Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture 9811926034, 9789811926037

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Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture Yanbing Zeng Translated by Yuan Li

Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture

Yanbing Zeng

Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture

Yanbing Zeng Renmin University of China Beijing, China Translated by Yuan Li Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Guangzhou, China

Sponsored by Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (本书获中 华社会科学基金资助) ISBN 978-981-19-2603-7 ISBN 978-981-19-2604-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4 Jointly published with Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd. This edition is published by arrangement with Capital Normal University Press and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd. The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing. ISBN of the mainland of China edition: [9787565653674] © Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

1

1

Introduction

2

Sinking to the Seabed of Chinese Culture: Franz Kafka and Traditional Chinese Culture 2.1 China in German Culture 2.2 “I Am a Chinese” 2.3 Building the German “Great Wall”

13 13 24 33

The First Dance Steps in Winter: An Analysis of Description of a Struggle 3.1 Gazing Upon China 3.2 Describing China 3.3 Transcending China

41 42 47 54

The Great Wall in Transcultural Context: The Great Wall of China 4.1 The Textual “Great Wall” 4.2 The Historical “Great Wall” 4.3 The Transcultural “Great Wall”

61 62 68 75

Old Manuscript from China: An Old Manuscript 5.1 Originating from China 5.2 Erasing China 5.3 Constructing China

81 81 85 90

3

4

5

v

vi

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CONTENTS

Babel on Chinese Great Wall: Kafka and the Philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi 6.1 Tao and Law 6.2 Butterfly and Insect 6.3 Goblet Words and Parables

95 96 100 105

7

Kafka and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 7.1 Loneliness and Lonely Indignation 7.2 Allegory and Metaphor 7.3 Alienation and Poeticization

111 113 117 121

8

Into “Fortress Besieged” and Out of “The Castle”: A Comparative Analysis of Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged and Kafka’s The Castle 8.1 “Get In” and “Get Out” 8.2 Mind and Heart

125 125 134

Inscriptions on the Tomb Stone: A Comparative Analysis of Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” and Kafka’s “A Dream” 9.1 Lu Xun and Kafka 9.2 “A Dream” and “Tombstone Inscriptions”

139 139 142

“Bosom Friends” in Contemporary China: The Reception of Kafka’s Works by Contemporary Chinese Writers 10.1 Life as a Work of Art 10.2 Ushering Another World 10.3 The Castle to the Soul

155 156 161 166

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Franz Kafka and Contemporary Chinese Culture 11.1 Kafka in China’s National Higher Education Entrance Examination 11.2 Kafka in Chinese Mass Culture 11.3 Kafka in Chinese Households The Discussion of Kafka Never Ends: Kafka Studies in China 12.1 Translations at Early Stage 12.2 Scholars and Translators of Kafka in China 12.3 Topics Within Kafka Studies in China 12.4 The Characteristics of Kafka Studies in China

171 171 176 180 183 184 192 193 198

CONTENTS

13

The Translation and Introduction of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in China 13.1 The Beginning (1966–1979): Patronage and Translation from English 13.2 The Period of Silence (1980–1995): Li Wenjun’s Translation and Other Versions 13.3 The Period of Ascension (1996–2006): The Complete Works and Multiple Versions 13.4 The Period of Prosperity (2007–) 13.5 The Features of Chinese Translations of The Metamorphosis

vii

203 204 207 213 215 217

Bibliography

221

Name Index

237

Story Index

239

Subject Index

241

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the famous Austrian writer of the twentieth century, is regarded as “the strange genius” of European literature, the explorer and master of modernist literature. As one scholar puts it, “Kafka is not only one of the finest writers of this century, now legendary and saintly” and “bearing, as Auden remarked in 1941, the same sort of relation to the age that Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to theirs.”1 Another critic also notes, “Yet nothing is more arbitrary than to compare him, as is often done today, with the writer who was, if not his teacher, at least his precursor, as he was for nearly all the European writers in our time, whether they realise it or not.”2 Similarly, Milan Kundera claimed that Kafka can say things about “our human condition (as it reveals itself in our century) that no social or political thought could ever tell us.”3 Nabokov viewed Kafka as “the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him.”4 According to Max Brod, readers 1 Joyce Carol Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, The Hudson Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (Winter, 1973–1974), p. 623. 2 Nathalie Sarraute, The Age of Suspicion: Essays on the Novel, trans. Maria Jolas (New York: George Braziller, 1990), p. 7. 3 Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint, 2003), p. 58. 4 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (New York: Mariner Books, 2002), p. 225.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_1

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of magazines in Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, and U.S. are exposed to references to Kafka on a frequent basis.5 It is impossible to know much about Western literature in the twentieth century without reading Kafka. Kafka remained largely unknown during his own lifetime. For his part, he remained more interested in reading his works aloud than in having them published. During his lifetime, his publications resulted from the solicitation of his friend, Max Brod. He even asked Brod, who also became the executor of his will, to burn his manuscripts upon his death. However, Brod went against his will and proceeded to edit and publish the works. Kafka’s unfinished novels, with The Trial , The Castle, and Amerika, in particular, were edited and published in 1925, 1926, and 1927, respectively. From 1935 to 1936 and from 1949 to 1950, 6-volume works and 9-volume works edited by Brod were published, thus rendering Kafka’s works accessible to the world. From the 1930s, Kafka’s works became popular, first in Europe and U.S. and then in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. To date, there are at least two annual international conferences dedicated to him in addition to numerous papers and monographs on him. Kafka studies have become an independent discipline with a great number of scholars and quite a few international associations. By 2019, there were 320 books that were salient to Kafka in The National Library of China, including 170 monographs in English and 150 in German. As one of the most popular and revered Western writers, Kafka exerted great influence on the lives and works of modern and contemporary Chinese writers. The available evidence indicates that the earliest Chinese commentary on Kafka was offered by Zhao Jingshen [赵景深] in his article “The Recent German Literature.” This was published in the first issue, vol. 21 of The Short Stories Monthly 《小说月报》 [ ] in 1930 and was a short comment of 600 words. On June 1, 1936, German writer Jacob Wassermann’s article “The Trend of Modern German Novels” translated by Zhao Jiabi [赵家璧] was published in the second issue, vol. 5 of Modern 《现代》 [ ] magazine. This included a section about a so-called Jewish writer [考夫加], namely, Kafka. In 1944, Sun Jinsan [孙晋三] published an article, “Starting from Kafka,” in the third issue, vol. 4 of Modern and Trendy Literature and Arts 《时与潮文艺》 [ ] in Chongqing. This may have been the first article focusing on Kafka in China. In 1948, 5 Max Brod, Kafka, trans. Ye Tingfang, etc. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press, 1997), p. 218.

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the Chinese translation of the French version of excerpts of Kafka’s diaries by Ye Rulian [叶汝琏] was published in the literary column of a newspaper Yishibao 《益世报》 [ ] in Tianjin, including six diary entries written by Kafka from 1910 to 1911. These excerpts from journals may be the earliest translations of Kafka’s writings in China. The serious translations and introductions of Kafka in China started at the end of the 1970s. The first published article was “Kafka and His Works,” written by Ding Fang [丁方] and Shi Wen [施文] in World Literature Journal 《世 [ 界文学》 ] (the first issue of 1979). Ding Fang is the alias of Ye Tingfang [叶廷芳], and Shi Wen [施文], the alias of Li Wenjun [李文俊]. In the 30 years that followed, hundreds of journal articles on Kafka were published, along with various biographies and commentaries, including both translations of non-Chinese books and studies by Chinese scholars. The major works include The Explorer of Modern Art 《现代艺术的探险 [ 者》 ], Kafka: The Father of Modernist Literature 《卡夫卡——现代文学 [ 之父》 ], and The Awakening of Modern Aesthetic Consciousness 《现代审 [ 美意识的觉醒》 ], all written by Ye Tingfang; Kafka by Klaus Wagenbach, translated by Zhou Jianming [周建明], published by Beijing October Literature and Arts Publishing House in 1988; K: A Biography of Kafka by Ronald Hayman, translated by Zhao Qianlong [赵乾龙], published by The Writer’s Press in 1988; Franz Kafka: A Biography by Max Brod, translated by Ye Tingfang, published by Hebei Education Press in 1997. There were some other biographies written by Chinese scholars, including The Gentleness of Purgatory: Kafka by Lin Hesheng [林和生], published by Sichuan People Publishing House in 1997; Rebellious Personality: Kafka by Yan Jia [阎嘉], published by Yangtze River Literature and Arts Publishing House in 1996; Finding a Way Out in The Castle: The Life of Kafka by Yang Hengda [杨恒达], published by Shanghai World Book Publishing Company in 1994; The Biography of Kafka by Si Moyan [ 斯默言], published by North Eastern Normal University Press in 1996. Yang Hengda also edited a reader-friendly version of Kafka’s stories— The Distorted Castle: An Introduction to Kafka’s Works, published by Shanghai World Book Publishing Company in 1999. It is also worth mentioning that Can Xue [残雪], the famous avant-garde Chinese writer, published a monograph on Kafka—The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka in 1999. In addition, more than 200 papers on Kafka and dozens of collections of Kafka’s stories were also published. The most famous is The Complete Works of Franz Kafka, published by Hebei Education Press in 1996, which marks the pinnacle of Kafka studies in China.

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However, there is still a lack of monographs on Kafka despite the achievements in Kafka studies in China. In contrast, Japanese scholars made great progress in this area, with more than 30 monographs published from 1953 to 1995, according to the statistics in Yoshihiko Hirano’s book Kafka: Topos of Body. Compared with Kafka studies in the west or in Japan, there is still room to improve for Chinese scholars. Despite numerous studies with various methods and approaches, there is one perspective that needs due attention, especially for Chinese scholars, namely, the relationship between Kafka and Chinese culture. So far, the major research findings in this area include a doctoral thesis entitled Kafka and China (1985) by Chinese scholar Meng Weiyan [孟伟严] when he was in Munich University, Germany; another doctoral thesis entitled Kafka’s Writing and The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (1992) by Zhou Jianmin [周建民] when he was in Free University, Berlin; and a seminal book Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (1997) by Rolf J. Goebel from Alabama University, the U.S. In 1996, Kafka and China, edited by a Canadian scholar Adrian Hsia, was published simultaneously in Bonn, Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, Paris, and Vienna. In addition to a long introduction by the editor, six papers were collected in this book. In 1997, Ren Weidong [任卫东], a Ph.D. candidate at Beijing Foreign Studies University, wrote his thesis Kafka in China—A Reception History of a Modern Classic Writer in German. And in 2002, Jiang Zhiqin [姜智芹], a Ph.D. candidate at Shandong University wrote The Mirror of the Other: Kafka and Chinese Modern Novels in Chinese. Another doctoral thesis The Introductions and Translations of Kafka in China (1979 to Present) was written by Wang Wei [王蔚] from Shanghai Foreign Studies University. Moreover, there are a few relevant papers published. It is also worth noting that the Foreign Literature and Art journal (the 2nd issue) in Shanghai reprinted the article “Kafka’s Paradise” by American writer Joyce Oats in 1980. In this article, Oats discussed Kafka’s interest in Chinese culture, especially Chinese philosophy. “Though Kafka was deeply interested in ancient Chinese philosophy, especially Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, few critical studies have related his work to Taoism; yet it is in Taoism that we come across the very spirit of Kafka himself.”6 Oats’

6 Joyce Carol Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, p. 630.

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article was widely noticed by Chinese academics at that time, but they did not engage in further studies of this kind. To date, there has yet to be a monograph on Kafka and Chinese culture written in Chinese. As the world-famous theorist, Edward Said, once claimed, “The question is a matter of knowing how to read, as the deconstructionists say, and not detaching this from the issue of knowing what to read.”7 Once we have learned to change our perspectives and ways of thought, i.e., to a Chinese way of thinking and perspective, we might achieve unexpected findings. Kafka had a special affection for Chinese culture, even going so far as to refer to himself as ‘Chinese’. He was well read when it came to the translated Chinese classics, poetry, and legends; books about China and the East by Western scholars; and travel logs and memoirs by Western travelers, missionaries, journalists, officers, and merchants. He also referred to Chinese culture many times in his correspondence, diaries, and conversations, thereby indicating that he was full of admiration. In his letters to his girlfriend, Felice, he quoted repeatedly from the poem “In the Dead of Night” 《寒夜》 [ ] by Yuan Mei [袁枚], a famous Chinese poet in the Qing Dynasty. He also praised Hans Heilmanny’s collection of Chinese Lyrical Poetry and Buber’s Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, declaring that the latter “are wonderful, at least the ones I know.”8 Buber’s collection is actually a selection of stories from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. “Kafka not only admired the art of ancient Chinese pictures and woodcuts; he was also charmed by the proverbs, similes and sharply pointed parables of ancient Chinese philosophy and of the religious books which he read in the translations by the German sinologist, Richard Wilhelm-Tsingtau.”9 Richard Wilhelm-Tsingtau (1873–1930), known as Wei Lixian [卫礼贤] in Chinese, was a famous German Sinologist. He went to China as a missionary after the German occupation of Tsingtau in Shandong Province. After living in China for 25 years, he grew to love and admire its culture and thus became a scholar of Confucianism. Since 1903, Richard Wilhelm started to publish articles about China and Chinese culture, as well as translations of Chinese philosophical classics. By the year of Kafka’s death (1924), he had published 7 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 259. 8 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, eds. Erich Heller and Jurgen Born, trans. James Stern

and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 194. 9 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, trans. Goronway Rees (New York: New Directions Books, 2012), p. 191.

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several translations, including The Analects 《论语》 [ ] (1910), Laozi 《老 [ 子》 ] and Liezi 《列子》 [ ] (1911), Zhuangzi 《庄子》 [ ] (1912), A Collection of Chinese Folklore (1914), and I Ching 《易经》 [ ] (1914). Kafka gave Wilhelm’s A Collection of Chinese Folklore to his sister as a present. The first story that Kafka wrote, Description of a Struggle, is closely related to China. This connection was further addressed in his later works, such as “An Old Manuscript,” “The Great Wall of China,” and “An Imperial Message.” His other works also often contain ideas that are attuned to Chinese thought in one way or another. Throughout his life, Kafka had been engaging himself in imagining, reading, describing, and reinventing China, which was unique among Western writers. Why did Kafka have this special connection with Chinese culture? Why did he imagine and describe China, and build a new “Great Wall” in German through his works? The reasons are as follows: Firstly, there were many similarities shared by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and China at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Referring to as “a Germanic China” by Karl Marx, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a multiethnic empire with a vast territory and a large population. Various ethnic groups contributed to the crisis it endured in the late nineteenth century. The empire went through a historical transition from prosperity to decay and downfall. In the palace of the “Germanic Roman Emperor” in Vienna, the onetime capital of human civilization, there were ancient imperial emperors. These emperors came to power in the lifetime of Kafka’s grandparents and became a source of myths and legends and shadows of their own regime. A slow, dysfunctional, and endless bureaucratic system (bureaus, departments, ministries) was situated between the emperors and their ministers and subjects. It controlled everything in the name of the emperors and reported to no one.10 The Austro-Hungarian Empire retained medieval characteristics, such as an economy focused on agriculture, that hindered its social development.11 Franz Josef (Francis Joseph), Emperor of Austria, and King of Hungary reigned for nearly 70 years and saw the empire gradually decline during this period. The empire lost a series of wars that accelerated its downfall. It was divided into five 10 Dmitrii V. Zatonskii, “The True Color of Kafka”, in On Kafka, ed. Ye Tingfang (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1988), p. 468. 11 He Rong, Austro-Hungarian Empire (Aoxiong Diguo), (Xi’an: Sanqin Publishing House, 2001), p. 16.

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new nations after the First World War: Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, China had an agricultural economy and a miserable past caused by the decadence, backwardness, corruption, and incompetence of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Thus, Kafka’s attention to the social reality of the AustroHungarian Empire was easily redirected to that of China. In a sense, the description of Chinese society in his stories can be viewed as that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Secondly, the Jewish people also share quite a few similarities with the Chinese, such as a time-honored history and hard-working, witty, and even crafty characters. They underwent similar miseries, such as being bullied and invaded at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. As a Chinese scholar notes, “both Chinese and Jewish nations have a civilization of five thousand years. The founding year of the People’s Republic of China is close to the founding year of Israel. During the period from the Diaspora to the middle of the twentieth century, Jewish people came to China on many occasions. There is a certain bond and consensus between these two nations and two cultures.”12 The relationship between the god-like Chinese emperor and his subjects also has parallels within the history and religion of the Jewish people. As Zhang Longxi once noted, as the two cultures—the Hellenic and the Hebraic—have often been set up in a dichotomous relation with one another, a dichotomy within the Western tradition itself, of course, the Chinese culture and the Western culture has likewise been considered dichotomous, only that the former being the dichotomy within the Western culture and the latter being dichotomy between the Occident and the Orient.13 Therefore, being concerned with Chinese culture is in a way that is concerned with Jewish culture. Thirdly, China’s association with romance, exotic flavors, beautiful scenery, and extraordinary experiences has rendered it an image of utopia for Europeans imagining a way to escape from their continent. For example, during 1814–1815, Goethe wrote in one of his poetic collections, West–East Divan:

12 Zhang Qianhong, Jewish People, Jewish Spirit (Beijing: The Publishing House of the China Literary Federation, 1999), pp. 12–3. 13 Zhang Longxi, “Cultural Differences and Cultural Constructs: Reflections on Jewish and Chinese Literalism”, Poetics Today, 1998, 19 (2): 305–28.

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North and South and West—they shake! Thrones are cracking, empires quake, To the purer East, then, fly Patriarchal air to try: Loving, drinking, songs among, Khizer’s rill will make you young.14

“The East” here refers to ancient civilizations, such as Persia, India, and China. Goethe’s West–East Divan ignited an “East fever” throughout Europe. The Europeans were struck by the powerful line “To the purer East, then, Fly,” and in his own time, Kafka felt it even more strongly than others. He referred to Prague as a “little mother with claws,” which would never let him go. Immediately after graduating from middle school in 1902, Kafka turned to his uncle, Alfred Lowy, who worked for Spanish railways, in the hope of finding a job that would allow him to “go to some place and start over.” When he went to college, he became desperate to transfer himself to Munich and from there to another place. After college graduation, he wrote in a letter to Max Brod, “my uncle would have to find us a position in Spain, or else we would go to South America or the Azores, to Madeira.”15 Kafka later found a job in an insurance company. Although bored by the job, Kafka derived optimism from the hope of “someday sitting in chairs in faraway countries, looking out of the office windows at fields of sugar cane or Mohamedan cemeteries.”16 Even upon his death, Kafka hoped to live in Palestine with Dora Diamant. He loved activities such as traveling, hiking, and walking, which were depicted in many of his stories. Kafka wrote a mini-story, which was later entitled “The Departure” by Brod: I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables. The servant did not understand my orders. So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked: “Where is the master going?” “I don’t 14 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West–East Divan: The Poems, with “Notes and Essays”: Goethe’s Intercultural Dialogs, trans. Martin Bidney (New York: State University of New York Press, 2010), p. 3. 15 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), p. 28. 16 Nicolas Murray, Kafka (London: Abacus, 2005), p. 67.

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know,” I said, “just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it’s the only way I can reach my goal.” “So, you know your goal?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “I’ve just told you. Out of here—that’s my goal.”17

To Kafka, the goal is to be “out of here” to get out of Prague. This strong and intense wish to run away from Prague and Europe directed Kafka’s eyes, again and again, to the east and to China. Ancient China, although strange to Europeans, seemed familiar to Kafka, since he felt like a complete stranger in Europe. Fourthly, the meaning of literary creation lies in the imagination, description, and construction of China. Kafka deemed writing the meaning of his life and the best means of communication and engaging in dialog. He once said, “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?… However, we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”18 When making comments on a German poet Johannes Robert Becher (1891–1958), Kafka criticized Becher’s poems for failing to reach effective dialogs with his readers: “Instead of bridges, the words form high unscalable walls. One is continually offended by the form, so that one can never penetrate to the content.”19 The most difficult communication might be cross-cultural, especially between the West and China. Therefore, it is of great significance for Kafka to search for possibilities of communication with the culture of the East, especially with China. Fifthly, the language barrier is one of the biggest hindrances to mutual communication between the East and the West. Kafka was situated at points of intersection between the German, Jewish, and Czech cultures. Often, ethnic conflicts are simultaneously cultural or linguistic. Kafka had always been concerned with language, maintaining that it is the foundation of human existence. Without it, we lose our home, our foundation. 17 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 448. 18 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, p. 20. 19 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 78.

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He held that human language can best represent human nature: “Certainly language is the most common possession of all men: all people speak, just as in the nation of mice everyone whistles, but only in the whistling of Kafka’s artist, the singing mouse Josephine, is it free from the fetters of daily life, and it sets us free too for a little while.”20 “Language is the music and breath of home. I—but I am badly asthmatic, since I can speak neither Czech nor Hebrew. I am learning both. But that is as if one were pursuing a dream. How can one find outside oneself something which ought to come from within?”21 “Language is an essential intermediary, something living, a medium. Yet language must not be used as a means, but rather experienced, or even suffered. Language is eternal mistress.”22 “Being is most of all a being-with-things, a dialogue.”23 Such comments and descriptions about language are ubiquitous in Kafka’s letters, diaries, and stories. The most difficult and important problem is the possibility and necessity of mutual communication and translation between the languages of the East and the West. Kafka’s concern with language is also one of the biggest concerns in the literature of the twentieth century. Lastly, Kafka’s family gave him the chances and the possibility to know about China. One of Kafka’s uncles, Josef Lowy, established a colonial trade company in Paris. That Josef once made it to China is evidenced by the presence of his name on the passenger list of a shipping line, which also indicates that he departed from Shanghai by ship to Hankou in October 1903 and left Hankou for Qufu in November.24 Between 1903 and 1906, he was the Chinese representative for his company, and his descriptions of the country must have made a great impression on Kafka. For example, in Kafka’s China-related stories, we find implicit references to the fact that, although highly developed in culture, China remained at a medieval stage in terms of its technological innovations and the fact that imperial power only took control nominally, wielding little power on local administrations and officials.

20 Franz Kafka, Letter to Felice, p. 10. 21 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 115. 22 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 117. 23 Ibid., p. 34. 24 Anthony Northey, Kafka’s Relatives: Their Lives and his Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 26.

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The preceding factors explain Kafka’s China complex. As a Germanspeaking Jew living in Prague, he did not have much patriotic sentiment toward the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and yet he was upset when the Slavic culture replaced the multiculture of the empire: “As a Jew not quite to the Christian world; and as a non-practising Jew—as he originally was—not quite among the Jews. As a German-speaking Czech, not quite among the Czechs; and as a German-speaking Jew, not quite among the Bohemian Germans. As a Bohemian, not quite to Austria. As an official of a workers’ insurance company, not quite to the middle class. Yet as the son of a middle-class family, not quite to the working class. He cannot feel at home among his office colleagues, for he knows himself to be a writer. But he is unable to live entirely as a writer either, for he sacrifices his energies to the welfare of his family. But ‘in my family I am more estranged than a stranger.’”25 Kafka seems to be no one and everyone; his rootlessness makes him cosmopolitan. This cosmopolitan perspective distinguishes Kafka from the average nationalist, imperialist, and religious writers in terms of their understandings of the East and China. In 1946, Angel Flores wrote his introduction to The Kafka Problem that he had himself edited, Thomas Mann once lent his friend Albert Einstein a book by Kafka. It is said that Einstein returned the book with the comment: “I couldn’t read it. The human mind isn’t complicated enough.” I don’t how much this story is true, but after years of studying reviews of Kafka, I think I can say for sure that Einstein is the only one who admitted that Kafka is incomprehensible. Almost everyone who has read Kafka, let alone anyone who hasn’t, is in doubt whether he or she fully understands him. It is even more doubtful if someone claims that he is only one who really understands Kafka.26

I dare not say that I have understood Kafka, but I am willing to read him, to explore his world, and to approach him with all those who love him. Kafka’s world is a mystery full of temptations and confusions, and it

25 Gunther Anders, Franz Kafka, trans. A. Steer and A. K. Thorlby (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1960), p. 18. 26 Angel Flores, Introduction. The Kafka Problem (New York: Gordian Press, 1975),

p. ix.

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is difficult and painful to make friends with him. However, his problems are deep; his pain is profound, and his words are prophetic. Let us clear our mind and listen to what he is telling us.

CHAPTER 2

Sinking to the Seabed of Chinese Culture: Franz Kafka and Traditional Chinese Culture

Feeling a special connection to traditional Chinese culture, Franz Kafka featured China and Chinese subjects in quite a few of his works, and certain Chinese flavors and characteristics manifested themselves in his works. On the other hand, Kafka’s writings exert great influence in contemporary China. Inspiring so many Chinese readers and writers, he is regarded as one of the most influential Western writers in China in the twentieth century. In this sense, it will be of great significance to study Kafka and his connection to traditional Chinese culture, which not only provides a unique perspective for us to understand Kafka but also helps to explain why he has gained such prominence in China today.

2.1

China in German Culture

The cultural exchanges between Germany and China can be traced back to Notker Teutonicus’s comments on Boethius in 1000 AD, in which the German word “seres” was first used to refer to a remote, dreamy Asian country famous for its silk production.1 The word “seres” was also mentioned in Heinrich der Löwe’s commissioned book Lucidarius (1190) and Rudolf von Ems’s The Chronicle of the World (Weltchronik, 1240). According to the known historical record, at the beginning of 1 “Seres” refers to silk.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_2

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the fourteenth century, not long before Marco Polo, the Italian explorer published Book of the Marvels of the World, Bruder Arnold, a German Catholic missionary arrived in Khanbaliq or Dadu, the capital of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), and he became the first German to set foot upon Chinese soil. During the Age of Enlightenment across Europe, the “Chinese Vogue” took place in Germany, where “Chinese objects were popular and Chinese arts and lifestyle, the so-called Chinoiserie, became a fad. Apart from traditional products such as silk and tea, other imported products included ceramics, lacquer, lacquer wares, wallpaper, shadow puppet plays and even sedan chairs.”2 All these paved the way for more cultural exchanges, communications, and interactions between China and Germany. However, it is not the intention of this book to exhaust all aspects of these cultural encounters. This book aims to describe and analyze Kafka’s understanding of China through his German cultural background. Greatly intrigued by philosophy at college, Kafka attended lectures by a Swiss-born Austrian philosopher Anton Marty and participated in philosophical discussions in some of the literary cafés. He was deeply impressed and inspired by Marty’s lectures on Kant’s Pure Reason Critique and “The Philosophy of Praxis” given by another young faculty member named Christine Von Alanfields. During this period, Kafka made great efforts in studying Kant and Hegel. Therefore, it is beyond doubt that Kafka was under the influence of German thinkers who began to describe or pass comments on China a long time ago. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), a great German philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, started to study Chinese philosophy at the age of 20, and it became a lifelong interest. As one Chinese scholar noted, “He was one of the best European scholars of the time to take an immense interest in Chinese philosophy and to be greatly influenced by it.”3 In a letter to Domingo Fernández Navarrete, a Spanish Dominican missionary, in 1689, Leibniz wrote, “For a person with intellectual curiosity, nothing is more desirable than visiting and listening to someone who can tell us those treasures and secrets that have been buried in the Far East [i.e., China] for centuries.” Leibniz’s 2 Qtd. in Yang Wuneng, Goethe and China (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1991), p. 4. 3 Jiao Shu’an, “On Leibniz on Chinese Philosophy”, The Study of the History of Chinese Philosophy, 1981 (3), p. 20.

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lifetime coincided with the early period of China’s Qing Dynasty (1636– 1912) when a large number of European missionaries came to China. Their missions were bidirectional in the sense that they also introduced a series of books about Chinese philosophy, literature, history, morality, and law back to Europe, and this gave rise to the “Chinese Vogue” at that time. In 1697, Leibniz edited and published a book in Latin called Novissima Sinica, which was a collection of reports and correspondence from the Society of Jesus in China. The goal of this book was “to forge a genuine cultural exchange between China and the West. He [Leibniz] held that in these exchanges, the West should be receptive to learning from China, as well as offering to teach.”4 Leibniz wrote a 10,000-word introduction that touched upon 23 issues regarding China. For instance, with respect to Chinese emperors, he wrote, “Who will not be amazed by the fact that the sovereignty of such a big empire is viewed as the omnipotent God as if he can make anything happen.”5 Leibniz conducted a comprehensive study on Chinese philosophy, touching upon Chinese classics such as Book of Documents 《尚书》 [ ], I Ching 《易经》 [ ], The Great Learning 《大学》 [ ], The Doctrine of the Mean 《中庸》 [ ] and the works by philosophers of Song and Ming Dynasties. In his famous 40,000-word A Letter to Nicole Rémond on Chinese Philosophy, Leibniz wrote: China is a great Empire, no less in area than cultivated Europe, and indeed surpasses it in population and orderly government. Moreover, there is in China a public morality admirable in certain regards, conjoined to a philosophical doctrine, or rather a natural theology, venerable by its antiquity, established and authorized for about 3000 years, long before the philosophy of the Greeks whose works nevertheless are the earliest which the rest of the world possess, except of course for our Sacred Writings.6

4 An Wenzhu, etc., Leibniz and China (Fuzhou: Fujian People’s Publishing House, 1993), p. 86. 5 Xia Ruichun, ed., German Thinkers on China, trans. Chen Aizhen, etc. (Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Press, 1995), pp. 16–7. 6 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Writings on China, trans. Daniel J. Cook & Henry Rosemont Jr. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1994), p. 78.

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Harboring a great admiration for Chinese philosophy and culture, Leibniz held that Sino-European relations should be based on an equal footing, mutual understanding, and open communication, despite their impositions upon one another. He said, “Nations which are far away from each other, should build a new mode of communication. Other nations are not entitled to impose upon the Chinese.”7 This view was fully conveyed in Hans Heilmann’s collection of Chinese lyrical poems and later in Kafka’s thoughts and works. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was the founder of German classical philosophy, and his work was also considered to be seminal to the modernist literature in the West. Kant showed a certain interest in Chinese culture in the 1790s when he made comments such as “The Chinese empire has large territory…it is no doubt the nation with the largest population and arable lands in the world. According to statistics, the population of China equals the total population in Europe.” Kant also mentioned the Jewish people living in China: “Like the Jews living along Indian Malabar Coast, the Jewish people here (in China) who migrated to this place B.C.E., have little knowledge about Judaism.”8 These Jewish people, who knew little about Judaism, certainly struck a chord in Kafka, a Jew living in Western Europe. Johann Gottfried Herder, a student of Kant, was another German thinker, philosopher, and literary critic who took interest in China and the East. As a great eighteenth-century thinker, Herder exerted significant influence on the literature and philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His commentary on the East, especially on China, was quite striking. Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach wrote, “If there is a thinker who made unbiased judgments on eastern nations and cultures and whose comments are still relevant today, it must be Herder.”9 Herder’s descriptions of, and analogies based upon, China’s stagnant history, imperial institutions, and unsophisticated political systems resonated in the works of later thinkers such as Hegel, Schlegel, Schelling, and Marx.

7 Xia Ruichun, ed., German Thinkers on China, p. 21. 8 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, “China—Deified Philosophy”, Chinese Impression:

World Celebrities on Chinese Culture, ed. He Zhaowu (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2001), p. 176. 9 Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, Johann Gottfried Herder, trans. Ren Li (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1993), p. 1.

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Kafka was also influenced by Herder’s account of China. Herder commented on China in his The Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1787). He noticed certain similarities between the Chinese and the Jewish people and made the rather negative point that “other than being proud of not being assimilated by other nations like the Jewish people, they [the Chinese] have nothing else to be proud of.” Herder’s summary of the features of the Chinese empire was often noted and quoted by westerners: Is it to be wondered, that a nation of this kind should have invented little in the sciences according to the European standard? Or that it has remained for some thousands of years at the same point? Even its books of law and morality continually pace round the same circle, and carefully and precisely say the same things of childish duties, in a hundred different ways, with systematic hypocrisy. Its music and astronomy, poetry and tactics, painting and architecture, are as they were centuries ago, the children of its eternal law, and unalterably childish institutions. The empire is an embalmed mummy, wrapped in silk, and painted with hieroglyphics: its internal circulation is that of a dormouse in its winter sleep. Hence the system of keeping foreigners separate, acting the spy over them, and throwing obstacles in their way: hence the pride of the nation, which compares itself with itself alone, and neither knows nor loves strangers.10

Herder’s negative and figurative language, such as “pace round the same circle,” “childish,” “mummy,” and “hieroglyphics,” became the most classic formulations of Sinophobic discourse in the West. As Rolf J. Goebel pointed out: Herder’s idea is the major source of discourse about Asia in the West. Besides Schelling and Marx, other philosophers such as Hegel and Schlegel would not comment on Chinese issues without referencing Herder’s examples and discussions. This orientalist discourse formed by Herder’s modes of expression, themes, metaphors and ideologies connects him intertextually with the modernists including Kafka.11

10 Gottfried Johann Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Mann, trans. T. Churchill (NY: Bergman Publishers, 1966), p. 136. 11 Rolf J. Goebel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (Columbia: Camden House, 1997), p. 28.

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Marx made a similar comment to Herder’s: A prerequisite of the preservation of old China is its remaining completely separated from the outside world. When this separation was disrupted under the force of the British, this necessitated a rebirth; once fresh air penetrates the hitherto airtight coffin of a well-protected mummy, it will disintegrate.12

Here, Marx went further and foretold the collapse of China’s old political system and the coming of a new age. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), a Great German thinker and writer, held that Herder was “a thinker ahead of his time.” As he put it, “one of the most significant events in my life is to get to know Herder and form a close relationship with him.”13 Like Herder, Goethe was a key figure in the history of Sino-German cultural exchanges. Having been exposed to Chinese culture since his childhood, Goethe named his living room on the second floor of his house in Frankfurt am Main, “Peking Hall,” and decorated it with Chinese-style lacquer furniture, colored porcelain figures with long mustaches, and wax-dyed wall hangings with Chinese patterns. In the music room on the same floor, there was an ancient organ with a touch of Chinese style. A typical Chinese landscape painting can be seen on the lid of the organ: mountains, rivers, willows, pagodas, and fishing figures, forming an ambiance of peace and serenity in the Chinese countryside. These Chinese elements left Kafka with a deep impression when he visited Goethe’s home. It is said that Goethe read the Latin versions of China’s Four Books and that he devoted himself to the study of China from 1812 to 1815 and from 1827 to 1829. Based on the translated German versions of such Chinese literary works as Hau Kiou Choaan or The Pleasing History 《好逑传》 [ ], Hua Jian Ji—Chinese Courtship 《花笺记》 [ ], Iu-Kiao-Li or the Two Fair Cousins 《玉娇梨》 [ ], The Book of Hundred Beauties 《百美新 [ 咏》 ], Goethe wrote his Chinese-German Book of Hours and Seasons, which carries a strong Chinese flavor. These poems “are the fruits of Goethe’s efforts of learning Chinese culture, which embodies the influence and 12 Karl Marx, “Chinese Revolution and European Revolution”, The Collections of Marx and Engels, vol. 2 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1972), p. 3. 13 Goethe, The Autobiography, trans. Liu Simu (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1983), p. 412.

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inspiration that Chinese literature has on Goethe.” The eighth poem of the collection is considered the most Chinese: Dusk has settled from above, All that was new is now far away; However, first was lifted up the evening star, shining gently! Everything floats away into uncertainty, Mists creep upwards, The lake is at rest And only reflects black depths of darkness. Now in the eastern range I have a presentiment of the moon’s glow and radiance, The hairlike branches of gracious willows Stroke playfully over the water near me. Lunar magic tremors through the moving shadows, And through the eye A calming coolness steals into the heart.14

When it comes to the Chinese, Goethe noted in one of his conversations, they: think, act, and feel almost exactly like us; and we should feel perfect congeniality with them, if all they do were not more clear, more pure and decorous than with us. With them all is well contrived, citizen-like, without great passion or poetic flight; […] they differ from us in another way. Among them, external nature is always associated with the human figures. You always hear the goldfishes plashing in the pond, and the birds singing on the bough; the day is always serene and sunny, the night always clear. There is much talk about the moon, but its light does not alter the landscape, because it is as clear as that of day itself.15

As one of his favorite writers, Goethe’s commentary on China seemed to have been so enlightening to Kafka that he once referred to himself as Chinese. He highlighted the theme of man and nature through a long and detailed description of the moon and the landscape under the moon. 14 Qtd. in Yang Wuneng, Goethe and China (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 57, 66–7. 15 Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, trans. S. M. Fuller (Boston: Hilliard, Gary, and Company, 2016), pp. 201–2.

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Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, another great German writer, was also an admirer of Chinese culture, having read some Chinese novels such as Hau Kiou Choaan or The Pleasing History. He wrote The Proverbs of Confucius and adapted and translated the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi’s tragicomedy Turandot: The Princess of China. This is how Schiller describes the Great Wall in China in his translated version: How many centuries flew by As it stood still under the sky Against time and tide? It soars into cloud, and winds its way to the ocean. It is not built for showpiece, But for the well-being of the people, guarding them; It is the most extraordinary piece of work Created by the most ordinary people. This ancient, solid construction Weathered through turbulence and age, Reaching the infinite, Protecting hundreds of thousands of people. It is the Great Wall, A divide between the world and the desert of the Tartars.

Schiller’s account of the Great Wall resonates in many places in Kafka’s Building the Great Wall of China. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) made comments on Chinese history and culture mainly in his Philosophy of History and Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Hegel noticed that China lacked change despite its large population, vast territory, and long history. He said: By the lowest calculation, China has 150,000,000 of inhabitants; another makes the number 200,000,000, and the highest raises it even to 300,000,000. From far north, it stretches toward the south to India; on the east, it is bounded by the vast Pacific, and on the west, it extends toward Persia and the Caspian.16 16 Georg W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1991), p. 134.

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Hegel went on saying: With the Empire of China History has to begin…Early do we see China advancing to the condition in which it is found at this day; for as the contrast between objective existence and subjective freedom of movement in it, is still wanting, every change is excluded, and the fixedness of a character which recurs perpetually, takes the place of what we should call the truly historical.17

These views and commentaries also resonate in Kafka’s works. Hegel discusses Oriental and Chinese philosophy at the beginning of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History: We thus find only dry understanding amongst the Easterners…It is the same as in their worship, which is complete immersion in devotion and then an endless number of ceremonials and of religious actions; and this on the other side is the exaltitude of that illimitable in which everything disappears.18

When it comes to China’s I Ching philosophy, Hegel noted: The Y-King consists of figures, which have been regarded as the bases of the Chinese written character, and this book is also considered the groundwork of the Chinese Meditation. For it begins with the abstractions of Unity and Duality, and then treats of the concrete existences pertaining to these abstract forms of thought.19

Then, Hegel quoted Windischmann: “if Windischmann in his commentary recognizes in this system of Confucius, a thorough interconnection between all Kua, in the whole series.” Hegel commented on Confucius: “there is a circumlocution, a reflex character, and circuitousness in the thought, which prevents it from rising above mediocrity.”20 Some of the features summarized by Hegel, such as “concrete existences pertaining to these abstract forms of thought” and “circumlocution and 17 Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 132–3. 18 Georg W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, trans. He Lin, etc.

(Beijing: Commercial Press, 1959), p. 118. 19 Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 134. 20 Ibid., p. 154.

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circuitousness,” resonate with Kafka’s parables. Perhaps through Hegel, Chinese philosophy inspired Kafka in many ways. Hegel also made a long commentary on Taoism. He said: We still have his [Lao-Tso] principal writings; they have been taken to Vienna, and I have seen them there myself. One special passage is frequently taken from them: ‘Without a name Tao is the beginning of Heaven and Earth, and with a name she is the Mother of the Universe. It is only in her imperfect state that she is considered with affection; who desires to know her must be devoid of passions.’ Abel Remusat says that taken at its best this might be expressed by the Greek in oogoς [logos].21

“Tao” is “logos,” “principle,” or “law,” and Kafka’s short story “Before the law” can be interpreted as “the gate to Tao.” For Chinese emperors and imperial censors, Hegel noted: From all this it is clear that “the Emperor is the center, around which everything turns; consequently the well-being of the country and people depends on him.” And “In every Ministry, and in various parts of the Empire, there is a Censor (Ko-tao), who has to give the Emperor an account of everything. These Censors enjoy a permanent office, and are very much feared.”22

These commentaries lead to the association with Kafka’s short story An Imperial Message. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) had an in-depth analysis of Chinese culture and language in his philosophy of mythology. In Schelling’s view, Chinese are not a nation, “They are, rather, a pure humanity … an arrested portion of the Absolute prehistoric humanity.” Whereas other people were formed by the divisive effect of the mythological process, China “remained completely outside the mythological movement.” While other great kingdoms have come and gone, China remains. China stands immune to internal disruption insofar as the Emperor manifests “the sovereign of the world, because the middle, the

21 Georg W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, trans. He Lin, etc. (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1959), p. 127. 22 Ibid.

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center, the power of heaven is in him.”23 The supreme power of the emperors, the patriarchal order and authority were duly noted in Kafka’s China-related stories. Schelling also thought that the monosyllabic language of the Chinese is a remnant of the primal languages of the human race before the confusion of tongues produced a multitude of polysyllabic languages. China was associated with the “absolute prehistorical” age. In one of his short stories, “An Old Manuscript,” Kafka describes a group of nomads who show no signs of culture for the lack of language: “Indeed they hardly have a language of their own. They communicate with each other much as jackdaws do. A screeching of jackdaws is always in our ears.”24 This description seems to be inspired by Schelling. In addition, Schelling commented on Laozi’s philosophy as follows: “Tao means gate, the gate from non-being into being.”25 Gate was often mentioned in Kafka’s works, and the gate in the famous short story “Before the Law” can be interpreted from this perspective. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was also a major influence on Kafka. He often referred to Nietzsche in his journals and letters. Of Nietzsche’s works, Kafka’s favorite was Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he was also interested in On the Genealogy of Morality and The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche once noted in his The Gay Science: Would a woman be able to hold us (or “enthrall” us, as they say) if we did not consider her able under certain circumstances to wield a dagger deftly (any kind of dagger) against us? Or against herself—which in certain cases would be the more severe revenge (Chinese revenge).26

This Chinese revenge was applied by Kafka in his personal life when dealing with his parents, girlfriends, or society. However, he also applied it in his works, rendering it a behavioral trait of some of his main characters,

23 Qtd in Paul Collins Hayner, Reason and Existence: Schelling’s Philosophy of History (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1967), p. 151. 24 Franz Kafka, “An Old Manuscript”, in The Completed Stories, p. 415. 25 Qtd in He Zhaowu, ed. Chinese Impression: World Celebrities on Chinese Cultures,

p. 237. 26 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 126.

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such as Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis , Josef K in The Trail, and K in The Castle. Nietzsche also made a comment on the Chinese in his Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudice of Morality that they “might as a whole contribute to the blood of restless and fretful Europe something of Asiatic calm and contemplativeness and—what is probably needed most—Asiatic perseverance.”27 The Chinese characteristics of calm, contemplativeness, and perseverance are attributed to the overweight Chinese man in Description of a Struggle. Kafka came to know China through the aforementioned German thinkers and writers. Carl Jung noted in his memorial address for Richard Wilhelm: The spirit of the East is really at our gates. Therefore it seems to me that the search for tao, for a meaning in life, has already become a collective phenomenon among us, and to a far greater extent than is generally realized.28

It is against this background that Kafka gradually immersed himself in Chinese culture and identified himself with the Chinese, thus dedicating his life to the building of a German cultural “Great Wall.”

2.2

“I Am a Chinese”

There are approximately fourteen direct references to China in Kafka’s correspondence and journals, eight of which are in letters to his girlfriend Felice Bauer and pertain to a Chinese poem. Another two references are from his letters to Milena Jesenská and are principally concerned with Tibet and Chinese ghost stories. The remaining four references pertain to Chinese culture, art, and customs and can be found in his letters and journals to his friends. Of all the references to China, the most striking one is from a postcard that Kafka sent to Felice from Marienbad, a hot-spring resort, in May

27 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, eds. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 207. 28 C. Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, trans. R. E. C. Hull (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 59.

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1916. He admired the natural scenery of that area, describing the beauty of the land: beauty is now enhanced by silence and emptiness, and by the readiness to accept all animate and inanimate nature, hardly spoiled by the dull and windy weather. I think that if I were Chinese and were going home (at bottom, I am Chinese and am going home), I would soon have to find a way to come back here.29

Some Western scholars tried to interpret the meaning of this paragraph by associating it with the Chinese idiom, “Falling leaves return to their roots.” However, if Kafka considers himself Chinese, the roots or home here should not be China, but perhaps Jerusalem. Other scholars speculated that this might be because he thought of the Chinese in the poem “In the Dead of Night” 《寒夜》 [ ], who worked hard at night like him when he was at the Marienbad resort. Or perhaps, as a German-speaking Jew in Prague, and like the Chinese in Europe, he found it hard to fit in? He might also have associated his physical feebleness with the weak image of the Chinese in the eyes of Europeans.30 While these proposals are all speculative, there can be no doubts concerning Kafka’s intense interest in, and affection for, Chinese culture, especially ancient China. The aforementioned poem “In the Dead of Night” was written by Yuan Mei [袁枚], a famous poet in the Qing Dynasty in China. Kafka wrote in one of his letters to Felice on November 24, 1912: But wait a moment, to prove that nightwork everywhere, even in China, is left to men, I’ll go to the bookshelf (it’s in the next room) to get a book and copy out for you a short Chinese poem … It is by the poet Yuan Tzutsai [袁子才] (1716–1797), on whom I find the comment: “Very talented and precocious, had a brilliant career in the civil service. He was uncommonly versatile both as man and artist.” To understand the poem, one should know that well-to-do Chinese sprinkle their sleeping quarters with fragrant essences before going to sleep. The poem may be very slightly improper, but its lack of propriety is amply complemented for by its beauty. Here it is at last: 29 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, eds. Erich Heller and Jurgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 157. 30 Wei Maoping, The History of Chinese Influence on German Literature (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1996), pp. 409–10.

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IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

In the cold night, while poring over my book, I forgot the hour of bedtime. The scent of my gold-embroidered bedcover Has already evaporated, The fire in the hearth burns no more. My beautiful mistress, Who hitherto has controlled Her wrath with difficulty, Snatches away the lamp, And asks: Do you know how late it is?

Well? This is a poem one has to savour to the full.31 The comment on Yuan Mei (Yuan Tzu-tsai) quoted by Kafka in this letter is not entirely accurate. “Very talented” is true since Yuan started to learn Chinese classics, such as The Great Learning and The Analects, and began to write poems at the age of 7.32 “Precocious” is not as exact as “enjoying success when very young,” since Yuan passed the countylevel imperial exam at the age of 12, the provincial level at 23, and was appointed Shujishi [庶吉士], working as an apprentice in the imperial academy after passing the highest exam. However, the good fortune did not last long, as he was relegated to be the magistrate in several counties in southern China for “failing to learn Manchu language.” Yuan decided to retire from office at 33 and moved to the Garden of Leisure in Xiao Cangshan, Nanjing. Thereafter, he entertained himself with poems and articles, mountains and rivers, and parties with friends, becoming the leader of the poetry circle. So he did not exactly have “a brilliant career in the civil service” with such early retirement. “Uncommonly versatile” was not as exact as “prolific and unique.” Nevertheless, Kafka had a fine understanding of Yuan’s poem, referring to it many times in his letters to Felice. For instance, he wrote from December 4 to 5, 1912, Here, as opposed to China, it’s the man who wants to take the light from his love. But this does not mean that he is more reasonable than the Chinese bookworm (in Chinese literature one keeps coming across this 31 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, p. 117. 32 Yuan Mei, Xiao Cangshan Collection of Poetry and Essays (Shanghai: Shanghai

Ancient Works Publishing House, 1988), p. 123.

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combination of ridicule and respect for the “bookworm”), for though he is against his beloved writing letters at night, he avidly grabs these same night letters from the mailman.33

On January 13, 1913, he wrote, “At around 2 o’clock every morning I keep remembering the Chinese scholar. Alas, it is not my mistress who calls me, it’s only the letter I want to write to her.”34 He wrote five days later on January 19: Don’t underestimate, dearest, the steadfastness of that Chinese woman! Until the early morning—I don’t remember whether the hour is specified—she lay awake in her bed, the glow of the reading lamp kept her awake, but she remained quiet; perhaps by her glances she tried to divert the scholar’s attention from his book, but the unhappy man, though greatly devoted to her, didn’t notice; God only knows how many sad reasons he had for not noticing, reasons beyond his control but which altogether, in a higher sense, were again devoted only to her. But finally she could no longer contain herself, and did take the lamp away from him, which after all was quite right, beneficial to his health, one hopes not harmful to his studies, conducive to love, which inspired a beautiful poem, and yet, all things considered, was mere self-deception on the woman’s part.35

He continued on January 21 that this Chinese poem had “acquired such great meaning” for both of them. “Didn’t you notice that it was specifically about the scholar’s mistress, and not his wife, although the scholar is undoubtedly an elderly man, and the combination of scholarship and age would seem to contradict the presence of a mistress. But the poet, ruthlessly striving only for the final situation, ignores this improbability.” “Dearest, what a dreadful poem that is, I hadn’t realized it. Perhaps, since it can be opened up, it can also be crushed under foot and left behind; human life has many levels; the eye sees but one possibility, but in the heart all possibilities are present. What do you think, dearest?”.36 On March 11, 1913, he wrote to Felice: “I have been thinking for some time: May I call you ‘Fe’? This was how you sometimes used to 33 Kafka, Letters to Felice, p. 119. 34 Ibid., p. 197. 35 Ibid., p. 260. 36 Ibid., p. 190.

