By Lida Prypchan
At 8:00 p.m., Leonardo quit writing. He looked for a blank sheet of paper and, taking his pen, wrote “The End.” Before taking his novel to the publisher, he read it in its entirety and observed that it had neither a happy nor a sad ending. It simply didn’t have an ending. In his novel he had tried to express himself, to describe reality or unreality, his way of thinking, his beliefs, but was unable to bring it all to a conclusion as he felt it would be contrived. In the last few pages he united some couples, broke up others, even murdered tow characters and committed another to a mental institution, but this didn’t mean it was the end of their lives. At that point, he stumbled upon a truth: life is infinite…everything keeps on going…not even death can break us apart, because sometimes we even suffer under the shadow of a dead one – even feeling him close to us, or conversing with his shadow if it will not leave us alone. Besides, thought Leonardo, circumstances can turn the tables and make us change. Fate is so…uncertain, the future unpredictable and life so…contradictory: today we have a friend and tomorrow he can be our enemy; today we despise someone and tomorrow…we need him.
This so apparently insignificant a fact caused him to investigate the matter and he became troubled. He had a hunch that as he delved further into infinity, many doors would open. Of course, no end of people recommended that he read the works of Franz Kafka, the writer who has best dealt with the infinity of things, the infinity of man’s absurdities. Kafka’s messages, like life, are unending. The hero, or rather, the anti-hero, of his novels was K., a disoriented rebel who did not know what he wanted, who would set out upon a thousand trails at the same time.
Kafka continues to have meaning in our times. When he died, we were just getting acquainted with him and as time passes, we become all the more interested. In The Trial he writes about the eternal guilt inherent in man – that all of us are guilty (some men come to fetch K. to inform him that he has a trial pending; he doesn’t know the reason for it and must climb thousands of steps for an interview with his lawyer without ever finding out what he was charged with.)
There are many beliefs regarding guilt. One is the Christian view which tells us that we are born with original sin. Another is the spiritual belief that we came into this world to pay the debts of our former life.
Kafka called The Trial the book of the past; if we are deemed guilty, it is because we are responsible for some action in the past.
One of Kafka’s other works, perhaps the most important, is The Castle, where he structures many ideas around a single metaphor: the impossible task of reaching the castle. Contemplating mediocrity and self-improvement, the meaning and meaninglessness of life, he seeks answers to his questions, all the while failing to realize that there is no difference, and as a consequence he loses his opportunity. In The Castle Kafka portrays the absurdity of life, the absurdity of bureaucracy, the absurdity of the manner in which humans communicate without ever understanding one another. K. never reaches the castle, just as we all die without resolving our doubts.
Kafka’s greatness from the literary point of view was in the way he developed his ideas: he had the ability to give himself the luxury of writing three hundred pages around a single metaphor.
He and his works have been the focus of many, indeed, infinite interpretations.
Leonardo didn’t publish his novel. He kept it and added to it, writing until the last day of his life, when he left a note for his wife that said, “Please take this to the publisher.” The title of the book was Without an End.
