1 00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:08,930 Sophia, thank you so much for being here to talk about Kafka. 2 00:00:08,940 --> 00:00:15,570 Um, and we've been thinking about Kafka in different national traditions and also different ways of reading Kafka, 3 00:00:16,050 --> 00:00:19,830 but also about writers writing back to Kafka. 4 00:00:20,250 --> 00:00:27,130 Um, this is literally the case in two written texts that you want to talk about today. 5 00:00:27,150 --> 00:00:30,180 I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about them. Yeah. 6 00:00:30,190 --> 00:00:35,670 So I think I'd like to start off with like a motif that actually comes from Kafka's text itself, 7 00:00:36,090 --> 00:00:39,300 and that would be the very enigmatic, but also very famous text, 8 00:00:39,480 --> 00:00:46,230 which are the judgement written in 1912, which basically centres on the story or the dispute between the father and the son, 9 00:00:46,560 --> 00:00:50,100 um, and the failed passage of power between the two of them. 10 00:00:50,340 --> 00:00:54,149 But actually it is mediated through thirds and other. 11 00:00:54,150 --> 00:00:57,960 And that is the youth friend of the main protagonist who went to Saint Petersburg. 12 00:00:58,320 --> 00:01:02,070 You know, we're, um, seeing Russia on the rise, so to speak. 13 00:01:02,370 --> 00:01:06,629 And, um, so, so the, um, text actually starts with, um, 14 00:01:06,630 --> 00:01:11,280 Georg Benjamin writing this letter that he's intending to send off to his friend to Saint Petersburg. 15 00:01:11,550 --> 00:01:14,280 And this function of like, this absent, removed, 16 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:20,939 potentially imaginary friend is actually that through this geo um geo cultural also distance he presents a 17 00:01:20,940 --> 00:01:27,570 focal point for like reversing perspectives on to own self perceptions conceptions of world interpretations. 18 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:31,680 And that is exactly what happens all like the showdown between the father and the son. 19 00:01:32,220 --> 00:01:39,270 And what is then interesting is that this letter that, um, Gil Benjamin writes never really gets sent off. 20 00:01:39,270 --> 00:01:41,130 It never reaches Petersburg. 21 00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:51,530 But unlike this letter, Kafka's writings actually travelled eastwards and ended up with quite peculiar trajectories, uh, in post-Soviet and Soviet um. 22 00:01:51,540 --> 00:02:00,000 Reception. Can you tell us a bit about that? Um, because obviously Kafka goes through phases in, in many different cultures. 23 00:02:00,390 --> 00:02:03,840 Um, but there's a very particular problem, isn't there, behind the Iron Curtain? 24 00:02:04,410 --> 00:02:10,530 Indeed it is. So actually, um, officially, his journey to Soviet Russia only started in 1964. 25 00:02:11,070 --> 00:02:18,150 So that was during the Khrushchev um thaw period of like, relative relaxation in terms of, like, censorship and political repression. 26 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:26,220 And so he only really was translated into Russian and available to Soviet readers 40 years after, um, um, Kafka's death. 27 00:02:26,730 --> 00:02:31,379 And um, then shortly after that, in 68 already, there was an interruption. 28 00:02:31,380 --> 00:02:36,600 Again, the Prague Spring was happening. Kafka was deemed to be one of the intellectual fathers of the uprising. 29 00:02:36,720 --> 00:02:44,010 So persona non grata again. And then the Kafka renaissance only really, um, takes off again with like 1988. 30 00:02:44,010 --> 00:02:55,050 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, 31 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:58,590 um, Soviet Russia, like the USSR as like a totalitarian regime. 32 00:02:58,590 --> 00:03:07,320 Is that his images, the um, storylines, the themes and the atmospheres were a bit too close to the reality that people were experiencing. 33 00:03:07,740 --> 00:03:14,220 Um, the next reason is that, um, his writings definitely don't add up to the, um, predominant aesthetic principle. 34 00:03:14,230 --> 00:03:19,230 So no, um, socialist uplifting utopias that we find in Kafka's writings. 35 00:03:19,680 --> 00:03:24,239 No utopias? Definitely not. And, um, yeah. 36 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:29,370 So so what one, um, philologist Maxim shook is commenting on is that, um, 37 00:03:29,370 --> 00:03:35,220 we find in Kafka's text the sort of like ambivalence is these destabilised perspectives 38 00:03:35,430 --> 00:03:39,810 which very much go against the grain of like a society that tries to keep, 39 00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:49,350 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. 