Eleven sons

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Elf Sons is a story by Franz Kafka that was written in 1916 and published in 1920 as part of the volume Ein Landarzt . It depicts the complaint of a father who is dissatisfied with his eleven sons.

Summary

A father describes his eleven sons. He finds defects in every son. It's not an undifferentiated nagging. He regards every son as a whole with good and bad qualities. But then his negative view always prevails. Apparently positive things such as beauty, seriousness, sociability, profundity also lead to negative things in the father's assessment. He only wants children from one, the seventh son. It remains unclear why from this one who he thinks will not get the wheel of the future rolling. Besides, the father doesn't believe that this will happen either.

This remark by the father reveals something about the wish to find many children and grandchildren from this son in this world. But it is not explained why he sees him as "encouraging and hopeful" and not one of the - at least partially - described as much more splendid brothers.

In the gaze of the weak eleventh son he reads an ominous message that could lead to the destruction of the family.

shape

The prose piece consists of a lamenting monologue by a father who complains both openly and subtly. In the last paragraph there appears to be a dialogue with the eleventh son; but they are only guesses derived from looks.

Eleven sons also appear in the Anderson fairy tale The Wild Swans .

Biographical background

The motif of the father dissatisfied with his son, or here with his sons, appears many times in Kafka. It obviously comes from your own family history.

This story is a reflection of Kafka's own existence as a son in relation to a father whose approval he was never able to gain. This subject is presented in detail in the story The Judgment and in the letter to the father . Especially in the judgment one finds the similarly strange phrase that the father incomprehensibly does not prefer the successful son, but a distant eccentric.

The description of the sons includes male, female and gender-neutral coded characteristics such as "unsightly", "beautiful", "slim and well-built", "the beauty of a singer", "much too big for his age", "dear and good", " somehow shrunk in the bone formation ”,“ elegant ”and“ sweet ”. None of these sons corresponds to the Jewish, but also none to the non-Jewish ideal of men. In this respect, reference is made to Kafka's situation as a German-speaking Jew in the Danube monarchy.

There is an indication that there is also an allegory or a riddle of the literary text in the form that every description of the son aims at a certain story from Kafka's country doctor's book. Max Brod remembers Kafka's own words, according to which “there are quite simply eleven stories that I'm working on right now.” The second son corresponds to the legend Before the Law . The eighth son corresponds to the story The Bucket Rider .

A similar portrayal of a literary riddle can be found in the story A Visit to the Mine . It is similar in that eleven people are described at a time, creating an association between the sons and the young engineers described there.

Kafka has repeatedly brought his writing into visual contexts with the procreation process, pregnancy, the birth process and the growing up of an infant. With the intellectual connection between sons and literary work, one sees Kafka in the role of a father compared to his works. And just as the father is often dissatisfied with his sons in the present story, Kafka is extremely critical of his works and he only wanted a few to exist for publication and for posterity. The eleven sons were one of them.

Kafka was pleased that the lecture artist Ludwig Hardt considered this piece to be particularly suitable for his recitations and included it in his lecture evenings alongside works by well-known writers such as Christian Morgenstern , Detlev von Liliencron and Heinrich Heine .

Quotes

  • "The third son is beautiful too, but it's not the beauty that I like."
  • “The fifth son is kind and good; promised much less than he kept; "
  • "My eighth son is my child of pain, and I don't know why."
  • “Son: 'I'll take you with me, father'. Father: 'You would be the last one I would trust.' Son: 'So at least I want to be the last one'. "

reception

  • Alt (p. 511) emphasizes that the description of the sons' bodies is an “allegory of the literary text”, “the meaning of which creates a form of self-reflection”. As with the other country doctor pieces, a “leading structure of non-psychological narration” prevails here, among other things tangible in the “renunciation of analytical realism”.
  • Stach (p. 439) sees the prose piece as a rhetorical riddle text without external action and without message, which is completely shaped by the language, which makes it particularly suitable for recitation.
  • v.Jagow, Lorenz (p. 371): The description of the young men includes male, female and gender-neutral coded characteristics ... None of these sons corresponds to the Jewish or non-Jewish ideal of men, none enjoys the undivided approval of the fictional father. The dividing lines between the sexes fluctuate with Kafka in texts of all creative periods as well as those between humans and animals.

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: All the stories. Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Franz Kafka The stories. Edited by Roger Herms, original version. Fischer Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Prints during his lifetime. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, pp. 284-292.

Secondary literature

theatre

  • Eleven sons . Narrative theater / acting with objects. Pete Belcher. Vienna, world premiere November 2005

Web links

Wikisource: Elf Sons  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kafka Handbook Life-Work-Effect Dagmar c. Lorenz S. 371 Kafka and gender.
  2. ↑ Alt, p. 511.
  3. ↑ v.Jagow, Corngold, S. 153rd
  4. ↑ Alt, p. 510.
  5. ^ Stefan Neuhaus: "A country doctor" is dissected .
  6. ↑ Unseld, p. 145.
  7. ↑ Stach, p. 439.