Sophia, thank you so much for being here to talk about Kafka.
Um, and we've been thinking about Kafka in different national traditions and also different ways of reading Kafka,
but also about writers writing back to Kafka.
Um, this is literally the case in two written texts that you want to talk about today.
I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about them. Yeah.
So I think I'd like to start off with like a motif that actually comes from Kafka's text itself,
and that would be the very enigmatic, but also very famous text,
which are the judgement written in 1912, which basically centres on the story or the dispute between the father and the son,
um, and the failed passage of power between the two of them.
But actually it is mediated through thirds and other.
And that is the youth friend of the main protagonist who went to Saint Petersburg.
You know, we're, um, seeing Russia on the rise, so to speak.
And, um, so, so the, um, text actually starts with, um,
Georg Benjamin writing this letter that he's intending to send off to his friend to Saint Petersburg.
And this function of like, this absent, removed,
potentially imaginary friend is actually that through this geo um geo cultural also distance he presents a
focal point for like reversing perspectives on to own self perceptions conceptions of world interpretations.
And that is exactly what happens all like the showdown between the father and the son.
And what is then interesting is that this letter that, um, Gil Benjamin writes never really gets sent off.
It never reaches Petersburg.
But unlike this letter, Kafka's writings actually travelled eastwards and ended up with quite peculiar trajectories, uh, in post-Soviet and Soviet um.
Reception. Can you tell us a bit about that? Um, because obviously Kafka goes through phases in, in many different cultures.
Um, but there's a very particular problem, isn't there, behind the Iron Curtain?
Indeed it is. So actually, um, officially, his journey to Soviet Russia only started in 1964.
So that was during the Khrushchev um thaw period of like, relative relaxation in terms of, like, censorship and political repression.
And so he only really was translated into Russian and available to Soviet readers 40 years after, um, um, Kafka's death.
And um, then shortly after that, in 68 already, there was an interruption.
Again, the Prague Spring was happening. Kafka was deemed to be one of the intellectual fathers of the uprising.
So persona non grata again. And then the Kafka renaissance only really, um, takes off again with like 1988.
So with the collapse of, um, the Eastern Bloc. And I guess the main reasons that scholars and probably guess for why Kafka made it so late to like,
um, Soviet Russia, like the USSR as like a totalitarian regime.
Is that his images, the um, storylines, the themes and the atmospheres were a bit too close to the reality that people were experiencing.
Um, the next reason is that, um, his writings definitely don't add up to the, um, predominant aesthetic principle.
So no, um, socialist uplifting utopias that we find in Kafka's writings.
No utopias? Definitely not. And, um, yeah.
So so what one, um, philologist Maxim shook is commenting on is that, um,
we find in Kafka's text the sort of like ambivalence is these destabilised perspectives
which very much go against the grain of like a society that tries to keep,
um, a unified perspective in place. So in that sense, training quite the opposite attitudes, um, as it was present, um, under the totalitarian regime.
But what is quite interesting when we now look at this, this idea that, um,
Kafka's texts were quite compatible, quite resonant with the lived experiences of um, Soviet citizens and um,
critics, is that they also let and inspired quite a few of expressions that actually reference Kafka,
and I'll just give a few of them in translation, but they're quite graphic.
So there is, um, expressions like, um, with Cathcart in life, Kafka after Kafka or um, Kafka is visiting.
So one of the most interesting aphorisms, um, also most famous ones is from, um,
the Ukrainian born conceptual artist and, um, graphic graphic artist and um,
um, um, um, but um, and um, and it reads in translation, we were born to make Kafka come true, which is quite a stark statement.
So that's really fascinating. So on the one hand, the authorities and it was the same in East Germany.
We're very worried because Kafka seems, uh, formalist.
That was the word the Germans used. So they were worried about the style and worried about the lack of a clear socialist, uh, message.
But also then, perhaps because of this censorship.
Kafka. Subterranean life finds his way into the political realm as a kind of warning against oppression.
Am I reading it right? Mhm mhm. Yeah, definitely. It's this kind of um but I think it's, it's even taking a step further.
It's on the one hand kind of like seen as this profit who's kind of like creating this social but also
political metaphors that could have like showing the irony of the regime in which they would be read.
Um, on the other hand, there um, there is with these expressions, for example.
