ON KAFKA ETC

....One has to imagine Kafka's books as as an immense system of valves, retorts and glass vessels transporting the matter from one place to another, distilling and transfiguring the essence of our being. At times we are faced with great vastness of incorporated space and at other, there is the narrowness of passage and unfamiliar planes of space and settings. That makes the structure of his works resemble a tight interconnected system of tubes and retorts of an alchemist.

The stifling dwelling of Titorelli the painter merges with court offices. The filthy crowded hall of Hotel Occidental filled with low-lifes becomes the hallways and lift lobbies of a respectable establishment, six-storey-high, with a plethora of things to discover. The common kitchen hall we are first encountered with the next day turns into a fashionable establishment the well-to-dos of the looming New York City frequent. At time we even have difficulty observing day changing into night!

Those transformations are abrupt, we have no time to adjust to them, there is no chance to contemplate sudden change of scenery. There is a feeling of being sucked into the vacuum or spewed up into the unknown by the gigantic external forces.

It also begs us to question the very basics of our reality. After all, theoretical physics permits the existence of manyfold universes. Both our environment and ourselves perturbate with every second passing and truly the setting in his works where a particular chapter or action started to unfold is not the same by the time it has finished. Kafka's text certainly makes such leaps seem believable....