Kafka's ''Schloß'' and the Subversion of Plot

7/29/2019 Kafka's ''Schlo'' and the Subversion of Plot

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Kafka's "Schlo" and the Subversion of PlotAuthor(s): Karen J. CampbellSource: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), pp. 386-403Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27709690

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Journal of English and Germanic Philology?July? 1986 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

KAFKA'S SCHLOSSAND THE SUBVERSION OF PLOT

Karen J. Campbell, University of California, Santa BarbaraDas waren zweifellos Widerspr?che, sie waren so sichtbar, da? siebeabsichtigt sein mu?ten.?Kafka, Das Schlo?

As Kafka's last and arguably most important novel, Das Schlo? standsat an enormous remove from the reigning literary vogue at the timeof its inception?that is, from Expressionism.1 To be sure, while therest of Kafka's oeuvre can hardly be subsumed under the rubric ofExpressionism either, its influence upon him is in evidence there, particularly in the earlier, more experimental pieces; the fact is worthnoting, if only to affirm their difference from Das Schlo?. Writtenshortly before Kafka's death in 1924 and published by Max Brod in1926, this novel represents a turning-away on Kafka's part from thesort of "surrealistic" technique evident in such earlier works as Ein

Landarzt and even Der Proze? to a more "realistic" method.2 It is not,like those earlier works, particularly "nightmarish" (to use a favoritequalifier of much Kafka criticism), nor is it luridly phantasmagorical,on the order of, say, Beschreibung eines Kampfes. Nor are there remarkable metamorphoses here; no verminous salesmen, no unheard-oftorture machines. Das Schlo? presents a more mundane tale, a plotline that is low-keyed to the point of tedium (a traveler gets lost inred tape) and a development which is relentlessly continuous andchronological.

Although this novel appears to submit itself to more conventionalnarrative controls than do many of Kafka's earlier pieces?and certainly more than many prose works of contemporary Expressionist

writers3?its structure presents a puzzle all the more arresting be1For a general discussion of the limited applicability of this term to Kafka, see PaulRaabe, "Franz Kafka und der Expressionismus," in Franz Kafka, ed. Heinz Politzer(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), pp. 386-405.2This is the opinion voiced by Walter H. Sokel in Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie:Zur Struktur seiner Kunst (1964; rpt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,

1976), p. 442.3At the radical end of Expressionist innovations were now little-remembered workslike Carl Einstein's Bebuquin (1906/1909), which dispensed with traditional constraints ofplot altogether to achieve its phantasmagoric effect. Einstein explicitly championed (inhis "Anmerkungen ?ber den Roman" of 1912) a new prose style that set itself against"Psychologie . . . 'Gef?hl', Kausalit?t, Erotismus und Deskription" in narrative and proposed tomake it into "eine Sache der Willk?r." Cf. Otto F. Best (ed.), Expressionismus undDadaismus (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1974), pp. 83 and 139 f.

386


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 387cause it cannot be explained with "dream logic" or any other selfconsciously "modern" technique in fashion at the time of its composition. It is in large part a structure that has eluded critics for decades,a structure that they have recounted endlessly and almost as oftenunderestimated: witness, for example, their curious failure to recognize, for some twenty years after the novel's publication, the numerous contradictions in K.'s account of himself.4 In the following, Iwill be concerned with examining the relationship Kafka's narrativesustains with the most general of structural conventions, with theAristotelian principle of plot: a principle that prescribes coherent,homogeneous fictions informed by straightforward causal patterns.If, as I wish to demonstrate, Kafka's novel?which is not, after all,

especially coherent or homogeneous?actually subverts the very notion of plot, and does so consistently, then two questions arise. The

first concerns the reluctance of Kafka scholars, particularly in the earliest phases of Kafka criticism, to remark on certain of the structuralpeculiarities of Das Schlo? at all (such as K.'s aforementioned equivocations). The second concerns the implications of such peculiarities forlarger questions of poetics. These two questions, as I shall argue, are

but related aspects of one underlying problem.1

For clarity's sake and as a point of departure for discussing what isinconsequential about Kafka's novel as a whole, let us carefully reviewthose key junctures of the text, already noted by some critics,5 whichdemonstrate beyond any doubt that K. contradicts himself and prevaricates in dealings with the village people. I shall examine threespecific claims: (1) K.'s assertion that he is the land surveyor whom thecount has summoned; (2) his statement that his two assistants are enroute to the village with the surveying gear; and (3) his suggestion thathe has left wife and family behind in order to set out for the village of

Graf Westwest. These claims are, of course, all interrelated.K. makes his first, most general claim on the evening of his arrivalin the village, after he has been awakened by the castle emissary who

challenges his right to be there. When this emissary, Schwarzer, pointsout that the village officially belongs to the castle, K.'s first response is4As Sokel has observed in "Kafka und Sartres Existenzphilosophie," Arcadia, 5, No. 3

(1970), 267?68; he ismore emphatic about this point here than in his earlier study,Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie.5For an overview of some approaches to the problem of Widerspr?chlichkeit in K.'saccount, see Peter U. Beicken, Franz Kafka: Eine kritische Einf?hrung in die Forschung(Frankfurt am Main: Athen?um Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974), p. 329 ff.