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sign your letter; it also reminds one of ‘Fee’ [fairy], and of the beautiful land of China ….”37 Hereby, China was idealized as a fairytale land full of exotic flavors and fairies. Felice was also orientalized by this name. Kafka compares his relationship with Felice to a couple of “Lang (Scholar)” [郎] and “Beauty” [美人] in Chinese poems. Like a Chinese “Lang,” a Chinese scholar, a “bookworm,” Kafka had conflicting thoughts such as wanting to take his girlfriend’s lamp away while waiting desperately for her letters; working hard at night while being unable to resist writing to her; admiring the strength for love of this Chinese “beauty” while regarding her as self-deceiving. Ultimately, he found the poem dreadful, for its highlighting of multiple possibilities only one of which can be seen by people. Thus, Kafka defines and analyzes his relationship with Felice through this Chinese poem, which is reflected in his works, such as the ambiguous relationship between K. and Frieda in The Castle. Furthermore, Kafka wrote in one of the letters (after 1920) to Milena Jesenská: “I am reading a book about Tibet; at a description of a settlement near the Tibetan border in the mountains my heart grows suddenly heavy, this village seems so hopelessly deserted, so far from Vienna. Would it really be far?”38 Kafka believed that Tibet was close to his heart and that village near the Tibetan border was indeed the village under the castle in his novel The Castle. On January 16, 1913, Kafka mentioned Martin Buber in one of his letters to Felice, saying that he “knows a lot, there were some Chinese stories.” He commented Buber’s Chinese Ghost and Love Stories as “wonderful, at least the ones I know.”39 Martin Buber (1878–1965), a German Jew, was one of the greatest German religious philosophers. From 1909 to 1910, Buber was invited to Prague as a guest lecturer and gave three talks on Judaism and Jews, which Kafka might have attended.40 As an expert in both Jewish culture and Chinese culture, Buber served as a bridge between them. In 1916, Buber founded the famous Jewish journal in Germany The Jew (Der Jude), which published quite a lot of Kafka’s short stories and novellas. Buber was 37 Ibid., p. 230. 38 Qdt. in Norman Manea, “Nomadic Language”, The Writer Uprooted: Contemporary

Jewish Exile Literature, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (Indiana UP, 2008), p. 8. 39 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, p. 194. 40 Noah Isenberg, Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of Germen-Jewish

Modernism (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 24.

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regarded as a Chinese expert after publishing two books about China: Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables (1910) and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories (1911). Chinese Ghost and Love Stories was actually the German version of the Chinese classic Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, one of Kafka’s favorite German writers, adapted one of the stories “Lotus Princess” into one of his ballet plays in 1916 with great success in Europe. Kafka’s stories about small animals and metamorphosis might be related to Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. He mentioned in one of his letters that he was Reading a Chinese book…it’s concerned exclusively with death. A man lies on his deathbed and in the independence given him by the proximity of death, he says: “I’ve spent my life trying to fight lust and to put an end to it.” Then a pupil mocks his teacher who speaks of nothing but death: “You talk about death all the time but still you don’t die.” “I’ll die all the same. I’m just singing my last song. One man’s song is longer, another’s shorter. The difference, however, can never be more than a few words.”

He then commented: “This is true, and it’s unjust to smile about the hero who lies mortally wounded on the stage and sings an aria. We lie on the ground and sing for years.”41 This can be viewed as a summary of Kafka’s life. He made no name in the literature, living a solitary life without a wife and children, and was thus subject to ridicule, especially by his father. He seemed to be constantly threatened by imminent death and tried to resist all forms of lust. However, Kafka never gave up on writing, performing like the hero who sings aria upon dying. His oeuvre is indeed a long last song. As for Chinese poetry, Kafka loved Hans Heilmann’s collection of Chinese Lyrical Poetry, which was published in Munich in 1905. It contained 88 Chinese ancient lyrical poems. The first was “Hill Climbing,” selected from the Chinese Classic The Book of Songs 《诗经 [ 》 ]. There were also 26 poems by the famous Tang poet Li Bai [李白], and 13 by Du Fu [杜甫]. Heilmann wrote a 40-page-long preface to the collection, giving a detailed account and comment on China’s lyrical poem tradition. Kafka was greatly impressed by the collection and quoted 41 Qtd. in Klaus Wagenbach, Kafka: A Life in Prague, trans. Peter Lewis (London: Haus Publishing, 2011), p. 112.

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some of the poetic lines. The images, forms, and language of Chinese poems appeared many times in his works. Kafka was also impressed by other aspects of Chinese culture. There are two references to China in his journals. Following a visit to Goethe’s old house on July 5, 1912, he wrote: “Goethe’s room is small, wellshaped…with quite a lot of Chinese pieces.”42 Goethe was no doubt a big influence on Kafka, who wrote in his diary: “the zeal, permeating every part of me, with which I read about Goethe and which keeps me from all writing.”43 He must have accepted Goethe’s famous comment on the Chinese that they “think, act, and feel almost exactly like us—and we soon find that we are perfectly like them, except that all they do is more clear, pure, and decorous than with us. With them all is orderly, citizen like, without great passion or poetic flight….”44 Furthermore, Kafka wished he were Chinese because he hated Prague and wanted to escape. Kafka’s passion and study of Chinese culture were also recorded in Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka: Kafka not only admired the art of ancient Chinese pictures and woodcuts; he was also charmed by the proverbs, similes and sharply pointed parables of ancient Chinese philosophy and of the religious books which he read in the translations by the German sinologist, Richard Wihelm-Tsingtau.45

Janouch mentioned that he was given two books related to China by Kafka: Man, Become Essence! Sayings of Laotse, translated into German by Klabund; and Laotse’s Tao-te-King in F. Fiedler’s translation. When Janouch asked about Gustav Wyneken, the publisher of Fiedler’s translation, Kafka noted that he and his friends wish to escape from the grip of our machine world. They turn to nature and to man’s most ancient intellectual heritage. They spell out— as you can see here—transcriptions of reality from translations of ancient

42 Qtd. in Franz Kafka, The Complete Works of Franz Kafka, ed. Ye Tingfang, vol. 6 (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press, 1996), p. 530. 43 Franz Kafka, The Dairies of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh, etc. (New York: Schocken Books, 1948), p. 157. 44 Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, pp. 201–2. 45 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, trans. Goronway Rees (New York: New

Direction Books, 2012), p. 140.

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Chinese instead of quietly reading the original text of their own lives and responsibilities.46

Here, Kafka might have noticed the quotations from Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables translated by Buber: “Those who use tricky tools are tricky in their business affairs, and those who are tricky in their business affairs have trickery in their hearts.”47 Although he acknowledged the significance of ancient Chinese culture to the West, he refused to take Zhuangzi’s theory at face value. On a different occasion, Kafka told Janouch that he had “studied Taoism fairly deeply over a long period, so far as that’s possible in translation. I possess nearly all the volumes of the German translations of this school of thought which have been published by Diedrichs in Jena.”48 These translations included The Analects and The Doctrine of the Mean; Laozi’s Tao Te Ching 《道德经》 [ ] and Lie Zi; and Zhuangzi’s The True Book of the South Land of Blossom 《华南经》 [ ]. According to Kafka, these Chinese books are a sea in which one can easily drown. In Kung-Futse’s conversations one is still on firm ground; but later everything dissolves more and more into darkness, Laotse’s sayings are nuts that are hard as stones to crack. I am fascinated by them, but their kernel remains hidden from me. I’ve re-read them several times. I discovered that—like a little boy playing with glass marbles—I followed them from one cranny of thought to another without in any way getting any further. In these aphoristic marbles, I only discovered the hopeless shallowness of my intellectual categories, which couldn’t define or accommodate Laotse’s marbles.49

There was a paragraph in Kafka’s aphorisms stating that “it isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in

46 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 142. 47 Martin Buber, Chinese Tales, Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables and Chinese Ghost and

Love Stories, trans. Alex Page (New Jersey and London: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1991), p. 48. 48 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 139. 49 Ibid., p. 141.

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ecstasy.”50 Indeed, this is a translation of the 47th chapter in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, which states that “Without going outside his door, one understands (all that takes place) under the sky; without looking out from his window, one sees the Tao of Heaven. The Further that one goes out (from himself), the less he knows.” In addition, Kafka admired Laozi’s idea of “a small country with a small population.” In 1917, he moved to the Bohemian village of Zürau for health reasons and lived there on and off for a total amount of 8 months. It is a remote premodern village without electricity that is miles away from the nearest train station. Kakfa found it a “paradise” and felt that there is “nothing freer than living in a village.”51 According to Walter Benjamin, in Kafka, “there is the air of a village” in which “the neighboring countries may be within sight, so that the sounds of roosters and dogs may be heard in the distance. Yet people are said to die at a ripe old age without having travelled far”.52 It is without doubt that this commentary comes from the 80th chapter of Tao Te Ching. From this point, Kafka did in a way grasp “the glass marble” of Laozi. In regard to Zhuangzi, Kakfa might have read Buber’s version of Zhuangzi (1910), which contains 54 sayings and parables. The stories and parables with profound thinking might have impressed Kafka to some extent. He once read a quotation from Zhuangzi to Janouch: “Death is not brought to life by life; life is not killed by dying. Life and death are conditioned; they are contained within a great coherence.” He then explained that this is “the fundamental and central problem of all religions and of wisdom about life. It’s a question of grasping the coherence of things and time, of deciphering oneself, and of penetrating one’s own becoming and dying.”53 He also told Janouch that he underlined the following quotation with pencil strokes:

50 Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms, trans. Micheal Hofmann (London: Harvill Secker, 2006), p. 108. 51 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka (New York, 1984), p. 207. 52 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927 –1934, eds. Marcus paul Bullock, etc., trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996), p. 805. 53 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 140.

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The men of antiquity changed outwardly, but inwardly remained unchanged. Today men change inwardly but outwardly remain unchanged. When men change by adapting themselves to circumstance yet remain one and the same, that is not real change. One remains calm in changing and calm in not changing; men remain calm in all their contacts with the outside world and do not let themselves be drawn into the multiplicity of things. Thus men believed in the gardens and halls of the wise men of old. But the gentlemen who gathered together in the different schools of learning fought against each other with assertion and counter-assertion. And today, for the first time, how do things look? The saint who is called dallies in the world but does not injure the world.54

Unfortunately, Kafka did not elaborate on it, but according to him, it is quite normal to be perplexed by these profound theories because The truth is always an abyss. One must—as in a swimming pool—dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order later to rise again—laughing and fighting for breath—to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.55

In the same way, Kafka’s oeuvre demonstrates his attempt to sink into the depths of Chinese culture in order to grasp its essence.

2.3

Building the German “Great Wall”

Kafka’s close connection to Chinese culture had a great influence on his work; Chinese and Oriental flavors permeate his oeuvre, which features numerous Chinese themes, characters, and objects. In a certain sense, Kafka built a new “Great Wall” in German in the West through his works. For instance, three of Kafka’s novellas, Description of a Struggle, The Great Wall of China, and An Old Manuscript , have a Chinese theme or focus. These three novellas will be given detailed analyses in the next three chapters. This section briefly analyzes the Chinese themes and subtexts in Kafka’s other major stories and novellas, such as “In the Penal Colony,” “An Imperial Message,” The Metamorphosis , “A Report to an Academy,” Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle.

54 Ibid., p. 139. 55 Ibid., p. 141.

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“In the Penal Colony,” a short story written by Kafka in October 1914, is said to be related to the painful memory of Kafka’s cancelation of his engagement to Felice in July. The narrator in this story is an explorer who visits an unnamed penal colony where he witnesses the last use of a special torture and execution device. It is used to torture the Condemned who has offended the Commandant while letting him suffer a slow death. The new Commandant wants to abolish this system, but the Captain who is executioner strongly believes in the system and the justice and value represented by the torture machine. He eventually chooses to die with the machine. However, the machine collapses with the penal system and sends the Captain to a quick death, denying him the mystical experience of the prisoners he executed. The plot of this story seems irrelevant to China, and the only evidence that this could happen in China might be that the setting is “along the equator” and that there are “rice pudding” and “tea house” in this place. However, these simply constitute a bizarre background against which the story takes place, which has little to do with the main themes and ideas. The story can be interpreted as a parable about crime, punishment, and martyrdom. The Captain is both a sadist and masochist; a criminal and a martyr. He identifies himself with the torture machine, and the meaning of his life is to ensure its proper function. The downfall of the machine and the Captain symbolize the collapse of the old system of absolute justice. Thus, the story offers a metaphysical reflection on justice. Separately published in 1919, “An Imperial Message” was originally a parable within the short story “The Great Wall of China.” The relationship among the dying emperor, the powerful messenger, and the “humble subject” lies at the core of this work. The messenger starts his toil, bearing the emperor’s deathbed message, but he never makes it out of the royal capital, obstructed by the huge crowds and sediment, and numerous courtyards and stairways. The external resistance that prevents the messenger from coming out to give the message might symbolize the friction that exists between the budding idea of the mind and its manifestation in the actual physical world. However, the last sentence of the parable goes: “You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes.”56 Here Kafka also might suggest that 56 Mark Harman, “Kafka’s ‘A Message from the Emperor’: A New Translation”, available at https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/07/01/message-emperor-new-transl ation/, accessed on September 2, 2018.

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all the useless toil of the messenger is just an illusion or dream, thus presenting the possibility of achieving “enlightenment through an interior vision (a dream) when the external world of history and of other men fails us.”57 Joyce Carol Oates, a famous American novelist, made a comment on Kafka and Taoism: “it is in Taoism that we come across the very spirit of Kafka himself , the awareness of a dominion of absolutely impersonal and incomprehensible Being over the efforts of individuals to influence it, or even to influence their own lives.”58 This “absolutely impersonal and incomprehensible Being” is “Tao,” which transcends language entirely. Kafka was fascinated by it and conveyed this idea in many of his works. In this sense, Oats comments: “‘An Imperial Message’ is central to Kafka’s work,” and “it suggests his interest in Oriental philosophy and psychology as well”.59 The Metamorphosis is one of Kafka’s most important works. It has a very simple plot about a human turning into a bug. “As Gregor awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”60 And from then on, Gregor’s words could no longer be understood. The Austrian critic Heinz Politzer once said, “the most surprising thing is Kafka’s skillful mastery of another technique: turning into small animals, which usually is best used by the Chinese.”61 In this sense, Elias Canetti famously described Kafka as “the only essentially Chinese writer the West has produced.”62 It is true that there is a great number of metamorphoses in ancient Chinese literary classics, especially Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 《聊斋》 [ ]. The renowned Chinese scholar Qian Zhongshu [钱钟书], when making comments on Master Jiao’s Interpretation of The Book of Change (Jiao Shi Yi Lin 《焦氏易林]) [ in his Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters 《管锥篇 [ 》 ], quoted Kafkauo The Metamorphosis to highlight the similarities: “in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , a person wakes up from his sleep and finds 57 Joyce Carol Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, The Hudson Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (Winter, 1973–1974), p. 625. 58 Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, p. 630. 59 Ibid., p. 625. 60 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 141. 61 Heinz Politzer, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 212. 62 Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 94.

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himself turned into a bug. Feeling very articulate, he tried to talk to his family outside his bedroom, but they could not understand him. This is just like what Xue Wei [薛伟] (the character) has encountered.”63 This proves the point that Politzer made. However, in Chinese literary classics, the morphed ghosts and fox fairies are often idealized human beings, and the stories focus on the consequences and events of the metamorphosis instead of the psychological state of the subject. Yet in Kafka, the metamorphosis is an externalization of the alienation of modern men. Alienation becomes a central theme in Kafka’s world: “Life for him is something entirely different than for all other human beings; in particular, things like money, the stock market, currency exchange, a typewriter are utterly mystical to him (and they really are, too; just not for the rest of us), they are the strangest riddles to him, and his approach to them is completely different than our own.”64 Since Kafka could not find the cause for the ubiquitous alienation in the West, he turned Gregor Samsa into a bug very abruptly and mysteriously. “A Report to an Academy” is said to be inspired by Monkey King, who is attributed with the capacity for 72 transformations in the Chinese literary classic Pilgrimage to the West 《西游记》 [ ]. The painful journey of an ape turning into a man parallels Monkey King’s early experiences. When he finally learns how to drink gin, the ape feels like “jumping into a human society.”65 Of course, the ape’s journey is far more painful and difficult than Monkey King’s skillful transformations. Another short story, “The Conscription of Troops,” is influenced by “Official of Stone Trench Village” 《石壕吏], [ a poem by Du Fu [杜甫] (a Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty), which is in Hans Heilmann’s collection of Chinese lyrical poems under the title of “The Conscription” in German. In Du Fu’s poem, the old woman had to join the army because there were no men left. In the end, the old woman says, “At dawn, before I set upon the road, it is only from the old man that I part.” However, in Kafka’s story, it seems that everyone wants to be enrolled in the army. Even the girl from another town comes to have a try: 63 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1986), p. 568. 64 Milena Jesenska, “Letter to Max Brod”, available at https://www.goodreads.com/ review/show/952035743, accessed on September 5, 2018. 65 Franz Kafka, “A Report for an Academy”, available at http://www.kafka-online.info/ a-report-for-an-academy.html, accessed on September 5, 2018.

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Should the person not on the list be man, his only desire is to be conscripted with the others although he does not belong to this house. But this too is utterly out of the question, an outsider of this kind has never been conscripted and nothing of the sort will ever happen.66

Amerika describes the wandering of a sixteen-year-old European boy, Karl Rosmann, who was banished by his father to the U.S. after the scandal of his seduction by a middle-aged housemaid. However, the “Amerika” in this novel does not refer to a real place configured by historical period or geological location. Instead, it is a floating signifier subject to various interpretations. For instance, Max Brod held that the novel is about “the issue of an individual entering into society” or an “individual entering into heaven.” Some critics regard “Amerika” as the embodiment of an ideal society, while others treat it as a critique on the U.S. Of course, it will also make sense to think of “Amerika” as either Kafka’s escape strategy from Prague, or his longing for freedom.67 In general, this novel is a very rich and complicated parable. As Benjamin held that Karl Rossmann is “transparent, pure, without character,” a Chinese-like character, because in China people are—so far as their spiritual aspects are concerned—“devoid of individual character, as it were. The idea of the wise man, of which Confucius is the classic incarnation, blurs any individuality of character, he is the truly characterless man, namely, the average man …” Benjamin went on noting that: the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma harks back to Chinese theatre, which is a theatre of gesture. One of the most significant functions of this theatre is to dissolve events into their gestural components. One can go even further and say that a good number of Kafka’s shorter studies and stories are seen in their full light only when they are, so to speak, put on as acts in the “Nature Theater of Oklahoma.” Only then will one come to the certain realization that Kafka’s entire work constitutes a code of gestures which surely had no definite symbolic meaning for the author from the outset; rather, the author tried to derive such a meaning from them in ever-changing contexts and experimental groupings.68 66 Franz Kafka, “The Conscription of Troops”, in The Completed Stories, p. 440. 67 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka, p. 257. 68 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2: 1931–1934, eds. Michael W.

Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, trans. Rodney Livingstone, etc. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 801.

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The Trial describes an unexpected “trial” and focuses on its lengthy and futile process. The protagonist Josef K. is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified institution. Having been accused of a crime but never told what it is, K. is eventually sentenced to death. K’s guilt remains unknown even to the judges leading his case. He is guilty perhaps because everyone is guilty of something in his life. In this sense, Kafka deems it a fundamental feature of the human condition that one is involved in an endless and futile trial from birth. He saw in human life only one endless trial, senseless and merciless. In Kafka’s mind, there are two kinds of truth, represented by the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. For Kafka, the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents the state of normal earthly life where everything has its individual state, good being separated from evil. The tree of life represents the state of mystical unity in which good and evil, self and the object, cannot be separated, transcending reason and language just like Tao. Therefore, the concept of the tree of life is shrouded with the mysticism of the East. There is a famous parable “Before the Law” within The Trial : “Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment.” The man makes all kinds of efforts to get in, including bribing the gatekeeper with all his belongings, but he is still denied access. The man ends up spending the rest of his life waiting in vain. Upon dying, he cannot help but ask the gatekeeper: “Everyone strives after the law, so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper answers, “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”69 The story is full of paradoxes: the gate is open, but guarded by a gatekeeper; the gatekeeper promises the possibility of getting in, but keeps rejecting the man; the man cannot enter through the gate, but the gate was assigned only to him. Zhang Zhiyang, a Chinese critic noted: “the gate draws the boundary of a place, but can also be breached. You can break in or break out, thus entering in and out of being … if there were

69 Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”, in The Compltete Stories, pp. 66–7.

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no division between being and non-being, either everything would be or everything would not be.”70 If the gate allowed no access at all, it could not serve as an entrance, and hence could not serve as a gate. But if it allowed complete access, it could not serve as a barrier, and hence could not serve as a gate either. In consequence, the gate seems to presuppose a plurality of things, allowing access to some but not to others. But then how can there be a gate for one thing? The answer seems to be that it must simultaneously forbid access while promising it as a future possibility. The meaning of the world reflects the promises it makes but will never fulfill. Consequently, the simplicity of the story is no more. The narrative, for all its simplicity, is insufficiently clear enough to be understood well enough to pass a clear judgment. The implications of this seemingly elementary plot escape our comprehension. “Law” and “the entrance” are always there, but they are somehow out of reach. In this sense, this “entrance to the law” can be viewed as “Tao,” as “The Tao, which can be told, is not the true Tao.” The Castle, another of Kafka’s important novels, tells a similar tale of K.’s unavailing struggle with an unknown authority to gain access to the Castle. Like the man from the country in “Before the Law,” K. spends his life wandering around the castle until, upon dying, he is told that his “legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there.” The ending resonates with what Laozi said: “Turning is the Motion of the Tao. Its Practice is soft. In All-under-Heaven the myriad things are born from Being. Being is born from Non-Being.”71 The reasons which grant his access to the castle have nothing to do with K.’s lifetime efforts to get in. The idea of course relates to Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxical concepts such as “one cannot go from point A to point B” or “the flying arrow is motionless.” But it also coincides with some thoughts from Ancient China, such as Gongsun Long’s “moving wheels do not touch the ground,” Zhuangzi’s “A chi-long stick, cut in half every day, will never be exhausted in myriad ages,” and “the shadow of a flying bird is not in motion.” Therefore, Oates commented:

70 Zhang Zhiyang, The Distance of Kafka (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1992), p. 276. 71 Laozi, Tao Te Ching, trans. John Minford (New York: Viking, 2018), p. 206.

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… the Castle, imaged as Kafka’s European, historical, vaguely sinister expression of the same primordial force that Laozi calls the “Tao,” is clearly that static or purposeless truth that rests in eternity and is realized only within the stilled, unstriving mind.72

The Castle is most Kafkaesque in that the prominent feature of the novel is its multiple meanings and parables. There have been various interpretations as to the meaning of “the castle.” Ye Tingfang, a Chinese scholar, holds that the castle can be viewed as “the summary of Kafka’s psychological experiences,” “the phantom of a menacing authority,” “the sketches of alienation,” “a metaphor of Jewish people seeking a homeland,” “a parable of human beings seeking for God,” or “the symbol of perceivable yet intangible truth.”73 Hence “the castle” becomes a riddle without an answer, subject to all kinds of interpretations and speculations, and eventually heads to mysticism and nihilism. This coincides with “nothingness” in Buddhism and “Tao” in Taoism. The style of The Castle is especially close to Laozi and Zhuangzi’s writings in terms of their approach to the expression of ideas. The ancient essays of Pre-Qin (before 221 B.C.) China are full of allegories and parables, as Lu Xun once said that Zhuangzi wrote a fable-like book of over 100,000 words describing fictional characters and places.74 Like the ongoing theoretical hermeneutics on Zhuangzi, The Castle also generates numerous debates and interpretations. In summary, Kafka’s writing style is very Chinese in that he built the German “Great Wall” in sections. He often started one of his works and turned to another one, leaving the previous one unfinished. Furthermore, his ambivalent attitude toward his works can be shown by the fact that he asked his friend to burn all his manuscripts after his death.

72 Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, p. 639. 73 Ye Tingfang, “An Analysis of Kafka’s The Castle”, Foreign Literature Review, vol. 4,

1998, pp. 46–52. 74 Lu Xun, Outline of Chinese Literary History in The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 9 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1981), p. 364.

CHAPTER 3

The First Dance Steps in Winter: An Analysis of Description of a Struggle

Description of a Struggle is Kafka’s earliest known novella. The first draft was probably written in the winter of 1903–1904, when Kafka was a 20year-old college student. Finishing his first work in total secrecy, Kafka claimed that this was “the first dance steps” in that winter. This first attempt was extraordinary. When he finally overcame his shyness and confessed that he was a writer, he showed this work to a newly acquainted friend, the then-established writer, Max Brod. Amazed by the astuteness and grandeur of the novella, Brod was taken back by Kafka’s talent. On February 9, 1907, at the end of a commentary on his friend and playwright, Franz Blei, in the literary weekly Die Gegenwart, Brod wrote: It is a token of the high level reached by German literature that we now have several authors able to meet its exalted standards and who grace the most diverse aspects of existence by their art and cruelty. Heinrich Mann, Wedekind, Meyrink, and Franz Kafka, together with the author of this play, belong in this sainted company.1

Brod included Kafka on this list, although Kafka had yet to publish any work, because this manuscript was sufficient to enable him to foresee

1 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 161.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_3

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Kafka’s value to and position within the canon of German and world literature. Two excerpted sections from Description of a Struggle—“Conversation with the Supplicant” and “Conversation with the Drunk”—appeared for the first time in the March/April 1909 issue of the literary journal Hyperion. In addition, other excerpts such as “Children on a Country Road,” “Excursion into the Mountain,” “Clothes,” and “The Trees” were included in Kafka’s first book The Stoker by the publisher Wolff in 1913. After completing the first draft of this novella, Kafka attempted to improve it through rewriting, but he eventually gave up. In 1909, after the last attempted rewriting, Kafka reduced the original 110 pages down to a final draft of just 58 pages long. By 1910, Kafka was ready to give up and gave his manuscript to Brod as a gift. Brod combined two versions in his edition of Kafka’s complete works, which were published in 1936. The complicated and fragmentary process of writing and publishing aligned with the complex, fragmentary, and paradoxical nature of the novella. It is packed with so many themes, concepts, and forms that it can seem like a Chinese magician’s box of odds and ends that the reader must struggle to sort and order. As Ernst Pawel comments: “… the text is already dense enough to support any number of free-floating hypotheses. Where it falls short is in transcending its fragmentary nature and in transforming flashes of lightning into a steady source of light.”2 The novella attracted attention gradually after its publication in 1937, inviting various interpretations and criticisms pertaining to Marxist alienation, metaphysical uprootedness, egotism, and theology. However, one perspective that has escaped critical eyes is its connection to Chinese culture. In a sense, the novella marks the beginning of Kafka’s quest for other cultures, especially that of China.

3.1

Gazing Upon China

At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a renewed surge of European interest in China. However, this time China was regarded as a target and prey, to be taken advantage of:

2 Ernst Pawel, p. 184.

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In the Far East the ancient empire of China was the chief bone of contention. There, first in the field, England had by 1890 established a commercial and diplomatic pre-eminence based upon sea power. In the north, Russia aimed at securing an ice-free port to serve as the terminus of the great Trans-Siberian Railway.…In the south, France’s acquisition of Indo-China had been indirectly at Chinese expense, as had the British annexation of Upper Burma in 1885, and both powers were now able to penetrate into south China.3

Meanwhile, Japan had cast a covetous eye on China. In the wake of its defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding Liaodong Peninsula and Taiwan to Japan. Germany had also been seeking opportunities to partake in this conquest. By conspiring with Russia and France, Germany managed to stop Japan from taking up the Liaodong Peninsula for its own interest. It thus secured two concessions (Tian Jin and Han Kou) from the Qing government in China and was able to lend the government huge loans that it needed to pay off its debt to Japan. On November 1, 1897, three German missionaries were attacked, two of whom were killed, in Zhangjia V illage, Juye County in southern Shandong Province. In response to this event, on November 14, 1897, Germany sent a cruiser fleet, led by Rear Admiral Otto Von Diderichs, to occupy Tsingtao and Jiaozhou Bay. On March 6, 1898, Germany forced China to sign the Kiautschou Bay Concession Treaty, transferring the occupied area to Germany on a 99year lease. As a result of the lease treaty, the Chinese Qing government gave up its sovereign rights within the leased territory in a 50-kilometerwide zone. In the meantime, the treaty also enabled Germany to enjoy rights for the construction of railway lines and the mining of local coal deposits in this zone. Kiautschou Bay was officially placed under German protection by a German imperial decree on April 27. Germany then began to assert its power in Shandong and built the city of Tsingtao as the base of the German East Asiatic Squadron of German Nay. In 1900, Germany was part of the Eight-Nation Alliance to crush the Boxer Rebellion, protecting its interests in China. While addressing German troops who were departing to suppress the Boxer rebellion in China, Wilhelm

3 C. L. Mowat, The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 113.

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II, the German emperor, referred to the Chinese as a “yellow peril.” This prejudice was shared by many Germans at that time. For instance, Rudolf Zabel, a famous German war correspondent, wrote: China should be forced into European subjugation, so that the purpose of political and trade control shall be served. We should prevent the “yellow peril” through long term interference in China’s internal affairs. We can achieve this goal by either peaceful merging of two cultures, or by force.4

Such was the accepted German view at that time. However, the military action against China was not only considered as a new crusade but also a great opportunity to learn about a distant land. Of course, as an ancient civilization in the East, China had always been an object of fancy and imagination in the West. Mechthild Leutner, a contemporary German Sinologist once wrote: China is a fascinating fantasy land with exotic and dazzling flavors .… It still seems so far away—invisible to most of the Europeans. It can be regarded as a utopia which reflects all the hopes, fears and worries connected to our own society and environment.5

By the end of the nineteenth century, with Europe’s social conflicts intensifying, its systemic flaws increasingly manifest to all, and the threat of war increasingly evident, Europeans were extremely disillusioned with their civilization, and therefore, “China and the far east, came to be considered superior civilizations.”6 The German invasion and conquest of China certainly drew Kafka’s attention to the country. The more Kafka learned of China, the more he became attached to it. Yearning for ancient Chinese culture and rusticity, he imagined escaping from his stifling life in Prague and exchanging it for the quiet life of the Chinese people. Upon graduating from middle school in 1902, Kafka turned immediately to his uncle, Alfred Lowy, who worked for Spanish railways, in the hope of finding a job that would allow

4 Mechthild Leutner, etc., The Exotic and Reality: China in German Travel Notes from 17 to 20th Century, trans. Yan Chenghan, in Liu Shanzhang ed., A History of Sino-German Relations (Qingdao: Qingdao Publishing House, 1992), pp. 384–5. 5 Ibid., p. 353. 6 Ibid., p. 357.

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him to “go to some place and start over.” When he went to college, he became desperate to transfer himself to Munich and from there elsewhere. After college graduation, he found a job in an insurance company. Although bored by the job, Kafka derived optimism from the hope of “someday sitting in chairs in very faraway countries, looking out of the office windows at fields of sugar cane or Mohamedan cemeteries.”7 Even upon his death, Kafka had hoped to live in Palestine with Dora. This strong and intense wish to run away from Prague and Europe directed Kafka’s eyes, again and again, to the east and to China. At that time, many Germans were “interested in Chinese philosophy, especially Laozi. They were also interested in Chinese lyrical poems. Numerous sinologists dedicated themselves to the translation of Chinese poems with a view to introducing them to a German audience. Many Germans, who knew nothing about the Chinese, would like to ‘keep up with the Jones’ via these translations.”8 It was against this background that in 1905, Hans Heilmann published his collection and translation of Chinese lyrical poetry from the twelfth century B.C. onward. In a 40-page introduction, Heilmann wrote: “China is a country of poetry which represents the essence of its culture. How can we associate ‘yellow devils’ with China?”9 In the eyes of the Westerners, “yellow devils” were barbaric, filthy, and coarse. Heilmann was strongly against this stigmatization of Chinese people. Although the medieval crusades brought many cultural achievements from the East, the modern wars waged by the West failed to do so. The Westerners were largely ignorant and biased in regard to China and Chinese culture. The Chinese way of life and mind was essentially different from that of the Westerners, so Heilmann viewed it wrong for Westerners to judge China by their own standards. As such, Heilmann’s attitude could be regarded as a cultural antidote to the Western military, economic, and political interference in China. Based on his own understanding and respect, Heilmann’s collection of Chinese lyrical poetry certainly triggered Germans’ enthusiasm to read Chinese poems and to learn about Chinese culture. At that time, quite a few German writers quoted the poetic lines from the collection in their 7 Nicolas Murray, Kafka (London: Abacus; New edition, 2005), p. 67. 8 Chen Quan, Chinese Influence on German Literature (Taipei: Taiwan Student

Publishing House, 1971), p. 191. 9 Hans Heilmann, ed. and trans. Chinesische Lyrik vom 12. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Bis zur Gegenwart. Die Fruchtchale, vol. 1 (Munich: Piper, 1905), p. v.

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own writings. Many of them, especially the expressionists, were attracted to the innocent candor and melancholic contemplation of Chinese Tang poets. Kafka held Heilmann’s collection of Chinese poetry in high esteem. In a letter to Felice in 1912, he quoted one of Yuan Mei’s poems and compared himself to that Chinese scholar in the poem. In a letter to Minze Eisner during November to December 1920, he wrote: Gogol, Hafiz, Li-Po: a somewhat random choice (the two later evidently in translations by Bethge or Klabund, which are none too good. There is one excellent small book of translations of Chinese poetry by Heilmann, but I believe it is out of print and no new edition has been issued. It is part of Piper Verlag’s “Fruchtschale” series. I lent my copy to someone or other and never got it back.), but in any case it is much better than your Schelesen reading of Dahn and Baumbach.10

It is difficult to ascertain the exact time when Kafka wrote his first novella or the time when he was first introduced to Heilmann’s poetry collection. However, there is plenty of evidence in Kafka’s works of his reading of the latter. Moreover, another poetry collection, Die chinesis che Flote, translated and edited by the German poet Hans Bethge (1876– 1946), was also popular in German-speaking countries. Gustav Mahler, the famous Austrian composer, also helped to bring this collection to a broader European audience when he adapted some of the poems into a symphony, Das Lied von der Erde, which premiered in Munich in 1911. Although it is never mentioned directly in Kafka’s works, the poetry collection must have been known to him. The great variety of German travel logs, journals, and introductory writings about China that were available in Prague must have offered raw materials and frameworks for Kafka’s imaginations, descriptions, and reconstructions of China. With Germany’s colonizing efforts in China after its Navy occupation in Jiaozhou Bay in 1897, China became the target of German colonial expansion and a tourist destination for German journalists. Paul Goldmann, Ernst von Hesse Wartegg, and Eugen Wolf were among the first group of journalists who wrote extensively about

10 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), p. 278.

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China from 1897 to 1901. As what is described in Mechthild Leutner’s book: Although China has gradually woken from its slumber, it is still regarded as a country in a medieval age by both positive or negative viewers. In consequence, in those travel notes, Europeans are always the ones who bring about civilization and new achievements to the Chinese people.11

These reports and descriptions of China brought it to Europeans’ attention and captured their imagination.

3.2

Describing China

As one of the earliest modernist works in Europe, Description of a Struggle is regarded as one of Kafka’s most complex novellas. Consisting of three parts, it is written with a first-person narrative, although the background and identity of “I” in the novella are quite vague. The themes are also ambiguous, and sometimes even paradoxical, a fact partly attributable to its transnational images of the east and China. The novella has a simple beginning: two young persons meet at a party, one of whom wants to talk about his lovesickness to the other. Considering that the talk is very private, they decide to leave the party and take a walk outside: At about midnight a few people rose, bowed, shook hands, said it had been a pleasant evening, and then passed through the wide doorway into the vestibule, to put on their coats. The hostess stood in the middle of the room and made graceful bowing movements, causing the dainty folds in her skirt to move up and down.12

This is a very realistic beginning with detailed observations and descriptions, and nothing out of the ordinary. However, as the two characters walk, the narrator notes:

11 Mechthild Leutner, etc., The Exotic and Reality: China in German Travel Notes from 17 to 20th Century, pp. 384–5. 12 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 72. All the following quotations will be referred to as page numbers.

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On turning into the Ferdinandstrasse, I realized that my acquaintance had begun to hum a melody from the Dollar Princess. It was low, but I could hear it distinctly. What did this mean? Was he trying to insult me? As for me, I was ready to do without not only this music, but the walk as well. Why wasn’t he speaking to me, anyway? And if he didn’t need me, why hadn’t he left me in peace in the warm room with the benedictine and the pastry? (Complete Stories, 74)

Therefore, the narrator “I” thinks: But I wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to turn down a side street; after all, I wasn’t obliged to go on this walk with him. I could go home alone and no one could stop me. Then, secretly, I could watch my acquaintance pass the entrance to my street. Goodbye, dear acquaintance! On reaching my room I’ll feel warm, I’ll light the lamp in its iron stand on my table, and when I’ve done that I’ll lie back in my armchair which stands on the torn Oriental carpet. (Complete Stories, 74)

Here, the novella starts to wander from reality, opening an imagined space. From the exotic “Oriental carpet,” we know that this space is the East or China. In the novella, the narrator is initially “too timid” to leave his acquaintance. However, later on, the narrator starts to feel terrified that his acquaintance may murder him. As he tries to escape, he falls down on the icy ground. His acquaintance then catches up without noticing anything, and they continue walking. In the second part of the novella, a subtitle “Diversions or Proof That It’s Impossible to Live” is added. This part is further divided into four sections: (I) A Ride, (II) A Walk, (III) The Fat Man, and (IV) Drowning of the Fat Man. Section III (The Fat Man) contains four episodes: (a) An Address to the Landscape; (b) Beginning of a Conversation with the Supplicant; (c) The Supplicant’s Story; and (d) Continued Conversation Between. This part is apparently built upon a series of hallucinations. First, the narrator imagines himself riding on the shoulders of his acquaintance as if he were a horse: “and we came fast enough into the interior of a vast but as yet unfinished landscape,” “I let a strong wind blow against us in long gust,” “Then my acquaintance collapsed, and when I examined him I discovered that he was badly wounded in the knee. Since he could no longer be of any use to me, I left him there on the stones without much regret and whistled down a few vultures which, obediently and

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with serious beaks, settled down on him in order to guard him” (Complete Stories, 83). After that, “I” keeps walking, “The stones vanished at my will and the wind disappeared.” “I” walk into a forest and climb to a treetop, falling into deep sleep. What happens next is surreal—like a dream within a dream. And here comes the fat man: “From the thicket on the opposite bank four naked men strode vehemently forth, carrying on their shoulders a wooden litter. On this litter sat, Oriental fashion, a monstrously fat man.” His “hairless skull was small and gleamed yellow.” He complains, “the landscape disturbs my thought” and said, “I implore you—mountain, flowers, grass, bush, and river, give me some room so that I may breathe” (Complete Stories, 87). The four bearers attempt to carry the fat man across the river, but they are drowned midway when a low wave sweeps over them. The narrator on the shore tries to rescue the fat man, who is carried down the river “like a yellow wooden idol.” However, the fat man doesn’t seem to care, telling the narrator a story of a Supplicant instead: the fat man, here as a narrator, used to go to a church every day where he noticed a young man “who had flung his long-emaciated figure on the ground. From time to time, he clutched his skull with all his strength and, moaning loudly, beat it in the palms of his hands on the stone floor” (Complete Stories, 89). The fat man asked about his way of praying, and the young man started to tell another story about how difficult he found it to interact with the rest of the world, especially women. He said, “I hope to learn from you how things really are, why it is that around things sink away like fallen snow, whereas for other people even a little liqueur glass stands on the table steady as statue” (Complete Stories, 102). The fat man asked him to live differently, but the young man said no. The young man told him another story about a woman in a garden, which inspired the fat man greatly. Consequently, he said, “How admirable, how clever this woman is! We must follow her example.” After drawing this conclusion, “the fat man could not go on talking, he was forced to turn and disappear in the loud roar of the waterfall” (Complete Stories, 103). This part of the narrator’s dreams concludes, too. The third part of the novella returns to the original scene in which the narrator and his acquaintance continue walking, exchanging stories of their love affairs, and courting strategies. At some point, the narrator says to his acquaintance: “I’m afraid no misdeed, no unfaithfulness or departure to some distant land will be of any avail. You’ll have to kill yourself.” Then, his acquaintance “pulled a knife out of his pocket” and

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“plunged it into his left upper arm” (Complete Stories, 107). The narrator pulls out the knife and tends to the wound. The pair seems to recover from the incident and start to have more faith in life. The novella ends: “A lantern […] burning close to the wall above; it threw the shadows of the tree trunks across the road and the white snow, while on the slope the shadows of all the branches lay bent, as though broken” (Complete Stories, 107). The second part of the novella constitutes its core. It is also the part in which the image of the fat man is at its most striking. He is an ideal character in Kafka’s mind, and the road that he takes symbolizes Kafka’s ideal journey. Syed Manzurul Islam, an American scholar, divides Kafka’s ways of escaping from reality in The Ethics of Travels into two categories: metamorphosis into small animals and travels. The category of travels can also be subdivided into travels by settlers and travels by wanderers, of which the latter is more significant. The travels of the fat man in Kafka’s novella belong to the latter. There is no destination, and traveling itself is an end rather than a means. As Islam argues, “The fat man doesn’t produce a map of the landscape, he encounters it and addresses it.”13 The image of the fat man embodies Kafka’s escapism. It is said to have come from China, a Buddha called Pu-Tai, namely, Maireya. In Klippe Ling Yin, Hangzhou, China, there is a famous statue of Maireya with a big belly: “He clutches prayer beads in his left hand, and holds a cloth bag in his right one.” He has “[a] bald head with big ears, a fat chin and a big belly. A rope is fastened to the lower belly to support the weight.”14 “He is asleep for most of the time. In China, he is associated with Taoism, but Westerners often confuse him with Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism.”15 The fat man in Kafka’s story sits similar to the statue of Maireya in a Buddhist temple. He has a “motionless body”; “His folds of fat were so carefully spread out that although they covered the whole litter and even hung down its side like the hem of a yellowish carpet.” “His face bore the artless expression of a man who meditates and makes no effort to conceal it” (Complete Stories, 86). Buddha statues 13 Syed Manzurul Islam, The Ethics of Travels: From Marco Polo to Kafka (Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 41. 14 Luo Weiguo, On Maireya (Beijing: China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing House, 1994), p. 13. 15 Rolf J. Geobel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (Columbia: Camden House, 1997), p. 38.

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usually sit cross-legged, with the left hand on the left foot. This gesture of meditation is known as the dhy¯ ana mudr¯ a (“meditation mudra”). Another posture, known as the “Bhumyakramana-Mudr¯a” (earth witness mudra), depicts the Buddha sitting in meditation with his left hand, palm upright, in his lap and his right hand touching the earth. This symbolizes the fact that the earth bears witness to Sakaymuni’s sacrifice for the world. In addition, meditation holds a significant position in Buddhism. The image of Sakyamuni in closed-eye meditation is “the most iconic image in Buddhist art.” “All schools of Buddhism regard meditation as the most effective way to enlightenment.”16 The litter that the fat man sits on is reminiscent of the Chinese sedan, which was introduced to Europe around the seventeenth century and became a fashion among the nobles. For instance, in 1727, the royal palace in Vienna decreed that only the imperial sedan could be in the color yellow, while the color for the ministers and nobles was to be black. As a Chinese scholar, Yang Wuneng [杨武能] wrote, “Sedans were once popular in Germany. It is recorded that Clemens August, the Archbishop of Cologne, enjoyed being carried around in a sedan like a Chinese lord. Even as late as 1861, the municipal government of Nürnberg made a set of new rules for sitting in sedans.”17 In Kafka’s story, the fat man whose hairless skull “gleamed yellow” seems like a Chinese emperor. In contrast to the fat man, the image of the narrator “I” looks like both Kafka himself and a frail Chinese scholar. “…Like a stick dangling in the air, he looked, with a black-haired skull on top. His body was clad in a lot of small, dull-yellow patches of cloth which covered him completely because they hung closely about him in the still air of last night” (Complete Stories, 76). The narrator thus describes himself: “I am rather delicate…and I find it too difficult to keep my body upright…I am very long” (76). This is both Kafka’s own image and the image of a Chinese man in the eyes of Westerners. This image is related to Li Bai’s two poems: “The Song of Knight-errant” 《侠客行》 [ ] and “Articles on Travel and Hunting” 《行行且游猎篇》 [ ], both of which can be found in Heilmann’s collection of Chinese lyrical poetry. In “The Song of Knighterrant,” there is 16 Damien Keown, Buddhism, trans. Zheng Baiming (Shenyang: Liaoning Education Press, 1998), p. 81. 17 Yang Wuneng, Goethe and China (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1991),

p. 5.

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A knight from Kingdom Zhao wearing a Hu style tassel, And a curved blade which was shiny like frost and snow His steed was white and matched by a silver saddle Galloping as fast as a shooting star could go. He traveled hundreds of miles; none could stop his steed. With every ten steps he cut down and killed a foe.

There is also an image of an old and weakly scholar “who could write down his deeds to fill the honored slate.” Similarly, in “Articles on Travel and Hunting,” there is the image of traveling martial artists: Young boys outside the city wall Since birth have not read one character in one book Yet they know how to easily and quickly hunt Huzi horses fat with white-autumn grasses Riding in flying shadows with no restraint Wielding golden whips with the sounds of white grasses Merrily and with gusto, they and their hawks head for the city’s edge Notched arrows, bent bows the shape of full moons.

And in contrast, there are also “Confucian intellectuals” who “cannot attain the renown of traveling martial artists, what benefits go to whitehaired tutors and teachers?”18 As Kafka once said, the “scholar” figure in Chinese poems is referred to as a “bookworm” elsewhere, “then he is compared to the ‘fearless traveler’, the war hero who wins victories over dangerous mountain tribes.”19 This image of the Chinese “bookworm” inspires that of the narrator “I,” which is also Kafka’s reflection on his own self-image. Similarly, in his letters to Felice, he likens himself to a Chinese scholar by repeatedly quoting the poem “In the Dead of Night” written by Yuan Mei. Given the places mentioned in the story, its setting seems to be Laurenziberg, a hill overlooking Prague. However, the landscape also suggests views in the East and is thus likely to be inspired by Chinese poems. Indeed, Klaus Wagenbach, a famous German Kafka scholar, held that the description of Laurenziberg was inspired by the poem “The Sound of 18 Li Bai: The Complete Works of Li Taibai, annotated by Wang Qi (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1997), pp. 181, 216. 19 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, eds. Erich helller and Jurgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elizabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 270.

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Pines” 《松声》 [ ] by another Chinese poet, Bai Juyi [白居易], which was addressed in the preface of Heilmann’s collection of Chinese poetry: The moon’s beautiful, and sitting alone Beautiful. In two pines near the porch, A breeze arrives from the southwest, Stealing into the branches and leaves, Swelling such isolate silence into sound Past midnight under a brilliant moon; A cold mountain rain whispering far, A crystalline ch’in pitched autumn pure. I hear it rinsing summer heat clean, Clearing the confusion twilight darkens, And by the end of a night without sleep, Body and mind are so light and quick. Horses and carts soon crowd the road, Neighbors start their raucous flutesong. Who’d believe it—here under the eaves, Ears so full and no trace of such racket?20

According to Heilmann, the poem is abstruse but profound. Kafka’s story employed these recurring images of a brilliant moon, pine trees, breeze, a cold mountain, ch’in, horses and carts in the poem. For instance, “Over the deserted, evenly lit street stood a large moon in a slightly clouded, and therefore unusually extended, sky” (Complete Stories, 73). “But now the cool light that precedes the rising of the moon spread over the mountain and suddenly the moon itself appeared from beyond one of the restless bushes” (Complete Stories, 83). “…and from there I watched the cloudlike mountains on the other shore. A violin was playing softly in the hotel by the river. Now and again on both shores trains chuffed by amid shining smoke” (Complete Stories, 84). These kinds of depictions can be found throughout the story. Of course, there are more descriptions of the East in general, and China in particular, in this story, but the abovementioned suffice to prove Kafka’s keen interest in China and his intention to represent it in his works.

20 Bai Juyi, The Complete Works of Bai Juyi, Ding Ruming, etc. annotated (Shanghai: Shanghai Classics Publishing House, 1999), p. 61.

