-
¨
bock’ of mankind who allows other people to enjoy sin innocently. He
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
505
described how, through writing, the writer ‘erlaubt den Menschen, eine
Sunde schuldlos zu geniessen, fast schuldlos’ (Br2, 380).
¨
Kafka’s remarks have indicated close parallels between Kierkegaard’s
religious views and his own view of the artist’s existence. In the subsequent
part of this article I intend to analyse how Kafka’s understanding of Kierke-
gaard’s religious person influenced his portrayal of the artist’s life in his
last stories.
KAFKA’S DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTIST IN ERSTES LEID (1922), EIN
¨
¨
¨
HUNGERKUNSTLER (1922) AND JOSEFINE, DIE SANGERIN ODER DAS VOLK DER MAUSE
(1924)
In those stories which Kafka wrote within the two last years of his life he
describes artists who have devoted their lives to their art. The protagonist
of Erstes Leid is a trapeze artist who has devoted himself to this art so
entirely than when engaged by a company he stays on his trapeze through-
out the day and night. When practising his art, the trapeze artist achieves
a silent and hidden state resembling Kierkegaardian inwardness in which
other people and outer circumstances have ceased to have any meaning
for him:
Sonst blieb es um ihn still; nachdenklich sah nur manchmal irgendein Ange-
stellter, der sich etwa am Nachmittag in das leere Theater verirrte, in die
dem Blick sich fast entziehende Hohe empor, wo der Trapezkunstler, ohne
¨
¨
wissen zu konnen, dass jemand ihn beobachtete, seine Kunste trieb oder
¨
¨
ruhte. (D 317)12
The protagonist of Ein Hungerkunstler is an equally passionate starver who
¨
lives only for those weeks during which he stays in his small cage ‘bleich,
im schwarzen Trikot, mit machtig vortretenden Rippen’ (D334). In his
¨
cage he communicates at times with his public but these moments are
soon followed by the hunger artist’s withdrawal into solitude:
. . . dann aber wieder ganz in sich selbst versank, um niemanden sich kum-
¨
merte, nicht einmal um den fur ihn so wichtigen Schlag der Uhr, die das
¨
einzige Mobelstuck des Kafigs war, sondern nur vor sich hinsah mit fast
geschlossenen Augen und hie und da aus einem winzigen Glaschen Wasser
¨
¨
¨
¨
nippte, um sich die Lippen zu feuchten. (ibid.)
The protagonist of Kafka’s last story, Josefine, die Sangerin oder das Volk
¨
der Mause, is a singing female mouse who surpasses the earlier protagonists
¨
in her passion for her art. While singing, Josefine is able to forget her
physical surroundings so entirely that it is as if she had died away:
12 References in this form are to Franz Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten, ed. Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch
and Gerhard Neumann, Frankfurt a.M. 1994.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
wie sie ihre Lippe krauselt, zwischen den niedlichen Vorderzahnen die Luft
¨
¨
ausstosst, in Bewunderung der Tone, die sie selbst hervorbringt, erstirbt und
¨
¨
dieses Hinsinken benutzt, um sich zu neuer, ihr immer unverstandlicher
werdender Leistung anzufeuern. (ibid., 366)
¨
¨
These short moments of absorption, ‘Hinsinken’, always encourage her
to achieve better results and give her strength to overcome difficulties and
obstacles which she confronts. Her passion for her art is limitless and she
shows her deep devotion by always putting her artistic ambition higher
and, as the narrator reveals, ‘ware es in ihrer Macht, sie wurde ihn noch
¨
¨
hoher hangen’(ibid., 372).
¨
¨
When describing the deep involvement that these artists have in their
art, Kafka simultaneously shows how their devotion places them outside
the social world. Similar to the religious person in Kierkegaard’s philo-
sophy, these artists often find themselves in opposition to their surround-
ings and they suffer in their wordly life and look for solitude. The trapeze
artist’s longing for solitude is so intense that he insists on staying on his
own, high up on the trapeze, when others are performing. As the narrator
reveals, ‘sein menschlicher Verkehr war eingeschrankt’ (ibid., 318) and his
¨
only social contact, except for that with his impresario, is with his servants
and a few colleagues who occasionally visit him on the trapeze. His need
for solitude is so absolute that when he is forced to leave his trapeze and
to travel to other cities to perform, the artist demands to travel during
the night, to use the fastest car available and when travelling by train to
sleep high up in the luggage-rack in order to avoid the painful contact
with the outside world. In spite of these concessions, his contact with the
world is, as the impresario reveals, ‘fur die Nerven des Trapezkunstlers
¨
¨
zerstorend’ (ibid., 319). The starvation artist’s devotion to his art has simi-
¨
larly alienated him from life in the world. His only social contact is with
the guards who observe him during those long weeks which he spends
without food. The guards frequently consider him a fool and suspect him
of cheating while fasting, although those initiated into the art of starving
know how groundless this suspicion was, since the starvation artist would
never eat, even if forced, ‘die Ehre seiner Kunst verbot es’ (ibid., 341).
