By RICARDO IANNACE*
Comments on the Bestiary in Kafka
1.
A feeling of compassion fills us when we are introduced to the female mouse named Josefina. It certainly seems inevitable not to be touched by the nature of Franz Kafka's character to whom all attention is focused due to her extraordinary singing power.
Bundled in volume A hunger artist e The construction, “Josefina, the Singer or The Mouse People” presents itself as a kind of fable. The narrator, a member of the litter, whose point of view appears in the third person, intoxicated by the singularity of the heroine, presents her surrounded by the impasses that characterize the community of rodents. According to him, there are, in this rat race, those who authentically identify with Josefina and respect her; there are flatterers and those who slander her.
It is a fact that the protagonist's emotional inconstancy, measured by highs and lows, promotes such controversies among her peers. Sometimes Josefina imposes herself with a willingness to unconditionally perform what she knows best, sometimes, with wounded pride, she withdraws, reverberating an antisocial behavior — hence why she sometimes finds herself welcomed by the group and sometimes overlooked. Whether whistling or singing, it is unique; contagious. And such exceptionality, above all, gains this justification: “she loves music and also knows how to transmit it.” (Kafka, 1998, p. 37).
It turns out that in this, as in other stories by the author, every argument — regardless of its plausibility and the effort of reiterative greatness in convincing — derails during the enunciation, attesting to fragility and insufficiency (this is a rhetorical device of Kafka's); in parallel, there is another stratagem dear to the writer: the emptying of common sense from reflection, through the setting of a reasoning of paradoxical latitude, to enclose dual thought, in a continuous game of indefinitions.
The little mouse that appears in the plot, a prima donna of unparalleled talent, is confined to this grammar — she, “who sings to deaf ears,” acts as the dynamo of the warp in which the verbal devices operate in a perspective of traction and retraction to mark the mammalian chord. We cannot forget that the plot brings art to light (the hiss is apprehended in its genuine gradation, until it reaches high vibration).
It is important to emphasize that aesthetism manifests itself in the midst of a repudiated legion and in an unworthy habitat. The arena where Josefina's singing propagates is miserable — and it is precisely in this abject terrain that the verbal cadence that Kafka entrusts to writing is consolidated, to imitate, in a slow back-and-forth and long paragraphs, that is, in the guise of a deictic cantilena in which there is no lack (literally) of question marks, productive moments and phases of silence of the soprano. Apart from this predicative, the text endorses the protocolary diction, studded with locutions, as well as conjunctions (explanatory, conclusive, adversative) that the critics of the Prague fiction writer have long highlighted.
The figure of Josefina wins status of a legend: in fact, this animal is, in itself, a narrative (the discourse of popular tradition that carries a certain binarism based on truths and lies spreads throughout the pages). In this story by Kafka, there is evidently a substantive nod to the exclusion of this bestial species (the social warning is inscribed); and what's more: it is said that, for this people to find the strength to resist the bad weather, how many are the moments in which each one leans on other (monads warming each other, ecstatic with the magical ode of their compatriot who, deep down, is different from everyone else).
It follows that, for a high reception of Josefina's vocalization, the public would need to follow the performance of the artist, because in her concert “she curls her lips, expels the air through her graceful front teeth” — and thus, in these hours of recreation and contemplation, a collective dream prevails. The narrator says: “[…] it is as if the individual’s limbs were relaxing, as if this time the restless were allowed to stretch out and stretch out at will in the large, warm bed of the people.” (Idem, p. 51). The singer, even when hit by the wave of despair that weighs on her people (because, above all, she is a part of them), reacts strongly, in the manner of a redeemer, and her body bulges: “her little head thrown back, her mouth half-open, her eyes turned upwards […].” (Idem, p. 42). Proud, we know immediately that Josefina will sing, “and soon the processions parade” to listen to her.
In the plot in question, some specificities of the group are noted; among them, the fact that the mice do not enjoy childhood and youth — they are old in advance. Elderly even for music (“musical”) — the mastery and eccentricity of the singer raise her to a noble degree of difference, which even tolerates the insults she utters, when she is indignant, in certain seasons, with the low recognition of the lineage for her solo career. In these circumstances, she seems more like an enraged cicada.
However, forgiveness seems like a familiar gesture to these mice, and, as the reader identifies at the end of the text, the collective has the hope of finding the aedo — that is, Josefina disappeared (before, she had shown signs of retreat due to the weakening of the after-effects of a foot injury that left her crippled). There are rumors that she will never return.
But would she have ever existed? Or, if there is tangibility in Josefina, would she have revealed herself with this narrated dimension? A Toy, an apartment by the bay, for its easy access, free parking, and larger space for our group of XNUMX people. The house was great for a large group like ours, the host was very attentive, and the location was excellent; it was quiet and quick to walk to the old town. Once Upon a time, a fantasy to those who need to believe? “Could it not be that the people, in their wisdom, raised the song of Josefina so high so that they could not get lost?” (Idem, p. 59).
