15.3.2009
(I continue to develop some conceptual tools that I'm going to need in
my analyses of Kafka's literature.)
1) Let's make a thought experiment. Imagine a world that is quite
like ours, with one small exception: the people in this world understand
something different by 'giving a party'. In their world, when someone
intends to give a party - next Friday, let's say -, he would send out
invitations, talk to people in the week before, even discuss with some of
them the special entertainments, or the arrangements for food or drinks. But
when the day comes, none of the people on the guest list actually show up,
nor does the host expect them to do so. In fact, the host might just go to
the movies, or even on a weekend trip. In short: the week before the date
of the party looks very much as in our own world, but that is all just
a game of imagination. Nobody expects these things to actually happen.
(The host doesn't actually buy or prepare anything; why should he do
so, since everybody including himself knows that all that ever happens
is talking — fantasizing, that is.) Of course, in the week after the
event (or rather: non-event), nobody at all is interested in last week's
parties. They're over and done with, and never mentioned any more.
The difference between this world and the real world is very much
restricted to a specific time window. Let's assume that the two
worlds are really indistinguishable except for what happens on the
actual day of the party. (Let's ignore complications from concurrent
partying.) What we have, then, is what I'm going to call locally
restricted fictionality. ('Locally' in this formulation is
not necessarily related to spatial location; it is taken in a more
generic sense.)
2) Now imagine you are reading a novel that happens to play in
this fictional world, but without explaining the difference. The novel
just tells a story, involving some people and, among other things,
their partying activities. As a reader of the novel, you never
learn that the social activity referred to in the book by 'giving
a party', or 'being invited to a party' is not quite the same as
the one referred to by us, in the real world. What happens, of
course, is that you start wondering when you read things that
are inconsistent with your expectations.
3) What makes the reading experience peculiar when an
author works with locally restricted fictionality? When cleverly
done, the reader may well be very extensively misled before noticing
incongruities. The reader can also be left in the dark quite how far
the restriction goes — she might be able detect some inconsistencies
and thus infer about some elements that they are fictional, but if that
happens often enough, she can never be sure what else will turn out to
be different than in reality. So: parties are not the same in this world
as in reality. What about driving lessons? Sports events? Or judicial
proceedings? Thus an author can plant an insecurity in his readers
about the extent of the fictional in his book. In other words, the reader
is unsure where the borders between fiction and reality run, and
(crucially) will never find out. The room left to imagination
is larger than usual, because the reader gains the impression that
in this novel's world, nothing may really be as it seems. (This is
what I think happens in The Trial and The Castle.)
Or there could be the converse effect: the author could make the extent
of the locally restricted fictionality so clear that it nearly hurts. A
brilliant example for this is Kafka's Metamorphosis
(Die Verwandlung). There is a single physical change (immediately
before the beginning of the narrated events), and the rest is just
playing out consequences of it. (The text even plays self-referentially
with this aspect, when Gregor Samsa decides to confront the other
characters with his changed appearance in order to find out how far
the consequences of the altered reality go: "Er wollte tatsächlich
die Tür aufmachen, tatsächlich sich sehen lassen [...]; er
war begierig zu erfahren, was die anderen, die jetzt so nach ihm
verlangten, bei seinem Anblick sagen würden. Würden sie
erschrecken, dann hatte Gregor keine Verantwortung mehr und konnte
ruhig sein. Würden sie aber alles ruhig hinnehmen, dann hatte er
auch keinen Grund sich aufzuregen, und konnte, wenn er sich beeilte,
um acht Uhr tatsächlich auf dem Bahnhof sein.", KKADL 130[1])
__
[1] All references are made by page number from the critical
edition of Kafka's works: Franz Kafka, Der Proceß [KKAP],
ed. Malcolm Pasley, and Drucke zu Lebzeiten [KKADL], ed. Wolf
Kittler et. al., both in Schriften. Tagebücher. Kritische
Ausgabe, eds. Jürgen Born et. al., Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 2002.
As an observation aside: this resembles a passage early in The
Trial, where Josef K. runs through the same line of thought: just
walking out of the room might get him out — not just of the arrest,
but "out of the whole thing", i.e. his entire trial. In his case, however,
this fails already because Josef K., in accordance with
his
personality, never takes any action at all (KKAP 16).