The mental state of the starvation artist is therefore often unbalanced,
and doubt and despair are mingled with passionate devotion. He spends
most of his time in ‘truber Laune’ and behaves ‘zum Schrecken aller wie
¨
ein Tier’ in his cage (ibid.). Josefine’s situation among her people, the
mouse nation, is equally solitary. Although the mice are fascinated by her
song, which succeeds in capturing ‘etwas von verlorenem, nie wieder
aufzufindendem Gluck’ (ibid., 366) of this nation, the value of her singing
¨
is constantly doubted. The narrator even asks if her song should be called
singing or mere squeaking: ‘Ist es denn uberhaupt Gesang? Ist es vielleicht
¨
doch nur ein Pfeifen?’ (ibid., 351). When the value of her song is doubted,
Josefine shows her superiority by ‘ein freches, hochmutiges Lacheln’ (ibid.,
¨
¨
354) which causes further irritation among her people. The narrator also
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implies that there is an organised opposition to Josefine among her people
which aims at devaluing her singing and depriving her of the privileges
that she has succeeded in achieving. The public’s dissatisfaction with her
privileges increases towards the end of the story when they begin to
demand that Josefine should participate more actively in the daily work
of her people. At this point the narrator refers to Josefine’s position by
addressing it as if in explicitly Kierkegaardian terms. When describing
Josefine’s exceptional place in society, the narrator maintains that Josefine
seems to be outside the law, beyond ethical norms and codes that govern
the life of her people. His description of Josefine’s position closely
resembles Kierkegaard’s definition of the religious person as being outside
ethical life:
Daraus konnte man schliessen, dass Josefine fast ausserhalb des Gesetzes
¨
steht, dass sie tun darf, was sie will, selbst wenn es die Gesamtheit gefahrdet,
¨
und dass ihr alles verziehen wird. Wenn dies so ware, dann wurden auch
Josefines Anspruche vollig verstandlich, ja, man konnte gewissermassen in
¨
¨
¨
¨
¨
¨
dieser Freiheit, die ihr das Volk geben wurde, in diesem ausserordentlichen,
¨
niemand sonst gewahrten, die Gesetze eigentlich widerlegenden Geschenk
¨
ein Eingestandnis dessen sehen, dass das Volk Josefine, wie sie es behauptet,
¨
nicht versteht, ohnmachtig ihre Kunst anstaunt, sich ihrer nicht wurdig
¨
¨
fuhlt, dieses Leid, das es Josefine tut, durch eine geradezu verzweifelte Leis-
¨
tung auszugleichen strebt und, so wie ihre Kunst ausserhalb seines Fassungs-
vermogens ist, auch ihre Person und deren Wunsche ausserhalb seiner
¨
¨
Befehlsgewalt stellt. (ibid., 368)
Kafka’s further description of these artists reveals, however, even closer
resemblances to Kierkegaard’s definition of the religious person. The
deep involvement that these artists feel with their art not only places them
outside ethical life but tends to disintegrate their finite lives. Towards the
end of Erstes Leid the trapeze artist loses his vital contact with the outside
world, that is, with his impresario, and falls into a state of despair from
which he does not find a way out. During one of his strenuous trips he
begins to demand a second trapeze for his performances, and, although
the impresario succeeds in consoling the artist, he wonders whether the
artist’s anxiety may threaten his whole existence:
Wenn ihn einmal solche Gedanken zu qualen begannen, konnten sie je
¨
ganzlich aufhoren? Mussten sie sich nicht immerfort steigern? Waren sie
¨
¨
nicht existenzbedrohend? Und wirklich glaubte der Impresario zu sehn, wie
jetzt im scheinbar ruhigen Schlaf, in welchem das Weinen beendet hatte, die
ersten Falten auf des Trapezkunstlers glatter Kinderstirn sich einzuzeichnen
¨
begannen. (ibid., 321)
This brief incident at the end of the story implies that the trapeze artist
may no longer be able to form a renewed relationship with his art but
that he remains in a desperate state, as the wrinkles on his forehead sym-
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bolically suggest. Kafka’s description of the starvation artist in Ein Hunger-
kunstler resembles Kierkegaardian ideas in this respect even more closely.
