The hunter Gracchus

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The hunter Gracchus is a fragmentary short story by Franz Kafka that was written in 1917 and published posthumously. She tells of a dead person who cannot come to rest.

content

In the southern town of Riva am See, a boat arrives in the harbor. A stretcher, on which a person with a wild appearance is carried, is carried out and brought to a room in a house, apparently a school or boarding school for boys. Salvatore, the Mayor of Riva, appears and goes inside. A large pigeon had announced the dead man's arrival at night. The man on the stretcher opens his eyes. He says that he is the dead hunter Gracchus who died in the Black Forest in Germany while chasing a chamois. But he could not arrive in the realm of the dead. His death boat missed the voyage, perhaps because of the boatman's carelessness. Death would be very welcome to the hunter Gracchus, but he has to keep sailing the world. Lying in his cabin, covered with a woman's kerchief, he looks at an enigmatic picture of an armed Bushman who appears to be aiming his spear at him. The mayor asks who is to blame for it all and also whether the hunter wants to stay in Riva. Gracchus answers, with his last sentence, only vaguely: "My boat is without a rudder, it drives with the wind that blows in the lowest regions of death."

background

Franz Kafka stayed in Riva on Lake Garda in 1909 and 1913 , the model for the idyllic location of the present story.

In addition to this text, there are other texts on the subject: a monologue by Gracchus and a conversation with an ignorant person who does not even know the Gracchus story, which was 1500 years ago.

A reference of the name Gracchus to the personalities of Roman history, the consuls and tribunes, is not immediately recognizable. The meaning of the Latin name ("the gracious") is applied here to someone who is expressly denied the grace of longed-for death.

Kafka is more likely to have alluded to gracchio , the Italian word for jackdaw (in Czech: Kavka = jackdaw), in order to bring an identification of his own person with the figure of the hunter into play.

Interpretative approaches

The story begins with an atmospheric description of a southern location. But already within the first paragraph the text changes threateningly. A boat floats into the harbor, which contains a stretcher with a person lying on it ( association with the well-known Heine poem, beginning with "A strong black boat ...").

The nine movements of the opening each fix a precisely outlined snapshot, they are closed still images that form a row without a clear narrative structure. Each sentence stands on its own. A panorama-like connection develops in the reader who connects the individual parts to a whole according to the method of the stereoscope .

The narrative is shaped right up to the end by the description of a tormenting, never-ending transition stage of the hunter who finds himself in a maelstrom of ongoing life.

In describing the Gracchus fate, old myths are used, but with a modified meaning and alienated representation:

  • Gracchus - The wild hunter Orion ; the Eternal Jew Ahasver (cf. the mayor's question about guilt)
  • Boatswain - Ferryman Charon
  • Dove - symbol of the Holy Spirit
  • Bushman - symbolic figure of a will to kill
  • Chamois - feminine allure.

Quotes

  • “I'm always on the move. But if I take the greatest upswing and the gate lights up for me already above, I wake up on my old barge stuck in some earthly body of water. "
  • “Nobody will read what I write here, nobody will come to help me; [...] The thought of wanting to help me is an illness and has to be healed in bed. "

reception

  • Stach (p. 428): “What remains in our hands is a narrative beginning of almost painful beauty, a dead-living, noiseless scene, expressly in Riva and yet in nowhere, the fragment of a silent film, or better still: a film, its soundtrack is empty, but its faint crackling awakens the expectation of something monstrous: "
  • Ries (p. 99) sees disorientation, represented by the acausality of the action, the indeterminacy of the action space and the deformation of classic motive tradition.
  • Alt (p. 568) sees a reference to Kafka's work, because in his works he almost always struggled to get closer to the ultimate things and to finish and finish his writings; mostly he failed because of it. As a writer he found himself in the role of Gracchus, who never came to an end.

expenditure

  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • The stories. Original version, edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Retained writings and fragments 1. Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, ISBN 3-10-038148-3 , pp. 310-313, 378-384.
  • Diaries. Edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller and Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 810 f.

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son. A biography. Munich 2005, p. 567.
  2. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son. A biography. Munich 2005, p. 569.
  3. ↑ Reiner Stach: Kafka - The years of decisions. Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 428.
  4. ^ Peter-André Alt: Kafka and the film. Munich 2009, p. 148.
  5. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son. A biography. Munich 2005, p. 569.
  6. ^ Wiebrecht Ries: Kafka for an introduction. Hamburg 1993, p. 97.