revolt against the arbitrary. Max Brod never doubted that Josef K. is guilty. What has he done? According to Brod (Despair and Salvation in the Work of Tranz Kafka [Verzweiflung und Erlosung im Werk Franz Kafkas], 1959), he is guilty of Lieblosigkeit, the inability to love. 'Josef K. liebt niemanden, er liebelt nur, deshalb muss er sterben.' Josef K. loves no one, he only dallies, and therefore he must die. (Let us never forget the sublime stupidity of this sentence!) Brod is quick to adduce two proofs of Lieblosigkeit: according to a chapter left unfinished and excluded from The Trial (usually published as an appendix), Josef K. has not been to see his mother for three years; he has merely sent her money, getting information about her health from a cousin (a curious resemblance: Meursault, in The Stranger, is also accused of not loving his mother). The second piece of evidence is K.s relationship with Fraulein Biirstner, a relationship that Brod describes as of the 'lowest sexuality' (niedrigster Sexualitat). 'Fraulein Biirstner, to whom he is drawn by a kind of desire, remains shadowy to him as a human being, interests him only as a sexual creature.'
In his preface to the 1964 Prague edition of The Trials the Czech Kafkologist Eduard Goldstiicker criticized K. with equal severity, even though his vocabulary is marked not by theology, like Brod's, but by Marxist-style sociology: 'Josef K. is guilty because he has allowed his life to be mechanized, automatized, alienated, to be fitted to the stereotyped rhythm of the social machine, let it be deprived of every human quality; thus K. has broken the law that, according to Kafka, rules all humankind: 'Be human.'' In the fifties Goldstiicker underwent a dreadful Stalinist trial where he was accused of imaginary crimes, and he spent four years in prison. I ask myself: how could this man, the victim of a trial himself, some ten years later set up a trial against another defendant, no guiltier than he?
According to Alexandre Vialatte (L'Histoire secrete du Proces, 1947), the trial in Kafka's novel is the one that Kafka brings against himself, K. being nothing but his alter ego: Kafka had broken his engagement with Felice, and his future father-in-law 'came from Malmo expressly to try the guilty fellow. The hotel room in the Askanischer Hof where this scene unfolded (in July 1914) gave Kafka the sense of a courtroom… He started the next day on 'The Penal Colony' and on The Trial. We do not know K.'s crime, and today's morality absolves it. And yet, his 'innocence' is diabolical… In some mysterious way, K. has violated the laws of a mysterious justice that has nothing to do with ours… The judge is Doctor Kafka, the defendant is Doctor Kafka. He pleads guilty to diabolical innocence.'
In the first trial (the one Kafka recounts in his novel), the tribunal accuses K. without specifying the crime. The Kafkologists were unastonished that a person could be accused without cause and were not spurred to either ponder the wisdom or appreciate the beauty of this unheard-of invention. Instead, they set about playing prosecutor in a new trial that they themselves brought against K., this time trying to figure out the true crime of the accused. Brod: he is incapable of love! Goldstucker: he acquiesced in the mechanization of his life! Vialatte: he broke his engagement! They do deserve credit for one thing: their trial against K. is just as Kafkan as the first one. For if in his first trial K. is accused of nothing, in the second he is accused of no matter what, which comes to the same because in both cases one thing is clear: K. is guilty not because he has committed a crime but because he has been accused. He is accused, therefore he must die.
There is only one way to understand Kafka's novels: to read them as novels. Rather than search the character K. for a portrait of the author and K.'s words for a mysterious coded message, to pay careful attention to the behavior of the characters, their remarks, their thoughts, and try to imagine them before your eyes. Reading The Trial this way, you are immediately struck by K.'s strange reaction to the charge: without having done anything wrong (or without knowing what he did), K. immediately begins to behave as though he is guilty. He feels guilty. He has been made to feel guilty. He has been culpabilized.
People used to see a very simple link between 'being guilty' and 'feeling guilty': it's the guilty person who feels guilty. In fact, the French word culpa-biliser-to induce feelings of guilt-is relatively recent; it was first used in 1966 because of psychoanalysis and its innovations in terminology; the noun derived from this verb (culpabilisation) was created two years later, in 1968. But long before that, the hitherto unexplored condition of induced guilt feelings was set forth, described, and developed in Kafka's novel, in the character K., and it was shown at different stages of its evolution:
Stage 1: Futile struggle for lost dignity. A man absurdly accused who does not yet doubt his innocence is disturbed to see that he is behaving as if he is guilty. Acting guilty without being so has a humiliating element, which he tries to conceal. Set out in the first scene of the novel, in the next chapter this situation is condensed into a tremendously ironic joke:
An unknown person telephones K.: he is to be interrogated the following Sunday at a house in the suburbs. Without hesitation, he decides to go; out of obedience? out of fear? Oh no, self-delusion works automatically: he wants to go there in order to be done quickly with these nuisances who are wasting his time with their stupid case ('the case was getting under way and he must fight it; this first interrogation must also be the last'). Immediately after, his chief at the bank where he works invites K. to a party on the same Sunday. The invitation is important for K.'s career. Should he therefore ignore the grotesque summons? No; he declines the chief's invitation since, without wanting to acknowledge it to himself, he is already under the sway of the trial.
And so on Sunday he goes to the house. He realizes that the voice on the telephone that gave him the address neglected to specify the hour. No matter; he feels pressed for time, and he runs (yes, literally, he runs; in German: er lief) across the entire city. He runs in order to arrive on time, even though no hour has been specified. Granted that he has reasons to arrive as early as possible; but in that event, instead of running, why not take the streetcar, which incidentally follows the very same route? The reason: he refuses to take the streetcar because 'he had no desire to humble himself before the committee of inquiry by a too-scrupulous punctuality.' He runs to the tribunal, but he runs as a proud man who will not be humiliated.
Stage 2: Proof of strength. Finally, he arrives in the room where he is expected. 'So you are a house painter?' says the examining magistrate, and K., in front of the crowd filling the hall, reacts spiritedly to the ridiculous mistake: 'No, I'm the chief clerk of a large bank,' and then, in a long speech, he lambastes the tribunal for its incompetence. Heartened by applause, he feels strong, and in the familiar cliche of the accused turned accuser (wonderfully deaf to Kafkan irony, Orson Welles was taken in by the cliche), he challenges his judges. The first shock comes when he notices badges on the collars of everyone there and realizes that the audience he thought to win over consists of officials 'here to listen and snoop.' He turns to leave, and at the door, the examining magistrate is waiting to warn him: 'You have flung away with your own hand the advantage an interrogation always offers an accused man.' K. exclaims: 'You scum! You can keep all your interrogations!'
A reader will understand nothing about this scene unless he sees its ironic connections with what comes immediately after the rebellious outburst from K. that ends the chapter. Here is the start of the next chapter: 'During the next week, day after day K. awaited a new summons; he could not believe that his refusal to be interrogated had been taken literally, and having heard nothing by Saturday evening, he assumed that he was tacitly required again in the same building and at the same time. So he again made his way there on Sunday…'
Stage 3: Socialization of the trial. Alarmed by the case being brought against his nephew, K.s uncle arrives one day from the country. A remarkable fact: the case, it's said, is utterly secret, confidential, yet everyone knows about it. Another remarkable fact: no one doubts that K. is guilty. Society has already adopted the accusation and added the weight of its tacit approval (or its nondisagreement). We would expect indignant surprise: 'How could they accuse you? And for what crime, exactly?' But the uncle is not surprised. He is only frightened by the thought of the trials consequences for all the relatives.
