The Castle 

by Kafka

Excerpts and paraphrases from the prolog and a novel

 

The snow-covered environment is that of the ski resort of Spindlermuhle in the Tatra Mountains, where Kafka stayed in January 1922, while the rural community no doubt reflects his experiences

in Zurau, where he stayed on his sister’s farm in the winter of 1917 – 18. The emotional drama goes back, in complex and untraceable ways, to his relationships with the Czech journalist Milena Polak,

nee Jesenska, and with Julie Wohryzek, his second fiancee. But the isolated setting of the novel, and its quasi-fantastic social system, enable Kafka above all to explore and dramatize some long-standing

intellectual preoccupations.

One of these was the idea of a community. Kafka’s personal writings constantly express his sense of solitude, his isolation from his family, his need to find a substitute in writing, and his wish to found a community by marrying and starting a family. But, while attracted to the community as an ideal, he was also sharply aware of the frictions arising from living with even one other person. 

When he and Felice Bauer stayed together in a hotel in the summer of 1916, Kafka recorded in his diary

how laborious it was to live together, adding: ‘only deep down perhaps a narrow trickle worthy to be called love’ (5 July 1916). Integration into a community such as the fictional village would be many degrees

harder. Hence K. the outsider is treated with condescension, contempt, and outright dislike by the villagers, and allowed only a marginal place in their community as janitor in the village school. His situation has been compared to that of Jews seeking a place in European society.2  But to interpret the novel accordingly would be too narrow.