Question 1: What is Kafka's relationship to theory, and in what ways is Kafka theoretical?
I have always been struck by the incredible volume and variety of Kafka criticism and theory that is available. What I have found particularly frustrating is the ultimate inadequacy, however well-written, of such writing. There are seemingly as many different schools of thought and "interpretations" of Kafka as there are words in the English language. What I have come to realize is that this was always already Kafka's exact and inevitable intention. Kafka is theory; his texts explore the fluid and changing relationship between "sign" and "signified", between "concrete" and "figurative" language, between "reader" and "text." It is as impossible for us to stop interpreting Kafka as it is for us to stop interpreting language; just as we cannot look at a word on a page and not read it, we cannot read Kafka and not interpret it.
Harold Bloom has said that Kafka did everything possible to evade interpretation, which only means that what most demands interpretation in Kafka's writing is its deliberate evasion of interpretation. If we accept that Kafka deliberately tries to evade interpretation, to make finding the "right" meaning in his texts all but impossible, what we must next ask ourselves is "Why?" What Kafka was attempting to do every time he put pen to paper was to explode language and our relationship to it from within, to "concretely touch its limits." Kafka was particularly interested in the use of metaphor, as he felt that metaphor was the heart of all language. However, he despaired that metaphorical language could ever express what he was trying to express; he felt that the correct action for writing was a "raising up" rather than a "carrying over." For Kafka, metaphor was always already linked to the world of the mundane; it was not possible to reach a "higher" state through writing because metaphor allowed only a "carrying over" from one sphere of existence to another. No matter how creative the metaphor, writing can never go beyond itself.
What Kafka tried to do in his writing was to explode metaphor, to touch its limits, to set up a resonance in the metaphor, causing it to vibrate back and forth from pole to pole until it exploded in heretofore untold associations. In a story such as "The Metamorphosis," for example, Gregor is not "either" a beast "or" a man, but in some ways he is both at the same time, and in some ways he is neither. We are never certain what exactly Gregor is, and because of this creatively focused ambiguity, entirely new associations between man and beast are allowed to spring up for us. It is this uncertainty, this ambiguity that creates the tension in the story, for our first impulse as readers is to "interpret"; What "is" Gregor? What does his transformation "mean"? Why does he act the way he does? etc. Gregor is the metaphor made concrete, and his death is Kafka's despairing comment on language as a mode of communication.
We can see very similar sentiments in nearly all of Kafka's texts. In "The Hunger Artist" we see the metaphor starved of all significance by the greedy needs of those who use it for their amusement; in "The Burrow" we have another concretization of the metaphor, setting up some unusual resonances between the poles of man and beast; in "The Judgment" we see the relationship between father and son made painfully and mortally concrete. In all of these texts we see a failure to communicate or a lack of communication that becomes fatal.
Indeed, communication, and in particular writing, can ultimately be doomed only to failure if our intent is to convey "truth" or to come to some "correct interpretation." Language, like metaphor, is essentially completely arbitrary, and to think that we are able to communicate "truthfully" with one another is extremely arrogant. If I say a word, "dog" for instance, in "interpreting" that word you must take into account why I am saying it, how I am saying it, where I am saying it, what else I am saying with it, how long it takes me to say it, the expression on my face when I say it, etc. etc. In this one small word there are nearly an infinite number of interpretations to be found; How then can we expect to "interpret" an entire story full of words?
Kafka's ultimate point in evading interpretation was that interpretation is ultimately impossible. So does this mean that we should not try to interpret what we read or what others say? Of course not. Because there is always hope; there is always the chance that indeed the message may get through, against all odds, and will be read correctly on the other end. It is the struggle that is of importance, because that is all that we have; if we become obsessed with the end of our journey we will never get there. Just as Joseph K. is so obsessed with the object of his journey, the Castle, that he does not realize how many mistakes he makes in trying to reach it, or indeed, that it is probably not even worth reaching; just as Joseph K. is so obsessed with the ending of his Trial that he barely even notices when he is taken out and killed "like a dog." It is this struggle for understanding, this seemingly unavoidable need to interpret that keeps us going, keeps us reaching for some kind of truth, no matter how hopeless that task may sometimes seem. This is also why we create literature; it is through literature that we hope to create some kind of truth.
Question 2: Waiting is certainly a central theme in the works of Kafka. What role does waiting play in his works, and how does it tie into the theoretical?