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3.3

Transcending China

While there are strong connections to Chinese culture in Description of a Struggle, the struggle is by no means a Chinese one. It is still a struggle in Laurenziberg, the hill in Prague, which achieves an estrangement effect with the introduction of many Eastern elements, especially the fat man. In this half-familiar and half-strange fictional world, the author gives full play to his imagination, as if breaching reality and breaking away from the traditional forms of narrative. In this sense, China offers an opportunity and a possibility for Kafka to pursue greater freedom to explore his imagination in his writing. In the meantime, Kafka was opposed to most of the orientalists of his time, who interpreted the East based on their own aesthetic standards and literary practices. It is not feasible to explore the meaning, truth, and essence of Chinese culture through Hermeneutics due to the limitation of Western discourses and the huge differences between China and the West. However, it is not impossible to understand and communicate based on shared values and humanistic concerns. The question lies in whether the Westerners had always viewed the East as the other. One of the most extraordinary qualities of Kafka—which brought universality to his works—was his capacity to transcend the boundaries between the East and the West. Max Brod observed that this novella had a more apt title than most of Kafka’s works published posthumously, since it was chosen by Kafka himself. However, what does this “struggle” refer to? Who is struggling? What is the outcome? These questions are left rather vague and unclear in the story. In fact, there is more than one struggle in the story, and the meanings are complex and multiple. The struggles can be categorized as follows. First, the struggle between men: between the narrator and his acquaintance, on the one hand, and the fat man and the supplicant, on the other. The narrator meets his acquaintance at a party, and after a brief conversation, they decide to take a walk. As they do so, they try to understand and help each other, but the more effort they make in this regard, the more alienated they become. There is silence at the beginning of their walk, during which the narrator feels ashamed and baffled. When he starts to explain himself, his acquaintance seems too overwhelmed by his own happiness to understand him. He thinks his acquaintance is rather indifferent and even starts to suspect that he might murder him. At one point, he even leaps onto the shoulders of his acquaintance and urges him into

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a quick trot during which his acquaintance stumbles and hurts his knees. Finally, the narrator convinces his acquaintance to commit suicide, and the latter attempts it by stabbing his left arm with a knife. Human relations in modern society are presented here in terms of mutual jealousy, suspicion, and harm. The second battle is between the fat man and the supplicant. Provoked by the supplicant’s odd way of praying, the fat man seeks an explanation for the practice in a rude and abusive manner. At one point, he grabs him by his coat collar and pushes him down the steps, shouting, “you won’t escape me” (Complete Stories, 91). After a brief conversation, the supplicant says, “I am glad I haven’t understood a word you’ve been saying.” The fat man is irritated and says quickly, “You being glad about it proves that you have understood it” (Complete Stories, 92). Human relations are paradoxical as such: they are glad they don’t understand each other, and to understand is to misunderstand. The four characters in the story share stubbornness and egotism. Therefore, it is impossible for them to form a satisfying relationship, which also shows that it is almost impossible to achieve mutual understanding and communication. Second, there is the struggle between men and society embodied by the narrator. He feels lonely at a party, “sitting alone drinking schnapps” (Complete Stories, 72). Being friendless, he becomes acquainted with a man, but they cannot trust each other. For some reason, he suspects that his new friend is going to murder him and that the policemen nearby would just stand by. He falls to the ground, but he is more worried that the people from the tavern might mock him. When his acquaintance finds him lying on the ground, he doesn’t seem to care but “spoke in a singsong voice, as though he were telling a story—and a very pleasant story at that—about a far distant pain in a knee. He moved his arms about but did not think to pick me up” (Complete Stories, 94). Finally, when his acquaintance stabs his own arm, the narrator cannot find anyone to help. Although it is not the main focus of the novella, the conflict between men and society is illustrated here. Third, there is a struggle between men and nature, including the human struggle against the material world and nature. The story shows that no one can avoid being enslaved by the material world while being surrounded by it: “We build useless war machines, towers, walls, curtains of silk, and we could marvel at all this a great deal if we had the time. We tremble in the balance, we don’t fall, we flutter, even though we may be uglier than bats” (Complete Stories, 103). It also occurs to the Supplicant in the story that it is a terrible time to live in: “Why is everything so

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badly built that high houses collapse every now and again for no apparent reason” (Complete Stories, 94)? “If people must build such huge squares from sheer wantonness, why don’t they build a balustrade across them as well” (Complete Stories, 95)? In this material world made by men, “Frequently people fall in the street and lie there dead” (Complete Stories, 94). The narrator tries to escape this world by creating a different one in which everything is subject to his own imagination and command. The fat man and the supplicant attempt to do the same thing but only in vain. At last, the fat man disappears, along with his ideal, “in the loud roar of the waterfall” (Complete Stories, 105). The story also shows the hubris, stubbornness, folly, and greed of human beings who impose their own will on nature. For instance, the narrator reports that “I let a strong wind blow against us in long gusts. Only when the sky became gradually hidden by the branches of the trees, which I let grow along the road, did I come to myself” (Complete Stories, 83). Because he dreads “the effort of climbing the mountainous road,” he “let it become gradually flatter, let it slope down into a valley in the distance.” “The stones vanished” at his will (Complete Stories, 83). The fat man also said, “The landscape disturbs my thought.” “Mountain, I do not love you, for you remind me of the clouds, of the sunset, of the rising sky, and these are things that almost make me cry because one can never reach them while being carried on a small litter. However, when showing me this, sly mountain, you block the distant view which gladdens me, for it reveals the attainable at a glance” (Complete Stories, 86). Nature starts to form a threat and oppress men, so the fat man implores the things of nature—“mountain, flowers, grass, bush, and river, give me some room so that I may breathe” (Complete Stories, 86). In the end, nature exacts its revenge on the fat man and the four men by drowning them in the roaring river. The fat man’s last words are: This is the water’s and the wind’s revenge; now I am lost. Yes, revenge it is, for how often have we attacked them, I and my friend the supplicant, amidst the singing of our swords, the flash of cymbals, the great splendor of trumpets, and the leaping blaze of drums! (Complete Stories, 87)

Fourth, there is the struggle between man and himself—a hidden theme in this novella that is full of symbolism and metaphors. The image

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of the narrator is highly autobiographic, and his night visit to Laurenziberg has several layers of meaning. First of all, it shows Kafka’s ambition to become a writer. He did pay night visits to the hill and wrote: Many years ago, I sat on the slope of the Laurenziberg, in a sad enough mood, to be sure. I tried to sort out what it was I wanted from life. The most important, or the most attractive wish, turned out to be a vision of life (and—this was a necessary part of it—the ability to convince others of it by my writing) in which life, while retaining its natural full rise and fall, can be seen at the same time, and no less clearly, as a nothing, a dream, a state of suspense. A beautiful wish, perhaps, if I had wished it right.21

This trip meant a lot to Kafka, as it produced an epiphany about the meaning of his life: “To write or to die”? This urge and great vision to write is embodied by Li Bai: Kutsu’s prose song Hangs with the sun and moon. King So’s terraced palace Is now but barren hill, But I draw pen on this barge Causing the five peaks to tremble, And I have joy in these words Like the joy of blue islands. (“The River Song” 《江上吟》 [ ])

As Du Fu describes, “Your brush set to paper, stirred wind and rain, a poem completed made gods and spirits weep” (“To Li Bai [12], Twenty-Couplets” 《寄李十二白二十韵》 [ ]). These poetic lines may have encouraged and inspired Kafka. Secondly, the narrator in the story wanders like a sleepwalker through damp and slippery streets and alleys heading for the summit of the city of Laurenziberg—thereby symbolizing an attempt to affirm life and to fight against the threat of death. Kafka witnessed many deaths in his family when he was young, including those of his two younger brothers: Georg died from measles at the age of two, and Heinrich died from otitis media at the age of six months. Kafka’s maternal grandmother died of typhus. Kafka once said of his maternal relatives: “All but my mother’s grandfather died young.”22 21 Earnst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka, p. 184. 22 Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket Books, 1984), p. 256.

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These deaths played a significant part in Kafka’s later thoughts and writings. On December 13, 1914, he wrote in his diary that all the best things that he wrote pertained to death: “All these fine and very convincing passages always deal with the fact that someone is dying”.23 While these deaths were draining experiences, they also increased Kafka’s spiritual strength. Fifth, there is the struggle between men and language. The problem of language was one of the most important issues in the twentieth century. Samuel Beckett wrote in his novel The Unnamable: “It all boils down to a question of words”; “all words, there’s nothing else.”24 The language was given a prominent place in all of Kafka’s China-related stories. He realized the significance of language at the very beginning of his writing. This is illustrated by what the fat man says to the supplicant in the novella. After hearing what the supplicant told him, the fat man seems to understand his problem, so he says, this is “a seasickness on land”: Don’t you feel it’s this very feverishness that is preventing you from being properly satisfied with the real names of things, and that now, in your frantic haste, you’re just pelting them with any old names? You can’t do it fast enough. But hardly have you run away from them when you’ve forgotten the names you gave them. The poplar in the fields, which you’ve called the “Tower of Babel” because you didn’t want to know it was a poplar, sways again without a name, so you have to call it “Noah in his cups.” (Complete Stories, 93)

The separation of language and objects, of signifier and signified, is the impasse that faces modern men. The stable and appropriate correspondence between names and the real meanings aspired to by the fat man is no more than wishful thinking. Everything becomes unreal after the separation between language and reality: moon, you are no longer moon, but perhaps it’s negligent of me to go on calling you so—called moon, moon. Why do your spirits fall when I call you “forgotten paper lantern of a strange color”? And why do you almost 23 Franz Kafka, The Dairies 1910–1923, ed. Max Brod (New York: Schocken Books, 1948), p. 312. 24 Samuel Beckett, The Beckett Trilogy: Molly, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1955), pp. 281, 366.

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withdraw when I call you “the Virgin’s pillar”? As for you, pillar of the Virgin Mary, I hardly recognize your threatening attitude when I call you “moon shedding yellow light.” (Complete Stories, 98)

It is only when we call the moon “moon” by chance that it becomes the moon. If we call it “paper lantern” or “Virgin’s pillar,” it will no longer be the moon. We would have thought there was a very stable and steady relationship between us and reality: For we are like tree trunks in the snow. They lie there apparently flat on the ground and it looks as though one could push them away with a slight kick. But no, one can’t, for they are firmly stuck to the ground. So you see even this is only apparent. (Complete Stories, 102)

In conclusion, our connection to the world is only apparent because it is built up through language.

CHAPTER 4

The Great Wall in Transcultural Context: The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall has been the national pride of the Chinese people and the symbol of Chinese spirit and culture. However, describing the construction of the Great Wall and exploring its significance and meanings are not only of great importance to Chinese writers and scholars; for Western writers and scholars, the topic represents a spiritual venture into China, the ancient and mysterious “other”—a cultural quest for the possibility and necessity of mutual understanding and communication between the East and the West. As Daniel Schwartz said, the wall as an architectural element becomes a part of Chinese civilization, which is probably one of a kind in the world … The Great Wall was the first and the most prominent embodiment of the wall concept, distinguishing between “us” and “them,” “the inside” and “the outside.”1 Kafka might have been unaware of the significance of this topic when he wrote his short story The Great Wall of China in 1917, but it has been highlighted gradually over the last century.

1 Daniel Schwartz, The Great Wall of China (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2001), p. 8.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_4

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4.1

The Textual “Great Wall”

Kafka considered The Great Wall of China as his most important work. It is also regarded as one of his most influential works, exerting great influence on many writers, including Jorge Luis Borges. The fact that Kafka gave up writing The Castle in first-person narrative means that this story is the longest one in first-person narrative, although the narrative perspective does vary a little in some places.2 The narrator “I” is so different from the writer, Kafka, that the fictionality and artificiality of this story are its most prominent features. Consequently, the Great Wall in this story cannot be viewed as the Chinese one, but a fictional object of Kafka’s creation. Since Kafka had neither been to China nor understood Chinese, his understanding and knowledge of China came from the West. Kafka’s knowledge of China and his construction of it were based on the German translation of some Chinese classics, some scholars’ comments on China, the travel logs, journals, reports, and introductory books about China. The Great Wall in China in his story was also created based on these texts. As Edward Said noted, “Texts are not finished objects. They are, as Williams once said, notations and cultural practices. In addition, texts create not only their own precedents, as Borges said of Kafka, but their successors.”3 Just as Borges was created by his precedents like Kafka, Kafka was also created by his precedents. In his works, the Chinese elements are reflected in the eyes of the Westerners, such as vast territory, large population, long history, splendid culture, circuitous concepts, ruthless systems, the Great Wall, numerous palaces, the supreme emperors, and the ordinary people being trampled upon at will. Moreover, there are also smaller details, such as smoke pans, flutes, pigtails, embroidered robes, the sparse beard of Chinese men, and Chinese expressions, to show that one is deep in thought. In the first draft of this story, there was a paragraph:

2 James Whitlark, Behind the Great Wall: A Post-Jungian to Kafkaesque Literature (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), p. 218. 3 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993), p. 259.

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THE NEWS of the building of the wall now penetrated into this world— late, too, some thirty years after its announcement. It was on a summer evening. I, ten years old, was standing with my father on the riverbank. In keeping with the importance of this much-discussed hour, I can recall the smallest details. My father was holding me by the hand, something he was fond of doing to the end of his days, and running his other hand up and down his long, very thin pipe, as though it were a flute. With his sparse, rigid beard raised in the air, he was enjoying his pipe while gazing upwards across the river. As a result, his pigtail, object of the children’s veneration, sank lower, rustling faintly on the gold embroidered silk of his holiday gown.4

The American critic, Rolf J. Goebel, once said that, along with Hans Heilmann’s Chinese Poetry from the Twelfth Century B.C. to the Present (1905), and the historical accounts of China offered by Herder, Hegel, and Schlegel, Juliu Dittmar’s travelogues A Journey Around the World (1911) and In New China (1912) should also be regarded as “indispensable for a reconstruction of the referentiality of Kafka’s texts.”5 Since many of the broader Western—and especially German—perspectives on China have been discussed in previous chapters, here we can focus on Western accounts of the Great Wall of China, with a view to providing a background for Kafka’s version of the Great Wall in this story. The earliest account of the Great Wall in Europe is said to have been made by a Roman Historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century A.D. He wrote, “Beyond the districts of the two Scythias, on the eastern side, is a ring of mountains which surround Serica….”6 Here, “a ring of mountains” refers to the Great Wall. Unfortunately, Marcellinus’ remarks were neglected and that, as a consequence, it was not until the twelfth century that the Portuguese historian João de Barros wrote about the Great Wall in detail in his Decades of Asia: This wall was drawn on the map of Chinese territory by the Chinese mentioned above .… I had heard about this wall before, and I had thought 4 Franz Kafka, “The News of the Building of the Wall: A Fragment”, in Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 160. 5 Rolf J. Goebel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997), p. 65. 6 Ammianus Marcellinus, Complete Works of Ammianus Marcellinus (London: Delphi Classics, 2016), p. 213.

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it was discontinuous, winding through the land of the Tartars, creating a passageway through the mountains. But I am so amazed to find that in this map it was completely connected.7

Regarded as the first-person to serve as a de facto cultural ambassador between the West and the East, the Italian traveler, Marco Polo, dispelled some of the mysteries of the East to the Europeans, presenting China as a vast, abundant, and charismatic territory. In 1298, Marco Polo returned to Europe, having lived in China for 17 years. He recounted his experiences in a travel log Oriente Poliano, which later became known as The Travels of Marco Polo. This became extremely popular in Europe, with translations made into dozens of languages. The book included vivid depictions of the great achievements of the Mongols, including their nomadic conquest by horseback. This ethnic group shocked the whole world by both unifying China and conquering many parts of Europe and Asia: … Kublai Khan, who became greater and more powerful than all the others who went before him: in fact, if you were taken all those five together, they would not be so powerful as he. Nay, I will say yet more; for if you put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians,—aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot,—would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Kublai …8

Feeling threatened by this aggressive nomadic ethnic group, Pope Innocent IV sought to convince all the Europeans that they had to fight the Mongols in the name of Christianity lest it be wiped out. This threatening image of the Mongol was also depicted in Kafka’s works: “…these faces of the damned, their gaping mouths, their jaws furnished with great pointed teeth, their half-shut eyes that already seem to be seeking out the victim which their jaws will rend and devour.”9 Marco Polo also mentioned the city walls and palaces of the capital of Yuan Dynasty:

7 Wu Mengxue and Zeng Liya, A History of European Sinology in Ming Dynasty (Beijing: Beijing Oriental Press, 2002), pp. 69–70. 8 Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Manuel Komroff (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1930), p. 61. 9 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka, pp. 152–60.

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The new city is of a form perfectly square, and twenty-four miles in extent, each of its sides being six miles. It is enclosed with walls of earth, that at the base are about ten paces thick, but gradually diminish to the top, where the thickness is not more than three paces. In all parts the battlements are white. The whole plan of the city was regularly laid out by line, and the streets in general are consequently so straight…In this manner the whole interior of the city is disposed in squares, so as to resemble a chessboard, and planed out with a degree of precision and beauty impossible to describe. The wall of the city has twelve gates, three on each side of the square, and over each gate and compartment of the wall there is a handsome building: so that on each side of the square there are five such buildings, containing large rooms, in which are disposed the arms of those who form the garrison of the city, each gate being guarded by a thousand men. It is not to be understood that such a force is stationed there in consequence of the apprehension of danger from any hostile power whatever, but as a guard suitable to the honor and dignity of the sovereign.10

The description of walls upon walls and palaces upon palaces fits that of the emperor’s messenger in Kafka’s story. Later, Gaspar da Cruz, a Portuguese missionary from the Dominican Order, highlighted the discontinuity of the Great Wall: “because of the lasting wars against the Tartars, the Chinese built a 100-mile wall (it was said to be longer elsewhere) between them and their enemy, allowing them to station their soldiers there in preparation for potential attacks. It was reported that the wall was not well connected due to being disrupted by mountains.”11 These descriptions may have inspired Kafka. The Spanish missionary Juan Gonzales de Mendoza also spoke of the Great Wall in his The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China: “There is in this kingdome a defense or wall that is five hundred leagues. A wall of 500 leagues long, long, and beginnneth at the citie Ochyoy, which is vppon the high mountianes, and runneth from the west vnto east.”12 Like Kafka, Mendoza based his account of China upon reports in previous Western texts. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit priest who had lived in China for 10 Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, pp. 84–5. 11 Wu Mengxue and Zeng Liya, A History of European Sinology in Ming Dynasty, p. 71. 12 Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China

and the Situation Thereof (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, 2009), p. 28.

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approximately 30 years, once mentioned the Great Wall in his diary, and this was later edited into the book China in the 16th Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583–1610. He understood that the Wall was built for the defense against the Tartars, which was “a tremendous wall four hundred and five miles long.”13 Almost mimicking Ricci, Kafka’s story The Great Wall of China begins as follows: “The Great Wall of China was finished off at its northernmost corner.” Hegel also commented on the Great Wall in China in his The Philosophy of History: “The long wall built by Shi-hoang-ti—and which has always been regarded as a most astounding achievement—was raised as a barrier against the inroads of the northern Nomades.”14 The goal of building the wall is not a secret in Kafka’s story: “Against whom was the Great Wall to serve as a protection? The people of the north.”15 The French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire thought highly of Chinese culture. To his mind, Chinese culture was more rational and moral than that of the West. He also knew of China through the books and correspondence of Western missionaries. There are two paragraphs on the Great Wall in his An Essay on Universal History (Essai sur les moeurs ): The great wall which separated and defended China against the Tartars, and which was built a hundred and thirty seven years before our era, subsists to this day; it is 500 leagues in circumference, rising on the tops of mountains, and descending down precipices, being almost everywhere 20 feet broad, and above 30 feet high: a monument superior to the pyramids of Egypt, both by its utility and dimensions. Yet this rampart did not hinder the Tartars from making a proper use of the divisions of the Chinese, and conquering that empire; but this revolution made no change in their constitution of government. The country of the conquerors has become part of the conquered state; and

13 Matteo Ricci, China in the 16th Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583–1610,

trans. Louis J. Gallagher, S. J. (New York: Random House, 1953), available at https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China, accessed on October 2018. 14 Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans J. Sibree (New York: Prometheus Books, 1991), p. 136. 15 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 156. All the following quotations will be referred to as page numbers.

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the Mantchoux Tartars, now masters of China, have only submitted with sword in hand to the laws of the country, whose throne they invaded.16

In addition, Voltaire’s description of Chinese emperors shed some light on Kafka’s works. Voltaire wrote: The emperor has been high pontiff from time immemorial; it is he who sacrifices to Tien, the supreme ruler of heaven and earth: he is considered also as the first philosopher and first preacher in the empire; and his edicts are generally instructions and lessons of morality.17

There are several times in which Kafka’s works portray Chinese emperors, along with their edicts and religious rituals. The German writer Heinrich Heine was also fascinated by China. In 1833 he wrote: Know ye China, the fatherland of winged dragons and porcelain teacups? The whole country is vast cabinet of curiosities, surrounded by a remarkably long wall, and guarded by a hundred thousand Tartar sentinels. But birds and the thoughts of European scholars fly over the wall, and when they have feasted their eyes with the wonderful sights, they return to us, and relate the most delightful tales of that strange country and strange people.18

As a kindred German-speaking Jew, Heine struck a chord with Kafka. Kafka’s descriptions of the Great Wall of China and the Northern nomads were probably inspired by Heine’s “the Great Wall of China.” Nevertheless, Kafka’s great wall is also undoubtedly inspired by the famous “Hunger Wall” on Laurenziberg in Prague. It is said that it was built between 1360 and 1362 by order of Charles IV to serve no purpose at all other than to provide employment for the destitute when the city was 16 M. de Voltaire, An Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, from the Reign of Charlemaign to the Age of Lewis XIV , trans. Mr. Nugent (Charleston: Nabu Press, 2011), p. 13. 17 Ibid. 18 Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School, trans. S. L. Fleishman, available at https://

archive.org/details/romanticschoolb00heingoog, accessed on October 2018.

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struck by hunger. Its lack of a further purpose meant that the wall was never completed, thus leaving it resembling Kafka’s Great Wall with its many cleavages and cracks.

4.2

The Historical “Great Wall”

The fact that China’s Great Wall has existed for thousands of years has generated numerous historical accounts of, and folk stories about, its origins. The construction of the Great Wall began during the Spring and Autumn Periods. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, the wall had been repaired and had undergone maintenance and expansion in approximately 20 kingdoms and dynasties. The most well-known walls were built during the Qin, Han, and Ming dynasties, with a total length exceeding 5000 kilometers. The State of Chu in the Spring and Autumn Periods was the first to build the Great Wall. The Chu State Wall was called “the Square Wall.” The Book of Han: Treaties on Geography 《汉书·地理志》 [ ] says, “There was a great wall, called ‘the Square Wall’ in the state of Chu.”19 After Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 B.C., “The territory of the Qin Dynasty (221–207 B.C.) ran to the sea in the east and to five mountains in the south. The walls stretched from Lin Tao (Ming County in Gansu Province) in the North West to Liao Dong in the North East, and close to the old walls of the Warring States Period, to protect the dynasty against incursions by nomads from the north.”20 According to Records of the Grand Historian 《史记》 [ ], Master Lu, a native of Yan, who had been sent out to sea, returned and, claiming that it had come to him from the gods and spirits, submitted a document that said: “Qin will be destroyed by Hu.” The First Emperor thereupon ordered Meng Tian to call out 300,000 troops and lead them north to strike at the Hu barbarians. The general invaded and seized the area south of the bend of the Yellow River…Qin, having completed its unification of the empire, dispatched Meng Tian to lead a force of 300,000 men and advance north, expelling the Rong and Di barbarians

19 Ban Gu, The Book of Han, vol. 6 (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1962), p. 1564. 20 Fan Wenlan, General History of China, vol. 2 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1978), p. 7.

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and taking control of the region south of the bend of the Yellow River. He set about constructing the Great Wall, following the contours of the land and utilizing the narrow defiles to set up frontier posts. The wall began at Lintao and ran east to Liaodong, extending for a distance of over 10,000 li.21

During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) which followed the Qin, the Great Wall underwent massive maintenance and expansion. A separate outer wall north of the Yinshan Range, with a total length of 10,000 kilometres, was constructed under the command of the Han emperors. The longest single wall built in ancient China, it ran from Baotou in Inner Mongolia, to the west, past Yanhai, Jiuquan, Yumen, Dunhuang, and all the way to Xinjiang. Zhu Yuanzhang [朱元璋], known as the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), adopted the policy as captured by the motto: “Build high walls, stock up rations, and don’t be too quick to call yourself a king.” Although the idea of building high walls was not directly related to the Great Wall, the intention to build walls had been there all along. Forming the most visible parts of the Great Wall today, the Ming Great Wall measured 6700 kilometers from Jiayu Pass in the west to the sea at the Shanhai Pass. Regarding the method of construction, a stone tablet at Badaling gives an account of the construction project during 1582 (or the tenth reigning year of Wanli). The burden of building the Great Wall fell mostly on the shoulders of the military. One of the projects containing a 200-meter long wall and a stone arched gate took many years with thousands of soldiers and numerous commoners.22 After the Qin Dynasty, there was a popular song called “Building the Wall” 《筑城词》 [ ] in China, and it was turned into a poem by Zhang Ji [张籍], a Tang poet: At the construction site of the wall, thousands of people are laboring with hammers and spades. Under the whip of the supervisors from the military,

21 Sima Qian, Records of The Grand Historian, trans. Burton Watson (Hong Kong: Columbia University Press Book, 1993), p. 199. 22 Zhang Xiuping, etc., eds., A General View of Chinese Culture (Beijing: The East Press, 1988), p. 36.

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they have been toiling for a whole year, with ragged clothes, and they are starving and thirsty. With spades they dug till exhausted to death. Sons were once meant to support their families, but now they are mere dust under the wall.

According to Chinese historians, the Great Wall serves three purposes: (1) To fend off the northern nomads and to protect the nation and its people; (2) To develop more arable lands and to ensure the development of agriculture in remote areas; and (3) To ensure the safety of correspondence and business trips. Although Kafka was greatly intrigued by the legends and records of the Great Wall in China, it was not his goal to represent the history of the construction of the Wall in ancient China via his stories, nor did he intend to use the past to allude to the political situation of China at his time, to which he was not indifferent. So why did Kafka write a story about the Great Wall in China? As Jonathan D. Spence argues, Kafka “didn’t relate his theory to history, but to his understanding of Chinese civilization.”23 Since the Great Wall was an important part of the East imagined and constructed by the Westerners, exposing the fictionality and arbitrariness of this oriental image was of great significance, especially for promoting mutual understanding and communication. In this sense, Kafka’s endeavor and insight went far beyond that of his contemporaries, to the extent of coinciding with today’s postcolonial perspectives. Deconstruction of the image of the Great Wall is a first step in the right direction. How was this textual Great Wall constructed? How was it rendered into a historical narrative instead of historical fact? In the story of The Great Wall of China, Kafka subverts the Western tradition of historical narratives, especially narratives of the orientalists. First of all, the identity of the narrator remains rather vague, so it is problematic whether he is qualified to narrate this part of history. As for the identity of “I,” “I come from the southeast of China” (Complete Stories, 156). I can still remember quite well us standing as small children, scarcely sure on our feet, in our teacher’s garden, and being ordered to build a sort of wall out of pebbles; and then the teacher, girding up his robe, ran full tilt

23 Jonathan D. Spence, Cultural Commonality and Cultural Usage, trans. Liao Shiqi, etc. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1990), pp. 109–10.

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against the wall, of course knocking it down, and scolded us so terribly for the shoddiness of our work that we ran weeping in all directions to our parents. (Complete Stories, 153) I was lucky inasmuch as the building of the wall was just beginning when at twenty, I had passed the last examination of the lowest school. (Complete Stories, 153) I can recall an incident in my youth. A revolt had broken out in a neighboring, but yet quite distant, province…one day a leaflet published by the rebels was brought to my father’s house by a beggar who had crossed that province. It happened to be a feast day, our rooms were filled with guests, the priest sat in the center and studied the sheet… (Complete Stories, 179)

These descriptions bear no resemblance to the context of ancient China and simply reflect Kafka’s own experiences and imagination. For instance, “the lowest school” was unthinkable at the time when the Great Wall was started. It is said that there had been “schools” as early as the Xia Dynasty (c. 2070–c. 1600 B.C.) in China, but there is a lack of evidence other than words such as “teach,” “study,” and “teacher” among inscriptions on oracle bones. The oracle inscriptions, such as those “discovered in Yin Remains,” show that there had been schools in the Yin Dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1046 B.C.), but the schools at that time were less educational institutions than places to consolidate the orders of society, such as the relationship between sovereign and ministers and differences between the young and the old. By the time of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 B.C.), the educators were granted official status and were supposed to teach music, archery, morality, and rites to a small number of the offspring of aristocrats. Such schools were run solely by the government, in which only government officials were entitled to be teachers.24 These schools have nothing in common with Kafka’s lowest school. Even after the Spring and Autumn period, when Confucius founded private schools, the form of education was mainly through conversations without any examinations. The stern examination system to which Kafka alludes is that which he had to go through upon middle school graduation. He described these traumatic experiences as follows:

24 Mao Lirui, etc., eds., A History of Education in Ancient China (Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1979), p. 29.

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Never, I thought, would I make it through first grade; but I did, I even got a prize. I certainly won’t pass the high-school entrance examinations; but pass I did. I’ll definitely fail in my first year in high school; but no, I didn’t fail, I succeeded in passing, time and again. Success, however, did not inspire confidence; on the contrary, I was always convinced that the more I accomplished, the worse off I would be in the end. In my mind’s eye I often saw a terrifying conclave of teachers (the Gymnasium merely provides the most cogent example, but they were all around me) meeting to discuss this unique, this absolutely outrageous case, to wit: how I, the most incompetent, certainly the most ignorant of all, had managed to sneak from first into the second Gymnasium grade, then into the third, and so on up the line. But now that I had at last aroused their attention, I would of course be immediately thrown out, to the immense satisfaction of all righteous men delivered from a nightmare.25

In 1893, Kafka took the high school entrance examination, which he considered to be akin to a series of public trials. Kafka was one of the 83 students attending a German language middle school in Prague, and only 24 were left after 8 years of annual examinations. As for Kafka: “…every examination, from first to last, was a dress rehearsal for the Day of Judgment. Nor did passing a test bring relief; all it meant was that he had succeeded one more time in hoodwinking his judges and thus added to the sum total of his transgressions ultimately to be accounted for.”26 In 1901, Kafka attended the comprehensive finals and qualified for admission to the university. He considered this to be the ultimate ordeal, and the worry caused him many sleepless nights. In the end, he passed with moderate performance. It is said that one of his classmates had bribed the Greek teacher’s housekeeper and had obtained an advance copy of the finals. Kafka was said to be involved in this.27 By this time, he was 18 years old and thus a similar age to the narrator in the story of The Great Wall of China. Some of the details in the story, such as the priest studying the leaflet, were not likely to happen in China. The fictional background against which the story takes place renders the story itself unreal.

25 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka (New York: 1984), pp. 33–4. 26 Ernst Pawel, p. 42. 27 Ibid., p. 89.

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There are not many accounts of the narrator’s name, gender, occupation, and experiences. “During the building of the wall and ever since to this very day I have occupied myself almost exclusively with the comparative history of races…” (Complete Stories, 156). The readers can probably assume that the narrator is a scholar, spending his days studying some problems related to different races. For instance, why was the Great Wall built section by section? Is it true that the goal of the great wall was to lay a foundation for Babel? Who did the Great Wall fend off? Why did the Chinese have to travel so far to build the Great Wall if we had never encountered the northerners? Why are some of the Chinese institutions clearly specified, while others are underspecified and vague? Is the capital city the symbol of the Sovereign? Here, “I” sounds more like a European scholar than a Chinese one, since no ancient Chinese scholar would have asked those questions. Therefore, as a non-Chinese, the narrator’s credibility is put into question when he tries to narrate “what he experienced” during the construction of the Great Wall. Moreover, any narratives about history are historical. No matter how hard the narrator tries to give an objective account of the construction of the Wall, he is doomed to fail since his accounts are inevitably tainted by his limited knowledge and distorting perspective. Kafka mocks the respectable historical tradition when his narrator tries to explain why the Great Wall was built by sections: “My inquiry is purely historical; no lightning flashes any longer from the long since vanished thunderclouds, and so I may venture to seek an explanation of the system of piecemeal construction which goes farther than one that contented people then. The limits that my capacity for thought imposes upon me are narrow enough, but the province to be traversed here is infinite” (Complete Stories, 156). In the nineteenth century, many historians regarded history as an array of past events that they could reconstruct objectively. The narrator in this story is skeptical of this view, maintaining that “The limits that my capacity for thought imposes upon me are narrow…” (Complete Stories, 156). His own experiences and perspectives are intertwined with the past that he narrated, and his own personal history shapes his understanding and misunderstanding of that part of history. In addition, any historical account will inevitably reflect historians’ blind spots. “I” is devoted to the comparative history of races, and he believes “there are certain questions that one can probe to the marrow, as it were, only this method” (Complete Stories, 157). Then, “I” discovered that “we Chinese possess certain folk and political institutions that

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are unique in their clarity, others again unique in their obscurity.” “Now one of the most obscure of our institutions is that of the empire itself. In Peking, naturally, at the imperial court, there is some clarity to be found on this subject, although even that is more illusory than real. Additionally, the teachers of political law and history in the schools of higher learning claim to be exactly informed on these matters and to be capable of passing on their knowledge to their students” (Complete Stories, 157). This is in fact a critique of an oversimplified approach to history and knowledge. Some scholars of the comparative history of races hold that the historians of other races might have a better footing to explore the culture and history of the targeted race since they achieve a critical distance from the subject of the study. By this logic, Western historians might be better equipped to evaluate the history of the East. However, for Kafka, no one can explain the mysteries of the East explicitly, either from the inside or from the outside, as the solutions are ineffable.28 Nevertheless, any historical account is limited by the historian’s position and perspectives. At the beginning of the twentieth century, China bore some resemblance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some German intellectuals compared the ending of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) to the downfall of China’s Qing Dynasty (1636–1912). “When Kafka wrote this story, the entire continent of Europe was engulfed by the patriotic frenzy which led to the First World War.”29 Against the backdrop of such turmoil, Kafka interpreted that part of the history of China very negatively, ignoring its reforms and positive thinking, and paying more attention to the disempowered Emperors and imperial institutions, as well as the conspiracies, rebels, court schemes, rumors, lack of transparency, and chaos. Moreover, in his story, Kafka abstracted away from the exact time and place of the historical narrative, restoring it to a pure narrative. As any historical incident happens in concrete time and place, the erasure of details that draws attention to the narrative itself precludes accounts from being historical. In this story, the timescale is not exact and seems disordered. The narrator does not start his story chronologically but rather jumps between referring to the Qin Dynasty when the building of the Wall started, to

28 Rolf J. Goebel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse, p. 75. 29 Jonathan D. Spence, Cultural Commonality and Cultural Usage, p. 110.

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the prosperity of Han, the downfall of Ming, and the corruption of Qing Dynasty. This nonlinear narration shows the deadlock and stagnation of Chinese history and the backwardness of Chinese reality, thus creating more of an orientalist spiritual portrait of China than a genuine history. The spatial setting of the story seems infinite, ranging from the North to the South, from the West to the East, covering the whole of China. “So vast is our land that no fable could do justice to its vastness, the heavens can scarcely span it—and Peking is only a dot in it, and the imperial palace less than a dot.” “But how should we know anything about that—thousands of miles away in the south—almost on the borders of the Tibetan Highlands? And besides, any tidings, even if they did reach us, would arrive far too late, would have become obsolete long before they reached us” (Complete Stories, 157). The infinity of space precludes proper communication between imperial institutions and the people, which in turn leads to the isolation and backwardness of an empire frozen in time. In this way, Kafka turns this historical account to an allegory about history.

4.3

The Transcultural “Great Wall”

The emblematic Great Wall is said to represent the spirit of the Chinese nation. Consequently, Kafka attempts to interpret the spirit of the Chinese through the Great Wall and to explore the possibility and necessity of mutual communication and understanding between the West and the East. With respect to the rationale for building the Great Wall, it has been universally proclaimed that it was intended to fend off the nomads from the North. However, Kafka did not concur because this would have rendered it paradoxical that it was a piecemeal construction: “But how can a wall protect if it is not a continuous structure? Not only can such a wall not protect, but what there is of it in perpetual danger?” (Complete Stories, 153). According to the narrator, there are several reasons for piecemeal construction. First, to build the Great Wall is to give the exhausted laborers hope and vitality: “…while they were still exalted by the jubilant celebrations marking the completion of the thousand yards of wall, they were sent far, far away…” (Complete Stories, 154) “…never before had they seen how great and rich and beautiful and worthy love their country was. Every fellow countryman was a brother for whom one was building a wall of

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protection, and who would return lifelong thanks for it with all he had and did” (Complete Stories, 153). Therefore, in building a tangible Great Wall, people have built up an even more solid wall of solidarity in their minds. Second, to build the wall is to lay a foundation for the equally ancient architecture, Babel, one of the seven wonders of the world. In this story, the narrator notices that “…during the early days of building a scholar wrote a book in which he drew the comparison in the most exhaustive way)” (Complete Stories, 153); “…the Tower of Babel failed to reach its goal, not because of the reasons universally advanced, or at least that among those recognized reasons the most important of all was not to be found”; “…the tower failed and was bound to fail because of the weakness of the foundation.” So the scholar in the story claims that “the Great wall alone would provide for the first time in the history of mankind a secure foundation for a new Tower of Babel” (Complete Stories, 154). In this way, the Great Wall is associated with the Bible, which implies a possible connection between Chinese and Western cultures. Third, the Great Wall was built in this way because “the command deliberately chose the system of piecemeal construction.” For if the command “had seriously desired it, [it] could also have overcome those difficulties that prevented a system of continuous construction. There remains, therefore, nothing but the construction that the command deliberately chose the system of piecemeal construction. But the piecemeal construction was only a makeshift and therefore inexpedient. Strange conclusion! True, and yet in one respect it has much to be said for it” (Complete Stories, 153). In consequence, for the commoners, the most important issue is not the meaning of the Wall, but the intention of the command, which is likened to the river in the story. It can both sustain and destroy. Fourth, the idea of building the Great Wall had long existed, and it is hard to trace which emperor or which command made the pivotal decision. According to the narrator, “no northern people can menace us there… We have not seen them, and if we remain in our villages we shall never see them, even if on their wild horses they should ride as hard as they can straight toward us—the land is too vast and would not let them reach us, they would end their course in the empty air” (Complete Stories, 153). Therefore, there is no need for “us” to build the

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Wall for defense. “Our” knowledge about northern people with “their gaping mouths and their jaws furnished with great pointed teeth” comes from descriptions from a few ancient books, which can be considered solid evidence. And most ridiculously, “Unwitting peoples of the north, who imagined they were the cause of it! Honest, unwitting Emperor, who imagined he decreed it! We builders of the wall know that it was not so and hold tongues” (Complete Stories, 154). History was produced as such. Fifth, there is a hidden goal in the piecemeal construction plan, namely, a spiritual pursuit and an artistic expression. According to the narrator, “human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self” (Complete Stories, 153). So why are people with an unstable nature willing to build a wall for themselves? Despite its strict boundary, the piecemeal and unfinished construction leaves people boundless space and endless possibilities. Therefore, we must understand the construction of the Great Wall in a purely “spiritual sense” (Complete Stories, 153). Of course, “we” have never seen any northern people, and only read about them in ancient books. What “we” have seen them through is “the faithful representations of the artist,” thanks to which people are encouraged to build the Great Wall.30 The baffling interpretations of the events surrounding the building of the Great Wall are essentially connected with the ambiguity of the Chinese empire. Taking the emperor as an example, it is almost impossible to know anything about him; although there are lots of rumors about him, none of them can be verified: “…any tidings, even if they did reach us, would arrive far too late, would have become obsolete long before they reached us” (Complete Stories, 157). It is very likely that one dynasty has been overthrown and replaced by the other before the old emperor’s decree reaches everyone. People “do not know which Emperor is reigning, there exist doubts regarding even the name of the dynasty…Thus, then do our people deal with departed emperors, but the living ruler they confuse among the dead” (Complete Stories, 158). Everything seems so irrational and unbelievable that the people “find it more difficult to picture such a city than to believe that Peking and its Emperor are one, a cloud, say, peacefully voyaging beneath the sun in the course of the ages” (Complete 30 Syed Manzural Isalm, The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka (Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 31.

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Stories, 159). Consequently, the narrator decides not to “proceed any further” with his inquiry into these questions. This may also mean that Kafka decided not to proceed with his inquiry into the problems of the Great Wall and China and the East. He seems to have taken China to be inexplicable due to the lack of any definable meanings. The predicament of interpretation is just like that which is faced by the Emperor’s messenger as he makes his way through the endless chambers of the palace and courtyards, crowds, and garbage. Even if at last he “should burst through the outermost gate—but never, never can that happen” (Complete Stories, 157)—then he might carry a message from a dead man which holds no meaning anymore. It is analogous to the aspect of the interpretation process in which the signifier is conveyed with unremitting effort but the signified is lost on the way. The interpretation can never reach the receiver. However, after giving up the pursuit of a fixed interpretation, Kafka gains liberation and freedom. This gives rise to his poetic imagining of the building of the Great Wall, Chinese empire, Chinese history, and the multitudes of the Chinese spiritual world. Consequently, Kafka’s Great Wall is textual, poetic, ahistorical, and transcultural. The fictional China provides Kafka with rich themes, vivid imagery, and discourse from the East. Where the historical interpretation falls short, a poetical creation is born. Roland Barthes, a French poststructuralist, addressed a similar issue in his article “Well, and China?” He wrote: We want there to be impenetrable phenomena, so that we can penetrate them: an ideological atavism has made us deciphering creatures, hermeneutic subjects. We believe our intellectual task is always to discover a meaning. China seems to resist yielding this meaning, not because it hides it, but more subversively, because (in this respect very un-Confucian) it defeats the constitution of concepts, themes, names.31

The fact that China resists producing reality in accordance with the structure of the West makes Westerners question some of their interpretations and meanings. This is what Barthes called “the end of interpretation.” Perhaps Kafka was sensitive enough to predict this end of 31 Roland Barthes, “Well, and China?”, in Discourse 8, trans. Lee Hildreth (fall–winter 1986–1987), pp. 116–7.

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interpretation, and that is why he not only gave up the pursuit of the question but also the goal of finishing the story. He took only one part from the story and published it under the name “An Imperial Message” in the collection of A Country Doctor.

CHAPTER 5

Old Manuscript from China: An Old Manuscript

An Old Manuscript, a very short story of approximately 1000 words in length, was published while Kafka was still alive in 1917. The story did not draw much attention until the end of the twentieth century. With the rise of postcolonialism, it acquired greater salience because the fact that it describes a Chinese story means that it can be considered to bear the imprint of the Western imagination and perspective.

5.1

Originating from China

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Kafka gave up writing The Great Wall of China in the beginning of 1917. However, he was still haunted by some of the materials from the story, such as that of the Chinese empire under the invasion of the nomads. He soon found a better narrative angle by telling the story via a shoemaker in Beijing, the capital city of China: “I have a cobbler’s workshop in the square that lies before the Emperor’s palace.”1 The original name of the story is “An Old Manuscript from China,” thus indicating that the story comes directly from China. Later, Kafka removed “China” from the title, thus rendering its background vague and unclear but also enabling the story to achieve

1 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), ebook, p. 415. All the following quotations will be referred to as page numbers.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_5

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greater universality. One problem with abstracting away from the original Chinese background and thus reading the story as pure parable is that it makes it easier to get lost in overinterpretation. For instance, some critics view the emperor in the story as the Judaeo-Christian God and take his palace to symbolize Abrahamic ideals and values that have become contaminated by modern materialism. Other critics regard the story as a metaphor for modern schizophrenia caused by the collapse of religious beliefs. These interpretations neglect Kafka’s ambiguous attitude toward these Orientalist texts, which both inspired and baffled him. An Old Manuscript , an excerpt from The Great Wall of China, no longer treats the nomads from the north as a distant enemy and an imaginary invader but portrays them instead as real invaders, savages whose arrival is imminent. In The Great Wall of China, we are told of the nomads that “We have not seen them, and if we remain in our villages we shall never see them, even if on their wild horses they should ride as hard as they can straight toward us—the land is too vast and would not let them reach us, they would end their course in the empty air” (Complete Stories, 264–5). In contrast, in An Old Manuscript , it is narrated that Scarcely have I taken my shutters down, at the first glimmer of dawn, when I see armed soldiers already posted in the mouth of every street opening on the square. But these soldiers are not ours, they are obviously nomads from the North. In some way that is incomprehensible to me they have pushed right into the capital, although it is a long way from the frontier. At any rate, here they are; it seems that every morning there are more of them. (Complete Stories, 415)

This change no doubt reflects Kafka’s understanding of the reality of China at that time when it was subject to various Western powers. From the Opium War in 1840 to the time when Kafka wrote this story in 1917, China fell into a semicolony of various imperial powers, including the West and Japan. According to some Western scholars, in 1840, it was “not only because of China’s relative military weakness, but also because of the currents of ideas-concepts of scientific learning, of individual freedom, and of economic growth, for example—which were beginning to sweep over the modern world. In demanding diplomatic equality and commercial opportunity, Britain represented all the Western states, which would sooner or later have demanded the same things if

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Britain had not.”2 Marx once said, “Before the British arms the authority of the Qing dynasty fell to pieces; the superstitious faith in the eternity of the Celestial Empire broke down; the barbarous and hermetic isolation from the civilized world was infringed; and an opening was made for that intercourse which has since proceeded so rapidly under the golden attractions of California and Australia.”3 After the First Opium War (1839–1842), the Qing government signed the Treaty of Nanjing with the U.K., ceding Hong Kong to the U.K., and five treaty ports were opened for foreign trade, including Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai. A total sum of 21 million dollars was to be paid in installments over three years. In 1843 and 1844, the Qing government signed the Treaty of the Bogue with the U.K., the Treaty of Wanghia with the U.S., and the Treaty of Whampoa with France, the provisions of which included granting the most favored nation status and hence equal trading opportunities and interests to each of these powers. In the meantime, Russia intensified its control over Manchuria, forcing China to sign the Treaty of Aigun. After China was defeated in the first Sino-Japanese War, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed between Japan and the Qing Dynasty. China was forced to cede to Japan in perpetuity full sovereignty over Taiwan, the Pescadores group, and the eastern portion of the bay of Liaodong Peninsula. China also agreed to pay Japan as a war indemnity the sum of 200,000,000 Kuping taels. In addition, Germany forced China to sign the Jiao’ao Concession Treaty on March 6, 1898, in which the Jiaozhou Bay area became a German concession for 99 years. These unequal treaties showed the weakness of China compared to imperial powers. The title of the story “An Old Manuscript” is also symbolic, signifying the irony of the Qing Empire that came to an end in 1912. As the last of many autocratic feudal dynasties in China’s long history, the Qing Dynasty ruled the vast territory of China for 268 years.4 The Qing Dynasty reached the zenith of its prosperity in the middle of the eighteenth century after 100 years of development since it began to rule in 2 John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, etc. A History of East Asian Civilization, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), p. 136. 3 Karl Marx, “Revolution in China and in Europe”, available at https://www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/14.htm, accessed on April 23, 2019. 4 Dai Yi, A Brief History of Qing Dynasty, vol. 1 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House), 1980, p. 1.

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1644. The centralized government managed to reinforce the unification of various ethnic groups in China and to achieve political, economical, and cultural development. However, the feudal government gradually met with its downfall, while Western countries advanced through capitalist expansions and invasions. China became a major prey to their plunder. Moreover, the Qing government was severely weakened by various wars and revolutions, such as the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the SinoFrench War, the Hundred Day’s Reform, and the Boxer Rebellion. The Revolution of 1911 put an end to its reign, thus concluding more than two thousand years of autocratic imperial rule. When Kafka wrote this story in 1917, it was the sixth year of the Republic of China, and the ancient Chinese empire and its monarchy had passed into history and memory, like pages of “the old manuscript.” Some of the imagery from the story comes from classical Chinese poetry. As mentioned earlier, Kafka was greatly influenced by Li Bai’s two poems: “The Song of Knight-errant” 《侠客行》 [ ] and “Articles on Travel and Hunting” 《行行且游猎篇》 [ ], both of which can be found in Heilmann’s collection of Chinese lyrical poetry. In “The Song of the Knight-errant,” there is A knight from Kingdom Zhao wearing a Hu style tassel, And a curved blade which was shiny like frost and snow His steed was white and matched by a silver saddle Galloping as fast as a shooting star could go. He traveled hundreds of miles; none could stop his steed. With every ten steps he cut down and killed a foe.

Additionally, in the “Articles on Travel and Hunting”: Young boys outside the city wall Since birth have not read one character in one book Yet they know how to easily and quickly hunt Huzi horses fat with white-autumn grasses Riding in flying shadows with no restraint Wielding golden whips with the sounds of white grasses Merrily and with gusto, they and their hawks head for the city’s edge Notched arrows, bent bows the shape of full moons.

