Friedrich Beissner’s Critique of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

1. Friedrich Beissner’s Critique of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis Anne-Solène Bayan Jeanne Chauffour Morgane Holley

2. Friedrich Beißner (1905-1977) • He is mostly known for his works on German classism and his studies and critiques of Hölderlins’ poems (one of the greatest German poets of the XIXth century) • He was a university professor in philology, German language, and literature • In 1933, he becomes an SA member • In 1937 he joins the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and he becomes a mentor in the Hitler Youth programs

3. « The Writer Franz Kafka » (1952) Epilogue told from parents & sister POV ≠ the rest of the novel (Gregor’s POV) which “looks into the dreamlike distorted loneliness of the sick hero who imagines he has turned into a monstrous vermin” → “narrator does not depart from that intimate connection at the interior of the hero’s subjectivity” For the narrator (// reader) Gregor is transformed into a bug “It would be wholly impossible for the writer event to intimate that this metamorphosis is only a delusion of the sick hero: in so doing he would destroy the specific density of his story”

4. 1st edition cover (1916) • Illustrator: Ottomar Starke • Illustration “done presumably not w/o the author’s consent, very probably even w/ his cooperation or at his request” • Man: dressing gown + slippers→ desperately throws hands in front of face+ moves w/ long stride into the center of room toward spectator away from open door (not opened for him: outside is darkness+ nothingness) • This can only be Gregor (dark hair and youthful vigor of the mvt+stride) • This is Gregor before the start of the book, he is still a man: “Kafka the artist could allow himself this hint outside the work of art. In the story itself there was no possibility for it”

5. « Kafka the Poet » (1958) • In 1953, Starke wrote he had not known Kafka personally and had not acceded to any request on his part concerning the illustrations. • It is then conceivable that no draft of the cover was sent to Kafka, and that he played no part in asking for or consenting to a cover illustration. • Would Kafka’s publisher have taken all those decisions? • Kafka’s publisher, Kurt Wolff, had a lot of respect and esteem for the author. Would he then have been indifferent enough to put the illustration in the hands of a young artist only in his 2nd year of practice (Starke)? • Did Wolff make all the decisions by himself or did he ask for Kafka’s consent? Starke was not able to remember the commission well enough to make a statement. • [Kafka died in 1924, thus not being able to testify.]

6. Starke is uneasy that his early work is being “adduced as the criterion of an interpretation of Kafka”. He informs the public that the commission of ‘an illustrated title page’ consisted in “condensing the content of a book into a sort of catch-word” (in this case: Horror! Despair!...) • Also “the figure fleeing in terror has black hair because the head is black on white → for pictorial reasons + he wears dressing gown & slippers: →irruption of a very ‘non-bourgeois’ catastrophe into a very ‘humdrum [=dull] bourgeois’ existence” • Did Starke mean that the man he drew never appears in the story?

7. Beissner declares that it is more “the background that is white because the hair is black”. + he writes that the dark cross-hatching of the wall to the right of the door does not seem to indicate the shadow of the open wing nor that of the man. The wall is also done in black to the left + above the door where there is no shadow. Yet, the cross-hatching stops where the back hair of the figure who already exists is supposed to stand out starkly, as Starke said himself.

8. Rudolph Binion adds… • “Even so the evidence would be equivocal at best: Gregor reminisces much, and the scene may be prior to his illness. Furthermore, some of the details do not fit the tale, however construed. On the other hand, the tale does afford full internal evidence that Kafka meant Gregor’s illness as mental and not physical”.