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388 Campbellto profess ignorance of the castle: "'In welches Dorf habe ich michverirrt? Ist denn hier ein Schlo??'"6 It is only when his efforts toplacate Schwarzer fail?and the latter angrily orders him to leave?that K. justifies his presence with his professional status:

"Genug der Kom?die", sagte K. auffallend leise . . . "Sie gehen, jungerMann, ein wenig zu weit, und ich werde morgen noch auf Ihr Benehmenzur?ckkommen. Der Wirt und die Herren dort sind Zeugen, soweit ich?berhaupt Zeugen brauche. Sonst aber lassen Sie es sich gesagt sein, da? ichder Landvermesser bin, den der Graf hat kommen lassen. Meine Gehilfen mit denApparaten kommen morgen im Wagen nach. Ich wollte mir den Marschdurch den Schnee nicht entgehen lassen, bin aber leider einigemal vom

Weg abgeirrt und deshalb erst so sp?t angekommen. Da? es jetzt zu sp?twar, im Schlo? mich zu melden, wu?te ich schon aus eigenem, noch vorIhrer Belehrung. Deshalb habe ich mich auch mit diesem Nachtlagerhier begn?gt, das zu st?ren Sie die?gelinde gesagt?Unh?flichkeithatten. Damit sind meine Erkl?rungen beendet. Gute Nacht, meineHerren." (p. 8; emphasis mine)If K.'s peremptory manner here seems to belie his initial ignoranceof local geography, his reaction to the castle switchboard's confirmation of his story, after its initial rejection of his claim, further calls his

motives into question:K. horchte auf. Das Schlo? hatte ihn also zum Landvermesser ernannt.

Das war einerseits ung?nstig f?r ihn, denn es zeigte, da? man im Schlo?alles N?tige ?ber ihn wu?te, die Kraftverh?ltnisse abgewogen hatte undden Kampf l?chelnd aufnahm. Es war aber andererseits auch g?nstig,denn es bewies, seiner Meinung nach, da? man ihn untersch?tzte undda? er mehr Freiheit haben w?rde, als er h?tte von vornherein hoffend?rfen. Und wenn man glaubte, durch diese geistig gewi? ?berlegeneAnerkennung seiner Landvermesserschaft ihn dauernd in Schreckenhalten zu k?nnen, so t?uschte man sich; es ?berschauerte ihn leicht, daswar aber alles, (pp. 9?10)

K.'s assessment of the situation in antagonistic terms, as a "fight"; hissuspicion that the castle recognizes him only in order to intimidatehim?neither of these reflections makes any sense if he is who heclaims to be, a land surveyor who was officially summoned and hasduly appeared to do his job. In fact, his view of his own confirmationas a possible tactic of intimidation on the part of the authorities suggests he fears being exposed by them as an incompetent and a fraud.The legitimacy of his first claim is additionally undermined by his visitto the Gemeindevorsteher in Chapter 5. Although the official concedesthat there had been a bureaucratic slip-up involving a land surveyor at

6Franz Kafka, Das Schlo? (1935; rpt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974), p. 7. All further references are to this edition, and are given in parenthesesin the text.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 389some point in the past, he clearly states that K. cannot have been theman in question: "'Dieser Erla? kann nat?rlich nicht Sie betroffenhaben, denn das war vor vielen Jahren . . .'" (p. 53). This, finally, isconsistent with Brod's account of how the novel was to have ended?with K.'s acceptance by the community despite thefact "da? . . . einRechtsanspruch K.s, im Dorfe zu wohnen, nicht bestand?."7K.'s second claim, that his two assistants will shortly be arriving withthe surveying equipment, is also patently spurious. Although he volunteers this information to Schwarzer on his first evening in the village (p. 8) and again to the innkeeper the following day ("'Nunwerden bald meine Gehilfen kommen, wirst du sie hier unterbringen

k?nnen?'"?p. 10), he promptly adopts two locals, Artur and Jeremias,as his assistants at the beginning of Chapter 2, in what appears to be abizarre improvisational move. As he returns to the Br?ckenhof afterhis first vain attempt to reach the castle, K. encounters two strangemen whom he has already come upon in his meanderings through thevillage:

"Wer seid ihr?" fragte er und sah vom einen zum anderen. "EuereGehilfen", antworteten sie. "Es sind die Gehilfen", best?tigte leise der

Wirt. "Wie?" fragte K. "Ihr seid meine alten Gehilfen, die ich nachkommen lie?, die ich erwarte?" Sie bejahten es. "Das ist gut", sagte K. nacheinem Weilchen, "es ist gut, da? ihr gekommen seid."?"?brigens",sagte K. nach einem weiteren Weilchen, "ihr habt euch sehr versp?tet,ihr seid sehr nachl?ssig."?"Es war ein weiter Weg", sagte der eine. "Einweiter Weg", wiederholte K., "aber ich habe euch getroffen, wie ihr vomSchlosse kamt."?"Ja" sagten sie, ohne weitere Erkl?rung. "Wo habt ihrdie Apparate?" fragte K. "Wir haben keine", sagten sie. "Die Apparate,die ich euch anvertraut habe", sagte K. "Wir haben keine", wiederholtensie. "Ach, seid ihr Leute!" sagte K., "versteht ihr etwas von Landver

messung?"?"Nein", sagten sie. "Wenn ihr aber meine alten Gehilfenseid, m??t ihr doch das verstehen", sagte K. und schob sie vor sich ins

Haus. (p. 19)If the reader is left with any doubts that K. deliberately enters into acharade here, these are dispelled by K.'s comments to the Gemeindevorsteher in Chapter 5. When K. objects that the presence of Arturand Jeremias at his interview is annoying, and the councilman countersthat they are, after all, his own assistants, K. demurs decisively,"'Nein', sagte K. k?hl, 'sie sind mir erst hier zugelaufen'" (p. 54). Andlater, after K.'s ill-fated association with the two dissolves, Jeremiasreveals that he and Artur had originally been assigned to K., theirignorance of surveying notwithstanding, to "cheer him up," by the

7Max Brod, Afterword to the first edition of Das Schlo? by Franz Kafka (1935; rpt.Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974), p. 301.