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The image of the nomads in Kafka’s story bears a great deal of resemblance to that of the traveling hunter in this poem. There are also many poetic lines about Chinese emperors and imperial palaces from Heilmann’s collection. For instance, “The time when the crows are roosting on the terrace of Ku-su; is when, in the Wu king’s palace, Hsi Shih is growing drunk.” (Li Bai, “A Song for the Hour when the Crows Roost” [李白《乌栖曲》 ]; “Right north from passes of mounts, reports of fights din; The messages of westward campaigns in fights do flee. Like fish and dragons, neath autumn river cold; I think of my native soil as an absentee” (Du Fu, “Eight Poems of Autumn: The Fourth” [杜甫《秋兴八首 其 四》 ]); “The creek gully turns, long winds through pines, Gray rats scuttling over ancient tiles; I wonder what prince’s hall that lies, A construct abandoned, beneath sheer cliff wall” (Du Fu, “Yuhua Palace” [杜甫《玉 华宫》 ]). These poetic lines may have fueled Kafka’s imagination of China.

5.2

Erasing China

Although the quasi-Chinese or eastern background of Kafka’s story is vital to the understanding and interpretation of “An Old Manuscript,” it does not mean that the story is about China and its history and social reality. A literal reading of the story is not viable. And this story is by no means a translation of fragments of a genuine ancient Chinese manuscript. Kafka avoided referring directly to China in this story for a reason. Many of his stories are set against the background of a distant, exotic country, such as America in Amerika, ancient Greece in “the Silence of the Sirens,” “Prometheus” and “Poseidon,” and China in “the Great Wall of China.” These distant places serve as a medium to represent Kafka’s own world, which is closely related to his own environment. As Roland Barthes once noted, “To me the Orient is a matter of indifference, merely providing a reserve of features whose manipulation—whose invented interplay—allows me to ‘entertain’ the idea of an unheard-of symbolic system, one altogether detached from our own.”5 Many Western scholars hold that this story reflects the historical reality of the First World War and the political bankruptcy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. According to Rolf J. Goebel, Western intellectuals have always found that the corrupted and decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire bore much 5 Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 73.

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resemblance to China’s Qing Dynasty.6 The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a Dual Monarchy in Central and Eastern Europe between 1867 and 1918. Austria and Hungary had separate governments and parliaments, but their foreign and military affairs came under joint oversight, and each side’s parliament sent representatives to discuss common matters with the other. This empire came to an end after the end of the First World War in 1918. Most of Kafka’s life (1883–1924) overlapped with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he witnessed its historical transition from prosperity to decline. As a multiethnic empire with a vast territory and large population, the Austro-Hungarian Empire covered most of central Europe, reaching Russia in the north via the coast of the Adriatic Sea and the Ottoman Empire in the east via the Alpine Mountains. It was the second largest European country next to Russia, with a total area of 250,000 square miles. Located in the center of Europe, the empire played an important role in shaping the continent. Many ethnic groups lived in Austria-Hungary, including Germans, Magyars, Italians, Czechs, Rosenians, Romanians, Polish, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes, Jews, and Gypsies, and this helped to contribute to the crisis it endured in the late nineteenth century. “Not only was Austria-Hungary increasingly anomalous in a Europe of nation-states; its very dualism emphasized the rift between the Slav, who were divided between Austria and Hungary, and the German or Magyar ruling class which owned the big estates and often controlled industry. Thus, the Slavs could nurse a grievance as the social underdogs, so that class and racial antagonisms tended to merge. The tide of socialism was rising.”7 However, the Austrian Revolution (1848–1849) failed, leaving a great deal of medieval forces hindering social development. As Vladimir Lenin pointed out, “These survivals are absolutism (unlimited autocratic power), feudalism (landlordism and feudal privileges) and the suppression of nationalities.”8 The failure of revolution and the resuming power of monarchy rendered Austria backward compared with other countries in the same period. Friedrich Engels once wrote that 6 Rolf J. Goebel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (Columbia: Camden House), p. 92. 7 C. L. Mowat, The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. XII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 478. 8 Vladimir Lenin, V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, vol. 18, trans. Stepan Apresyan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 368.

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Austria had always been the most backward German-speaking country, either before revolution or afterwards. It went the furthest against the modernist movement compared with other countries. These aspects of its history have strong parallels in the history of the Chinese empire. Franz Josef (Francis Joseph), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary (1830–1916) reigned for nearly 70 years and saw the empire gradually decline in this period. Austria lost most of its Italian possessions, such as Lombardy and Venetia, after its defeats in the wars against Italy, France, and Prussia, and it became the lesser of the two German powers after German unification in 1871. On August 6, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia but was soon defeated. Its weak and impotent emperor resembles that in Kafka’s story, who “spends all his time in the innermost garden,” and who just watches “with bent head the goingson before his residence” (416). Therefore, “it is left to us artisans and tradesmen to save our country; but we are not equal to such a task; nor have we ever claimed to be capable of it” (416). This resemblance renders Kafka’s story a political statement; he tries to send a message to people that only the people, not the emperor, can save the country and save the little village.9 However, the story also includes nonpolitical references to personal issues, such as his tuberculosis, marriage setbacks, and the stagnation of his writing. Of course, for Kafka the bigger danger and threat came from his inner soul rather than from the outside world. As Rolf Goebel notes, the imaginary threat from the nomads originates from one’s own heart. This potential danger is externalized by the form of the allegory.10 The nomads are a symbol to represent Kafka’s anxiety toward language, meaning, and communication. There is a paragraph in the story which can illustrate this: Speech with the nomads is impossible. They do not know our language; indeed they hardly have a language of their own. They communicate with each other much as jackdaws do. A screeching as of jackdaws is always in our ears. Our way of living and our institutions they neither understand nor care to understand. And so they are unwilling to make sense even out of our sign language. You can gesture at them till you dislocate your jaws

9 Frederick R. Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991), pp. 560–1. 10 Rolf J. Geobel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse, p. 92.

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and your wrists and still they will not have understood you and will never understand. They often make grimaces; then the whites of their eyes turn up and foam gathers on their lips, but they do not mean anything by that, not even a threat; they do it because it is their nature to do it. (Complete Stories, 415)

The nomads’ lack of genuine language and the fact that they sound like jackdaws indicate Kafka’s anxiety and fear of language and communication. As for the narrative perspective, Kafka abandoned the traditional omnipotent narrator and told the story via a frightened cobbler. However, he inserts his own voice during the narration by suggesting his name “Kafka.” “They communicate with each other much as jackdaws do. A screeching as of jackdaws is always in our ears.” Here, “jackdaws” is “Kavka” in Czech. This gives rise to an alienating effect because Kafka seems to identify himself with incomprehensible nomads. These jackdaw-like nomads can be easily associated with the Hebrews in exile, who often bring about hatred and distain of the natives. While these northern nomads do not respect the customs and lifestyle of ancient China, the narrator “I” does not want to know about their culture either. He regards them as cultureless: “As is their nature, they camp under the open sky, for they abominate dwelling houses. They busy themselves sharpening swords, whittling arrows, and practicing horsemanship. This peaceful square, which was always kept so scrupulously clean, they have made literally into a stable” (Complete Stories, 415). “Whatever they need, they take. You cannot call it taking by force.” What makes “me” terrified is their eating habits: when the butcher brings along a live ox one morning, “the nomads were leaping on from all sides, tearing morsels out of its living flesh with their teeth.” Then after that, “they were lying overcome around the remains of the carcass like drunkards around a wine cask” (Complete Stories, 415). According to the cobbler, the problems between the nomads and the Chinese nation can be summed up as a misunderstanding born of inadequate powers of communication. However, the real misunderstanding derives from bias. As James Whitlark puts it, in a multicultural era, how can people avoid making mistakes without cross-cultural communication and learning? Even the Great Wall,

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the greatest border in history, could not stop the influence of other cultures on China. Therefore, all cultural borders are permeable.11 However, since the cobbler is the only narrator of the story, his account of the nomads is not completely reliable. In Kafka’s mind, the narrator acts as a sensitive witness, as he reports his impressions of and feelings about a historical event. The fact that the cobbler finds the nomads irrational indicates Kafka’s own knowledge of the difficulty, or even impossibility, of transcultural communication. Being content with their culture, Chinese people never question it, and it is impossible for them to transcend it. They can hardly understand the lifestyles and cannibalism of the nomads, which contravene the Chinese ideal of stability and harmony. On the other hand, the nomads also show disdain toward Chinese ways of suppressing individuality and freedom. It is impossible to achieve mutual understanding and communication between two heterogeneous cultures, especially between foreign invaders and the invaded. Therefore, the story ends with a pessimistic note: “This is a misunderstanding of some kind; and it will be the ruin of us.” It is not surprising for a writer like Kafka, whose works always push boundaries and are replete with multidimensional meanings. After erasing China, the allegorical and ahistorical nature of the story is highlighted. In addition, this is not an ordinary allegory, but a prophetic one about imminent doomsday. When Kafka wrote this story in 1917, Russians crossed the northeastern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and pushed into Galicia in Austria. Kafka seemed to express his fear of this threat through the cobbler’s worries. In addition, the chaos and terror that the cobbler witnesses are in fact a reflection of Kafka’s own disturbed mind. His other story, “A Common Confusion,” written in the same year, can serve as additional proof. The story seems like only an outline without any substantial content: “A. has to transact important business with B. in H.” After a preliminary interview, A. decides to settle his business. It somehow takes him a long time to reach B.’s place and he is informed that B., “annoyed at his absence, had left half an hour before to go to A.’s village.” A. immediately goes back home, knowing that B. is waiting for him there. But when rushing upstairs to see B., A. stumbles and twists his ankle, “almost fainting with the pain, incapable even of uttering a cry.” In a moment of great pain, 11 James Whitlark, Behind the Great Wall: A Post-Jungian to Kafkaesque Literature (London: Associated University Press, 1991), p. 229.

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he hears B. “stamping down the stairs in a violent rage and vanishing for good” (Complete Stories, 427). This story seems to show that no one can hold on to everything he desires and that it is easy to fail to seize opportunities even if goals are within reach. This leaves us like passive observers of our own lives, waiting—like the Chinese emperor at his window—to see what we will do next.

5.3

Constructing China

Kafka is a traveler of texts. Although he did travel to several places, such as Vienna, Venice, Paris, and Hungary, he did most of his “traveling” through reading texts about places and cultures that he did not actually visit or with which he was not directly acquainted (e.g., Greece, U.S., and China). This textual travel includes historical texts and geological ones. All the texts about the East written by Western writers feature what Edward Said called “Orientalism.” Kafka started to know and construct the East, and his conception of China, from this orientalist background. “Orientalism” was proposed by Said in his seminal book Orientalism published in 1978. As an Arab born in Jerusalem, Said came to the U.S. and became a tenured professor at Columbia University. Despite the study of the real East, Orientalism is about the East in Westerner’s eyes. “Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”12 Said’s Orientalism has three layers of meanings; it is a study of Western studies of the East, the differences between Eastern and Western thought, and the relationship between the power that the West exercised over the East and its discourses pertaining to that region. In summary, Said felt that orientalism is a way for the West to control, reconstruct, and reign the East through descriptions, teachings, colonies, domination, and judgments. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, Said discovered the comprehensive discipline of the West. As he puts it, My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the

12 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 1.

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Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period.13

Just as the history of men is created by men themselves, the East and the West are constructed too. For any Westerner who studies the East, he must encounter it as a Westerner first and then as a person. Ever since the nineteenth century, with the rise of political, economic, and military power, Westerners gradually developed a sense of superiority and cultural pride with respect to the nations and cultures of non-Western societies. This is so-called “cultural hegemony.” With the political, economic, and military expansion of the West, there appeared a process of “Easternizing the East” via imaginations and texts, which formed the orientalist discourse popular in the West. Therefore, the East in the orientalism is no longer our east, but the Westerners’ east. In the meantime, as an American professor educated in the West, what Said was concerned with was not the East but the West. To put it more precisely, he was concerned with the place and roles of Asian scholars in the West. Although having been accepted by the mainstream culture in the West, Asian scholars were still very marginalized. In order to proceed from the periphery to the center, it is necessary to rewrite the mainstream discourse. This rewriting needs a reference, an “Other,” which is different from the West. What Said intended to show was that the development and sustenance of any culture relied on the existence of another, different, and competitive one.14 So, what Said focused on was still the East constructed by the Westerners. In his oriental study, the starting point, the destination, and the audience are all in the west. The questions that he raised and tried to answer and the way of thinking were also very Western. As a Western writer, Kafka needs the east to know and define the west; that is, he needs the “other” to know and describe himself. “[A]lthough some elements of Chinese culture were assimilated into the hermeneutic mode, and although the so-called objective materials and analytic reports about China were collected and published, the whole process was directed at knowledge of the self through engagements with other countries,

13 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, p. 3. 14 Sheng Ning, A Critique on the Postmodernism in the West (Beijing: Joint Publishing

House, 1997), p. 180.

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rather than to know China as such.”15 Having only been exposed to certain Orientalist texts about China, Kafka’s knowledge of, and views on China must have been quite limited, and he helped to construct that limited Western understanding through his own writings. “It looks as if much had been neglected in our country’s system of defense. We have not concerned ourselves with it until now and have gone about our daily work; but things that have been happening recently begin to trouble us.” This opening paragraph presents a typical image of Chinese people: they don’t care about national affairs, and simply go about their own business. Although they are worried about the invasion, they are at a loss to take action. The Cobbler is confused by the invasion of the northern nomads: “in some way that is incomprehensible to me they have pushed right into the capital, although it is a long way from the frontier” (Complete Stories, 415). These nomads are filthy, grotesque, and barbaric. What’s worse, they barely have a language of their own, so it is impossible to talk with them and to find out their intentions. In the eyes of Chinese people, Western countries are the same as barbaric nomads, who live a barbaric life without culture and history. Only China is “the Central Empire,” boasting a long history and splendid civilization. So, the Chinese are arrogant, despising other nations. Hegel once made a comment on this: “The Chinese are, on the other hand, too proud to learn anything from Europeans, although they must often recognize their superiority.”16 The cobbler’s attitude toward the nomads in his narration can illustrate this point. In Kafka’s story, the Chinese emperor and his army are weak and fail to provide shelter for the people. Without any motivation, the emperor lives a secluded life in the Forbidden City, far from the crowd. This reflects the general Western view of the Chinese emperor and his people. Kafka wrote in this story, This was the occasion when I fancied I actually saw the Emperor himself at a window of the palace; usually he never enters these outer rooms but spends all his time in the innermost garden; yet on this occasion he was

15 Mechthild Leutner, etc., The Exotic and Reality: China in German Travel Notes from 17 to 20th Century, trans. Yan Chenghan, in Liu Shanzhang ed., A History of Sino-German Relations (Qingdao: Qingdao Publishing House, 1992), p. 354. 16 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, p. 155.

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standing, or so at least it seemed to me, at one of the windows, watching with bent head the goings-on before his residence. (Complete Stories, 416)

The palace is famous for its splendor, but the palace guards are bad at engaging in real combat: “The Emperor’s palace has drawn the nomads toward it but does not know how to drive them away again” (Complete Stories, 416). This is highly allegorical since China truly did draw in various foreigners, coveting the land and wealth, but the Chinese were incapable of driving them away. The European view was that while Ancient China had bidden farewell to its glorious past, it had embraced no future. In summary, having never visited China and with access only to orientalist texts, Kafka could only base his writings about China on a very limited and somewhat biased Western perspective. However, what distinguishes Kafka from other orientalists is that he never thought Westerners could fully understand the essence of Chinese culture, although they were superior in their political, economic, and military powers. In his view, insofar as Westerners failed to acknowledge the biases and limitations of their perspective, that left them even further removed from a genuine understanding of Chinese culture.

CHAPTER 6

Babel on Chinese Great Wall: Kafka and the Philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi

Both Chinese and Western scholars have long noticed the way in which Kafka’s works resemble and resonate with the philosophy of Laozi [老 子] and Zhuangzi [庄子]. For example, according to James Whitlark, Kafka’s attitude toward language and literature is very close to Taoism.1 Walter Benjamin once noted that Kafka’s works were a site for a battle between Judaism and Taoism.2 Elias Canetti also claimed that Kafka “has epitomized what ‘smallness’ meant for him” from “a Taoist text”: “Tow possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity…”3 Joyce Carol Oates commented, “What is the visible world, then, in Kafka’s own life, but the continual building of Towers of Babel (or the hypothesized, comic erection of this Tower upon the Great Wall of China); However, the Castle, imagined as Kafka’s European, historical, vaguely sinister expression of the same

1 James Whitlark, Behind the Great Wall: A Post-Jungian Approach to Kafkaesque Literature (London: Associated University Press, 1999), p. 12. 2 Rolf J. Goebel, Constructing China: Kafka’s Oriental Discourse, p. 6. 3 Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice (London: Penguin Books,

2012), p. 90.

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primordial force that Laozi calls the ‘Tao’.”4 Chinese scholars have also highlighted the relationship in academic journals.5 Gustav Janouch, a friend of Kafka, notes Kafka’s interest in and study of Taoist philosophy on many occasions. He even recollects being given two books related to China by Kafka: Man, Become Essence! Sayings of Laotse, translated into German by Klabund; and Laotse’s Tao Te King in F. Fiedler’s translation. According to Janouch, Kafka once said to him, “I’ve studied Taoism fairly deeply over a long period, so far as that’s possible in translation. I possess nearly all the volumes of the German translations of this school of thought which have been published by Diedrichs in Jena.”6 In addition, Kafka was also known to quote and explain the analects of Zhuangzi. In short, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that Kafka read and studied Laozi and Zhuangzi. Of course, this raises the question of how exactly Kafka was influenced by them and where this influence can be found in his works. This chapter will discuss three aspects of the influence.

6.1

Tao and Law

As the most important concept of Taoist philosophy, Tao is also one of the core concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy. Various Chinese philosophical schools have attempted to explain Tao from their own perspectives. Consequently, Tao became a term with rich connotations, such as ontology, essence, process, and social and moral norms.7 Kafka seemed to be familiar with the idea of Tao, as it is similar to the idea of law that he employs in his works. When commenting on Kafka’s idea of religion, Max Brod pointed out that many themes in Kafka’s works indicated the “enormous danger that we may lose the right way, a danger so grotesquely out of proportion that it is really only an accident—‘gratia praeveniens’—that can bring us to the point of entering into ‘The Law’,

4 Joyce Carol Oates, “Kafka’s Paradise”, The Hudson Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (1974), p. 638. 5 For example, Zhang Zhongzai, “Zhuangzi’s Dream of a Butterfly and Gregor’s Metamorphosis into a Bug”, in Foreign Literature 1998, p. 6; Zeng Yanbing and Chen Qiuhong, “Kafka and Chinese Traditional Culture”, in Literary and Artistic Studies (2002), p. 4. 6 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 127. 7 Zhang Liwen ed., Tao (Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 1989), p. 345.

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i.e., the right and perfect life, into Tao.”8 It seems that Kafka might have read Martin Buber’s translation of Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables (1910). In the suffix of the book Buber expounded on Tao: The word Tao means “the path,” the way, but since it also carries the sense of “speech,” it has at times been rendered as logos. In Laozi and his disciples, where it is developed metaphorically, it is tied to the first of these meanings. This linguistic ambivalence, related indeed to the Heraclitean Logos, lies in the fact that both meanings transfer the dynamic principle of life to the transcendent, but basically refer to nothing less than human life itself, the vehicle of all transcendence. I would like to go into this as it pertains to Tao.9

Buber’s simple and concise explanation captured the essence of Tao. Law is an important concept in Kafka’s works, as it is in Western culture more generally. Kafka wrote a very famous short story “Before the Law,” which became a chapter in his later novel The Trial . “Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment.” While the man makes all kinds of attempts to get in, including bribing the gatekeeper with all his belongings, he is still denied access. In consequence, the man ends up spending the rest of his life waiting in vain. Upon passing away, he cannot help but ask the gatekeeper: “Everyone strives to reach the Law, so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper answers, “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”10 What does “the law” mean in this story? Its meaning can be very vague, complicated, and paradoxical. Like the Great Wall, America, and the Castle in Kafka’s stories, “the law” has many connotations, and the meaning of the phrase should not be derived from a literal interpretation. In this sense, “law” is very similar to “Tao.” For Laozi, Tao is the origin of everything:

8 Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), p. 174. 9 Martin Buber, Chinese Tales, Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables and Chinese Ghost and

Love Stories, trans. Alex Page (New Jersey and London: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1991), pp. 92–3. 10 Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”, in The Complete Stories, pp. 66–7.

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Tao is a hollow vessel And its use is inexhaustible! Fathomless! Like the fountain head of all things… (Chapter 4)11

Out Out Out Out

of of of of

Tao, one is born; one, two, two, three; three, the created universe. (Chapter 42)

Tao arises from everything and exists among them, embodying the movement and transformation of all things. “[R]eversion is the action of Tao”; “[g]entleness is the function of Tao.” (Chapter 40) In the meantime, Tao is the highest form of morality and cultivation; “the mark of great character is given by the Tao alone” (Chapter 21). A person can become a saint with Tao through cultivation. The nature of Tao is “doing nothing”: The student of knowledge (aims at) learning day by day; The student of Tao (aims at) losing day by day. By continual losing One reaches doing nothing (laissez-faire). He who conquers the world often does so by doing nothing. (Chapter 48)

Apparently, Kafka had a deep understanding of Laozi’s “Tao,” especially the wisdom given by the phrases “Tao imitating nature”; “Banish wisdom, and discard knowledge”; “Attain the utmost in Passivity; hold firm to the basis of Quietude”; and “a small country with a small population.” Zhuangzi expanded the scope of Laozi’s Tao. According to Zhuangzi, Tao is the origin of the universe, giving rise to everything: The Way (Tao) has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed, it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the 11 Laozi, Tao Te Ching, trans. Lin Yutang, available at http://www.360doc.com/con tent/17/1016/09/235213_695322450.shtml, accessed on May 25, 2019.

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spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old.12

In the meantime, Tao dictates the movement and transformation of the universe, providing rules: the Way (Tao) is the path by which the ten thousand things proceed. All things that lose it, die; all that get it, live. To go against it in one’s undertakings is to fail; to comply with it is to succeed. Hence, wherever the Way is to be found, the sage will pay homage there. As far as the Way is concerned, this old fisherman may certainly be said to possess it. How, then, would I dare fail to show respect to him! (278)

The main difference between Laozi and Zhuangzi stems from their distinct approaches to practicing Tao. While Laozi felt that it consisted in doing nothing, Zhuangzi takes it to involve aspiring to be at one with Heaven and Earth in such a way that one achieves spiritual transcendence and absolute freedom. That is why Zhuangzi wrote some of his masterpieces, such as “A Happy Excursion” and “Dreaming of the Butterfly.” To sum up, Tao is everywhere but difficult to find anywhere: The thing that is called Tao Is elusive, evasive. Evasive, elusive, Yet latent in it are forms. Elusive, evasive, Yet latent in it are objects. Dark and dim, Yet latent in it is the life-force. The life-force being very true. Latent in it are evidences. (Chapter 21)

So where is Tao? It is “in the ant,” “in the panic grass,” “in the tiles and shards,” even “in the piss and shit!” (Zhuangzi, 182). Tao exists in 12 Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 45.

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the universe, but what is Tao? In The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, the Way, it is mentioned more than 320 times. Invisible and intangible, Tao is such a mysterious and elusive term. As Laozi puts it in the first chapter of Laozi: The Tao that can be told of Is not the Absolute Tao; The Names that can be given Are not Absolute Names. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the Mother of All Things. (Chapter 1)

This famous paragraph caught Hegel’s attention. In his lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel mentioned this paragraph and argued that it could be interpreted via the Logos of the Greeks. Tao is Logos, rules, and law. Thus, in Kafka’s story, “before the law” becomes “before the Tao.” Like Tao, Kafka’s law also exists everywhere, full of rich and paradoxical connotations. However, it is impossible to describe it with words. The Jewish nation attaches great importance to law. For example, the “ten commandments” in the Bible are God’s law for human beings. Rabbinic Judaism has a double law system consisting of the Oral Torah or Oral Law and the written Torah, with the former interpreting and supplementing the latter. The major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that, while the former abides by the law, the latter believes in Jesus Christ. For the Jewish people, the significance of the law resembles that of Tao to the Chinese people.

6.2

Butterfly and Insect

Where “dreaming of a butterfly” becomes a prominent feature of Zhuangzi’s philosophy, “metamorphosis to a bug” becomes the defining feature of Kafka’s writings. The story of dreaming of a butterfly can be found in “Discussions on Making All Things Equal” by Zhuangzi: Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed, he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang

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Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly, there must be some distinction! (Zhuang, 18)

In one of the most important stories written by Kafka, The Metamorphosis tells the story of a man morphing into a bug: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”13 We can also find evidence that Kafka read Zhuang Zhou’s dream in some of his other works. In “The Hunter Gracchus,” the hero dies but comes back to life from death and goes on to describe his experience in “the other world” as follows: “I am forever on the great stair that leads up to it. On that infinitely wide and spacious stair I clamber about, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, always in motion. The Hunter has been turned into a butterfly” (Complete Stories, 254). Interestingly, when translating Zhuangzi’s works, Buber chose to switch from the third to a first-person narration: “I Zhuangzi, once dreamed I was a butterfly—a butterfly fluttering here and there.”14 Kafka’s story appears to be closer to Buber’s translation than the original one. The symbol of the butterfly does not have much of a role in Kafka’s stories. He prefers the symbol of insects and rats, which seem to carry distinct connotations. While the transformation to a butterfly is a poetized and idealized process, the transformation to a bug is a negative process of alienation. For Zhuangzi, the transformation is the specification of one of his aspirations, namely, “Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me” (Zhuang, 13). In contrast, the transformation to a bug is a modern allegory of the absurd existence of human beings. It symbolizes the alienation of men from each other, the world, nature, and even their own selves. In consequence, the transformation symbolizes human loneliness, anxiety, fear, and despair. One of the striking features of the story of Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly is that he cannot tell whether he is dreaming of being a butterfly or the butterfly is dreaming of being him. This blurs and

13 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), ebook, p. 141. All the following quotations will be referred to as page numbers. 14 Martin Buber, Chinese Tales, Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, p. 90.

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transcends the distinction between self and world—the “self” and “nonself”—which is close to the essence of Tao being no self, no merit, and no fame. “If he had only mounted the truth of Heaven and Earth, ridden the changes of the six breaths, and thus wandered through the boundless, then what would he have had to depend upon?” (Zhuang, 3). Zhuangzi was born to a poor family in the Warring States period about 2000 years ago. Though he spent his entire life in poverty, turmoil, and deprivation, he transcended all the miseries and found contentment. Poverty was in fact conducive to Zhuangzi’s noble spirit. As one scholar comments, “Zhuangzi considered himself rich in spirit and mind despite the material destitution of his life.”15 It is said that the king of Chu Kingdom once tried to appoint Zhuangzi as his minister, but he rejected, saying: A thousand Chin is great profit, and a ministership an exalted position, but can it be that you have not seen the sacrificial cow used in the suburban sacrifices? After feeding it for several years, it is dressed in figured brocade and sent into the Great Temple. When things have reached this point, though it might wish to become an untended pig, how could it attain this? Go quickly, sir, do not pollute me. I would rather romp at my own pleasure in a slimy ditch than be held in captivity by the ruler of a state. I won’t take office for as long as I live, for that is what pleases my fancy most.16

Zhuangzi would rather turn into a butterfly and fly among the flowers, which is his ideal of “free and easy wandering.” In contrast, while Gregor in Kafka’s story realizes that he is turning into a bug, he doesn’t know how or why. The metamorphosis, which occurs in a single night, is an allegory of alienation in the modern societies of the West. At Kafka’s time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire combined a capitalist economy with a monarchical political system. The rapid development of capitalism in the nineteenth century was like a giant beast, devouring everything in its path. Kafka was pained to witness the misery of the lower middle class and even more so that of the workers. Moreover, as a Jew, he was also painfully aware of his rootlessness. In his family, his

15 Cui Dahua, The Study of Zhuangzi (Beijing: People’s Press, 1992), p. 15. 16 Ssu-ma Chi’ien, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, trans. Tsia-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu,

William H. Hienhauser, and Robert Reynolds (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 24.

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father, like a tyrant, also posed a threat to him. He attempted to escape from his father’s influence, but ultimately, he failed. All these factors combined to generate Kafka’s deep feelings of loneliness, fear, anxiety, guilt, and ultimately alienation. Almost all of Kafka’s works are concerned with alienation. According to one critic, although Kafka did not know the precise cause of his alienation, he linked it to barbaric and inhuman social relationships. While Kafka’s writings explore the psychological dimension of alienation, he also felt it stemmed from objective social conflicts.17 As Milena Jesenská once put it in a letter to Max Brod: For [Kafka], life is something altogether different from what it is for ordinary people. Above all, things such as money, the stock market, foreign exchange, or a typewriter are utterly miraculous (as indeed they are, only not to the rest of us)…Is his work at the office, for instance, anything like an ordinary job? To him the office, including his own part in it, is as mysterious and wonderful as a locomotive is to a small child. Have you ever been to the post office with him? Watched him compose a telegram, shake his head while he picks a window he likes best and then, without the least notion of why and wherefore, starts wandering about from one window to the next?…No, this entire world is and remains a mystery to him, an enigmatic myth…His books are amazing. He himself is far more amazing.18

Thus, the characters in Kafka’s stories always encounter a sudden transformation without understanding the reason for its occurrence. In Zhuang Zhou’s dream, he could not tell himself from the butterfly or himself from external objects. This state is only possible for those who have achieved Tao. After the dream, Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly remain intact and separable, so the dream is only temporary. However, in Kafka’s story, once the transforming into a bug takes place, there is no turning back. A person is reduced to a bug permanently. The Chinese scholar Chen Guying maintained that an important difference between Zhuangzi’s story and that of Kafka is that “Zhuangzi’s

17 Paul Lehman, “Social Issues in Kafka’s Stories”, trans. Qu Kuangfu, New Perspectives on World Literature, vol. 1, 1980, pp. 2–17. 18 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), p. 282.

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metamorphosis is a metaphor of self-ease.”19 As Zhuangzi said, “Now you have this big tree, and you’re distressed because it’s useless. Why don’t you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village or the field of Broadand-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it?” (Zhuang, 6). This idea of “free and easy wandering” in “Not-Even-Anything Village” refers to spiritual wandering instead of physical wandering. In this sense, Zhuangzi’s dream of a butterfly is a spiritual pursuit, a mysterious experience of spiritual freedom, and thus more than a mere escape from reality. In Zhuangzi’s story, the transformation from man to butterfly is mutual, thus embodying his idea of “making all things equal.” However, in Kafka’s story, the transformation from human to bug is irreversible. Moreover, it represents a regress, as the human world is obviously superior to that of a bug. Zhuangzi’s article “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” affirms the meaning and value of everything in the world, including humans and animals. As such, it represents an egalitarian perspective: “Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse…. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable. For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Xishi, things ribald and shady, or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. Nothing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again” (Zhuang, 10). “Here is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount Tai is little. No one had lived longer than a dead child, and Pengzu died young. Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me” (Zhuang, 13). Therefore, in this sense, both the butterfly and Zhuangzi are independent individuals of equal value and significance. Whereas Zhuangzi is no more noble because he is a philosopher, the butterfly is no less humble because it is an insect. Their mutual transformation marks the Taoist state of self-forgetting and nonself. Not only does this Taoist perspective imply that all beings are one but it also implies the complementarity and mutuality of life and death, in and out, subject and object. Kafka must have been familiar with this concept of Zhuangzi. He once read one excerpt from Zhuangzi’s writings to Gustav

19 Chen Guying, A Brief Discussion on Zhuangzi (Beijing: United Press, 1998), p. 21.

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Janouch, highlighting his idea of “changing on the outside but not on the inside.” By changing on the outside—or external change—Zhuangzi means that one should adapt to the exterior environment. According to him, everything is created as such, so we should accept it and follow the natural order, whether we are created as a chicken, a cow, a horse, a rat’s liver, a bug’s arm, or a baby.20 In contrast, by not changing on the inside—or undergoing internal change—Zhuangzi means that one should maintain the tranquility of one’s heart when facing a fast-changing world. Undergoing external but not internal changes are two sides of the same coin in that one adapts to the changing environment with an unchanging heart. For instance, the transformation of Zhuangzi into a butterfly consists of external change, while remaining to his true self is resisting internal change. With one’s true self intact and unchanging, it doesn’t matter whatever external change one undergoes, and hence whatever shape one takes, as a material being. In contrast, Gregor’s transformation in “The Metamorphosis” is both internal and external. In modern society, the story suggests that human beings are reduced to bugs because of alienation, which leads to a corresponding and self-reinforcing external change of form. After all, having turned into a bug, Gregor feels even more lonely, angry, and desperate: “…there was nothing he could do but wait; and harassed by self-reproach and worry he began now to crawl to and fro, over everything, walls, furniture, and ceilings, and finally in his despair, when the whole room seemed to be reeling around him, fell down onto the middle of the big table” (Complete Stories, 165). Finally, death seems to be the only way out for him, “Just see how thin he was. It’s such a long time since he’s eaten anything. The food came out again just as it went in” (Complete Stories, 179). Gregor’s parents and sister are so relieved after his death, and they move on with their life happily, thus proving that “human beings can’t live with such a creature” (Complete Stories, 176).

6.3

Goblet Words and Parables

The phrase “goblet words” [卮言] refers to Zhuangzi’s manner of speech when he is using language to covey the Tao. The phrase comes from Zhuangzi’s article “Imputed Words” 《寓言》 [ 篇]: 20 Liu Xiaogan, The Philosophy of Zhuangzi and Its Evolution (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1988), p. 203.

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With these goblet words that come forth day after day, I harmonize all things in the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out my years. As long as I do not say anything about them, they are a unity. But the unity and what I say about it have ceased to be a unity; what I say and the unity have ceased to be a unity. Therefore I say, we must have no-words! With words that are no-words, you may speak all your life long, and you will never have said anything…If there were no goblet words coming forth day after day to harmonize all by the Heavenly Equality, then how could I survive for long? The ten thousand things all come from the same seed, and with their different forms they give place to one another. Beginning and end are part of a single ring, and no one can comprehend its principle. This is called Heaven the Equalizer, which is the same as the Heavenly Equality. (Zhuang, 234–5)

Zhuangzi also makes comments on imputed words and repeated words: “Imputed words make up nine-tenths of it; repeated words make up seven-tenths of it” [寓言十九, 重言十七] (Zhuang, 234). The imputed words, “like persons brought in from outside for the purpose of exposition,” are a subset of the goblet words. The repeated words are, in turn, a subset of the imputed words, that repeat the sayings of past philosophers and saints. So, the three kinds of words also represent a hierarchy of importance. Though often regarded as stories, Kafka’s writings can be interpreted as imputed words or parables. Indeed, it is even possible to view his life as a parable. There is a parable written by him with the same word as its title: All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter. Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost. (Complete Stories, 289)

Kafka’s life can also be described as follows: following the parables, becoming parables, and winning in parables.

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If all of Zhuangzi’s works can be regarded as goblet words and all of Kafka’s as parables, it is also useful to compare them in other ways. First, while Zhuangzi’s goblet words aim at being one with heaven and conveying Tao, Kafka’s parables are like “the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” For Zhuangzi, goblet words are to “harmonize all by the Heavenly Equality” [和以天倪]. Heaven the Equalizer, “which is the same as the Heavenly Equality,” means that one comes and goes “alone with the pure spirit of Heaven and earth, yet he did not view the ten thousand things with arrogant eyes” (Zhuang, 296). Zhuangzi said, “To know the Way is easy; to keep from speaking about it is hard. To know and not to speak— this gets you to the Heavenly part. To know and to speak—this gets you to the human part. Men in the old days looked out for the Heavenly, not the human” (Zhuang, 281). In this sense, Zhuangzi is human as he knows and speaks. While the saints in the old days knew but chose not to speak, Zhuangzi felt this responsibility to speak. However, since “perfect speech is the abandonment of speech,” what he speaks is not Tao itself but the goblet words conveying Tao. For example, in Zhuangzi’s article “Knowledge Wandered North” 《知北游》 [ ], the character called Knowledge [知] asks Mr. Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing [无为谓] about “the Way” (Tao), but he doesn’t answer. Knowledge asks Mr. Wild-and-Witless [狂屈] the same question. However, just as Mr. Wild-and-Witless “was about to say something, he forgot what it was he was about to say.” Finally, knowledge asked the Yellow Emperor [黄帝], and the Yellow Emperor said, Only when there is no pondering and no cogitation will you get to know the Way. Only when you have no surroundings and follow no practices will you find rest in the Way. Only when there is no path and no procedure can you get to the Way…Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing—he’s the one who is truly right. Wild-and-Witless appears to be so. But you and I in the end are nowhere near it. (Zhuang, 176–7)

Thus, to know the Way, one needs to refrain from seeking to know it through cognition. Moreover, if one believes that one can articulate knowledge of the Way, one lacks such knowledge. This is the truth that has to be told by those who don’t know, and in his stories Zhuangzi assumes the role. In contrast, Kafka did not have the conviction and confidence to find Tao. Moreover, he did not even possess the general sentiments and values, such as patriotism, nationalism, or even love for family, that are its precondition. As an onlooker—a stranger in modern society—Kafka expressed

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his observation and knowledge of this world via his works. Kafka’s parables are more internal dialogs between the parts of a bifurcated soul than a dialog between two distinct people in the external world. This explains why Kafka did not want to publish his works and requested their destruction upon his death. Kafka said, “However, we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”21 In this sense, Kafka’s writings are highly personal. Second, while goblet words convey Tao by conveying a meaning that lies between “saying” and “nonsaying,” Kafka’s parables reveal a truth mediated by the interaction between semantics and pragmatics. Goblet works are Zhuangzi’s ideal language, as he once said, “The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words” (Zhuang, 233). Words are just vehicles through which human beings express their feelings—a means to achieve Tao. Zhuangzi also said, If you talk in a worthy manner, you can talk all day long, and all of it will pertain to the Way. But if you talk in an unworthy manner, you can talk all day long, and all of it will pertain to mere things. The perfection of the Way and things—neither words nor silence is worthy of expressing it. Not to talk, not to be silent—this is the highest form of debate. (226)

If “neither words nor silence” can express the perfection of the Way, it should be achieved through the interaction between words and silence. Goblet words consist of a “middle path” that conveys Tao (the Way) through images and stories. Given its fathomless and intangible nature, those who aim to grasp it will follow Zhuangzi’s guidance. For Kafka, opting to communicate through parables was a natural choice, as it was an “untimely” form for thinking in the modern age.22 Modern parables are subject to various interpretations since the corresponding relationships between the signifiers and the signified are cut 21 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), p. 20. 22 Zhang Xiudong, “Critique on Parables”, Literary Criticism, vol. 4 (1988), p. 150.

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off. Their connections are vague, ambiguous, fragmented, and arbitrary. Any signifier, including a person or an object, can signify something else. There is no absolute meaning in a parable. This is how Kafka’s stories should be viewed. Third, while goblet words are often absurd, playful, and exaggerated, parables are paradoxical and stern. In his writings, Zhuangzi mocks the likes of Confucius and clarifies the policies of Laozi, “yet he was skilled in composing works and turning phrases, in veiled reference and analogy, and with these he flayed the Confucians and Mohists. Even the most profound scholars of the age could not defend themselves. His words billowed and swirled without restraint, to please himself, and so from kings and dukes, the great men could not utilize him.”23 Since Zhuangzi believed that “the world was drowned in turbidness and that it was impossible to address it in sober language,” he deliberately engages in teasing, displacement, and hyperbole to break the limits of language and appeal to the common audience. Thus, he expounded his views “in odd and outlandish terms, in brash and bombastic language, in unbound and unbordered phrases” (Zhuangzi, 296). In summary, while Zhuangzi speaks through goblet words, this does not mean that the real world is made up of goblet words. The grotesque and absurd world in Kafka’s works is shaped by his world view of alienation: the castle is within reach, but forever inaccessible; people are arrested and placed on trial for no reason; the gate of law is opened but it is impossible to enter; a salesman transforms into a bug, disgusting his family; an executioner suddenly becomes the executed; an ape makes a report of its experiences and feelings to the academy … In each case, the human world is rendered essentially absurd and paradoxical. In addition, Kafka’s narrators are far from omnipotent and omniscient. When they tell stories, there is an apparent objectivity and calmness in their voices that jars with the horrifying content. Take The Metamorphosis as an example: there is not a single adjective, metaphor, or emotional simile in the story as Kafka wanted to avoid any descriptions tainted with emotions and artificiality. Adjectives, nouns, and verbs are all simple and straightforward. This writing style features on narration instead of argumentation, thus differs once more from Zhuangzi’s style.

23 Ssu-ma Chi’ien, The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1, pp. 22–3.

CHAPTER 7

Kafka and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

In Kafka’s Other Trial, Elias Canettit noted that “An interest comparable to Kafka’s in very small animals, especially insects, is to be found elsewhere only in the life and literature of the Chinese.”1 Kafka wrote a series of stories about animals, such as “A Crossbreed,” “The Cares of A Family Man,” “The New Advocate,” “A Report to an Academy,” “Investigations of a Dog,” “The Burrow,” “Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk,” “Jackals and Arabs,” and so on. The most important of them all is, of course, The Metamorphosis . Certain commonalities between Kafka’s stories about animals and those found in Chinese literature have been noted by Chinese scholars, such as Qian Zhongshu. In his commentary on a story from Master Jiao’s Forest of Changes 《焦氏 [ 易林》 ] in his Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters 《管锥篇》 [ ], Qian describes how a man is transformed into a bug after a night’s sleep in The Metamorphosis , and then how he tries to talk to his family outside his bedroom as if he is capable of human communication, only to find that he makes no sense to them. His experience is similar to that of the character Xue Wei [薛伟], who is transformed into a fish, in the Chinese book of

1 Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial, available at https://books.google.com.hk/books? id=A0Gj3Qx0oM8C&pg=PT89&lpg=PT89&dq=Kafka+small+animals+only+Chinese&sou rce=bl&ots=yQrFN1nzb&sig=ACfU3U3TpZ_L1VjM1rq7ahPCCihg7W2LAg&hl=en&sa= X&ved=2ahUKEwj_ssLNx9PiAhXF62EKHfGjCZkQ6AEwCnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage& q=Kafka%20small%20animals%20only%20Chinese&f=false, accessed on June 6, 2019.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_7

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tales, Into the Porcelain Pillow: 101 Tales from Records of the Taiping Era 《太平广记》 [ ].2 How was Kafka inspired by the Chinese narratives of small animals? How could his works relate to this genre? Did he ever read such Chinese stories? These are the questions that remain to be answered. The most representative Chinese work that depicts small animals is Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 《聊斋志异》 [ ], which was written by Pu Songling [蒲松龄] at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. Kafka happened to read the German version of some excerpts from this novel and spoke of it highly. On January 16, 1913, Kafka mentioned Martin Buber and his edition of Chinese Ghost and Love Stories in his letter to Felice, saying that those stories were “wonderful, at least the ones I know.”3 He also gave Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book (1914) to his sister, Ottla, as a gift. Among more than one hundred Chinese tales in this collection, fifteen of them were selected from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, including “The Taoist Priest of Lao-shan” 《崂山道士》 [ ], “Planting a Pear Tree” 《种梨》 [ ], “Miss Ying-ning” 《婴宁》 [ ], “The Little Hunting Dog” 《小猎犬》 [ ], “The Ghost Who Was Foiled” 《画皮》 [ ], “The Dragon After his Winter Sleep” 《蛰 [ 龙》 ], “The Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge” 《白莲教》 [ ], “Giavna the Beautiful” 《娇娜》 [ ], “The Frog Princess” 《青蛙神》 [ ], “Rose of Evening” 《晚霞》 [ ], “The Kingdom of The Ogres”《夜叉国》 [ ], etc. Four out of these fifteen stories are about small animals. Martin Buber (1878–1965), a German Jew, was one of the greatest German religious philosophers. Buber was regarded as a sinologist after publishing two books about China: Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables (1910) and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories (1911). Chinese Ghost and Love Stories was the German version of the Chinese classic Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This German translation was based on the English translation by Herbert A. Giles. Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, one of Kafka’s favorite German writers, adapted one of the stories “The Princess Lily” into a ballet play in 1916 with great success in Europe. In Buber’s Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, sixteen stories were selected from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, including “The Mural” 《画壁》 [ ], “The Judge” 《陆判》 [ ], “The Laughing

2 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1986), p. 568. 3 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, p. 194.

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Girl” 《婴宁》 [ ], “The Vixen” 《莲香》 [ ], “Ways of a Lover” 《阿绣》 [ ], “The Crows” 《竹青》 [ ], “The Flower Girls” 《香玉》 [ ], “A Foolish Student” 《 [ 书痴》 ], “The Banished God” 《雷曹》 [ ], “The Land in the Sea” 《罗刹 [ 海市》 ], “Leaf Clothes” 《翩翩》 [ ], “The Priest’s Sleeve” 《巩仙》 [ ], “The Dream” 《莲花公主》 [ ], “Music” 《宦娘》 [ ], “The Sisters” 《小谢》 [ ], and “A Bao” 《阿宝》 [ ].4 It seems that Kafka was inspired by these stories. For instance, in his “A Country Doctor,” there is a similar description of walking through the wall as in “The Taoist Priest of Lao-shan” 《崂山 [ 道士》 ]. On a stormy night, the country doctor is in a rush to tend to a patient in a village ten miles away, but he cannot find a horse for his gig. He kicks at the door of the pigsty, and a man crouches out, yelling “Hey there, Brother, hey there, Sister!” And. two horses, enormous creatures with powerful flanks, one after the other, their legs tucked close to their bodies, each well-shaped head lowered like a camel’s, by sheer strength of buttocking squeezed out through the door hole which they filled entirely. But at once they were standing up, their legs long and their bodies steaming thickly. (Complete Stories, 247)

Of course, it is not due to Taoist magic that the two horses come out of the door hole, but the image is bizarre and full of dream-like mystery. What are the connections between Kafka’s stories and the German version of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio? Why did Kafka speak so highly of it? How do Kafka’s writings compare to this Chinese book? This chapter attempts to answer these questions.

7.1

Loneliness and Lonely Indignation

Kafka did share some traits with Pu Songling, the writer of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, in terms of the way they lived, wrote, and experienced loneliness due to the lack of appreciation of their works in their own lifetimes. However, Kafka seemed to enjoy his loneliness, viewing it as a necessity for his art. In contrast, Pu Songling’s loneliness generated indignation in the form of anger at the world’s failure to recognize and

4 Martin Buber, Chinese Tales Zhuangzi: Sayings and Parables and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, trans. Alex Page (London: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1991), p. vii.

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understand him. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio was the result of Pu’s lonely indignation, providing him with a mode of release. Kafka can be considered the loneliest writer in the modern world, and it is for this reason that he was capable of understanding and describing this loneliness so well in his works. Kafka’s loneliness in his life and works is paradoxical in that he achieved little in his personal life but a great deal in his literary creation. Kafka chose the loneliness that he ever dreaded for his writing, turning his back on friendship, relationships, marriage, and family. However, while he valued his writing above everything else, on his deathbed he demanded that all his manuscripts, journals, and letters be burnt. Such extreme loneliness resonates well with modern readers. As Kafka once said, I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my room, outside the cellar’s outermost door. The walk to my food, in my dressing gown, through the vaulted cellars, would be my only exercise...And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up!5

Thus, Kafka’s “best mode of life” is this writing in loneliness, which is best described in one of his stories named “A Hunger Artist.” The hunger performance of this artist is planned to last 40 days, but he insists on his fasting performance to pursue the highest form of art even at the cost of his life. It seems like a Faustian quest, in which the cost of pursuing the infinite is to kill the finite physical form. Though Kafka valued his writing more than anything in his life, it was not very redeeming for him. As he put it, “I write differently from the way I speak, I speak differently from the way I think, I think differently from the way I ought to be thinking, and so on into deepest darkness.”6 Instead of lifting him out of loneliness, writing only aggravated it. In his foreword to Chinese Ghost and Love Stories, Buber made a brief introduction to Pu Songling’s life and work and translated some of his writings: 5 Franz Kafka, Letter to Felice, eds. Erich Heller and Jurgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 147. 6 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka, p. 342.

