Franz Kafka, a member of the German-speaking Jewish community of early twentieth century Prague, was, like Marcel Proust, a highly assimilated Jewish genius who revolutionised the art and essence of the novel. His working career was largely taken up as ’the token Jew’ working for an insurance company; his whole perspective is of a man living the everday but profound anxiety of the accepted/not accepted Jewish citizen of a Christian state. No doubt this perspective helped create the particular anxious, analytical and sardonic sensibility with finds no better description than ’Kafkanian’.

A key work, The Trial is an uncanny book, written in the early 1920s before the totalitarian bureaucracies, Communism and Fascism, that reduced everyone to frustrated impotence were fully in place, and yet capturing exactly the powerlessness of the citizen of an uncivil society.

In The Trial We are given an imaginative reconstruction of a textbook case; a man is kidnapped by the state but has no redress or argument to make because his kidnappers act under orders of a higher, impersonal authority — ’we are humble subordinates’. The victim is the profoundly respectable, respectful man K. Happy with his routine life as Chief Bank Clerk and his regular visits to his mistress, he only wants to smooth out the waves created by his arrest. Predictable enough, but far less predictable, and with a delicious element of truth, is the scene where he acts out with a female accomplice an eroticised version of his arrest and appearance before the elusive but powerful ’commission’ that is investigating him. In the course of this private action replay we realise that the ’application of the law’ sexually excites them both; we are then forced to realise that the obedient citizens of the state may be, au fond, in some kind of masochistic thrall to it. Kafka is poking about into the deepest, darkest most secret links between man and man (and no doubt woman and woman) in a hierarchical system of power... He is the literary sociologist and psychoanalyst of our modern corporatist society.

As well as this The Trial is a metaphor for how we experience life; the self-doubt and the appeal to outside opinion for reassurance. All this is told with Kafka’s unique and hard to replicate style of apparent naturalism interlarded with bizarre details — a fat old washerwoman is endlessly pursued by an infatuated young student — why? No explanation, no rationale, just the juggernaut of a reality somehow made more real by details that don’t appear realistic at all.

Kafka himself had studied law and worked in a bureaucracy and flashes of sardonic wit based on close acquaintance with the real procedures of authority light up the book — the court ’is impervious to proof... but it is quite a different matter with one’s efforts behind the scenes’. The tribunal that arraigned K. is always associated with rooms full of stifling never-changed air; a hallmark to this day of the machineries of justice and bureaucracy, with their sealed windows and their sealed-off mental and physical environments impervious to commonsense and humanity.

After K.’s multiple and hopeless battles with the wily and nebulous operations of the law the book finally reaches an abrupt and terrible ending, which chillingly prefigures the operations of the Stalinist and Nazi law courts whose ’judges’ and officials have never, in Russia or Germany or Austria, been punished for their cruel assaults on ordinary citizens...

’The great privilege, then, of absolving from guilt our Judges do not possess, but they do have the right to take the burden of the charge off your shoulders. That is to say, when you are acquitted in this fashion the charge is lifted from your shoulders for the time being, but it continues to hover above you and can, as soon as an order comes from on high, be laid upon you again. As my connection with the Court is such a close one, I can also tell you how in the regulations of the Law-Court offices the distinction between definite and ostensible acquittal is made manifest. In definite acquittal the documents relating to the case are said to be completely annulled, they simply vanish from sight, not only the charge but also the records of the case and even the acquittal are destroyed, everything is destroyed. That’s not the case with ostensible acquittal. The documents remain as they were, except that the affidavit is added to them and a record of the acquittal and the grounds for granting it. The whole dossier continues to circulate, as the regular official routine demands, passing on to the higher Courts, being referred to the lower ones again, and thus swinging backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter delays. These peregrinations are incalculable. A detached observer might sometimes fancy that the whole case had been forgotten, the documents lost and the acquittal made absolute. No one really acquainted with the Court could think such a thing. No document is ever lost, the Court never forgets anything. One day — quite unexpectedly — some Judge will take up the documents and look at them attentively, recognize that in this case the charge is still valid, and order an immediate arrest.’ p177-178

An uncanny book, written in the early 1920s before the totalitarian bureaucracies, Communism and Fascism, that reduced everyone to frustrated impotence were fully in place, and yet capturing exactly the powerlessness of the citizen of an uncivil society.

We are given an imaginative reconstruction of a textbook case; a man is kidnapped by the state but has no redress or argument to make because his kidnappers act under orders of a higher, quite impersonal authority — ‘we are humble subordinates’. The victim is the profoundly respectable, respectful K. Happy with his routine life as Chief Bank Clerk and his regular visits to his mistress he only wants to smooth out the waves created by his arrest. Predictable enough, but far less predictable and with a delicious element of truth, is the scene where he acts out with a female accomplice an eroticised version of his arrest and appearance before the elusive but powerful ‘commission’ that is investigating him. In the course of this private action replay we realise that the ‘application of the law’ sexually excites them both; we are then forced to realise that the obedient citizens of the state are, au fond, in some kind of masochistic thrall to it. Kafka is poking about into the deepest, darkest most secret links between man and man (and no doubt woman and woman) in a hierarchical system of power... He is the literary sociologist and psychoanalyst of our modern corporatist society.

As well as this The Trial is a metaphor for how we experience life; the self-doubt and the appeal to outside opinion for reassurance. All this is told with Kafka’s unique and hard to replicate style of apparent naturalism interlarded with bizarre details — a fat old washerwoman is endlessly pursued by an infatuated young student — why? No explanation, no rationale, just the juggernaut of a reality somehow made more real by details that don’t appear realistic at all.

Kafka himself had studied law and worked in a bureaucracy and flashes of sardonic wit based on close acquaintance with the real procedures of authority light up the book — the court ‘is impervious to proof... but it is quite a different matter with one’s efforts behind the scenes’. The tribunal that has arraigned him is always associated with rooms full of stifling never-changed air; a hallmark to this day of the machineries of justice and bureaucracy, with their sealed windows, their sealed-off environments impervious to common logic and humanity.

After K.s multiple and hopeless battles with the wily and nebulous operations of the law the book finally reaches an abrupt and terrible ending, which chillingly prefigures the operations of the law courts of the Stalinists and Nazis, whose ‘judges’ and officials have never, in Russia or Germany or Austria, been punished for their cruel assaults on ordinary citizens...

‘The great privilege, then, of absolving from guilt our Judges do not possess, but they do have the right to take the burden of the charge off your shoulders. That is to say, when you are acquitted in this fashion the charge is lifted from your shoulders for the time being, but it continues to hover above you and can, as soon as an order comes from on high, be laid upon you again. As my connection with the Court is such a close one, I can also tell you how in the regulations of the Law-Court offices the distinction between definite and ostensible acquittal is made manifest. In definite acquittal the documents relating to the case are said to be completely annulled, they simply vanish from sight, not only the charge but also the records of the case and even the acquittal are destroyed, everything is destroyed. That’s not the case with ostensible acquittal. The documents remain as they were, except that the affidavit is added to them and a record of the acquittal and the grounds for granting it. The whole dossier continues to circulate, as the regular official routine demands, passing on to the higher Courts, being referred to the lower ones again, and thus swinging backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter delays. These peregrinations are incalculable. A detached observer might sometimes fancy that the whole case had been forgotten, the documents lost and the acquittal made absolute. No one really acquainted with the Court could think such a thing. No document is ever lost, the Court never forgets anything. One day — quite unexpectedly — some Judge will take up the documents and look at them attentively, recognize that in this case the charge is still valid, and order an immediate arrest.’ p177-178