Franz Kafka, 1883-1924

The Literary Science of the ‘Kafkaesque’

Change Blindness Demo: Gradual Change

Used in Simons, D.J., Franconeri, S.L., and Reimer, R.L. (2000) ‘Change blindness in the absence of a visual disruption’, Perception 29: 1143–1154.

what changes in this video?

Franz Kafka, Das Schloβ

Da blieb Barnabas stehen. Wo waren sie? Gieng es nicht mehr weiter? Würde Barnabas K. verabschieden? Es würde ihm nicht gelingen. K. hielt Barnabas' Arm fest, daß es fast ihn selbst schmerzte. Oder sollte das Unglaubliche geschehen sein, und sie waren schon im Schloß oder vor seinen Toren? Aber sie waren ja, soweit K. wußte, gar nicht gestiegen. Oder hatte ihn Barnabas einen so unmerklich ansteigenden Weg geführt? „Wo sind wir?“ fragte K. leise, mehr sich als ihn.

Then Barnabas stopped. Where were they? Weren’t they going on? Would Barnabas take his leave? He wouldn’t be able to. K. held Barnabas’ arm so tightly that he himself almost felt the pain. Or should the inconceivable have occurred, and they were already in the Castle or before its gates? But as far as K. was aware, they hadn’t climbed at all. Or had Barnabas led him on such an imperceptibly climbing path? “Where are we?” K. asked quietly, more to himself than to Barnabas.

Das Schloβ, ed. Malcolm Pasley (New York: Schocken, 1982), 50-1

Franz Kafka, Der Proceß

Da erinnerte sich K. daß er das Weggehn des Aufsehers und der der Wächter gar nicht bemerkt hatte, der Aufseher hatte ihm die drei Beamten verdeckt und nun wieder die Beamten den Aufseher. Viel Geistesgegenwart bewies das nicht und K. nahm sich vor, sich in dieser Hinsicht genauer zu beobachten.

Then K. remembered that he hadn’t noticed at all the departure of the inspector or that of the guards, the inspector had hidden the three clerks from him and then the clerks in turn the inspector. That did not testify to great presence of mind, and K. resolved to be more careful in this regard in future.

Der Proceß, ed. Malcolm Pasley (New York: Schocken, 1990), 28-9

‘we enact the world by skillful exploration’ (Noë forthcoming, 18).

‘we enact the world by skillful exploration’

Alva Noë (2005), ‘Real presence’, Philosophical Topics 33: 244.

Enactivism lets us escape from the

Cartesian Theatre(Dennett)

Franz Kafka, Der ProceßJemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet. Die Köchin der Frau Grubach, seiner Zimmervermieterin, die ihm jeden Tag gegen acht Uhr früh das Frühstück brachte, kam diesmal nicht. Das war noch niemals geschehn. K. wartete noch ein Weilchen, sah von seinem Kopfkissen aus die alte Frau die ihm gegenüber wohnte und die ihn mit einer an ihr ganz ungewöhnlichen Neugierde beobachtete, dann aber, gleichzeitig befremdet und hungrig, läutete er. Sofort klopfte es und ein Mann, den er in dieser Wohnung noch niemals gesehen hatte trat ein. […] „Wer sind Sie?“ fragte K. und saß gleich halb aufrecht im Bett.

Someone must have falsely accused Josef K., because without his having done anything wrong, one morning he was arrested. His landlady Frau Grubach’s cook, who brought him his breakfast at about eight o’clock every morning, didn’t come this time. That had never happened before. He waited a little while longer, saw from his pillow the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with a quite uncharacteristic curiosity, but then, at once disconcerted and hungry, he rang the bell. Instantly there was a knock at the door, and a man whom he had never seen in the house before came in. […] “Who are you?” K. asked, and immediately half sat up in bed.

Der Proceß, ed. Malcolm Pasley (New York: Schocken, 1990), 7

Pilot Study, Bristol Grammar School, December 2006

Franz Kafka, The Castle

Chapter 1: Arrival

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay deep in snow. There was nothing to be seen of the castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it, not even the faintest glimmer of light hinted at the great castle. For a long time K. stood on the wooden bridge that leads from the country road to the village and looked up into the apparent emptiness. […]

This is the opening paragraph of Kafka’s final, unfinished novel, The Castle.

On the separate paper provided, please draw as well as you can the image this passage conjures up for you.

Pilot Study, Bristol Grammar School, December 2006

Please rate on a scale of 1 to 5 your reactions to the text, by placing a number after each question to indicate your response.