Roland Barthes has written an extraordinary piece on waiting in which he describes the lover waiting for the arrival of the loved one. The lover must stay put because the loved one may arrive at any moment or may telephone at any moment. In Kafka's texts, there is a great deal of waiting going on; indeed, one might say that Kafka's texts are in essence about the dynamics of waiting.
What does one wait for? One waits for everything in some way or another. There can be no gain without waiting. The act of waiting sets up an unbreakable and dynamic link between the one waiting and the one being waited for; the one being waited for has an incredible amount of power over the one who waits. Joseph K. starts out alone in The Castle, and until the moment he enters the town and begins waiting for his call from the Castle, he is free. And yet the call he receives from the Castle makes no sense; it is merely a "hum" through the wires. However, all that is important is that he wait; the actual text of the message makes no difference.
Similarly, in The Trial we see the parable of the man from the country who comes to the door of the Law and yet is denied admittance by the gatekeeper. No reason is given for his denial, and seemingly the man has no reason to stay, and yet he sits down and waits. In this situation, the gatekeeper had no power whatsoever over the man until the main began waiting for the gatekeeper to let him in. Indeed, the parable ends with the gatekeeper informing the man that the doorway was intended only for the man from the country, and that now that the man is dying the door will be shut. If at any time the man had decided to leave, to stop waiting, the gatekeeper's power over him would have ceased; however, the man from the country is as incapable of ceasing his waiting as is Joseph K, and as we are incapable of ceasing our interpretations of the parable. In this parable, Kafka gives us a concrete version of the metaphor that is us reading his parable. His parable tells us that interpretation is not possible (though it is not undesirable); it is merely a way of making our waiting more bearable. Indeed, as the priest says, most of the writing about the parable comes merely from the commentators' despair over its interpretation.
In this way, Kafka shows us that reading is waiting; interpretation is waiting: we are waiting for the author to reveal the "truth" to us, or for ourselves as readers to reveal the "truth" to ourselves. Just as Joseph K. appears to try extremely hard to get to the Castle, trying every possible way he can think of to reach it, we try our best to interpret the "meaning" of the texts we read. Though it would seem that each of us is "acting" in some way, which is the opposite of waiting, in truth we are not acting; interpretation is simply a prolongation of waiting. In truth, we will always wait, for we can never know truth. Interpretation is ultimately an impossibility, and so we will wait some more; we will wait for another chance to interpret, for another chance to find the "true" meaning. Similarly, Joseph K. never tires of waiting. He waits for a call from the Castle. When that does not get him to his goal (the Castle itself), he uses Frieda to get to Klamm and then waits in hiding for Klamm. Even when he actually is able to enter the Castle, he waits for the officials to hear his case, waits for their judgment, etc. Once again, those involved in his waiting and the actual results of his waiting do not matter nearly as much as the waiting itself. What is of utmost importance is that he must wait.
If interpretation is merely another form of waiting, and waiting gives the one waited for incredible power over the one who waits, then we can see why we tend to feel that there is great power in writing. Reading is simply another form of waiting. We may feel as though we are actively reading, actively processing information, but the end of the story is a foregone conclusion (just as the result of Joseph K.'s trial is a foregone conclusion), and what we are doing is simply deluding ourselves into believing that we are not merely waiting for it to be over so that we can know the "truth." When we interpret a text, we are very much like Joseph K., using bits and pieces of our surroundings (our lives, the text itself) in order to try to reach our goal, which is "meaning." However, also like Joseph K., when we think we have reached our goal, we realize that we are just as far away from it as we were when we started, for now "meaning" has become for us something other than what it was when we began reading the text (just as the Castle seemingly changes depending on what Joseph K.'s intentions and/or degree of success in reaching it are). And so we have merely prolonged our waiting for meaning.So the question must become "Why do we wait?" We wait because, just as the one who is waited for has great power over the one who waits, the one who waits also has a kind of power over the one who is waited for. If the one who waits decides he/she will wait no longer, then the one who is waited for loses all of his/her power. There is a kind of symbiotic relationship between the waiting and the waited for, and it is this relationship, this taste of our own power, that keeps us waiting, keeps us interpreting, keeps us trying to understand. Waiting gives us purpose and definition. "Who am I? I am waiting (or reading, or speaking)." Language has power because we interpret it, and because we have created language through our interpretation, we are powerful.Copyright 1996, Christopher M. Wisniewski