Or gender. It's really brilliant that you're here.
Um, it's really important to me that we're also talking about Czech, uh, and Kafka and Prague Kafka and the Czech reception of him.
Um, and I know that you've brought a couple of books. Uh, you have a couple of books in mind which, uh, respond to Kafka, talk back to Kafka in a way.
Could you tell us a little bit about. Yeah, sure. Yes. I brought, uh, to, uh, different, uh, examples.
Um, the first one, um, is a lecture, actually, um, given in 1992 by the former dissident philosopher Karel Kazik,
um, which in Czech is called still Achi Marchetti,
some of a um and uh, so at the century of Greta Samsa and both of my texts are actually about greater rather than Gregor,
which is kind of interesting. Um, and, uh, I can tell you about Kostic, first of all, perhaps, and then to the second one.
Um, so, um, he, uh, takes what I think is probably the conventional, uh, understanding of Grutter, which, um,
I think was best expressed by Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian emigre writer who calls Gretta the villain of the piece in metamorphosis.
Um, and this interpretation is, is, of course, based on Grace's speech at the end of the story, uh, when she demands that, uh,
Gregor or the creature that Gregor has become is removed from the house, um, and, uh, she explicitly doesn't recognise this creature as her brother.
Um, it has to go. It has to go. And it's, um.
And it's it's causing hardship and disruption.
And if it were Gregor, of course, he would understand that he was causing this trouble.
But it's not Gregor.
And so he doesn't, um, and, you know, when we read the story, I think we're very moved by the accounts of Gregor's death, which Kafka gives us.
And then this very matter of fact disposal of the corpse.
Um, and, uh, the narrator tells us at the end that this is going to allow the family to rejoin polite society.
Um, and Gretel will be able to make a good marriage and pursue a career.
So, um, the bulk of who reads the story is a story about an artist.
Um, he he reads Gretta is the representative of the Philistines in society who, uh, don't appreciate the tortured artist that Gregor represents.
And in fact, they want their removal because they make life harder to live.
Because they they make they talk about difficult things.
Um, and he takes this interpretation really beyond the artistic context, a more general sort of social context.
And he argues that that is the main character in metamorphosis, um, which is not new.
I don't think, uh, in that, uh, various critics have talked about the sort of blossoming of Gretta as Gregor declines,
um, and they trace her transformation from child into woman in the story through caring for Gregor.
Um, but, um, he argues that the key transformation is precisely the ceasing to regards the creature as her brother and her dehumanising of him and,
um, sacrificing empathy to secure peace and quiet.
This is the thing that he he focuses on this idea of peace and quiet.
And I can quote from him if you like, um, go to Samsa personifies that unshakeable calm of the modern age that nothing can knock off course,
and thus marches to its goal over corpses.
That's written in the early 90s.
Yeah, and it sounds like there's a political agenda, or at least, uh, a kind of reflection on that particular historical moment in what he's saying.
Would that be fair? Oh, absolutely.
And I think that, you know, it's a very common response of intellectuals at this time, in fact, and through the um,
mid 20th century, in post-war periods where we've had, of course, uh, successive authoritarian, um, uh,
governments in, for example, Czechoslovakia, um, and um,
intellectuals were very frustrated at people's willingness to accept oppression and to
kind of look for ways to have peace and quiet rather than to resist and to protest.
Um, and so I think we see cuts are very much in that light, uh, that she is one of these people who just wants a quiet life,
wants to be allowed to, to, to sort of pursue her career, pursue her love life and so on.
Um, he says that people are so imprisoned in banality,
the everyday mediocrity and pettiness that they consider normal and customary that they have no power,
will or desire to free themselves from these degrading conditions.
And this is the sort of standard critique, even of a Marxist intellectual like cacique, of people's refusal to resist.
Um, these authors authoritarian governments, communist governments, in the case of Czechoslovakia.
So how does he read the end of the story? Is Gretta freed from the imprisonment of the family,
or is she on her way to new imprisonment in a new in a new form of subservience to the, uh, I think he accepts at face value.
What? Um, the. Narrator tells us at the end that indeed, these things will come to pass.
Um. Uh, that that's greater will be liberated, I think.
Not necessarily from the family, but the.
Well, I think the implication is that the whole family will be liberated from the tyranny that has been visited on them by this creature,
and they will be able to go back to polite society and get back to, you know, living what you know, that's a conventional bourgeois life.
Um, so, um, this is interesting. I mean, if I go to the second story because, um, it the the other example that I have,
um, is very much not accepting what the narrator tells us at the end of the story.