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39? Campbellcastle official Galater (Ch. 16). Since his "original" two assistants havein the meantime never appeared with the gear, we are left to concludethat they in all likelihood never existed, but were fabricated instead byK. to strengthen his position vis-?-vis local authorities.The third claim to be considered here, K.'s suggestion that he hasleft wife and child at home for the sake of his surveying work, ismadeso fleetingly that one can easily read past it. K. briefly alludes to hisostensible situation at home before he sets out for the castle, early inChapter 1.He is conversing here with the proprietor of the Br?ckenhof: "'Ich kenne den Grafen noch nicht,' sagte K., 'er soll gute Arbeitgut bezahlen, ist das wahr? Wenn man, wie ich, so weit von Frau undKind reist, dann will man auch etwas heimbringen'" (p. 10). This allusion would be unremarkable, of course, were it not for the fact thattwo days later, K. is openly announcing his intentions tomarry Frieda,the barmaid at the rival Herrenhof. Having only just met her, he hasalready appropriated her from Klamm, and has installed her in hisown room at the Br?ckenhof. Now, learning that the proprietresshere (Gardena) has long been Frieda's trusted confidante, he boldlystates his intentions to her: "'Dann kann ich Ihnen also, Frau Wirtin,sagen, da? ich es f?r das beste halten w?rde, wenn Frieda und ichheiraten, und zwar sehr bald'" (pp. 42?43). That K. and Frieda donot ultimately marry is an issue quite separate from the problem ofK.'s ostensible motives in passing himself off as a married man in thefirst place. What matters here, to put itmost bluntly, is that K.'s contradictory behavior marks him as a liar at best and a potential bigamist atworst.

By isolating passages such as these from the text of Das Schlo?, onecan easily demonstrate that K.'s "story" is fraught with inconsistencies.To be sure, K. has a relatively low profile when compared with manyof literature's most devious figures (lago, Mephistopheles, et al.), butdoes that fact satisfactorily explain the peculiar blindness of the firstgeneration of Kafka commentators? Consider, for example, MaxBrod's early verdict on K., which is surely startling in light of the passages rehearsed above:

Wie im "Proze?" h?lt sich K. an die Frauen, die ihm den rechten Weg,die rechte Lebensm?glichkeit zeigen sollen, freilich in einer alles Falsche und Halbe, alles L?genhafte ausschlie?enden Weise?denn andersw?rde K. diese Lebensm?glichkeit nicht akzeptieren, und gerade dieseStrenge ist es, die seinen Kampf um Liebe und um Eingliederung in dieGesellschaft zu einem religi?sen Kampf macht.88Brod, p. 303.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 391If Brod, writing in the afterword to the first edition of Das Schlo?,seems deliberately oblivious to all the contradictions in K.'s accountand actions, then so too do the popular press reviews of the novel forthe next twelve years (until the outbreak of World War II).9 Indeed, itis almost as if Kafka's critics, taking their cue from Brod (sometimes

explicitly), were determined to show their good will toward the deceased writer by their approval of his?all too identifiable!?fictionalproxies, the K.s. The K. of the Schlo? is thus continually lionized asMan, Everyman, the Wandering Jew, and so on in what have becomethe commonplaces of Kafka interpretation. As late as 1962, HeinzPolitzer still sees K. in this light. While he concedes that there areambiguities in K.'s story, he uncritically accepts such references to K.'spast as will bolster his own interpretation of the novel, often embroidering freely on the scantiest of evidence. "The Land-Surveyor is... an expatriate," he writes, one who has "left his home under noother compulsion than the lure of sinister powers in a faraway land."10The truth is that we have no clear idea of why K. left his home at all,or even of when he did so. To be sure, he himself complains to theGemeindevorsteher that he has been "zu b?sem Ende . . . hergelockt"(p. 64), but elsewhere his claims call this into question?for example,in Chapter 15, where he says, "'Ich bin aus eigenem Willen hier

hergekommen'" (p. 168). Allusions to the length of his projected stayin the village are also contradictory. If K. clearly implies to theBr?ckenhof proprietor that he intends to return home (p. 10), heannounces opposite intentions elsewhere: (to Frieda) "'[I]ch bin hierhergekommen, um hier zu bleiben .... Was h?tte mich denn in dieses ?de Land locken k?nnen, als das Verlangen hierzubleiben?'"(p. 118); or (to the driver Gerst?cker) '"[i]ch bin f?r die Dauer gekom

men'" (p. 201). But then again, these assertions conflict with K.'s ownthoughts as they are recorded in the fourteenth chapter, where hereflects upon the course events might have taken had Schwarzer notawakened him on his first night in the village: he might have unobtrusively found work as a hired hand, "nur f?r ein paar Tagenat?rlich, denn l?nger [wollte] er keinesfalls bleiben" (p. 141). Beyondthese contradictory references to K.'s intentions in coming to the village, we have also only the sketchiest of details about his past life. In

Chapter 13, K. suggests to the boy Hans that he has "einige medi9See J?rgen Born (ed.), Franz Kafka: Kritik und Rezeption 1924 ?1938 (Frankfurt amMain: Fischer, 1983).10Heinz Politzer, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,

1962), p. 219.


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392 Campbellzinische Kenntnisse" which had earned him the nickname "das bittereKraut" back home (p. 125), and he claims to know how to fashionwanderer's staffs (p. 129). But the only reliable details are those reported through K.'s own flashbacks. In Chapter 1, he mentally compares the contours of the castle with those of the church tower of hishome town (p. 12); in Chapter 2, he briefly recalls his "Milit?rzeit. . .diese gl?cklichen Zeiten" (p. 19), and a few pages later, he remembersa boyhood incident in which he had scaled a high cemetery wall(pp. 27 f.).

