The urban world

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The urban world is a prose fragment from Franz Kafka's diaries, born in 1911.

A defaulting student tries to convince his skeptical father and a friend that he has a brilliant business idea without the reader knowing what it might be.

origin

The fragment appears in the diary entries between the entries of February 21 and March 26, 1911. It was published posthumously in 1994 as part of the diaries 1909–1912 . The piece cannot be found in all commercially available Kafka editions, but is mentioned by current biographers.

content

The older student Oskar is on his way home in winter. He ponders intensely. When he arrives at his parents' apartment, his father greets him angrily and showering him with reproaches for his lazy lifestyle. The son defends himself and points to a special idea that he has that he needs to consider more closely and that he also needs his friend to realize and present. In the course of this, one learns that Oskar has been putting off a dissertation for ten years that he cannot come to terms with. The father, resignedly, accepts Oscar's suggestion, and above all wants to spare the mother, whom one shouldn't tell anything.

Oskar suddenly turns up at his friend Franz, the engineer. He slept because he was on night duty, and he is not ready to come with us immediately at Oskar's intense insistence, without finding out why. Finally, Franz dresses.

The fragment ends with the exclamation: “You can always be relied on”.

shape

The narrative perspective is impersonal and indefinite. It is mainly a matter of awkward exchanges between Oskar and his father in the first part and between Oskar and Franz in the second part. The emotions of the speakers are not explained in more detail, but illustrated by gestures: Oskar's “ dance turn to the way home ”, the father hides a window (in its full size), “Oskar turned his head as if he were being held by the neck” . A table that is set up between father and son and is pushed back and forth is a secondary theme that expresses the distance and simultaneous fixation.

The emphasis on the optical and the cinematographic representation, which is increasingly seen in Kafka's works, also applies to this fragment.

A grammatical design of the original fragment has hardly taken place. The punctuation is partly missing. The exchange speeches are not lifted out of the text and can often only be assigned to the right person at second glance. Both the heading and the last sentence of the piece are ambiguous. The fragment contains nothing that has to do with an “urban world”. The last sentence is not clear who is saying it. Probably Oskar; it is not absolutely imperative.

Text analysis

Even in the first sentence, a negative judgment is made about Oskar. "If you looked at him closer () you were frightened before his eyes" . As soon as the father appears, he certifies Oskar “ laziness, waste, malice and stupidity” . The conversation between father and son is dominated by mutual reproaches; massive reproaches from the father, more subtle reproaches from the son. At the same time, attempts to get closer can be seen; carried by resignation in the father and imbued with hope in the son. But you don't move towards each other, you can't approach each other verbally or in terms of content. Accordingly, the course of the conversation is also chaotic and wooden. The reader doubts that even if Oskar's great idea is disclosed (if he really has one) an agreement with the father can be established. A family farce is performed here. And isn't the father right in his assessment? A son who has been trying to do a doctorate for ten years, who suggests brilliant business ideas without explaining them in more detail; which requires a friend whose knowledge or even consent is not yet available.

Oskar also behaves inappropriately when he comes into contact with his friend Franz. In the young engineer's apartment he shows an infantile ruthlessness. Oskar grabs the man who has just been awakened by the skirt, puts him on, kicks the bed with his heel, and doesn't say a word to his friend. Franz replied to this behavior with laconic, ironic remarks, but finally with giving in.

References to other Kafka works

This fragment from 1911 seems like a preparatory exercise for the piece The Judgment , composed a year later ; both deal with the “myth of patriarchal violence”. What is striking is the enormous linguistic advancement within this year.

It may be indicative that Oskar demands support from his friend, the engineer. The engineer appears at Kafka several times as a representative of a profession that is difficult to acquire and is characterized by intensive, high-quality work. See The Missing One , A Visit to the Mine . It is noticeable that Kafka gives the engineer his own first name.

There is also a certain relationship to the posthumously published piece A Young Ambitious Student, probably composed in 1914 . There, too, a student wants to escape the barren hardship of his student life by developing a special horse dressage idea. But this piece describes an actively planning young man with lonely determination.

Biographical references

The year 1911 was for Kafka et al. a. shaped by the fact that, in addition to his job at the workers' accident insurance company , he and his brother-in-law became partners in a small asbestos factory at the urging of his parents. To the chagrin of his father, he withdrew further duties to manage the company, which caused Kafka to feel guilty.

In the late summer of 1911 Kafka went on a trip to Lucerne with his friend Max Brod . Under the impression of Swiss tourism, the friends came up with the idea of creating a special travel guide for the cheapest offers with the title “Cheap” . Although it was never realized, notes on it were made in a Swiss hotel, but they show the main features of the project:

“A millionaire company. Cheap through Italy, cheap through Switzerland, cheap in Paris ... Can be translated into all languages, motto: Just courage .... "

The guide was supposed to "make them millionaires and tear them away from the hideous official work".

Kafka himself was undecided at the beginning of his studies and tried different fields of study (chemistry, German studies). After he had made his way to studying law, however, he completed it with difficulty but relatively quickly and graduated in 1906 with a doctorate.

reception

Reiner Stach ( The Years of Decisions ), p. 30: " The urban world , started in the spring of 1911 and broken off after a few pages: a story in which a rumbling father appears, whose figure covers an entire window, and a windy son, a squadron who leads a 'lotter life' [...] no, it would have been difficult to endure, of all times, in the midst of the bickering about the asbestos factory, indulging in such fantasies of doom. "

Reiner Stach ( The Early Years ), p. 472: “The promising idea, to let a windy figure who has not yet found support in life, to fail because of a vital, overpowering father, is already pictorially present. But since the idea still takes precedence over the image, the first attempt at literary design leaves the characters pale, and the clumsily threaded plot is lost in hints: The urban world is the name of the fragment that is one of Kafka's very few weak texts. "

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: The stories. Original version, edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Diaries. Edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller and Malcolm Pasley. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 1990, pp. 151-158.

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ published by Hans-Gerd Koch Fischer paperback; Note see also Franz Kafka Die Erzählungen Original version Fischer Verlag 1997 Roger Herms ISBN 3-596-13270-3 pp. 548/554
  2. ↑ Reiner Stach Kafka The Years of Decisions S. Fischer Verlag 2004 ISBN 3-596-16187-8 pp. 30, 197, 206
  3. ^ Peter-André Alt : Kafka and the film. Beck Verlag 2009 ISBN 978-3-406-58748-1
  4. ↑ Reiner Stach Kafka The Years of Decisions p. 206
  5. ↑ Reiner Stach Kafka The Years of Decisions p. 197
  6. ↑ Reiner Stach: Kafka. The years of decisions , p. 24 ff.
  7. ↑ Reiner Stach: Is that Kafka? P. 184.
  8. ↑ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son , p. 200.
  9. ↑ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son , p. 97 ff.

Web links