Among my classmates

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Among my classmates is a prose fragment by Franz Kafka , which was written in 1909 and can be found in the legacy writings and fragments .

The fragment contains memories of the narrator's youth, which are marked by humiliation and confusion.

Emergence

This fragment from the posthumous writings was written in July 1909, while Kafka was also trying to complete his story Wedding Preparations in the Country . This story of the unwilling and unhappy bridegroom Raban is contrasted with a fragment about an unhappy student.

These are records from the years 1908 to 1909 as part of the so-called bundle , the present bundle called “Among my classmates”.

The piece cannot be found in all commercial Kafka editions, but is mentioned by current biographers and publications (see Peter-André Alt : Kafka The Eternal Son. Mauro Nervi's The Kafka Project website).

content

The narrator describes himself as stupid, but denies that he is the stupidest of his classmates, as some teachers claim. This annoys him and makes him sad, because it also influences strangers who initially had a better impression of him. So he is completely spoiled for meeting strangers. But he himself also knows that when a job actually comes about , he can act “ safely and without a doubt” .

This is followed by a description of situations and people who criticize and judge him. In the narrator, this creates fear, sleepy helplessness and confusion. Once he discovers someone with good, blue eyes, but is unable to look into them any longer.

After a gap in the text, the last paragraph begins, which is about the fact that his father “ judged him ” with a saying he happened to hear when he was 17. The reader does not learn the saying. The narrator comments that it had no effect on him, as is typically the case with young people. But he doesn't want to attack the logic of young people.

Form and text analysis

First of all, it is a first-person narration from the point of view of a depressed, intimidated student. The utterances are consistently in the past tense; it is reflected from memory in a now-time. In the last paragraph a new fact and a further time level appears, namely that of the seventeen-year-old who experiences the father's judgment. Finally, with the mentioning and characterization of “young people” towards the end, a distance is created that points to an adult narrator.

The language of this fragment does not have the sober, clear style of many Kafka works. Especially when describing the observation and assessment of the protagonist by the environment, rampant sentence structures emerge, which e. T. let it lose comprehensibility.

It is significant that the classmates listed in the title do not appear again with a word; so the narrator is completely lonely in his situation.

References to Kafka as a person and to his other work

The present fragment is generally considered to be an autobiographical statement by the writer himself. As an adult, he repeatedly addressed his fears as a student. He felt like an impostor who only sneaked school successes.

In order to get an impression of the child Franz in his school days, it is helpful to look at the numerous photographs of the early Kafka. Klaus Wagenbach's illustrated book "Franz Kafka Pictures from His Life" shows, without exception, an obviously insecure child from this period (which is also true in part for the appearance of his three younger sisters).

In his real life, however, Kafka was not a student who was thought to be stupid. On the contrary, he was a preferred student in the first four grammar school classes, with the exception of mathematics, and was above average later on. Although there was pressure to perform and constant inquiries, his school situation was not generally unfavorable. He was at the old town high school, which was attended by a relatively large number of Jews, so that there were hardly any anti-Semitic tendencies to be recognized. There was also a comparatively modern conception of teaching here; z. B. were - at that time completely new - psychological topics were dealt with in class.

Kafka was not the childish-youthful loser he portrays in the fragment, but he makes his point of view and feeling his own as a writer, a mechanism that can also be observed in his other works. Kafka is not the poor land surveyor K., the protagonist from the castle . Rather, as a lawyer, he is comparable to the privileged higher officials of the palace administration. Kafka was never rejected by his family like the young Karl Rossmann from Der Verschollene , but he was supported and cared for by the family well into adulthood and later during his illness.

In the fragment, however, there is also a reference to a paternal offense when the father “judged him” in a saying. Three years later, Kafka's first big story, The Judgment , comes into being, in which a father sentences his son to death. In this and in the letter to his father , Kafka deals with the actual or even only apparent psychological injuries to his upbringing, especially by his father.

Quote

  • Ridiculous allegations were made, statistical lies, geographical errors, false doctrines, forbidden as well as nonsensical, or efficient political views, respectable opinions on current events, laudable ideas, both the speaker and society almost equally surprising and everything was proven ...

review

  • Peter-Andre Alt: "In the fragmentary sketch Among my classmates, which was made in July 1909, Kafka illustrates his fear of exams with floating ambiguous images, which primarily refer to his fear of being monitored by an external authority". Pp. 75/76

output

  • Malcom Pasley (Hrsg.): Post-traced writings and fragments I. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-596-15700-5 , pp. 172-176.

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malcolm Pasley (Ed.): Franz Kafka: Nachgelassene Schriften und Frage I. Apparatband. S. Fischer Verlag, 1993, ISBN 3-10-038148-3 , p. 57.
  2. ↑ Malcolm Pasley (Ed.): Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente I. 1993, ISBN 3-596-15700-5 , p. 1.
  3. ↑ kafka.org Kafka project
  4. ↑ Alt, p. 76 ff
  5. ↑ Wagenbach, pp. 29–37
  6. ↑ Alt, p. 76 ff.

Web links