To return now to the question of Politzer's reading, one might saythat what is typical of it?and for much of Kafka criticism, whichoften glosses and suppresses many of the crucial contradictions in K.'saccount of himself?is its reliance on paraphrase: as a critical reflex, itappears, against threatened eclipses of meaning. For paraphrase, asPaul de Man has aptly observed, "is the best way to distract the mindfrom genuine obstacles and to gain approval, replacing the burden ofunderstanding with the mimicry of its performance. Its purpose isto blur, confound, and hide discontinuities and disruptions in thehomogeneity of its own discourse."11 This pervasive use of a simplifying paraphrase, illustrated by Politzer's "translation" of K.'s actionsinto an amenable interpretation, is evident too in Edwin and WillaMuir's actual translation of Das Schlo? into English. Thus the line"Wenn man, wie ich, so weit von Frau und Kind reist, dann will manauch etwas heimbringen," with its troubling connotations of contem

plated bigamy for the later action, has been rendered by the Muirs assimply, "When a man like me travels so far from home he wants to goback with something in his pockets."12While it is not necessary to belabor such readings at much greaterlength, it is worth returning to Politzer briefly, since he inadvertently

offers a clue as to why K.'s questionable behavior so long deflectedcritical scrutiny. Unlike many other critics, Politzer does recognize K.'smendacious behavior, but he fails to gauge its relative importance:[K.] . . . admits candidly to having a family, a wife, and children [at

home]. However, he introduces himself to the village as a genuine bachelor of the Kafka variety and does not seem to notice that this introduction of himself as a family man is apt to work against his desire ... tomarry one of the village girls. It is quite possible that he fabricates thefew allusions to his previous life in order to impress the villagers and

11Paul de Man, Foreword to Carol Jacobs' The Dissimulating Harmony: The Image ofInterpretation inNietzsche, Rilke, Artaud, and Benjamin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.Press, 1978), p. ix.12Edwin Muir and Willa Muir (trans.), The Castle by Franz Kafka (New York: A. A.Knopf, 1930), p. 8.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 393officials in his favor, or at least that he invents for present advantage apast in which truth and fiction are inseparably interwoven. Yet if he lies,he is not smart enough to realize that his lies have shorter wings than hisimagination. He speaks without considering the undesirable effects hiswords may have.13

What is more striking than K.'s ostensible shortsightedness here iswhat Politzer himself misses: the surprising fact that K.'s prevarications actually have no direct consequences for the action! It is this, andnot simply his inconsistent behavior, which fundamentally rendersthe plot of the novel problematical. Nota

singleone of the suspiciousclaims K. makes is ever exposed as contradictory by the village people,

although he makes each claim publicly, and reports of his words andactions obviously circulate through the village with great speed.Are the villagers, then, simply oblivious to the contradictions in K.'saccount? Paradoxically enough, it would almost appear so. K. is admittedly not accorded a friendly welcome by them from the beginning, but any specific rationale for their general hostility toward himis never advanced. In the first chapter, this apparently baseless animosity is already evident in K.'s initial encounter with the teacher, whocoldly rebuffs his friendly overtures; and then, even more eerily,in the reception he gets that evening at the house of the tannerLasemann.14 Nonplused by his inability to reach the castle and exhausted from his futile march through the snow, K. has appeared atLasemann's door requesting to be let in to rest. An old man admitshim to the house's dim interior:

"Wer seid Ihr?" rief eine herrische Stimme und wohl zu dem Altengewendet: "Warum hast du ihn hereingelassen? Kann man alles hereinlassen, was auf den Gassen herumschleicht?"?"Ich bin der gr?fliche

Landvermesser", sagte K. und suchte sich so vor den noch immer Unsichtbaren zu verantworten. "Ach, es ist der Landvermesser", sagte eine

weibliche Stimme, und nun folgte eine vollkommene Stille. "Ihr kenntmich?" fragte K. "Gewi?", sagte noch kurz die gleiche Stimme. Da? manK. kannte, schien ihn nicht zu empfehlen, (p. 14)Later, as the unwelcome guest prepares to leave, Lasemann tells himonly half apologetically: '"Ihr wundert Euch wahrscheinlich ?ber diegeringe Gastfreundlichkeit . . . aber Gastfreundlichkeit ist bei uns

13Politzer, p. 221.14This apparently unmotivated hostility toward a stranger is the single most strikingfeature of the short fragment "Verlockung im Dorf," which appeared as an entry inKafka's diary in 1914. Parallels to Das Schlo? are obvious, and according to Brod, thisfragment was an early study for the novel. Cf. Franz Kafka, Tageb?cher 1910?1923,ed. Max Brod (1948; rpt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974),pp. 243 ff.


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394 Campbellnicht Sitte, wir brauchen keine G?ste'" (p. 15). But such "explanations," where they are offered, never rise above this level of discourse?categorical but vague.The hostility of the villagers toward K. makes the more incongruoustheir apparent obliviousness to precisely those inconsistencies in hisspeech and actions that would give them greatest reason to mistrusthim. On the one hand, most of those he encounters disapprove of K.and seem inclined to discredit him; on the other hand, his prevarications suggest that he deserves to be discredited. Yet the general opposition to K. stands in no obvious causal relationship to what is immediately suspicious about his behavior: his conflicting statements.The result is a series of strange dislocations in the nexus of the narrative. It is almost as if, for all their animosity toward K., these peoplewere secretly conspiring with him to avoid exposing?to the readeror the authorities?the most telling evidence against him. True, heperiodically enters into disagreements with characters intent on denouncing him, notably with the Br?ckenhof proprietress Gardena,who faults him for his brazen disrespect of Klamm, his ignorance oflocal customs, and his presumption generally.15 He disagrees evenwith Frieda, who reveals that she has seen Gardena's worst warningsabout K. confirmed after she has watched him skillfully extract from aguileless pupil (Hans Brunswick) information he needs for his ongoing fight with the castle. But these denunciations are generallylengthy and diffuse and not constructed around specifics, so that K.never has any problems refuting them while he maintains the appearance of being the injured party. The relatively insignificant Herrenhof proprietress, a vain and flirtatious woman, is the only character who comes really close to challenging K.'s fundamental claims.'"Du sagst nicht die Wahrheit,'" she says rather indifferently, afterhearing his explanations of the land surveyor's art (p. 261), but it isonly an offhanded comment, offered without justification, and it fazesK. not at all.

