A Contrastive Study of Kafka and Beckett
Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett. A Contrastive Study of Sheir Short-Prose Writings
1. The Literary Heritage of Samuel Beckett’s and Franz Kafka’s short-prose writings
When confronted with the task to compare two major writers that lived and created in two different periods if not two different literary epochs, one can not stop pondering upon the most essential and overwhelming features encountered all throughout their literary work.
Thus, one can easily distinguish these by referring to poststructuralist approaches to Beckett’s literary work:
Thus, one can easily distinguish these by referring to poststructuralist approaches to Beckett’s literary work:
"What is different about Beckett is not that he provokes a critical response ...but the protean, open ended , ‘undecidable’ and inexhaustible quality of the challenge he offers. In this, it seems to us, he is the poet of the poststructuralist age. Not that he was not the poet of other ages too for he was-Beckett as the quintessential nouveau romancier, Beckett the Cartesian, Beckett the Existentialist, these have rubbed shoulders with Beckett the nihilist, Beckett the mystic and Beckett the explorer of the limitations of language. But, recuperating all of these and moving without apparent strain into new realms, deconstructionist “avant la lettre”, there is a new Beckett, thinkable only in the most recent terms, rethinkable now, as doubtless, also in the future. "(Butler and Davis, IX)
Thus, one can easily distinguish these by referring to early poststructuralist approaches to Beckett’s literary work. Kirstin Morrison emphasized the fact that it was with Beckett that the narrative played a different role as with Kafka, although he admitted the tremendous influence of the latter. More exactly this role was of evading the world within the dramatic writing.The conventions of narrative allow the disguising of painful emotional issues. The use of the “Magna Mater” myth becomes a main feature of his workings. Beckett succeeded nevertheless in overcoming the crisis up to 1959 when he published “Pim” which came to be the first version of “How It Is”.Enclosed figures are described in a language that veers between agonized objectivity and mathematical rigor. The published works were a result of a rigorous process of rewriting and compression.The style that Beckett first adopted was inconsistent. He juxtaposed the most learned references with colloquial prose. Nevertheless, his earliest prose causes a rather tiring effect on the causal reader. References are nailed on the phrases and sentences that are already fully formed. However beneath the rather overworked surface of the prose, one can already see the young author developing those concerns that will later on come to be thought of as typically Beckettian.The prose of “Assumption” is considered to be pretentious but not overburdened with knowledge. Placed on the periphery of human life, reduced to nondescript identities, these subhuman creatures represent the evolution of mankind, from the age to the mystery of its future condition. In his French works Beckett no longer satirizes as he did in his English fiction, the mediocrity of certain types of people of certain social institutions instead he confronts the reader with the crude image of being-the image of a creature stripped of all human attributes, who while crawling naked like a worm in the mud, reveals the secret of the creative process as well as the agony of the process of life, whether real or fictitious. Federmann regarded “How It Is” as an exercise in an almost completely disintegrated text, the moment when Beckett reached the endpoint. In “More Pricks than Kicks” he traced the gradual removal of the hero from the real world. The key themes were pinpointed as such: “…….Human loneliness, physical disintegration mental alienation, intellectual fiasco, creative failure, and above all the unavoidable dualism of mind and body, reality and fiction….” (Federmann 1965: 57).Thus, these remained recurrent themes up to the mid-1960.2.
2.The literary reception of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett in Romania
The main task that this work embarks upon is to catch a glimpse at the extent to which both writers were recepted in translations, reviews and critical approaches in Romania.
2.1. The reasons for the choice of the thematic literary field reflected as a system of commonalities and differences
The choice of the thematic field came with the awareness that the interest of the researcher today eventually turned towards the literary reception. The most appealing issue is the intercultural exchange and the direct impact that was produced during the literary reception of the short-prose writings in Romania. The short-prose workings were given little attention by the Romanian readers as it could be noticed in the little amount of reviews concerned with the translated body of work of Samuel Beckett Franz Kafka in Romania. Nevertheless, Franz Kafka remains the most representative writer of Romanian literary reception. The amount of his work was offered a considerable interest. Given the fact that his work was received with much interest and enthusiasm, we could conclude that he is included in the group of the most widely read Jewish writers in Romania. His most well known “Metamorphosis” caused a long-lasting literary eco and trace in the receptive sphere across Romania. This fact constituted a new challenge for literary critique i.e. a closer look and insight at his literary impact in Romania. Thus, a relation of the Romanian reader with the work was developed which should expand further on and reveal new dimensions of the writers’ artistic credo.The theory of reception went through a major development so that several conclusions could be reached. Nevertheless it first became obvious that the reception of the public was reduced to the aesthetic and ideological dimension whereas the information content remained scarce, and pointed thus at a contested difficulty.Therefore one must take into consideration both the history of the text and that of the public. The history of literature confronted itself with the way and literary technique of literary creation i.e. with “mimesis” and several style typologies that lead to the creation of the literary master piece. The reversed effect especially the impact that literature had on society was less explored.[1]That romanticism had a relevant effect on the manner of perceiving the landscape and several other feelings related to it is today certain.Hence, secondly it becomes the main task of this work to research to what an extent the tragic, the humorous and the idyllic and fantastical influenced the literary cultural society in Romania from the aesthetic and cultural point of view.The authentic media that serve to the establishment of the extent to which the thinking and the lifestyle of Kafka’s and Beckett’s short prose influenced the Romanian cultural milieu are disposed of by the literary sociology.
