An everyday confusion

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An everyday confusion is a short parable-like story by Franz Kafka , written in 1917 and published posthumously. It is a representation of the daily pitfalls and errors that result in failure.

content

The story begins with the programmatic sentence: "An everyday incident: his enduring an everyday confusion."

However, this sentence arises from a reading error (or editing error) by Max Brod; the critical edition (and the manuscripts) does not say “confusion”, but “an everyday heroism”.

Person A and person B from H want to close an important deal in H. But they don't come together. The different lengths of the path and the lack of agreement on the meeting point lead to confusion for both and prevent the meeting.

They even met in the meantime without A being aware of it, although he was talking to B. But he was obviously fixated on being able to reach B only in B and could not even take note of it elsewhere. B is waiting at his home. When A learns this, he hurries to his apartment, but falls on the stairs.

In the end, A remains injured and B disappears angrily.

Text analysis and interpretation approach

The story reads like a math or physics problem. The people A and B and the place H are arbitrary sizes, that means they also stand for any person and any place. The time and place references are also variable and cannot be accessed in a fixed manner. A playful association with the theory of relativity with its redefinition of space and time could also be recognized here.

Time and space can be overcome. What could actually be a liberation, however, turns against human striving. It is not physical causes that make time and space appear so relative and indistinct. It is the assessments of the people, their hopes, their fears but also simple luck, or as here: misfortune, which make the paths short or long or prevent attention or give wrong places.

In the opening sentence, the connection between the neutral fact “everyday incident” is connected with its agonizing effect on people “bearing an everyday confusion”. Again Kafka's failure is the subject, here failure because of the peril of everyday life. It may seem coincidental and paradoxical on the one hand, but also full of inevitable logic on the other. Again, like in the story The Village School Teacher, there are two people who actually want the same thing, but whose intention is prevented by fate. Or is it rather through their own inadequacy, through volatility and impatience?

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Franz Kafka: Stories and other selected prose. Edited by Roger Hermes. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Legacy writings and fragments II. Edited by Jost Schillemeit. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, pp. 35/36.

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: An Everyday Confusion  - Sources and Full Texts