This generally perplexing silence of the other characters regardingthe legitimacy of K.'s basic claims is surely a major reason why theinconsistencies in his story went so long unnoticed by readers. Kafka,after all, preserves the opacity of K.'s motives by so constructing theplot that the logical consequences of K.'s prevarications?his exposureas a fraud and expulsion from the village?are not forthcoming. Yet

15As Walter Sokel notes in Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie, p. 621. Erich Heller firstpointed to the wordplay in K.'s professed occupation; cf. his "The World of Franz Kafka,"in his The Disinherited Mind: Essays inModern German Literature and Thought, exp. ed.(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), p. 216.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 395at the same time as the disapproval of the villagers is deflected fromthe key issues, it finds its ostensible justification in those apparentlyirrational prejudices which so alienate a reader upon a first reading;prejudices like that conveyed inLasemann's terse phrase, "Gastfreundlichkeit ist bei uns nicht Sitte."

This displacement of conventional cause-and-effect patterning inK.'s interaction with the villagers is not, however, the only factor thatserves to de-emphasize his inconsistent behavior in the overall schemeof the novel. Another relevant factor is the unusual narrative perspective that Kafka employs, a perspective that also preserves the opacity ofK.'s innermost motivations. This phenomenon has met with considerably more critical attention than has the problematic plot of DasSchlo?. Before we examine more closely what accounts for the permutations of the latter, itwill be helpful to consider it as well.In 1952, Friedrich Bei?ner elaborated the principle of perspectivalEinsinnigkeit in Kafkan narrative which has, in the intervening thirty

three years, become one of the basic assumptions of Kafka scholarship. As Bei?ner observes,

Kafka erz?hlt . . . stets einsinnig, nicht nur in der Ich-Form, sondernauch in der dritten Person. Alles, was in dem Roman "Der Verschollene". . . erz?hlt wird, ist von Karl Ro?mann gesehen und empfunden; nichts

wird ohne ihn oder gegen ihn, nichts in seiner Abwesenheit erz?hlt, nurseine Gedanken, ganz ausschlie?lich Karls Gedanken und keines andern, wei? der Erz?hler mitzuteilen. Und ebenso ist es im "Proze?" undim "Schlo?."16

As others have observed, the effect of this technique is to combine"the expectation of authorial objectivity" associated with third-personnarration with the point of view of the first person, so "that the resultactually amounts to a first-person narrative told in the third person."17If K., then, is the pivotal character from whose perspective events areactually narrated in Das Schlo?, then the result of this technique is to

predispose us to accept K.'s view of things as authoritative. And precisely because it superficially has the appearance of third-person objectivity, this narrative perspective serves unobtrusively to endorse K.'sposition without calling attention to the fact that it does so. This in

16Friedrich Bei?ner, Der Erz?hler Franz Kafka: Ein Vortrag (1952; rpt. Stuttgart:W. Kohlhammer, 1961), p. 28. An interesting problem is that of the occasional breaks inthis perspective of Einsinnigkeit (although they do not directly affect my analysis). Cf.,e.g., Lothar Fietz's treatment of the passage in which B?rgel talks at great length to thesleeping K., in "M?glichkeiten und Grenzen einer Deutung von Kafkas Schlo?-Roman,"DVLG, 37 No. 1 (1963), 76.17Theodore Ziolkowski, Dimensions of theModern Novel: German Texts and EuropeanContexts (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 47.


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396 Campbellturn inclines us as readers (at least upon a first reading) to let ourattention be drawn to the strange and inimical behavior of the villagers who confront K., while at the same time we accept uncriticallyhis own conflicting claims. Not only do the missing consequences ofK.'s prevarications keep us from noticing them on the level of plot,then, but so does the narrative perspective itself. In this way, the perspective reinforces the action.We have only to contrast the inscrutability of K.'s motives in DasSchlo? with, say, the pathetic equivocations of the frightened animalin Der Bau?equivocations laid painfully bare by the first-person,stream-of-consciousness narration there?to appreciate what subtleadvantage accrues to K. through this third-person technique of Einsinnigkeit. In this connection, it is useful to recall that Kafka had originally begun his manuscript of the novel in the first person, beforereplacing the ?cA-narrator with the cipher K. near the beginning ofthe third chapter, and subsequently revising the pronoun in the earlier chapters. In her suggestive analysis of this "radical mutation,"Dorrit Cohn points out that the frequent conjectural and subjunctiveconstructions which heighten the ambiguity of K.'s action in the finalversion (e.g., "'Und man mu? die Erlaubnis zum ?bernachten haben?'fragte K., als wolle er sich davon ?berzeugen, ob er die fr?heren

Mitteilungen nicht vielleicht getr?umt h?tte") had sounded stilted andillogical in the original, given its first-person point of view (cf. '"Undman mu? die Erlaubnis zum ?bernachten haben?' fragte ich, als wolleich mich davon ?berzeugen, ob ich die fr?heren Mitteilungen nichtvielleicht getr?umt h?tte"). As Cohn observes,

The change of meaning in conjectural phrases alerts us to the fact,that the ich of the "Urschlo?" was conceived as a more negative figurethan the K. of the final version. This impression is reinforced by a fewsentences crossed out during the writing of the opening scene, which indicate that Kafka had to repeatedly check an impulse to make hisprotagonist into an aggressive schemer. The K. revision, without introducing lexical changes, then further reduced his latent villainy.18

This change in person which plays down the obviousness of the original ich's "villainy," then, is consistent with a plot qua causal nexusdislocated so as to de-emphasize this same feature (K.'s claims go conspicuously unchallenged). Had Kafka maintained the original ichnarrator throughout and written his novel exactly the same in all

other respects, the reader's continual awareness of this ich's selfconscious deviousness (conveyed by such constructions as "als wolle

18Dorrit Cohn, "K. Enters the Castle: On the Change of Person in Kafka's Manuscript," Euphorion, 62 No. 1 (1968), 28?45; esp. p. 37.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 397ich mich davon ?berzeugen . . .")would conflict noticeably with thefictional characters' failure to remark on it. Thus the final versionachieves a truer integration of perspective and action than the novelcould possibly have had if narrated in the first person. Yet howeversubtly veiled by the third-person narration, K.'s prevarications arestill undeniably there in the final text, evident to any careful reader.

