Kafka For Himself

You have to know you're not Kafka, says W., that's the first thing. But you have to know that the person you're speaking to might be Kafka, that's the second. This is why conversation, for W., is always a matter for hope. The very ability to speak, to listen and respond is already something, he says.

Of course, to speak to the other, to respond is already to betray. Whatever you say is a betrayal, even if at the same time it is suffused with hope. That the other person is Kafka is a perpetually present possibility. And that you are also the Brod who betrays Kafka is the destruction of this possibility, its disavowal.

In what sense is he Brod?, W. wonders. He never listens enough. He never gives himself over to what is being said. He comes up short, says W., very short, which is why he always feels troubled when he speaks, yet at the same time always wants to push conversation towards the Messianic.

In my case, W. says, I am untroubled by guilt, and therefore by the sense of a perpetually present possibility. History is not about to be blown off its hinges for me. There's no escape, no plurality. What can Kafka mean to me? But Kafka means everything to W., and especially the sense that the other person, the speaker, might be Kafka.

'Even you', says W., 'even you might be Kafka, which would be a great miracle'. Of course, on the other hand, I'll never be Kafka for myself, but only for him, my conversationalist. The other person is never other for himself, says W. Or only rarely.

For haven't we along the way met thinkers – real thinkers – who speak without a concern for themselves, without any sense of self-preservation? It's as though what they say is indifferent to them, we agree. As though they are borne by thought, thought by it, rather than the other way round.