The helmsman

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The helmsman is a small prose piece by Franz Kafka from 1920 in which a first-person narrator as the helmsman of a ship is forcibly displaced by an intruder without the ship's crew helping him to regain his old position.

Emergence

In the autumn of 1920, when Kafka broke away from his lover Milena Jesenská , a series of short prose pieces emerged as if in a productive burst. These include, The coat of arms , Poseidon , at night , community , our town is ... (also available at The rejection ), the question of law , the levy of troops , Testing , The Vulture , The gyro , Small fable and, indeed, the mate .

Kafka did not publish these small works with their inner context; the titles are largely by Max Brod .

content

At the beginning of the story, the narrator asks if he is not a helmsman. Before that, he was standing at the steering wheel in the dark when a “stranger” suddenly appeared. This pushes the narrator aside, who turns the steering wheel in the fall, but the other corrects this wrong steering and takes over the steering. The narrator calls for the crew in the ship's hull. She comes up, but does not help him, is rather fascinated by the intruder and retreats back inside the ship.

Interpretations

politics

One can see this prose piece as a parable about a political leader whose supporters are slipping away under the influence of a new, more charismatic competitor and who are annoyed by the opportunism of the people who do not seem to be interested in questions of legitimacy and who, although quite “powerful “, Allows a violent user.

The custom of comparing the state to a ship is very old. Talking about the state as a ship and the rulers as “helmsmen” is a topos that has been consolidated in terms such as “ governor ” (literally: “helmsman”). If you see “the ship of state” in the ship, then (at least in a democracy) the rulers, the “governors”, actually belong to the “people”, the demos , which they only serve. By the fact that the crew in The Steering Man seems to be indifferent about who controls the ship and whether the intended course is maintained, they show that, although the narrator expressly characterizes them as "powerful", they are not ready to oppose a coup and to work for democracy.

The narrator is resigned and therefore rightly sees his team as just a senseless shuffling people. But by referring to the men in the third person (“they”) as “ people ”, he shows that he does not feel that he belongs to this same “people”. This is true in the sense that a helmsman always belongs to an elite that is separated from the common people by their position. On the other hand, the former helmsman expressly addresses the men of the crew with the word “comrades” before they abandon him. In fact, “everyone is in the same boat”, and it would therefore only make sense if everyone (despite all possible mutual resentment) stuck together, especially against an intruder who has boarded the ship like a pirate and whose intentions are unknown.

The argument of “sitting in a boat” need not necessarily be used with a democratic tendency: it implies that the helmsman and his crew (as well as the passengers, who are not mentioned in the Kafka text) are exposed to the same danger. They form an emergency community whose members depend on each other and are therefore obliged to act in solidarity out of self-interest. The well-being of the individual depends on the safe voyage of the ship and thus also on the well-being of all other passengers. This idea is already familiar to antiquity; Using the example of the helmsman, who himself is one of the fellow travelers and therefore also shares in their benefits, Aristotle explains to what extent rule benefits both those who are ruled and those who rule. The first-person narrator apparently expects his team to see exactly that, and therefore despairs over their "thoughtlessness".

The narrator seems to be blind to his own role in the "stranger" taking over power. The way in which the crew initially follows his instructions without complaint in the middle of the night (even if not at the speed desired by the helmsman) shows that they are used to obeying without thinking, which the helmsman is probably not entirely to blame for. The men continue this habit with the “stranger”, whom they also consider to be more attractive than their old helmsman.

Society and economy

One can also assume that Kafka's story is a symbol of social Darwinian behavior, specifically: an image of the relationship between a self-confident, strong, authoritarian personality and an insecure, weak person who relies on others, as well as the obedient, authority-fixated crowd of fellow human beings: Not state affairs, other affairs - management functions of any kind - are taken over by the stranger according to this interpretation, because he is the stronger and more self-confident.

biography

The stranger in Der Steuermann is one of the many father figures in Franz Kafka's work, characterized by brutal strength. As is clear in his letter to his father , written in 1919, Kafka saw his father as an authority who repeatedly had a negative impact on his life. The way through one's own life could be compared to a trip on the “ship of life”, and the narrative self, the helmsman who confidently “tries to stay on course”, would stand for Kafka himself. As soon as the foreigner comes into play in the story, awakens even before he has said or done anything, he doubts in his ego whether it can even steer his ship of life. The fact that the ego asks the question, "Am I not a helmsman?" With which Kafka's story begins, seemingly unmotivated can be explained by the uncertainty that the mere appearance of the "dark" father figure triggers.