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In my youth I was thin, always sickly, and incapable of asserting myself. Our house was cold and bleak like a cloister, and there, plying my pen, I was poor like a monk with his begging bowl…I was tossed here and there, according to the wind’s blast, like a flower crushed into mud. But the Six Paths of Wandering are truly impenetrable, and I have no right to complain. Nonetheless, midnight finds me at the dying of the lamp while the storm howls woefully; I stitch my tales together upon my joyless table…Alas, I am only a bird in terror of the frost of winter who finds no refuge in the branches of a tree—I am a cricket of autumn who chirps at the moon and hugs the door in order to catch a little warmth. For where are they who know me?7

Pu Songling’s life did share some characteristics with that of Kafka. Both Pu Songling and Kafka were physically weak. Like Pu, Kafka never stopped stitching his tales while feeling at a loss. As he once said, “There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.”8 It is also likely that Kafka empathized with Pu Songling’s hardships and personality. Moreover, when Pu Songling referred to “A bird in terror of the frost of winter,” this must have drawn Kafka’s attention since it sounds like “Kavka” in Czech. Notwithstanding the fact that the lives of Kafka and Pu Songling were separated by 200 years, the societies they inhabited had certain similarities. Kafka’s loneliness, fear, anxiety, and guilt were reactions toward the corrupted Austro-Hungarian empire that he lived in, the misery of the working class under capitalism, his alienated identity as a Jew, and his tyrannical father. Pu Songling encountered a comparably chaotic time in his youth. He was born (1640–1715) immediately before the end of the Ming Dynasty, and thus came to witness the invasions by the Manchu army and the attendant social turmoil. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu government’s crackdown on resistance groups was relentless, and it exerted tight control over all cultural and intellectual fields. Such suppression contributed to Pu Songling’s indignation. He learned to express his ideals and interests through allegories about ghosts and gods. Born into an intellectual family, Pu Songling was a brilliant student under his father’s instruction. However, he failed again and again

7 Martin Buber, pp. 111–2. 8 Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms, available at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/

38296-there-is-a-destination-but-no-way-there-what-we, accessed on July 20, 2019.

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in the imperial examinations and was therefore unable to work for the government as the intellectuals of his time would aspire to do. Instead, he had to settle for making a living as a schoolteacher and died in loneliness at the age of 76. His lonely indignation was manifested most clearly in his masterpiece, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Loneliness is also the controlling motif in Kafka’s works. “The Judgment” provides an extreme illustration of the unsurmountable gap between father and son. The father in the story sentences his son to death by drowning, and the son does so immediately, calling out his last words before dying: “Dear parents, I have always loved you, all the same.” In The Metamorphosis , Kafka doesn’t describe the process through which its protagonist turns into a bug, instead focusing on highlighting the loneliness and alienation resulting from the metamorphosis. The character “K” in The Castle could neither enter the castle that is right in front of him nor even become a villager in the village attached to the castle. This sense of perpetual loneliness permeates Kafka’s works. With the intensification of loneliness, the world in Kafka’s stories becomes increasingly smaller until it shrinks to a small burrow. At the beginning, Karl Rosmann in Amerika is faced with a broad world, which shrinks to streets, corridors, and working sites for Joseph K in The Trial . K in The Castle is restricted to the hostel and the village, Blumfeld, the elderly bachelor, to his room and the hunger artist to the cage. In the end, the world shrinks into a burrow and is closed for good. On the other hand, lonely indignation is the most important feature in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. As Zhang Yuan, a scholar from the Qing Dynasty noted, Pu Songling was disillusioned and indignant with his time. His indignation, combined with his interest in the uncanny and the supernatural, made his works unique and distinctive.9 Each story in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio conveys Pu Songling’s own feelings and opinions. In “The Land in the Sea”《罗刹海市》 [ ], Pu Songling wrote about a kingdom in which people’s appearance is more valued than the substance of their character. What is worse, people in that kingdom regard beauty as ugliness and black as white. This reflects how Pu Songling viewed his world. In “A Bao”《阿宝》 [ ], the imperial examination is shown as ridiculous and unfair because of corruption and bribery. “The Flower 9 Zhang Yuan, “Inscriptions on the Tombstone of the Grave of Mr. Pu”, in The Sourcebook of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ed. Zhu Yixuan (Tianjian: Nankai University Press, 2002), p. 285.

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Girls” 《香玉》 [ ] conveys Pu’s ideal of love. Huang is in love with a peony flower girl, and he falls into deep mourning when the peony flower withers and dies. Flower goddess is moved by him and brings the flower girl to life. Huang gives up his secular life and enters a deep mountain with her. When he dies, he becomes a peony flower too. Pu Songling speaks highly of his love, commenting at the end of the story that the ghosts and gods can be touched by true love. “The Banished God”《雷曹 [ 》 ] expresses Pu’s indignation of his own misery by depicting the character as a real talent who is ignored and rejected by the world. The part that most embodies the author’s indignation is the comments made by Pu Songling, which are expressed as “the author thinks” [异史 氏曰]. This is a writing style that Pu imitated from Records of the Grand Historian 《史记》 [ ]. There are 194 places where the comments as “the author thinks” appear. Whenever Pu Songling feels that his ghost and fox stories are inadequate to express his own thoughts, he steps out and comes to the front and expresses himself directly. It is a pity that Buber deleted all these authorial comments in his translation, which weakened the expressions of indignation in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. It is difficult to imagine that a writer with a happy family life could describe loneliness as well as Kafka, as it is equally difficult to imagine that a writer with a successful public career expressing indignation like Pu Songling. As “poems express ideals” [诗言志], there will be more writers expressing their indignation out of loneliness, but writers who engage with loneliness vividly are rare since it is hard to face loneliness alone.

7.2

Allegory and Metaphor

Whereas Pu Songling expresses his lonely indignation through metaphors, Kafka expresses his thorough allegories because his loneliness is voluntary, self-sufficient, and self-referential. Walter Benjamin defines modern allegory as the arbitrary assignment of meaning to disinterested signifiers. Consequently, allegorical representation does not assume any meaningful connection between signifier and signified. Therefore, the images and tropes of allegorical presentation are interchangeable and exchangeable and possess no significance in themselves.10 In other words, allegory is 10 Steven Leddin, “Benjamin’s Allegorical Hermeneutics: The Critique of Historicism and the Disclosure of the Historical ‘Other’”, Otherness: Essays & Studies 3.2, June, 2013, p. 18.

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a form of experience acutely aware of the transiency of meaning: “any person, any object, any relationship can mean absolutely anything else. With this possibility, a destructive but just verdict is passed on the profane world as a world in which the detail is of no great importance.”11 In consequence, “allegory” as used by Benjamin is a capacious term; it is a way of seeing any object, image or text as multivalent and polysemous. Kafka’s world of allegory is close to Benjamin’s concept. In his first well-claimed story “The Judgment,” the father sentences his son to death by drowning and the son follows his father’s order immediately. Though it seems absurd, this story is commonly viewed as a classic allegory about father–son conflicts, an important motif in modernist literature in the West favored by great writers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Pierre Baudelaire, and Edgar Allan Poe. Kafka highlights the dual nature of father–son conflicts by depicting the son’s dilemma in facing his tyrannical father, thus revealing the way in which sons are often torn between fear and dependence, love and hatred, rebellion and seeking help. The presentation of the multifaceted nature of relationships is key to many of Kafka’s allegories. Another example is The Castle. In this novel, the castle is both an entity and a mysterious symbol. Max Brod thinks that it symbolizes the grace of God, while others hold that it is God. Some positivist scholars think that the castle represents Osek, the birthplace of Kafka’s father, and that Kafka wrote this story to cope with his unpleasant experiences with his father. According to some socialist scholars, the castle represents capital, and the story is about capitalist class conflict. Some argue that the castle represents the Austro-Hungarian empire in Kafka’s time, while others think that the castle embodies the alienation of modern life. The castle can also be viewed as a critique of bureaucracy: each of the layers of the hierarchical structure is unwilling to make a finalizing decision, thus condemning people to circle around in futility. Consequently, the castle is like a riddle that loses its answer, with multiple possible interpretations. The polysemic and complex meanings of the castle lead to mystery and nihilism, which is the Benjaminian sense of allegory without signified meaning. The Metamorphosis is universally acknowledged as an allegory of modern alienation, not least because it is impossible for a person to 11 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. J. Osborne (New York: Verso Press, 1998), p. 175.

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become an insect. Kafka focuses on the loneliness and devastation of the incident. “The Metamorphosis to an insect” has become an allegory of modern existence and feelings. As Walter H. Sokel notes, “It lies in the nature of Kafka’s deeply ambiguous art that no single analysis can completely comprehend his multifaceted creation. Each can merely be one step toward the explanation of a ‘mystery’, the essence of which can perhaps never be fully resolved.”12 The metamorphosis is subject to various interpretations. On the other hand, metaphor refers to a rhetoric not only in poetry but also in various speeches. It is an expression that describes an A by referring to a B that is considered to have similar characteristics. A metaphor is an implied comparison in contrast to the explicit comparison of the simile. In consequence, whenever metaphor is used there is a cognitive leap beyond rational comparison to an identification of two objects, resulting in a new entity that has characteristics of both. As such the making of metaphors can be regarded as a system of thought that bypasses logic.13 This way of thinking blurs the boundaries among objects, experiences, or concepts such as men and animals, flora and fauna, contemporary and ancient, men and ghosts. Metaphors are abundant in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. In “The Mural,” the character’s entrance and exit of the mural world is metaphoric of the Buddhist concept of form and emptiness; “The Ghost Who Was Foiled” describes a ghost with human skin, a metaphor for a chaotic world in which humans and the ghosts are indistinguishable; the interaction between human and the ghost in “The Judge” is a metaphor for the concept of karma; the kingdom in “The Land in the Sea” is practically a metaphor for real society; the corrupted life of the imperial court is reflected in “The Priest’s Sleeve”; and the illusion and stubbornness of intellectuals in Chinese feudal society are suggested in “A Foolish Student.” Metaphors are also used in different layers in Pu Songling’s stories in addition to the abovementioned controlling ones.

12 Walter H. Sokel, “Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’: Rebellion and Punishment”, Monatshefte, vol. 48, no. 4 (April–May, 1956), p. 204. 13 “Metaphor”, available at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphor, accessed on October 15, 2019.

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For instance, “Music” tells a love story of Wen Ruchun [温如春] and Ge Lianggong [葛良工], in which they fall in love with each other due to their mutual passion for playing Qin [琴] and Zither [筝]. The beauty of music is elegantly described, such as when it is stated that the sound of music comes as if “a gentle wind was passing and bringing a hundred different birds until every tree in the courtyard was covered with them and all were singing.”14 The protagonists, Wen and Ge, cannot become a couple at the beginning, but the Ghost girl, Huanniang, plays the role of go-between for them out of her passion for music. Consequently, Qin and Zither become the metaphors for a human relationship, and the harmony of Qin and Zither represents the love between husband and wife. Another story, “Miss Ying-ning,” is also laden with metaphors. The striking features of the heroine Ying-ning are her love for flowers and her laughter. Flowers, part of nature, and laughter, part of human traits, reflect and complement each other, thus creating a metaphor for the unity of nature and human beings. Ying-ning’s world is a natural world where humanity and nature are in harmony. In contrast, Wang Zifu’s world is an ethical world full of taboos and restrictions. When Ying-ning steps out of her natural world and walks into the ethical world, her laughter is replaced by her tears. This is Pu Songling’s critique of an ethical society in which human nature is smothered. Although the tenor and the vehicle within a metaphor are not clearly pointed out, their relationship is definite and exact. A reader won’t have any trouble in finding both in a metaphor which is more than a figure of speech qua pertaining to something more significant. In this sense, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio embodies Pu Songling’s lonely indignation. However, in contrast to the classical texts of Pu Songling, which are full of metaphors of exact meanings, Kafka’s allegories are modernist in the sense that their signifiers and signified are no longer corresponsive. Inspired by Benjamin’s concept of the modern function of allegory, Paul de Man argues that allegory suggests the disjunction between the way in which the world really appears and the way it appears in language. The relationship between the allegorical sign and its meaning is not decreed by dogma … Instead we have a relationship between signs in which the reference to their respective meanings has become of secondary 14 Martin Buber, p. 191.

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importance. But this relationship between signs necessarily contains a constitutive temporal element. It remains necessary if there is to be allegory that the allegorical sign refers to another sign that precedes it.15

As Kafka notes, “for all things outside the physical world language can be employed only as a sort of adumbration, but never with approximate exactitude, since in accordance with the physical world it treats only of possession and its connotation.”16 The modern notion of allegory is thus related to the gap between sign and meaning, which is a dominant feature of modernism. This marks the difference between Kafka as a modernist writer and Pu Songling as a classic writer.

7.3

Alienation and Poeticization

There is much that is grotesque and absurd in Kafka’s allegories and Pu Songling’s metaphors. While Kafka illustrates modern alienation through absurdity, Pu Songling poeticizes reality through ghost stories. For Kafka, stories are even more real than reality, while for Pu Songling, his stories are poetry. As a poet with six volumes of poetic collections, Pu Songling often poeticized the characters, plots, and atmospheres in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, giving a special flavor to his stories. While the alienation in Kafka’s works is universal and unpreventable, the poeticization in Pu Songling’s works is an idealized pursuit. In Kafka’s stories, human beings are turned into bugs, dogs, rats, apes, and mongrels. In contrast, in Pu Songling’s stories, flowers, ghosts, and foxes are turned into humans. Whereas Kafka’s stories are absurd and paradoxical in nature, Pu Songling’s stories are gothic and mysterious. Whereas Kafka’s characters are limited by their environments, Pu Songling’s characters walk freely in a broad space, even transcending time and space. Almost all of Kafka’s works are concerned with alienation in the West. As he once said, “the conveyer belt of life carries man along toward an unknown destination. Man is more like a thing, an object, than a living

15 Paul de Man, “Blindness and Insight”, Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 207. 16 Franz Kafka. “Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope and the True Ways”, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), p. 55.

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being.”17 Although his mind was unclear about the underlying cause of alienation, Kafka saw the symptoms of it and wrote about it, often through the allegorical metamorphosis of human beings into animals and insects. The poeticization of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio lies first in the characterization. As Lu Xun comments, the Zhiguai stories [志怪] (stories of anomality) of the Ming Dynasty are often simple and grotesque, but Liaozhai (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) is different in that its detailed accounts of supernatural beings render them more human.18 In Pu Songling’s stories, ghosts, fairies, and foxes are poeticized and aestheticized into humans. These characters include Yingning [婴宁], Lianxiang [莲香], Pianpian [翩翩], Princess Lotus [莲花公 主], Huanniang [宦娘], A’Xiu [阿绣], Zhuqing [竹青], Xiaoxie [小谢], Xiangyu [香玉], Jiangxue [降雪], Jiaona [娇娜], etc. Ying-ning in “The Laughing Girl” is one of Pu Songling’s favorite female characters. Her story begins on the day of the Spring Lantern Festival, and when she appears, she is seen to have just “snapped off a plum-blossom twig.” With her smile described as “irresistible,” she is depicted as a fine model of human existence. In “The Flower Girls” 《 [ 香玉》 ], two flower fairies manifest themselves as two gentle and beautiful sisters (Xiangyu and Jiangxue) who are both in love with Huang. Xiangyu marries Huang in the end, while Jiangxue remains a dear friend to him. These two characters, varying in personalities, embody the writer’s ideal and hope for a good relationship. Turning to their respective writing techniques, Kafka illustrates alienation through the grotesque and the absurd. His stories are replete with accounts of ordinary people subjected to upsetting occurrences, thus allowing him to explore the spiritual life in terms of concrete, everyday realities. Albert Camus pointed out that in Kafka’s works, logic and ordinariness are important to tragedy and the absurd: “these perpetual oscillations between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universal, the tragic and the everyday, the absurd and the logical,

17 Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka: An Anthology of Marxist Criticism, ed. and trans. Kenneth Hughes (London: University Press of New England, 1981), p. 281. 18 Lu Xun, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1973), p. 178.

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are found throughout his work and give it both its resonance and its meaning.”19 In contrast, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio is mysterious and uncanny, describing ghosts, foxes, fairies, and other strange tales. Though Pu Songling’s fantasies are based on reality and his indignant awareness of it, the world that he created is romantic and mysterious. For instance, in “A Bao”《阿宝]》 [ , Sun Zichu [孙子楚] loves A Bao so much that his soul goes with A Bao to her house in the form of a parrot. This description might have some influence on Kafka. And in “Leaf Clothes”《翩翩》 [ ], the characters live a carefree life feeding on leaves and dressed in clouds, thus revealing the romanticized visions of the writer. When it comes to language, Kafka writes in a cold and realistic style because he believes that alienation is a cold fact. He was probably inspired by Gustave Flaubert, who said “…the artist should not appear any more in his work than God in nature.” 20 In consequence, there is no omnipotent third-person narrator in Kafka’s stories. The narrative voice seems very objective and detached, even toward shocking incidents. For example, there are no adjectives, similes, or any other emotive and provocative phrases in The Metamorphosis . Paradoxically, the fact that the language is stripped bare adds multiple meanings to his works. In contrast, the language in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio is poetic and elegant, containing ancient lyrical couplets and vernacular phrases. As one critic notes, the language in Strange Stories is a perfect combination of archaic and vernacular Chinese of elegance and liveliness.21 This combination serves the stories well in that it creates a hybridity of reality and illusion.22 Of course, there are overlaps between Kafka and Pu Songling in terms of their loneliness and indignation, allegories, and metaphors. There is certainly a poetic layer to Kafka’s works of alienation, and there are also 19 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (London: Vintage Books, 1955), p. 81. 20 Gustave Flaubert, “The George Sand–Gustave Flaubert Letters”, available at http://www.online-literature.com/gustave-flaubert/sand-flaubert-letters/7/, accessed on October 5, 2019. 21 Wang Linshu, etc., “The Combination of Poetry and Drama: On the Art of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”, The Study of Fictions in Ming and Qing Dynasties, vol. 2 (Beijing: The Publishing House of China Federation of Literature and Art, 1985), p. 292. 22 Zhang Renrang, “The Language of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”, in Appreciating Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, eds. Wu Zuxiang, etc. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1986), p. 153.

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themes of alienation in Strange Stories such as “The Taoist Priest of Laoshan” 《崂山道士》 [ ] and “The Cricket” 《促织》 [ ]. This kind of story is neglected in Buber’s translation, but Kafka must have been inspired by Strange Stories in many aspects. For instance, there is certainly a similarity between a man turning into a parrot and man turning into a bug. In addition, there is a story from Buber’s translation about a priest trying to see a prince but the gatekeeper refusing to let him in. This seems like Kafka’s “The Gate” and The Castle, which will be given due discussion in later chapters.

CHAPTER 8

Into “Fortress Besieged” and Out of “The Castle”: A Comparative Analysis of Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged and Kafka’s The Castle

The differences between Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged and Kafka’s The Castle are apparently larger than their similarities. However, a comparative study of these two writers is still worthwhile not least because it offers insights into the differences between the modes of thought of the East and those of the West.

8.1

“Get In” and “Get Out”

There is a famous conversation in Fortress Besieged: “I talked to Bertie about his marriages and divorces once,” Shenming said. “He said that there is a saying in English that marriage is like a gilded birdcage. The birds outside want to get in, and the birds inside want to get out, he said, so divorce leads to marriage and marriage leads to divorce and there’s never any end to it.”

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_8

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“There’s a saying like that in France, too,” Miss Su said. “Only there it’s about a forteresse assiégée—a fortress under siege. The people outside want to storm in, and the people inside are desperate to get out.”1

Qian Zhongshu’s wife Ms. Yang Jiang [杨绛] summarized the theme of Fortress Besieged as follows: The fact that the people inside the fortress want to get out while the people outside want to get in is relevant not only to marriage but also to people’s careers and perhaps even to the majority of the desires that they have in life. However, although the story of a fortress besieged comes from the West, the core of this novel is still very Chinese, embodying many Chinese cultural elements such as the concepts of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Book of Changes 《周易》 [ ]. In addition, the emphasis is given to “getting out” instead of “getting in,” as the former seems to be more Chinese in a traditional sense. Some argue that the image of Kafka’s castle comes from Zeno of Elea, the ancient Greek philosopher who is famous for his construction of paradoxes of motion, such as the paradox of the arrow and the dichotomy. In fact, these paradoxes were also mentioned by ancient Chinese philosophers, including Gong Sunlong [公孙龙] and Zhuangzi. As discussed in the previous chapters, there is solid evidence to suggest that Kafka showed keen concern toward Chinese culture. In his letter to Felice, apart from quoting Chinese poems, he also mentioned a remote and isolated village by the border of Tibet, which is close to the description of the small village in The Castle. Kafka’s castle belongs to the West, especially Western religion. According to Max Brod, Kafka’s friend, executor of his will, and literary advocate, the castle means the mystery of God’s rule and divine grace. Human life cannot be a path to God, which is why it remains chaotic and absurd. The relationship between men and God is not equal. It proves the Jewish saying that Milan Kundera, the famous Czech writer once quoted, “Man thinks, God laughs.” As a Jew himself, Kafka might have known the proverb. As Gustav Janoch wrote in Conversations with Kafka, “Kafka is a Jew, but he is far more capable of Christian love than the dear good Catholics and Protestants in the office.”2 Consequently, it makes sense to 1 Qian Zhongshu, Fortress Besieged (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1980), p. 96. All the following quotations will be referred to as page numbers. 2 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 55.

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interpret The Castle from the perspective of religion, although it is not the only perspective. Both getting out of the besieged fortress and getting into the castle represent human striving and struggle, an aspect of human nature that is a recurring motif in the literature of the East and the West. It is possible that both writers were under the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer when writing their stories. Since Kafka attended a lecture on Schopenhauer given by Max Brod on October 23, 1903, he was relatively familiar with the German philosopher. Qian Zhongshu mentioned Schopenhauer many times in his works, such as Fortress Besieged and Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters . Schopenhauer wrote in The World as Will and Representation, “Now we are already in a position to see that we can never reach the essence of things from the outside: no matter how much we look, we find nothing but images and names. We are like someone who walks around a castle, looking in vain for an entrance and occasionally sketching the facade.”3 This can serve as a footnote to The Castle and Fortress Besieged. However, due to their different cultural traditions and lifestyles, Qian Zhongshu emphasizes “getting out,” while Kafka focuses upon the difficulties of “getting in.” In Fortress Besieged, the protagonist, Fang Hongjian, experiences various facets of life, including education, romance, a career, and marriage (family). However, rather than pursuing these goals, Fang seems to be engaged in a kind of “anti-pursuit,” which is to say an effort to run away from the traditional burdens and bondages of education, career, and marriage. This reflects a futile rebellion and a cunning and escapist approach to life, which is also characteristic of nihilism and inaction in Buddhism and Taoism. One critic even suggests that Fortress Besieged comes from nothingness.4 This is also the idea of getting out. In his Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters , Qian Zhongshu quotes a sentence (“to advance contains the attempt to retreat; to maintain contains the wisdom to let perish; to get contains the awareness to lose.” [进有退之意, 存有亡之几, 得有失之理。]) from The Account of Yue State: Ji Nic 《越绝书: [ 计倪篇》 ] in an attempt to interpret a famous saying from Tao Te Ching: “Good fortune follows upon disaster; disaster lurks within 3 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, trans. and eds. Judith Norman, etc. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 123. 4 Zhao Yifan, “The Metaphors and Themes in Fortress Besieged”, Dushu, vol. 5, 1991, p. 33.

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good fortune.” [祸兮福之所倚, 福兮祸之所伏。 ]5 This might well be the meaning of fortress besieged. As Qian’s wife Yang Jiang once said, I love one of the poetic lines from Su Dongpo [苏东坡] that in a sea of 10,000 people, one can hide [万人如海一身藏]. I also admire Zhuangzi’s concept of “land sinks” [陆沉] … one will not be afraid of falling if he does not want to climb high. Free from trifles and conflicts, one can devote oneself to one’s own pursuits while preserving one’s innocence and an uncontaminated heart. This is the idea of “getting out.” To “get out” completely is to transcend the boundaries of “fortress besieged,” reaching the Buddhist state of Nirvana. This is probably the state that Qian Zhongshu aims to attain. In contrast, in Kafka’s The Castle, protagonist K’s pursuit is simple and straightforward, although it is shrouded with mystery. K makes every effort to try to access the castle, first as a land surveyor, and then as a lover of a barmaid in the village, Frieda, who is the mistress of the castle official Klamm. K believes that his relationship with Frieda can help him get close to Klamm and thus get into the castle eventually, but Frieda thwarts his plan by breaking up with Klamm. Consequently, K has to break up with her and go after the new barmaid Pepi. The fact that K will never enter the castle can be interpreted from a religious perspective, as the castle can be taken to represent God or Heaven. When interpreted thus, getting into the castle signifies a return to Eden. Alternatively, it could also be regarded as a Kafkaesque pilgrimage, which centers on “getting in.” The concept of “getting in” can be found in the works of great writers such as Dante and John Bunyan. In Faust, which had a profound impact on Kafka, Goethe turns the religious pursuit into human beings’ tragic pursuit of truth. Therefore, in this sense, the castle can also be viewed as a modern version of the Faustian spirit. 8.1.1

Liqu and Lishi

In his Discourses on the Art of Literature 《谈艺录》 [ ], Qian Zhongshu distinguishes two approaches in writing classical Chinese poems, liqu (理趣, rational gusto) and liyu (理语, rational expression): “poetry cannot live without ration, but liqu is superior to liyu.” A line in a poem is one of liqu when in the line “the mind can be reified in the external

5 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters , p. 53.

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world and only a few words are used, as long as they denote the things having direct visual presence.” In contrast, “if what is poetically expressed in the same meaning as that expressed in rational interest indulges in logical inference, the line is nothing but liyu.”6 This concept of poetry can also be applied to fictions, since fiction focuses more on ration. Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged and Kafka’s The Castle can be interpreted according to the above analysis. Qian Zhongshu wrote Fortress Besieged and Discourses on the Art of Literature at almost the same time. Fortress Besieged was started in 1944 and finished in 1946. During this period, Qian was also engaged in the writing of Discourses on the Art of Literature 《谈艺录》 [ ]. Based on his high remarks on liqu in poetics, it is understandable that Mr. Qian wrote his novel with this approach. In contrast, it is not appropriate to attribute Kafka’s The Castle to liyu, since it is not just about abstract reasoning, but more about allegorical meanings. The image of “The Castle” in the novel, though mysterious, stands firmly on the top of the mountain, and in the mind of the readers. The narration of people and events in the novel, though bearing vague backgrounds, creates vivid and detailed images. Thus, it is more appropriate to use lishi (理事, rational event) to summarize the writing approach of The Castle. Qian Zhongshu also discusses allegory as one of the literary devices in the Western literature in Discourses on the Art of Literature, admitting some similarities between allegory and liqu. However, he also points out the differences, in China, objects are used as a metaphor for certain events. For example, the relationship between men and women is used as a metaphor for that between the emperor and his ministers. Thus, both the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor are factual. In contrast, Dante uses events as metaphors for the way. For example, the relationship between men and women is used as a metaphor for that between God and humans. The vehicle is factual, but the tenor is something metaphysical.7

Fortress Besieged and The Castle are exactly the same cases: as for the former, both the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor are factual with the

6 Qian Zhongshu, Discourses on the Art of Literature (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1984), pp. 223, 228, 231. 7 Qian Zhongshu, Discourses on the Art of Literature, p. 231.

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writing style of Spring and Autumn Annals; as for the latter, the vehicle is factual but the tenor is metaphysical and mysterious. Thus, it is well grounded to argue that in Fortress Besieged, the metaphors have many sides, while in The Castle, the metaphors are created to highlight mystery. Qian Zhongshu made many insightful comments on metaphors in his Limited Views. According to him, metaphors can have “two handles” and “many sides”: “…the metaphor implies a denunciation of absurdity. Praise or censure, the connotations are quite different.” Qian also established another category for metaphors that have many sides: Metaphors may have two handles, but they also have several sides. Now, a certain thing may be one, but its qualities and capabilities are likely to be many. Consequently, the one thing is not restricted to one use or one effect. Those who employ a figure of speech may do so with different aspects of the figure in mind or with a different feature in view, so that even when the denotatum is the same the significatum will vary. That is why a single image may fulfil several different purposes or meanings even while it remains the same.8

In one of his early papers, “One Feature of Chinese Traditional Literary Criticism,” Mr. Qian noted that “[o]ur knowledge of the world is a knowledge of metaphors, symbols, and poetic cognation.”9 His interest in, and studies of, metaphors can be seen in the writing of his novels. In Fortress Besieged, witty metaphors are ubiquitous, with either “two handles” or “many sides.” The besieged city can be viewed as an encompassing metaphor containing numerous smaller metaphors. One of the scholars, Zhou Jin, listed more than 60 great metaphors in his The Study of Fortress Besieged. The characters and events described in this novel are all factual and true to life, and the themes are true to life too, such as “the setbacks of future, destiny, career, property, relationships, marriage, and family.” This corresponds to the idea that both the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor are factual. These colorful and juicy metaphors lighten up the philosophical seriousness of the novel. Some scholars divided Qian’s metaphors into five categories: theme-oriented,

8 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters , selected and translated by Ronald Egan (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 125. 9 Qian Zhongshu, “One Feature of Chinese Traditional Literary Criticism”, Literature Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4, August, 1937.

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introductory, multifaceted, deductive, and the combination of logic and imagery.10 Fortress Besieged appears to be a giant web of metaphors woven carefully by Qian, full of wit, philosophy, humor, and sarcasm. Qian even asked his readers to treat his novel as a metaphor; as he once told an English lady who wanted to see him on the phone, “If you enjoy the taste of an egg, why do you feel the necessity to see the hen who laid it?”.11 Metaphor is a very important way of thinking in Chinese literature. Ancient Chinese philosophers were accustomed to expressing their thoughts via metaphors and aphorisms. For instance, almost every passage in Zhuang Zi is metaphoric. One of the features of Chinese reviews of literature and paintings is that they apply metaphors full of imagery instead of logical analysis. For example, when commenting on Xie Lingyun, one of the foremost Chinese poets of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, phrases like “green pine trees arising above the bushes, and white jade amid dust and ashes” are used.12 Therefore, in this sense, with a typical Chinese way of thinking, Qian Zhongshu inherited and perfected the art of Chinese traditional literature rather than breaching it. In contrast, in The Castle, the vehicle is factual, but the tenor is metaphysical. The castle seems to be a factual entity, but there are multiple meanings behind it. As Camus noted, “a symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation [from the writer’s mind to paper], an artist can restore to it only its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering.”13 Kafka himself also claimed, “I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”14 Kafka’s works are subject to various interpretations other than one. The

10 Tian Jianmin, “The Features of Qian Zhongshu’s Metaphors”, in The Study of Qian Zhongshu, vol. 3 (Beijing: Culture andArt Publishing House, 1992), pp. 84–96. 11 Yang Jiang, “Qian Zhongshu and Fortress Besieged”, in It is Teatime (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1992), p. 118. 12 Ji Xianlin, “Comments on Chinese and the Western literary Theories from a Layman”, Literary Reviews, vol. 6, 1996. 13 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p. 124. 14 Franz Kafka, Quotes, available at https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5223.

Franz_Kafka, accessed on October 5, 2019.

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complex and multiple meanings of the castle lead eventually to mystery and nihilism. The choices of liqu and lishi in Qian’s and Kafka’s writing approaches gave shape to different thoughts and themes. In general, Fortress Besieged is a traditional realist novel, while The Castle is a modernist masterpiece. A reader of Fortress Besieged is easily reminded of the realist classics, such as Unofficial History of the Scholars and Tom Jones. As “one of the most interesting and most crafty novels in modern Chinese literature,” Fortress Besieged is “interesting” and “great,” not because of its form but because of its content. It does not transcend the tradition of realism in terms of formal structure. A reader who is amazed by Fortress Besieged often comes up with such questions as “how can a novel be written so exquisitely?” In contrast, Kafka’s The Castle is unprecedented in terms of its form. A reader is often shocked by it and prompted to ask questions such as “how can a novel be written in this way? Can it be called a novel?” The traditional way of reading is challenged, which turns on a new leaf of fictional writing. In the first two or three paragraphs of Fortress Besieged, time, place, and the backgrounds of the characters are clearly stated. The writer is omnipotent, and the reader is passive. In contrast, the beginning of The Castle goes like this: IT was late in the evening when K. arrived, the village was deep in snow. The Castle hill was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there. On the wooden bridge leading from the main road to the village, K. stood for a long time gazing into the illusory emptiness above him.15

In this paragraph, time, setting, and characters are very vague, and this requires readers to engage the text more actively with their imagination and other creative faculties. In this sense, to use Roland Barthes’ terms, Fortress Besieged is a “readerly” text, while The Castle is a “writerly” text. When making a comparison between two writing techniques and styles of Chinese modern novels represented by Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu, Chinese Scholar Huang Weiliang [黄维梁] borrowed two terms Yunjie “酝藉” (implicit and metaphysical) and Fuhui “浮慧” (explicit and witty)

15 Franz Kafka, The Castle, available at http://www.kkoworld.com/kitablar/frans_ kafka_qesr-eng.pdf, accessed on October 5, 2019.

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from Liu Xie [刘勰]’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons [文心雕龙]. It would be relevant to apply these two terms to the comparison between Kafka and Qian Zhongshu, although Kafka is perhaps more implicit and mysterious. (This is why Kafka’s stories are allegories.) The Castle can be viewed as a great allegory, and all the interpretations of it can only be “allegorical.” The castle is within reach, but K cannot enter, no matter how hard he tries to do so. The characters and events seem to be detailed and factual, yet the philosophical meaning is abstruse and obscure. This is what we called lishi.

In contrast, Fortress Besieged demonstrates features of Fuhui “浮慧” (explicit and witty). Known for his wit and eruditeness, Qian Zhongshu strew the novel with witty comments and eloquence. Qian admired the tradition of word play in Chinese culture in which philosophers often used puns to illustrate their ideas. He mentioned in Limited Views that witty word plays are ubiquitous in ancient Chinese classics and that readers don’t have to hold their breath in front of them, which would prevent them from appreciating the fun.16 So, here again, Qian’s theory of liqu is applicable to the understanding of his novel writing. The choices of language styles are related to liqu and lishi. Fortress Besieged consists of both narration and commentaries with a very strong authorial intervention. The ironies, humor, along with the teasing, joking language, help the readers to know more about the author’s philosophical thought. In contrast, The Castle adopts seemingly objective and detached narration with a minimum of authorial intervention. Even while describing an appalling scene, Kafka would still avoid using colorful adjectives and rhetorical language apt to induce an emotional reaction on the part of the reader. This writing style gives Kafka’s work a greater capacity to accommodate multiple meanings and hence multiple interpretations, adding to the abstruseness and mystery of the work.

16 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters , p. 461.

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8.2

Mind and Heart

Mind and heart are complementary in regard to writing. On the one hand, Qian Zhongshu writes novels with his mind, thus rendering it an intellectual activity. This also distances writing from the less intellectual aspects of normal life, and thus his intellectual approach means that Fortress Besieged is written “on the edge of his life,” from an “outsider’s” point of view. On the other hand, Kafka writes with his heart, and his The Castle was written “in the middle of his life.” As he once put it, “How is it possible to rejoice in the world except by fleeing to it?”17 He viewed writing as his life, so he wrote The Castle from within. Different lifestyles generated different writing styles. Kafka once noted, “…I still strove with hardly a suspicion after a description in which every word would be linked to my life, which I would draw to my heart, and which would transport me out of myself.”18 His whole life is like that “hunger artist” in one of his stories who, feeling well upon completing his forty-day fasting performance, decided to extend it. For Kafka, to live properly is to pursue the highest form of art, even at the cost of life. Like Doctor Faust, the cost of pursuing infinity is the extermination of finite physical form. This is the spirit in which Kafka wrote The Castle. Qian Zhongshu wanted to “describe a certain type of people, and a certain part of modern Chinese society,” but it is unlikely that he would include himself in this type. As Ms. Yang Jiang said, “all the characters and plots in the novel are fictional, though some fragments were taken from real life. Some plots might be based on real life, but the characters are all fictional.” Yang also pointed out that “Although Fang Hongjian, the protagonist of the novel, comes from the same place (Wu Xi) as Qian Zhongshu, they have completely different life experiences.”19 Kafka kept no distance from art but kept a long distance from life; Qian Zhongshu kept a distance from art, and therefore, was closer to life. As mentioned before, writing means everything to Kafka. He once claimed,

17 Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms, trans. Michael Hofmann (London: Random House, 2006), p. 25. 18 Franz Kafka, The Diaries 1910–1923, ed. Marx Brod (New York, Schocken Books, 1976), p. 26. 19 Yang Jiang, “Qian Zhongshu and Fortress Besieged”, pp. 124–5.

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It is easy to recognize a concentration in me of all my forces on writing. When it became clear in my organism that writing was the most productive direction for my being to take, everything rushed in that direction and left empty all those abilities which were directed towards the joys of sex, eating, drinking, philosophical reflection, and above all music. I atrophied in all these directions.20

“[N]othing coming from outside could disturb my writing now (that, of course, was not so much boasting as an attempt to comfort myself).”21 “[T]here is also nothing to me which, in relation to writing, one could call superfluous, superfluous in the sense of overflowing.”22 Kafka rejected friendship, love, marriage, and family for the loneliness that he dreaded in order to become a writer. He can be viewed as the loneliest writer in the world and this loneliness is well reflected in his works. In this sense, Kafka’s life and his writing merged, thus ensuring that he achieved almost nothing in real life, but a great deal in writing. The banal external life rendered Kafka anxious, lonely and terrified. He led a double life by doing a mindless job in an insurance company during the day and devoting himself to writing at night. As he noted, “Outwardly, I fulfil my duties satisfactorily in the office, not my inner duties, however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves. The smallest good fortune in one becomes a great misfortune in the other.”23 So, in this sense, the protagonist K. in The Castle, who tries so hard but in vain to get into the castle, is Kafka himself. It might be suggestive that the protagonist is named after the initial letter of Kafka. Despite the great turbulence in his life, Qian Zhongshu managed to keep inner peace and calm. He went through ups and downs without losing his calmness. As one critic commented, “His existence almost amounted to one of facing perpetual challenges: the challenges of political turmoil, religious bias, mundanity, and even honor. He remained true to himself no matter what happened.”24 For Qian, writing novels was just a 20 Franz Kafka, The Diaries 1910–1923, p. 109. 21 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, trans. Richard and Clara Winston

(New York, Schocken Books, 1977), p. 107. 22 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, p. 49. 23 Franz Kafka, The Diaries 1910–1923, p. 34. 24 Ke Ling, “Conversations with Qian Zhongshu”, The Study of Qian Zhongshu, vol. 1

(Beijing: Cultural and Art Publishing House, 1989), p. 223.

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small part of his life. He would not be so famous today without his novel, but he was still a great scholar. That is why he wrote with his mind, and writing novels was not a necessity. During the two years when he was writing Fortress Besieged, Qian meant to stop many times because of his sadness about the world. It was his wife, Ms. Yang Jiang, who encouraged him to finish it. After the completion of Fortress Besieged, Qian started another novel entitled Lily. Unfortunately, part of the manuscript was lost in 1949, and Qian was so disappointed that he lost his passion for writing novels and never got back to it, focusing on his academic research instead. In this sense, writing novels is just “the edge” of his life, which is utterly different from Kafka. These different attitudes toward writing determined different ways of writing. According to Ms. Yang, Qian Zhongshu loved “to say something silly and something bizarre, and to combine these with creation, association and exaggeration.” This is the way of writing Fortress Besieged. There is some truth in the novel, but it is still completely fictional. Qian created many characters in the novel who failed in their lives, but he was certainly a winner in his own life in that he reaped what he sowed. The characters and stories in the city were written out of imagination and exaggeration by a writer who stands outside “the city.” Although Fortress Besieged ends with tragic notes, the comic features take more stock. As Ms. Yang mentioned on many occasions, how they laughed during the process of Qian’s writing: “Every night, he showed me one part of a manuscript that he had just finished, eager to see my reaction. I laughed, and he laughed, too. Oftentimes we would laugh so hard that we had to put down the script and do nothing more than laugh there together.” “What made me laugh when reading the script, was not that I discovered similar characters and stories in real life, but that I saw how fragments of real people and real incidents were turned into something and someone new and unexpected, through creation and pastiche.”25 Their laughter was the laugher of the wise, which consisted of sarcasm, understanding, and self-mockery. In contrast, there are quite a few absurd and comic descriptions in The Castle, but the tragic undertone is dominant in this novel. The tragedy also lies in the fact that Kafka never finished it. According to Max Brod, the novel probably ends with K. continuing his struggle until he dies of

25 Yang Jiang, “Qian Zhongshu and Fortress Besieged”, pp. 119, 133.

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exhaustion. As he lies on his deathbed, word arrives from the Castle saying that, although K. has no valid claim to be in the village, given the circumstances he will be permitted to continue to live there. K.’s efforts and struggle are doomed just like Kafka’s aspirations. He chose writing over his mundane life, and it led him to the death that he dreaded. This is a tragedy of his putting all of his life and his heart into his writing, a tragedy revealing his insurmountable greatness. Fortress Besieged and The Castle are compared and analyzed in this chapter from three interrelated perspectives. The different cultures and mindsets of “getting in” and “getting out” exert influence on the choices of liqu (理趣, rational gusto) and lishi (理事, rational event): “mind and heart.” Although it is impossible for Kafka to have read Qian Zhongshu, there is no doubt that he was influenced by Chinese culture. Similarly, while it is also doubtful whether Qian Zhongshu was inspired by Kafka’s The Castle during his writing of Fortress Besieged, it is clear that he was very familiar with Kafka. Thus, there are solid and significant reasons for conducting a comparative study of Kafka and Qian Zhongshu.

CHAPTER 9

Inscriptions on the Tomb Stone: A Comparative Analysis of Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” and Kafka’s “A Dream”

Since the 1990s, a scholarship has emerged on the comparative study of Lu Xun [鲁迅] and Kafka, including journal articles and even monographs. However, it seems that there is no evidence that these two great, contemporaneous writers knew or met each other. Lu Xun was keen on foreign literature, especially the literary works of minority groups. However, until now, there has been no evidence to indicate that he knew of Kafka and his works. Similarly, while Kafka was interested in ancient Chinese culture, he left no commentary on the Chinese literature of his time. Although there are so many differences between them, they somehow relate to each other in terms of their spirit and insight. Therefore, there is always a temptation for Lu Xun and Kafka scholars to identify and analyze their connections.

9.1

Lu Xun and Kafka

Lu Xun (1881–1936), formerly known as Zhou Shuren [周树人], was born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, into a once prosperous but by then impoverished family. Kafka (1883–1924) was born in 1883 to a Jewish

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Merchant family in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He was two years younger than Lu Xun and passed away 12 years earlier in 1924. There are few biographical similarities except that both were the eldest sons of their families, and both died of TB. Overall, their life experiences were quite different. Whereas Lu Xun studied mining and railway construction in his early years, went to medical school in Japan, and finally became a writer and an educator, Kafka studied law and worked in an insurance company and was only able to write in his spare time. Whereas Lu Xun was considered successful in terms of being married, having a family, and having a career, Kafka remained single and achieved little at work. Whereas Lu Xun became a great influence and published many works in his lifetime, Kafka remained unknown and obscure throughout his life, and most of his works were only published posthumously. Whereas Lu Xun left his hometown at the age of 17 and wandered through the large cities of China thereafter (with the exception of a short stay at home after studying abroad in Japan), Kafka stayed in Prague almost all his life and never traveled abroad. Whereas Lu Xun is well established as one of the great thinkers and writers of twentieth century China, it is difficult to define Kafka, a Jewish writer living in Prague and writing in German. Of course, this list of contrasts could be supplemented further. Nevertheless, despite all these differences, many have seen the two writers as kindred spirits. In 2003, Zhang Tianyou [张天佑], a Chinese critic, published a monograph on this topic—The Parables of Autocratic Culture: On Lu Xun and Kafka with a preface by Qian Liqun [钱理群], a renowned literary scholar on Lu Xun. In the preface, professor Qian wrote, “I have long felt the connections between the Chinese writer and the Jewish writer. I also feel close to them… These two writers, who provided allegorical interpretations of our world in the twentieth century, were ‘homeless outlanders’ excluded from their worlds, one being a ‘Sickman in Asia’, and the other being an ‘unfortunate Jew’.”1 Ge Fei [格非], the famous Chinese writer, also performed a comparative study on Lu Xun and Kafka. He noted:

1 Qian Liqun, “The Prophetic Interpretations of the World in the 20th Century by Two ‘Unknown Persons’”, preface in Zhang Tianyou, The Allegory of Autocratic Culture— Readings on Lu Xun and Kafka (Lanzhou: Gansu People’s Press, 2003), pp. 1–2.

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Despite their own desperate conditions, Lu Xun and Kafka accumulated the strength to break through. They did not fall into nihilism because “hope” was unperceivable and suspended. They are victims and martyrs in the most pessimistic sense, but their sufferings shed light on the dark places that human beings must try to transcend.

Ge Fei also pointed out the life philosophy and writing styles that they share: “like Kafka, Lu Xun felt keenly the absurdity of existence. Both encountered the impossibility of speech. Despite different cultural prerequisites, both of their ways of expression served as a negation and deconstruction of the existing language systems.”2 Professor Sun Yu [孙郁], another Lu Xun scholar, expressed a similar view: [u]nder the scope of world literature, Lu Xun had lots of shared traits with many other writers, especially Osip Mandelstam, Kafka and Paul Celan. They created an alienated existence within their mother tongues, enriching the languages in a rebellious manner…as Kafka said, “what I wrote is different from what I said; what I said is different from what I thought; what I thought is different from what I should think. It goes on and on until I sink into the darkest place.” This resonates with a statement of Lu Xun’s that “when I am silent, I feel rich and full; when I am about to speak, I feel barren and hollow.3

There are quite a few similar statements to be found. However, it will be impossible or extremely difficult to conduct a comprehensive and thorough comparative study of these two great writers. It would be a lifetime job to study just one of them given the scope and complexities of their works. Nevertheless, it is feasible to make comparisons based on certain aspects, themes, images, or works. The next section will attempt to make such a comparison of Kafka’s “A Dream” and Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” 《墓碣文》 [ ].

2 Ge Fei, “Lu Xun and Kafka”, Contemporary Writers Review, 2001, vol. 1, pp. 20–3. 3 Sun Yu, “In the Labyrinth of Words”, preface in Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild

Grass (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2014), pp. 3–4.

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9.2

“A Dream” and “Tombstone Inscriptions”

From 1914 to 1915, Kafka wrote the short story “A Dream,” first published in 1919 by Kurt Wolff in a collection of short stories. It describes a dream in which Josef K. finds himself in a cemetery. In addition, he found his own name in one of the tombstones. This can easily be related to Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions,” written in 1925, approximately 10 years later than Kafka’s “A Dream.” “Tombstone Inscriptions” was later selected in Lu Xun’s prose and poem collections Wild Grass 《野草》 [ ], first published in 1927 by Beijing Beixin Press. Although the content of the dream in these two works is quite different, they are both obscure and abstract, thus inviting a variety of interpretations. This is an abridged version of Kafka’s “A Dream”: Josef K. was dreaming: It was a beautiful day and K. wanted to go on a walk. But no sooner had he taken a few steps than he was already at the graveyard. He glided along a winding path until he spotted a freshly dug burial mound at which he wanted to halt. Since the path continued rushing along beneath his feet as he leaped off, he staggered and fell to his knees right in front of the mound. Two men were standing behind the grave, holding a headstone between them in the air; the moment K. showed up, they thrust the stone into the earth, and it stood there as if cemented to the ground. Instantly, a third man emerged from the bushes, and K. promptly identified him as an artist, who proceeded to write in pencil on the top end of the stone: “Here LIES—.” After writing those two words, he looked back at K. He then appeared to want to complete the phrase, but something hindered him, and lowering his pencil, he turned to K. again. This time, K. looked back at the artist, who, he noticed, was very embarrassed but unable to indicate the reason for his embarrassment. All his earlier liveliness had vanished. K. was inconsolable about the artist’s dilemma; he began to cry, sobbing into his cupped hands for a long time. The artist waited for K. to calm down, and then, finding no other solution, he decided to keep writing all the same. It was a J, it was almost completed, but now the artist furiously stamped one foot into the burial mound, making the dark soil fly up all around. At last, K. understood him; there was no time left to apologize; with all his fingers he dug into the earth, which offered scant resistance; everything seemed prepared; a thin crust of earth had been set up purely for show; right beneath it a huge hole with sheer sides gaped open, and K., flipped over on his back by a gentle current, sank into the hole. With his head still erect on his neck, he

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was welcomed down below by the impenetrable depth, and his name, with tremendous embellishments, rushed across the stone up above. Enraptured by this sight, he woke up.4

The following is a complete quotation of Lu Xun’s short prose “Tombstone Inscriptions” for comparison: I dreamt that I stood in front of a tombstone, reading the inscriptions. The tombstone was apparently made of gravel, as it had been flaking a lot, overgrown by clumps of moss and only survived by a few texts— …Keep cool in the zealous singing and see the abyss in the heaven. View nothingness in the eyes of all things, and be salvaged from hopelessness… …A wandering soul morphs into a snake, stuffing its mouth with poisonous fangs. It doesn’t gnaw human flesh, but bites itself. So eventually it falls down… …Go away!... It was only by going around to the back of the tombstone that I could see the extent of its solitude. While it had long been decaying, it had not been overgrown by any vegetation. Through a big gap, a dead body could be glimpsed, with broken chest and belly, but without a heart. And its face didn’t show any sign of sorrow or joy, but was as misty as smoke. In doubt and fear, I had no time to turn around. However, I’ve seen the remaining words on the shady side of the tombstone. …If you would like to know the flavour of your heart, eat it yourself. But if it suffers great pains out of severe injury, how could its flavour be known?... …After the pain fades, eat it slowly. But the heart has been stale, how could its taste be known?... …Answer my questions. Or go away!... I was going to leave. And the dead man in the grave had sat up. With his lips in stillness, he said— “Once I turn into dust, you’ll see my smile!”

