The Judgment
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The Judgment (Das Urteil) is a short story by Franz Kafka which depicts the conversation between a man and his father, where many conflicts arise. The story has been analyzed under the scope of psychoanalysis. Kafka wrote the story on the night of September 22-23, 1912 [1] This coincides with the eve of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), also known as Yom ha-Din, the Day of Judgment. The story was written at a time when Kafka wrote some of his best known works (such as The Metamorphosis).
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[edit] Plot summary
The story begins when a young businessman by the name of Georg Bendemann tries to write a letter to a friend living in Russia. Georg has not seen his friend in three years and deeply contemplates whether he should discuss the details of his life with his friend. Georg recently has become engaged to a woman from a well-to-do family, and his business has grown quite dramatically in the last two years.
But Georg's friend has not been faring well in Russia and, in Georg's words, "had resigned himself to becoming an incurable bachelor" with little to no commercial success. As a result Georg has kept most details of his life secret from his friend, including his engagement and commercial success. Georg rationalizes this by saying he's afraid his friend would get hurt, or that he might envy him.
But after considering the issue for a while — and after remembering how his fiancée had been offended by Georg for keeping their engagement a secret from his friend — he ends his letter with the news of his engagement to Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld. He finishes the letter and goes to another room to consult his father about the situation.
Georg has not set foot in his father's room for months (being busy with his business and fiancée). The room appears shockingly dark and the windows are closed, and the remains of his father's breakfast, not much of which has been eaten, stands on the table. To Georg's surprise, his father does not recall his friend in St. Petersburg. Detecting a certain weakness in his father, Georg reproaches himself for neglecting his father. He resolves to take care of him from now on and remove him from the miserable condition he's in right now.
Georg carries his father to his room and lays him on his bed. His father then draws the blanket especially high over his shoulders and asks him if he's well-covered. After Georg remarks "Don't worry, you're all covered up," his father suddenly jumps out of the bed and starts yelling at him.
In a dramatic show, the father explains that not only does he remember who Georg's friend is, but that he has been communicating with him secretly and "he knows everything". The father talks in an accusatory way and ends his speech by saying: "So now you know what else existed in the world outside of you, before you knew only about yourself! Yes, you were a truly innocent child, but you were even more truly an evil man!—And for that reason, I hereby sentence you to death by drowning!"
Georg immediately runs to a nearby bridge, from which he throws himself into the river [2].
[edit] Publication History
The Judgment was first published in the annual Arkadia, edited by Max Brod (Leipzig: Kurt Woolf Verlag, 1913). The story was dedicated "to Miss Felice Bauer," and in subsequent editions simply "for F." [3].
[edit] Interpretation
In the story, the exiled friend in Russia exerts considerable power over the other characters—Georg, his father, and his fiancée, Frieda. In his diaries, Kafka wrote that the friend is the strongest connection between Georg and his father, for it is through this link that his father is able to reassert himself as paterfamilias and his son's enemy and that Georg is able to submissively accept him as such. Kafka goes on to relate that the fiancée exists, in a tangential sense, only because of the father-son bond that the absent exile creates.[citation needed]
[edit] Translation
A virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. An example is the Kafka's use of the German noun Verkehr in the final sentence of the story. The sentence can be translated as: "At this moment an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge."[4] What gives added weight to the obvious double meaning of Verkehr is Kafka's confession to his friend and biographer Max Brod that when he wrote that final line, he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- Kafka, Franz (ed. Nahum N. Glatzer). The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 1995. ISBN 0805210555
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Kafka, Franz (ed. Nahum N. Glatzer). The Complete Stories New York: Schocken Books, 1971. p. 468
- ^ Kafka, p. 77-88
- ^ Kafka, p. 468
- ^ Kafka, p. 88
[edit] External links
| The Works of Franz Kafka |
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| Novels
The Metamorphosis • The Trial • The Castle • Amerika Short Stories 1904-1912: Description of a Struggle • Wedding Preparations in the Country • The Judgment • Contemplation • The Stoker 1914-1917: In the Penal Colony • The Village Schoolmaster (The Giant Mole) • Before the Law • Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor • The Warden of the Tomb • A Country Doctor • The Hunter Gracchus • The Great Wall of China• A Message from the Emperor • A Report to an Academy • A Dream • Up in the Gallery • A Fratricide • The Next Village • A Visit to a Mine • Jackals and Arabs • The Bridge • The Bucket Rider • The New Advocate • An Old Manuscript • The Knock at the Manor Gate • Eleven Sons • My Neighbor • A Crossbreed (A Sport) • The Cares of a Family Man 1917-1923: The Refusal • A Hunger Artist • Investigations of a Dog • A Little Woman • The Burrow • Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk • A Common Confusion • The Truth about Sancho Panza • The Silence of the Sirens • Prometheus • The City Coat of Arms • Poseidon • Fellowship • At Night • The Problem of Our Laws • The Conscription of Troops • The Test • The Vulture • The Helmsman • The Top • A Little Fable • Home-Coming • First Sorrow • The Departure • Advocates • The Married Couple • Give it Up! • On Parables Diaries, Notebooks and Essays The Diaries 1910-1923 • The Blue Octavo Notebooks • The First Long Train Journey (with Max Brod) • The Aeroplanes at Brescia Letters Letter to His Father • Letters to Felice • Letters to Ottla • Letters to Milena • Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors Collections The Complete Stories • The Sons • The Penal Colony • Parables and Paradoxes • The Great Wall of China • Dearest Father |