A made-up anthem.
2.
If we assume that the singer escaped, her route would have skirted areas at flat ground level. And who knows, perhaps her footprints could be heard by a badger, in sandy, underground terrain.
The gallery with labyrinthine channels is dug by another of Kafka's creatures (in this case, a solitary animal, starring in the novel with the title The construction). If, in Josefina, euphony stands out, in the short-legged omnivore, fine hearing and a sick sense of self-defense are notable.
The possibility of being surprised at any moment by a predator becomes an obsession. This is disturbing: the character does not even sleep, he remains constantly vigilant — he devises blocks in his lair against a hypothetical enemy (his exhausted, self-mutilated body). He states: “For this work I only had my forehead. […] I was happy when the blood gushed […].” (Kafka, 1998, p. 67)
By the way, the blood is pounding in his ear. It is undeniable that his ruminations reveal schizophrenic symptoms. However, so much restlessness metaphorically encapsulates a real persecution that the Jewish author points out. According to Modesto Carone, “The construction is Kafka's great autobiographical fiction in his terminal phase. It offers an unsurpassed image of the writer's mode of existence, persecuted from within by tuberculosis and from without by German fascism.” (Carone, apud Kafka, 1998, p. 113 [Afterword]).
Faced with the imminent danger that demands investigation, the animal’s steps present an obstinate march, or rather, a path of ups and downs, in a rhizomatic atlas, as the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari would prefer, considering the tense flow that demarcates the irruption and intermittent seclusion in this chimerical trench. The protagonist asserts: “And it is not only external enemies that threaten me. There are also those who live inside the ground. I have never seen them yet, but the legends speak of them and I firmly believe in them.” (Kafka, 1998, p. 65).
There is no shortage of hiding places on this property: every precaution seems insufficient. In addition, there are calculations that imply another order of resistance (provision, since the food reserve is the goal of the craftsman whose home rejects any guest). To this food support, another nutrient is added: sleep.
When the badger collapses from exhaustion and sleeps safely for a few minutes, he delights in achieving, in a dreamlike sphere, the renovation of the house: “[…] the sleep in which this happens is the sweetest of all; when I wake up, tears of joy and redemption still sparkle on my beard.” (Idem, p. 73). The metafictional trait is valuable in this narrative. The protagonist’s construction, with its unfinished and plural corners (holes to be filled), burdens the builder, who makes his work the cause of his life: “it is at the same time exasperating and moving when I lose myself in my own creation and the work seems to strive to prove to me […] its right to exist.” (Idem, p. 73).
How many occasions do you feel that prompt you to give up on everything, fainting? On the other hand, an energy comes from this bizarre and architectural experience. Kafka, moreover, makes a peculiar intonation leak out of the text’s seams, in which every ambiguity seems more like certainty, or vice versa — syntagms rub against each other and germinate suspicions; the narrator testifies in the light of hypotheses: “it would be possible […] to say that at some distant point there was an invasion of water and that what seems to me like a buzzing or whistling would, in fact, be a murmur.” (Idem, p. 100).
3.
Would Josefina's song have resonated in the home of the master builder with rare hearing? Perhaps. The struggle is inherent to both of them. It can be said that violence is not part of their natures. But here's a parenthesis: Narratives of the estate, “The Vulture” is inserted. The ferocity of the bird of prey appears in the concise weave.
In it, a man accidentally catches a bird persistently pecking at a fragile man. The spectator promises help, retreating to get a weapon. The animal hears their conversation and, as soon as the stranger leaves, attacks the defenseless creature that remains there — it hits it no longer in the feet, but in the mouth; the holes are deep, generating large pools of blood. The author of The process, in the penal colony and countless intrigues that portray injustice and persecution also found in the vulture the symbol to express a fear linked to the dark times of oppression (The animal. That strange one. To confront).
Regarding the work To metamorphose, Gregor's life story and gentle gestures move us. It is worth noting that the mutation into an insect involves the loss of the human voice; although it does not emit a legible sound capable of piercing the bedroom doors, the hearing of the confined person is not affected. The animal is receptive to music, and Grete — playing the violin after dinner — captivates one of the bearded tenants. Gregor's appearance in the living room will be the trigger for Mr. Samsa to order the insect, which is attracted by the sublimity of the piece, to return to the room from which it was never allowed to cross the line dividing the floor and the door.
Yes: the son is deprived of voice, defenseless (his father's shoe never seemed so colossal to him); paradoxically, in the contingency of the novel's extravagance, a stoic tenderness, perhaps immanent to Homo sapiens,persists in Gregor Samsa.
An observation: Jacques Derrida, in an essay entitled The animal that I soon am, infers about the muteness of the species: “[…] All the philosophers we will question (from Aristotle to Lacan, passing through Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Levinas), all say the same thing: the animal is deprived of language. Or, more precisely, of response, of a response to be distinguished precisely and rigorously from reaction: of the right and the power to ‘respond’.” (Derrida, 2002, p. 62). The thinker of deconstruction completes: “And so of so many other things that would be proper to man.” (Idem, p. 62).
