Conversation with the drunk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conversation with the Drunken Man is a story by Franz Kafka that appeared in the magazine Hyperion in 1909 on the initiative of Max Brod and against the intention of Kafka himself . It is also part of the posthumously published description of a fight . It is a bizarre portrayal of an encounter with a simple drunk man, but whom the narrator insinuates to be a distinguished French.

content

The narrator steps out onto the street, where he is “attacked by the sky with the moon and stars and great vaults and from the Ringplatz with the town hall, Marian column and church ”. He makes a strange little address to these nocturnal apparitions. Then it occurs to him that “a thoughtful person (ie he) learns from a drunk man”. In fact, after a long search at the well, he meets a drunk man. The narrator addresses the drunk in a very gracious manner and insinuates that he is a man from Paris. He describes the supposedly wonderful, but also hollow events there in Paris in an exuberant way.

At first the drunk doesn't react at all and just belches. Finally he stammered that he would like to go to his brother-in-law on Wenceslas Square , but he doesn't know if he even has a brother-in-law. The narrator is neither irritated nor let himself be diverted from his line. He offers himself to the drunk instead of a servant and offers him his arm.

Text analysis and interpretation approach

The narrator steps into the nocturnal picture and what he utters is confused, almost as if drunk. The nocturnal stars and the houses "attack him". This is followed by a verbal banter with the terms "moon" and "Mariensäule" and it is about houses "that roll like on small wheels ...". He actually meets a drunk who he thought he could learn something from. But what should one learn from that other than just being drunk? The narrator showered him with a mannered torrent of speech about the glamor and hollowness of the city of Paris. The burp is the drunk's drastic response that should actually sober up. But not this narrator, he is by no means irritated. He does not assume that the other is a French aristocrat. The narrator is also in a state of intoxication and stubbornly suppresses the triviality of this wretched drunkard phenomenon.

Within this partial narrative from a version of the description of a struggle - as in the reference work - the technique of doubling is used. Apparently the two people appearing are completely different. The confused, enthusiastic youth and the withdrawn drunk are opposite poles and yet they are also similar in their respective loss of reality. They form a lonely, grotesque couple when they end up arm in arm on their way into the unknown.

Source and web link

Wikisource: Conversation with the Drunk  - Sources and full texts

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: Prints during his lifetime . Published by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann , S. Fischer Verlag 1996, Frankfurt / Main, pp. 395–400.
  • Posthumous writings and fragments I . Edited by Malcolm Pasley. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1993, pp. 101-107.

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unseld p. 27
  2. ↑ Alt p. 151