Advocate (Kafka)

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Advocate is a prose piece by Franz Kafka , probably composed in 1922. It was first published in 1936.

A monologue describes the difficulty and necessity of finding advocates using the legal metaphors typical of Kafka .

content

A first-person narrator reports on his search for advocates, during which he is constantly walking in corridors in which there is an undefined roar. Old, cumbersome women keep appearing. The narrator doesn't know if he's in a courthouse. But he knows that he is not in the right place to gather advocates. The advocates are required against the accusers, who can nimbly overcome the former. In a court case with its apparently clearly regulated sequences, the narrator does not seem to need advocates. But at the same time he wants to win over a large number of advocates, from all walks of life.

The never-ending, ever-driving search in what appears to be a gigantic building ends the prose piece with the idea of ​​the stairs, which continue to grow upwards, under the feet that rise upwards.

shape

It is a small, unstructured piece of prose that has so far been little interpreted. It begins in the past tense , changes to the present tense and then, in its last passages, addresses the reader in an almost evocative manner, who is often addressed as “you”. The narrator has begun this search even before the time, they engaged him present and the thought of it dominates him always excessive .

While static elements still predominate at the beginning (“repulsive faces, roaring, clumsily turning women”), the end expresses a breathless, aimless hurrying on through corridors, doors and stairs. This final sequence shows a typical element of Kafkasch's representation, namely the implementation of movement in a cinematographic manner.

Text analysis

The advocate is a term both legal and religious. It is unclear what the narrator actually needs the advocate for, since he doesn't think he needs them in court. But can you believe him if he swears his confidence in the orderly processes of the judiciary? There is talk of prosecutors whose harmful function remains unclear. They are described as nimble animals (weasels, clever foxes, mice). At most there is something unsound about them.

The narrator wants a wall of advocates. He would like to collect these "in one place [...] where many different people come together, from different areas, from all classes, from all professions, of different ages". Here the thought of a longed-for protective collective appears , which is the community ideal of Zionism , with which Kafka was intensely concerned.

The concluding description of the growing stairs under the rising feet describes a Sisyphus situation. At the same time, this expresses the further and further distancing oneself from the advocates who may already have been won.

References to other works by Kafka

The advocates are like looking back at the novel The Trial, which had been broken off seven years earlier : the aimless wandering in hallways, of which it is not clear whether they belong to the court, the considerations about the nature of the judiciary, the search for helpers.

In the year 1922, however, Kafka was also busy with the fragment Das Schloss . The old portly women omnipresent in the advocate make one think of the landladies from the castle, especially the bridge landlady Gardena, who tries to give the protagonist there an insight into the mechanisms of the castle life.

The roar in the corridors, that is, a noise that cannot be located, has its counterpart in the intangible hissing of the story Der Bau, which emerged a year later .

Quotes

  • "It was very unsure whether I had advocates, I couldn't find out anything about it, all faces were dismissive, most of the people who came towards me and whom I met again and again in the corridors looked like old fat women [...] . "
  • "How? Running down a flight of stairs in this short, hurried life accompanied by an impatient roar? That's impossible. The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose a second, you have already lost your whole life [...]. "

Web links

expenditure

  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Stories and other selected prose. Published by Roger Hermes, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Kafka The Stories. Original version Fischer Verlag 1997 Roger Herms ISBN 3-596-13270-3 p. 572
  2. ^ Franz Kafka Complete Stories. published by Paul Raabe S. Fischerverlag 1977, ISBN 3-596-21078-X , p. 405.
  3. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 585
  4. ^ Peter-André Alt : Kafka and the film. Beck Verlag 2009 ISBN 978-3-406-58748-1 .
  5. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 , p. 586.