First Fragmentary on Kafka's The Trial
Arrest/Conversation with Frau Grubach/Then Fräulein Bürstner/Initial Inquiry
Thanks, in part, to FRANZ, a Substack dedicated to translating the letters of Franz Kafka into English, I am rereading Kafka’s novels with the hope that they might shed light on contemporary political crises. When I first read Kafka in 2015, I was too ignorant about the nature of political discouragement in the United States to recognize the attraction of Donald Trump, who was then preparing to run for president, and, being also inexperienced with literature, had no way of recognizing, let alone relating, that same discouragement in Kafka’s novels. Ten years later, I am rereading Kafka not because I think he will resolve the present crises but because political courage now demands an inner dignity of action while navigating a labyrinth of political institutions that offer none. Kafka knew the labyrinth well.
These “fragmentaries,” a portmanteau of “commentaries” and “fragments,” are intended as partial explications of literary works as they relate to recent or emerging aporias in the political world. They are not intended to be ideological, but as attempts to come to terms with disruptions to the structure of contemporary politics.
The Trial almost begins with a knock at the door of Josef K.’s room, but it does not. It begins with the narrator describing the knock, and inferring that someone must have slandered K. for the events of the novel to have begun. That morning, K. expected Anna, the servant of his landlady, to bring him breakfast, but, instead, two men, Franz and Willem, arrest him, although under whose authority and for what reason they are either unable or unwilling to say.
K. is persuaded to wait in his room, where after some time his landlady, Frau Grubach, enters, but “no sooner had she noticed K. then she seemed seized by embarrassment, apologized, and disappeared, closing the door carefully behind her.”1 Believing her embarrassment a response to her invasion of his privacy, K. calls to her to come back into the room, but after a time, he opens the door and asks the two men "Why didn’t she come in?”2 One of them explains that she is not allowed to enter because “you’re under arrest.”3
The encounter initiates a thematic contrast between the legal right to privacy and a broader meaning of privacy. Grubach is embarrassed for having discovered K. in a compromised state of arrest, and when he visits her that evening she describes his arrest as “something scholarly,” as if in being stripped of his rights his life became an open book.4 For Grubach, we do not write our own stories, but are subject to the “scholarly,” those with the technical know how to author us on our behalf.
Privacy is something different than, and even opposed to, the legal right to privacy. It means being apart from others, although not always alone. It is freedom from the governing opinions of the republic. In the world of The Trial, genuine privacy is a crime because it grants withdrawal from legally prescribed subjectivity. What Grubach wants most is for her apartment to return to normal, whereon she can pigeonhole her tenants along the lines of their respective rental agreements.
An inspector soon arrives to meet with K. about his arrest, and K. walks across the apartment to discover that the inspector has broken into the room occupied by Fräulein Bürstner, and that her “nightstand by her bed had been shoved to the middle of the room as a desk for the hearing and the inspector was sitting behind it.”5 The inspector then proceeds to arrange “with both hands the few objects lying on the nightstand—a candle with matches, a book, and a pin-cushion—as if they were tools he required for the hearing.”6 And when K. asks, in spite of the peculiarity of the situation, to sit down across from him, the inspector replies that “[i]t’s not customary”.7
The “hearing” is short, and necessarily so because were K. to begin to seriously question his surroundings he would soon discover that the inspector had conjured an office out of a bedroom. The inspector’s trick is to persuade K. that the nightstand really is a desk, or that “[t]hese gentlemen and I are merely marginal figures in your affair,” insinuating that they are really representatives of a stupendous force.8 In either case, the implication is that K. should rest assured that there is an legitimate reason for what is happening, but having neither authority nor reason of their own they cannot provide him with an explanation of their activities.
The inspector’s advice to K. is nonetheless revealing. He advises him to
think less about us and what’s going to happen to you, and instead think more about yourself. And don’t make such a fuss about how innocent you feel; it disturbs the otherwise not unfavorable impression you make. And you should talk less in general; almost everything you’ve said up to now could have been inferred from your behavior, even if you said only a few words, and it wasn’t terribly favorable to you in any case.9
In short, the inspector is advising K. to be himself, and for good reason. Without a reason for the arrest, there is no way to connect it to K. The hearing is a solution in search of a problem, and K. has only to act contrary to his “behavior,” to stray from social normality. What we normally think of as crime, such as bribery, prostitution, and sexual assault, are not only acceptable in the world of The Trial but sometimes prove fundamental parts of the legal machinery.
Slander is one mechanism for maintaining the machinery in which actions outside normality are pathologized. When K. confides in Grubach that he intends to notify Bürstner of the hearing that morning which took place in her room, he gives Grubach the impression that he holds Bürstner responsible for not occupying the room, and she takes this as an opportunity to gossip:
I certainly have no wish to slander Fräulein Bürstner, she’s a fine and dear young woman, friendly, neat, punctual, and industrious, I appreciate all that, but it’s true she should show more pride, and more reserve. I’ve already seen her twice this month in other neighborhoods and each time with a different man. I find it very embarrassing; I swear to the dear Lord I’ve mentioned it to no one but you, Herr K., but there’s no getting around it, I’ll have to speak to the young woman about it. And that’s not the only thing I find suspicious about her.10
Furious, K. reproaches Grubach for misunderstanding him, but more interesting is Grubach’s attempt to disavow her slanderous intent as anything other than an obligation to others to caution them about their idiosyncrasies. She reassures K. that she has only their collective better interests in mind, but K. refuses her assurances, and shuts himself in his room, “paying no attention to the timid knocks that followed.”11
Nor is Bürstner innocent of the compulsion to slander. When K. does manage to inform her about the hearing, he opines that “exactly how it happened isn’t worth talking about.”12 She responds "[b]ut that’s what’s really interesting”.13 When K. shortly after reenacts the hearing, there are erotic undertones, where the rearrangement of furniture becomes a rearranging of the body, and “what’s really interesting” are the only means of intimacy between the two.
