The departure (Kafka)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Der Aufbruch is a parable written by Franz Kafka in 1922 and published in 1936 posthumously and initially in abbreviated form by his friend Max Brod . It describes the ride of a first-person narrator who leaves his home with an uncertain destination. The text may be based on an Eastern Jewish narrative.

content

At the beginning, the first-person narrator prepares his ride. When asked by his servant where the journey should lead, the protagonist replies several times with “just get away from here” and declares “away from here” as his goal. When the servant asks why his master is not taking any provisions with him, the protagonist who sets out replies that it was such a particularly long journey that he would have to starve to death anyway if he didn't get anything to eat on the way. The short parable ends with the emphasis that this immense length of the journey is lucky .

Shape analysis

In this parable Kafka uses the rather simple style he is familiar with. The statements are in short main clauses , so there are only three subordinate clauses exactly 36 main clauses. In general, these are not particularly lavishly decorated and are simply strung together without special links. The simple action initially develops into a change of speech , followed by the use of indirect speech , which in the end leads to direct speech.

Interpretative approaches

In this parable, Kafka speaks confidently (a specialty!) Of the great risk of a new beginning in life in which the protagonist renews himself. He rides out without knowing exactly where he wants to go. This ride is intended to break through the boundaries of the obviously unloved familiar, it almost seems like an escape. Those around him (in this case the servant) do not understand this resolution. To reinforce the feeling of departure, a trumpet tone sounds shortly after the announcement of the project, so that his inner readiness to depart and the external signal take place simultaneously. However, only he hears this wake-up call, because his environment remains incomprehensible to his urge to break for new shores.

The journey is, as he emphasizes, long and can also fail (death by starvation). A hedge against failures such as B. taking food supplies with you means that this trip - in the sense of a change - would again fail because it would degenerate back into the state of the familiar. In this way, the journey alone nourishes the traveler and not the destination alone ensures his survival. In one paraphrase, this could be interpreted as the maxim “the journey is the goal”. And that's why it is also lucky that this path is a “truly tremendous journey”. However, this contradicts the fact that the journey will come to an end, since it is not infinite, but only "long and monstrous" . Despite these hardships, the protagonist is ready to take it upon himself to break through the old and face the new - an everlasting departure.

Sudau (p. 126): “So simple relationships, basic situations, important and recurring from human memory onwards. Only the secret shifts of meaning - journey as a journey through life, trumpet as a wake-up signal - which emanate from the quiet irritations - the servant's failure to understand and not to hear - ensure that the banality turns into meaning ... "

Writing as a journey

Sabine Eickenrodt uses the example of Kafka's story The Sudden Walk (1913) to show that the sudden departure represents a topos , a typical motif, in Kafka's stories. Jörg Wolfradt sees in Kafka's departure texts the “deprivation of meaning as a structural principle” “Kafka's texts 'rehearse beginnings'. They operate with initial assumptions of meaning in order to then take them back bit by bit. "Kafka's parable" Der Aufbruch "takes" an initial material 'counter-bearing' "as the starting point. The initial “references to reality - entering the stable, saddling the horse, arriving at the gate” would, however, be called into question by the subsequent conversation.

According to Wolfradt, this turning away from concrete references takes place in two steps: The statement “Always away from here ...”, which is still linked to the concrete starting point of the journey, the old surroundings, becomes the imaginary goal of “Away from here ". Following Eberhard Frey, Wolfradt interprets this awakening as a linguistic "transition from the known to the unknown". Frey interprets this speaking very largely as the journey itself. The linguistic construct of “away from here”, which the servant cannot understand, brings the “text in motion” according to Wolfradt.

The description of the destination remains incomprehensible to the servant, the master cannot express it in words, "an explication of the destination fails due to the general disorder of the discourse". What remains is the movement of writing. Based on this, Frey interprets the "narrative as a journey ... as the incessant movement that repeatedly pushes itself away from the goal that has just been achieved and thus always remains on the border with the unknown."