The third point of the questioning is the request of today’s time to find solutions and answers to the expectations of the readers to certain literary masterpieces.The horizon of expectation develops within the framework of a literary history. The aim of the research will be to determine the extent to which the explored literary workings prove to be informative sources, more exactly how the virtually implied reader encounters reflections of himself. This should be detected in the construction style, the rhetoric and the constellation of motives out of the cultural expectation; more exactly the entire communicative strategy of the working in which the public thought is reflected as an impact and intention possibility.During the examination we proceeded to crisscross text and public and to keep a sharp eye on the reception biased literary workings. The most often translated were stressed and at certain text spots certain particularities were detected i.e. scant degrees of the overlapping and equivalence in a particular context of reception.The public efficiency is not a constant constituent of the literary working. Thus, there are public oriented intentions of the author (encouraging or entertaining) and public indifferent writings.
Many of Beckett’s writings embrace this quality. Therefore, one can split the impact into two categories: the public embracing (considering the necessities of the reader) or public provoking (while neglecting the impact).Kafka was known as the writer of the “nothingness” among other well known writers as: Camus (the absurd), Jean Paul Sartre (the nothingness), Jaspers (the disgust), Kierkegaard (the desperation), Heidegger (existence). Apart from the above mentioned there was the original interweave between the real and fantastic that marked its influence on Franz Kafka’s short-prose. Samuel Beckett on the other hand was less well known to our cultural milieu and it was soon obvious that he became well known mostly for his most well known plays. However, beside “Waiting for Godot” it was the novel “How It Is” too that brought him world wide recognition and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969. While Beckett’s writing is rich in images, Kafka’s enhances a rather imageless language that is rendered by an unconventional style, known as the style of the eternal “mirroring”. While Beckett states that the fear in Kafka’s work is only in the form the fear that resounds from his material is real. However they both share a similar aesthetic dimension that can be encountered all throughout their short prose writings.[2]
2. 2. Narrative perspectives
While the narrative technique of the Kafkaesque style generally resides in the usage of the first person narrative, the narrative technique of Samuel Beckett consists in the usage of the third person narrative (omniscient point of view) with few exceptions. The first person is present in “Fizzle 5” and ”Texts for Nothing 8” and respectively the second person in “Heard in the Dark 1” Kafka’s language is clear and colorful. There is no conflict but rather a waiting in Beckett’s short –prose writing. There is no dramatic plot but everything takes place rather around a process of erosion caused by the same type of movement. Hence the impression of the irreducible, most often without an increase of rhythm and intensity emerges.The characters share certain characteristics and features. Thus, the Kafka character is present all along and the relating thread to the other character’s perspective is rendered by his confessions or by another tertiary.
The female characters of Beckett’s short prose writing were rendered differently from Kafka’s vision and images that corresponded to his view of women.[3]Kafka had a so to speak bleaker view on women. He regarded women as frail and weak but he could in the end mainatain a stable relationship of 6 months with Dora Diamant.
With Beckett it is almost the same development that the reader meets although in the latest short- prose writings the concrete reference to a main character is missing. The rhythm remains a law that needs to be elucidated.Kafka’s work possesses an impressive homogeneousness and clarity in spite of its antinomies. Thus, by referring to the absurdity in Beckett’s writing we are obliged to take into account its more general circularities. Some kind of a centrifugal force projects the characters ceaselessly all the time to the brink of the sphere of the absurd, possessing the tendency to proceed beyond its limits. Compared to the characters encountered throughout Beckett’s prose, characters like Joseph K., the measurer or Karl Rossmann in the “Stoker” impose through their offensive spirit.
It is not the judges that pursue Joseph K. but Joseph K., who pursues them, expressing on first encounter despise and mistrust in their laws. The castle rejects Joseph K. whom it hired but K proceeds in getting to the castle and when he experiences a first contact with its feared representatives, he intimidates them by his refusal to succumb to their bizarre hierarchy. Young Rossmann struggles with anxiety and ingenuity in order to find the way to a wonderful America, a symbol of a new world and he is firmly decided upon finding it no matter the cost.In Beckett’s prose the failure of the characters is prior to the first presentation while in the castle and America we do not see the failure or its relentlessness.Human condition dominates the people almost to the point of crushing them; in the short-prose-and especially in America-it is the characters that try to determine their own condition. This is nevertheless not only an unaccomplished impulse but a tireless impulse, whose presence, no matter how shabby it is, modifies the sense of human existence. Kafka’s prose is profoundly philosophical not only by its implications, but also through some structural particularities. In order to adapt to the absurd situation, or to get out of it or even to modify it the heroes carry on a simple, ingenious, sparkling thinking. The virtues are characteristic not only of human heroes, but animal heroes, too: bugs, monkeys, dogs, mice, moles, jackals etc. Some 100 pages of his creation describe nothing else than the feverish race of a critical mind, capable of construing the most unexpected hypothesis, to refute them and to continue this tantalizing agony all over again. On the other hand we have the hostility towards “discursive writing”.
The prose of Samuel Beckett tries to explain irrationality by logic rationalism. Hence, as the search of the characters is given up beforehand the rationality becomes impossible.The concept of search launches the Kafkaesque creation-it gives it at the same time an impulse and a clear argument, sends a vital tonus, his main philosophical structural and even literary stylistic cause being exactly the special role of the active rationality in the make up of the artistic image.The irrationality of man becomes the irrationality of mankind. In this aspect there are more differences than similarities. To a certain extent and shape, the idea about the sterility of rationality can be encountered at both writers of the absurd. With the first it results form the inefficient usage of rationality-with Beckett’s writing through its abandonment.With the first writer the contrast between the inefficacy of rationalism and the ingenuity is the source of various powerful and original artistic effects, which seem to lack in the latter case. Therefore Kafka’s short-prose writing might be considered “sui generis” in itself.
