Big noise

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Großer Lärm is an autobiographical prose sketch by Franz Kafka that appeared in the Prague newspaper Herder-Blätter in October 1912 . It shows an excerpt from Kafka's life in the middle of his parents' noisy household. In a letter to editor Willy Haas on September 26, 1912, Kafka wrote that he wanted to "publicly chastise his family".

content

The first-person narrator describes how he sits in his room and hears doors slamming around him. The father storms through his room. Voices from the next room reach the narrator. After the father has closed the door of the apartment with a loud jolt when leaving, the noise decreases; but it is still present and disruptive for the narrator in its more delicate form. The text closes with the narrator's consideration of whether he should not “crawl like a snake” to his sisters and their young lady to ask them to be quiet.

Text analysis

Here a real scene from the Kafka house is described first. There is the father, known for his loud impulsiveness, as he is also described in the letter to the father . Sister Valli is specifically mentioned by name. The narrator sees himself in a kind of state of war, he feels in his room as "in the headquarters of the noise". The noises that reach him develop an acoustically diverse life of their own and he perceives them excessively with his overexcited nerves. But he does not dare to openly claim his need for rest. He wants to plead for calm with the ruse of cringing submission. He does not have the feeling that he is allowed to openly address his legitimate interests here in this apartment. Here, too, the difference to the father becomes apparent - on an acoustic level, so to speak. The father naturally makes noises with every expression of life, the son does not dare to articulate his contrary need for rest. He is only considering asking the sisters for silence and not the father as the real troublemaker.

Interpretative approach

One might think that Kafka's disproportionately long living in his parents' apartment produced an over-nervous reaction to everything that was disturbing there. From Kafka's diaries, however, we know that the noise problem was not just there. Even in various apartments that were later rented, Kafka saw himself being annoyed in a hypochondriacal manner by noise and thereby disturbed in his literary work. Noises in general, regardless of their volume, are events with negative connotations for Kafka. In construction z. B. a very soft chirping leads the listening animal into ever deeper panic, the justification of which cannot be conclusively assessed.

The text can also be seen as a description of a person who is exposed to disturbing influences from his environment. The person cannot free himself from the misery symbolized here by the noise on his own.

expenditure

  • All the stories. Edited by Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1970. ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • The stories original version ed. by Roger Herms. Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Diaries 1909–1923. Edited by Max Brod . S. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 1951 and others. ISBN 3-10-038160-2 .
  • Prints in lifetime. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, p. 441 f.
  • Diaries. Edited by Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller and Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 225 f.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Big noise  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 180
  2. ↑ Reiner Stach : Kafka. The years of decisions S. Fischer Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-596-16187-8 , p. 8 ff.
  3. ^ Peter-André Alt : Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 , p. 180