Wolfradt points out that for Kafka, riding serves as a “metaphor for writing” in various texts. "The ride on the horse embodies the 'riding in' into writing, the movement of the pen on the white paper."

Biographical interpretation

Marie Haller-Nevermann puts the story in a biographical context. As a “solution to life”, Kafka kept thinking in diaries and texts of “running away, walking away, jumping away”. The parable “Der Aufbruch” culminates in the literary versions of these attempts to break out, for which Kafka has thought through both travel and suicide. "One of the vehicles that serve this utopia of leaving is for the rider Kafka the horse." The target formulation "Away-from-here" in the parable stands for the rejection of his life situation, but turned positively: It is the "request being self, to become active oneself, to free oneself through negation ”.

In the same sense, Peter-André Alt places the parable in the biographical context of Kafka's trip to Dora Diamant in Berlin in 1923. “The short study Der Aufbruch in February 1922 described what happened here with the anticipatory knowledge of literature: a rider undertakes one long journey, the only goal of which is to lead 'just away from here'. "

Web link (text of the parable)

Secondary literature

  • Sabine Eickenrodt: Sudden walk. The departure as a topos of a literary form of movement in Kafka and Walser. In: Hans Richard Brittnacher; Magnus Klaue: On the way. On the poetics of vagabondness in the 20th century. Cologne [u. a.] 2008, p. 43ff.
  • Eberhard Frey: Storytelling as a way of life. To Kafka's story “The Departure”. In: Sprachkunst 13, 1982.
  • Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 .
  • Jörg Wolfradt : I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malcolm Pasley and Klaus Wagenbach date the text handed down in a quarterback to spring 1922, Hartmut Binder gives February 1922 as the date of origin; Pasley; Wagenbach: Dating of all of Franz Kafka's texts, quoted from: Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 101.
  2. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 104
  3. ↑ Hartmut Binder: Motif and design by Franz Kafka. Bonn 1966, p. 55.
  4. ↑ This is where the shortened version by Max Brod ends.
  5. ^ Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 , p. 126/127
  6. ^ Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 , p. 125 f.)
  7. ^ Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 , p. 125 ff.
  8. ^ Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 , p. 126
  9. ↑ Sabine Eickenrodt: Sudden Walk: The departure as a topos of a literary form of movement in Kafka and Walser. In: Hans Richard Brittnacher; Magnus Klaue: On the way. On the poetics of vagabondness in the 20th century. Cologne [u. a.] 2008, p. 43ff.
  10. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 101
  11. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 101
  12. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 101
  13. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 102
  14. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 102
  15. ↑ Eberhard Frey: Telling as a way of life, quoted from: Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 102
  16. ↑ cf. Eberhard Frey: Storytelling as a way of life. To Kafka's story “The Departure”. In: Sprachkunst 13, 1982, p. 90, quoted from: Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 102
  17. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 103
  18. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 103
  19. ↑ Eberhard Frey: Telling as a way of life. To Kafka's story “The Departure”. In: Sprachkunst 13, 1982, p. 90; quoted from: Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 105
  20. ↑ Jörg Wolfradt: I am the novel. Writing and writing in Kafka's "The Lost One". Epistemas. Literary Studies Series, Vol. 188, Königshausen & Neumann 1996, p. 105
  21. ^ Marie Haller-Nevermann: Franz Kafka - visionary of modernity. Göttingen (Wallstein-Verlag) 2008, Genshagener Talks 11, p. 30
  22. ^ Marie Haller-Nevermann: Franz Kafka - visionary of modernity. Göttingen (Wallstein-Verlag) 2008, Genshagener Talks 11, p. 31
  23. ^ Marie Haller-Nevermann: Franz Kafka - visionary of modernity. Göttingen (Wallstein-Verlag) 2008, Genshagener Talks 11, p. 31
  24. ↑ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: the eternal son: a biography. 2nd edition, Munich (Beck) 2008, p. 667