Poseidon (Kafka)

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Poseidon is a small prose piece by Franz Kafka from 1920.

The sea god Poseidon is presented here as a dissatisfied administrator of the waters, who actually does not know his own profession , namely the sea.

Emergence

In the fall of 1920, Kafka broke away from his lover Milena Jesenská . A series of short prose pieces emerged in a productive push. Mention should be made here of the city coat of arms , the helmsman , at night , community , our little town is ... (also known under the title The Rejection of 1920), On the question of the laws , the raising of troops , the test , the vulture , the roundabout , little fable and also Poseidon . Kafka did not publish these small works with their inner connections himself; the titles largely come from Max Brod .

content

Poseidon sits at the desk doing calculations about the waters he has to manage. He could rely on assistants for his work, but prefers to do it himself. He is dissatisfied with his work. But all considerations as to how one could employ him differently lead to no result, since he ultimately does not want to accept any other work.

Above all, Poseidon is annoyed about the notions that are commonly made of him, namely that he is constantly driving through the waters with his trident . Instead, he sits in the depths of the world's oceans, calculates continuously and has hardly seen the oceans himself. Only sometimes, when he makes a trip to Jupiter , from which he mostly returns angry, does he glimpse the sea during the hasty ascent to Olympus . He thinks he will have to wait until the end of the world, until a quiet moment will arise and he can take a little tour of the sea.

shape

The little story consists of two paragraphs. The narrative perspective is ambiguous and shifts between the first and second paragraph. Not Poseidon tells, but an anonymous figure next to him. An impersonal “man” perspective from a lookout, obviously above Poseidon, looks down on him and on his dissatisfaction and nagging. She is apparently trying to sort things out in the Poseidon's favor. The following passages from the first paragraph testify to this:

  • "You couldn't possibly ..."
  • "If you then made him various suggestions ..."
  • "And you offered him a position outside ..."
  • "By the way, you didn't take your complaints seriously ..."

Who is this "one" who half takes on the work sensitivities of the sea god, but ultimately negates them? It could be a higher god, perhaps Zeus, the chief of the Greek gods. But then even the supreme god would only be a labor administrator and bureaucrat. One thing is clear, this higher authority looks at the sea god with distinct irony.

The second paragraph is marked by Poseidon's displeasure, his own point of view is now more prominent, but here, too, he is not the narrator.

Relation to other works of Kafka

A number of themes typical of Kafka appear in this prose piece, and there are various references to a number of other works. Poseidon does not trust his assistants, just like the two helmsmen from Der Steuermann do not use the crew to steer the ship or as the surveyor K. from Das Schloss does not find his two assistants helpful. Another relation to the castle is that the perspective is exactly the opposite. In the castle , the distant high officials are the object of village observation and longing. In Poseidon we are introduced to the highest - even divine - official, so to speak, but there is nothing sublime there.

An inner reference can be seen to The New Advocate . There the warhorse of Alexander of Macedonia , also a mythical figure, turns into a lawyer and immerses himself in the old books, but he does not suffer from this change.

The city coat of arms comes from the same creative phase as Poseidon . Organizational and bureaucratic obstacles to the building of the Tower of Babel are presented here, which can only be lifted by the longed-for demise of the city. So here too a hope for the clarifying and purifying function of destruction.

Quotes

  • [...] when a powerful man torments, one must apparently try to give in to him even in the most hopeless matter;
  • He used to say that he would wait until the end of the world to do so, then there would probably be a quiet moment when, shortly before the end, after looking through the last bill, he would be able to quickly take a short tour.

reception

  • Reiner Stach : Kafka The Early Years p. 146: The Silence of the Sirens , Poseidon , Prometheus , The New Advocate : In none of these parable-like pieces does Kafka show any interest in the history of ideas in his characters, rather he uses the prominence of their names around them with the greatest possible effect to expose the neon light of modernity. The fact that the ancient myth is disrespectfully dismantled and reassembled - as in the case of Poseidon, who appears in Kafka as a bad-tempered senior administrative officer - is part of the literary game.

Text output

  • Poseidon. Originated in 1920. First published: Description of a fight. Edited by Max Brod. Prague 1936, p. 100 f. (Title by Max Brod).
  • Poseidon. In: Franz Kafka: Complete stories. Edited by Paul Raabe . Frankfurt a. M. 1977, p. 405, ISBN 978-3-596-21078-7
  • Franz Kafka: The stories. Original version. Edited by Roger Hermes. Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Legacy writings and fragments II. Ed. By Jost Schillemeit. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, pp. 300-302.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 548.
  2. ^ Franz Kafka A Writer's Life Joachim Unseld Carl Hanser Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-446-13568-5 , p. 194.
  3. ↑ Alt p. 569.
  4. ↑ Alt p. 578
  5. ^ Kafka for advanced learners Hans Dieter Zimmermann Verlag CH Beck 2004, ISBN 3-406-51083-3 , p. 175

Web links