Only a poet could have written Auden’s The I Without a Self. His essay on Kafka displays a mastery of concision.
Yesterday, I reflected on the importance of being in the right mood to read Kafka or Plath. Emily and Michelle suggested that Woolf and Houellebecq demand the same cautious approach: writers whose textures are best entered in certain states of mind.
Another of Auden’s observations stayed with me today, this one about the creation of character. He remarks that sometimes, in life, one meets a person and thinks: this man comes straight out of Shakespeare or Dickens. But no one, he notes, has ever met a Kafka character. What Kafka creates is not individuals but conditions: we can have experiences that feel Kafkaesque, yet we would not call any experience of our own Dickensian or Shakespearian.
It made me think, obliquely, of Iris Murdoch’s admission that she never created a memorable character. A different kind of absence, perhaps; but similarly, a reflection of how fiction sometimes seeks not likeness, but a more inward and difficult recognition.
We’ve just started a site encouraging users to share their interpretations of some of Kafkas stories, alongside new translations – would be really interesting to hear your view, provided your in the mood to read the story 🙂