Fergus, Quondam Happy Face's Reviews > Trial (Wisehouse Classics Edition)

Isn’t our Whole Life a Trial, in an existential sense?

If, like me, you walk a plain and decent path, the world is probably none too friendly toward you.

That’s understandable. And I think you should also know that should you plainly persist in it, you’ll probably be Put on Trial. Figuratively speaking.

Welcome to the Absurd.

But there’s also an UP side to that.

I think that anyone who has lived a highly idiosyncratic life, like Franz Kafka and my own totally colossally unsuperstar self, has in time developed a larger ideological container for their intellectual life.

Sorta like quantum mechanics does, for we have come to see the laws and customs of the world under that selfsame Aegis of Absurdity.

And that is the sense in which we appreciate the Rule of Law in this world. The law is itself idiosyncratic and accretive, but it WORKS.

Under quantum mechanics, if something works MOST of the time, we can allow that as a constant FOR US. Even if should we ourselves should be put in the dock.

But, allowing it to be a constant, can we learn to Love it, as being in itself in a state of Absolute momentary transcendence over an Absurd physical universe?

Even if that transcendence means our death?

For that’s the vision Kafka seems to have attained as his life drew to a close...

That’s - or so I believe - Kafka’s premise in this novel. If a thing works most of the time, that’s normal - and good in a practical sense.

And that’s a start. Even though we’re implicated in the machinery of Law, the Law’s Good.

And we ALL have to take the Fire as punishment - now - or later.

Don’t laugh. I’m serious.

I could be wrong, but this seems to be the one novel the great hag-ridden Franz Kafka completed. I believe that that’s for a good reason.

OK. Many of you may not know this, but at one point in his later Diary, Kafka wrote the words (as best as I can remember and can now paraphrase):

‘If you disagree with the rules of the world, the world is invariably Right.’

He wrote those words to mark a critical split in his personal path that, as I believe, he had finally and irrevocably decided to take. It would give him Closure. And pain.

Except now, in the Pain - was Hope.

And it’s not just that the law is just a rule to follow, not that it’s wrong-headed but nevertheless our duty, not that it’s dumb but the best people can manage - no.

The law of the world is right. That’s the Real Way of the World. And the universe, in fact.

It’s just, you may say, that we are in a world that’s Absurd. But actually, then we’re of no importance, suddenly. Remember that feeling?

That’s called waking up.

Anyone for Hegel? For this is just Hegel rehashed. But a Hegel Redux for postmodernists!

But it’s surely more than that... on a personal level. Because it’s the result of a long personal struggle with Angst.

We know the Law’s something Kafka’s imperious Dad really believed in, and something he felt it was young Franzl’s duty to believe, too.

So Kafka senior pounded it into his son’s soul.

You see that in spades in that famous story in which his Dad tells him to jump off the long end of a short pier. And he does.

Why, in the name of all that’s right and proper?

That’s just the way it is. My way or the highway, kid!

And so Franz wrote, and wrote, and WROTE - to let the steam out. As you and I do too.

Finally, here, he couldn’t argue with his superego anymore. He was finally gonna take the straight and narrow path. Cause it was so right, it was absurd.

And that’s what K learned when he came of age. We are NOTHING to the universe.

Did he go ballistic as a result?

You bet! That’s the Meaning of the Absurd, which all of us must face. Every day of our lives!

For the Trial IS our daily workaday grind. You can’t Pooh-Pooh your coming of age again.

We are accused; we are belittled; we are slandered behind our back. And we go on. We NEED our job. We get enraged. But we go on...

It’s built into our lives. It’s a total disconnect - like COVID-19, it’s a great Grand Canyon that makes a huge gap in our minds between subjectivity and objectivity.

When we’re at home, we try to relax. We let loose on the phone; we harangue our tormentors in our dreams; we get even. But that’s not what Kafka meant.

We HATE the conditions that are laid out for our life.

Auden memorably says our pet dogs often “wish their Tall Conditions (us) Dead” - just as we often see daggers in our minds when we see our absurdly condition-imposing leaders.

But law is law. Can we learn, maybe, to follow it in spite of itself? For we’re really just:

Men and bits of paper.

Not one law at the office, and one law at home and on vacation.

No.

For Kafka now, The Soul is Answerable to the law of God. THAT was his Dad’s message. And this little realization was K’s first reluctant step towards Faith. One small step...

And his ultimate faith in the Law as Love.

A faith he finally starts to absorb in his last work, America.

Yes, the Self - in time and space - answers to the Law.

It hurts!

We kick and scream in pure anguish!

Agenbite of Inwit.

But like him, we DO as we are told. What option do we have?

But the Way that opens up to us in our books is really the same long and winding path that leads to the final reconciliation of Law and Love in the total transcendence of our pain.

Which Franz chose at the end.

Which I believe all started in this simple fork in the road:

Where we choose the Way of Obedience.

And in itself -

It’s a long and winding road.

I’ve seen that road
So many times before -
Don’t leave me standing here
Lead me to Your Door!

And He will open it to you.

But where it all starts, is in a place we all love to hate:

In His Law.

A Law that means our Death, and our Life.