Which, from hills in the distance,
Stretches to distant hills.'
Franz Kafka's 'Description Of A Struggle' - Getting By: the wider story within which his later writings can dwell? Kafka's Description Of A Struggle is a short prose-piece. Surely one day it will be up there with the most admired of his writings? It's all in place. Despite its early date, the little signatures are there in place: the figure standing at an upper window; distant music signifying what? . . .
And do some people read it as the 'wider' story within which his later writings can dwell? Description Of A Struggle can be read as the basic struggle to 'get by' within the conventions of wherever a man happens to dwell: in one sense the later writings, the famous ones, can all hearken back to this overall problem; they can be partly read as specific examples of an over-arching predicament (getting by) - a specific emigrant trying to get by in a specific America, a specific outsider trying to get by beneath the walls of a specific Castle administration, a specific insect-like man trying to get by within a specific apartment-dwelling family.
The 'struggle' of the title can (doubtless there are other interpretations) refer to a couple of sentences half way through the story, and within the section headed Proof That It's Impossible To Live - the narrator finds a river that pleases him and lays down by its side (trying to ignore the dread sound of sobs coming from somewhere), and says:
'It won't take much courage to live here. One will have to struggle here as anywhere else, but . . .'
In fact what follows that word 'but' is telling, for he comforts himself that out here in the inanimate landscape there are no animate people who try to force him to 'live there' with, as he puts it 'graceful movements' meaning perhaps 'conventional habits'?
Surely the narrator's first 'struggle to get by' (if you choose to read it this way) is the one he feels as essentially a private man concerned with the privacy of savouring his pile of pastries at a gathering of acquaintances, when he is faced with the demands of dealing with an over-familiar self-centred individual intent on being loudly indiscreet? The narrator is struggling with the conventions of a world which allows this to happen. He does not have the necessary verbal tools to deal with these events in his world, and his reaction is a slightly panicky one. He urges the two of them to leave. A walk up the Laurenziberg is what is needed. Outside walking together in the snow, he is incapable of keeping step with his acquaintance. Later he is anxious that the fellow finds him too tall and he crouches bizarrely; he fears that he is annoying this acquaintance and that soon the fellow will murder him. Perhaps the last sentence in this episode alludes to the overall struggle which this narrator has with his world?
'. . . but let him do the talking and enjoy yourself after your fashion, for this is the very best way (say it in a whisper) to protect yourself.'
Part two (Proof That It's Impossible To Live) flies off into the narrator's daydream (if you choose to read it this way) and after sleepily trying to control a landscape of his own imagining, he seems to try to enjoy a fantasy that he's found a way to live, free of struggle, through rest, and that he:
'ought to be pleased to be already in this natural position, for otherwise many painful contortions, such as steps or words, would be required to arrive at it.'
The next part of his daydream includes another group of individuals also with their own 'struggles to live' in their own world. A monstrously fat man carried on a litter, wishes to have a life of meditation. The four naked porters of this litter have their own struggle to get by within this little world, one which they lose for they cannot keep this litter above the waves of the river they are to cross. The fat man revolves slowly down the flowing river:
'like a yellow wooden idol which had become useless'.
The fat man tells the narrator of his friend, the supplicant, a man who had an extravagant way of praying, lying on the church floor and drawing lots of attention from other worshipers. The fat man eventually corners the supplicant and forces it out of him that his own struggle, a struggle with a world irritated by him, is a need to be looked-at:
'It's not fun, for me it's a need; a need to let myself be nailed down for a brief hour by those eyes . . .'
And gazing up at those eyes that look at him, sometimes the supplicant has a hope, a hope that someone, the fat man for instance, can tell him 'how things really are' for the things that he looks at, somehow 'sink away'. The symptoms of his 'struggle to live' are a bending, a moving, and a fluidity of everything he stares at. Town spires, lampposts, everything. A girl addresses him and makes an accusation that perhaps does get to the heart of this particular struggle with life - she says that he does not impress her at all, because she can see that he finds life boring; that he demands more of it. And of course he has very little to contribute to life, very little to offer to the others in his community. He cannot in the least play the piano yet he fancies, perhaps, that some inspiration will come over him; and the girl looking him over contemptuously makes the comment that 'Perhaps he wants to make some contribution to the entertainment.'
Of course he can't, and the community politely drags him away from the instrument and pretends that he is a very entertaining gentleman. Perhaps something of his inadequacy (is it?) dawns on him for politely invited to leave, straightaway he fancies once again that everything around him doesn't have much fixed reality at all. Is this the supplicant's 'struggle'? He turns to the fat man and compliments him:
'I flatter you and yet you cry? I think you cope quite sensibly with the difficulty of living.'
The conversation ends as the fat man disappears over a waterfall.
Part three returns to the narrator and his walk with the acquaintance up the Laurenziberg. The narrator passes comment on the 'struggle with life' should a girl use only her looks to 'trade' with.
The struggle with life the acquaintance is dealing with is that of being involved in a love which is something hitherto unknown to him, and which is causing him the gravest apprehensions:
'. . . I have to keep fingering a pink ribbon in my pocket all the time, I'm filled with the gravest apprehensions about myself which I cannot follow up - and I can even stand your company, sir, whereas normally I would never spend this amount of time talking to you.'
The acquaintance stabs himself in the upper arm. The narrator reminds him that he will be happy, that he has well-meaning friends around him, and that he has Annie to love, and in Spring they will travel in the sun surrounded by music and people, that there will be no 'struggle'. The acquaintance cries '. . . Oh God, that won't help. That won't make me happy.' he leans on the narrator and they go on.
Do all the longer famous writings in one sense harken back to this early prose-piece, this struggle to simply get by?
__________
And for those who haven't yet read Description Of A Struggle - it has more of Kafka's vivid and economic sketches. Some men surely recognize themselves in the very first sight of this narrator: 'I sat at a tiny table - it had three curved, thin legs - sipping my third glass of benedictine, and while I drank I surveyed my little store of pastry which I myself had picked out and arranged in a pile.'
And Kafka has the nature of large city-squares captured in a sentence: 'But then, on having to cross a large square, I forget everything. If people must build such huge squares from sheer wantonness, why don't they build a balustrade across them as well?'
The story is a very memorable piece of writing indeed.
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