40 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:54,569 But what is quite interesting when we now look at this, this idea that, um, 41 00:03:54,570 --> 00:04:00,870 Kafka's texts were quite compatible, quite resonant with the lived experiences of um, Soviet citizens and um, 42 00:04:00,870 --> 00:04:07,800 critics, is that they also let and inspired quite a few of expressions that actually reference Kafka, 43 00:04:08,340 --> 00:04:11,399 and I'll just give a few of them in translation, but they're quite graphic. 44 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:20,190 So there is, um, expressions like, um, with Cathcart in life, Kafka after Kafka or um, Kafka is visiting. 45 00:04:20,460 --> 00:04:27,090 So one of the most interesting aphorisms, um, also most famous ones is from, um, 46 00:04:27,090 --> 00:04:32,460 the Ukrainian born conceptual artist and, um, graphic graphic artist and um, 47 00:04:32,700 --> 00:04:44,910 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. 48 00:04:45,510 --> 00:04:50,070 So that's really fascinating. So on the one hand, the authorities and it was the same in East Germany. 49 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:53,459 We're very worried because Kafka seems, uh, formalist. 50 00:04:53,460 --> 00:04:59,760 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. 51 00:04:59,970 --> 00:05:04,200 But also then, perhaps because of this censorship. 52 00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:12,400 Kafka. Subterranean life finds his way into the political realm as a kind of warning against oppression. 53 00:05:12,430 --> 00:05:19,209 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. 54 00:05:19,210 --> 00:05:24,190 It's on the one hand kind of like seen as this profit who's kind of like creating this social but also 55 00:05:24,190 --> 00:05:30,730 political metaphors that could have like showing the irony of the regime in which they would be read. 56 00:05:31,060 --> 00:05:35,830 Um, on the other hand, there um, there is with these expressions, for example. 57 00:05:35,830 --> 00:05:41,950 So the, the reception that kind of like appropriates but also identifies with Kafka's writing to some extent. 58 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:48,640 Um, there is this movement of saying Soviet reality and the absurdities of fit. 59 00:05:48,790 --> 00:05:53,499 They transcend the literature, so they go beyond they they manifest. 60 00:05:53,500 --> 00:05:57,010 So the metaphors actually become tangible in that context. 61 00:05:57,010 --> 00:06:03,489 And I think that's quite a striking development, which is also not, um, only there for the Soviet 60s. 62 00:06:03,490 --> 00:06:07,690 So those expressions travel and continue to be there well into the post-Soviet times. 63 00:06:07,690 --> 00:06:13,209 And you would still find, um, other um, phrases like, um, Kafka's resting. 64 00:06:13,210 --> 00:06:23,740 So the literature is kind of like falling behind, uh, reality or another quite visceral phrases, um, couscous, smoking nervously on the sidelines. 65 00:06:24,310 --> 00:06:27,340 Wow, wow. Yeah. 66 00:06:27,340 --> 00:06:32,440 And so we have this kind of paradoxical structure of literature is the reference point, 67 00:06:32,440 --> 00:06:35,980 the authority that kind of like is a pretext to interpret reality, 68 00:06:36,100 --> 00:06:44,860 but also reality goes further or like add something or basically also make something a bit more unambiguous in the sense and um, 69 00:06:44,860 --> 00:06:52,089 that is the reason why then, um, some Russian philologists, um, so for example, Alexander Chekhov, um, were saying, 70 00:06:52,090 --> 00:07:00,310 I quote, um, Kafka in the USSR and Russia always has been more than Kafka, but essentially remained unread. 71 00:07:01,580 --> 00:07:04,670 So if the in the story. 72 00:07:04,680 --> 00:07:09,060 Um, uh, that's a little a judgement. The letter is never sent. 73 00:07:09,110 --> 00:07:14,720 Your argument is that actually the message, whatever that is. 74 00:07:15,020 --> 00:07:21,440 Um, and we don't want to reduce it to a single message, but something about Kafka has made its way into, 75 00:07:21,470 --> 00:07:26,840 uh, Russian culture, uh, from the 1940s of the 1960s, right up to the present day. 76 00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:34,309 Mhm. Right. So there is a quite peculiar case where we can say Kafka is not just translated adapt it, 77 00:07:34,310 --> 00:07:38,750 but there is also a certain way of like reflecting this process and therefore answering back, 78 00:07:38,900 --> 00:07:44,660 kind of taking into account what is reception history in this travel of like the unsent letter. 79 00:07:44,660 --> 00:07:48,320 And in that sense, Kafka's writings, um, would mean and provoke. 80 00:07:48,620 --> 00:07:53,959 And I guess that leads to, um, um, the work of the philologist. 81 00:07:53,960 --> 00:08:02,820 We've already talked about Maxime Schook, um, who has been, um, very recently publishing two books, um, which work well together, also interconnected. 82 00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:09,500 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. 