The Departure (short story)

The departure is a 1922 written by Franz Kafka parable and was published posthumously in 1936 and initially shortened by his friend Max Brod. It describes the ride of a first-person narrator who leaves his home with an uncertain destination. Maybe the text is an Eastern Jewish narrative based.

Content

At first the narrator is preparing his ride. On request of his astonished servant, where the journey should lead, the protagonist responding repeatedly with " get away from here" and places " away-from - here " as its destination securely. When the servant wants to know why his master because take with no food, replies the fracturing protagonist, so it was a very long journey that he would starve anyway, if he go get nothing to eat. With the emphasis that this immense length of the journey was but a lucky ending the short parable.

Shape analysis

Kafka used in this parable known of him, rather plain style. The statements are taken in short main clauses, only three subordinate clauses are facing exactly 36 main clauses. In general, these are not particularly expensive and decorated without special shortcuts easily strung together. The simple plot develops first into an AC speech, then it follows the use of indirect speech, which boils down at the end of direct speech.

Interpretive approaches

In this parable Kafka speaks confident ( a specialty! ) From the great risk of a life awakening, in which renewed the protagonist. He rides out, but without knowing where he would like to leave exactly. This ride is to break through the boundaries of the obviously unpopular familiar, it seems almost like an escape. His environment (in this case the servant ) does not understand the intent. To reinforce the sense of awakening sounds shortly after the announcement of the project, a trumpet, so that its inner awakening readiness and the external signal occur simultaneously. This wake-up call but only he hears, since his environment his urge to break out to new shores, remains incomprehensible.

The journey is, as he points out, long and can also fail (death by starvation ). A hedge against failures, such as the entrainment of food supplies, amounts to the fact that this journey - in the sense of a change - turn would fail because it verkäme back to the state of the familiar. Thus the way feeds alone the traveler and not only the objective ensures its survival. In a paraphrase could be this as " the journey is the destination " -Maxime interpret. And so it was indeed fortunate that this approach represents a "truly immense journey." However speaks countered that the trip will come to an end but because it is not infinite, but only "long and outrageous ". Despite these hardships, the protagonist is willing to take it upon himself to break the old and to face the new - a perpetual departure.

Sudau (p. 126): " Simple conditions so basic situations, important and recurring from time immemorial to. Only the secret preceding shifts of meaning - as travel life's journey, trumpet wake-up signal, which as of the faint irritation - the non-understanding and non - hearing of the servant - go out, make sure that the banality is changing in importance ... "

Writing as a travel

Sabine Eickenrodt uses the example of Kafka's story The sudden walk (1913 ), that the sudden departure, in Kafka is a topos, a typical motif stories. Jörg Wolfradt sees in Kafka's texts awakening the "sense withdrawal as a structural principle " " Kafka's texts, rehearsing beginnings '. They operate with initial assumptions sense, and then withdraw it piece by piece. " Kafka's parable " The Departure " take " an initial Stoffliches, abutments ' " to the starting point. The initial " Wirlichkeitsbezüge - Enter house, saddling the horse, arriving at the gate " would, however, undermined by the subsequent conversation in question.

This shift away from concrete covers is accomplished by Wolfradt in two steps: From the words " All the time away from here ... " which still carried on where the actual starting point of the journey, the existing environment, will the imaginary goal of the " way of here ". Following Eberhard Frey Wolfradt interpreted this transition as linguistic " transition from the known to the unknown ". Very broadly interpreted this Frey speaking itself as the journey. The deconstruction of the " away-from - here ", which remains the servant incomprehensible after Wolfradt brings the " text in motion ".

The servant remains the target description incomprehensible, the Lord could not course put into words, " an explication of the destination fails because of the general disorder of discourse ". What remains is the movement of the writing. Frey interpreted, assuming the " narrative as a journey ... as the incessant movement, which again and again thrusting from only just recovered target and thus always remains on the edge of the unknown. "

Wolfradt points out that riding for Kafka in various texts serve as a " metaphor for writing ". " The ride on the horse embodies Riding Into ' into writing the Hinfahren the spring on the white paper. "

Biographical interpretation

Marie Haller -Never man presents the story in a biographical context. Kafka thought as "life solution " in diaries and texts over and over again because " run away, go away, jump away ." The parable of " The Departure " is the culmination of the literary versions of these escape attempts, for Kafka had thought through both travel and suicide. "One of the vehicles that serve this utopia of going away, is the horse for Kafka riders. " The target phrase " away-from - here " in the parable stands for the rejection of his life, but turned positive: There is the " call to his ego, to become active, to free themselves by negation. "

In the same sense, Peter- André Alt parabola in the biographical context of Kafka's trip to Dora Diamant to Berlin 1923 " The short study The departure was described in February 1922, the anticipatory knowledge of the literature, what happened here. A rider takes a long journey whose only goal is to just get out of here ' to lead. "

Web link ( text of the parable )

• The online version of the parable asked

Secondary literature

• Sabine Eickenrodt: Sudden walk. The departure topos as a literary form of movement in Kafka and Walser. In: Hans Richard Britt Acher; Magnus Claw: On the road. Poetics of vagabondage in the 20th century. Cologne [ et al ] 2008, pp. 43ff.
• Eberhard Frey: Tell a lifestyle choice. For Kafka's story " The Move". In: Language Arts 13, 1982.
• Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories - 16 interpretations. Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7.
• Jörg Wolfradt: The novel I am. Writing and writing in Kafka's " The Missing ". Epistemata. Series Literature, Vol 188, King & Neumann 1996.