The bachelor's misfortune

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The Unhappiness of the Bachelor is a prose sketch by Franz Kafka , which appeared in the anthology Contemplation in 1913 .

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The short prose piece begins with the words: "It seems so bad to remain a bachelor ...". Then the loneliness of the bachelor is portrayed without domesticity and without intimate closeness to wife and children. In the imagination, the figure develops more and more into the prototype of the bachelor as one has him in one's own memory. In conclusion, it says that you will actually stand there “ with a body and a real head, including a forehead, to slap your hand on ”.

History of origin

The first version of the text can be found in Kafka's diary on November 14, 1911 with the title Before falling asleep . For publication, he revised the text, which showed an overly obvious autobiographical touch.

Biographical background

The portrayal of the bachelor life occupies a large space in Kafka's work. Among others, Blumfeld, an older bachelor , Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis and Josef K. from The Trial or Raban from wedding preparations in the country should be mentioned here . With this, Kafka anticipated his own fate in his writings. It was incompatible for him to be a husband and a writer at the same time, but that would doom him to remain a bachelor. On the other hand, it was precisely because of the Jewish faith and the associated ceremonies that the demand for (male) offspring emerged, for example if the son was to speak the kaddish for the dead father.

At the same time, the bachelor type is also present in the prose of Thomas Mann with Der Bajazzo , Der kleine Herr Friedemann , Tonio Kröger or in Hermann Hesse with Peter Camenzind .

Text analysis and interpretation approach

This piece laments the unworthy situation of those who have to seek human sociability in old age. The bachelor appears depressingly homeless and estranged because “his room only has side doors that lead into strange apartments” . There is no apartment that is looked after by a woman and into which one can withdraw. There is no confidentiality between married couples. He can only marvel at foreign children because they are something unattainable in his life plan.

The status of the bachelor is represented as something absolute; the possibility of finding a stable relationship after all is not considered. Only the negative of being a bachelor is shown, never the freedom and the easier life. This existence is described here and in other Kafka works only as poor and unfit for life. Its representatives also appear so bleak because they are not attached to a higher meaning, but remain fatally attached to the bourgeois everyday world, whose claims they cannot meet.

The little prose sketch ends with the gesture of slapping his forehead with his hand. The gesture can express sudden recall or recognition, or the mixture of pessimism, indolence and stupidity; or she says something like “How could I?” Here she expresses an abrupt reflection on something that has developed wrongly in one's own life. Kafka uses small gestures several times in consideration in order to express inner sensitivities, see also absent-minded looking out , decisions .

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: The Bachelor's Misfortune  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Franz Kafka Diaries" u. a. Malcolm Pasley Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag ISBN 3-596-15700-5 p. 249
  2. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography . Munich: Verlag CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 253
  3. ↑ v.Jagow / Jahraus Dagmar C. Lorenz p. 375
  4. ↑ Alt p. 253
  5. ↑ Alt, p. 254.