Um, so my my second example is, um, uh, quite recent, actually, by a Czech writer called Milana Savitsky.
Uh, and, uh, from this, this, uh, cycle called, uh, on, um, um, which means, uh, she and in this, uh, cycle of short stories, love, it's, uh, uh,
tells us at the beginning that she is interested in taking minor characters from minor female characters,
from texts written by men and exploring them. Um, and this is a relatively new thing, I think, at least in the Czech context.
I think you're familiar with it from, uh, perhaps, uh, you know, Anglophone and French contexts.
Um, and I think from what we've already discussed, you know, greater is not, um, a minor or a dispensable character really, in metamorphosis,
but she is a character that, um, readers and critics tend not to have paid as much attention to is, uh, to Gregor himself.
Um, and, um, uh, I think that, uh, perhaps I ought to tell you what the story is about.
First of all, it's not. It's in translation in English, but very nice. Uh, if it is translated sometime.
Um, so the story takes place in 1929, um, 14 years after the events of metamorphosis um, which was published in German in 1915.
Um, and, uh, none of what is predicted in the final paragraph is actually come to pass.
Um, the family didn't recover from the episode of The Creature.
Gretta is living alone in the same apartment, which was never sold, and she has.
Witold been caring for her parents through long illnesses, uh, for which they've now died.
And, I mean, if we do the sort of maths.
Um, she's only in her 30s, but she comes across really as a as, um, you know, a much older woman, and she's struggling with her memory.
She struggles with interactions with other people. Um, I think we would say she's traumatised.
Probably. Um, um, and in the story, she has opened, uh, Gregor's room, which had been sealed, uh, since his death by the family.
Um, and she found a text that he'd been writing, and, uh, she takes the text to the editor of a popular magazine who,
uh, comes to the apartment to interview her, but she's not able to answer his questions.
Um, and the editor then also takes photographs of the room where, uh, Gregor had Gregor's bedroom, basically.
Um, and after he leaves, um, gets a reproaches.
Gregor. And I'll quote from the story she says for you, it is all over and you're even going to be famous.
But what about me? I'm just stuck here. And she recalls an incident from when they were little.
Um, they were playing a game of forfeits. Um, and they each had to remove an item of clothing if they lost around.
And at a certain point, she senses that he wants to kiss them, and then he kisses her on the neck.
Um, and then the father interrupts this, and he beats her, and Gregor does nothing to defend her or protect her,
so that this sort of incest motif and the kind of troubled relationship with the father are both in the Kafka.
Yes, yes. Is this a sort of psychoanalytic or an Oedipal drama that's playing out in in this text?
I yeah, I think that, um, in terms of the, the incest story, um, I think that, um,
and again, I'm not sure if this is completely new, but it's sort of developed here.
The idea that actually, possibly Grutter performed this metamorphosis that in discovering Gregor's desire for her, but also implicitly,
I think, her desire for Gregor, she she turns that feeling, if you like, as you say, in a kind of psychoanalytic way, into the creature.
And then finally wanted this, wanted rid of this creature.
Um, and, uh, you know, she she is she's kind of bereft in various ways.
She's bereft of the man that she loved. Therefore, um, and this is how we see her, you know, in this story, um, and, um, I think another, um,
interesting aspect of this is actually this business around the finding of the text because,
um, I think anyone who who knows a bit about Kafka will know this.
Of course, when he died, he made his, uh, very good friend Max Broad's the executor of his estate.
Uh, and he told him to burn everything, and Broad's didn't do it.
And he, of course, gave us, uh, so much more material by Kafka than had been published at the time.
Um, and so I think in the story's love, it's got turns greater in some plots.
And so we can sort of see that the that's a Gregor relationship is actually the broad Kafka relationship for.
Love, it's God. And I think actually there's also a sexual dimension to that because people have discussed,
you know, whether there was a kind of unrequited love between Brod and Kafka from which side.
It also, of course, creates a hierarchical relationship.
And that's your Brod is forever in the shadow of Kafka, just as glass is always forever in the shadow of her brother.
Um, so so so this guys playing with quite a lot of these kind of themes is really there,
as you say, in the text itself or relates closely to the text.
Um, so is it a feminist text?
I mean, is it about, um, so is it about kind of, uh, shifting the focus to greater,
um, or do you think it kind of given that greater remains stuck and in the shadow?
And is it easy to is it in a sense, about the failure of that kind of development for women?
Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really interesting question because if you, um, if you do look back,
I mean, Nina Pelikan stress in 1989 presented this sort of feminist reading of the story.