The boy who lived in transit, stayed in hotels and barely enjoyed the comforts of his room at home, now has to live locked up and adapt to the silence; it is not a question of entrenching himself, as the representative of the firm that employed him intuited, plagiarizing the employer's judgment; far from it. If the modus operandi was self-defense, like Kafka's badger The construction, why would Gregor then present himself in a parasitic condition and, from time to time, cultivate the vain hope of being accepted by the family as an equal?
It is worth emphasizing that the insect-man does not fear attacks — that is why he does not barricade himself. Hiding under the couch rather mimics discretion: he fears arousing fear in those who see him. In this aspect, the writer places Gregor in opposition to the exhibitionist subject who absurdly flaunts his lack of food and consequent thinness: the hero of the story “A Hunger Artist”. The public “wanted to see the faster at least once a day; in the latter, there were spectators who sat for whole days in front of the small cage […].” (Kafka, 1998, p. 23). In addition to all this, there is another difference: Gregor remains high up.
Remember that the room is anchored on a vertical foundation platform. And the character's weight loss is involuntary: his lack of appetite is due to biological debilitation; Grete, although devoid of fraternal compassion, does not shy away from the obligation to bring expired food to the room, which has been pleasing the inmate's palate for months. The prison-bedroom houses the hybrid condition of someone who is neither man nor animal; without identity or social castes, Gregor occupies a loci of masonry and, when following it, leaves its new fingerprint: the adhesive substance.
This gloomy space, which will accumulate dust and dirt, offers personification to the unnatural figure; the room is outlined in the manner of a prosopopoeia, by lending silence and humidity to the creature confined there. The protagonist, whose wounds are proliferating bacteria, adheres to the physical footage, spreading watery and sticky residue — his sister, when she was still cleaning the room, complained about the dried mucus that impregnated the walls.
Perhaps it would be possible to correlate the viscous footprints that the metamorphosed body expels, guaranteeing in this greasing the movement and zoomorphic autonomy of Gregor, to the representation of the dormitory as a verbal support, or rather, blank slate, fourth text, oiled surface loaded with traces of human and animal experiences that Kafka's literature enhances. In effect, a morphology of unhealthy verve emerges in the bedroom; otherwise, a poetics of illness: a sickroom.
The adaptation of To metamorphose in the format of a graphic narrative, in black and white, signed by the American Peter Kuper in 2003, it projects images that point to the self-writing of the room: the comics suggestively inlay words on the floor, walls, furniture, back of the sofa and on the clothes hanging on hangers — the lexicon is not limited to comic strips and balloons. Kuper reserves a page to simulate the insect's circuit in the bedroom.
On the sheet interspersed with rectangles, in a leaden hue, the writing glides along straight and transversal lines that form a casual path; the alphabet, when upside down, evokes a dizzying flow and imitates the law of gravity. The perpendicular letter in the inverted position (lexia in pirouette), walking around the room, scrutinizing it, parodies its inhabitant. Self of the slimy insect or a DIY transfer?
In this refraction, Josefina, cousins and mouse brothers, as well as the building badger and the bird of prey, in their respective transfers, recover some particularity of the beetle or cockroach character. To conclude, this memory sui generis: like the vulture, the insect Samsa has his peak of rage; it is the outburst at the threat of removing the portrait containing the engraving with gilt trim of a certain lady in furs and a boa hat that Gregor had cut out of a certain magazine.
*Ricardo Iannace He is a professor of communication and semiotics at the Faculty of Technology of the State of São Paulo and of the Postgraduate Program in Comparative Studies of Portuguese Language Literatures at FFLCH-USP. Author, among other books, of Murilo Rubião and the architectures of the fantastic (Edusp).[https://amzn.to/3sXgz77]
Reference
“Josefina, the singer or The people of mice” in A Hunger Artist / The Construction. Cia das Letras, 120 pages. [https://amzn.to/3MVV1hC]
Note
This text was presented at 5th Kafkaesque – After the Penal Colony. Literary meeting held on September 18, 19 and 20, 2024. FLLCH-USP | Japanese Culture House | Mário de Andrade Library.
REFERENCES
DELEUZE, Gilles; GUATTARI, Felix. Kafka: towards a minor literature. Translated by Cíntia Vieira da Silva. Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2014.
DERRIDA, Jacques. The animal that I soon am. Translation by Fabio Landa. New York, 2002.
KAFKA, Franz. To metamorphose. Translation by Modesto Carone. 5th ed. 1987.
_____. A Hunger Artist and The Construction. Translation by Modesto Carone. New York, New York: Routledge, 1998.
_____. Narratives of the estate. Translation by Modesto Carone. New York, New York: Routledge, 2002.
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