¨
Towards the end of the story the public gradually loses interest in his art
and eventually he is removed to a circus where he has to continue starving
among animal cages. After having been removed to the circus, the star-
vation artist no longer even tries to attract the attention of his public but is
pleased to be left on his own, staring absent-mindedly into the far distance:
In der ersten Zeit hatte er die Vorstellungspausen kaum erwarten konnen;
¨
entzuckt hatte er der sich heranwalzenden Menge entgegengesehen, bis er
¨
¨
sich nur zu bald – auch die hartnackigste, fast bewusste Selbsttauschung hielt
¨
¨
den Erfahrungen nicht stand – davon uberzeugte, dass es zumeist der
¨
Absicht nach, immer wieder, ausnahmslos, lauter Stallbesucher waren. Und
dieser Anblick von der Ferne blieb noch immer der schonste. (ibid., 345).
¨
After having been deprived of the chance to continue his art, the star-
vation artist also loses his belief in his art himself. Towards the end of the
story he demands that he should not be admired for his art and confesses
that he had been starving only because he could not find ‘die Speise . . . ,
die mir schmeckt. Hatte ich sie gefunden, glaube mir, ich hatte kein Auf-
¨
¨
sehen gemacht und mich vollgegessen wie du und alle’ (ibid., 349).
Much of the critical discussion concerning this story has sought to
define the starvation art and the historical time described in the story. It
would be tempting to see starvation art as a symbol of modern art, as has
been suggested by Frederick Krotz and Gerhard Kurz in their interpret-
ations of the story. Krotz has compared Kafka’s story to several other mod-
ern works and suggests that Kafka’s description of art in this story
resembles the ambition of modern art to attain a new transcendence.13
Kurz, on the other hand, suggests that Kafka has undertaken an ideologi-
cal criticism of the modern artist in this story by stressing his pathological
sides.14 Kurz fails therefore to see the value of the hunger artist’s unique
performance, and although Krotz succeeds in relating hunger art to mod-
ernist ideas about art he nevertheless fails to explain why the art of fasting
had been so popular earlier. It seems therefore that the starvation art
refers not to something radically new but, on the contrary, to something
ancient which the public of the story is confronted with and wants to
reject. Some earlier critics of the story have taken this into account in
their interpretations of the story. As early as 1936 Harry Steinhauer sug-
gested that the change described in the story reflects a cultural change in
which religion loses its meaning.15 He maintains that the hunger artist is
therefore comparable to an ascetic saint who is confronted by an age with-
out religion. Kafka’s last protagonist, Josefine, seems to suffer an end just
as tragic as those of the trapeze artist and the starvation artist, since
13 Frederick Krotz, ‘Franz Kafka: Ein Hungerkunstler’, Modern Austrian Literature, 5 (1972), 104–14.
¨
14 Gerhard Kurz, Traum-Schrecken: Kafkas literarische Existenzanalyse, Stuttgart 1980, p. 79.
15 Harry Steinhauer, ‘Hungering Artist’, in Die Deutsche Novelle 1880-1933, New York 1936, pp. 28–43.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
509
towards the end of the story the narrator refers not only to her disappear-
ance but also to her death. But a closer analysis of the narrator shows that
his revelations about Josefine’s fate are not necessarily true, since we can-
not infer Josefine’s entire story from the narrator’s remarks, which
throughout the story are very contradictory. Michael Dentan has earlier
suggested that the narrator’s attitude towards Josefine expresses his
inability to approach the artistic realm, but when carefully analysed it
seems that some of his remarks even show a conscious wish to devalue
her art.16 The narrator becomes more ambivalent towards the end of the
story when he starts to describe critically Josefine’s demands to be free of
the daily work of her people. He describes Josefine as unrealistic and child-
ish by blaming her for her privileges, but throughout this negative descrip-
tion he often slips into a positive characterisation of Josefine. When por-
traying Josefine as somebody who aims for boundless admiration, the
narrator also admits that admiration itself means nothing to her and that
her demands are always caused by an inner logic: ‘Wenn sie etwas fordert,
so wird sie nicht durch aussere Dinge, sondern durch innere Folgerichtig-
¨
keit dazu gebracht’ (ibid., 372). Walter H. Sokel has offered an expla-
