The Age of Suspicion Read Online Free Page B

or cluster of sentiments gathered and held together by this frail envelope are nothing if not this same passionate, anxious desire to establish contact that runs like a guiding thread through Dostoievski's entire work. But whereas the quest on which Dostoievski's characters are bent leads them to seek a sort of interpenetration, a total and ever possible fusion of souls, in the most fraternal of worlds, the entire effort of Kafka's heroes is aimed at a goal that is at once less ambitious and less attainable. All they want is to become, 'in the eyes of these people who regard them with such distrust . . . not their friend, perhaps, but in any case, their fellow citizen' . . . , to be able to appear and justify themselves before unknown, unapproachable accusers, or to seek to safeguard, despite all obstacles, some paltry semblance of a relationship with those closest to them.
    This humble pursuit, by virtue of its desperate obstinacy, of the depths of human suffering, the distress and complete abandonment that it brings to light, extends well beyond the domain of psychology and lends itself to all kinds of metaphysical interpretations.
    However, readers who would like to assure themselves that Kafka's heroes have no connection with those characters in fiction whose authors, out of a need to simplify, through prejudice or from didactical motives, have emptied them of 'all subjective thought and life,' and present them as 'the very image of human reality when it is divested of all psychological conventions,' need only re-read the minute, subtle analyses that Kafka's characters indulge in with impassioned lucidity, as soon as the slightest contact is established between them. As, for instance, the skilful dissections of K.'s conduct and sentiments towards Frieda, performed with the keenest of blades, first by the landlady, then by Frieda, then by K. himself, and which reveal the complicated interplay of delicate wheel-works, a flash of multiple and often contradictory intentions, impulses, calculations, impressions and presentiments.
    But these moments of sincerity, these states of grace, are as rare as the contacts that may give rise to them (love between Frieda and K.—if their strange relationship may be so called—or hatred for K. on the part of the landlady).
    If we were to try to locate the exact spot in Dostoievsky's writings at which Kafka 'seized the token,' it would no doubt be found in the Notes from Underground which, as we have seen, constitutes a sort of ultimate limit, the furthermost point of this œuvre.
    The hero of these Notes knows that, for the officer who 'takes him by the shoulders and without any explanation, without a word, moves him to one side and passes on, as though he did not exist,' he is now nothing but a mere object, or, in the eyes of Zverkov, with his 'ram's head,' a 'curious insect'; as he tries to mingle with the crowd and 'slips between the passersby in the most odious way,' he feels 'like an insect', he becomes very clearly aware that, in their midst, he is nothing but a 'fly,' 'a nasty fly.' This furthermost point at which he finds himself for a very brief moment—for he is quickly revenged, he discovers within easy reach human beings with whom the closest fusion will always be possible (such as Lisa, whom he immediately causes to suffer, and by whom he succeeds in making himself both intensely loved and hated)—this furthermost point to which he is driven for an instant only, was the same world without exit, enlarged to the dimensions of an endless nightmare, in which Kafka's characters were to flounder.
    We all know this world, in which a sinister game of blindman's buff is in constant progress, in which people always advance in the wrong direction, in which outstretched hands 'claw the void,' in which everything we touch eludes us, in which the person we clutch hold of for a moment and feel with uneasy hands, suddenly becomes transformed or escapes, in which appeals are always