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Jul. 21st, 2009 02:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionJust reread "In the Penal Colony" for the first time as a grownup. Am I overreading, or are the final lines suggesting that the Intellectuals ultimately abandon the People to the potential reemergence of murderous Tradition - perhaps out of the desire to ignore ground-level reality because they're traveling promiscuously among more interesting things, or maybe out of the need to stay an elite by not sharing their knowledge, or out of contempt? It's so easy to read Kafka through the War and Holocaust not even he saw coming.
The traveler's sympathy for the officer can be read two ways, after all: as some humanistic understanding that, for the officer, the traditional life was the only one that could be accepted, or as respect for any view of life that rejected vulgarity, dedicating it to some higher purpose, despite his finding the officer's purpose illogical and unviable. The latter point of view is open to a certain critique from vulgarity, or on its behalf, no? Which Kafka might be making by having the two speak French - and the traveler's scrupulosity could be interpreted by some as self-important. (I don't think so; this case is making itself without me, as it were. I want to read "Penal Colony" as a beautiful, straight attack on religion, and also one that doesn't blame it on people like me.)
But also the case may be being made against the People? They're following these orders, behaving clownishly etc. Perhaps it's they that enable religion, fascism, whatever else, and he's getting away from them to preserve himself. And it's just weird - dream-weird, Kafka-weird - that they try to leave with the traveler. Makes sense that he wouldn't be taking them with him, since why would he? It's not like he's leaving them behind among people like the officer, at the end, since commandant #2 and his ladies seem to be running things. Though apparently there are still captains making random implausible accusations (but if the condemned man acted so strangely at the end, perhaps he really could have threatened to "gobble" him?).
Great story though. Heavily reminiscent of the glorious Naphta/Settembrini sequence in Magic Mountain, which I find similarly gratifying. That's even more fun, actually, though Mann's only waveringly in Kafka's artistic league (basically Tolstoy's and Shakespeare's league, no?). Was reminded greatly of Naphta the other day, in fact, reading excerpts from Eagleton's new douchebaggy book. Not that he has Naphta's brains, or is anywhere near as entertaining. Post-conversion Orestes Brownson is a much purer real life version of that character.
The traveler's sympathy for the officer can be read two ways, after all: as some humanistic understanding that, for the officer, the traditional life was the only one that could be accepted, or as respect for any view of life that rejected vulgarity, dedicating it to some higher purpose, despite his finding the officer's purpose illogical and unviable. The latter point of view is open to a certain critique from vulgarity, or on its behalf, no? Which Kafka might be making by having the two speak French - and the traveler's scrupulosity could be interpreted by some as self-important. (I don't think so; this case is making itself without me, as it were. I want to read "Penal Colony" as a beautiful, straight attack on religion, and also one that doesn't blame it on people like me.)
But also the case may be being made against the People? They're following these orders, behaving clownishly etc. Perhaps it's they that enable religion, fascism, whatever else, and he's getting away from them to preserve himself. And it's just weird - dream-weird, Kafka-weird - that they try to leave with the traveler. Makes sense that he wouldn't be taking them with him, since why would he? It's not like he's leaving them behind among people like the officer, at the end, since commandant #2 and his ladies seem to be running things. Though apparently there are still captains making random implausible accusations (but if the condemned man acted so strangely at the end, perhaps he really could have threatened to "gobble" him?).
Great story though. Heavily reminiscent of the glorious Naphta/Settembrini sequence in Magic Mountain, which I find similarly gratifying. That's even more fun, actually, though Mann's only waveringly in Kafka's artistic league (basically Tolstoy's and Shakespeare's league, no?). Was reminded greatly of Naphta the other day, in fact, reading excerpts from Eagleton's new douchebaggy book. Not that he has Naphta's brains, or is anywhere near as entertaining. Post-conversion Orestes Brownson is a much purer real life version of that character.