The father as a psychic authority has evidently been pushed out of the son's consciousness and therefore appears, however his sudden presence is to be explained (it is not explained in the story), when he appears as a “stranger”. His appearance is extremely effective: Not only his physical strength, but also the matter of course with which he "scares away" the son's claim to be helmsman like "a dream" weaken the ego so much that it is actually "incapable of steering" and has to admit defeat to the father figure.

In this interpretation, the team stands for Kafka's family. Around 1920, according to the letter to his father , Kafka felt left alone by them.

Psychoanalysis

Joachim Pfeiffer develops the following psychoanalytic interpretative approach:

The text stages an inner-psychic drama, it shows graphically the conflict of the psychic instances ego, id and super-ego and their failing mediation: the crisis experience of the subject. The ego, which is supposed to mediate between the super-ego, i.e. the social and moral norms on the one hand, and the irrational instinctual energies on the other hand, in order to assert itself in reality, is challenged to rule in its own house, i.e. in its own ship. The “swaying, tired, powerful figures” that rise from below illustrate the instinctual energies that should come into the service of the ego, but which prove to be of little help. They nod to the helmsman, but, it is said, "They only had looks for the stranger ..." They submit to the domineering super-ego, the stranger who calls out to them: "Don't bother me!" Such an interpretation, the based on Freud's model of psychic instances and dream analysis , can refer to the dreamlike world of this text. The text would then be understood as a projection of an inner world, as a “ mimesis of the reality of the unconscious”.

Relation to other works of Kafka

Among Kafka's characters there are many young men who are initially successful as managing directors or employees, but later fail in a " Kafkaesque " way. That hits u. a. towards Georg Bendemann ( The Judgment ), towards Gregor Samsa ( The Metamorphosis ), but also towards Josef K. ( The Trial ). There is also such a figure in The Hunter Gracchus . Misguided by temptation, it must persist in a permanent state of transition from life to death. Here, too, there is a failing boatswain, through whose failure the hunter has lost all control over his death boat.

Quote

  • “ What kind of people is that! Do you think too or are you just shuffling senselessly over the earth? "

expenditure

  • The helmsman . Originated in 1920. First published: Description of a fight. Edited by Max Brod, Prague 1936, p. 100 ff. (Title by Max Brod).
  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • The stories. Original version. Edited by Roger Hermes, Frankfurt / Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Legacy writings and fragments II. Ed. By Jost Schillemeit, Frankfurt / Main 1992, p. 324.

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alt 2005, p. 548.
  2. ↑ Unseld 1982, p. 194.
  3. ↑ Alt 2005, p. 569.
  4. ↑ Cicero uses it e.g. B. in De re publica . Book I, 51 ( Memento of the original from February 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.latein-lk.de
  5. ^ Aristotle: Politics . Translated and edited by Olof Gigon. Munich 1976, p. 113
  6. ↑ Dietmar Peil: "In the same boat". Variations on a Metaphorical Argument (PDF; 2.9 MB). In: Egon Boshof: Archive for Cultural History . 68th volume. Böhlau. Cologne / Vienna 1986, p. 274f.
  7. ↑ Hans H. Hiebel: Franz Kafka: Form and Meaning. Form analyzes and interpretations of 'Before the Law', 'The Judgment', 'Report for an Academy', 'A Country Doctor', 'Der Bau', 'Der Steuermann', 'Prometheus', 'Der Verschollene', 'Der Proceß' and selected aphorisms . Wurzburg. Königshausen + Neumann 1999. p. 272
  8. ^ Joachim Pfeiffer: Kafka's topicality. An introduction ( memento of the original from July 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 1997 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / home.ph-freiburg.de
  9. ↑ Alt 2005. p. 568