The irrepressible resort to rationalizing in the creation of the Prague writer implies the following: 1.) The idea about man’s impossibility to exist without rationalizing, although this activity is useless;2.) The “defacto” maintaining of the faith that human reaction to the inhuman condition starts with the act of thinking.In the case of Beckett’s prose the refusal of rationalizing implies an relevant key features: the confusion between the suffering of man as a sensation and the conscience of this suffering with the implication that the abandonment of rationality can facilitate the avoidance of error.The Kafkaian character revolves around the margin of rationality with the intention of enlarging its limits; the Beckettian characters do the same, but with the intention of escaping these limits. Kafka wants to make use of the instrument that Beckett sometimes wants to destroy. The request of knowledge gaining takes place by rejecting with consequence its main means: rationality, language. The conceptual system of thought is replaced by an imagistic thinking whose object is not spiritual life anymore, but the sub-spiritual one. The subtlety is transformed into feeble instability. The nonsense is a plague of the world but this is not so much the case of Samuel Beckett’s early short-prose.
Hence, the differences are as follows: with the first the nonsense does not exclude a certain conformism, whereas with the second the latter is excluded. In the case of Kafka there is a certain discrepancy between the imposed norm and the behavior towards it, although this behavior is restricted to the rejection of that particular norm. However the latter is expressed by a complete refusal.With the others the corollary of behaviour is as that of the reply-non sequitur causing thus the propensity towards an absolute independence of the action, towards the conjuncture of the word with the action.One of the most valuable dimensions of the Kafkaesque vision that we rediscover with Beckett’s prose is the primordial rejection of conformism, cliché, inertia and encysted thinking that is transformed into a mechanical process. Kafka rejects this horrible evidence disguised underneath the appearance of authentic rationalism, in the name of authentic rationalism. In Beckett’s prose false rationalism is confounded with rationalism, thus he rejects them both with the same hostility.The writers and theoreticians of the absurd use a great deal of arguments to prove the possibility of an art that by abandoning the traditional logics wants to impose a “poetic logics”. In reality a car that reverses does not need the same amount of energy as a car that advances.
The usage of the method of absurd reduction in geometry is not less logical and rational than common demonstration. The ambition of the author is to dominate the world to such an extent that he can notice its absurdity. To be able to observe that in a finite image demands a considerable amount of profound thought. This kind of thinking remains nevertheless in the lab of the author who does not give anything up of it. The creation of irrational images demands this huge amount of thinking.Therefore the literary critic Martin Esslin’s opinion is contested by the Romanian critic Pavel Campeanu in whose opinion the promoters of the “theatre of the absurd” demonstrate what the rationalism considers as being “inappropriate”. Thus the abandoning becomes thus eventually relentless. The dynamic thinking takes place on the part of the writer. The heroes abandon any dynamism and have to confront an absurd situation. In Kafka’s short-prose the most frequent means of expression are the parable and the myth.This is a new kind of catharsis that partially has to explain the sense of the absurd. This was something very similar that Freud would meditate upon: the pleasure of nonsense having its roots in the feeling of freedom, we get rid of the critical rationalizing thinking. The condition of the world thinking domination becomes a common characteristic of both Kafka’s and Beckett’s prose writing.However the forms of the short-prose writings present different characteristics:Another significant particularity that is common to both artistic visions is the tragic-comic feature. The exegesis of the work of the Prague writer trying to define the innovating myths of his art becomes utterly relevant. In Max Brod’s view “America” is even a parable with a religious substratum.These could be viewed as an enrichment of the means of expression.The writers and theoreticians of the literature of the “absurd” and of the avanguarde insisted strongly upon the dreamlike inspiration. The dreamlike formula with its ambiguity, from the artistic point of view to a certain extent fertile, determining the mixture between real and fantastic is common both to Beckett and Kafka.
This is nevertheless a rather old means of expression. It is true that this means gaining a particular and rather impressive reverberation.The combination of some old procedures can result in new effects. It is the tragic comic that pertains to Kafka’s originality and to the way these old techniques are subjected to a personal artistic vision.This shift from the tragic to comic brings Kafka nearer to writers such as Brecht, Dürrenmatt, Frisch. Some researchers consider Karl Rossman a predecessor of Chaplin. With Beckett it is Buster Keaton that the characters are associated with.Mankind never was that near to the most terrible real or potential cataclysms, it was never that advanced on the way towards the transformation and conscious of its own condition. Beckett’s characters rely on the source of their error. With Kafka it is objective, the error resides within the hero and with Beckett it is subjective, the characters inheriting an inhuman guilt. Hence, it is the inability of the hero to adapt to the situation that leads to its destruction and therefore it is this absurd reality that tends to crush the main character. Though the character renders the whole absurd situation a great deal of thought, the data offered by the latter makes his thinking inefficient. Thus, we encounter with him and many contemporary writers a kind of hypertrophy of the place that the artistic thinking occupies in the creation that is doubled by an influence of the active part, by a need to control their feelings that sometimes lapse toward scarcity, dryness, and even aridity.The comic attitude towards a tragic condition represents the sole possibility to gain distance in relation to this condition. The tragic-comic vision denies a reality over which he does not possess the power to change. In the artistic transposition of this vision Kafka is the only one that discovered the unshakable power of an alienation that lacks any grandeur. In this sense it is the short-prose writing “Metamorphosis” that stands as a solid proof.The great metaphysic objects are immediately expressed by the relating to the facts and objects of the most common every day life. These mediating factors amplify to the point of paroxysm the emotional tension of the image. It seems obvious that to this extent Beckett owes much of his ideas to Kafka. But the differences are shaking and substantial. The degree of reflexivity and the direct impact with the writing remain overwhelming when reading Franz Kafka’s short prose. Though vague and fustigating, Karl Rossmann hopes to break the gates of iron of the absurd world. This kind of hope is actually the fundamental theme of America. His searches do not lead to a solution but the perseverance of its continuous repetition remains. Beckett the author does not search for anything anymore. From the character’s vision it is this kind of hope that misses. Thus, the positive contribution to prevent the absurdity of an absurd world transforms into its contrary just as truth turns into an error by the attempt to change it. The world is absurd but it is not merely that. It is the more original features that are not absurd, than the rational ones. The tight character of personal experience as well as the class experience hinders the access to the readers to other zones of contemporary reality. Their fault consists in the fact that they use the virtue of globalization upon a partially valid image of the world.His artistic vision is more profound and more encompassing with all its limits. The musical dimension is not to be overlooked.The elements of affiliation exist. They are composed of isolated segments. Secondary impulses in Kafka become force lines with Beckett. That is why in Kafka’s creation humanism imposes above all uncertainties and hesitations as while with Beckett an intuitive value excels in proving the scale of inhumanity.Jaqueline Hoefer’s essay on “Watt” detected in Watt’s linguistic strategies a common root with Wittgensteins “Tractus Logico Philosophicus” which stressed out the limits of the logical analysis.