So the, the reception that kind of like appropriates but also identifies with Kafka's writing to some extent.
Um, there is this movement of saying Soviet reality and the absurdities of fit.
They transcend the literature, so they go beyond they they manifest.
So the metaphors actually become tangible in that context.
And I think that's quite a striking development, which is also not, um, only there for the Soviet 60s.
So those expressions travel and continue to be there well into the post-Soviet times.
And you would still find, um, other um, phrases like, um, Kafka's resting.
So the literature is kind of like falling behind, uh, reality or another quite visceral phrases, um, couscous, smoking nervously on the sidelines.
Wow, wow. Yeah.
And so we have this kind of paradoxical structure of literature is the reference point,
the authority that kind of like is a pretext to interpret reality,
but also reality goes further or like add something or basically also make something a bit more unambiguous in the sense and um,
that is the reason why then, um, some Russian philologists, um, so for example, Alexander Chekhov, um, were saying,
I quote, um, Kafka in the USSR and Russia always has been more than Kafka, but essentially remained unread.
So if the in the story.
Um, uh, that's a little a judgement. The letter is never sent.
Your argument is that actually the message, whatever that is.
Um, and we don't want to reduce it to a single message, but something about Kafka has made its way into,
uh, Russian culture, uh, from the 1940s of the 1960s, right up to the present day.
Mhm. Right. So there is a quite peculiar case where we can say Kafka is not just translated adapt it,
but there is also a certain way of like reflecting this process and therefore answering back,
kind of taking into account what is reception history in this travel of like the unsent letter.
And in that sense, Kafka's writings, um, would mean and provoke.
And I guess that leads to, um, um, the work of the philologist.
We've already talked about Maxime Schook, um, who has been, um, very recently publishing two books, um, which work well together, also interconnected.
One of them is a bit more academic. So it's called, um, um, the wrote to the Castle or a few lectures on Franz Kafka.
The other one is more literary and translates those letters to call.
And, um, so he classifies that as a so-called post novel, but, um, so in the epistolary,
um, genre tradition, but he's taking a new, um, media communication form.
So basically Facebook posts, um, which is amazing, those letters addressed to call and um, and, and I guess like the, the interesting bits here.
Um, we all really get that, um, within the story, the main character is actually philologists.
We see a parallel to Maxime Schook there, who is like working at a university, teaching literature, writing a book on Franz Kafka,
and then travelling Russia to kind of like, see the different, um, sad, absurd, funny moments of life and telling his distant friend Kong about that.
So that's the point. Which also brings us back to the maybe more political dimension of like how, um, scholars, critics.
So dealing on the one hand with the legacy of um, of Kafka, but also the kind of, um,
more politicised dimension of what does it mean to read, interpret and decipher their own reality.
So, so, Karl, in that sense, um, is not just Kafka, it's not just his character.
And and Schook would be inventing that and writing back in that sense.
But it's more he's he's writing about his writing with Kafka and with that he's kind of like also writing back and answering to Kafka and his legacy.
And, um, one can illustrate that quite well with, um, what the name call actually comes from.
So, um, Karl is, um, it's actually referring to a meme that went viral and in Russia from like 2015 onwards,
um, and stems from a post-apocalyptic series.
So walking with the dead, where a father is instructing his son Karl kind of like making statements.
And it was very soon taken up in the Russian internet, um, so far that even, um, for example,
people like Alexei Navalny and Leonid Volkov would use, um, the meme reference to kind of like announce a candidature, um,
and two 2015 and um, so Schook takes up this way of communicating with this, this communication infrastructure,
um, and in Russia at the time and tannen's this catchphrase of call into the friend that he's addressing.
And, um, but what he's doing then with his, with his book, what he's navigating there is he's travelling through Russia.
He's picking up on different moments, but it's, um, combined with the attitude of a philologist, the philologist who's reading Kafka on the one hand,
but who's also reflecting critically, reflecting on the Russian, um, history or like reception history of Kafka.
So there's one quite telling quote where he's saying, um, um, being a philologist is not a profession, but a diagnosis.
So, um, and that really chimes with Kafka, doesn't it?
It does. Yes. Of kind of being existentially on the line, as it were, in, in his writing.
Um, yes. Aren't we all? Yes, yes.
Interestingly, what he then does is kind of like with his letters to call reversing the communication situation that we had in those words.