And, as K. observes himself after reviewing the contents of a letterhe has received from Klamm early in the novel: "Das waren zweifellos Widerspr?che, sie waren so sichtbar, da? sie beabsichtigt seinmu?ten" (p. 24).We have seen now how the unique perspective of Das Schlo?, together with the strangely inconsequential character of K.'s mendacious behavior vis-?-vis the villagers, long worked to shield K. fromcritical readers. But what are the implications of this sort of idiosyncratic patterning of the action for the question of plot? Can theunderlying contradictions of K.'s story be reconciled to the failure ofthe antagonistic villagers to expose them? I believe they can. In attempting to show how, I shall have recourse to portions of Kafka'saphoristic writings that have on occasion been applied by other criticsto various of Kafka's narratives.

11

As a point of departure?and, to some extent, of contrast with existing criticism?one may take two aphorisms, one from the collectionentitled (by Brod) "Betrachtungen ?ber S?nde, Leid, Hoffnung undden wahren Weg" and the other from the collection "Er," which havebeen elaborated to clarify the notion of motivation as it applies toKafka's fictions:

Seit dem S?ndenfall sind wir in der F?higkeit zur Erkenntnis des Gutenund B?sen im Wesentlichen gleich; trotzdem suchen wir gerade hier unsere besonderen Vorz?ge. Aber erst jenseits dieser Erkenntnis beginnendie wahren Verschiedenheiten. Der gegenteilige Schein wird durchfolgendes hervorgerufen: Niemand kann sich mit der Erkenntnis alleinbegn?gen, sondern mu? sich bestreben, ihr gem?? zu handeln. Dazuaber ist ihm die Kraft nicht mitgegeben, er mu? daher sich zerst?ren,selbst auf die Gefahr hin, sogar dadurch die notwendige Kraft nicht zuerhalten, aber es bleibt ihm nichts anderes als dieser letzte Versuch. (Dasist auch der Sinn der Todesdrohung beim Verbot des Essens vom Baumeder Erkenntnis: vielleicht ist das auch der urspr?ngliche Sinn des nat?rlichen Todes.) Vor diesem Versuch nun f?rchtet er sich; lieber will er dieErkenntnis des Guten und B?sen r?ckg?ngig machen (die Bezeichnung"S?ndenfall" geht auf diese Angst zur?ck): aber das Geschehene kann nichtr?ckg?ngig gemacht, sondern nur getr?bt werden. Zu diesem Zweck entstehen die


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398 CampbellMotivationen. Die ganze Welt ist ihrer voll, ja die ganze sichtbare Welt istvielleicht nichts anderes als eine Motivation des einen Augenblick lang ruhenwollenden Menschen. Ein Versuch, die Tatsache der Erkenntnis zu f?lschen, dieErkenntnis erst zum Ziel zu machen.19Die Erbs?nde, das alte Unrecht, das der Mensch begangen hat, bestehtin dem Vorwurf, den der Mensch macht und von dem er nicht abl??t,da? ihm ein Unrecht geschehen ist, da? an ihm die Erbs?nde begangenwurde.20Given the thematics of guilt and freedom with which these aphorisms are concerned, it is not surprising that they have been broughtto bear especially in discussions of Der Proze?.21 In his analysis of that

novel, for example, Theodore Ziolkowski relates Josef K.'s refusal toadmit his own guilt to the human process of "motivating," the genesisof which Kafka mythologizes in the first aphorism above. Since no oneis innocent of wrongdoing, freedom can be attained only by the individual's assumption of full responsibility for his own "sins." But ratherthan acknowledge the fact of his guilt, Josef K.?consistent with thefirst aphorism?attempts "to project [his] own guilt onto the worldoutside and thus to deny it"; consistent with the second aphorism,Josef K.'s "sin . . resides in the very fact that he insists an injustice hasbeen done unto him."22 If, in the case of Der Proze?, we have to acceptthe ominous and unconventional Instanz that occupies Josef K.'s apartment and places him under arrest as a.fait accompli, the product of his"motivating," from the first page of the novel, itmust be concededthat we are offered few insights into the process of motivation itself.The substance of the first aphorism, in particular, is not so much enacted by Der Proze?, as presupposed by it.The situation is different in Das Schlo?. By concentrating on theproblematic plot of the latter work, we can detect a particularly sophisticated integration of the substance of Kafka's aphorisms into thestructure of the novel itself. That this integration is effected in a novelless "garish" than several of Kafka's earlier works makes itboth subtlerand more latently disturbing.

