Roberto Calasso - K.

Often I ponder it and then every time I must say my upbringing, in certain ways, has done me great harm.

Often I ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, and every time, however I view it, I come to the conclusion that my upbringing, in certain ways, has done me terrible harm.

Often I ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, but every time I come to the conclusion that my upbringing has damaged me more than I can understand.

I often ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, but every time I come to the same conclusion, that I have been more damaged by my upbringing than anyone I know and more than I am able to comprehend.

Kafka must have been quite convinced of that incipit to have varied it six times. But who is the “I” who speaks here? One thinks at once of Kafka himself, since this notebook is full of references to particular episodes of his life. Were that the case, these incipits would almost merit consideration as the inaugural text of that literature of psychological recrimination that would later spread through the century. The troops of all those who were to declare themselves damaged — by mom or dad, by their family, by school, by their environment, by society — could have paraded behind the heraldic insignia of that text. A vast company, mostly tedious and querulous. But even if the expression of the psychology, as it often is in Kafka, is here oddly clear and incisive, indeed almost brutal, the psychology itself is certainly not the point of the narrative. Indeed, the psychology here will be pushed to an extreme, but as if to ridicule it.

How can that be shown? Simply by looking at the variations in the roster of guilty parties as it appears from one version to the next. In order:

This reproach is aimed at a multitude of people, namely my parents, several relatives, certain house guests, various writers, a certain particular cook who accompanied me to school for a year, a heap of teachers (whom I must bundle together in my memory, otherwise I’ll lose one here and there, but having bundled them together so tightly, the whole mass begins, in certain spots, to crumble away), a school inspector, slow-walking pedestrians, in brief this reproach twists like a dagger through society.

This reproach is directed against a multitude of people, all of whom however are gathered here and as in old group photographs they don’t know what to do with each other, it doesn’t even occur to them to lower their eyes and they don’t dare smile, because they’re waiting. My parents are there, several relatives, several teachers, a certain particular cook, several girls from the dance lessons, several guests at our previous house, several writers, a swimming instructor, a ticket seller, a school inspector, then some people I met only once on the street and others I can’t remember at the moment and those I’ll never again remember and finally those whose instruction I, being somehow distracted, failed to pay attention to at the time; in brief, they are so numerous that one must be careful not to name any of them twice.

Implicit in this recognition is a reproach directed against a multitude of people. Among them are my parents, my relatives, a certain particular cook, my teachers, several writers, families friendly with ours, a swimming instructor, the residents of holiday resorts, several ladies in the city park who don’t show certain things, a hairdresser, a beggar woman, a tax man, the family doctor, and many others besides and there would be still more if I wanted and were able to call them all by name, in brief they are so numerous that one must be careful not to name anyone in the bunch twice.

[The reproaches] are directed against a multitude of people, this can be frightening and not only I but anyone else would rather look at the river through the open window. Among them are my parents and relatives, and the fact that they harmed me out of love renders their guilt even greater, because how they could have helped me with their love, then friendly families with a spiteful gaze, who aware of their guilt resist rising up into memory, then the legion of nannies, teachers and writers and among them a certain particular cook, and then, blurring into one another as their punishment, a family doctor, a hairdresser, a tax collector, a beggar woman, a paper seller, a park warden, a swimming instructor and then certain foreign ladies in the city park who don’t show certain things, several residents of holiday resorts, which make a mockery of innocent nature, and many others; there would be still more if I wanted and were able to call them all by name; in brief, they are so numerous that one must be careful not to name any of them twice.

These wild, exhilarating gallops revolve around Kafka’s favorite theme: guilt. They are attempts by the writer to list all those who have, to whatever degree, harmed him. Just as Josef K., shortly before being sentenced to death, will envision a crowd of his accusers as a solid, unanimous chorus, so the young Kafka looks around and sees all those who are guilty in relation to him — guilty to the point of becoming his executioners. Certain presences are essential: his parents and relatives. But just as essential is “a certain particular cook” who had accompanied Kafka to school for a year. We finally meet her again in a letter to Milena from June 21, 1920: “Our cook, small dry and thin with a pointy nose and hollow cheeks, yellowish, but firm, energetic and superior, took me to school each morning.” These words suffice to admit us to the secret memory rooms of an individual named Franz Kafka. But, even as the dim psychologist is congratulating himself for uncovering the true material concealed behind every piece of literature, Kafka the writer snatches it away and renders it meaningless. For his lucidity goes much further. Among the guilty, father and mother certainly come first. But the others step forward in an inexorable procession. We meet not only the yellowish cook, but also some people who made the mistake, on a certain day, of walking slowly, some girls from the dance school, a hairdresser, a beggar, a paper seller. And in the end they will all be arranged together, as for a group photo. They’re a little embarrassed, since many don’t know one another, have never even seen one another before. But all are united by guilt. Even, lost and forgotten in that crowd, his parents.

In his mad rush, Kafka sets no limits; we even find, among the procession of the guilty, some people he met once on the street and others he is unable to remember . Guilt, then, extends not only to everything that has been perceived, even if only faintly and only once, but also to everything that happened, unnoticed, around us. At this point, every psychology collapses from within, opening a breach that leads toward literature. First of all Kafka’s.

Kafka was an expert on the feeling of being foreign or extraneous, and he began, in his last period, to consider it and represent it in his work in commonplace situations that became suddenly illuminating. For example, the family’s card-game ritual. For years, in the evening, Kafka’s parents played cards. For years they asked him to take part. For years the son said no. But that doesn’t mean he went elsewhere. “I stayed to watch, apart, a complete outsider.” One day he paused to reflect: “What does that refusal, repeated so often since childhood, mean?” The invitation to play a game represents a call to take part in the community. And the game per se, Kafka observed, “would not even have been all that boring.” And yet his reply was invariably negative. From such mulishness Kafka inferred something quite profound: his behavior with his family made clear to him why “the current of life” had never swept him along, why he had always remained on the threshold of things that then eluded him. There is something slightly comic, at first, in seeing which grave consequences can be deduced from a little domestic scene. But Kafka, imperturbable, goes one step further. On an evening soon after the day he recorded these observations, he decided to take part in the game, in a manner of speaking, by “keeping score for mom.” In doing so, he realized that his new situation corresponded mockingly to his typical rapport with the outside world: participating “didn’t give rise to greater closeness, and whatever hint of it there might have been was drowned in weariness, boredom, and sadness over the lost time. And it would have always been that way. Only in the rarest of cases have I forsaken this borderland between solitude and community, indeed it’s there that I have settled, even more than in solitude itself. How lovely and lively by comparison was Crusoe’s island.” Here Kafka has situated himself, defining himself almost as a geometric locus, in relation to communal life.