Dresses (narration)

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Dresses is a short story by Franz Kafka that appeared in 1913 as part of the anthology contemplation .

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In this short piece of prose, a first-person narrator laments how ornate clothes wear out and become covered with dust, so that they should certainly not be worn every day. He compares this with the outward appearance of beautiful girls who "appear in this one natural masked suit" every day. He thinks that sometimes they come from a party and have to perceive their own sight as worn, bloated and “hardly bearable”.

Text analysis and interpretation approach

The narrator's gaze is directed towards the deterioration of the outside. Clothes "that lie nicely over beautiful bodies" only remind him of the dust that settles in them and can no longer be removed. Dust is the expression of the ephemeral and decaying. It is particularly concentrated in the decorations and ruffles, especially in the jewelry accessories that have increased the value of the dress. To stop this deterioration, the beautiful dress must of course not be worn every day.

The outward appearance of beautiful girls is inevitably linked to the daily presentation of themselves. The narrator now suspects that the beautiful girls should see this connection in a similar way to him and should feel that their appearance is worn out, which moreover is only a mask .

The view of these girls is voyeuristic . This means that a meticulous observation of the other takes place without any other contact. His description of her beauty is: "Multiple irritating muscles and bones and tense skin and masses of thin hair" . A similar point of view is presented in the plays The Passenger and The Rejection , also from the volume Contemplation . The narrator seems to put himself in these girls' shoes, but he's not really trying to understand them. He projects his downright morbid feelings onto her. He doesn’t get down to her essence, nor does he obviously care. He devalues ​​her beauty, makes her mentally unattractive and thus creates a reason to avoid contact.

In this little prose piece, Kafka's problematic relationship with women emerges. It manifested itself in a total of three engagements and engagements, a crowd of young admirers, but no permanent bond. But it also contains the vanitas- everything-is-vain thought .

The topic of inappropriate and ephemeral clothes also appears in Kafka's fragment of the novel Das Schloss in the last conversation with the landlady and with Pepi.

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son . Verlag CH Beck Munich 2005 ISBN 3-406-53441-4

Web links

Wikisource: Dresses  - Sources and Full Texts