19Franz Kafka, "Betrachtungen ?ber S?nde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahrenWeg," in Er: Prosa von Franz Kafka, ed. Martin Walser (1936; rpt. Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1968), pp. 204?05; emphasis mine.20Martin Walser (ed.), Er: Prosa von Franz Kafka, p. 214.21These two aphorisms are specifically discussed by Ziolkowski. See also IngeborgHenel, "Die T?rh?terlegende und ihre Bedeutung f?r Kafka's 'Proze?,'" DVLG, 37(1963), 50?70. Wilhelm Emrich applies the first aphorism to Kafka's Der Bau in Franz

Kafka (Bonn: Athen?um, 1958), pp. 181 -83. For a more generally oriented discussion, see Werner Hoffmann, Kafkas Aphorismen (Berne and Munich: Francke, 1975),pp. 47 ff.22Ziolkowski, p. 45.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 399Let us return for the moment to the text of the aphorism describingthe genesis of "Motivationen." While the term is usually rendered in

English as "motivations," this is a somewhat inadequate translationsince "to motivate" ("provide with a motive; impel; incite") does notnecessarily convey the sense of deliberate falsification involved in

making "die Erkenntnis erst zum Ziel." To say that one "rationalizes"one's behavior?that one "attributes (one's actions) to rational andcreditable motives without adequate analysis of the true . . . motives"?comes closer to the sense of the process Kafka describes. Thata "rationalization," like the related term, "pretext" ("excuse, pretense,cover"),23 be self-serving is, of course, critical, or else it is useless. Thecommon feature of all these terms, English and German, is that theyare inventions designed to divert someone from the truth (including,in theory, oneself)?in Kafka's scheme, from the excessively hardtruth of "Erkenntnis." They are all essentially diversionary tactics.In a passage omitted from the final version of Das Schlo??it is thetext of a Protokoll prepared about K. by the village secretary Momus,which would have been strikingly incompatible with the Einsinnigkeitof the remaining text?we read the following:

Des Landvermessers K. Schuld zu beweisen, ist nicht leicht. Man kannn?mlich auf seine Schliche nur kommen, wenn man sich, so peinlich esauch ist, ganz in seinen Gedankengang hineinzwingt. Hierbei mu? mansich nicht beirren lassen, wenn man auf diesem Weg zu einer von au?enher unglaublichen Schlechtigkeit gelangt, im Gegenteil, wenn man soweit gekommen ist, dann ist man gewi? nicht irregegangen, dann erst istman am richtigen Ort.... Hat man dann die haarstr?ubende Wahrheitgefunden, mu? man sich freilich auch noch gew?hnen, sie zu glauben,aber es bleibt nichts anderes ?brig, (p. 304)

This passage, which unambiguously attributes to K. the basest of motives (in the part omitted, Momus depicts K.'s courtship of Frieda asheartless opportunism), is accordingly absent from the final text. Yet,in the problematic inconsistencies we have seen, there is ample evidence to support Momus's view of things. In them we see the telltaletraces of K.'s "Motivationen," the pretexts and rationalizations he fabricates in order to make his presence in the village acceptable to itsinhabitants. That K. has never been summoned he well knows. But in

order to remain in the village, he must present a version of anteriorevents more suasive than the village's version of its own history, whichdoes not include him. For, as the Gemeindevorsteher notes, acknowledging K.'s claims without endorsing them: '"Sie sind als Landvermesser

23All definitions are from Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage.


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4oo Campbellaufgenommen, wie Sie sagen; aber leider, wir brauchen keinen Landvermesser'" (p. 52).In effect, then, K. posits a false causality with which to divert hisvillage interlocutors from the inauspiciousness of his own situation.The diversionary function of his initial claims becomes clearer whenwe reconsider those junctures of the text inwhich they occur. K.'s first

mention of his status as surveyor comes, we have seen, toward thebeginning of the first chapter. After first having professed ignoranceof the castle, K. is ordered to leave the village by Schwarzer, who hasbecome incensed by his all too casual behavior: "Nun geriet aber derjunge Mann au?er sich. 'Landstreichermanieren!' rief er. 'Ich verlange Respekt vor der gr?flichen Beh?rde! Ich habe Sie deshalb

geweckt, um Ihnen mitzuteilen, da? Sie sofort das gr?fliche Gebietverlassen m?ssen'" (p. 8). It is only now, with the threat of forcibleeviction imminent, that K. resorts to "official" justification of his presence. Despite the on-again-off-again confirmation from the castleswitchboard that follows, the villagers' suspicions of K. are not, ofcourse, allayed. He embellishes upon his story accordingly. The following day, as he is briefly conversing with the Br?ckenhof proprietor, he takes the opportunity tomention his family back home. Todo so is eminently expedient on his part: "Das Wohlwollen f?r seineSache, um das es K. geht, wird sich selbstverst?ndlich vertiefen, wenner als Ehemann und Familienvater erscheint, dessen in weiter Fernedaheim gelassene Familie durch einen 'Vertragsbruch' des SchlossesNot leiden m??te."24 But the conversation with the innkeeper is,from K.'s point of view, strained and uncomfortable; the man is atonce intimidated by K. and mistrustful of him: "Leicht war das Vertrauen dieses Mannes nicht zu gewinnen" (p. 11). Consequently, K.embellishes upon his story, attempts to divert the innkeeper yet alittle more:

Der Wirt sa? K. gegen?ber am Rand der Fensterbank, bequemer wagteer sich nicht zu setzen, und sah K. die ganze Zeit ?ber mit gro?en,braunen, ?ngstlichen Augen an. Zuerst hatte er sich an K. herangedr?ngt,und nun schien es, als wolle er am liebsten weglaufen. F?rchtete er, ?berden Grafen ausgefragt zu werden? F?rchtete er die Unzuverl?ssigkeitdes "Herrn", f?r den er K. hielt? K. mu?te ihn ablenken. Er blickte auf dieUhr und sagte: "Nun werden bald meine Gehilfen kommen, wirst du siehier unterbringen k?nnen?" (p. 10; emphasis mine)

That K. later contradicts these earlier claims by adopting Artur andJeremias as his assistants and holding forth for Frieda's hand is only in

24Walter H. Sokel, "Kafka und Sartres Existenzphilosophie," Arcadia, 5 No. 3 (1970),270-71.


