Recall the readings (Brod’s amongst them) which suppose the castle of Kafka’s novel is an image of another world. True, there are always motifs of salvation in Kafka’s work – they were there from the start, but to assume the castle – which is, as the landsurveyor K. sees, only a collection of village huts – is a symbol for a heavenly beyond is to commit the same impatience as K. Do not think K. will find what he seeks; the castle, which is always there, and Klamm himself – an ordinary man, seated in front of a desk – do not hide themselves. To understand them as the goal itself is to be content with intermediary figure.
Blanchot asks: ‘To what extent did he connect the ordeal of his heroes with the way in which he himself, through art, was trying to make his way toward the work and, through the work, toward something true?’ A crucial question. For K’s fault, like the novelist’s, is the impatience which seeks to find a substitute for the goal. Kafka’s greatness: his stories are unfinished, his diaries and correspondence, to which so much of his writings are confined, remain provisional and incomplete. Has he failed – or is this failure, measured against the success of the award winning novelist, testament to his fidelity to a demand implicit in the work? Accept no intermediary substitute; do not take refuge in the artful dénouement; be content to fail without nostalgia for success.
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