nation for the narrator’s ambivalence and pointed to the exceptional
status of this narrator within Kafka’s entire work. Sokel suggests that the
narrator belongs to the declining power of the mouse nation and that in
contrast to Kafka’s earlier works, where power structures were always seen
through the perspective of the weak protagonist, here the heroine is seen
through the eyes of the declining power.17 Most earlier critics of the story
have not, however, paid attention to this narrative possibility but have
instead assumed that the narrator is reliable. James Rolleston calls him a
‘skeptical narrator’ whose ‘efforts to extract a permanent meaning from
the text are equally frustrated by the heroine’s sheer quirkiness’.18 And
Roy Pascal maintains that the narrator is ‘a medium that must be trans-
parent and utterly valuable’.19 In contrast to earlier critics, this analysis
has revealed that the narrator’s comments about Josefine should be
addressed with scepticism and, in fact, we doubt whether his revelations
about Josefine’s character and particularly about her death at the end of
the story are true. The narrator’s unintentional revelations point out, on
the contrary, that Josefine possesses an endlessly resolute attitude towards
her art and it is therefore difficult to imagine that Josefine would have
completely given up her singing and no reason is given for Josefine’s sud-
den death. In contrast, the narrator always emphasises Josefine’s vitality
by saying that ‘fur sie gibt es kein Altern und keine Schwachen ihrer Stim-
¨
¨
me’ (ibid., 372). Kafka’s Josefine in his last story differs thus from his earl-
16 Michael Dentan, Humour et creation litteraire dans l’oeuvre de Kafka, Geneva/Paris 1961, pp. 154–5.
´
´
17 Walter H. Sokel, Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie: Zur Struktur seiner Kunst, Munich/ Vienna 1964,
p. 576: ‘Wir sehen die Macht nicht mehr durch die zweifelnden Augen des Ich-Helden, sondern
die Macht ist uns durch einen ihrer sinnierenden Teilhaber zuganglich.’
¨
18 James Rolleston, Kafka’s Narrative Theater, University Park, Pa./ London 1974, pp. 131–32, 136–7.
19 Roy Pascal, Kafka’s Narrators: A Study of his Stories and Sketches, Cambridge 1982, p. 220.
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KAFKA’S DEBT TO KIERKEGAARDIAN IDEAS
ier artists since she is able to resist the disintegrating effect of her sur-
roundings.
* * *
Kafka’s late artists – the trapeze artist, the hunger artist and Josefine –
resemble Kierkegaard’s ‘religious person’ in many respects. They are in
possession of powers which allow them to devote themselves to the aes-
thetic life. The choice which places art beyond everything else in their
lives closely resembles Kierkegaard’s definition of a choice through which
a person may gain a higher validity for the self. But perhaps Kafka’s view
of the artist’s existence is most similar to Kierkegaard’s definition of
religious life when he describes the difficulties these artists confront in
their worldly lives. Their devotion to art places them outside the profane
world to which they are frequently in opposition, and the artists spend
their lives in Kierkegaardian melancholy. When describing artists in these
stories, which he wrote towards the end of his life, Kafka must have
thought of his own experiences as an artist, upon which he reflected in
his letters and diaries throughout his life. Kafka’s view of the artist’s life
in these stories brings further evidence about the subject’s experience of
modernity. As Harvie Ferguson has suggested in his study Melancholy and
Modernity, melancholy has emerged as the most characteristic trait of mod-
ern existence: in modernity melancholy came to mean the general sense
of ‘cosmic dislocation, the feeling of being alone in a void, of isolation in
the face of the double infinity of external and internal space’.20 Kafka’s
comments on his writing have revealed that art was for him a means of
preserving his spiritual integrity in life and that Kierkegaard’s example
was crucial for him when making his decision to concentrate on writing.
Kafka’s devotion to literature allowed him to resist the disintegrating effect
of modernity and to remain in creative touch with ‘das Unzerstorbare’,
¨
with the most hidden and therefore undamaged part of his personality.
20 Harvie Ferguson, Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity: Soren Kierkegaard’s Religious Psychology,
London/New York 1995, p. 17.
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