Um, but, um, she at least initially sees this actually as a story of we talked about Gregor's decline and the blossoming of Gretta becomes,
um, kind of, um, Gregor's incapacitation becoming the emancipation of guts.
Um, and so it's quite a sort of positive feminist reading of what happens to go through, um, uh, Gregor's,
um, suffering, whereas it's doesn't give us that sort of, um, you know, positive idea of emancipation.
As you say, she's not in that space. She's stuck. She tells us that she's stuck.
So I think that the idea that she's a victim of trauma, I think is, is is kind of, um, you know, the more important, uh, uh, aspect of this.
And I think that, um, given the sort of time of writing so, you know, we're talking about 2018, um, I think I related this story.
When students talk about it, they tend to relate it to, um, you know,
the MeToo movement and to the discoveries we made in that period in the later 20 tens around, you know, the kind of,
um, the, the abuse that women experienced in all sorts of contexts that we have lots of court cases,
um, and, uh, you know, and again, lots of women talking about these experiences.
And so she seems to be, you know, a victim, a prisoner of male abuse from the father,
uh, but also of kind of male limitations that Gregor not defending her,
you know, is as bad in a way, as the abuser, which, again, came out of this sort of MeToo narrative.
Um, and so I think it is feminist, but I don't think it's necessarily that sort of joyous, you know, emancipatory feminism, it's more about, um, yeah.
I mean, what does emancipation actually look like?
Um, and it doesn't look like this that places the story in a kind of or the reception of the story in an international context.
But I suppose I'm interested. Do you think there's anything particularly Czech, if I can put it like that, about these two approaches to Kafka's text?
Um, I, I don't think in, in that kind of first order of things, there is, I think, possibly the opposite that I think in both cases there's a,
you know, quite a common use of Kafka by Czech intellectuals and writers to internationalise themselves that, you know, Kafka is their root house.
Um, uh, and that's quite an interesting thing to explore, actually.
Um, uh, but I think the other way around of that, which I think, uh, we also see in the Czech context, is, is a desire, um,
over the last certainly 50, 60 years, to kind of reclaim Kafka a little bit, at least for, um, Czech culture, which is, which is complicated.
Um, uh, I mean, I read, um, I think there was a survey a few years ago where I think 75% of Czech schoolchildren thought that Kafka wrote in Czech,
which is a quite an interesting sort of, uh, thing that's going on there.
Um, of course, writing German, um, uh, but living in Prague, um, and, uh, from a family that had had lived there for, uh, you know, decades and,
um, he, uh, but that he, I think is the only non writer who doesn't write in Czech who you will find in the Czech section of bookshops.
Um, we would, uh, you know, talking before that, uh, you know, his name is assumed, I think, by Czechs to refer to, uh,
Jack straw, and in that the family themselves are aware of Kafka and Jack, although I think it actually has a Hebrew origin.
Um, and it's interesting, actually, that classical Slavic scholar also names that his blackbird and nightingales.
So we've got lots of birds today.
Um, but I think that they, um, you know, they, they see him as, as a way of being seen, um, by sort of major and larger literatures,
by the international a, you know, a this is a place that is important for literature, for culture.
Um, so I think that we can see two things going on there, the kind of appropriation of Kafka to discuss.
Things that that Cacique and Stubbies Club would like to talk about.
Um, but also kind of getting a legitimacy for it through Kafka.
Um, one final question.
Um, I was intrigued that both, uh, the people you mentioned approach Kafka and perhaps sort of draw on Kafka for for the reasons you say,
but through female character, through character.
Um, so is it the is it still the century? Is it the new century of writer?
Do you think, I mean, or what's going on that they approach Kafka obliquely nowadays?
Um, I think again, I would need to think more about that because there's attempting, you know, of course,
the sort of idea of the Czech as the feminine to the German masculine, and that's all very tempting.
I don't know if that's being played out here. I think that what's I mean, Slavic skies responding as much to caustic, I think,
as she is to Kafka and I think to this kind of male appropriation of female characters, which is the theme of her whole collection.
Um, and, you know, um, really, you know, in Kostic, in Nabokov, we see this kind of, you know,
Adam and Eve story playing out again, that it's the woman who is bad and who leads the the man to disaster.
And, um, I think that, uh, uh, this guy is really trying to repudiate that idea, which I think we might feel has been long repudiated within sort of,
um, you know, successive waves of feminism in Western literature, but is really still quite a new thing in Czech literature.
And so I think that, you know, some of its purpose is really to to introduce the kind of literary feminism,
uh, that is still not, not sort of entirely well received, I think, in Czech context.
Thank you. Thank you very much.