K. sought a connection with the grace of the Godhead when he sought to root himself in the village at the foot of the Castle; he fought for an occupation, a post in a certain sphere of life; by his choice of a calling and by marriage he wanted to gain inner stability, wanted as a “stranger”—that is from an isolated position and as one different from everybody else—to wrest for himself the thing which fell into the ordinary man’s lap as if of itself, without his striving for it particularly or thinking about it. Decisive for this interpretation of mine is the deep emotion with which Franz Kafka once referred me to the anecdote which Flaubert’s niece mentions in her introduction to his correspondence. The passage runs: “May not Flaubert have regretted even in his last years that he had not chosen an ordinary vocation? I could almost credit it when I think of the touching words which once burst from his lips when we were returning home along the Seine; we had been visiting one of my friends, and had found her in the midst of her brood of lovely children. ‘They’re in the right of it’ (Ils sont dans le vrai
), he said, meaning the honest family life of those people.”
Like the hero of The Trial, K. puts his faith in women who are destined to show him the right way, the right vocation; but yet he rejects every half-truth and falsehood and insincerity; for on no other terms will he accept this vocation, and it is precisely this incorruptibility that makes his struggle for love and integration in the community a religious struggle. At one point in the story, where he certainly overestimates his successes, he himself defines the goal of his struggle: “It may not be much, but I have a home, a position and real work to do, I have a promised wife who takes her share of my professional duties when I have other business, I’m going to marry her and become a member of the community.” The women have (in the language of this novel) “a connection with the Castle”—and in this connection lies their importance, though from it result many things that lead both men and woman astray, also much injustice, real and illusory, for both. A deleted passage in the manuscript (this, too, shows the uniqueness of Kafka as a writer, that the deleted passages in his manuscripts are just as beautiful and important as the rest—one does not need to be a prophet to foresee that a later generation will insist on having those passages printed as well)—the deleted passage, then, concerning the chambermaid Pepi, runs: “He had to admit to himself that if he had encountered Pepi here instead of Frieda and had suspected that she had some connection with the Castle, he would have sought to get possession of the mystery by means of the same embrace which he had had to employ in Frieda’s case.”
A complete statement of the theme, seen, it is true, entirely through an enemy’s eyes, can be found in a fragment (afterwards deleted) from the protocol of the Village Secretary Momus. It is set down here as a good, though very one-sided, survey of the plan of the whole:
“The Land Surveyor had first to try to establish himself in the village. That was not easy, seeing that nobody needed his services, nobody, apart from the Bridge Inn landlord, whom he had taken unawares, wanted to take him in; nobody, apart from the officials who had played a few pranks on him, troubled about him. So he ran about apparently without any aim, and did nothing but disturb the peace of the place. But in reality he was very much occupied; he was lying in wait for his opportunity, and it was soon found. Frieda, the young barmaid in the Herrenhof, believed in his promises and let herself be carried away by him.
“To prove the Land Surveyor K.’s guilt is not an easy matter. One can only get on his track, indeed, when one gives oneself up to his train of thought, painful as this may be. In doing so one must not allow oneself to be turned aside if one comes across a piece of wickedness incredible when seen with our eyes; on the contrary when one reaches that point it is certain that one has not gone astray, then only does one know one is on the right track. Let us take Frieda’s case, for example. It is clear that the Land Surveyor did not love Frieda, and that it was not for love of her that he wanted to marry her; he knew quite well that she was an insignificant hectoring girl, a girl, besides, with a past; he actually treated her accordingly, and went about his affairs without troubling about her. That is the gist of the matter. Now it could be interpreted in several ways, so that K. might appear a weak, or a stupid, or a magnanimous, or a despicable fellow. But all these interpretations would miss the mark. One only attains the truth when one continues full on his tracks, which we have exposed here, from his arrival until his connection with