So we had um, then daemon writing to his imaginary friend in Saint Petersburg, which is this, uh, moment of like addressing the imaginary other,
like the one who is removed, who could potentially provide a counter reflection, but it never happens in the case of abandonment.
So there is this moment of also mis misunderstanding, um, the friend or like the one, uh,
one is in correspondence with and forsook that would translate actually the other way around where the position of.
Tender man would rather be taken up by the um Soviet and post-Soviet reception of Kafka, which is misunderstanding Kafka's writings to some degree.
Like, um, not misunderstanding, but kind of like, um, taking away a certain kind of ambiguity that would,
um, also defines a certain literary quality about them by,
um, reducing them to being taken over, um, lift out, um, transcended, um, by the absurdities of the early life.
Uh, um, so question about that, because one of the very odd things about the story,
the judgement is, of course, um, we don't really know whether the friend exists.
And, you know, at one point the father says, ah, yes.
Well, first of all, Paul says, no, he doesn't exist. And then the father says, ah, yes, I've been in contact with him all the time.
Um, and so, I mean, I absolutely get what you're saying about it being a kind of screen or a mirror or something that's reflecting the relationship,
but then, in truth, correcting back, um, what's the father doing?
That's the father.
Is that is that the Soviet authorities or is that too dull a reading or what's the father if if we're reversing the sort of triangle?
Um, where's the father? Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a very good question.
Like, especially because it doesn't, like, directly translate onto those roles.
But we kind of see him maybe taking up and adapting those impulses and kind of like understanding,
um, what is new and different in the sort of like real historical reality that he is living in.
So, um, what would be the father's position?
I mean, um, the father is the one that, um,
kind of confronts the view and maybe the misinterpretation of the son by also saying, I've also been writing letters,
um, to the friend in Saint Petersburg and actually, um, you you haven't, like, understood correctly how you're relating to each other.
You have a, like self reflected properly and, um, but on the other hand,
it's also like the figure that kind of like hinders from the passage of power,
like whether we want to interpret that as a generational issue, as a political issue.
So, um, the question. Who the other one is who kind of, like, shatters the womb or creates the clash of perspectives.
It may be. Is it? Maybe it is like the idea that the the friends in um, in juke aren't just like limited to this one person, but for him,
as he said in an interview, it's maybe more representative or the general image of like all the friends who have left of Vladivostok.
So this, um, this question of like who, who is remaining but who is potentially answering back to him.
I think it's maybe this open ended ness that is not like limited to the book itself, especially because it was written as Facebook post.
It's kind of like still embedded or was taken out of this, um, social network or social media network.
Um, that's um, implies a different structures of communication and would activate maybe the reader much more.
That makes a lot of sense. And, and so communication is at the heart of Kafka isn't isn't it this idea of communication or failed communication?
Um, no. Absolutely. So, um, I mean, a question that I been worrying about and I'm afraid I have this text isn't translated.
Um, so I haven't been able to read it. Um, so I don't know how it ends.
Um, because, of course, the father also condemns this guy to death.
Uh, and he dies in things that will remind students who look at this of, uh, metamorphosis, of course, as well.
Um, so is there a kind of disastrous and fishhook as well, or.
It's not disastrous a memory and mirroring and and and that's and so it's,
I guess more ingrained in like, um, documenting those little findings about like, um, Russian reality.
But I think also what is, um, quite different where we shouldn't just see it maybe as like a repetition,
but like taking an impulse up but also transforming it.
Um, is that not only are there potentially more imaginary friends, which are you united in call?
Um, but also, um, there is there is maybe less this being, um,
this solipsistic world that our Georg Benjamin still has in Kafka's text, which is like very much, um,
just like thinking about himself or like taking the other one as a mirror to, like,
confirm what his successes in the business and his private relationships were.
And, um, the writing of Of Shook is much more open and kind of like, permeated by, like, events surrounding him.
So I think already there we have this transformation that was maybe inspired through Kafka,
but takes Kafka to some degree also in a different direction. Um, that, um, really tries to be perceptible and not close things off.
So recreate an open ended ness that's, um, poor Georg failed to actually have.
And then 100 years later, um, after this, uh, letter was sent to Saint Petersburg, the answer from Vladivostok is maybe a bit more open.
And that's a great place to finish.
Thank you very much. Thank you.