4 Franz Kafka, “A Dream”, available at https://genius.com/Franz-kafka-a-dream-ann otated, accessed on September 2, 2018.

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I fled away, not daring to look back, in the fear that he was chasing me.5 Although in the form of a prose essay, given its fictional and imaginative features, Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” can also be read as a story. For instance, the ending reflects “the author’s casual fictional style.”6 Kafka’s “A Dream” can also be read as both a story and a prose essay. Both include passages about dreams in which the characters visit the graveyard and see the inscriptions on the tombstones. The similarities in themes, images, and styles of these two works show that Lu Xun and Kafka share many insights and thoughts. But given that they are both very original writers, they also differ in various aspects. Therefore, it is important to compare these particular works. As mentioned earlier, Lu Xun enjoyed fame in his lifetime, while Kafka remained unknown until his death. Kafka gained his reputation posthumously after World War II. It is the same with these two works. Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” was incorporated into the collection of prose Wild Grass, which drew quite a lot of critical attention following its publication. As one of Lu Xun critics noted, “Although the collection was written in loneliness, it has never been lonely since its publication. It has remained in the spotlight for 90 years, forming a history of study.”7 In contrast, Kafka’s “A Dream” remained “lonely” all along, receiving little critical attention. It is a prequel to Kafka’s novel The Trial , which was published posthumously by his friend Max Brod. In what follows, we will analyze and discuss the two works. Firstly, both works describe a dream: “I dreamt that I stood in front of a tombstone, reading the inscriptions”; “Josef K. was dreaming.” The focus on dreams could reflect the writers’ exploration of souls and spirits on the one hand and the influence of the then-popular Freudian psychoanalytic theory on the other. When commenting on Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian writer Lu Xun wrote, “While admiring him, I hate his cool cruelty. He designed forms of mental torture in his imagination, showing us the unfortunate men under

5 Lu Xun, “Tombstone Inscriptions” in The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 2 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2005), pp. 207–8. 6 Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild Grass (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2014), p. 97. 7 Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild Grass, p. 1.

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interrogation.”8 He also wrote, “He appears both as a sinner and an interrogator. He puts men and women from his novels in desperate situations. By putting them on trial, he not only exposes the sins underneath the innocent surface, but also exposes the real innocence underneath the sins.”9 Many other great writers succeeded in “exposing sins underneath the innocent surface,” such as Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Gogol, and Balzac. However, Dostoevsky was one of a few writers who could expose “the real innocence underneath the sins.” As for Chinese writers, Lu Xun belongs to this exclusive club of writers who plumb the depths of anguished souls to degrees that others leave unexplored. Kafka is also one of them insofar as he is obsessed with peering into the abyss of the human mind. He once wrote in his diary: It is entirely conceivable that life’s splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.10

In this sense, one of Kafka critics noted that to Kafka, “artistic expression is the projection and externalization of his mind, rendering this invisible world visible.”11 When it comes to the influence of Freud, Kafka’s friend Brod once said, “There is no denying that Kafka exemplifies Freud’s subconscious theory. In fact, Kafka himself knew well about these theories, but he did not pay them much attention, regarding them as an imperfect image of the real world. He thought that these theories lacked key details, especially regarding conflicts.”12 It is true that Kafka mentioned Freud occasionally. He wrote on September 23, 1912, in his diary:

8 Lu Xun, “In Memorization of Wei Suyuan” in The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 6 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2005), p. 69. 9 Lu Xun, “About Dostoevsky” in The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 6 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2005), p. 425. 10 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 347. 11 Roger Garaudy, On Boundless Realism, trans. Wu Yuetian (Tianjin: Baihua Literature

and Art Publishing House, 1998), p. 155. 12 Qtd in Frederick Hoffman, Freudism and the Literary Mind, trans. Wang Ning, etc. (Beijing: Joint Publishing, 1987), p. 226.

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This story, “The Judgment,” I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd–23rd, from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning…Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening of the body and the soul… many emotions carried along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something beautiful for Max’s Arkadia, thoughts about Freud, of course…13

Lu Xun quoted Freud more frequently, with 8 indexes of the complete works referring to Freud. For instance, he mentioned how he used Freud in “Mending Heaven” to explain creation—the origin of human beings and literature.”14 Despite quoting Freud, both writers were reserved in their uptake of Freudian theories. Secondly, both works are featured with contrasts and paradoxes. The inscriptions in “Tombstone Inscriptions” show the narrator’s dark despair; “through sharp semantic contrasts such as ‘cool and zealous’, ‘heaven and abyss’, ‘nothings and all things’,” ‘salvage and hopelessness’,” [the inscriptions] manifest the poet’s emotional development and life experiences, and also his mentality at that moment.”15 “Keep cool in the zealous singing!,” exclaims another, indicating a contradictory synthesis of hotness and coldness, associated with the dead fire, an extreme paradoxical state.”16 These contrasts and paradoxes also mark Kafka’s style, which often are imbued with absurdity, the absurdity of both his expressions and ways of thinking. In Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions,” the tombstone that the narrator is facing does not belong to him. Who is the dead? It is a “wandering ghost” who suffered a sudden and tragic death, with nowhere to belong, and no commemorations. It became a ghost because it “morphs into a snake, stuffing its mouth with poisonous fangs. It doesn’t gnaw human flesh but bites itself. So eventually it falls down…” This implies that the dead died of self-torture and suicide; a likely portrait of Kafka, with a spear toward the world, wandering and exploring far and wide.

13 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 189. 14 Lu Xun, The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 2 (Beijing: People’s Literature

Publishing House, 2005), p. 353. 15 Li Yuming, A Study of Wild Grass and Lu Xun’s Consciousness (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2012), p. 121. 16 Zhang Jieyu, A Closing Reading and Study of Wild Grass (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2013), p. 221.

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Eventually, it turned against him, just as Kafka said, “More and more fearful as I write. It is understandable. Every word, twisted in the hands of the spirits—this twist of the hand is their characteristic gesture—becomes a spear turned against the speaker.”17 Why did the dead man in “Tombstone Inscriptions” torture himself? After the narrator goes around to the back of the tombstone, he finds a large gap in the tomb where he can see a dead body “with broken chest and belly, but without a heart.” The heart was eaten by the dead himself: “If you would like to know the flavor of your heart, eat it yourself. But if it suffers great pains out of severe injury, how could its flavor be known?…After the pain fades, eat it slowly. But the heart has been stale, how could its taste be known?” One of Lu Xun scholars noted that the idea of eating one’s own heart represents a “desperate paradoxical situation…It might be the most extreme paradox of all in Wild Grass. You may want to know the taste, but you couldn’t eat it without already being dead—the taste is never to be known.”18 Li Oufan [李欧梵], a renowned professor of cultural studies, noted, “the imaginary tombstone inscriptions are dedicated to the martyr who takes revenge against himself by self-injury. With all their grotesque expressions, they show an unsolvable paradox: since he died, how could he find the meaning of his life and his sacrifice?”19 In fact, this can be regarded as a paradoxical expression of Lu Xun’s idea on writing. In other words, it is “a philosophical reflection on writing, especially ‘authenticity’ in writing.”20 Paradoxes and absurdity are ubiquitous in Kafka’s works: the castle is within one’s reach, but one is denied access; one is captured and put on trial unexpectedly, and the judge has no idea of the persecuted; the law is assigned to you, but you can’t ever get in; the salesman turns into a bug overnight and is abandoned by his family; in a penal colony, the executioner becomes the executed; hungry performance becomes a hungry strike; an ape makes a report to the academy on its emotional experiences; the Olympic swimming champion does not know how to swim … All these situations show that human existence is essentially absurd. To Kafka,

17 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 371. 18 Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild Grass, p. 95. 19 Qtd. in Li Tianming, Finding Secrets in Wild Grass (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2000), p. 168. 20 Zhang Jieyu, A Closing Reading and Study of Wild Grass, p. 224.

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It is impossible to avoid paradoxical situations because both individuals and institutions have to compromise their goals in order to achieve them. In other words, in order to achieve a goal we have to acknowledge certain constraining social codes of conduct that must be observed in the process, even though those constraints are not simply inconducive to the goal, but actually inhibit its attainment. In consequence, we cannot achieve a goal without deviating from the most immediate path to its attainment. This gives the goal a dual nature: if to achieve it we must treat it as if it were not our real goal.21

In summary, Kafka found an Archimedean point from which he could move, not the world, but the self. Thirdly, two writers share the characters of self-analysis and the unremitting pursuit of truth. Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” describes the dead man who is brave enough to self-analyze. These inscriptions reflect “his mentality when engaging in self-analysis.”22 The idea is that we cannot know our true selves any more than the dead man can know the taste of his own heart. The most we can do is get a sense of its flavor through unremitting self-exploration and self-transcendence. This unremitting and insatiable spirit reminds us of Faust, of whom Goethe says, “no joy, nor any luck can satisfy him. He keeps chasing illusory and inconstant images until this last, terrible and empty moment.”23 Insatiable pursuit of the infinite is a kind of philosophical pursuit and often leads to great tragedy. The wild lifestyles that Faust is obsessed with become his spiritual purgatory. Finally, transcending himself after a series of purgatorial tests, Faust feels satisfied and embraces the end of his finite life. Feng Zhi [冯至], a modern Chinese writer, noted that the theme of Faust coincides with one of the maxims in The Book of Change: “As Heaven’s movement is ever vigorous, so must a gentleman ceaselessly strive along.”24 Lu Xun knew Goethe and Faust well. As early as 1907, Lu Xun made comments on Goethe in one of his essays “The History of

21 Ye Tingfang ed., On Kafka (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1988), p. 322. 22 Li Helin, Annotations on Wild Grass (Xi’an: Shaanxi People’s Press, 1975), p. 154. 23 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Faust”, in The Works of Goethe, vol. 1, trans. Luyuan

(Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1999), p. 434. 24 Feng Zhi, Goethe (Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1986),

p. 4.

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Men”: “Goethe is the great poet in Germany, profound and philosophical.”25 He kept discussing Goethe and Faust in many different occasions. By comparison, Lu Xun’s horrifying pursuit in “Tombstone inscriptions” represents a greater ordeal than that of Faust. In the process of analyzing and exploring himself, he finally discovers that it is impossible to know the taste of his own heart, for in fact the taste doesn’t exist at all, just as one’s true self doesn’t exist at all. Although the inscriptions are vague and riddle-like, it is not hard for “those who know about Lu Xun to view them as a summary of his spiritual resume.”26 Lu Xun’s self-analysis is known to the world, and no one could have explored themselves to a greater depth. He wrote a passage titled “After The Tomb” in 1926: Indeed I often analyze people, but I am more ruthless in analyzing myself. Those who prefer warmth and gentleness find it cold and cruel when I expose myself just a little. A full exposure would be hard to imagine. I sometimes attempt to dispel others by doing this, since those who do not judge me will be my friends, the real friends, no matter what freaks or monsters they are. I will be fine with just myself if no one stays. But I cannot do this now, because I am not brave enough, and because I still want to live, in this society.27

The idea of analyzing oneself till death, or even after death, is best conveyed in “Tombstone Inscriptions.” The dead man in the tomb seems not to be in real death: “with broken chest and belly, but without a heart,” he can still think, sit up and talk. The real death comes when he turns into dust, his mind and body thereby completely disappearing. When he says, “once I turn into dust, you’ll see my smile,” it shows that “the dead man can look forward to another death, a complete death.”28 In comparison, facing his own tombstone and the inscriptions on it, Kafka’s Josef K. sees his death. However, he only goes from life to death, not from death to another death. In this sense, Lu Xun may be said to be crueller and more thorough.

25 Lu Xun, The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 1, p. 11. 26 Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild Grass, p. 93. 27 Lu Xun, The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 1, p. 300. 28 Maruo Tsuneki, Shame and Recovery: Call to Arts and Wild Grass, trans and eds.

Qin Gong, etc. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2009), p. 282.

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Self-analysis is also one of the distinguishing features of Kafka. He once made an insightful comment on his Jewish identity when Milena, his then girlfriend, asked him whether he was a Jew: You ask me if I am a Jew, perhaps this is only a joke, perhaps you are only asking me if I belong to those anxious Jews…The insecure position of Jews, insecure within themselves, insecure among people, would make it above all comprehensible that they consider themselves to be allowed to own only what they hold in their hands or between their teeth, that furthermore only palpable possessions give them the right to live, and that they will never again acquire what they once have lost but that instead it calmly swims away from them forever. From the most improbable sides Jews are threatened with danger, or let us, to be more exact, leave the dangers aside and say they are threatened with threats.29

Kafka also said, “sometimes I’d like to cram them all as Jews (including myself) into the drawer of the laundry chest, then wait, then open the drawer a little, to see whether all have already suffocated, if not, to close the drawer again and go on like this to the end.”30 Whereas Kafka’s selfanalysis is partly a reflection of the fact that, as an exiled European Jew, he lacked a sure sense of nationality, Lu Xun’s self-analysis led him to raise questions about the nature of his Chinese identity and to seek to answer them through wandering far from his homeland in Japan. Fourthly, Lu Xun and Kafka’s writings share many features, such as their style, language, wording, and semantics. In these two works, the tombstones and the inscriptions thereon are important symbols. The thoughts, feelings and behaviors of the narrators form the main body of the story/prose. The inscriptions in Lu Xun’s work are half-destroyed and broken, without a clear beginning or end. The inscriptions in Kafka’s are in an ongoing process but achieve finality. The different presentations of the inscriptions are rich in meaning. In Lu Xun, from these broken lines, we can see that the historic data about the dead man (such as the dates of birth and death, size, or life experiences) are omitted. The semantic chain containing narratives is broken by the ellipses

29 Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket Books, 1984), p. 270. 30 Qtd. in Judith Butler, “Who Owns Kafka?” available at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/

n05/judith-butler/who-owns-kafka, accessed on September 4, 2018.

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which keep emerging throughout the passage. … In “Tombstone Inscriptions,” the totality of historical discourses collapses, leaving a series of broken speeches. The illusory nature of historical discourse is exposed during the process.31

In other words, Lu Xun’s Inscriptions are related to historical discourses and texts and the tradition of historical writing in China. However, Kafka’s inscriptions are about writings: for Kafka, writing is, first of all, an individual activity, and marks his choice of existence, namely, the realization of the self. The historicity of his writing can be viewed as the historicity of an individual’s self-consciousness coming into being. Therefore, to Kafka, genuine, pure writing is writing about the self. On the other hand, Kafka deemed writing as the destination of the self. Writing in this sense, becomes a metaphor of the writer digging his own grave with his pen and inscribing his name.32

Therefore, in this sense, Josef K. is Franz Kafka. The language in Lu Xun’s prose collection Wild Grass often comes as a shock to critics and literary historians. For instance, the fact that the tombstone inscriptions are broken and incomplete, and hence, besides the adversatives, all the other conjunction words are covered by eclipses, leads one critic to note that: Uses of “but” emerge one after another, forming a series of full negations like linguistic vortexes; the long sentences consisting of constant negating images, notional words and adversatives push forward forcefully like snakes or old pine trees, winding, twisting and struggling all the way. The constant negations lift the meaning up to a higher empty, nihilistic space where the author tries to capture new possibilities…33

Moreover, Kafka was even fonder of adversative sentence structures; in “A Dream,” “but” appears 12 times. As Fredric Jameson commented:

31 Zhang Hong, Voices in the Dark: The Poetics and Spiritual Code of Wild Grass (Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2007), p. 100. 32 Zhang Hong, Voices in the Dark: The Poetics and Spiritual Code of Wild Grass, pp. 94–5. 33 Wang Weidong, The Study of Wild Grass, p. 36.

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Kafka, the most logical of writers since the great alternating periodic sentences of the eighteenth century, not only shifts with monotonous regularity between the twin subjects of his double title but also between the pour and the contre, between an affirmation and a negation equally predictable in their alternation, whose implacable rhythm—“but”, “yet”, “doch”—makes up the fateful neutrality of his style.34

Of course, there are quite a few differences between Lu Xun’s “Tombstone Inscriptions” and Kafka’s “A Dream.” Firstly, the heroes are different: in Lu Xun’s work, the hero is the dead man in the grave, while the narrator “I” is a passer-by and a visitor. In Kafka’s work, the hero is the narrator, Josef K. who “was dreaming.” And there are other characters such as two men and the artist. Secondly, Lu Xun uses the first-person narrative, expressing himself through the dead man, not the narrator, while Kafka adopts the third person narrative expressing himself through K. Thirdly, the endings are different. In “Tombstone Inscriptions,” the ending is as follows: I was going to leave but the dead man in the grave sat up. With his lips in stillness, he said— Once I turn into dust, you’ll see my smile! I fled away, not daring to look back, in the fear that he was chasing me.

The image of the dead sitting up and smiling invokes an association with Charles Baudelaire’s “Skeleton with a Spade” in The Flowers of Evil. At the end of “A Dream,” K. falls into the grave as soon as the artist writes down K.’s name. Realizing that he falls into his own grave, K. is enraptured by this sight and wakes up. In Lu Xun, whereas the mandatory order of “go away!” serves as a warning to the possible spectators, sending the narrator away, in Kafka, Josef K. wakes up from his dream and embraces a new start. All these literary differences are indicative of differences in Lu Xun’s and Kafka’s characters and cultural backgrounds. Another perspective can be drawn from an examination of the Buddhist chant-like phrases and sentences in “Tombstone Inscriptions,” which can be viewed as a poetic expression of life philosophy and reflection upon existence. Highly concise maxims are like physics formulas which describe

34 Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (NY: Columbia UP, 1994), p. 124.

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complex natural phenomena in conciseness and precision.35 Another similarity is that both Lu Xun and Kafka use maxims to express ideas, from which it can be inferred that they were both inspired by Nietzsche. Of all Lu Xun’s works, the most Nietzschean one is Wild Grass, which is marked by Nietzschean ideas, themes, images, and metaphors.36 The influence of Nietzsche on Kafka is even deeper and longer. However, although favoring maxims, Kafka seldom abandons details. He prefers the process of proceeding from the concrete to the abstract during which abstract meanings are implied in concrete details. Maruo Tsuneki, a Japanese scholar, detects the darker side of Lu Xun. He thinks that the prose essay “Tombstone Inscriptions” “reflects Lu Xun’s own innate ‘ghostly’ and ‘toxic’ nature reflected by the solitary grave and the dead man inside.”37 Expressions such as about to “die in anger” and “die in despair and torture,” render this one of Lu Xun’s most desperate, violent, and horrifying pieces.38 In comparison, as grotesque and unfortunate as it is, Kafka’s “A Dream” is not casted with any ghostly or toxic shadows. Death is one of Lu Xun and Kafka’s central concerns, as we have already seen from previous chapters.

35 Fan Meizhong, Wild Grass Among People (Beijing: China Radio Film & TV Press, 2012), p. 167. 36 Min Kangsheng, Lu Xun’s Writings and Nietzsche’s Maxims (Xi’an: Shaanxi People’s Education Press, 1996), p. 42. 37 Maruo Tsuneki, Shame and Recovery: Call to Arts and Wild Grass, p. 278. 38 Chen Anhu, Interpretations on Wild Grass (Beijing: People’s Publishing House,

2013), p. 133.

CHAPTER 10

“Bosom Friends” in Contemporary China: The Reception of Kafka’s Works by Contemporary Chinese Writers

The reception of Kafka by Chinese writers has been influenced by the difficulty of accessing the Chinese translation of his works. Before 1949, the translation and introduction of Kafka’s works were too scarce to garner much attention from Chinese writers. “The Trial ” and Other Stories, which included “The Trial,” The Metamorphosis , “In the Penal Colony,” “A Country Doctor,” “A Report to An Academy,” and “The Judgment,” was not translated until 1966. However, since this collection, translated by Li Wenjun [李文俊] and Cao Yong [曹庸], was only circulated among party members as a “negative example,” the majority of Chinese writers would have had little access to it. The first public appearance of Kafka’s works in China can be dated back to 1979 when the journal World Literature 《世界文学》 [ ] published the translation of The Metamorphosis by Li Wenjun together with an introductory article “Kafka and his Works” written by Ding Fang [丁方] and Shi Wen [施 文]. Another four stories were published by Foreign Literature 《外国文 [ 学》 ] in 1981, including “The Judgment,” “A Country Doctor,” “Before the Law,” and “A Crossbreed.” Nevertheless, at that time, Kafka’s works were more objects of puzzlement than admiration because the uniqueness of his style made it “difficult to find a hereditary lineage of Kafka

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with other writers.”1 Nevertheless, Kafka certainly inspired a few AvantGarde and adventurous writers at that time, and this helped his influence grow over time.

10.1

Life as a Work of Art

A Chinese writer, Xu Xing [徐星], once said, “modernism is not an artistic form, but a lifestyle. People who are detached from life are the most miserable. Kafka’s life is a work of art, and his works are determined by his lifestyle.”2 Xu Xing has pointed out the way in which Kafka’s life and work are supplementary to each other. The uniqueness of the way in which Kafka suffered, embraced lovers with despair, touched the truth with fear, and crowned himself with destruction means that there is no way to imitate his writing. Among all the expressionist writers, Kafka achieved the most in his works but the least in his life. On July 3, 1883, he was born into a Jewish family in Prague, which was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father, the son of a poor country butcher, strived to become a merchant and later ran a small factory. He had a forceful personality that left Kafka feeling suppressed at home, especially when he did not want to pursue his father’s business. The fear of and struggle against his father became an important part of Kafka’s life. At the age of 36, Kafka wrote a fortyseven-page letter to his father expressing his fear of him. He wrote: Hence the world was for me divided into three parts: one in which I, the slave, lived under laws that had been invented only for me and which I could, I did not know why, never completely comply with; then a second world, which was infinitely remote from mine, in which you lived, concerned with government, with the issuing of orders and with the annoyance about their not being obeyed; and finally a third world where everybody else lived happily and free from orders and from having to obey. I was continually in disgrace; either I obeyed your orders, and that was a disgrace, for they applied, after all, only to me; or I was defiant, and that was a disgrace too, for how could I presume to defy you; or I could not

1 Yu Hua, “Kafka and K”, Dushu, vol. 12, 1999, p. 38. 2 Xu Xing, “I Don’t Understand”, Literature Review, vol. 3, 1987, p. 77.

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obey because I did not, for instance, have your strength, your appetite, your skill, although you expected it of me as a matter of course; this was the greatest disgrace of all.3

In the letter, Kafka sounds like the plaintiff, the accused, and the judge at the same time. In addition, Kafka’s relationship with his mother was also painfully disappointing. Though loving him, his mother lacked the intellectual depth to really understand him. In 1911, Kafka’s father opened an asbestos factory in Prague in which Kafka was co-owner with his brotherin-law. Kafka had to work in the factory, which he soon found to be a painful experience. He became especially miserable, as he realized that the time spent at the factory was nothing but a drain on his literary creativity. In one of his letters to Brod, he wrote, “I realized with perfect clarity that now only two possibilities remain open to me, either to jump out the window once everyone has gone to sleep, or in the next two weeks to go daily to the factory and to my brother-in-law’s office.” Worried about Kafka’s suicide attempt, Brod copied this letter and sent it to Kafka’s mother. Equally shocked, his mother replied with shaking hands: “I, who would give my heart’s blood for any of my children, to make them all happy, am helpless in this case.”4 Loving Kafka in her own way, she tried to help him by telling Kafka’s father the lie that their son made daily visits to the factory while simultaneously telling Kafka not to do so and asking others to help instead. However, in his diaries, Kafka suggested that his mother misunderstood him: Today at breakfast I spoke with my mother by chance about children and marriage, only a few words, but for the first time saw clearly how untrue and childish is the conception of me that my mother builds up for herself. She considers me a healthy young man who suffers a little from the notion he is ill. This notion will disappear by itself with time; marriage, of course, and having children would put an end to it best of all. Then my interest in literature would also be reduced to the degree that is perhaps necessary for an educated man.5

3 Franz Kafka, “Letter to his Father”, available at https://www.brainpickings.org/ 2015/03/05/franz-kafka-letter-father/, accessed on October 6, 2019. 4 Qtd. in Nicolas Murray, Kafka (London: Abacus; New edition, 2005), p. 67. 5 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 138.

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He also expressed his frustration with his mother in a letter: “her love for me is as great as her lack of understanding of me, and her inconsiderateness, due to this lack of understanding, becomes part of her love, and is greater still, and to me, at times, altogether incomprehensible.”6 Kafka’s life seems very uneventful: primary school–middle school– college–work–disease–death. However, a sense of mystery surrounds his life. He was engaged three times but never got married, dying at a relatively young age (41). Despite his devotion to the literature, he insisted that his manuscripts be burnt upon his death. The tension between a seemingly uneventful external life and a tortured soul killed him at a prime age. Kafka was afraid of loneliness but even more afraid of losing it. To depict loneliness, he would rather endure it, even at the cost of love, friendship, and family. He met Felice in 1912 and was engaged to her twice during a 5-year period but eventually broke up with her. He struggled to determine what to do and listed all the arguments for and against his marriage in his diary on July 21, 1913. This struggle is also mentioned in one of his letters to Felice: As you know, there are two combatants at war within me. During the past few days I have had fewer doubts than ever that the better of the two belongs to you. By word and silence, and a combination of both, you have been kept informed about the progress of the war for 5 years, and most of that time it has caused you suffering…Of the two who are at war within me, or rather whose war I consist of—excepting one small tormented remnant—the one is good, the other evil. From time to time they reverse their roles, which adds to the confusion of their war, already so confused. Until very recently, however, despite reverses, it was possible for me to imagine that the most improbable would happen (the most probable would be eternal war), which always seemed like the radiant goal, and I, grown pitiful and wretched over the years, would at last be allowed to have you…And now I am going to tell you a secret which at the moment I don’t even believe myself (although the distant darkness that falls about me at each attempt to work, or think, might possibly convince me), but which is bound to be true: I will never be well again. Simply because it is not the kind of tuberculosis that can be laid in a deckchair and nursed back to health, but a weapon that continues to be of supreme necessity as long as I remain alive. And both cannot remain alive.7 6 Franz Kafka, Letter to Felice, p. 94. 7 Ibid., pp. 892, 894.

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For Kafka, like life and disease, marriage and writing cannot exist at the same time. As he put it while writing about his feelings for Felice, “I cannot live without her, nor with her.” “Perhaps the force that ties me to her and that which keeps her away from me are one and the same. There is really nothing to be done.”8 He also wrote about his conflicted mind in his letters to Brod: this one thing is: fear of complete loneliness…Fundamentally, loneliness is my sole aim, my greatest temptation, my opportunity, and assuming it can be said that I have arranged my life, it was always with the view that loneliness can comfortably fit into it. And in spite of this, this year of what I love so much. Far more understandable is the fear of being robbed of loneliness, which is equally strong…9

Kafka was also torn by the conflict between maintaining a job and writing. From 1907 he worked in an insurance company for 15 years. The meaningless and senseless work at the company formed a sharp contrast with his vehement pursuit of a writing career. Viewing writing as the most valuable thing in his life, he dreaded his day job, saying, “writing and office cannot be reconciled, since writing has its center of gravity in depth, whereas the office is on the surface of life. So, it goes up and down, and one is bound to be torn asunder in the process.”10 Kafka lived to write and for this, he had to work to live. The fact that his company focused on work injury-related insurance meant that Kafka’s work experience gave him insight into the darkness of capitalist society and the absurdity of human life in it. Injured poor workers should have been entitled to compensation, but often they were left poverty-stricken as their claims became lost in the interacting cogs of the bureaucratic machinery. Kafka felt keenly their misery and their tragedy. The misery brought about by his work not only stimulated his writing but also consumed his life. What’s more, Kafka’s daily schedule was unusual: he would work from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; sleep from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.; then take a walk and a meal; and then write from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m. He once questioned Felice in one of the letters:

8 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, pp. 442, 623. 9 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, p. 282. 10 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 483.

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But what, dearest Felice, have you to say to the kind of married life in which the husband, at any rate for several months in the year, returns from the office at 2:30 or 3, eats, lies down, sleeps until 7 or 8, hurriedly has his supper, takes an hour’s walk, and then starts writing, and writes till 1 or 2? Could you really stand that? What I need for my writing is seclusion, not “like a hermit,” that would not be enough, but like the dead. Writing, in this sense, is a sleep deeper than that of death, and just as one would not and cannot tear the dead from their graves, so I must not and cannot be torn from my desk at night. Simply to race through the nights with my pen, that’s what I want. And to perish by it, or lose my reason, that’s what I want too, since it is the inevitable and long-anticipated consequence.11

There can be no doubt that Kafka’s health was impaired by overnight readings, and he was even more sleep-deprived after taking up writing. In consequence, he suffered from headaches, insomnia, and neurasthenia all his life to the point that he was occasionally precluded from writing. In 1917 his suffering from these interruptions became particularly acute, and he contracted TB. This led him to spend more time on his writing, which worsened his physical and mental health even further, and beset by suicidal thoughts he succumbed to a premature death. As he wrote in diary on January 16, 1922: Everything seemed over with...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.12

Kafka was torn between these two worlds, which made his life unbearable. Upon his death, he begged his doctor to give him a large dose of morphine, his last words being “kill me, or else you are the murderer.” The paradoxical nature and absurdity of the world presented themselves in the last minute of his life.

11 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, pp. 478, 483, 503. 12 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910–1923, p. 265.

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Ushering Another World

Although Kafka’s life cannot be imitated, his works can be studied and utilized. Many contemporary writers acknowledged his influence on their writings. In China in 1999, the New World Press published a series of books entitled Ten Novellas that have Changed My Life, in which Chinese writers chose one novella or story that had made an impact on them. Renowned writers, such as Mo Yan [莫言], Yu Hua [余华], and Pi Pi [皮皮], all chose one of Kafka’s stories. As Pi Pi put it, these good stories will be talking to you about life, death, love, and hatred through various stages of your life. She chose Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” on which she wrote her BA thesis. She described her reading experience of it as follows: “various feelings came rushing including calmness, horror, admiration, and nervousness.”13 Yu Hua also included “In the Penal Colony” among the 10 stories that he recommended. He said, “I chose the story because the narrative structure is most clear…The naturalistic description of that excavation machine can well compare with Balzac. It is these realistic portrayals that lay the foundation for Kafka’s stories. His stories, absurd as they are, are built on a very solid foundation.” Yu Hua also gave a poetic account of his reading experiences: “like a timid child, I grabbed them [Kafka’s stories] by their sleeves and followed them along the river of time. That was a warm and emotional journey. They took me away and let me come back alone, but once back, I realized that I have been actually with them forever.”14 Yu Hua mentioned Kafka on many other occasions. In 1990, in an article “The Heritage of Yasunari Kawabata and Kafka,” he wrote, “The Year of 1986 was full of excitement,” because he read Kafka’s “A Country Doctor,” and this story shocked him greatly … making him realize that “writers can be free with forms which seem to be ‘anarchic’. Kafka liberated me. He rendered my former writing principles useless.”15 According

13 Pipi, Preface, Make It Warmer: Ten Novellas that have Changed My Life (Beijing: New World Press, 1999), p. 1. 14 Yu Hua, Preface, A Warm Journey: Ten Novellas that have Changed My Life (Beijing: New World Press, 1999), p. 5. 15 Yu Hua, “The Heritage of Yasunari Kawabata and Kafka”, Foreign Literature Review, vol. 2, 1990, p. 110.

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to Yu Hua, Kafka is a miracle in the history of world literature. He was deeply impressed by Kafka’s sharp thought and accurate diagnosis of human symptoms. In “A Country Doctor,” there is a paragraph presenting how the doctor inspects his patient and discovers a palm-size wound on the right side of the patient’s body near his hip: Rose-red, in many variations of shade, dark in the hollows, lighter at the edges, softly granulated, with irregular clots of blood, open as a surface mine to the daylight. That was how it looked from a distance. But on a closer inspection there was another complication. I could not help a low whistle of surprise. Worms, as thick and long as my little finger, themselves rose-red and blood-spotted as well, were wriggling from their fastness in the interior of the wound toward the light, with small white heads and many little legs. Poor boy, you were past helping. I had discovered your great wound; this blossom in your side was destroying you.16

Yu Hua was shocked by this cold and objective description of a tragic and nasty fact. The metaphor of “blossom” for a big wound was eyeopening. His novel Travel afar from Home at the Age of 18 was written after his reading “A Country Doctor.” In another novel, 1986, Yu Hua presented an even more shocking scene in which a middle school teacher hurt himself: He shouted, “Bi! (cutting off nose)” as he carefully placed the teeth of the saw against the bottom of his nose. His grimy black lips trembled, almost as if he were smiling. His arms began to rock back and forth, and with each spasmodic motion he shouted, “Bi!” as loudly as he possibly could. The blade worked its way into flesh, and blood began to seep out from under the skin…He panted for another few moments before lifting the saw once again to the sun and carefully examining the blade. He extended a long and bloodstained fingernail to the blade and began to pick little bits of cartilage out of the teeth. Saturated in blood, they shimmered red in the sunlight.17

Here Yu Hua furthered Kafka’s objective and even indifferent “death narrative” of cruelty and violence to a new level. 16 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, pp. 249–50. 17 Yu Hua, 1986, China’s Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology, ed. Jing Wang (Duke

University Press, 1998), p. 95.

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In 1999, Yu Hua published an article “Kafka and K” in Dushu 《读 [ 书》 ], discussing the relationship of Kafka and K in his novel The Castle. He noted, “The characters in Kafka’s works are consumed by restlessness and confusion. Kafka doesn’t offer them a way out and they have to stay in a hell-like place.” After studying Kafka’s works as well as his letters and diaries, Yu Hua commented, “Kafka’s life is characterized not by a terrible loneliness, but the embarrassment of an outsider, which is a more profound loneliness. He could not get along with the world, nor even with himself.” Yu Hua also spoke highly of Kafka’s narrative techniques: “Kafka’s description is accurate and exact, full of aesthetic pleasure.” As to the relationship between Kafka’s diaries and stories, Yu Hua noted that his diaries were like excerpts of fragmented stories, while his novel The Castle is like an endless diary of K.18 In short, Yu Hua captured what he wanted from Kafka with his writerly insight and sensitiveness. Mo Yan [莫言] also included “The Country Doctor” in the stories that he recommended. He holds that a good story must have a unique style, “not only in terms of language but also in terms of its type and narrative skill.” According to Mo Yan, Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” was a fine example as such. It is a typical “mock-dream” story, “the dream state of which is actually shared by most of Kafka’s stories. Everyone can dream, but only Kafka can write about dreams so vividly.”19 Mo Yan learned a lot from Kafka’s unique style and imitated it to a certain degree in his own works. Zong Pu [宗璞] started reading Kafka as early as the middle of the 1960s first in an attempt to criticize. To her great surprise, reading Kafka “ushered her into another world”: An entirely new world is created by his pen, a world which seems absurd, illusory, but very real at the same time. This world can be identified in various places such as China where many people woke up to find themselves turned into ‘ox demons and snake monsters’, thus hinting at the absurd reality of the Cultural Revolution.20

18 Yu Hua, “Kafka and K”, pp. 39–40, 46. 19 Mo Yan, Preface, A Room in A Keyhole: Ten Novellas that have Changed My Life

(Beijing: New World Press, 1999), p. 2. 20 Zong Pu, “The Charisma of an Original Writer”, Foreign Literature Review, vol. 1, 1990, p. 117.

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The description of the characters turning to snakes in Zong Pu’s novel Who Am I? 《我是谁?》 [ ] is obviously an imitation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis : “To their horror, Meng Wenqi and Wei Mi plunged into the ground and turned into two snakes…. Wei Mi struggled to crawl like a real snake, hunching her back and then stretching forward. It took her a while to bypass an artificial garden rock. She lifted her head searching for Meng Wenqi who obviously crawled more quickly than her.” But in contrast to the complete alienation of the protagonist of the The Metamorphosis , Zong Pu let his characters hold on to their humanity. For Zong Pu, alienation is temporary, and prompted by contingent events such as the Cultural Revolution. A further contrast is that, while Kafka describes a metamorphosis of both form and content, Zong Pu’s metamorphosis is purely formal. Finally, while Kafka’s narrator is objective and indifferent, Zong Pu’s narrator is far more involved, and displays greater emotion, such as when commenting that “as long as spring comes, human beings will return home; in other words, it is only if human beings return home that the real spring will come.”21 Zong Pu divided her works into two categories: “Outsight” and “Insight,” where the latter refers to works that involve “exposing essence through appearance. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and The Castle belong to [that] category. The stories are about something that could never happen in the real world, and yet they are so real in [terms of] essence and spirit. It is sometimes necessary to strip the appearance, and this inspires me.”22 It is worth noting that although Zong Pu borrowed from Kafka, she did not fully embrace the absurdity of Kafka’s world insofar as the characters managed to maintain their humanity even after their metamorphosis into snakes. Another of Zong Pu’s novels A Snail’s House 《蜗居》 [ ] is a typical Kafkaesque allegory. The protagonist grows a snail’s shell on his back and crawls like a snail. Unlike Kafka, Zong Pu writes with strong social and political awareness, and she expresses her opinions whenever she can in her novels. Another Chinese writer, Jiang Zidan [蒋子丹], is also inspired by Kafka. She tried to write absurdist novels after reading Kafka in 1983. She described this kind of absurdist novel as follows: “every detail is 21 Zong Pu, Who Am I? (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1991), pp. 38,

61. 22 Qtd. in Shi Shuqing, “Both Classic and Modern: An Conversation with Zong Pu”, People’s Literature, vol. 10, 1988, p. 107.

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authentic and eligible (or at least it seems so), but beneath the surface, there lies a core of absurdity, and with this core of absurdity, there lies a certain dark truth.” Following this idea, she wrote novellas, including “Black Color” 《黑颜色》 [ ], “Blue Color” 《蓝颜色》 [ ], “It Rained the Other Day” 《那天下雨]》 [ , and “Circle” 《圈》 [ ]. Although Chinese readers were baffled by these stories, Jiang Zidan was never regretful of her choice. She notes that it is not terrible for a writer to choose a wrong objective, and what is terrible is to have no objectives.23 A great admirer of Kafka, Ge Fei [格非] studied his works carefully. He wrote the critical article “Kafka’s Clockwork,” attempting a comprehensive study connecting Kafka’s life to his works. He commented in this article, “it is a big mistake to separate a writer’s intention and meaning from his narrative forms because his intention and meaning generate the corresponding forms.” He also noticed that many Kafka scholars seldom talk about his unique contribution to narratives or give a detailed analysis of his narrative forms.24 Moreover, Ge Fei performed a comparative study of Lu Xun and Kafka, arguing that both writers “accumulate strength to see through a wall of despair out of their own desperate situations. They are victims and martyrs in a pessimistic sense, but their misery lights up some shadows in the unfathomable realm of darkness that we try to transcend.” “Like Kafka, Lu Xun keenly felt the absurdity of existence. Although differing in languages and cultures, both writers were met with the difficulty of articulating, and both writers found a way of articulation to deconstruct the existing discourses.”25 This must have had an impact on Ge Fei’s writing. A paragraph in Ge Fei’s novel On the Margin 《边缘》 [ ] is reminiscent of Kafka’s “A Country Doctor.” One of the characters is a doctor named Zhong Yuelou, who “often wears a casual smile even when he handles dead bodies on surgery table.” Remaining indifferent and unempathetic to the painful shivering and spasms of a severely injured soldier, he performs routine procedures on the soldier while chitchatting with the narrator about how to seduce women:

23 Jiang Zidan, “Two Kinds of Absurdity”, The Writers, vol. 8, 1994, p. 23. 24 Ge Fei, The Study of Fiction Narratives (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2002),

p. 139. 25 Ge Fei, “Lu Xun and Kafka”, Contemporary Writers Review, vol. 1, 2001, pp. 20,

23.

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Lying on the table and struggling for breath with half closed eyes, that soldier seems hopeless. I noticed that the gunshot wound in his leg was festering, the blood clotted around it. …… Zhong Yuelou tried to pick a bullet out of that wound with a pair of tweezers, but every time he appeared close to success, the head of the bullet sank back in like a small eel. Zhong Yuelou wiped clean his face, which had been dripping with sweat, and panted deep breaths. “You have to wait until a woman softens, because that is the time to raise her skirt and touch her and touch them. They will eventually cave in as long as you are patient.” Zhong Yuelou spoke to himself like this, and the nurse got impatient, warning him that the soldier might be dead. Ignoring her, Zhong Yuelou stared out of the room. …… “I think he is indeed dead,” said Zhong Yuelou.26

Zhong Yuelou seems completely indifferent to the dead soldier, and the readers are kept in the dark as to the emotional state of the character.

10.3

The Castle to the Soul

Can Xue [残雪], a contemporary Chinese woman writer, is regarded as “China’s Kafka.” As one critic notes, Can Xue’s works from the 1980s, such as “Old Floating Cloud” 《苍老 [ 的浮云》 ], “Skylight” 《天窗》 [ ] and “Hut on the Mountain” 《山上的小屋 [ 》 ], featured nightmarish images that were so overwhelming as to preclude her style from being likened to that of Kafka. However, her works from the 1990s were characterized by sufficiently greater mellowness, control and subtlety of style that Kafka’s influence upon her became increasingly evident.27

Can Xue started to read Kafka’s works at the beginning of the 1980s. She once observed,

26 Ge Fei, “On the Margin”, Harvest, vol. 6, 1992, pp. 169–70. 27 Tu Xianfeng, “The Dialog on the Meaning of Existence: Writing between Can Xue

and Kafka”, Literature Review, vol. 5, 2002, p. 111.

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The translation at that time is better than what we have now. The Castle is my favorite and is worthy of repeated readings. I think his early work The Metamorphosis is insufficiently mature, and is often misread by contemporary readers.… Apart from The Metamorphosis , I like all the rest of his works. It will take a long time for Chinese readers to fully understand and appreciate Kafka. Over the last two decades, most of the interpretations of his works were based on realism, which is wrong.28

To prove her point, in 1999, Can Xue published a monograph on Kafka, The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka. Can Xue’s abstract style and the bleak and distorted world that she created often keep readers at an arm’s length, and, in consequence, her works are not very popular in China. However, she regards Kafka as her soul mate, and this relationship transcends time and space. Kafka’s works have been discussed from multiple perspectives: the existentialists discovered Kafka’s misery and loneliness in the pursuit of freedom; the absurdists have found anti-heroes in Kafka’s works; black humor writers drew on his sarcasm; surrealists read Kafka with Freudian approach; expressionists see illusions and intuitions in his works; Marxists such as Georg Lukács hold that Kafka exposes social and class struggles … Putting all these critical approaches aside, Can Xue views Kafka simply as a writer. For her, Kafka is an artist in the purest form, not a moralist, theologian, psychologist, historian, or social critic. His works are an inner journey into his own soul. Can Xue seems to grasp the most vital point in interpreting Kafka. For Kafka, writing is everything, and his life would be meaningless without it. “I write, therefore I am,” as Ernst Pawel puts it, “writing … was his sole reason for living, and his sole means of survival.”29 For writing, Kafka rejected friendship, love, marriage, and family and embraced the loneliness that he was so afraid of. Empathizing Kafka’s lifestyle and objective, Can Xue wrote in an article “The Dark Dance of The Soul” [黑暗灵魂的舞蹈]:

28 Can Xue, The Practice of Eternal Life: Interpreting the Divine Comedy (Beijing: Beijing October Publishing House, 2004), pp. 214–5. 29 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka, p. 112.

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It is through writing that the conflicting parts of my personality became intense and sharp, and left me unable to experience a moment of peace. This restlessness and inner turmoil remains a mystery to me, and all I know is that I can’t live without writing. Out of a greedy nature, I don’t want to give up all the shining features of life (vanity, material pleasures, emotions, etc.). However, the only way to make these shining features shine is through writing; the trick is that these shining features are dimmed and rendered meaningless during writing.30

This seems very close to Kafka’s view of writing but Can Xue doesn’t go to the extreme of abandoning her marriage or family. Her loneliness is more spiritual, and she is far luckier than Kafka in real life. Can Xue has her unique interpretations of Kafka’s most famous works. She thinks “The Trial” is about the struggle of one’s soul: “The morning when K is arrested is when his self-examination begins”; “an unprecedented self-examination is triggered. The world becomes estranged in such a way that K must give up everything that he had valued, thus transforming himself entirely.”31 When it comes to the castle in The Castle, it “seems to be a void, an abstract being, and a phantom. No one knows for sure what it is. But strangely, it does exist, and controls the lives of the villagers. Its strong and irreversible will is embodied in every villager. Everything else seems doubtful to K, but he has strong convictions toward the castle.”32 In fact, the castle is the meaning of our lives, the light of hope in our hearts. As for Amerika, Can Xue holds that it is a story about growing up, especially spiritually: “If one doesn’t experience the ‘orphan’ stage in a spiritual sense, he/she can never grow up and find his/her own world, but must instead remain a parasite.”33 Can Xue also sheds light on some of Kafka’s short stories. For her, “The Great Wall of China” symbolizes the artists’ way of living; “A Report to An Academy” records “how the ape artist transcends his nature of being an ape and achieves self-awareness”; the old teacher in “A Country Doctor” is the embodiment of “artistic conscience”; “The Little

30 Can Xue, “The Dark Dance of the Soul”, The Essays of Can Xue (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2000), p. 11. 31 Can Xue, The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka (Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1999), p. 85. 32 Can Xue, The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka, p. 192. 33 Ibid., p. 4.

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Woman” describes the “Poet’s structure of the soul”; “The Burrow” expresses the dual drives of an artist who seeks nihilism to avoid existence and seeks existence to escape nihilism… Can Xue’s interpretations of Kafka are largely based on her own views on writing. Apart from her shrewdness, wit, and idiosyncratic interpretations, the question here is whether she is genuinely engaged in interpretation or whether she is using his works to build an alternative perspective of her own. It is my view that regardless of whether we answer one way or the other, Can Xue’s writings on Kafka will serve to increase the number of Chinese who are interested in his works.

CHAPTER 11

Franz Kafka and Contemporary Chinese Culture

Kafka’s influence on contemporary Chinese culture is ubiquitous. He has become a brand and a pop culture signifier in China, permeating various fields such as literature, film, music, painting, media, tourism, catering, real estate, furniture, interior designs, and wedding photos. Referred to in ads and posters like “Kafka in China,” and “China’s Kafka,” he seems to wield more power in contemporary China than any other modern Western writer. How did Kafka make this impact on Chinese culture? In which ways did he exert influence? What role did he play in the reshaping and development of Chinese contemporary culture? This chapter seeks to answer such questions.

11.1 Kafka in China’s National Higher Education Entrance Examination Kafka featured in the essay question of the National Higher Education Entrance Examination in Shanghai in 2014, thus indicating that Kafka is no longer a research subject for Chinese academics, writers, and artists alone. He has become part of Chinese contemporary culture. The essay question was as follows: Write an essay (not verse) of no fewer than 800 words based on the following quotation. The title of the essay is flexible. © Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_11

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“You can choose the path that leads to crossing the desert, so you are free; but since you must go through the desert, you are not free.”

This is adapted from Kafka’s “Trichotomy of Free Will,” which was selected from one of his notebooks and published posthumously. He wrote: Your will is free means: it was free when it wanted the desert, it is free since it can choose the path that leads to crossing the desert, it is free since it can choose the pace, but it is also unfree since you must go through the desert, unfree since every path in labyrinthine manner touches every foot of the desert’s surface.1

It will be useful to quote further: You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world: this is something you are free to do and is in accord with your nature, but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering that you might be able to avoid. …… A man has free will, and this of three kinds: First of all he was free when he wanted this life; now, of course, he cannot go back on it, for he is no longer the person who wanted it then, except perhaps in so far as he carries out what he then wanted, in that he lives. Secondly, he is free in that he can choose the pace, and the road of this life. Thirdly, he is free in that, as the person who will sometimes exist again, he has the will to make himself go through life under every condition and in this way come to himself, and this, what is more, on a road that, though it is a matter of choice, is still so very labyrinthine that there is no smallest area of this life that it leaves untouched. This is the trichotomy of free will, but since it is simultaneous it is also a unity, an integer, and fundamentally is so completely integral that it has no room for any will, free or unfree.2

1 Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks, ed. Max Brod, trans. Eithne Wilkins (New York: Exact Change, 2004), p. 49. 2 Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks, p. 50.