The final comment “whereof one can not speak thereof one must remain silent’ apparently resembled Watt’s situation in Knott’s house. This uncontainable situation presented itself as a real challenge. Ruby Cohn examined Beckett’s language, tracing its development from the early development to the late short prose pieces. The analysis presents strong similarities with Brian Finney’s of the shorter fiction. Therefore the novel”How It Is” was regarded as a set of ‘lyrics’ short poetic evocations of nothingness. Antony Radice stresses the novels “Molloy”, “Malone dies” and the short story the “Calmative”and “Stories and Texts for Nothing” which were inspired by the writing of Kafka.Thus, although “How It Is” is more Kafkaesque in its poetics, it presents certain differences of style:One buttock two big the other twice too small unless an optical illusion here where you shit it’s the mud that wipes I havn’t touched them for an eternity in other words the ratio four to one I always looked arithmetic it has paid me in full. (Beckett. How It Is, 37)Therefore the nihilistic view is different, considering the year of the novel’s publishing (1963) and the fact that it was translated from French into English. The fragmentation of the paragraphs stands for the process of writing.The comparison with Kafka’s “Burrow” renders the difference in style and taxonomy of writing:
"Aber in Freien bin ich eigentlich nicht, zwar drücke ich mich nicht mehr durch die Gänge, sondern jage in offenen Wald, fühle in meinem Körper neue Kräfte, für die im Bau gewissermaßen kein Raum ist, nicht einmal auf dem Burgplatz und wäre er zehn mal größer."(Kafka, 57)[4]
3.Main Differences revealed at a close reading
Although both writers render few images of women, the portrait of women is very differently crayoned. Beckett gives very vague descriptions of women and the images differ across the two periods of his creation:Never the two gazes together except once when the beginning of one overlapped the end of the other, for about ten seconds. Neither fat nor thin, big nor small, the bodies seem whole and in fairly good condition, to judge by the surface exposed to view. The faces too assuming the two sides of a piece, seem to want nothing essential.
Between their absolute stillness and the convulsive light the contrast is striking, in the beginning, for one who still remembers being struck by the contrary. (Gontarsky, 184) The character of totality and wholeness of the artistic expression in Benedetto Croce’ sense applies to Kafka’s work too. An equivocal doctrine as the open piece of writing that is fragmented and disparaged emerges. With Kafka it is the endless mirror reflection of a core issue while with Becket the circular modulation overspread with allusions and half symbolic images that create picturesque landscapes that render his creation a stern original character.The absurdity in Kafka’s short-prose writing marks its way unobserved and is only to be observed in the most common facts of everyday existence. The thread articulation that binds an already known reality with the imagined absurdity is very fine and flexible. That is precisely why the barrier between the absurd and the rational is so fluid and therefore the invented stories question the real ones, even those that are largely accepted. On the contrary, it is in the work of the Irish writer that the fantastic dimension is clear, enormous fiction being completely separated from reality. In the most frequent cases the absurdity in Beckett’s short prose detects the absurd situation man finds himself in and limits to express it while using symbolic images. Kafka’s hero that experiences to the verge of exhaustion the transformation of the discrete absurd laws into brutal ones is doing all human possible to reinstall justice in the world. He dreams about regaining a more real and breathable air. It is true that this impulse remains a wishful desideratum the way towards rationality remaining unknown. But this simple desideratum is even tougher than reality, desperation it keeps itself in spite of the failures that put an end to the tendencies of achieving that specific desideratum.
Although eventually inefficient the striving towards rationality and justice separates strictly the vision about Kafka’s world from the world of the absurd.This essential category is the most easy to be noticed by comparing the dimension of the two categories of characters. It is both in the prose of the Prague writer and of the Irish we deal with tortured characters by a hostile world. These characters manifest a scaring capacity of adaptation to the most inhuman conditions of existence as they are limited by their impotence to sustain an imaginative dimension wholly separate from their own sad circumstances. Thus, a sterile struggle in the rigorous sphere of the captivity emerges.
4. Conclusion
Whereas Becket’s work reveals itself as a body of work pierced by “pregnant“ lines half symbols and cryptic allusions, Kafka’s short-prose writing impresses as a work of art of a intuitive and visionary critic of the modern age.
2.The literary reception of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett in Romania
The main task that this work embarks upon is to catch a glimpse at the extent to which both writers were recepted in translations, reviews and critical approaches in Romania.