If being oneself is criminal, then the reenactment compromises Bürstner by turning her witness to his crime. This explains the length that K. is willing to go to conceal from their neighbour the performance, even suggesting that he make it appear that he sexually assaulted her. K.’s weekly visits to Elsa, apparently a prostitute, suggest that sex in the world of The Trial is both routine and transactional. If sex is of no special meaning, then sexual assault may be a lesser crime, or even legal, whereas the reenactment is unexpected, and thus illegal.
Bürstner is unbothered by the hearing taking place in her room, except where her photographs were moved. It seems that as long as everything is put back into the right order, and things can continue normally, that there is no obvious reason for expressing frustration. But for Bürstner, the “photos hav[ing] been all mixed up. That’s really annoying.”14 I am reminded of Sigmund Freud’s theory that consciousness operates according to economic principles, and is automatic, having nothing to do with the individual until unconscious memories infringe on that operation. Similarly, Bürstner’s annoyance is a consequence of the photos, her memories, disordered, upsetting the autonomy of normal, conscious life.
K. is notified that an official inquiry will take place on Sunday morning, and he travels to “Juliusstrasse,” a working-class district where the office is located.15 When he finds the correct building, he discovers that it is occupied by the families of the workers from “the various warehouses” owned by firms with which the bank he works for does business.16 Only two men are mentioned: the first “[o]n a crate” in front of the building, “a barefoot man reading a newspaper.”17 The second is “a friendly young worker” whose assistance he accidently solicits when he attempts to find the exact room by asking random occupants if they have seen a carpenter named Lanz.
K. appears to believe that using the excuse that he is searching for the fictional Lanz will allow him to avoid the embarrassment of asking for directions to his inquiry. He discovers, however, that the occupants, who are mostly women, their children, the sick, or otherwise incapacitated, are all too willing to help him locate the missing carpenter, and to avoid further embarrassment he allows himself to be led from room to room under the pretense of the search. K. mistakenly assumes that the occupants resemble those of his own living quarters, where minding one’s business is more important than community. He ought to have known better, “since almost all the doors were standing open, with children running in and out” of the rooms.18
While this communal spirit differs from the secluded tenants of K.’s apartment, Kafka does not appear to be portraying an ideal community. I suspect from the depiction of the poor that he did not have a high opinion of the aspirations of communism. The children that K. passes on his way into the building “looked angrily at him as he passed through their midst.” K. considers bribing or beating them in any future encounters, but not talking with them. The children within the building are nearly feral, and the women care for them with one hand and cook with the other, while at least one occupant is passed out with his clothes on, presumably after a night of drinking. What communal spirit exists never rises above the animal, the species.
The women are confined to their apartments, but the men are absent. Given it is Sunday morning, it seems strange that almost none of the men are present. One possibility is that they are working, but as K. finally arrives at the office of his inquiry he is led into a room filled with men. “Most were dressed in black, in old, long, loosely hanging formal coats. This was the only thing K. found confusing; otherwise he would have taken it all for a local precinct meeting.”19 It appears that the inquiry is for the men of the building something resembling a Sunday service.
It is never clear in what capacity these men inform the inquiry, if at all, but they observe and react to it, some applauding or cheering while others are silent. There is no distinguishing the individual man from the masses. When the inquiry begins, they watch from either side of a divide, and their responses to the proceedings depend more or less on which side they are on. One gets the sense of an allegory of the political spectrum, that Kafka has in mind the masses polarized, and other than their location on either side their responses are incomprehensible.
Near the end of the chapter, K. makes “the true discovery” that “[b]eneath the beards” of the men are
badges of various sizes and colors shimmered on the collars of their jackets. They all had badges, as far as he could see. They were all one group, the apparent parties on the left and right, and as far as he suddenly turned, he saw the same badges on the collar off the examining magistrate, who was looking on calmly with his hands in his lap.20
Masses are always usefully divided along the lines of partisanship, and here, in the office of the inquiry, politics is transformed into spectatorship, further dispossessing the workers of political engagement.
K. concludes his oration by denouncing the law entirely:
there can be no doubt that behind all the pronouncements of this court, and in my case, behind the arrest and today’s inquiry, there exists an extensive organization. An organization that not only engages corrupt guards, inane inspectors, and examining magistrates who are at best mediocre, but that supports as well a system of judges of all ranks, including the highest, with their inevitable innumerable entourage of assistants, scribes, gendarmes, and other aides, perhaps even hangmen, I won’t shy away from the word. And the purpose of this extensive organization, gentlemen? It consists of arresting innocent people and introducing senseless proceedings against them, which for the most part, as in my case, go nowhere. Given the senselessness of the whole affair, how could the bureaucracy avoid becoming entirely corrupt?21
Without principles, corruption is unavoidable, and principles only take hold in private life. In his attempt to put the system on trial, K. plays the revolutionary. But contrary to revolutionary ideals, K. is confused and desperate, degraded by circumstances that would deny him his use of reason and the dignity of his actions. This is, I think, for Kafka the reality of a political world in decline. There can be no principled left, right, or other stratagem among the politically alienated. There is only pretense, and an inalienable hope that what comes after will be better than what came before.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Breon Mitchell. New York, Schocken, 1998, p. 7.
Ibid., p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid., p. 25.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 28.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 38.
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., p. 50.