1 = no, definitely not ----------------------------------------------------------- 5 = yes, definitely

1. Is this description realistic?2. Can you imagine clearly the scene that is described?3. Is your image of the scene seen from a particular point of view?4. Is your image of the scene seen from the point of view of the character in the text?5. Does the scene seem visually and spatially logical to you?6. Do you identify with the character in the text?7. Does the passage make a strong impact on you?8. Is the passage written in a ‘literary’ style?9. Are you keen to find out what happens next?10. Compared to other fiction that you read, does the passage give you more of a mental image of what is described?11. Compared to other fiction that you read, does the passage emotionally affect you more?12. Compared to other fiction that you read, does this passage force you to work harder to create a mental image of what is described?

Pilot Study, Bristol Grammar School, December 2006

Which of the following statements best describes how you imagine the scene? Please tick one.

1. My image of the scene is perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision.2. My image of the scene is clear and reasonably vivid.3. My image of the scene is moderately clear and vivid.4. My image of the scene is vague and dim.5. I have no image at all of the scene, I only ‘know’ that I am thinking of it.

Please add in the space below any further comments on your impressions of the text or of the scene it conjures up for you.

Kafkaesk/Kafkaesque (adj.)in der Art der Schilderungen Kafkas; auf rätselvolle Weise

bedrohlich (Duden, 1999)

(of a situation, atmosphere, etc.) impenetrably oppressive, nightmarish, in a manner characteristic of the fictional world

of Franz Kafka (Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 2002)

The ‘Kafkaesque’: compelling yet unsettling…

…because cognitively realistic

MY CURRENT RESEARCH

Investigating the cognitive realisms of

Realism and Modernism

throughattention, agency, emotion, and memory

emily.troscianko@sjc.ox.ac.uk

An Empirical Study on Reader Responses

Thank you for agreeing to take part in this study. You will be reading a short story (of around 1,300 words) divided into 34 short segments of up to four sentences. I would like you to respond orally, in English, to each segment. Please read a segment and then describe any and all aspects of your reading experience: any thoughts, feelings, interpretations, evaluations, personal memories, ideas or images that are conjured up for you by what you read. It will be helpful if you can give some indication of the segment you are currently responding to, for instance by quoting a few words of it. You need not respond to any given segment if you feel no inclination to do so. If after reading the whole story you would like to say anything more general about your experience, please do.

Please use the down-arrow on the keyboard to begin reading, and to move on to the next segment when you are ready.

After you have read the story there will be three supplementary questions for you to answer.

Please come to ask me now if anything is unclear – or at any subsequent point if there is any problem.

Otherwise, please now say your name clearly.

And now, please press the down-arrow if you are ready to begin reading.

Sample text segments

Wir lagerten in der Oase Gemalja. Die Gefährten schliefen.

Ein Beduiner, hoch und weiß, gieng an mir vorüber, er hatte die Kamele versorgt und ging zum Schlafplatz.

Ich warf mich rücklings ins Gras, über mir das ungeheuere Firmament, ich wollte schlafen, ich konnte nicht, das Klagegeheul eines Schakals in der Ferne, ich saß wieder aufrecht.

„Rede nicht so laut“, sagte ich, „es schlafen Araber in der Nähe.“

„Du hast recht, Herr“, sagte er, „wir lassen sie bei ihrem Beruf, auch ist es Zeit aufzubrechen. Nun gesehen hast du sie. Wunderbare Tiere, nicht wahr? Und wie sie uns hassen!“

(The End)(please press the down-arrow again when you have said all you want to)

Additional questions

Thank you for reading the story. There are now three questions for you to answer. Please introduce your answers by saying ‘question one’, ‘question two’, and ‘question 3’ respectively.

Question 1:

Do you remember having read the story before? If so, can you name the story or say anything else about it?

Question 2:

If you have not read the story before, can you make a guess at the author and/or period or genre of the text?

Question 3:

Please say briefly what each of these terms means to you, if anything: a) surrealist b) the Absurd c) Kafkaesque d) realistic

That’s it!

Thank you!

Please say if you would like to be sent the results of the experiment once it is completed.

Please now leave everything as it is, and complete the two questionnaires on paper.

When you have completed them, please leave them here, and come to let me know you’ve finished.

Thank you again, immensely, for your time and your invaluable help.