2.1. The reasons for the choice of the thematic literary field reflected as a system of commonalities and differences
The choice of the thematic field came with the awareness that the interest of the researcher today eventually turned towards the literary reception. The most appealing issue is the intercultural exchange and the direct impact that was produced during the literary reception of the short-prose writings in Romania. The short-prose workings were given little attention by the Romanian readers as it could be noticed in the little amount of reviews concerned with the translated body of work of Samuel Beckett Franz Kafka in Romania. Nevertheless, Franz Kafka remains the most representative writer of Romanian literary reception. The amount of his work was offered a considerable interest. Given the fact that his work was received with much interest and enthusiasm, we could conclude that he is included in the group of the most widely read Jewish writers in Romania. His most well known “Metamorphosis” caused a long-lasting literary eco and trace in the receptive sphere across Romania. This fact constituted a new challenge for literary critique i.e. a closer look and insight at his literary impact in Romania. Thus, a relation of the Romanian reader with the work was developed which should expand further on and reveal new dimensions of the writers’ artistic credo.The theory of reception went through a major development so that several conclusions could be reached. Nevertheless it first became obvious that the reception of the public was reduced to the aesthetic and ideological dimension whereas the information content remained scarce, and pointed thus at a contested difficulty.Therefore one must take into consideration both the history of the text and that of the public. The history of literature confronted itself with the way and literary technique of literary creation i.e. with “mimesis” and several style typologies that lead to the creation of the literary master piece. The reversed effect especially the impact that literature had on society was less explored.[1]That romanticism had a relevant effect on the manner of perceiving the landscape and several other feelings related to it is today certain.Hence, secondly it becomes the main task of this work to research to what an extent the tragic, the humorous and the idyllic and fantastical influenced the literary cultural society in Romania from the aesthetic and cultural point of view.The authentic media that serve to the establishment of the extent to which the thinking and the lifestyle of Kafka’s and Beckett’s short prose influenced the Romanian cultural milieu are disposed of by the literary sociology.
The third point of the questioning is the request of today’s time to find solutions and answers to the expectations of the readers to certain literary masterpieces.The horizon of expectation develops within the framework of a literary history. The aim of the research will be to determine the extent to which the explored literary workings prove to be informative sources, more exactly how the virtually implied reader encounters reflections of himself. This should be detected in the construction style, the rhetoric and the constellation of motives out of the cultural expectation; more exactly the entire communicative strategy of the working in which the public thought is reflected as an impact and intention possibility.During the examination we proceeded to crisscross text and public and to keep a sharp eye on the reception biased literary workings. The most often translated were stressed and at certain text spots certain particularities were detected i.e. scant degrees of the overlapping and equivalence in a particular context of reception.The public efficiency is not a constant constituent of the literary working. Thus, there are public oriented intentions of the author (encouraging or entertaining) and public indifferent writings.
Many of Beckett’s writings embrace this quality. Therefore, one can split the impact into two categories: the public embracing (considering the necessities of the reader) or public provoking (while neglecting the impact).Kafka was known as the writer of the “nothingness” among other well known writers as: Camus (the absurd), Jean Paul Sartre (the nothingness), Jaspers (the disgust), Kierkegaard (the desperation), Heidegger (existence). Apart from the above mentioned there was the original interweave between the real and fantastic that marked its influence on Franz Kafka’s short-prose. Samuel Beckett on the other hand was less well known to our cultural milieu and it was soon obvious that he became well known mostly for his most well known plays. However, beside “Waiting for Godot” it was the novel “How It Is” too that brought him world wide recognition and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969. While Beckett’s writing is rich in images, Kafka’s enhances a rather imageless language that is rendered by an unconventional style, known as the style of the eternal “mirroring”. While Beckett states that the fear in Kafka’s work is only in the form the fear that resounds from his material is real. However they both share a similar aesthetic dimension that can be encountered all throughout their short prose writings.[2]
2. 2. Narrative perspectives
While the narrative technique of the Kafkaesque style generally resides in the usage of the first person narrative, the narrative technique of Samuel Beckett consists in the usage of the third person narrative (omniscient point of view) with few exceptions. The first person is present in “Fizzle 5” and ”Texts for Nothing 8” and respectively the second person in “Heard in the Dark 1” Kafka’s language is clear and colorful. There is no conflict but rather a waiting in Beckett’s short –prose writing. There is no dramatic plot but everything takes place rather around a process of erosion caused by the same type of movement. Hence the impression of the irreducible, most often without an increase of rhythm and intensity emerges.The characters share certain characteristics and features. Thus, the Kafka character is present all along and the relating thread to the other character’s perspective is rendered by his confessions or by another tertiary.
The female characters of Beckett’s short prose writing were rendered differently from Kafka’s vision and images that corresponded to his view of women.[3]Kafka had a so to speak bleaker view on women. He regarded women as frail and weak but he could in the end mainatain a stable relationship of 6 months with Dora Diamant.
With Beckett it is almost the same development that the reader meets although in the latest short- prose writings the concrete reference to a main character is missing. The rhythm remains a law that needs to be elucidated.Kafka’s work possesses an impressive homogeneousness and clarity in spite of its antinomies. Thus, by referring to the absurdity in Beckett’s writing we are obliged to take into account its more general circularities. Some kind of a centrifugal force projects the characters ceaselessly all the time to the brink of the sphere of the absurd, possessing the tendency to proceed beyond its limits. Compared to the characters encountered throughout Beckett’s prose, characters like Joseph K., the measurer or Karl Rossmann in the “Stoker” impose through their offensive spirit.
