* Kafka's 'The Burrow' - the bare bones of existence. Didn't Kafka seem to address, one after the other, two different 'basics'? The bare bones of living as an isolated creature (The Burrow, First Sorrow), and the different fundamentals to living in a society, fundamentals which he isolated and dealt with one by one (the need for recognition in Josephine The Singer, personal charity in The Bucket Rider, guilt in The Trial, and so on).The interesting thing becomes clear right from the outset; as with some other Kafka stories, there is effectively only one character and that character is addressing an audience; in The Burrow the character is some form of burrowing creature. What this creature is describing is effectively the fundamentals of every creature's life, including the human, and though he clearly rises some little way above these fundamentals, it isn't by much.
The bottom line - he has gone underground to get out of the weather, to store food, and to be safe; to protect himself (it seems to be a 'he') he preys on small creatures that stumble into his tunnels, so he need not go out much, and he is very anxious of being himself preyed-upon by bigger animals. And that, pretty much, is his life.
What unpacks itself is a sort of address which reveals an anxiety which by the (unfinished) end of the narrative is unravelling into an inhibiting terror. Surely an anxiety is fundamentally what is beneath all existences, something which is 'managed' according to resources, time, and culture. The creature is stunted with anxieties. He worries about the effectiveness of his tangle of narrower tunnels (what he refers to as his 'outer labyrinth') just beneath the one entrance to his burrow, he feverishly spreads out his large store of reserve food from his deepest chamber (his 'Castle Keep') to many smaller chambers and then returns it all, he dashes across open ground and finds a hiding place where he can safely watch his domain from the outside.
Preoccupied with the basics of simple survival, what his life lacks becomes clear to a reader. It lacks any of his own kind, lacks any struggle for position within a group, lacks the need to make others laugh. The creature is rarely able to afford the luxury of lowering his gaze from the need to survive, but when he does the only 'frivolous' thoughts he allows himself are contemplations upon the spaces he has created and their silence which is pleasing to him.
Of course it cannot last and he ends up listening at his walls to a distant sound, a form of whistle perhaps, made by a slowly approaching destroyer. (This is to take the words on the page 'straightforward', as doubtless irritates many, and not to indulge in thrillingly found 'parables', or worse to take the words as some difficult 'code' to an 'inner meaning' that needs to be broken. Different scholars can all find there whatever they are looking for and that of course is the problem with this activity. What did Kafka himself say about it?)
* Kafka's 'The Burrow' - the creature's voice. And there's something else that interests some of us no doubt, and that is the creature's 'voice'. Kafka had to choose which way to go, and the voice he gave the creature is an endearing one. The creature straightaway assumes a familiarity with you, his audience, and equally from the off, a note of self-deprecation confidently expresses itself. Familiarly he addresses his audience - 'But you do not know me if you think I am . . .' He addresses his audience thus - 'Just think . . .' And then on occasion the creature casually blends this 'report' on his works, with a casual self-deprecation - 'But I will admit that that is a fault in my . . .'
Is this just the right note to sound?
* Kafka's 'The Burrow' - a story left unfinished again. And again the Kafka traits are there in place. The initial predicament right from the off, and from which everything else follows. And, again, once Kafka has unpacked his startling predicament, the feeling that he's lost interest for he has already done what he came here to do: another 'unfinished' text is the result. Which brings us to the unfinished nature of this story - surely it is fortuitous isn't it? It's in the perfect state surely? The sound which this creature is straining to follow, left unexplained; and the creature's predicament left ongoing. That is a far better piece of writing than any grizzly-monster appearance.
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