83 00:08:09,830 --> 00:08:13,580 The other one is more literary and translates those letters to call. 84 00:08:14,270 --> 00:08:21,020 And, um, so he classifies that as a so-called post novel, but, um, so in the epistolary, 85 00:08:21,020 --> 00:08:26,329 um, genre tradition, but he's taking a new, um, media communication form. 86 00:08:26,330 --> 00:08:37,390 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. 87 00:08:37,700 --> 00:08:42,889 Um, we all really get that, um, within the story, the main character is actually philologists. 88 00:08:42,890 --> 00:08:51,020 We see a parallel to Maxime Schook there, who is like working at a university, teaching literature, writing a book on Franz Kafka, 89 00:08:51,350 --> 00:08:59,900 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. 90 00:09:00,350 --> 00:09:09,860 So that's the point. Which also brings us back to the maybe more political dimension of like how, um, scholars, critics. 91 00:09:09,860 --> 00:09:14,720 So dealing on the one hand with the legacy of um, of Kafka, but also the kind of, um, 92 00:09:14,870 --> 00:09:20,840 more politicised dimension of what does it mean to read, interpret and decipher their own reality. 93 00:09:21,230 --> 00:09:27,020 So, so, Karl, in that sense, um, is not just Kafka, it's not just his character. 94 00:09:27,020 --> 00:09:31,159 And and Schook would be inventing that and writing back in that sense. 95 00:09:31,160 --> 00:09:40,160 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. 96 00:09:40,610 --> 00:09:46,490 And, um, one can illustrate that quite well with, um, what the name call actually comes from. 97 00:09:46,790 --> 00:09:55,820 So, um, Karl is, um, it's actually referring to a meme that went viral and in Russia from like 2015 onwards, 98 00:09:56,180 --> 00:10:00,049 um, and stems from a post-apocalyptic series. 99 00:10:00,050 --> 00:10:05,810 So walking with the dead, where a father is instructing his son Karl kind of like making statements. 100 00:10:06,110 --> 00:10:12,200 And it was very soon taken up in the Russian internet, um, so far that even, um, for example, 101 00:10:12,200 --> 00:10:20,479 people like Alexei Navalny and Leonid Volkov would use, um, the meme reference to kind of like announce a candidature, um, 102 00:10:20,480 --> 00:10:28,310 and two 2015 and um, so Schook takes up this way of communicating with this, this communication infrastructure, 103 00:10:28,700 --> 00:10:35,960 um, and in Russia at the time and tannen's this catchphrase of call into the friend that he's addressing. 104 00:10:36,740 --> 00:10:43,670 And, um, but what he's doing then with his, with his book, what he's navigating there is he's travelling through Russia. 105 00:10:43,670 --> 00:10:51,739 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, 106 00:10:51,740 --> 00:10:58,670 but who's also reflecting critically, reflecting on the Russian, um, history or like reception history of Kafka. 107 00:10:59,060 --> 00:11:08,390 So there's one quite telling quote where he's saying, um, um, being a philologist is not a profession, but a diagnosis. 108 00:11:08,720 --> 00:11:12,710 So, um, and that really chimes with Kafka, doesn't it? 109 00:11:12,740 --> 00:11:20,300 It does. Yes. Of kind of being existentially on the line, as it were, in, in his writing. 110 00:11:20,330 --> 00:11:22,560 Um, yes. Aren't we all? Yes, yes. 111 00:11:24,590 --> 00:11:31,490 Interestingly, what he then does is kind of like with his letters to call reversing the communication situation that we had in those words. 112 00:11:31,700 --> 00:11:41,360 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, 113 00:11:41,390 --> 00:11:48,590 like the one who is removed, who could potentially provide a counter reflection, but it never happens in the case of abandonment. 114 00:11:48,590 --> 00:11:54,200 So there is this moment of also mis misunderstanding, um, the friend or like the one, uh, 115 00:11:54,260 --> 00:12:00,800 one is in correspondence with and forsook that would translate actually the other way around where the position of. 116 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:11,620 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. 117 00:12:11,770 --> 00:12:17,559 Like, um, not misunderstanding, but kind of like, um, taking away a certain kind of ambiguity that would, 118 00:12:17,560 --> 00:12:21,100 um, also defines a certain literary quality about them by, 119 00:12:21,100 --> 00:12:29,410 um, reducing them to being taken over, um, lift out, um, transcended, um, by the absurdities of the early life. 120 00:12:29,830 --> 00:12:34,930 Uh, um, so question about that, because one of the very odd things about the story, 121 00:12:34,930 --> 00:12:39,999 the judgement is, of course, um, we don't really know whether the friend exists. 122 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,299 And, you know, at one point the father says, ah, yes. 123 00:12:43,300 --> 00:12:48,400 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. 124 00:12:48,610 --> 00:12:58,090 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, 125 00:12:58,270 --> 00:13:03,489 but then, in truth, correcting back, um, what's the father doing? 