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Kafka's Schlo? and the Subversion ofPlot 401keeping with his self-interests, which dictate that he must fortify himself vis-?-vis the castle at every available opportunity. What is important here, to repeat this point, is that these contradictions all give K.'sefforts the lie, exposing them for the "Motivationen," the self-serving

maneuvers, that they are.How, then, do we account for the inconsequentiality introducedinto the narrative by the village people's failure to remark on these

very inconsistencies? Explaining the genesis of "Motivationen" in hisaphorism, Kafka writes, "Die ganze Welt ist ihrer voll, ja die ganzesichtbare Welt ist vielleicht nichts anderes als eine Motivation deseinen Augenblick lang ruhenwollenden Menschen." To the extentthat the village world is also a part of the sustaining fiction by which K.seeks to hold the truth at bay?the "visible" part?it too collaboratesin the continuing process of K.'s "motivating." (It is striking that K.'soverwhelming tiredness, which is emphasized repeatedly and mostmemorably depicted in his interview with B?rgel, is also very much inkeeping with the aphorism.) In the long run, K. cannot falsify hissituation. He cannot remove the truth permanently, he can only generate stratagems to displace it temporarily. Accordingly, the hostilitiesof the villagers are also displaced; not far, but far enough to leave K.'smain contentions unchallenged. The result is that their animosity isexpended on trivial issues which often seem alienatingly irrelevant tothe matters at hand. Thus the teacher reproaches K. for casually mentioning the count in a passing conversation (p. 13); or Lasemann ejectshim from his hut with the explanation that guests are unwelcome(p. 15); or the Herrenhof proprietress hysterically harangues him foran unremarkable comment that he had made about her dress the previous day (pp. 260 f.). The apparent arbitrariness of this antagonisticbehavior allows K. to appear as the wronged hero at every turn, whichthen reinforces the self-serving rationale of his "Motivationen." As inDer Proze?, this appearance of arbitrariness in an inimical world isconsistent with Kafka's aphorism about original sin, cited above: "DieErbs?nde . . . besteht in dem Vorwurf, den der Mensch macht undvon dem er nicht abl??t, da? ihm ein Unrecht geschehen ist."More abstractly, we may account for the problematic plot of DasSchlo? in the following way. In his discussion of literary verisimilitudein Structuralist Poetics, Jonathan Culler distinguishes between five levels of "vraisemblance," beginning with the most general level, the"real" or the "text of the natural attitude," and extending his list tofour other, increasingly restricted and metaliterary categories (cultural vraisemblance, generic vraisemblance, etc.). Of the most basic level,the "text of the natural attitude," Culler writes,


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402 CampbellThis is best defined as a discourse which requires no justification becauseit seems to derive directly from the structure of the world. We speak ofpeople as having minds and bodies, as thinking, imagining, remembering, feeling pain, loving and hating, etc., and do not have to justify suchdiscourse by adducing philosophical arguments.25

Fictional characters and events, then, may be vraisemblable, mimeticallyrepresented or not, with reference to this "text of the natural attitude,whose items are justified by the simple observation, 'but X s are likethat.'"26 One might say that Aristotelian specifications about plot,predicated as they are on the most general of human "universals,"correspond quite closely to the level of discourse Culler is describinghere. Now, any reader of Kafka's fictions will recognize that their distinctiveness lies precisely in their deformation of this "text of the natural attitude." Recognizable elements of the everyday world are stillevident, to be sure, but the 5^/f-evidence has gone out of their relationships. In Culler's terms, there are "Xs" here aplenty (villages, innkeepers, travelers); it is simply that they are not always "like that." InDas Schlo?, the incongruities arise because the "text of the natural attitude" is continually being infiltrated and subverted by "pretext," i.e.,by that process of Motivieren that Kafka describes in his paradigmaticmyth. K.'s personal history before his entry into the village is a virtualblank. But in the absence of his individual fictional past, Kafka's aphorism, set at the common beginnings of human consciousness, canserve as a useful construct for defining and anticipating K.'s interaction with the village world. (It is in this sense literally a "pre-text.")More than Der Proze?, which posits Josef K.'s unconventional arrestas a given from the first page, Das Schlo? exposes K.'s continuingdifficulties with village authorities as his Mota^ren-in-progress. Hisstruggle with the authorities is a continual give-and-take of text andpretext, a fact accounting for the frequently improvisational character of the action. This perpetual interaction, then, generates the nonsequiturs?unremarked for some twenty years?which resonate soquietly but persistently in the plot of Das Schlo?. A conventional modelof plot, after all, operates on the assumption that there are "naturalattitude" causalities upon which we can all agree, using them as anexpedient principle of organization with which to structure our fictions. Kafka's principle of "Motivationen" works on the assumptionthat there is a proliferation of devious, private causalities that humanswill invent to avoid coming to the obvious conclusions. Constructing

25Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), p. 140.26Culler, p. 141.


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Kafka's Schlo? and theSubversion ofPlot 403the novel along more apparently conventional lines than some of hisearlier works, Kafka subtly incorporates into the fabric of Das Schlo?the machinations and falsifications by which fictional characters, andreal ones, live, thereby rendering the plot problematical.

Fairly radical challenges to the hegemony, and adequacy, of Aristotelian thinking on questions of narrative structure were not, of course,

unprecedented by Kafka's time. In the German context they were already implicit, for instance, over a century before in the Romantics'call for a "progressive Universalpoesie" which would recognize "die

Willk?r des Dichters" as its only law, and in the sorts of compositionalliberties taken by Novalis in his Heinrich von Ofterdingen (especially"Klingsohrs M?rchen") or by Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre.Since Kafka's time, such theoretical challenges to the viability of plothave become almost commonplace: in a wider European arena, onethinks first perhaps of Sartre and Robbe-Grillet, among others. For allthat, the questions posed for poetics by Kafka's Schlo? are perhaps themore unsettling for being raised covertly, in the literary praxis?in an"inside job," so to speak. As a problematic conflation of text and pretext, Das Schlo? seems to ask whether straightforward plots or devious"Motivationen" are the more insidious fictions?the latter becausethey sustain us with complicated falsifications, or the former becausethey sustain us with simple ones.

Kafka's ''Schloß'' and the Subversion of Plot

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