It is not the judges that pursue Joseph K. but Joseph K., who pursues them, expressing on first encounter despise and mistrust in their laws. The castle rejects Joseph K. whom it hired but K proceeds in getting to the castle and when he experiences a first contact with its feared representatives, he intimidates them by his refusal to succumb to their bizarre hierarchy. Young Rossmann struggles with anxiety and ingenuity in order to find the way to a wonderful America, a symbol of a new world and he is firmly decided upon finding it no matter the cost.In Beckett’s prose the failure of the characters is prior to the first presentation while in the castle and America we do not see the failure or its relentlessness.Human condition dominates the people almost to the point of crushing them; in the short-prose-and especially in America-it is the characters that try to determine their own condition. This is nevertheless not only an unaccomplished impulse but a tireless impulse, whose presence, no matter how shabby it is, modifies the sense of human existence. Kafka’s prose is profoundly philosophical not only by its implications, but also through some structural particularities. In order to adapt to the absurd situation, or to get out of it or even to modify it the heroes carry on a simple, ingenious, sparkling thinking. The virtues are characteristic not only of human heroes, but animal heroes, too: bugs, monkeys, dogs, mice, moles, jackals etc. Some 100 pages of his creation describe nothing else than the feverish race of a critical mind, capable of construing the most unexpected hypothesis, to refute them and to continue this tantalizing agony all over again. On the other hand we have the hostility towards “discursive writing”.
The prose of Samuel Beckett tries to explain irrationality by logic rationalism. Hence, as the search of the characters is given up beforehand the rationality becomes impossible.The concept of search launches the Kafkaesque creation-it gives it at the same time an impulse and a clear argument, sends a vital tonus, his main philosophical structural and even literary stylistic cause being exactly the special role of the active rationality in the make up of the artistic image.The irrationality of man becomes the irrationality of mankind. In this aspect there are more differences than similarities. To a certain extent and shape, the idea about the sterility of rationality can be encountered at both writers of the absurd. With the first it results form the inefficient usage of rationality-with Beckett’s writing through its abandonment.With the first writer the contrast between the inefficacy of rationalism and the ingenuity is the source of various powerful and original artistic effects, which seem to lack in the latter case. Therefore Kafka’s short-prose writing might be considered “sui generis” in itself.
The irrepressible resort to rationalizing in the creation of the Prague writer implies the following: 1.) The idea about man’s impossibility to exist without rationalizing, although this activity is useless;2.) The “defacto” maintaining of the faith that human reaction to the inhuman condition starts with the act of thinking.In the case of Beckett’s prose the refusal of rationalizing implies an relevant key features: the confusion between the suffering of man as a sensation and the conscience of this suffering with the implication that the abandonment of rationality can facilitate the avoidance of error.The Kafkaian character revolves around the margin of rationality with the intention of enlarging its limits; the Beckettian characters do the same, but with the intention of escaping these limits. Kafka wants to make use of the instrument that Beckett sometimes wants to destroy. The request of knowledge gaining takes place by rejecting with consequence its main means: rationality, language. The conceptual system of thought is replaced by an imagistic thinking whose object is not spiritual life anymore, but the sub-spiritual one. The subtlety is transformed into feeble instability. The nonsense is a plague of the world but this is not so much the case of Samuel Beckett’s early short-prose.
Hence, the differences are as follows: with the first the nonsense does not exclude a certain conformism, whereas with the second the latter is excluded. In the case of Kafka there is a certain discrepancy between the imposed norm and the behavior towards it, although this behavior is restricted to the rejection of that particular norm. However the latter is expressed by a complete refusal.With the others the corollary of behaviour is as that of the reply-non sequitur causing thus the propensity towards an absolute independence of the action, towards the conjuncture of the word with the action.One of the most valuable dimensions of the Kafkaesque vision that we rediscover with Beckett’s prose is the primordial rejection of conformism, cliché, inertia and encysted thinking that is transformed into a mechanical process. Kafka rejects this horrible evidence disguised underneath the appearance of authentic rationalism, in the name of authentic rationalism. In Beckett’s prose false rationalism is confounded with rationalism, thus he rejects them both with the same hostility.The writers and theoreticians of the absurd use a great deal of arguments to prove the possibility of an art that by abandoning the traditional logics wants to impose a “poetic logics”. In reality a car that reverses does not need the same amount of energy as a car that advances.
The usage of the method of absurd reduction in geometry is not less logical and rational than common demonstration. The ambition of the author is to dominate the world to such an extent that he can notice its absurdity. To be able to observe that in a finite image demands a considerable amount of profound thought. This kind of thinking remains nevertheless in the lab of the author who does not give anything up of it. The creation of irrational images demands this huge amount of thinking.Therefore the literary critic Martin Esslin’s opinion is contested by the Romanian critic Pavel Campeanu in whose opinion the promoters of the “theatre of the absurd” demonstrate what the rationalism considers as being “inappropriate”. Thus the abandoning becomes thus eventually relentless. The dynamic thinking takes place on the part of the writer. The heroes abandon any dynamism and have to confront an absurd situation. In Kafka’s short-prose the most frequent means of expression are the parable and the myth.This is a new kind of catharsis that partially has to explain the sense of the absurd. This was something very similar that Freud would meditate upon: the pleasure of nonsense having its roots in the feeling of freedom, we get rid of the critical rationalizing thinking. The condition of the world thinking domination becomes a common characteristic of both Kafka’s and Beckett’s prose writing.However the forms of the short-prose writings present different characteristics:Another significant particularity that is common to both artistic visions is the tragic-comic feature. The exegesis of the work of the Prague writer trying to define the innovating myths of his art becomes utterly relevant. In Max Brod’s view “America” is even a parable with a religious substratum.These could be viewed as an enrichment of the means of expression.The writers and theoreticians of the literature of the “absurd” and of the avanguarde insisted strongly upon the dreamlike inspiration. The dreamlike formula with its ambiguity, from the artistic point of view to a certain extent fertile, determining the mixture between real and fantastic is common both to Beckett and Kafka.
