The Bridge (Kafka)

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Die Brücke is a prose piece by Franz Kafka that was written in 1916/1917 and published posthumously by Max Brod in 1931 . It was one of the first texts to be written in Alchemist Alley in Prague , independent of Kafka's parents. At that time the artist was engaged to Felice Bauer from Berlin for the second time.

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There is a bridge over an abyss at a lonely height. This bridge is waiting for the first person to step on it. She looks towards him with care, even with care. This person actually comes, jumps with both feet on the bridge and inflicts "wild pain" on it. The bridge wants to turn around to take a closer look at this person. She falls down and ends up “torn and skewered” in the brook below.

Text analysis

A first-person narrator describes the process in the past tense, without explanation or personal amazement at the appearance of a human bridge, a hybrid between building and human. The way of expression is - contrary to the otherwise mostly untouched, factual style of Kafka - here rather emotional, almost pathetic.

The bridge describes itself with human components - "toes, hands, lap of the skirt, hair". The view of the environment is also human. It is fond of the being that will be the first to walk on the bridge, wants to protect and preserve it; although the task of being a bridge is difficult for her. The terms "stiff and cold, had to wait, thoughts went in a jumble" express this. The concern for the hiker is badly rewarded. He jumps brutally on the bridge; why shouldn't he, he doesn't know anything about their human feelings.

But the bridge asks itself about the nature of the wanderer. Several variants are conceivable between “child” and “destroyer”. To get an answer here, the bridge turns around. She commented on this as if in astonishment: "The bridge is turning!"

One does not find out what happens to the hiker, he is likely to fall into the abyss with the broken bridge. By turning around, the bridge did not gain any knowledge of the hiker, but found its own death.

The last sentence makes you shudder. The bridge is "impaled by the pointed pebbles that had always stared at me so peacefully from the raging water" . In times of long, oppressive waiting, the bridge had found a certain peace in the sight of the pebbles in the brook and it was precisely because of them that it was being destroyed.

Interpretative approaches

The present prose piece has been treated and interpreted relatively little in the literature. References to other Kafka stories can be seen here, in which hybrids appear naturally - but there between humans and animals. (See, inter alia, The Metamorphosis , Research of a Dog , A Report for an Academy , A Crossbreed .)

Kafka also deals with the subject of death and knowledge. B. in Before the Law . The story Ein Traum also ends with the protagonist's fatal fall into an abyss (here: grave).

If one draws conclusions from history about its creator, it is clear that he must have been unhappy. He feels tied up in an unloved situation. He tries to do justice to his duty, even to let duty become an inclination. He feels destroyed by people or things to which he tries to turn positively. It is very likely that the well-known troubles in Kafka's life - his work as a lawyer, his relationship with his father or his fiancé - are the background.

A special possibility of interpretation is referred to in v. Jagow / Jahraus pointed out by Vivian Liska . There the bridge becomes the woman who, as intended, waits for her hero. There is a painful rape. She turns around - like Lot's wife and pulls the violent man into the abyss with her.

Expenses (selection)

  • When building the Great Wall of China. Unprinted stories and prose from the estate. Edited by Max Brod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps . Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1931.
  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Retained writings and fragments 1. Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-10-038148-3 , p. 304 f.
  • The short stories and other selected prose . Edited by Roger Hermes . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 978-3-596-13270-6 .

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: The Bridge  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 499
  2. ↑ Bettina von Jagow / Oliver Jahraus; Vivian Liska's reference to the interpretation by Ruth Gross, p. 68