Memories of the Kaldabahn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Memories of the Kaldabahn is a prose fragment by Franz Kafka from his diaries. It is about a man who does a heavy job on the railroad in the interior of Russia.

origin

The prose piece consists of two extensive entries in the diaries , namely from issue 7, entry from August 15, 1914, and from the bundles , entry from November 3, 1914. It appears in the critical edition of the KKAT diaries under the numbers 549-553 and 684-694.

The Kaldabahn's own publications cannot be found in the current Kafka editions. However, reference is made to it several times in current biographies.

Thematically related is the Broskwa sketch , a prose sketch that Kafka probably made at the same time as the Kaldabahn in the winter of 1914/15. It is about the very barren settlement of Broskwa to the north, from which the narrator wishes to get away, but which he will not leave in the end, even if he had the opportunity to do so.

content

Many years ago a man was looking for the lonely expanse of Russia to work as a station guard in a run-down railway station some distance from the small village of Kalda. He lives in a wooden shed that is also the station building. The few passengers waiting for the train use his crate as a waiting room. The man has no objection, as he almost appreciates the villagers.

He was hoping to be able to grow some things around his hut, but the barren, frosty soil cannot be conquered. He expected hunting opportunities too, but there are only bears, wolves and rats. So he has to buy everything dearly from the villagers.

The inspector comes once a month to check him and who always looks in vain for errors in the bookkeeping. After that, there is regular fraternization with drinking bouts, over which both of them fall asleep together on the cot.

The man is watching the rats closely. He describes the busy actions of a rat in an almost friendly manner, only to then kill it with one kick. There is the farmer Jekoz, an old, but still very strong man, who promised him hesitantly to get boards for the crate so that it could be winterized. The man himself tried to collect kerosene for the winter, a very dangerous undertaking.

Before winter comes, the man becomes very sick. He suffers from a strong cough, which is common in this area and which actually goes away quickly in the man. However, the man is now very weak. The prose fragment ends with the sentence: "[...] I then trembled all over and had to lie down wherever I was and wait until my senses came together again."

shape

The narrative perspective is based entirely on the first-person narrator with his solitary monologue. Only his perception and assessment determine the reader's point of view. Since no one else is, the additional information offered or authorial narrator, with which one could identify. In this way the abandonment of the man, of whom he himself expressly speaks, is vividly represented. The man had originally sought solitude, but he noticed that he didn't feel made for complete solitude at all. And a large part of the fragment is about the man's contacts with other people, he never describes the lonely Russian vastness in its barren beauty. Even his observation of the rat initially has something of a positive affection from someone who seeks distraction in his loneliness.

The language is emotional. It is not the sober, cool Kafka style . The man describes himself as a pitiable person because of his abandonment, but also because of the adversities of life in the Russian wasteland. But you know from the introduction that it was all many years ago. The narrator has obviously overcome the stage at the end of the fragment, in which a deeply exhausted person is presented.

References to other Kafka writings

This fragment contains many elements that also appear in other Kafka works. They come from the unmistakable Kafka cosmos, which the writer used at an early age and from which he draws to the end.

The man in Russia naturally reminds of the distant friend from the judgment , whom the father there prefers to his son. The old, but still strong man appears again and again as a father figure in Kafka. See The Judgment , Letter to the Father , The Married Couple . Interest in the rat's activities, which ends with a fatal kick, points to an intersection . The intensely digging animal can also be found in the giant mole from Der Dorfschullehrer or in Der Bau .

The lack of privacy, which becomes apparent when strangers sit down in the shed or the inspector even sleeps on the bunk with them, is also a basic theme, which is particularly evident in the three Kafka novel fragments The Lost One ( America ), The Castle and the process always comes into play. The protagonists there also almost never have a lockable area that only belongs to them, but others can come and go there as they please.

Biographical background

Alt (p. 28) writes that Kafka's adventurous uncle Josef Löwy, who was involved in the organization of the railway construction in the Belgian Congo, is reflected in the present fragment. The ice deserts of Russia take the place of the heat of the Congo in the story. It's about building railways (and thus western progress) under extreme climatic conditions.

Quotes

  • "I've never been as abandoned as I was there."
  • "In my opinion, this hope was not so much hope as despair and laziness."
  • “The thirst after such a night was terrible; it was as if there was a second person inside me who stuck his head and neck out of my mouth and screamed for something to drink. "
  • "In the last convulsion, in which the rat was hanging on the wall in front of me, it then apparently stretched its claws tight against its living nature, they were like a little hand reaching out towards you."

Web links (text of the fragment)

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: Diaries . Edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller and Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 549-553 u. 684-694.

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. P. 28
  2. ↑ Reiner Stach Kafka The Years of Knowledge p. 496
  3. ↑ Stach Is that Kafka? P. 132