There are no shortage of messengers in history-a noble role; what about assistants? No shortage in Google world: 2 million images of assistants worldwide. There is a literature of assistants including, of course, top-of-the-league Sancho but also the increasingly popular Robert Walser who both was an assistant and wrote a novel on the subject. There is more to this role than being 'one who helps'. Kafka writes about this role at length mainly in The Castle. K is expecting the arrival of his own assistants but they never appear; they are replaced, seamlessly, by 2 local characters who know nothing of surveying; they act more like idiots- almost indistinguishable from the local peasants who follow K everywhere like sheep-hinderers not helpers. Barnabas is a more familiar figure: that of the cryptic messenger. Arthur and Jeremiah carry no messages; they crouch in corners and in other tiny spaces trying to be invisible. Benjamin brackets all these types as 'unfinished' and incomplete; in-between-people, incapable of reflection; their squeezing into tiny spaces and clinging to each other denote this incompleteness. Benjamin further notes that for assistants there is hope; hope through being in an unfinished state Where does that leave Kafka's dogs, moles, mice and apes?
No comments:
Post a Comment