Roberto Calasso - K.

The more Huld refers to the narrowness of the visual field of individuals — be they defendants, lawyers, or low-ranking officials — the greater our sense, by contrast, of the immensity of the whole. The court is truly a “great organism,” a vast cosmic animal whose imposing nature we may grasp, but not its overall shape. Whatever happens, “this great judicial organism remains somehow eternally suspended” (but where? one wonders; in which regions of the sky?), and if anything ever damages or wounds one part of it, “it easily compensates for the slight disturbance in some other part — after all, everything is interconnected — and it remains unchanged; indeed it becomes, if anything, and this is quite likely, even more closed, even more watchful, even more severe, even more cruel.” These lines might refer, point by point, to the self-regulating capacities of a brain, to the emanations of a divine pleroma, to the operating procedures of an information network, or to a secret cipher. But even before we pause to wonder about the identity of the object that Huld is describing, we are struck by the hints of its psychological characteristics. The “great organism” he speaks of is, above all, a closed system that rebuffs every “suggestion for improvement,” which indeed only the most ingenuous creatures — unfailingly defendants, especially the fresh ones still in the first phases of their trials — would dare offer. Huld here has the delicacy not to mention, as an example of one who has engaged in this ill-advised behavior, his own client, Josef K. But the description fits him to a T.

Further, the “great organism” is attentive. Constant wakefulness is its supreme quality, the one on which all others depend. The great organism is conscious, acutely conscious, perennially conscious. Each attack on it can only enhance its powers of mental acuity. Thus — and this is Huld’s most useful piece of advice — one must “above all not attract attention.” Those who know the great organism best are distinguished, as the Greeks were with regard to their deities, by their ability to go unnoticed by it. If the officials are already “irascible,” we might suppose that the great organism of which they are only tiny cells is even more so. In speaking of its attention, one speaks of the keystone of the organism’s existence: its uninterrupted mental life. But this implies certain behavioral traits. First of all, the “great organism” will be “severe.” And why? Because there’s a pact between wakefulness and the law. Indeed one might even suppose that the law is the partner of wakefulness, as if wakefulness were inconceivable except in connection with some law. Pure contemplation, content with itself, without any governing purpose, is obviously out of the question, which brings us to the final characteristic of the great organism: a certain wickedness. Wakefulness is linked, by some obscure mechanism that Huld doesn’t even begin to address, to a punitive aspect, a sharp-eyed will to strike. Can there be a wakefulness that doesn’t punish? That doesn’t need to be accompanied by the rigor of law? Huld doesn’t say — he adds only the advice that concerns him, the foundations of which he has now laid: “Let’s let your lawyer work, then, instead of disturbing him.”

Block, the grain dealer, is also represented by Josef K.’s lawyer, in his “business cases” as well as in a trial of the kind Josef K. is undergoing. This fact is of immediate interest to Josef.K., who asks: “So the lawyer takes on ordinary cases too?” At Block’s affirmative reply, Josef K. appears relieved: “That connection between the court and jurisprudence seemed extremely reassuring to K.” Until this moment, a corrosive suspicion has been building in him: that the court has nothing to do with the law and the legal codes. Perhaps the court is simply a powerful, impenetrable apparatus superimposed upon juridical praxis and terminology, but in the end completely separate, resting on other premises. Block’s answer is at first blush “reassuring,” because it makes the court’s very existence seem less foreign and opaque. Ultimately it might be one of many courts, one that simply by chance hasn’t come to Josef K.’s attention sooner. But in the very next moment, these thoughts open the door to an even more disturbing suspicion: the court might indeed be part of that “jurisprudence,” and the process of passing into its ambit from that of the ordinary cases might even be easy, one habit among many for certain men of the law, just as it is possible to sit calmly down in a café without realizing that one is surrounded only by costumed extras. And another suspicion arises: what if all the courts that deal with “ordinary cases” are only a cumbersome, misleading front for the one true court, that which judges Josef K. and prefers to camouflage itself among the normal courts?

Block is the assimilated Jew whose arrival is “always ill-timed,” even when he has been “summoned.” Whatever he does is the wrong thing, and yet it corresponds precisely to what is asked of him. Only he would think to boast of having “studied closely what decency, duty, and judicial custom demand.” Who else but Block would decide to “study” what “decency” demands? That itself is an indecent admission.

Though as defendants they share a common condition, Josef K. subjects the merchant to those violent oscillations between attraction and aversion that assimilated Jews endured in the period between the first emancipations and Hitler. Josef K. listens to Block’s stories with the greatest attention, leaning toward him. He has the impression that Block has “very important things” to say and knows how to say them. And yet, moments later, “K. suddenly couldn’t bear the sight of the merchant.” There’s something shameless in the way Block reveals his suffering. Josef K. watches him and thinks that the merchant is certainly experienced, “but those experiences had cost him dearly.” Block is a magnet for humiliation. It’s as if his body is the repository for that supplement of uncertainty, fatigue, and anxiety from which the Jew in the big city cannot escape.

In a letter to Milena, it happened that Kafka spoke of Jews directly and at length. He was writing in response to a question of Milena’s that had taken him aback and that must have seemed improbable (“You ask me if I’m Jewish, perhaps this is only a joke”). It was the perfect opportunity. He wrote:

The insecure position of Jews, insecure within themselves, insecure among people, should explain better than anything else why they might think they own only what they hold in their hands or between their teeth, that furthermore only tangible possessions give them a right to live and that once they have lost something they will never again regain it, rather it will drift blissfully away from them forever. Jews are threatened with dangers from the most unlikely quarters or, to be more precise, forget dangers and let’s say “they are threatened by threats.”

With Block one has the impression that he holds his trial documents “between his teeth.” In any case, they are never out of his sight. In the unlit room where Block sleeps, there is “a niche in the wall, by the head of his bed, in which he had carefully arranged a candle, an inkpot and pen, and also a bundle of papers, probably trial documents.”

Block’s voluntary humiliation at the bedside of his lawyer, Huld, and in the presence of Leni and Josef K., is an impious parody of monotheistic devotion, with respect to which every anti-Semitic caricature seems timid. That’s why the scene “nearly degraded the onlooker”—and the reader.

Even when first entering the bedroom, Block is unable to look at the lawyer, “as if the sight of his interlocutor were too dazzling to bear.” From this point on, each gesture takes on an additional resonance: biblical, devotional, ritual. Block begins to tremble, as the lawyer, his back turned, addresses him. His face would be an unbearable sight. Block stoops as if to kneel on the fur rug beside the bed. The lawyer and the merchant exchange these words: “‘Who is your lawyer?’ ‘You are,’ said Block. ‘And other than me?’ asked the lawyer. ‘None but you,’ said Block. ‘Then do not follow any other,’ said the lawyer.” It’s a profession of faith. Its model is Moses before Yahweh. A little later Block kneels on the bedside rug: “‘I’m on my knees, my lawyer,’ he said.” Then, encouraged by Leni, he kisses the lawyer’s hand, twice. Leni stretches her supple body and leans over to whisper something in Huld’s ear. Perhaps she is interceding on Block’s behalf, so that the lawyer will speak to him. Now the lawyer begins to speak and Block listens “with his head lowered, as if listening transgressed some rule ( Gebot ).” But Gebot is also “commandment.” At this point, Josef K. has a strong, decisive sensation: the scene isn’t taking shape before his eyes but is the repetition of something “that had repeated itself many times before and would repeat itself many times again, and only for Block could it retain its newness.” This is a definition of ritual. Indeed, it’s a definition of ritual that makes plain its affinity with obsessional neurosis, as defined by Freud.