Sample responses 1

1. Short sentences. Lots of sleeping.3. Sleeping again, and ‘Schakale’ – reminds me of Schakale und Araber. 4. Distances are coming closer into you – it’s claustrophobic.8. ‘fauchend’ – reminds me of my cat. Again […?], the claustrophobia of them circling around him. 10. There’s so much sleeping! – ‘es schlafen Araber’11. Strange with the animals talking to the man – it’s like being in an odd dream. But it’s so normal to him. 13. That’s a horrible image of the dog breathing quickly – it makes your heart beat faster when you read it. And you get scared by their mentioning taking the blood, and that will be the end of the fight – you worry about what’s going to happen.[…]21. Horrible bodily images, ‘Knochen’, ‘Klagegeschrei’.22. They want purity, well it’s not a very pure way of getting it. Dirt and colours and – oh, the smells that are evoked – it’s all disgusting. 23. ‘…mit dieser Schere mit Hilfe deiner alles vermögenden Hände die Hälse durch’ – that’s awful. It’s really revolting. It makes you feel a bit sick to imagine him having to do that. And it’s ridiculous that he’s supposed to do it with nail scissors that are rusty. But they think it’s so simple; it’s not simple. I’m starting to see them as ridiculous, the animals.

24. That’s nice, to have another human in the picture; it was getting a bit odd, a bit too strange and unnerving. I think I feel a bit relieved that the Arab man’s come and confirmed that these dogs are a bit crazy – I don’t know what’s true or not, but it’s a feeling of relief.[…]30. Oh, it’s horrible images of blood and the neck cutting through the throat, ‘Schlagader’ und ‘rasende Pumpe’ and so much blood. ‘…zuckte jede Muskel’ – ah. I’ve got a lump in my throat – it hurts – I find it really disgusting, what they’re doing. 31. (sighs deeply) I can’t stand this image of this camel being torn apart, lying there in a pool of blood, it really, it’s really really disturbing me; I can’t actually concentrate on anything else apart from this image. 32. I’m actually finding it difficult to read the next passage, because I just see this camel, and the blood, and it’s disgusting, and it’s unfair. 34. Why ‘wunderbare Tiere’, why? (sighs) It’s really tiring; it’s tiring to read that. My head hurts and I have a lump in my throat, and I don’t really understand what I’ve just read, I just have horrible images of blood and tearing bodies apart and I’d have to read it again to really actually take in what’s just happened.

Sample responses 2[…]26. That’s absurd! Why are these scissors always walking with them? I feel I should realize something by now which I haven’t realized – something, it seems like this statement is mean to clarify things, like the end of a fairytale. But the Arabic guy seems to be really friendly […]27. So they approach everyone, he says, and tell everyone this big story; but why these scissors? […] but he’s very sympathetic – he’s saying, but we like them, they’re just clowns, and everything’s fine; that’s very relaxing in the end, very calming-down, in a way; but why is there this camel – is that just changing the topic?28. Aha, so we have a corpse here, and they want to eat now, and is it that they’re going to be more – are they going to comply more now, given that they’ll have some food? ‘mit dem Leib den Boden streifend’ – that sounds really depressed and really – they failed again, and this camel, is that the same one he fed a couple of sentences ago? Probably not – so this just seems to serve as a device to make the Schakals accept their defeat. 29. So they indeed admit defeat: they want to get rid of the Arabs, but the corpse is just far too attractive; and that’s interesting: that seems to say, you can solve a tremendous conflict just by finding something that people find more important to share – if the Arabs today in Israel would forget about their conflict, because they were more caring about football, then the situation would be solved; and I don’t know if that’s realistic, but at least it is in this case.

[…]30. So he starts sucking and biting the corpse, and that actually sounds really disgusting; it’s not the Arabs who seems to be disgusting – he’s like a vampire, he approaches them straightaway, and he knows what he’s doing: he’s like a professional killer, almost […]31. That’s sweet! That’s a strange feeling – that sounds really like the conflict’s over, the children were rebellious, but as soon as you give them some chocolate they all start complying again, and so it seems they’re all busy now, and everyone’s fine.[…]

Categories and dimensions derived from subjects’ responses

1. Anticipation/excitement2. Association3. Description

4. Discomfort/fear5. Frustration/annoyance

6. Identification (empathy)7. Moral judgement/shock

8. Recognition of inconsistency9. Recognition of pattern

10. Relief/pleasure11. Speculation/extrapolation

12. Surprise13. Sympathy/pity

14. Uncertainty/confusion

Positive-NegativeCognitive-Emotional

Results: what Kafka makes us feel