126 00:13:03,490 --> 00:13:04,000 That's the father. 127 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:12,280 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? 128 00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:16,249 Um, where's the father? Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a very good question. 129 00:13:16,250 --> 00:13:20,409 Like, especially because it doesn't, like, directly translate onto those roles. 130 00:13:20,410 --> 00:13:26,620 But we kind of see him maybe taking up and adapting those impulses and kind of like understanding, 131 00:13:26,620 --> 00:13:31,840 um, what is new and different in the sort of like real historical reality that he is living in. 132 00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:35,170 So, um, what would be the father's position? 133 00:13:35,170 --> 00:13:38,530 I mean, um, the father is the one that, um, 134 00:13:38,770 --> 00:13:45,820 kind of confronts the view and maybe the misinterpretation of the son by also saying, I've also been writing letters, 135 00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:53,730 um, to the friend in Saint Petersburg and actually, um, you you haven't, like, understood correctly how you're relating to each other. 136 00:13:53,740 --> 00:13:58,629 You have a, like self reflected properly and, um, but on the other hand, 137 00:13:58,630 --> 00:14:02,440 it's also like the figure that kind of like hinders from the passage of power, 138 00:14:02,440 --> 00:14:06,520 like whether we want to interpret that as a generational issue, as a political issue. 139 00:14:06,940 --> 00:14:17,410 So, um, the question. Who the other one is who kind of, like, shatters the womb or creates the clash of perspectives. 140 00:14:17,700 --> 00:14:27,639 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, 141 00:14:27,640 --> 00:14:33,700 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. 142 00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:39,910 So this, um, this question of like who, who is remaining but who is potentially answering back to him. 143 00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:46,929 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. 144 00:14:46,930 --> 00:14:52,480 It's kind of like still embedded or was taken out of this, um, social network or social media network. 145 00:14:52,780 --> 00:15:00,520 Um, that's um, implies a different structures of communication and would activate maybe the reader much more. 146 00:15:01,240 --> 00:15:09,010 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? 147 00:15:09,430 --> 00:15:17,860 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. 148 00:15:17,860 --> 00:15:20,950 Um, so I haven't been able to read it. Um, so I don't know how it ends. 149 00:15:20,950 --> 00:15:25,780 Um, because, of course, the father also condemns this guy to death. 150 00:15:25,810 --> 00:15:32,470 Uh, and he dies in things that will remind students who look at this of, uh, metamorphosis, of course, as well. 151 00:15:32,800 --> 00:15:38,680 Um, so is there a kind of disastrous and fishhook as well, or. 152 00:15:39,310 --> 00:15:43,480 It's not disastrous a memory and mirroring and and and that's and so it's, 153 00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:49,630 I guess more ingrained in like, um, documenting those little findings about like, um, Russian reality. 154 00:15:49,810 --> 00:15:54,459 But I think also what is, um, quite different where we shouldn't just see it maybe as like a repetition, 155 00:15:54,460 --> 00:15:57,520 but like taking an impulse up but also transforming it. 156 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:03,940 Um, is that not only are there potentially more imaginary friends, which are you united in call? 157 00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:10,330 Um, but also, um, there is there is maybe less this being, um, 158 00:16:10,330 --> 00:16:18,190 this solipsistic world that our Georg Benjamin still has in Kafka's text, which is like very much, um, 159 00:16:18,340 --> 00:16:22,209 just like thinking about himself or like taking the other one as a mirror to, like, 160 00:16:22,210 --> 00:16:26,980 confirm what his successes in the business and his private relationships were. 161 00:16:27,340 --> 00:16:35,440 And, um, the writing of Of Shook is much more open and kind of like, permeated by, like, events surrounding him. 162 00:16:35,770 --> 00:16:40,659 So I think already there we have this transformation that was maybe inspired through Kafka, 163 00:16:40,660 --> 00:16:48,760 but takes Kafka to some degree also in a different direction. Um, that, um, really tries to be perceptible and not close things off. 164 00:16:48,760 --> 00:16:53,620 So recreate an open ended ness that's, um, poor Georg failed to actually have. 165 00:16:54,040 --> 00:17:02,220 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. 166 00:17:02,230 --> 00:17:05,709 And that's a great place to finish. 167 00:17:05,710 --> 00:17:07,360 Thank you very much. Thank you.