This is nevertheless a rather old means of expression. It is true that this means gaining a particular and rather impressive reverberation.The combination of some old procedures can result in new effects. It is the tragic comic that pertains to Kafka’s originality and to the way these old techniques are subjected to a personal artistic vision.This shift from the tragic to comic brings Kafka nearer to writers such as Brecht, Dürrenmatt, Frisch. Some researchers consider Karl Rossman a predecessor of Chaplin. With Beckett it is Buster Keaton that the characters are associated with.Mankind never was that near to the most terrible real or potential cataclysms, it was never that advanced on the way towards the transformation and conscious of its own condition. Beckett’s characters rely on the source of their error. With Kafka it is objective, the error resides within the hero and with Beckett it is subjective, the characters inheriting an inhuman guilt. Hence, it is the inability of the hero to adapt to the situation that leads to its destruction and therefore it is this absurd reality that tends to crush the main character. Though the character renders the whole absurd situation a great deal of thought, the data offered by the latter makes his thinking inefficient. Thus, we encounter with him and many contemporary writers a kind of hypertrophy of the place that the artistic thinking occupies in the creation that is doubled by an influence of the active part, by a need to control their feelings that sometimes lapse toward scarcity, dryness, and even aridity.The comic attitude towards a tragic condition represents the sole possibility to gain distance in relation to this condition. The tragic-comic vision denies a reality over which he does not possess the power to change. In the artistic transposition of this vision Kafka is the only one that discovered the unshakable power of an alienation that lacks any grandeur. In this sense it is the short-prose writing “Metamorphosis” that stands as a solid proof.The great metaphysic objects are immediately expressed by the relating to the facts and objects of the most common every day life. These mediating factors amplify to the point of paroxysm the emotional tension of the image. It seems obvious that to this extent Beckett owes much of his ideas to Kafka. But the differences are shaking and substantial. The degree of reflexivity and the direct impact with the writing remain overwhelming when reading Franz Kafka’s short prose. Though vague and fustigating, Karl Rossmann hopes to break the gates of iron of the absurd world. This kind of hope is actually the fundamental theme of America. His searches do not lead to a solution but the perseverance of its continuous repetition remains. Beckett the author does not search for anything anymore. From the character’s vision it is this kind of hope that misses. Thus, the positive contribution to prevent the absurdity of an absurd world transforms into its contrary just as truth turns into an error by the attempt to change it. The world is absurd but it is not merely that. It is the more original features that are not absurd, than the rational ones. The tight character of personal experience as well as the class experience hinders the access to the readers to other zones of contemporary reality. Their fault consists in the fact that they use the virtue of globalization upon a partially valid image of the world.His artistic vision is more profound and more encompassing with all its limits. The musical dimension is not to be overlooked.The elements of affiliation exist. They are composed of isolated segments. Secondary impulses in Kafka become force lines with Beckett. That is why in Kafka’s creation humanism imposes above all uncertainties and hesitations as while with Beckett an intuitive value excels in proving the scale of inhumanity.Jaqueline Hoefer’s essay on “Watt” detected in Watt’s linguistic strategies a common root with Wittgensteins “Tractus Logico Philosophicus” which stressed out the limits of the logical analysis.
The final comment “whereof one can not speak thereof one must remain silent’ apparently resembled Watt’s situation in Knott’s house. This uncontainable situation presented itself as a real challenge. Ruby Cohn examined Beckett’s language, tracing its development from the early development to the late short prose pieces. The analysis presents strong similarities with Brian Finney’s of the shorter fiction. Therefore the novel”How It Is” was regarded as a set of ‘lyrics’ short poetic evocations of nothingness. Antony Radice stresses the novels “Molloy”, “Malone dies” and the short story the “Calmative”and “Stories and Texts for Nothing” which were inspired by the writing of Kafka.Thus, although “How It Is” is more Kafkaesque in its poetics, it presents certain differences of style:One buttock two big the other twice too small unless an optical illusion here where you shit it’s the mud that wipes I havn’t touched them for an eternity in other words the ratio four to one I always looked arithmetic it has paid me in full. (Beckett. How It Is, 37)Therefore the nihilistic view is different, considering the year of the novel’s publishing (1963) and the fact that it was translated from French into English. The fragmentation of the paragraphs stands for the process of writing.The comparison with Kafka’s “Burrow” renders the difference in style and taxonomy of writing:
"Aber in Freien bin ich eigentlich nicht, zwar drücke ich mich nicht mehr durch die Gänge, sondern jage in offenen Wald, fühle in meinem Körper neue Kräfte, für die im Bau gewissermaßen kein Raum ist, nicht einmal auf dem Burgplatz und wäre er zehn mal größer."(Kafka, 57)[4]
3.Main Differences revealed at a close reading
Although both writers render few images of women, the portrait of women is very differently crayoned. Beckett gives very vague descriptions of women and the images differ across the two periods of his creation:Never the two gazes together except once when the beginning of one overlapped the end of the other, for about ten seconds. Neither fat nor thin, big nor small, the bodies seem whole and in fairly good condition, to judge by the surface exposed to view. The faces too assuming the two sides of a piece, seem to want nothing essential.
