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object:Kafka and His Precursors
class:Essay
class:chapter
author class:Jorge Luis Borges


Kafka and His Precursors
I
once premeditated making a study of Kafka's precursors. At first I had
considered him to be as singular as the phoenix of rhetorical praise; after
frequenting his pages a bit, I came to think I could recognize his voice, or
his practices, in texts from diverse literatures and periods. I shall record a
few of these here, in chronological order.
The first is Zeno's paradox against movement. A moving object at A
(declares Aristotle) cannot reach point B, because it must first cover half the
distance between the two points, and before that, half of the half, and before
that, half of the half of the half, and so on to infinity; the form of this
illustrious problem is, exactly, that of The Castle, and the moving object and
the arrow and Achilles are the first Kafkian characters in literature. In the
second text which chance laid before me, the affinity is not one of form but
one of tone. It is an apologue of Han Yu, a prose writer of the ninth century,
and is reproduced in Margouliès' admirable Anthologie raisonnée de la
littérature chinoise (1948). This is the paragraph, mysterious and calm,
which I marked: "It is universally admitted that the unicorn is a supernatural
being of good omen; such is declared in all the odes, annals, biographies of
illustrious men and other texts whose authority is unquestionable. Even
children and village women know that the unicorn constitutes a favorable
presage. But this animal does not figure among the domestic beasts, it is not
always easy to find, it does not lend itself to classification. It is not like the
horse or the bull, the wolf or the deer. In such conditions, we could be face
to face with a unicorn and not know for certain what it was. We know that
such and such an animal with a mane is a horse and that such and such an
animal with horns is a bull. But we do not know what the unicorn is like." 30
The third text derives from a more easily predictable source: the
writings of Kierkegaard. The spiritual affinity of both writers is something
of which no one is ignorant; what has not yet been brought out, as far as I
know, is the fact that Kierkegaard, like Kafka, wrote many religious parables
on contemporary and bourgeois themes. Lowrie, in his Kierkegaard (Oxford
30
Non-recognition of the sacred animal and its opprobrious or accidental death at the
hands of the people are traditional themes in Chinese literature. See the last chapter of
Jung's Psychologie und Alchemie (Zürich, 1944), which contains two curious
illustrations.
190University Press, 1938), transcribes two of these. One is the story of a
counterfeiter who, under constant surveillance, counts banknotes in the Bank
of England; in the same way, God would distrust Kierkegaard and have
given him a task to perform, precisely because He knew that he was familiar
with evil. The subject of the other parable is the North Pole expeditions.
Danish ministers had declared from their pulpits that participation in these
expeditions was beneficial to the soul's eternal well-being. They admitted,
however, that it was difficult, and perhaps impossible, to reach the Pole and
that not all men could undertake the adventure. Finally, they would
announce that any trip—from Denmark to London, let us say, on the
regularly scheduled steamer—was, properly considered, an expedition to the
North Pole.
The fourth of these prefigurations I have found is Browning's poem
"Fears and Scruples," published in 1876. A man has, or believes he has, a
famous friend. He has never seen this friend and the fact is that the friend
has so far never helped him, although tales are told of his most noble traits
and authentic letters of his circulate about. Then someone places these traits
in doubt and the handwriting experts declare that the letters are apocryphal.
The man asks, in the last line: "And if this friend were. . . God?"
My notes also register two stories. One is from Léon Bloy's Histoires
désobligeantes and relates the case of some people who possess all manner
of globes, atlases, railroad guides and trunks, but who die without ever
having managed to leave their home town. The other is entitled
"Carcassonne" and is the work of Lord Dunsany. An invincible army of
warriors leaves an infinite castle, conquers kingdoms and sees monsters and
exhausts the deserts and the mountains, but they never reach Carcassonne,
though once they glimpse it from afar. (This story is, as one can easily see,
the strict reverse of the previous one; in the first, the city is never left; in the
second, it is never reached.)
If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have enumerated
resemble Kafka; if I am not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other.
This second fact is the more significant. In each of these texts we find
Kafka's idiosyncrasy to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka had never
written a line, we would not perceive this quality; in other words, it would
not exist. The poem "Fears and Scruples" by Browning foretells Kafka's
work, but our reading of Kafka perceptibly sharpens and deflects our
reading of the poem. Browning did not read it as we do now. In the critics'
191vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed
of all connotation of polemics or rivalry. The fact is that every writer
creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as
it will modify the future. 31 In this correlation the identity or plurality of the
men involved is unimportant. The early Kafka of Betrachtung is less a
precursor of the Kafka of somber myths and atrocious institutions than is
Browning or Lord Dunsany.
Translated by J.E.I.

book class:Labyrinths


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   2 Jorge Luis Borges

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1:In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors ~ Jorge Luis Borges
2:In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."
-- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors ~ Jorge Luis Borges

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