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Tens of millions of Chinese students have encountered Kafka’s works in the Higher Education Entrance Examination, not least because an excerpt of The Metamorphosis was included in middle school textbook. Apparently, the essay question discusses the dynamics of freedom and nonfreedom: each one is free to choose a different life, but nobody is free to refuse life; just as while we can choose the path of crossing the desert, we can’t choose not to go through it. The model essay, which was released online after the examination, began by quoting Rousseau’s The Social Contract: “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is greater slave than they.”3 Despite conveying a similar meaning, Kafka’s notes are far more complicated and profound. While Rousseau only sees the conflict between freedom and nonfreedom, Kafka senses the absurdity and paradox of our lives. According to Kafka’s will, the notebook from which the passage above was taken was supposed to have been destroyed along with other works. Consequently, Kafka never prepared the text for publication, and the task of editing was left to his friend Max Brod. There is evidence of a divergence between authorial intention and editorial intention. The discussion on free will would eventually lead to the issue of God’s will. Then, this would turn out to be a religious or theological question. It is in fact an ancient question regarding God’s will and man’s will. If man has free will, the existence of an omnipotent God, who could control that will, is cast into doubt; but if man lacks free will, the existence of a God-given meaning for life is cast into doubt. If God has created men with free will, it is no longer necessary for God to exist; but without freewill, men are reduced to God’s ornaments, lacking a self-created essence from the standpoint of existentialism. Dante tackles this problem through Beatrice in Paradiso: Supreme of gifts, which God, creating, gave Of His free bounty, sign most evident Of goodness, and in His account most prized, Was liberty of will; the boon, wherewith All intellectual creatures, and them sole, He hath endow’d…

3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract: And, the First and Second Discourses, trans. and ed. Susan Dunn (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), p. 156.

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For in the compact between God and him, This treasure, such as I describe it to thee, He makes the victim; and of his own act.4

That is, man signs a compact with God and freely chooses to give up his freedom. Nevertheless, this is by no means what Kafka means. Kafka implies that to attempt to escape from the misery of the world is itself a form of misery. This is a typical Kafkaesque paradox. Free will is not completely free. The man from the country in “Before the Law” testifies the paradox: Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.”…These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone…He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity…The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.”…Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper .… “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”5

Ge Fei raises a question regarding this story: “Since he is denied access to the law, why not give up and go back home? Or, isn’t it better to simply barge in to see what would happen next? Both choices would be

4 Alighieri Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry F. Cary (London: J. M. Dent, 1908), pp. 309–10. 5 Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”, in The Complete Stories, pp. 66–7.

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better than waiting in vain and dying before the law.”6 “Before the Law” actually indicates that there are ways to put the man out of his misery. As one critic points out: By abandoning his fear and entering the gate regardless of the risks awaiting him; if he were to choose to go forward, despite the injunctions of the doorkeeper, he would attain true self-fulfilment. However, the man in the parable could also do the opposite; he could yield to his fear and abandon his desire, leave the gate and turn his back forever on doorkeeper and Law.7

Turning to the note on free will, which Kafka wrote on February 22, 1918, its biographical link to Kafka’s breaking from his engagement with Felice Bauer for a second time is well-known. Five days after their breakup, having seen Felice off on a train to Berlin, Kafka went straight to Max Brod’s office. According to Brod, Kafka was apparently sad and devastated: “his face was pale, hard, and severe. But suddenly he began to cry uncontrollably.”8 However, while this breakup brought pain to Kafka, it also brought him relief. His whole life was trapped in a dilemma of freedom and nonfreedom: the freedom of marriage means the nonfreedom to write; the freedom of a job means the nonfreedom of his career; the freedom of body comes with the nonfreedom of spirit. In summary, free will comes with nonfreedom. Hence, as Kafka said, “the true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along.”9 Kafka’s paradoxical way of thinking and expressing himself is no longer strange and alien to Chinese readers, even teenagers. Therefore, it makes sense to include him in the National Higher Education Entrance Examination.

6 Ge Fei, Kafka’s Pendulum (Shanghai: East China Normal UP, 2004), p. 141. 7 Walter H. Sokel, Franz Kafka (New York: Columbia UP, 1956), p. 35. 8 Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, trans. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1995), pp. 166–7. 9 Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, p. 87.

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11.2

Kafka in Chinese Mass Culture

Despite merely being a topic of concern to a small number of scholars or elite readers, Kafka is popular with millions of readers among the general public in China today. He has become part of Chinese mass culture through television, film, theater, pop music, and cyber-literature. In 2013, Liu Zhennan [刘振南], a young director from Taiwan, made a film named Fly! Mr. Stuck, also known as Fly! Kafka. Focusing on the phenomenon of middle-life crises, the film tells the story of the protagonist A-Da [阿达], who used to be a celebrity at school, a legendry scout leader. By the time he reaches middle age, he has become a mediocre company employee, disoriented and disillusioned. He has become a “Kafka” in the sense that he is stuck in life without a way out. (Note: the transliteration of “Kafka” in Chinese consists of three characters, “卡夫卡”—the first and last of which, namely, 卡, mean being stuck. In addition, the second character means man. Hence, a man who got stuck.) A-Da is married with a son, working as a salesman in an insurance company, and frequently on business trips. Under the great pressure of livelihood, he loses the ability and opportunity to dream. One day, A-Da gets nostalgic and recollects an unattended date with his first love back in high school. Driven by remorse, he gets packed and embarks on a new journey. The film won the silver prize at the China–Korea International Film Festival that year. It draws on Kafka to shed light on the life of a contemporary man who is trapped in the banality of life. There are many other works that draw on Kafka in various ways. For instance, Running Kafka, a microfilm produced by Sichuan University of Media and Communications in 2013, tells a story of two high school students who have a budding but brief relationship. The film begins with Ma Xiaojun, who performs badly in school, trying to copy a top student’s answers during a test. Li Yu, the top student, gets close to Ma gradually. Being a bad influence, Ma encourages Li to steal several bike models from a shop. They become friends since they both feel lonely, being neglected by their respective families. They become attached to each other but have to part because Li must move with her mother to Beijing. The first sentence of the voice-over in this film sets the tone: “humans are primarily lonely.” The two students share their love for the novel Kafka on the Shore by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. There is a scene in which their teacher talks about The Metamorphosis in class. Despite these

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connections, the two characters do not have much in common with Kafka or the characters in his works. Kafka has also inspired contemporary Chinese musicians. For instance, Li Zhi [李志], a young songwriter composed a song named “Kafka,” with the lyrics as follows: Should I write a sorrowful song, Singing to you when you’re in blue? Should I write a sad song, Singing to you when you’re in sleep? Listening to the wind in the empty street I always think of you. Listening to the wind in such a night I always try to forget you. Listening to the wind in the empty street I always think of you. Listening to the wind in such a night I always try to forget you. Which face I should have To look at you when I am in love? Which face I should have To look at you when I am no longer in love?10

Does this song have anything to do with Kafka? Perhaps it is remotely connected to his love experiences. In addition, an album released by a band in Taiwan is called Kafka Urban Folk Unplugged, which celebrates the one-year anniversary of the band’s performance every Sunday night in the Cafe “Kafka by the Sea.” The 16 songs in the album all seem to have little to do with Kafka. One may argue that the unplugged music is original, natural, and rustic and thus bears some resemblance to Kafka’s writing style. It is not new to adapt Kafka and his works for theater. During the Beijing International Fringe Festival in 2010, Seven Boxes of Kafka was staged in the No. 46 Theatre, directed by Chen Henghui [陈恒辉] from Hong Kong. It is said that upon his death, Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn the seven boxes of his manuscripts. This created a dilemma for Brod by making him choose between being faithful to his friend’s literary intentions and acting in the best interest of literature as such. Based on Kafka’s writings such as “The Judgement,” “In the Penal Colony,” The Metamorphosis , “Letter to Melina,” “A Little Fable,” “Up in the Gallery” and “A Hunger Artist,” the seven boxes are labeled 10 Li Zhi, “Kafka”, available at http://wenwen.sogou.com/z/q224078580.htm, accessed on September 4, 2018.

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in accordance with different categories, including father and son, trial, animals, love, fables and parables, labyrinths, dream and death. The play transforms Kafka’s texts into images on stage by utilizing multimedia videos, experimental music, and stylized stage performances. Kafka is also now relevant to the popular genre of cyber-literature. As early as 2006, a young woman referring to herself as “Dai Qin” [黛秦] posted an article “Chinese Kafka: Sexuality and Cruelty” on the Tianya club internet forum, which used to be the most popular of its kind in China. Declaring herself the “Chinese Kafka,” she caught people’s attention through bold gestures such as exposing her back and buttocks. Dai Qin wrote in her article, Kafka is loved by many people because of the uniqueness of his thought and writing style, because he is the one and only, and because of the deep agony in his words. I believe that I deserve to be the “Chinese Kafka” because of my genuine understanding of him and because I have expressed the traumas and pains in life in my own way. Perhaps no one else in China would dare to call her/himself “Chinese Kafka,” or even perceive a similarity. Most people are too shallow and superficial; they are only willing to accept appearance, rather than face true reality.11

It is quite interesting that Dai Qin found herself related to Kafka. As she put it, “I just want to write something pure, to describe the freedom and joy that I have longed for. Nothing could stop us from loving regardless of the consequences, and nothing could stop us from walking freely in a free world.”12 It seems unlikely that Dai Qin knew of Can Xue, a contemporary Chinese woman writer and fan of Kafka. Can Xue has been referred to as the “Chinese Kafka” in response to the commentaries on his works. There is also a “Hong Kong Kafka,” Han Lizhu [韩丽珠], a young woman writer, who is held to be the best young writer in Hong Kong. Looking fragile and maiden-like, Han’s writings have been compared to Kafka on many occasions by critics.

11 [To Catch Eyes: Naked Blogger Asserts Herself as Chinese Kafka] (2006, June 7). Information Times. Retrieved from 女网友发帖秀背露屁股聚人气 自命是中国卡夫卡: 南 方网社会新闻频道 (southcn.com). 12 Ibid.

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Ironically, Kafka never liked to expose his body and would even wear clothes in a public bath. What he revealed is his spirit and soul, thus earning himself the description as “a spiritual nudist.” Dai Qin might have thought that since “a spiritual nudist” cannot be touched or seen and hence arouses less public interest, a “Kafka” with a naked body would be more authentically nude in virtue of inviting attention to her spiritual disclosures. Kafka did write something pure, but he described the absurdity and agony of the world instead of “freedom and joy.” Moreover, he never loved regardless of consequences and never walked freely in life. It is beyond doubt that Kafka’s most profound influence on contemporary Chinese culture lies in literature. He inspires many Chinese contemporary writers such as Zong Pu [宗璞], Yu Hua [余华], Ge Fei [格非], Ma Yuan [马原], Xu Xing [徐星], Liu Suola [刘索拉], Pipi [皮 皮], Jiang Zidan [蒋子丹], Can Xue [残雪], Mo Yan [莫言], etc. To go further, a generation of Chinese writers and readers have grown attached to Kafka. As one critic observes, “for Chinese literature in the new era, Kafka’s influence knows no boundary: ‘Kafka Zest’ began when he was first introduced by Yuan Kejia in the 1980s. This influenced China’s 1980s avant-garde literature, and since then, any literature relating to Kafka has been deemed fashionable. This writer, with little fame in his lifetime, has basically reshaped Chinese contemporary literature.”13 In 1987, Liu Zaifu [刘再复], a Chinese literary critic, claimed: As for the literary status and influence, Goethe has been replaced by Kafka in German language literature. Being regarded as the first modernist literary master, Kafka has caught much attention among Chinese writers. His works allow us to learn how profound it is for the Western writers to know about human nature. God is dead, and man too; the reality is absurd, man himself too. Man in many aspects is like a bug. These notions still startle us today, making us probe deeper into the human mind, as our writings always try to prove ourselves invincible heroes, rather than absurd and bug like.14

13 Ye Liwen, A Way of “Misreading”: The Diffusion and Reception of Western Modernist Literature in New China (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2009), p. 115. 14 Liu, Zaifu, “The Influence of Foreign Literature on Chinese Literature in the New Era”, World Literature, vol. 6 (1987), p. 292.

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As work on Kafka translation and research progresses, Kafka is exerting a deeper and more comprehensive influence on contemporary Chinese writers. Initially, Kafka principally inspired Chinese readers with his artistically created, absurd but realistic worlds. Later, more were drawn to his unique ideas and writing styles. Then greater attention was given to the aspects of Kafka’s life experiences and character that are inseparable from his works. In recent years, Chinese scholars and readers have discovered Kafka’s longings for Chinese culture and that he read and wrote a lot about it. This special connection renders Chinese readers even closer to him.

11.3

Kafka in Chinese Households

Besides Kafka’s influence on the spiritual and cultural aspects of contemporary China that has already been outlined above, he also greatly inspired its material culture. Since the 1980s, Kafka-themed or Kafka-focused bookstores, cafes, hostels, and hotels have grown like mushrooms, thus adding a special flavor to China’s corporate and catering culture. The “Kafka bookstores” are the most prominent of all. Approximately 20 years ago, the first Kafka-oriented bookstore was opened in a quiet little street (41 Renhou Street) in Chengdu. The owner is a poet named Tang Danhong [唐丹鸿]. When asked why she named the bookstore ‘Kafka’, she replied that this name was pleasurable to read because of the symmetry in its form. It is an interesting and funny way to explain Kafka, although far from his real spiritual world. This Kafka bookstore had its time but was finally closed due to diminishing customers. The owner changed her trade and became a TV director. Therefore, it is easy to follow the Kafka fad for a short time, but it is rather difficult to be engaged in a lifelong interest in him. There is also a well-known online “Kafka Poetry Bookstore,” which was opened on June 4, 2006, that specializes in poetry-related books. Since Kafka wrote only a few poems and did not publish them, this desire to associate itself with Kafka reflects his commercial value in the rising mass culture. Compared with conventional bookstores or other less specialized online ones, this bookstore is very customer-friendly with a standardized e-commerce protocol. However, since it is known to all that Kafka barely wrote any poems and never published any, it raises the question: why was the store named after him? In addition to the literary innovation that the name stands for, it also has commercial value in mass

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culture. Another Kafka bookstore in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, located near Yunnan University purports to create a space for fun and leisure.15 In a world riven by fierce competition, alienated interpersonal relationships, and failed communication, these bookstores seem to try to lead us away from the problems depicted in Kafka’s literature toward peace and leisure. Kafka in China is far from his time but close to our modern life. Apart from bookstores, there have been various Kafka cafés such as “East and West, Kafka Café” in Guangzhou, “Kafka by the Sea” in Taipei and the “Kafka Café” in Hsinchu, Taiwan, although some went out of business and hence may have been little more than an ephemeral fad. It is rather surprising to find that Kafka’s name is also associated with real estate and furniture business. For instance, one of the newly developed estates in Beijing is named after Kafka. Ironically, opting to reside with his parents for almost all of his life, Kafka never had a house or a family of his own. This is partly because he remained single and had only a few failed relationships. At one point, he was engaged to Felice Bauer and planned to rent a house that they could live in together to enjoy a married life. However, when the landlord rented it to someone else, this caused a delay in their marriage plans, and Kafka subsequently lost the courage to proceed and canceled the wedding. While Kafka’s lack of a proper dwelling helps to explain his failure to get married, a newly developed neighborhood in Chaoyang District of Beijing was named the “Kafka Community.” This neighborhood must have helped many newlyweds settle. It covers an area of 16,283 square meters, and the total floor area is 31,038 square meters. Consisting of three nine- to fourteen-story buildings, it is a well-facilitated and nicely designed modern building complex. Furniture is the very next item on the list, next to one’s own house. In the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, there appeared a modern furniture cooperation named “Suzhou Kafka Furniture Company Limited,” producing mattresses with the slogan “Dream in Kafka, Love in Homes” (“Kafka Mattress”).16 A bed was crucial for Kafka given how much of the time he was sick and bedridden. Nevertheless, Kafka suffered from 15 Ban Xia (半夏). “卡夫卡书屋” (“Kafka Book House”). Chengdu Daily, May 23, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.cdrb.com.cn/html/2011-05/23/content_1279663. htm. 16 卡夫卡床垫 [Kafka Mattress]. Retrieved from http://www.szkfk.com/about.aspx.

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insomnia and seldom slept well. Indeed, he once said, “Perhaps my insomnia only conceals a great fear of death. Perhaps I am afraid that the soul—which in sleep leaves me—will never return. Perhaps insomnia is only an all too vivid sense of sin, which is afraid of the possibility of a sudden judgment. Perhaps insomnia is itself a sin. Perhaps it is a rejection of the natural.”17 Kafka tended to read too much into diseases and to look for underlying psychological or spiritual causes, but in the case of his insomnia, it will be best explained by his troubled mental state. In addition to houses and furniture, hotels are another example of this Kafka fad in business. A small inn in Xiamen, the capital city of Fujian Province, was named “Kafka by the Shore.” This name is also associated with the best seller of the same name written by Haruki Murakami, the famous contemporary Japanese writer, but is far removed from the Kafka of Prague. A hotel in Taichung, Taiwan, is named “Kafka in the Mountain.” According to its designers, the name was initially meant as a joke on Haruki Murakami’s book, but they were very keen to make this space fun and interesting with well-designed in-door art installations and deco. Recently, a “Kafka Overseas Study Counseling Company” opened in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province. Its devotion to German language education gives it an authentic association with Kafka. Moreover, a “Kafka Studio” claims to provide software development and other relevant services in Beijing, Shanghai, and Xi’an. This company is utterly irrelevant to Kafka. In summary, Kafka’s impact on contemporary Chinese culture is multifaceted, enduring, and profound. There are at least three reasons for this cultural phenomenon. Firstly, since the 1980s, Kafka has gained a large readership in China and therefore exerted an influence directly; secondly, Chinese people have been exposed to a growing number of interpretations of Kafka by Chinese writers, translators, and theorists; thirdly, Kafka became a popular icon in the development of mass culture in China, which has little to do with his literary achievements. Last, but not least, Kafka impacted upon contemporary Chinese culture as indicated by the existence of Kafkaesque literature or culture with Chinese characteristics.

17 Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka, p. 69.

CHAPTER 12

The Discussion of Kafka Never Ends: Kafka Studies in China

In the West, Kafka did not become famous until after the Second World War despite Max Brod’s flattering comments about him made in 1916. Only a few of Kafka’s works were published in his own lifetime, and of the 800 copies of his first collection of stories that were printed, many remained unsold after five years. Indeed, according to Kafka himself, only 11 copies were sold in one of the most famous bookstores in Prague in a couple of years: “Ten he could easily account for, having bought them himself, but he kept wondering who might have bought the eleventh.”1 The first French translation of Kafka’s works was published in 1928, four years after Kafka’s death. However, the trauma of the Second World War in Europe helped to bring his works under the spotlight. With the publication of the 9 volumes of Kafka’s works edited by Brod in 1950, the West was quickly overtaken by a Kafka fever. Various postwar modernist and postmodernist thinkers and literary schools were inspired by Kafka, including absurdism, existentialism, black humor, and magic realism. In 1963, the year in which Kafka would have been 80 years old, an international conference on his work was held in his hometown. Thus, Kafka became one of the most important and influential writers in the world, receiving comparable critical acclaim to the likes of Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Joyce Carol Oats. Kafka’s works have also 1 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka, p. 338.

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4_12

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been adapted in theater, opera, and screen, thereby exerting far-reaching influence and rendering Kafka studies one of the most prominent subjects in Western academia.

12.1

Translations at Early Stage

It took far longer for Kafka to become well-known to a Chinese audience. For much of the twentieth century, histories of German literature by Chinese scholars did not mention him. For example, The Outline of German Literature History written by Zhang Chuanpu [张传普] in 1926 skipped Kafka completely, although it mentioned his friend Max Brod and his works.2 An article about new trends in German literature by Gerhart Hauptman was translated by Yuan Mei [袁枚] and published in the 12th issue of volume 13 of The Short Stories Monthly 《小说月报》 [ ] in 1922. It mentioned some young German writers at that time, such as Franz Werfel, Max Brod, and Carl Sternheim, but made no mention of Kafka. The history of German literature written by other Chinese scholars, including Yu Xiangsen [余祥森] and Liu Dajie [刘大杰], in the 1920s also overlooked Kafka. The Concise History of German Literature written by Feng Zhi [冯至] (published by People’s Literature Press in 1958) did not mention Kafka, either. As far as all the current materials show, the earliest Chinese commentary on Kafka was offered by Zhao Jingshen [赵景深] in his article “The Recent German Literature,” published in the first issue, vol. 21 of The Short Stories Monthly in 1930. It refers to Kafka as follows: Franz Kafka was a newly discovered German mystery novelist. When he passed away in 1926, he was unknown to most of Germans, still less to the other Europeans. He drew no attention from critics until two of his collections of stories were published in 1929. At that point, people started to mourn the loss of a great German writer. As an officer in Prague, he wrote many short stories combining realism with symbolic meanings. The first of his stories was Betrachtung, and then Der Heizer and Die Verwandlung. He then published a collection of stories Der Landarzt and a novel In Der Strakolonie. In his stories, both reality and fantasy and irony and illusion are intertwined. His reputation as a writer was consolidated after

2 Zhang Chuanpu, The History of German Literature (Shanghai: Zhonghua Book Company, 1926), p. 132.

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the publication of Das Scholoss in 1929. It tells a story in which a man attempts to enter a castle in many ways but fails each time. While some may argue that this is a political allegory, the others may say that it is symbolic in various ways. Kafka published another story Amerika in 1929. It tells about a German young man who visits his rich uncle in New York. He gets into conflicts with his uncle and works in a circus. Kafka is not a realist, so the readers often remember fantasy in his stories. He was only 35 years old when he died, leaving a lot of manuscripts unpublished.3

There are quite a few mistakes in the above quotation. For instance, it is not obvious that Kafka is a “mystery novelist,” and he certainly wasn’t a German writer, but rather an Austrian writing in Germany. He died in 1924 instead of 1926. He was by no means an officer but a clerk in an insurance company. He died at the age of 41, not 35. “In Der Strakolonie,” which is “The Penal Colony,” is a short story, not a novel. Nevertheless, despite all these mistakes, the comments about Kafka’s style of mixing “reality and fantasy” and “irony and illusion” remain well grounded. On June 1, 1936, German writer Jacob Wassermann’s article “The Trend of Modern German Novels” translated by Zhao Jiabi [赵家璧] was published in the second issue, vol. 5 of Modern magazine 《现代》 [ ], in which there was a section about Jewish writer [考夫加] Kafka: There is a talented writer, having all these features (features of psychological novels), who is Kafka. In a broad sense, his works are most German… This German happens to be a Jew.

The article made a similar mistake to the previous one in calling Kafka a German, but it is unknown whether this mistake existed in the original article or whether it was made by the translator. In 1944, Sun Jinsan [孙 晋三] published an article “Starting from Kafka” in the third issue, vol. 4 of Modern and Trendy Literature and Arts 《时与潮文艺》 [ ] in Chongqing, which might be the first article focusing on Kafka in China. Some of the content is as follows:

3 Zhao Jingshen, “The Recent German Literature”, The Short Stories Monthly, vol. 21, no. 1, January 10, 1930, pp. 226–335.

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Ever since the last world war, next to Eliot and Joyce, the writers who exert great influence on young men in the U.K. and America now are Rilke and Kafka (1883–1925)…It is a great pity that Kafka remains unknown to China despite his great influence in modern literature in the West. Kafka and Rilke are both Jews born in Prague. Both authors’ works feature a touch of mysticism, a search for meaning in the abstrusity of life, and deal in symbols without being confined to Symbolism as such. Kafka’s stories gave rise to allegories, but Kafkaesque allegories are different from that of Bunyan or Swift which are clearer and more instructive. They are closer to the novels of Herman Melville or Dostoyevsky, in which the complicated connotations are not captured easily. Kafka’s stories seem to describe banal and real life, but the reader constantly feels shrouded by a mystery. They often find symbols behind symbols, metaphors underneath metaphors, and meanings which it is difficult to unpack in an exhaustive manner. Kafka’s stories lead us transcend the sensual world into the most mysterious state of the universe. They are far more profound than psychoanalytic literature which stops at the subconsciousness.4

It is mistaken to say that Kafka died in 1925 and that Rilke is a Jew. Moreover, it seems inappropriate to regard Kafka as a symbolist writer. Nevertheless, the claim made about Kafka’s allegories is insightful and to the point. Three stories written by the British writer William Sanson were also published in the same issue of the magazine. Sanson is said to be very representative of Kafkaesque style, and these three stories are considered fine imitations of Kafka’s own. The article and these translated stories by Sanson showed the sincere intention of the scholar to introduce Kafka to Chinese readers. Moreover, his analysis of Kafka’s unique style of leading readers to “transcend the sensual world into the most mysterious state of the universe” might have been conducive to drawing certain Chinese novelists to Kafka. For instance, Kafka’s works could no doubt have appealed to Shen Congwen [沈从文], who was “crazy about abstract ideas” in which the perfect form of life exists.5 However, there is little evidence that Shen Congwen’s works were influenced by Kafka. On May 7, 1945, Bian Zhilin [卞之琳] wrote of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” that, while “this story can fully illustrate what Mr. 4 Su Jinsan, “Starting from Kafka”, Modern and Trendy Literature and Arts, vol. 4, no. 3, 1944, p. 168. 5 Fan Zhihong, The Changes of the World: Reviews on the Fictions of the Past 40 Years (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 2002), pp. 33–4.

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Mason called ‘creative nightmare’ in the latest issue of Penguin New Writing. It is doubtful as to whether it can be applied to the allegories written by William Sanson or other imitators of Kafka.”6 What is also in doubt is whether James’ story can be compared with that of Kafka. In 1945, Sun Jinsan published an article on Jean Paul Sartre and his works such as The Flies and The Wall in Modern and Trendy Literature and Arts. He wrote, “Sartre was obviously inspired by Franz Kafka. The French translation of Kafka’s ‘The Great Wall of China’ was published recently. The technique of exploring philosophical ideas in the form of allegory has been popular for so long and exerted great influence on French literature.”7 The association with Sartre brought Kafka under the spotlight in China, thus leading some critics to argue that Kafka’s introduction to China was a byproduct of that of French Existentialism.8 However, Kafka became a focal point once more with the introduction of English and American literature. In 1947, Xiao Qian [萧乾] referred to Kafka in his preface to “Four Writing Experiments”: “I have read more profound symbolist stories, such as Wolfe’s The Wave and Kafka’s The Castle. I know that it is very difficult to give a clear description of a symbol in a novella.”9 It is not very accurate for Xiao Qian to categorize Kafka as a symbolist writer. In 1948, the Chinese translation of the French translation of excerpts of Kafka’s diaries by Ye Rulian [叶汝琏] was published in the literary column of Yishibao newspaper 《益世报》 [ ] in Tian Jin, including six diary entries written by Kafka from 1910 to 1911. In the preface of the said French translation of these diaries, Kafka and his works were commented upon thus: “We only have some excerpts of Kafka’s writings. His aphorisms and intimate diaries are as delicate as his stories. As he himself once said, he experienced life as if it could not lead to accomplishment. He had no other way to overcome his consequent despair than to record what he saw under the ruins of his life…Kafka’s entire works represent the hope

6 Bian Zhilin, Vicissitude (Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 1982), p. 116. 7 Sun Jinsan, “The Flies and The Wall ”, Modern and Trendy Literature and Art, vol.

5, no. 1, 1945, p. 168. 8 Xie Zhixi, The Obsession of Life: Existentialism and Chinese Modern Literature (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1991), p. 74. 9 Xiao Qian, “Four Attempts on Writing”, The Selected Works of Xiao Qian, vol. 7 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 1998), p. 54.

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for our saviour…”10 This comment focused on the religious connotation of Kafka’s works, while neglecting other elements. But it is close to the views of Kafka’s friend Max Brod. These excerpts of journals might be the earliest translation of Kafka’s writings in China. In 1966, a collection of Kafka’s six stories under the title of The Judgment and Other Stories was published by The Writers Publishing House. These stories were translated by Li Wenjun [李文俊] and Cao Yong [曹庸], which included “The Judgment,” The Metamorphosis , “In Penal Colony,” “A Country Doctor,” “A Report to the Academy,” and “The Trial.” Regarded as “negative literary work,” the collection only circulated within a small circle of writers and academics. Li Wenjun later recalled, “I got to know Kafka by reading W. H. Auden. I found many new and novel features in his writings that are worthy of introduction to China. However, the writers like him at that time were taboo. Consequently, upon my suggestion, that ‘yellow book’ was published.” The Chinese-German Scholar Yang Wuneng [杨武能] also mentioned an interesting phenomenon: “It was not our German scholars who introduced Kafka to China, but the scholars in American and English literature, such as Li Wenjun, Tang Yongkuan [汤永宽] and Qian Mansu [钱满素]. Kafka’s major works were translated by them. The reason for this is that Kafka enjoys a higher status in English speaking countries than in German speaking ones…”11 Therefore, Kafka was overlooked by Chinese scholars in German literature at the beginning. As one of them notes, “when Kafka was introduced to China at the beginning, he did not draw much attention, still less exert any influence.”12 This situation remained unchanged until 1979 when The Metamorphosis translated by Li Wenjun was published in one of the issues of World Literature Journal 《世界文学》 [ ]. An article entitled “Kafka and His Works” was also published in this issue under the alias of Ding Fang [丁方] and Shi Wen [施文]. This article might be the first comprehensive commentary on Kafka. The authors did not leave their real names, thus suggesting that they may still have been traumatized by the Cultural Revolution that was not long concluded. In fact, Ding Fang is the alias 10 Ye Rulian, “Preface of French Translation”, Yishibao, no. 110, 1948. 11 Yang Wuneng, “The Reception of Modern German Literature in China: Kafka as a

Case Study”, China Comparative Literature, vol. 1, 1990, pp. 64–5. 12 Ye Tingfang, “Journey to the World of Kafka”, Literature Review, vol. 3, 1994, p. 115.

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of Ye Tingfang [叶廷芳], one of the famous Kafka scholars in China. According to Mr. Ye, he heard of Kafka for the first time in 1964. He recalled, “when I was the editor in Modern Literary Theory 《现代文 [ 艺理论》 ] in 1964, I came to know Kafka. At that time, all the excellent works, such as Kafka’s and Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit, were regarded as negative works and were published within a small circle with discretion. Of course, the scholars did not dare to explore their meanings in depth.”13 Ye Tingfang bought some stories of Kafka in a second-hand bookstore by chance in 1974. This was the first time for him to access Kafka. The article “Kafka and His Works” consists of four parts: “Kafka’s life,” “major works,” “lonely person and strange world,” and “artistic features.” Compared with the traditional literary criticism of the time, the article offered a rather “experimental” commentary on Kafka: “He does not belong to the traditional realism; therefore, we can’t evaluate him according to the realist standard. He deepened the exploration of social reality and extended the possibilities of artistic expression.”14 In 1980, the translation of Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” by Ye Tingfang was published in the fifth issue of October Magazine 《十月》 [ ]. The same issue also included an introduction of Kafka and the story written by Mr. Ye. In the same year, “Josephine, the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” was published in the second issue of Foreign Literature and Art 《外 [ 国文艺》 ], and The Castle, translated by Tang Yongkuan, was published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. In 1981, four of Kafka’s stories were published in Foreign Literature 《外国文学》 [ ], including “The Judgment,” “A Country Doctor,” “Before the Law,” and “Fellowship.” The Trial , translated by Qian Mansu, was published by Hunan People’s Publishing House in 1982. In 1983, which would have marked Kafka’s 100th birthday, a special collection of his stories was published in Foreign Literature and Art, including “The Great Wall of China,” “The Burrow,” and “A Report to the Academy.” In the same year, three other stories were published in Foreign Literature, including “A Visit to A Mine,” “The Village Schoolmaster,” and “Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.” In 1985, A Collection of Kafka’s Short Stories, edited by Sun 13 Ye Tingfang, The Awakening of Modern Aesthetic Consciousness (Beijing: Huaxia Publishing House, 1995), p. 2. 14 Ding Fang and Shi Wen, “Kafka and His Works”, World Literature, vol. 1, 1979, p. 242.

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Kunrong was published by Foreign Literature Publishing House with 9001 copies printed, with 6700 more copies printed two years thereafter. This collection included 20 of Kafka’s short stories, including most of the important ones. In the translator’s preface, Sun Kunrong confirmed the greatness of Kafka’s status in literary history: “Austrian writer Franz Kafka, Irish writer James Joyce and French writer Marcel Proust are considered as the founding fathers of modernist literature in the West.” But he also pointed out that “although we acknowledge that Kafka’s works enhance our insights into the corruption and inhuman nature of capitalist society in the west, some of the ideology conveyed by his works is not in line with our socialist values. Therefore, we should not imitate his artistic style without discretion.”15 In 1980, an article entitled “The Social Problems in Kafka’s Stories” written by an East German critic was published in World Literature Recent Developments 《外国文学动态》 [ ]. The article was preceded by the following editorial comment: In the last 30 years, Kafka, an amateur Austrian writer, who remained little known in his own lifetime, has drawn more and more attention in the West. He was regarded as the founding father of modernist literature, the greatest writer in the German language of the 20th century. Kafka was boycotted in the Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe in the first half of 1950s when his works become popular in the west. But after 1957, “the eastern defense” against him became loose, and quite a few Marxist literary critics started to evaluate him positively.16

Also, in 1980, Hans Mayer, the famous German literary historian and critic visited China. When asked, during a lecture at Peking University, who he believed to be the most important German writer of the twentieth century, he replied without hesitation, “Franz Kafka followed by Thomas Mann and then Bertolt Brecht….” This comment was reported as coming as a shock to the audience.17 After that, Kafka became well-known all over China through various literary journals and magazines. By the end of 1981, Qian Mansu wrote an article entitled “Kafka Comes to China,”

15 Sun Kunrong, “Preface of Translator”, A Collection of Kafka’s Short Stories (Beijing: Foreign Literature Publishing House, 1985), p. 1. 16 Paul Lehman, “The Social Problems in Kafka’s Stories”, trans. Yu Kuangfu, World Literature Recent Development s, vol. 12, 1980, p. 298. 17 Ye Tingfang, “Journey to the World of Kafka”, p. 116.

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declaring that Kafka finally traveled to China after wandering the world for nearly half a century. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that Kafka studies in the mainland of China started at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.18 Within two decades, ten monographs on Kafka were published, including that of Ye Tingfang. The biographies of Kafka included both foreign translations and studies by Chinese scholars. The major works included: Kafka by Klaus Wagenbach, translated by Zhou Jianming [周建明], published by Beijing October Literature and Arts Publishing House in 1988; K: A Biography of Kafka by Ronald Hayman, translated by Zhao Qianlong [赵乾龙], published by The Writers Publishing House in 1988; Franz Kafka: A Biography by Max Brod, translated by Ye Tingfang, published by Hebei Education Press in 1997. Other biographies written by Chinese scholars include The Gentleness of Purgatory: Kafka by Lin Hesheng [林和生], published by Sichuan People Publishing House in 1997; Rebellious Personality: Kafka by Yan Jia [阎嘉], published by Yangtze River Literature and Arts Publishing House in 1996; Finding a Way Out in The Castle: The Life of Kafka by Yang Hengda [杨恒 达], published by Shanghai World Book Publishing Company in 1994; The Biography of Kafka by Si Moyan [斯默言], published by North Eastern Normal University Press in 1996. Yang Hengda also edited a reader-friendly version of Kafka’s stories—The Distorted Castle: An Introduction to Kafka’s Works, published by Shanghai World Book Publishing Company in 1999. It is also worth mentioning that Can Xue, the famous Avant-Garde Chinese writer, published a monograph on Kafka—The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka in 1999. In addition, more than 200 papers on Kafka and dozens of collections of Kafka’s stories were also published. The most famous is The Complete Works of Franz Kafka published by Hebei Education Press in 1996, which marks the pinnacle of Kafka studies in China.

18 Translator’s note: The translation and introduction of Kafka in Taiwan was 20 years

earlier than that in the mainland of China. Kafka was first introduced in Modern Literature magazine in the 1950s by English majors in Taiwan University, including Bai Xianyong [白先勇], Chen Ruoxi [陈若曦], and Ou Yangzi [欧阳子]. A special issue dedicated to Kafka was published in 1960. Kafka was introduced to Taiwan with the existentialists such as Sartre and Camus. Nevertheless, Kafka studies in Taiwan have been very fruitful.

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Scholars and Translators of Kafka in China

Over the past 20 years, many scholars, translators, and experts have made great achievements in Kafka studies. Among them, the senior scholars were those who first introduced Kafka to China, such as Ye Tingfang, Li Wenjun, Tang Yongkuan, Cao Yong, Sun Kunrong, and Qian Mansu. Representative middle-aged scholars include Li Qi, and Hong Tianfu [洪天富], and representative junior scholars include Zu Guosong [祖国 颂], Ji Tong [冀桐], and Hu Zhiming [胡志明]. In addition, quite a few Chinese writers are interested in Kafka, including Can Xue, Yu Hua [余华], Ge Fei [格非], and Lin Hesheng. They wrote commentaries, articles, and even monographs on Kafka’s works. Some readers also published their thoughts and insights in newspapers and magazines. Ye Tingfang was born in Qu Xian, Zhejiang province in 1936. After graduating from Peking University as a German major, he dedicated himself to Kafka studies, publishing dozens of articles from 1979 onwards. He also published monographs, such as The Explorer of Modern Art, Kafka: The Father of Modernist Literature and The Awakening of Modern Aesthetic Consciousness. Since the beginning of the 1980s, it took him 8 years to edit On Kafka, “a summary of all the references to Kafka in the west over the past 70 years.”19 It has been of great significance to Kafka studies in China. The Complete Works of Franz Kafka was also edited by Mr. Ye. Published in 1996, The Complete Works marked a mature stage of Kafka studies in China. In summary, Ye Tingfang’s studies on Kafka are representative of the whole journey of Kafka studies in China, and his contribution can never be underestimated. Over the years, he “constructed a wholistic representation of the structure of Kafka’s world from various perspectives and critical approaches, including ethnic psychology, historian cultural studies, modern ethics, life philosophy and tragedy….” He also summarizes Kafka’s style of artistic expressions as “detailed and realistic under the framework of absurdity; picturesque symbols, allegories and metaphors; dream-like fantasy; shocking grotesque; ironic paradoxes and simplicities …”.20 Can Xue, the pen name of Deng Xiaohua [邓小华], was born in Changsha, Hunan Province, in 1953. She started to publish novels in 19 Ye Tingfang, “preface”, On Kafka, ed. Ye Tingfang (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 1988), p. 12. 20 Ye Tingfang, “Journey to the World of Kafka”, p. 119.

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1985, some of the most important of which were Dialogs in Paradise, Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas. She also wrote an influential monograph on Kafka—The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka. However, of course, Can Xue’s interpretations of Kafka are very personal and subjective readings. The monograph is not a piece of academic research but more of a creative work. In addition, quite a few quality academic papers on Kafka were written by Chinese scholars, such as Li Qi, Xie Yingying, Hong Tianfu, and Zeng Yanbing [曾艳兵]. Li Qi published an article “An Analysis of Kafka” in the third issue of Foreign Literature Studies 《外国文学研究》 [ ] in 1980. He also worked together with Ye Tingfang on the translation of Kafka’s works. Xie Yingying published a series of articles in the 1980s and 1990s, including “Realism in Absurdity: A Discussion on Modernist Writer Franz Kafka” in the 2nd issue of Foreign Literature in 1981, “Kafkaesque: Kafka’s Works and Reality” and “The Acceptance of Kafka’s Works in the World” in the first issue of Foreign Literature in 1996. In addition to the translation of many of Kafka’s works, Hong Tianfu wrote about Kafka’s novel Amerika in 1982. Zeng Yanbing’s papers on Kafka include “On Kafka” (The Journal of Xiangtan University 《湘潭大学学报》 [ ], the 2nd issue of 1993), “A Comparative Study of Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged and Kafka’s The Castle” (The Study of Literature and Art 《文艺 [ 研究》 ], May 1998), “An Allegory on the Pains of Life” (Foreign Literatures Quarterly 《国外文学》 [ ], February. 1999), “On Kafka’s Amerika” (Foreign Literature Review 《外国文学评论》 [ ], April 2000), “An Interpretation on Kafka’s The Castle” (Foreign Literatures Quarterly, March 2000). Since the 1990s, a new generation of scholars has appeared, including Hu Zhiming, Zu Guosong, and Ji Tong. Their papers on Kafka added new dimensions to Kafka Studies in China.

12.3

Topics Within Kafka Studies in China

Over the past 20 years in China, most research on Kafka has focused on the following topics and questions: 1. To which literary school or trend does Kafka belong? 2. The basic features of Kafka’s works 3. Studies on Major works

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4. Kafka and other writers, especially the relationship between him and the writers in the East. The first question has been a major concern in academia. The earliest position was defended in the article by Ding Fang and Shi Wen. They argued that he was “not a traditional realist writer […] As a serious writer, Kafka developed his own opinions toward reality…. Therefore, it is well grounded that he is considered the pioneer of modernist literature.”21 Since then, Kafka has been categorized as an “outstanding representative of expressionist novels.”22 However, some scholars have viewed Kafka as a realist: “The Studies of Kafka and Joyce have been separated from the general concept of realism, but from a certain point of view, they are realists […] since they depict all the details of the human mind …”23 Some scholars have also quoted Lukacs’ claim that “Kafka is still a realist writer” to add authority to their perspective.24 As the studies of Kafka have grown more nuanced, many scholars have become reluctant to simply label Kafka as an expressionist or a realist. As one of the scholars in question notes, “if you label Kafka as an expressionist, you are preventing yourself from understanding Kafka in all his aspects.”25 Although Kafka’s works “illustrate the features of expressionism, they are not completely expressionist.”26 He is both “a successor of traditional novels” and “an explorer of modern novels.”27 His works are a combination of realism and expressionism because “His works are a combination of realism and expressionism” because “there is a realist touch in his absurdist world.”28 21 Ding Fang and Shi Wen, “Kafka and His Works”, World Literature, p. 255. 22 Yuan Kejia, etc. eds., The Selected Foreign Modernist Works, vol. 1 (Shanghai:

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1980, p. 400. 23 Zhu Hong, “Starting from Trollope”, Dushu, vol. 11, 1982, p. 89. 24 Xie Yingying, “Realism in Absurdist Dreams: A Brief Discussion on Modernist Writer

Franz Kafka”, Foreign Literature, vol. 2, 1981, p. 39. 25 Ye Tingfang, “preface”, The Complete Works of Franz Kafka, ed. Ye Tingfang, vol. 1 (Beijing: Hebei Education Press, 1996), p. 8. 26 Wang Hannian, “The Expressionist Features of Kafka’s Stories”, Foreign Literature Study, vol. 2, 1997, pp. 27–9. 27 Cao Guochen, “Kafka’s Writing and the Aesthetics of Modern Fiction”, Foreign Literature Study, vol. 4, 1989, pp. 30–5. 28 Xiao Zhiqun, “The Relations between Modernism and Realism: Kafka as a Case Study”, Journal of Lingling Normal College, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 77–9.

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Other scholars claimed that Kafka can no longer be included in any school of art label than he was willing to be said to belong to any social or ethnic grouping while he was alive.29 In short, Kafka transcended any literary school or nation, became a cosmopolitan writer free of national and literary boundaries, and thus “it is no use categorizing Kafka’s works into this or that ism. He is completely unique and on his own.”30 However, there is one artistic style of Kafka with which he can be associated without controversy, namely, the Kafkaesque. One Chinese scholar conducted an etymological study of the term “Kafkaesque,” and argued that “besides being regarded as Kafka’s writing style, Kafkaesque also refers to a situation of absurdity in which a person is controlled and manipulated by an unknown force, finding himself or herself at a loss to find a way out, and therefore full of fear, anxiety, confusion and anger. Such a force is often generated by a system that is massive, complicated, random, invisible and yet ubiquitous.”31 In recent years, Chinese scholars have approached Kafka’s works from different perspectives and theoretical frameworks. The works that received the most critical attention are The Metamorphosis , The Trial and The Castle. The Metamorphosis is the first story that was translated into Chinese, exerting great influence. It is often considered the representative work of Kafka’s oeuvre. As one critic pointed out as early as 1980, “[The Metamorphosis ] is generally acknowledged as a representative work of alienation.”32 Another scholar notes, “…the value of The Metamorphosis lies in its portrayal of human alienation. It might be the first work to discuss the theme.”33 In the 1990s, Chinese scholars added new dimensions to the study of the story in addition to alienation, using the critical approaches of psychology, sociology, narratology, etc. 29 Zeng Yanbing, “How to Categorize Kafka’s Works”, The East Forum, vol. 4, 2000, pp. 38–42. 30 Wolfgang Bernard Fleischman, Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 2 (New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1976), p. 197. 31 Xie Yingying, “Kafkaesque: Kafka’s Works and Reality”, Foreign Literature, vol. 1996, pp. 41–7. 32 Zi Wei, “Seriousness in Absurdity: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis ”, Foreign Literature Study, vol. 1, 1980, pp. 101–4. 33 Guo Xianggeng and Dai Jinglun, “A Review on China’s Kafka Studies”, Foreign Literature Study, vol. 2, 1983, pp. 132–5.

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As the most favored novel, the Chinese translation of The Castle was published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 1980. According to Tang Yongkuan, the translator, he completed the translation of this novel as early as the beginning of the 1960s. It took 15 years for the Chinese version to be published. Tang said that this novel is “most Kafkaesque,” “imbued with a Kafkaesque nightmarish mystery.” In the novel, “the social hierarchy renders the life of the privileged high above the commoners. The bureaucratic structure is like a labyrinth, powerful and mysterious.”34 Ye Tingfang mentioned The Castle many times in his monographs and articles, the most influential one being “Exploring the Secrete of The Castle,” published in 1988. In the article, Ye gives a comprehensive analysis of the multiple meanings of the work: the summary of inner feelings, phantoms of an authoritarian power, the description of an alienated world, the metaphor of Jewish people seeking a homeland, the allegory of men looking for God, the search for the intangible truth.35 There have been many more articles on The Castle since then. For example, Zhu Yekuang [朱也旷] argues, The Castle can be interpreted as based on Chaos theory. “The chaotic situations appear in the fifth and fifteenth chapters.” “The chaos transforms our knowledge of a rational world.”36 Liu Guoping [刘国屏] argues, “The Castle is about certain life situations.”37 Zeng Yanbing and Zhao Shankui [赵山 奎] argue, The Castle is “both a tragedy without weight and an awkward comedy,” “a reality of illusions and nightmares,” and “a metaphysical pain and a game of pain.”38 Next to The Castle, The Trial has also received critical attention. In 1981, Zhou Jiansheng wrote a comprehensive analysis entitled “On The Trial ” (Foreign Literature Studies, the 2nd issue of 1981). The novel contains three layers of trial: the trial of the innocent, the trial of the guilty, and the trial of the trial. The protagonist Joseph K is arrested 34 Tang Yongkuan, “Preface”, The Castle, by Kafka, trans. Tang Yongkuan (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1980), p. 3. 35 Ye Tingfang, “An Analysis of Kafka’s The Castle”, pp. 46–52. 36 Zhu Yekuang, “The Transcendentality and Chaos of the Castle”, Foreign Literature

Review, vol. 2, 1994, pp. 65–7. 37 Liu Guoping, “Kafkaesque and the Castle”, The Journal of Jiangxi Normal University, vol. 1, 1995, pp. 43–8. 38 Zeng Xianbing and Zhao Shankui, “Resistance and Dissolution: Interpreting Kafka’s The Castle”, Foreign Literatures Quarterly, vol. 3, 2000, pp. 85–91.

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for no reason in his apartment and is ultimately sentenced to death, thus rendering the story about the trial and punishment of the innocent without cause. However, during his appeal, K gradually realizes that he partakes in the guilt of the world and that there is a sense in which there is good cause to put him on trial. Behind all these trials, there is an ultimate one, “we find ourselves deep in crimes, and this has nothing to do with actual crimes. The trial goes on forever in a perpetual court.” And this is the trial of the trial.39 As for the trial of the innocent, this novel is a social critique; as for the trial of the guilty, the meaning lies in ethical and moral awareness; and as for the trial of the trial, the meaning is more religious. The commentaries on Amerika are comparatively scarce. Besides Hong Tianfu’s article about it in 1982 (Contemporary Foreign Literature, the fourth issue of 1982), there haven’t been any relevant papers until Zeng Yanbing’s “On Kafka’s Amerika,” published in the fourth issue of Foreign Literature Review in the year 2000. In his article, Zeng attempts to correct some of the misunderstandings about this novel, arguing that Amerika is not the traditional realist novel that some scholars believe it to be but rather a modernist work full of Kafkaesque features. Though named after America, this novel is not about the country, but rather represents a dreamland that Kafka can employ to contrast with Prague. The structure of this novel imitates that of Dicken’s David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, but the content and narratives are completely Kafkaesque. As his first novel, Amerika is the first of his trilogy of loneliness, the images, and themes of which make recurrences in his later works. In addition, there are some articles on Kafka’s letters, diaries, and short stories such as “The Judgment,” “A Hunger Artist,” “The Burrow,” “The Great Wall of China,” and “In Penal Colony.” In recent years, Chinese scholars have also taken interest in Kafka’s novellas, such as The Silence of the Sirens .