Between their absolute stillness and the convulsive light the contrast is striking, in the beginning, for one who still remembers being struck by the contrary. (Gontarsky, 184) The character of totality and wholeness of the artistic expression in Benedetto Croce’ sense applies to Kafka’s work too. An equivocal doctrine as the open piece of writing that is fragmented and disparaged emerges. With Kafka it is the endless mirror reflection of a core issue while with Becket the circular modulation overspread with allusions and half symbolic images that create picturesque landscapes that render his creation a stern original character.The absurdity in Kafka’s short-prose writing marks its way unobserved and is only to be observed in the most common facts of everyday existence. The thread articulation that binds an already known reality with the imagined absurdity is very fine and flexible. That is precisely why the barrier between the absurd and the rational is so fluid and therefore the invented stories question the real ones, even those that are largely accepted. On the contrary, it is in the work of the Irish writer that the fantastic dimension is clear, enormous fiction being completely separated from reality. In the most frequent cases the absurdity in Beckett’s short prose detects the absurd situation man finds himself in and limits to express it while using symbolic images. Kafka’s hero that experiences to the verge of exhaustion the transformation of the discrete absurd laws into brutal ones is doing all human possible to reinstall justice in the world. He dreams about regaining a more real and breathable air. It is true that this impulse remains a wishful desideratum the way towards rationality remaining unknown. But this simple desideratum is even tougher than reality, desperation it keeps itself in spite of the failures that put an end to the tendencies of achieving that specific desideratum.
Although eventually inefficient the striving towards rationality and justice separates strictly the vision about Kafka’s world from the world of the absurd.This essential category is the most easy to be noticed by comparing the dimension of the two categories of characters. It is both in the prose of the Prague writer and of the Irish we deal with tortured characters by a hostile world. These characters manifest a scaring capacity of adaptation to the most inhuman conditions of existence as they are limited by their impotence to sustain an imaginative dimension wholly separate from their own sad circumstances. Thus, a sterile struggle in the rigorous sphere of the captivity emerges.
4. Conclusion
Whereas Becket’s work reveals itself as a body of work pierced by “pregnant“ lines half symbols and cryptic allusions, Kafka’s short-prose writing impresses as a work of art of a intuitive and visionary critic of the modern age.
Works cited:
Books:
Primary Readings and Translations in Volumes:
1.Beckett, Samuel. Watt. London: John Calder. 1972.
2.Beckett, Samuel. How It Is. New York: Grove Press.19643.
3. Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Short Prose 1929-1989. New York: Grove Press.1954.
4.Kafka, Franz. Sämtliche Erzählungen.Köln: Anaconda Verlag. 2007.
4.Kafka, Franz. Sämtliche Erzählungen.Köln: Anaconda Verlag. 2007.
Secondary Readings:
1. Butler, Lance Saint John and Robert ConDavis, ''Rethinking Beckett''. London:Macmillan.1988.
2.Die Oper als Textgestalt. Perspektiven einer interdisziplinären Übersetzungwissenschaft . Tübingen :Stauffenburg Verlag.1995.
3. Eco, Umberto. Opera deschisă. Bucureşti: Editura Paralela 45.2006.
4. Geschiche der deutschen Literatur (vom 19 Jh. Bis 1917) Volk und Wissen volkeigener Verlag Berlin.1974.
5. Grözinger, Karl Erich. Franz Kafka und das Judentum. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.1987
6. Pattie, David. The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett. London: Routledge. 2006.
7. Zima, V. Komparatistik. Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft.Thübingen:Franke Verlag 1992. p.150-210
3. Eco, Umberto. Opera deschisă. Bucureşti: Editura Paralela 45.2006.
4. Geschiche der deutschen Literatur (vom 19 Jh. Bis 1917) Volk und Wissen volkeigener Verlag Berlin.1974.
5. Grözinger, Karl Erich. Franz Kafka und das Judentum. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.1987
6. Pattie, David. The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett. London: Routledge. 2006.
7. Zima, V. Komparatistik. Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft.Thübingen:Franke Verlag 1992. p.150-210
.
Articles:
Articles:
1. Adelman, Gary: “Beckett and Kafka” in Triquarterly Evanston 17,
(2003:p.77
2. Campeanu, Pavel: ,,Un alt Kafka” in Secolul XX, 12, (1967): p.90- 96
.3. Cohn, Ruby. ”Watt in the Light of the Castle” in Comparative Literature 13.2,
(1961):p.77-106.
4. Corngold, Stanley Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner: “Franz Kafka: The Office Writings”, translated by Eric Patton and Ruth Hein in New York Review of Books (11):2008.
(1961):p.77-106.
4. Corngold, Stanley Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner: “Franz Kafka: The Office Writings”, translated by Eric Patton and Ruth Hein in New York Review of Books (11):2008.
5. Radice, Anthony. “Franz Kafka by Nicholas Murray" in Contemporary Review116, (2005):p.2
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[1]At the transfer from writer to reader the extent of indeterminacy increases (although several purely personal alternatives are lost altogether) and eventually the information content increases
[2]see Pavel Campeanu’s comment: in ,,Secolul XX”, nr.12, 1967, p.90-96
[3]although there appear few female images there is a cerain shade that gives the reader a glimpse in the artistic credo of the writer
[4] ,,Dar in libertate nu sunt cu toate acestes la drept vorbind, chiar dacă nu mai trebuie să mă strecor, prin ganguri, ci gonesc în pădurea deschisă îmi simt în trup puteri noi pentru care în vizuină nu eca să zic aşa destul loc, nici chiar în piaţa cetăţii chiar dacă ar fi de zece ori mai mare. (Ivănescu, 336)
”Nevertheless it is not freedom that surrounds me strictly speaking, although I do not need to crawl on pathways, but race through the open forest, I feel now powers in my body for which there is not enough space in the burrow not even in the square of the castle which is ten times bigger.” (our translation)
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