No subject

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

gregor uaz shokd 2 hear h!z oun vo!sz

kassel notes that the element of alienation which the philosopher of the grotesque,
wolfgang kayser, considers essential to the grotesque style, is evident in gregor's fright.
gregor's own voice seems to him someone else's, a stranger's.

it is thus fundamentally through language that gregor grasps his animal degradation;
and so the theme of communication emerges as the central theme of the story (160)


the pronoun es (it), which kafka retained throughout all the editions of the metamorphosis
he prepared or helped to prepare, is unfortunately changed without explanation to er (he)
in the collected works edited by max brod.




already nearly a quarter to -

kafka's diary entry for january 16, 1922: "... breakdown, impossible to sleep, impossible
to stay awake, impossible to endure life, or, more exactly, the course of life. the clocks
are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demoniac or in any case 
inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. what else can happen but that 
the two worlds split apart,
and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner"


kould it be that the alarm had not gone off?

enacted consciousness (erlebte rede)



whatever the character of the parents' debt, gregor does pay it off "by embodying as a 
vermin everything crawling and base which in a concealed and unacknowledged way 
determines the behaviour of the whole family"


i would have quit long ago



to the devil with it all

bombardment with apples

immediately after invoking the devil, gregor feels an itching sensation on his belly
and touches the spot with one of his legs; but a cold  shudder ripples through him
at the touch of his new body. we note that no sooner does gregor express his wish
that the devil free him of his job than he is reminded of his transformed body.
this conjunction endows the figure of speech with a sinister and literal significance.
if we substitute `metamorphosis` for `devil` [in the literal formula "the devil take 
it all"] gregor's wish has actually been granted, for the metamorphosis has surely taken the 
job from him. a parallel to the faust legend suggests itself, with the important qualification 
that the `devil's gift` to gregor has been given him in his sleep. at any rate gregor has, to 
be sure unconsciously, exchanged his birth right, his human form made in the image of god, 
for a `guiltless` escape from an intolerable situation. 

but a chill ... seizes him when he realizez his new form of existence. his shudder is the 
price exacted for his escape" (206)



the overcast weather ... made him completely melancholy

and not the metamorphosis! gregor does what he can to resist consciousness of the
terrible change.




which he had never felt before

on the likeness of these opening paragraphs to the opening of dostoyevsky's 
`the double`, see spilka, `kafka's sources for the metamorphosis`.

... gregor's "slight, dull pain" is one of several signs pointing to a 
concealed symptomatology of tuberculosis within `the metamorphosis`




raising up against the viewer (dem beschauer entgegenhob)

this translation of kafka's phrase is suggested by sokel (franz kafka: tragik und ironie, 94);
it captures the hostile stance of various idolized female figures in the novels (the statue
of liberty in `amerika`, the goddess of justice in `the trial`). in noting further the possible
allusion in the picture to sacher-masoch's novel `venus in furs`, both sokel + weinberg 
corroborate the sense of gregor's masochism. the usual translation of this phrase, "holding 
out to the viewer", creates, on the other hand, a seductive gesture that does not fit in easily 
with the woman's upright posture.




his many legs ... waving helplessly before his eyes

kafka's meticulous pseudo-realist description produces the effect of total
reality of the metamorphosis. however absurd, its reality is never less convincing
and frequently more convincing than the responses of gregor and those around him;
and yet their responses are always psychologically `true`.

kafka appears to stress his intention not to excite in the reader theories to account for
the delusion of a metamorphosis, such as `gregor is dreaming`, `gregor is mad`, or `the
entire family is mad`. in bypassing the fiction of hallucination, kafka achieved, according
to spilka, an essential advantage over the situation he borrowed from dostoyevsky's `the 
double`

adorno suggests that kafka excludes the dream from his work `because everything unlike 
the dream and its prelogical logic is excluded`. hence the world of `the metamorphosis` 
is for him dreamlike.

greenberg's conclusion is similar. he writes: "`it was no dream` is no contradiction of his
metamorphosis' being a dream but a literal-ironical confirmation of it. of course it is
no dream - to the dreamer. the dreamer, while he is dreaming, takes his dream as real;
gregor's thought is therefore literally true to the circumstances in which he finds
himself.

however, it is also true ironically, since his metamorphosis is indeed no dream (meaning
something unreal) but a revelation of the truth"








az ma! b obzervd - !t !z all v.koherent. nou u ua!t + man! l!ttle legz t!pe + t!pe + t!pe

kan u bu!ld 1 +?
dzn ! uant u



juzt u 

!n lv + fear  _ ueaponz. outztrechd.