39 Ye Tingfang, “An Explorer of Modernist Art in the West”, Literature and Art Study, vol. 6, 1982, p. 111.

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12.4 The Characteristics of Kafka Studies in China Kafka studies in China started relatively late, but the scholars who are dedicated to this field are well-trained academics who are capable of research in depth and width. Over the past two decades, Kafka studies in China have made achievements great enough to draw attention from abroad. The major characteristics of Kafka studies are as follows: First, the research fellows are scattered but devoted. They have not founded any special association and seldom hold any seminars, but they have been studious in Kafka studies and approach the topic from a variety of different perspectives. Second, the method of comparative studies is valued. Kafka studies in China have been prone to comparative studies from the beginning, reflecting China’s strong orientation toward comparative literature in general. In 1982, Fang Ping wrote the article “New Thoughts on ‘The Crickets’,” a comparative study of Pu Song Ling’s story and The Metamorphosis . Fang pointed out that “the humans’ metamorphosis into crickets in ‘The Fighting Crickets’ can be likened to the protagonist’s metamorphosis into a bug in The Metamorphosis , a twentieth century European modernist work. The two works, although separated by time and space, expose the tragedy of human alienation under dysfunctional social systems.”40 Ever since Fang’s article, the comparative approaches caught on and many articles were written. Hu Runsen [胡润森] performed a comparative study of The Metamorphosis and Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q 《阿 [ Q 正传》 ]. He argues that both works “focus on the theme of alienation but depict it from different kinds of perspective. The True Story of Ah Q describes a peasant’s alienation in a feudal village from a realist perspective, while The Metamorphosis describes a person’s self-alienation from an expressionist perspective.”41 Hu Zhiming also performed a comparative study of The Metamorphosis

40 Fang Ping, “New Thoughts on ‘The Crickets’”, Dushu, vol. 11, 1982, p. 126. 41 Hu Runsen, “A Comparative Study of The Metamorphosis and Lu Xun’s The True

Story of Ah Q : Philosophical Dimension”, The Journal of YanTai University, vol. 4, 1990, pp. 80–6.

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and Lu Xun’s Diary of a Mad Man based on the idea of fear.42 Xie Jiaju [谢家驹] made a comparison between The Metamorphosis and the story of Job in the Bible. He argued that the differences between the two stories are fourfold: different forms of alienation, different feelings of the subjects of alienation, different authorial intentions, and different artistic expressions.43 Yang Rong [杨荣] wrote a comparative study of The Metamorphosis and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. He claimed, Kafka’s story is about the individual’s metamorphosis and alienation while Ionesco’s is about the metamorphosis and alienation of the entire society. In Kafka’s story, Gregor, the individual who goes through the metamorphosis, feels lonely and tormented, while in Ionesco’s, the majority in the society go through the metamorphosis without suffering.44

Zeng Yanbing and Chen Qiuhong [陈秋红] compared The Castle with Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged. They argue that these two novels are similar in terms of theme, but that they also differ in many aspects due to the writers’ different lifestyles, personalities, and ways of thinking: the trope of leaving a city has a Taoist connotation, while the trope of entering a city is more easily interpreted in terms of Western religions. With regard to style, Fortress Besieged is characterized by “liqu” [理趣], expressing the sarcasm of the society of the time, using “Spring-andAutumn writing style” [春秋笔法] or the Chunqiu-Style elaboration of the profound meaning through subtle narratives. In contrast, The Castle is characterized by “liyu” [理语], in terms of being mysterious and metaphysical. Whereas Qian Zhongshu wrote Fortress Besieged “on the edge of life” with wit, when Kafka wrote The Castle he was in the midst of life and writing with heart.45

42 Hu Zhiming, “The Poetics of Fear: A Comparative Study of The Metamorphosis and Lu Xun’s Diary of a Mad Man”, The Journal of Shandong University, vol. 6, 2000, pp. 24–7. 43 Xie Jiaju, “The Motif of Lost Humanity and Metamorphosis: A Comparative Study of

The Metamorphosis and the story of Job in the Bible”, The Journal of Shanghai Education College, vol. 4, 1996, pp. 26–30. 44 Yang Rong, “A Comparative Study of The Metamorphosis and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros ”, Foreign Literatures Quarterly, vol. 4, 1996, pp. 72–7. 45 Zeng Xianbing and Chen Qiuhong, “A Comparative Study of The Castle and Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged”, Literature and Art Study, vol. 5, 1998, pp. 60–9.

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Dozens more comparative studies articles were published, including Guo Laishun [郭来舜]’s “A Comparative Study of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , Atsushi Nakajima’s ‘Mountain Moon’ and Yasushi Inoue’s ‘The Warrior and the Wolf’” (Lanzhou University Journal, the fourth issue of 1986); Wang Fuhe [王福和]’s “The Sympathy of Nikolai Gogol and The Tears of Kafka: A Comparison between Diary of a Mad Man 《狂人日 [ 记》 ] and The Metamorphosis (Shenyang Normal University Journal, the fourth issue of 1987); Zhao Shaoru [张绍儒]’s “Three Modernists in the West: Kafka, Freud and Sartre” (Hangzhou University Journal, the fourth issue of 1993); and Ai Jin [艾津]’s “An Analysis of Lu Xun and Kafka’s Writings” (Lu Xun Studies Monthly, the ninth issue of 1996). Third, new theories, methodologies, and perspective were applied within Kafka studies. Chinese Kafka scholars were not content with the traditional sociohistorical approach from the beginning. Some of them attempted to interpret Kafka’s works through psychoanalysis. As Dong Hongjun [董红均] notes, “To understand Kafka’s works, first one has to understand him and explore his rich inner world.” “Kafka’s works do not intend to reflect reality objectively, nor to depict an ideal picture. He wrote to convey his strong and fierce feelings and emotions.”46 The psychological trauma in his childhood played an important part in the formation of his personality: “the suppressive and abject familial environment shaped and problematized Kafka’s mentality. This lonely, sensitive, and temperate mentality gave rise to a great writer.”47 Some scholars based their interpretation on existentialism. For instance, Ang Zhihui [昂智慧] argues, “Kafka’s stories, aphorisms, letters and diaries can be seen as one great work, different in form, but all focusing on the theme of the human predicament.” “Kafka lived to find out the meaning of life. His life was a work of philosophy about human existence.”48 Other scholars argue that besides exploring the meaning of life, Kafka also explores death: “he elevated the sense of death in literary works with his unique life experiences and interpretations.” “The descriptions of death are both a part of Kafka’s spiritual world, and an integral 46 Dong Hongjun, “The Axe for the Frozen Sea: Kafka’s Mentality and Writing”, The Journal of Shanghai University, vol. 1, 1994, pp. 31–7. 47 Yuan Qingfeng, “Kafka: Loneliness, Sensitivity and Writing”, The Journal of Hengyang Normal College, vol. 2, 1996, pp. 64–7. 48 Ang Zhihui, “Soliloquy of a Strong Soul: Kafka’s Testimony of Life”, Foreign Literature Review, vol. 4, 1996, pp. 69–76.

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part of the narrative structure of his stories.”49 And one of the critics summarizes Kafka’s writings by claiming that “His mind was occupied by fear, his life loneliness, and death became his final ‘nirvana’.”50 Moreover, Huang Liaoyu [黄燎宇] gave an analysis of Kafka’s narrative style based on narratology. He claims that the mystery of Kafka lies in “a menacing overtone hidden in the seemingly placid narrative. The overtone often carries symbols and irony.” In addition, this is Kafkaesque “tragi-comic” writing.51 Yan Baoping [阎保平] performed a narrative analysis of The Metamorphosis . He argues that the narrative structures in this story are fourfold: vertical, horizontal, linguistic, and compound: “the vertical structure is the basic narrative structure of the text. It depicts the tragic life of the protagonist in chronological order, showing how humans were turned into attachments to a purely material life and were eventually abandoned by the capitalist relations of production”; “the horizontal structure shows the characters’ activities in a certain space, also as the externalization of the consciousness of the narrative subject”; “there are divisions between the linguistic structures of the protagonist’s and Kafka’s, which demonstrates the separations of spirit from practice, the subject from the object”; The compound structure is the total form of the narrative structure of the text including time, space, life, and art. It is like a cobweb made of sophisticated narratives.52 To sum up, over the past 20 odd years, Kafka studies in China have made great achievements, but there is still room for improvement due to the lack of originality, a stable research team and a narrowness of vision. However, given that Chinese scholars have found their own distinctive voice in Kafka studies, it is our conviction that the best is yet to come.

49 Zu Guosong, “The Death Consciousness in Kafka’s Stories”, Academic Exchange, vol. 2, 1997, pp. 109–11. 50 Zhou Dingyu, “Fear in Heart, Loneliness in Life: Kafka’s Writing”, The Journal of Xiangtan Normal College, vol. 5, 1999, pp. 78–81. 51 Huang Liaoyu, “Reading Between the Lines: Kafka’s Narrative Style”, Foreign Literature Review, vol. 4, 1997, pp. 60–6. 52 Yan Baoping, “The Narrative Structure of The Metamorphosis ”, Foreign Literature Study, vol. 3, 1992, pp. 128–31.

CHAPTER 13

The Translation and Introduction of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in China

Franz Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis from November 17 to December 7, 1912. Kafka originally sought publication in The Neue Rundschau, but the publisher Samuel Fischer rejected it due to its length. It was eventually published in Die weissen Blätter (The White Page) in October 1915. In the same year, the novella was published by Kurt Wolff in Leipzig, and this was followed by the publication of various translations in Czech, Hungarian, Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Japanese, thus rendering The Metamorphosis his most frequently translated work. However, a translation of this novella did not appear in China until 1966, when the Writer’s Press published The Trial and Other Works, thus initiating a half-century of further Chinese translations and studies. To date, 22 different Chinese versions of The Metamorphosis have been published, along with hundreds of research papers. As Walter Benjamin notes, “A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original all the more fully.”1 So how does The Metamorphosis shine through Chinese translations? This is a literary question worthy of an answer. Although The Metamorphosis is not the most outstanding of Kafka’s works, it is the most familiar to Chinese 1 Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, available at http://www.ricorso. net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm, accessed on October 6, 2019.

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readers, and thus, its translation has proven to be of enormous research value and of great significance for the history of translation in modern China.

13.1 The Beginning (1966–1979): Patronage and Translation from English The literary system consists of text, reading, and rewriting, and it is often subject to patronage from outside, “the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature.”2 These powers exerted great influence on the translation and introduction of The Metamorphosis in China. The earliest introduction of Kafka to Chinese readers can be traced back to an introductory note about Austrian Modernist Writers that was written by Shen Yanbing [沈雁冰] under the column of “overseas literary news” in The Short Stories Magazine 《小说月报》 [ ] (vol. 14) in Oct. 1923. However, the earliest translation of Kafka’s stories began in 1960, when some students in the English Department of Taiwan University including Bai Xianyong [白先勇], Chen Ruoxi [陈若曦], and Ou Yangzi [欧 阳子] published a special issue on Kafka in Modern Literature 《现代文学》 [ ] magazine that they founded. Some of Kafka’s stories were translated, including “The Judgment” (translated by Zhang Xianxu [张 先绪]), “A Country Doctor” (translated by Ou Yangzi), and “A Hunger Artist” (translated by Shi Ming [石明]). However, The Metamorphosis was not included. Up until 1966, a “yellow book” entitled The Trial and Other Works was published by The Writer’s Press. The book was a collection of Kafka’s stories, including “The Trial” (translated by Cao Yong [曹庸]), “The Judgement,” The Metamorphosis , “In Penal Colony,” “A Report to the Academy,” and “A Country Doctor” (all translated by Li Wenjun [李文 俊]). As mentioned in the previous chapter, this yellow book was regarded as “negative literary work” and circulated only within a small circle of writers and academics. In the suffix written by Ge Ha (the pen name of Li Wenjun) and Ling Ke [凌柯], Kafka was described thus: “a modernist

2 André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004), p. 15.

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decadent writer … a completely decadent writer, an extreme idealist. He is against reason, holding that the world is unknowable…He harbors hatred against revolution and thinks that the people are foolish …” From this, it was concluded that “to conduct a thorough critique of Kafka is one of the important projects in our fight against modern capitalist literature and modern Revisionist literature.”3 The yellow book illustrates the significance of the role played by patronage and ideology in the introduction and translation of Kafka’s works. The Metamorphosis was originally written in German, but Li Wenjun’s translation was based on an English version, i.e., Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, and published by Random House in 1952. Before the Second World War, due to antisemitism, many Jewish writers, especially non-German Jewish writers like Kafka, could not get any critical attention in German literary studies. Many German intellectuals became exiles in the U.S., bringing their sources and studies with them. Schocken Books, which published six volumes of Kafka’s works in Berlin, was also moved to the U.S. It published another 5-volume collection of Kafka’s Works in the U.S., rendering the country a center of Kafka studies in the 1930s and 1940s.4 As a result, Kafka was introduced to China via English translations. As Yang Wuneng [杨武能] noted, “It was not our German scholars who introduced Kafka to China, but the scholars in American and English literature, such as Li Wenjun, Tang Yongkuan [汤永宽], and Qian Mansu [钱 满素], who served as translators. The reason for this is that Kafka enjoys a higher status in English speaking countries than in German speaking ones…”5 Li Wenjun later recalled, “I got to know Kafka by reading W. H. Auden. I found many new and novel features in his writings that are worthy of introduction to China. However, writers like him at that time were taboo. Consequently, upon my suggestion, that ‘yellow book’ was published.”6 3 Ge Ha and Ling Ke, “Suffix”, The Trial and Other Works, by Franz Kafka (Beijing: Writer’s Press, 1966), pp. 394–9. 4 Xie Yingying, “The Reception of Kafka’s Works in the World”, Foreign Literature, vol. 1, 1996, p. 48. 5 Yang Wuneng, “The Reception of Modern German Literature in China: Kafka as a Case Study”, China Comparative Literature, vol. 1, 1990, pp. 64–5. 6 Zeng Yanbing, The Study of Franz Kafka (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2009), p. 433.

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After the implementation of the reform and openingup policy, Li Wenjun’s translation of The Metamorphosis was officially published in 1979 in World Literature 《世界文学》 [ ], which was just back in operation. Li wrote an introduction to the story, which included the following comments: “we think that The Metamorphosis is one of the most important capitalist literary works in the West in the twentieth century because it confronts many of the essential problems in modern capitalist societies…. Kafka accurately diagnoses the symptoms of his time.”7 Li made more positive remarks on the story than the negative ones. Since then, The Metamorphosis has been valued by Chinese scholars: “The Metamorphosis is viewed as a good representative work for conveying the theme of alienation”8 ; “…the value of The Metamorphosis lies in its portrayal of human alienation. It might be the first work to discuss the theme.”9 It seems that fever for the work swept China overnight. In Taiwan, the writer Jin Mingruo [金溟若, 1905–1970] was the first to introduce and translate The Metamorphosis . Born in Rui’an, Zhejiang Province, and having received primary education in Japan, Jin graduated as a Medical Major from Nan Tong University, but he later gave up being a doctor in order to take up writing instead. He was once taught by Zhu Ziqing [朱自清] and was also in close contact with Lu Xun [鲁迅]. Besides creative writing, he also translated the novels of some of the most famous Japanese writers, such as Yukio Mishima and Ry¯unosuke Akutagawa. In 1969, a collection of Kafka’s stories (including The Metamorphosis , “In Penal Colony,” “The Burrow” and “The Description of A Battle”) translated by Jin Mingrou, was published by Zhiwen Publishing House in Taiwan. In this collection, Jin also published two articles on Kafka, including “The Life of Franz Kafka” and “The Hope and Absurdity of Franz Kafka’s Works.” The Metamorphosis in this collection was translated from a Japanese version.

7 Li Wenjun, “Translator’s Introduction to The Metamorphosis ”, World Literature, vol. 1, 1979, p. 192. 8 Zi Wei, “Seriousness in Absurdity: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis ”, p. 104. 9 Guo Xianggeng and Dai Jinglun, “A Review on China’s Kafka Studies”, pp. 132–5.

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Jin Mingrou regarded Kafka as a pioneer of existentialism, attributing Gregor Samsa’s death to the loss of language ability after his metamorphosis: “language is the only way of human communication, or the most direct one.” The tragedy of Samsa. is an existential tragedy of our time, which exposes our spiritual predicament and the divisions between human beings. If people rely on language for communication, it is hard for them to understand each other once they lose the ability to speak, even the communication in question is with family members as in the case of Samsa. In this age the entire human race is Samsa, only we can still speak.10

This comment still resonates today. Jin’s translation of The Metamorphosis is so popular that it was reprinted twice in 1975 and 1999. Although the beginning of the translation of Kafka’s works is marked by the scarcity of translators and the translation from English versions, the translated versions are of great merit because the translators are well-trained literary scholars. When Li Wenjun was translating The Metamorphosis , his wife Zhang Peifen [张佩芬], who is a famous German translator, did very thorough revisions and polished the final text with reference to the original German work. During this period, the translation of The Metamorphosis laid a solid basis for further Chinese translations of, and introductions to, Kafka’s works.

13.2 The Period of Silence (1980–1995): Li Wenjun’s Translation and Other Versions The 1980s and 1990s saw another wave of literary translation in China. Encouraged by the policy of “reform and opening-up,” literary translation has turned a new leaf from the ideology-oriented mindset to a focus on the intrinsic value of literary works. As a result, modern and contemporary literary works in the West, which were once excluded from mainstream studies, have become popular objects of study and translation by Chinese

10 Jin Mingruo, “Introduction”, The Metamorphosis , by Franz Kafka, trans. Jin Mingruo (Taiwan: Zhiwen Publishing House, 1969), p. 1.

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scholars.11 Under such circumstances, translations of and introductions to Kafka’s works have also proliferated at an unprecedented rate. Here is a table listing the publications of the translated works in China (in chronological order). Publications of the Translated Versions of Kafka’s Works in China from 1980 to 1995 Year of Publication

Works

Editors/Translators

1980

“A Hunger Artist”

Ye Tingfang [叶廷芳] Sun Liang [孙亮]

1980

1980

1980

1980 1981 1981 1981 1981 1981 1981

1981 1981 1981

Journals/Publishers

October 《十月》 [ ] “A Hunger Artist,” Foreign Literature “Josephine the Singer, or and Arts The Mouse Folk” 《外国文艺》 [ ] The Castle Tang Yongkuan [汤永宽] Shanghai Translation Publishing House [上海译文出版社] In Penal Colony Li Wenjun [李文俊] Guangdong People’s Publishing House [广东人民出版社] “A Country Doctor” Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Translations 《译林》 [ ] “The Judgment” Dong Guangxi [董光熙] Foreign Literature 《外国文学》 [ ] “A Country Doctor” Qian Wencai [钱文彩] Foreign Literature 《外国文学》 [ ] “Before the Law” Xie Yingying [谢莹莹] Foreign Literature 《外国文学》 [ ] “A Community of Yang Yinen [杨荫恩] Foreign Literature Scoundrels” 《外国文学》 [ ] “To My Father” Zhang Rongchang [张荣 World Literature 昌] 《世界文学》 [ ] “The Bucket Rider” Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Foreign Literature Quarterly 《国外文学》 [ ] “Jackals and Arabs” Li Shixun [李士勋] Translations 《译丛》 [ ] “The Hunter Gracchus” Wang Yinqi [王荫祺] Translations 《译丛》 [ ] “The Great Wall of China” Ye Tingfang Translations [叶廷芳] 《译丛》 [ ] (continued)

11 Zha Mingjian and Xie Tianzhen, The History of Foreign Literature Translation in China in 20th Century (Wuhan: Hubei Education Press, 2007), p. 1451.

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Year of Publication

Works

Editors/Translators

1981

“An Old Manuscript”

Wang Yinqi [王荫祺]

209

(continued)

1982

1982

1983

1983

1983

1983

1984

1984

1985

1986

1987

1987

1987

Journals/Publishers

Translations 《译丛》 [ ] The Trial Qian Mansu [钱满素] Hunan People’s 、Yuan Huaqing [袁华 Publishing House 清] [湖南人民出版社] Amerika (Chapters 1and Xia Changle [夏长乐] Contemporary Foreign Literature 5) 《当代外国文学》 [ ] “The Hunter Gracchus” Dong Zuqi [董祖祺] Contemporary Foreign Literature 《当代外国文学》 [ ] “The Burrow,” “The Great Ye Tingfang, etc Foreign Literature Wall of China,” “A Report and Arts to An Academy” 《外国文艺》 [ ] “A Country Doctor,” Zhang Rongchang [张荣 Journal of Foreign “Blumfeld, an Elderly 昌] Literature Bachelor” Publishing House 《外国文学季刊》 [ ] “The Stoker” Tao Sheng [涛声] Journal of Foreign Literature Publishing House 《外国文学季刊》 [ ] “The Trial” Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Foreign Literature Quarterly 《国外文学》 [ ] Franz Kafka’s Letters Ye Tingfang People’s Literature (1902–1924) [叶廷芳] Publishing House [人民文学出版社] Selected Short Stories of Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Foreign Literature Franz Kafka (first edition) Publishing House [外国文学出版社] The Trial Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Foreign Literature Publishing House [外国文学出版社] Selected Short Stories of Sun Kunrong [孙坤荣] Foreign Literature Franz Kafka (Second Publishing House edition) [外国文学出版社] The Metamorphosis Li Wenjun [李文俊] People’s Literature Publishing House [人民文学出版社] The Trial : Selected Stories Li Wenjun [李文俊] Cao Shanghai of Franz Kafka Yong [曹庸] Translation Publishing House [上海译文出版社] (continued)

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(continued) Year of Publication

Works

Editors/Translators

1987

Fables and Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

Zhang Boquan [张伯权]

1989

Kafka’s Quotes

1989

Letters to Milena

1990

Selected Letters and Diaries of Franz Kafka (the first edition)

1991

Kafka’s Letters on Literature

1991

Kafka Says to Me

1991

The Stories of Franz Kafka

1991

The Essays of Kafka (the first edition)

1991

The Man Who Disappeared

1992

The Essays of Kafka (the second edition)

1993

Collected Essays of Kafka (the first edition)

1993

Kafka’s Love Letters to Milena

1994

Kafka’s Letters, Aphorisms, and Conversations

1994

Selected Letters and Diaries of Franz Kafka (the second edition)

Journals/Publishers

Heilongjiang People’s Publishing House [黑龙江人民出版社] Ye Tingfang Foreign Literature [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] 《外国文学》 [ ] Ye Tingfang World Literature [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] 《世界文学》 [ ] Ye Tingfang Baihua Literature [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] and Art Publishing House [百花文艺出版社] Ye Tingfang An Hui Literature [叶廷芳] and Art Publishing House [安徽文艺出版社] Zhao Dengrong [赵登荣] Time Literature and Art Publishing House [时代文艺出版社] Zhang Boquan [张伯权] Universe Books [万 象图书] Dong Ni [冬妮] Lijiang Publishing Limited [漓江出版 社] Yang Tian [阳天] Ai Yu [ Lijiang Publishing 艾瑜] Limited [漓江出版 社] Dong Ni [冬妮] Lijiang Publishing Limited [漓江出版 社] Ye Tingfang Haitian Publishing [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] House [海天出版社] Ye Tingfang Haitian Publishing [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] House [海天出版社] Hong Tianfu [洪天富] Contemporary Foreign Literature 《当代外国文学》 [ ] Ye Tingfang Baihua Literature [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] and Art Publishing House [百花文艺出版社] (continued)

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Year of Publication

Works

Editors/Translators

1994

The Absurdist Stories of Franz Kafka

Yu Kuangfu [余匡复]

211

(continued)

1994

1994

1994

1995

1995

1995

1995

1995

1995

Journals/Publishers

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House [上海文艺出版社] The Trial Li Kuixian [李魁贤] Laureate Publications [桂冠 出版社] Selected Stories of Franz Li Wenjun [李文俊] People’s Literature Kafka Publishing House [人民文学出版社] The Metamorphosis Li Wenjun [李文俊] Lijiang Publishing Limited [漓江出版 社] Selected Essays of Franz Ye Tingfang Haitian Publishing Kafka (the second edition) [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] House [海天出版社] The Works of Kafka Xue Si [学思] Wuhan University Press [武汉大学出版 社] A Selection of Kafka’s Tang Yongkuan [汤永宽] Hebei Education Works Press [河北教育出版 社] The Castle; The Han Yaocheng [韩耀成] Zhe Jiang Literature Metamorphosis Li Wenjun [李文俊] and Art Publishing House [浙江文艺出版社] The Travel Log of Kafka Sun Longsheng [孙龙生] Huashan Literature and Art Publishing House [花山文艺出版社] Selected Novellas of Kafka Ye Tingfang Fiction World [叶廷芳] Li Qi [黎奇] 《小说界》 [ ]

It is easy to see that most of the major works of Kafka were translated from 1980 to 1995. However, there were not many translations of The Metamorphosis , the most significant being that of Li Wenjun. Although Li’s version was reprinted many times with some alternations, there existed only one version of the story besides Li’s during this 15-year period. In 1994, Li’s versions of The Metamorphosis and “A Report to an Academy” were published by Lijiang Publishing Limited, along with illustrations by the German artist Hermann Naumann. The first print in 1994 ran to 8000 copies, and the second in 1995 ran to 18,000 copies.

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In the translator’s preface, Li Wenjun wrote that “The Major Works of Alienation,” “both The Metamorphosis and ‘A Report to An Academy’ focus on the theme of metamorphosis. Thus, it makes sense to combine them together for one book to enhance our understanding of this special theme.”12 Li noted that he had “read his original translation carefully and made some minor changes.”13 Although he did not translate directly from German, Li still did an excellent job. In the 1990s, a series of “Fine Short Stories in the World” were published by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, including Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka, which was translated from Paul Raabe’s Kafka’s Short Stories. The first print of this version in June 1995 ran to 10,000 copies. The translator for The Metamorphosis in this version is Lu Zengrong [陆增荣], a professor of German in Xi’an Jiaotong University. That was the first translation directly from German. Lu Zengrong suggested: Kafka’s characters are generally lower-class, uneasy, troubled, lonely, and lost in a paradoxical and distorted world. They feel powerless, and that attempts at resistance are futile, when facing oppression, and thus find themselves at a loss as to how to proceed.… Reading Kafka will incite various feelings, understandings, associations in each reader, but it is our sincere hope that the readers will not get lost in the world that he describes.14

This comment sounds more objective and neutral than the previous ones. In summary, there are several reasons why Li Wenjun’s translation of The Metamorphosis was the main translation for 15 years. Firstly, Li’s version was good enough for both average readers and scholars. Secondly, there was a dearth of German language translators at that time. Thirdly, at that time, Ye Tingfang was recruiting many of the existing German language and literature scholars to translate other texts in a collection of

12 Li Wenjun, “Translator’s Preface”, The Metamorphosis , by Franz Kafka, trans. Li Wenjun (Guilin: Lijiang Publishing House, 1994), p. 1. 13 Li Wenjun, “Translator’s Preface”, The Metamorphosis , p. 7. 14 Lu Zengrong, “Translator’s Preface”, Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka, trans. Lu

Zengrong, Zhou Xinjian, etc. (Changsha: Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 1996), p. 10.

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Kafka’s complete works, so there was no time for him to translate another version of The Metamorphosis .

13.3 The Period of Ascension (1996–2006): The Complete Works and Multiple Versions In December 1996, The Complete Works of Franz Kafka (10 volumes, 8000 copies for the first print) were published by Hebei Education Press, thus marking “a great event in, and symbolizing the depth and maturity of, Kafka Studies in China.”15 The complete works promoted further introductions to, and translations of, The Metamorphosis . In the next ten years, 8 new versions were published. The Metamorphosis in The Complete Works was translated by Zhang Rongchang [张荣昌], professor of German at Peking University, and was based on The Complete Works of Kafka’s Stories published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1969. Zhang Rongchang’s translation kept some of the flavors of the German language, but it was also influenced by Li Wenjun’s translation. For example, there are only slight differences in the first paragraph: 一天早晨, 格里高尔·萨姆莎从不安的睡梦中醒来,发现自己躺在床上变成了 一只巨大的甲虫。 他仰卧着, 那坚硬得像铁甲一般的背贴着床, 他稍稍抬了 抬头, 便看见自己那穹顶似的棕色肚子分成了好多块弧形的硬片, 被子几乎 比起掿大的身躯来, 他那许多只腿真是细得 盖不住肚子尖, 都快滑下来了。 可怜, 都在他眼前无可奈何地舞动着。(Li Wenjun’s version) 一天早晨, 格里高尔·萨姆莎从不安的睡梦中醒来,发现自己躺在床上变成了 一只巨大的甲虫。 他仰卧着, 那坚硬得像铁甲一般的背贴着床, 他稍稍一抬 头, 便看见自己那穹顶似的棕色肚子分成了好多块弧形的硬片, 被子在肚 比起掿大的身躯来, 他那许多 子尖上几乎待不住, 眼看就要完全滑落下来。 只腿真是细得可怜, 都在他眼前无可奈何地舞动着。(Zhang Rongchang’s version)

However, Zhang Rongchang’s translation differs from that of Li Wenjun in many places. For example, in the last sentence of the story:

15 Zeng Yanbing, “Kafka in China: 1930–1980”, Chinese Literature Study, vol. 1, 2008, p. 119.

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仿佛要证实他们新的梦想和美好的打算似的, 在旅途终结时,他们的女儿第 一个跳起来,舒展了几下她那充满青春活力的身体。(Li Wenjun’s version) 当到达目的地时, 女儿第一个站起来并舒展她那富有青春魅力的身体 时, 他们觉得这犹如是对他们新的梦想和良好意愿的一种确认。 (Zhang Rongchang’s version)

The two versions also differ in terms of their sentence ordering, thus shifting the focus of the attention of their respective readers. Moreover, since Zhang’s version is more faithful to the German original, some of the literal translations rendered the text less smooth, as would be expected. Since the publication of The Complete Works of Franz Kafka, direct translation from the German original has become the major trend. Many German language scholars have attempted new translations. In 1997, The Selected Works of Kafka edited by Gao Niansheng [高年生] was published by The Writer’s Press. Xie Yingying translated The Metamorphosis in this collection, based on the revised edition of S. Fischer Verlag. Xie was a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University and a famous scholar of German literature in China. Exerting great influence, her translation of The Metamorphosis was selected into The Complete Works of Kafka (People’s Literature Publishing House, 2003) and The Selected Short Stories of Kafka (People’s Literature Publishing House, 2003). In 2003, another quality translation of The Metamorphosis from the German original by Zhao Dengrong [赵登荣] was published by Zhe Jiang Literature and Art Publishing House. Apart from the complete story, a simplified version of The Metamorphosis was also available during this period. In 1997, A Hundred Novels: Selected and Simplified was published jointly by Shen Yang Publishing House and China Society Press, among which The Metamorphosis and “Investigations of A Dog” were edited and simplified by Li Xiangyun [李湘云] based on Li Wenjun’s translation. This simplified version facilitated greater access for the general reader, but it also did some damage to the original. Similar practices can be found in The Pocket Book of World Literary Classics: The Metamorphosis , edited by Liu Ruopeng [刘若芃], published by Inner Mongolia People’s Publishing House in 2002. The publishing industry in China has embraced new developments since the beginning of the twenty-first century. World literary masterpieces enjoy popularity among various publishers, and The Metamorphosis is no exception. It has been selected into many book series, such as

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Yan Min [阎敏]’s translation in World Classics Book Series, published by Dazhong Literature and Art Publishing House in 2005; Piao Haiyu [朴海宇]’s translation in The Treasure House of World Cultural Classics, published by Inner Mongolia People’s Publishing House in 2005; Wang Hong [王宏] and Wang Cui [王翠]’s translation in The Book Series of World Literary Classics, published by Yangtze River Literature and Art Publishing House in 2006. These publications offered platforms for younger translators and enhanced the influence of The Metamorphosis in China.

13.4

The Period of Prosperity (2007–)

Kafka studies and translations in China have also become more diverse and of deeper sophistication. As Walter Benjamin noted, “The higher the level of a work, the more it remains translatable, even if its meaning is touched upon only fleetingly…For to some degree all great texts contain their potential translation between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings.”16 It is so true with Kafka’s works, as they contain numerous potential translations. In 2007, The Kafka Reader, edited by Ye Tingfang, was published by Beijing New World Press. The Metamorphosis in this book was translated by Ye himself. Ye claimed in 1994 that The Metamorphosis was the earliest of Kafka’s stories, which he could relate to strongly.17 However, he did not translate it until 2006 after a dozen other translations were published in China. His translation features many short sentences, thus mirroring Kafka’s own literary style. Ye also wrote a new introduction to the Kafka Reader and placed The Metamorphosis at the beginning of the contents, thus seeking to draw attention to the story. Since then, an increasing number of translations of the story have been completed:

16 Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, available at http://www.ricorso. net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm, accessed on October 6, 2019. 17 Ye Tingfang, “Journey to the World of Kafka”, p. 118.

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A List of Chinese translations of The Metamorphosis from 2007 to 2016 The year of publication

Translator

Publisher

1

2007

2

2008

Ye Tingfang [叶廷芳] Xu Xiangying [徐向英]

3

2009

Gao Zhancan [高詹灿]

4

2010

Jin Zhishang [金质尚]

5

2010

Ji Jianmei [姬健梅]

6

2012

Liu Rufei [柳如菲]

7

2013

Li Yu [李豫]

8

2013

Zhu Gengsheng [朱更生]

9

2014

Luo Bin [罗斌]

10

2014

Tong Yali [彤雅立]

11

2016

Li Shuzhao [李毓昭]

New World Press [新 世界出版社] China Book Publishing House [中国书籍出版社] ECUS Publishing House, Taiwai [台湾木 马文化事业有限公司] Inner Mongolia People’s Publishing House [内蒙古人民出版社] Rye Field Publishing Co. [台湾麦田出版社] Lixin Accounting Publishing House Co., Ltd. [立信会计出版社] Azoth Books [台湾漫 游者文化出版] Guangming Daily Publishing House [光明日报出版社] Anhui Normal University Press [安徽 师范大学出版社] Muses Publishing House [台湾缪思出版社] Morning Star Publishing House [台湾晨星出版社]

As the above table shows, there were many more new versions of The Metamorphosis in this period than in the previous period, and the translators and publishers were also more diverse. What is worthy of special attention is that The Metamorphosis published by China Book Publishing House was the first bilingual story in China. The translator attempted to escape the shadow of Li Wenjun’s translation by making drastic changes. In addition, translators in Taiwan have made a great contribution to the translation of The Metamorphosis .

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13.5 The Features of Chinese Translations of The Metamorphosis Chinese translations of The Metamorphosis show the following features: First, the translators are more diverse. As in the case of Kafka studies in China as such, the translations and introductions of The Metamorphosis started late but developed quickly. There soon appeared a great team of translators, including the famous translator of English literature, Li Wenjun; translators and scholars of German literature such as Ye Tingfang, Zhang Rongchang, Zhao Dengrong, Xie Yingying; and other university teachers and even average readers. In addition, translators in Taiwan also contributed greatly. The diversity of the translators reflects the openness of the text. Moreover, some scholars combined the translation and studies of The Metamorphosis , publishing many academic papers following their translations. Second, different translations keep the same title but differ in their details. The translation of the title often tells the theme of the original text and the understanding of the translator. Many translations of Kafka’s stories have different titles. For example, “A Hunger Artist” was translated as “绝食的艺术家” by Shi Ming [石明]; “饥饿艺术家” by Ye Tingfang; “绝食表演者” by Jiang Aihong [姜爱红]. In contrast, 23 translations all turned the title into “变形记” with one exception which was “蜕变” by Jin Mingrou [金溟若]. However, despite the uniform translation of the title, various versions articulated the first sentence differently, depending upon the different views of the translators toward the protagonist Gregor: 1. 一天早晨, 格里高尔●萨姆沙从不安的睡梦中醒来, 发现自己躺在 床上变成了一只巨大的甲虫。(translated by Li Wenjun [李文俊]) 2. 早上, 戈勒各尔●萨摩扎从朦胧的梦中醒来, 发现自己躺在床上, 变 成了大毒虫。(translated by Jin Mingrou [金溟若]) 3. 当格里高●萨姆沙从烦躁不安的梦中醒来时, 发现他在床上变成了 一个巨大的跳蚤。(translated by Lu Zeng Rong [陆增荣]) 4. 一天早晨, 格里高尔●萨姆沙从不安的睡梦中醒来, 发现自己躺在 床上变成了一只巨大的甲虫。(translated by Zhang Rongchang [张 荣昌]) 5. 一天清晨, 格雷戈尔●萨姆沙从一串不安的梦中醒来时, 发现自己 在床上变成了一只硕大的虫子。(translated by Xie Yingying [谢莹 莹])

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6. 这天早晨, 当格雷戈尔●萨姆扎从噩梦中醒来, 发现自己躺在床上 的身子变成了一只可怕的虫子。(translated by Piao Haiyu [朴海 宇]) 7. 一天早晨, 格里高尔●萨姆沙从不安的梦中醒来, 发现自己竟变成 了一只巨大的甲壳虫。(translated by Wang Hong [王宏], Wang Cui [王翠]) 8. 一天清晨, 当格里高尔●萨姆沙从烦躁不安的 睡梦中醒来, 发现自己在床上变成了一只大的 吓人的甲壳虫。 (translated by Ye Tingfang [叶廷芳]) 9. 一天早晨, 当格列高●桑沙从不安的睡梦中醒来时, 他发现自己 变成了一条巨大的甲虫, 肚皮朝上躺在床上。 (translated by Xu Xiangying [徐向英]) 10. 格里高尔●萨姆沙做了一连串的噩梦, 等早上清醒过来的时候, 他 发觉自己已经变成了一只巨大的虫子, 正在床上躺着。 (translated by Liu Rufei [柳如菲]) 11. 当格里高●萨姆沙从烦躁不安的梦中醒过来的时候, 他猛然间发现 他已经在床上变成了一个巨大无比的跳蚤。(translated by Luo Bin [罗斌]) In the English translation of The Metamorphosis by Willa and Edwin Muir, the first sentence is as follows: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”18 In another English version by John Williams, the first sentence is, “One morning Gregor Samsa woke in his bed from uneasy dreams and found he had turned into a huge verminous insect.” Here, the original German of “insect” is “Ungeziefer,” which the Austrian Kafka scholar Walter H. Sokel translates as vermin. The term “vermin” holds the key to the double aspect of the metamorphosis. Vermin connotes something parasitic and aggressive, something that lives off human beings and may suck their blood; on the other hand, it connotes something defenseless, something that can be stepped upon and

18 Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), ebook, p. 141.

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crushed.19 So, what was Gregor turned into? A beetle, vermin, insect or flea? There is still room for discussion and further research. Third, there is a diverse range of ways in which the translated versions can be utilized. Initially, used as a “negative textbook” for criticism, the Chinese version was later studied by scholars as a sample work of modernist literature. In the 1980s, The Metamorphosis was selected in high school Chinese textbooks, such as the one published by the People’s Education Press, the Chinese textbooks used in the greater Shanghai area and Canton Province. As a result, Chinese high school students can acquire basic knowledge and understanding of Kafka and his works, thus rendering them better known to the broader populace. In addition, The Metamorphosis has also been adapted into a piece of Peking opera by the famous Taiwanese director Wu Xingguo [吴兴国] (staged in Taiwan Contemporary Legend Theater in 2013). Wu Xingguo played seven roles all by himself, ranging from the father, mother, sister, lover, bug, Kafka, and himself. The play localized The Metamorphosis in a Chinese text through a perfect combination of the plot and the form of the Peking opera. However, there still exist some flaws in the translations and introductions of The Metamorphosis in China. The translations vary in quality and some are awful. Perhaps the quasi-canonization of the early translations has left new translators feeling “the anxiety of influence” and thus unwilling to engage in bold innovations. Nearly 101 years have passed since The Metamorphosis was published and entered the canon of Western and world literature. Any fans or scholars of Kafka would not miss The Metamorphosis for the world in their readings and studies. Since Li Wenjun’s version, there have been fifty years of effort devoted to further translations and studies. A diversification in approaches to interpretation, partly reflecting variations in the translations, has also contributed to the popularity of this story in China. However, of course, as Benjamin notes in “The Task of The Translator”: It is plausible that no translation, however good it may be, can have significance as regards the original. Yet, by virtue of its translatability original is closely connected with the translation…Translations that more than transmissions of subject matter come into being when in

any the are the

19 Walter H. Sokel, “Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’: Rebellion and Punishment”, Monatshefte, vol. 48, no. 4 (April–May, 1956), pp. 203–14.

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course of its survival a work has reached the age of its fame. Contrary, therefore, to the claims of bad translators, such translations do not so much serve the work as owe their existence to it. The life of the originals attains in them to its ever-renewed latest and most abundant flowering.20

Consequently, it is our conviction that excellent Chinese translations have not simply prolonged the life of Kafka’s works in China but also enabled Chinese Kafka studies and appreciation of flower.

20 Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, available at http://www.ricorso. net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm, accessed on October 6, 2019.

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Name Index

B Bai Juyi, 53 Barthes, Roland, 78, 85, 132 Bauer, Felice, 24, 175, 181 Benjamin, Walter, 32, 37, 95, 117, 118, 120, 203, 215, 219, 220 Borges, Jorge Luis, 62 Brod, Max, 1–3, 8, 30, 37, 41, 42, 54, 58, 96, 97, 103, 118, 126, 127, 134, 136, 144, 145, 157, 159, 172, 173, 175, 177, 183, 184, 188, 191 Buber, Martin, 5, 28, 31, 32, 97, 101, 112–115, 117, 120, 124 C Canetti, Elias, 35, 95, 111 Can Xue, 3, 166–169, 178, 179, 191–193 D De Man, Paul, 120, 121 Dickens, Charles, 145 Du Fu, 29, 36, 57, 85

E Einstein, Albert, 11 Engels, Friedrich, 86

F Flores, Angel, 11 Freud, Sigmund, 145, 146, 167, 200

G Ge Fei, 140, 141, 165, 166, 174, 175, 179, 192 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1, 7, 8, 18, 19, 30, 128, 148, 149, 179

H Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 14, 16, 17, 20–22, 63, 66, 92, 100 Heilmann, Hans, 5, 16, 29, 36, 45, 46, 51, 53, 63, 84, 85 Heine, Heinrich, 67 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 16–18, 63 Hofmannsthal, Hugo Von, 29, 112

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J Janouch, Gustav, 5, 9, 10, 30–32, 96, 105, 126, 182 Jesenská, Milena, 24, 28, 103 Jiang Zidan, 164, 165, 179 K Kafka, Ottla, 112 Kant, Immanuel, 14, 16 L Laozi, 4, 6, 23, 31, 32, 39, 40, 45, 95–100, 109, 126 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 14–16 Li Bai, 29, 51, 52, 57, 84, 85 Liu Suola, 179 Lu Xun, 40, 122, 132, 139–153, 165, 198–200, 206 M Marx, Karl, 6, 16–18, 83, 134 Ma Yuan, 179 Mendoza, Juan Gonzalez de, 65 Mo Yan, 161, 163, 179 N Nietzsche, Friedrich, 23, 24, 153 O Oates, Joyce Carol, 1, 4, 35, 39, 40, 95, 96 P Pi Pi, 161 Polo, Marco, 14, 64, 65 Pu Songling, 112–117, 119–123

Q Qian Zhongshu, 35, 36, 111, 112, 126–137, 193, 199 S Said, Edward, 5, 62, 90, 91 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 16, 17, 22, 23 Schiller, Friedrich, 20 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 127 V Voltaire, 66, 67 W Wagenbach, Klaus, 3, 29, 52, 191 Whitlark, James, 62, 88, 89, 95 Wilhelm, Richard, 5, 6, 24, 112 X Xu Xing, 156, 179 Y Yang Jiang, 126, 128, 131, 134, 136 Ye Tingfang, 2, 3, 6, 30, 40, 148, 188–194, 196, 197, 208–212, 215–218 Yuan Mei, 5, 25, 26, 46, 52, 184 Yu Hua, 156, 161–163, 179, 192 Z Zeno, 39 Zhang Ji, 69 Zhuangzi, 6, 31, 32, 39, 40, 95, 96, 98–109, 126, 128 Zong Pu, 163, 164, 179

Story Index

A “A Country Doctor”, 79, 113, 155, 161, 162, 165, 168, 188, 189, 204, 208, 209 “A Dream”, 141, 142, 144, 153 Amerika, 2, 33, 37, 85, 116, 168, 185, 193, 197, 209 “An Imperial Message”, 6, 22, 33–35, 79 “An Old Manuscript”, 6, 23, 33, 81–83, 85, 209 “A Report to an Academy”, 33, 36, 111, 155, 168, 209, 211, 212

164, 167, 168, 187, 189, 193, 195, 196, 199, 208, 211 The Castle of The Soul: Understanding Kafka, 3, 167, 168, 191, 193

D “Description of a Battle”, 206 Discourses on the Art of Literature, 128, 129

F Fortress Besieged, 125–127, 129–134, 136, 137, 193, 199

B “Before the Law”, 22, 23, 38, 39, 97, 100, 155, 174, 175, 189, 208 The Book of Songs , 29 “The Burrow”, 111, 169, 189, 197, 206, 209

G “The Great Wall of China” , 6, 20, 33, 34, 61, 62, 66, 70, 72, 81, 82, 85, 168, 187, 189, 208, 209

C The Castle, 2, 24, 28, 33, 39, 40, 62, 116, 118, 124–135, 137, 163,

H “The Hunger Artist”, 134, 189, 204, 208, 217

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STORY INDEX

J “The Judgment”, 116, 204, 208

P “Penal Colony”, 34, 161, 208

L Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters , 35, 36, 111, 112, 127, 128, 130, 133

S “The Silence of the Sirens”, 197 Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, 5, 29, 35, 112–114, 116, 117, 119–123

M The Metamorphosis , 24, 33, 35, 101, 105, 109, 111, 116, 118, 119, 123, 155, 164, 167, 173, 176, 177, 188, 195, 198–201, 203–207, 209, 211–219

T “Tombstone Inscriptions”, 141–144, 146–149, 151–153 The Trial , 2, 33, 38, 97, 116, 144, 155, 168, 188, 189, 195, 196, 203–205, 209, 211

Subject Index

A Alienation, 36, 42, 101–103, 105, 109, 116, 118, 121–124, 164, 195, 198, 199, 206 Allegory, 40, 75, 87, 89, 101, 102, 115, 117–121, 123, 129, 133, 164, 185–187, 192, 196 The Austro-Hungarian Empire, 6, 7, 11, 74, 85, 86, 89, 102, 115, 118, 140, 156 B Babel, 73, 76, 95 Belonging, 38, 97 Bosom friends, 155 Buddhism, 40, 51, 127 C Chinese Fever, 8 Christianity, 64, 100 Comedy, 196 E The Edge of Life, 199

Existentialism, 173, 183, 187, 200, 207 Expressionism, 194

F Faust, 114, 128, 134, 148, 149

G German culture, 13 Goblet words, 105–109 The Great Wall, 20, 61–63, 65–71, 73, 75–78, 88, 95, 97 Grotesque, 92, 96, 104, 109, 121, 122, 147, 153, 192

K Kafkaesque, 40, 128, 164, 174, 182, 186, 193, 195–197, 201

L Law, 15, 17, 22, 38, 39, 74, 96, 97, 100, 109, 140, 147, 174, 175

© Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd 2022 Y. Zeng, Franz Kafka and Chinese Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2604-4

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SUBJECT INDEX

Liqu, 128, 129, 132, 133, 137, 199 Lishi, 128, 129, 132, 133, 137 Loneliness, 101, 103, 113–117, 119, 123, 135, 144, 158, 159, 163, 167, 168, 197, 201 Lonely indignation, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120

P Paradox, 38, 39, 42, 47, 55, 75, 97, 100, 109, 114, 121, 123, 126, 146–148, 160, 173–175, 192, 212 Poeticization, 121, 122 Post structuralism, 78

M Mass culture, 176, 180–182 Metaphor, 17, 40, 56, 82, 104, 109, 117, 119–121, 123, 129–131, 151, 153, 162, 186, 192, 196 The Middle of Life, 134

R Realism, 132, 167, 183, 184, 189, 194

N Narratology, 195, 201 Nomads, 23, 67, 68, 70, 75, 81, 82, 85, 87–89, 92, 93

O Oriental, 21, 33, 35, 48, 49, 70, 91 Orientalism, 90, 91 Other, 16, 25, 82, 91, 191, 195, 200

T Tao, 22, 23, 35, 38–40, 96–100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108 Taoism, 4, 22, 31, 35, 40, 50, 95, 96, 127 Text, 31, 42, 62, 63, 65, 82, 90–93, 95, 118, 120, 132, 151, 173, 178, 201, 204, 207, 212, 214, 215, 217, 219 Theory of Chaos, 196 Tragedy, 122, 136, 137, 148, 159, 192, 196, 198, 207 Transcultural, 75, 78, 89