Kafka's 'Up In The Gallery' And Structure Of Writing

Franz Kafka's 'Up In The Gallery' - the pleasure in its shape. Up In The Gallery is a short prose-piece. It consists of only two sentences.

Aside from the interest in the content of Up In The Gallery (does the narrator 'see clear'?) some of us simply enjoy its language structure. Some of us probably will have no recollection at all of what it is about, for the thing that sank in was its shape. A bare rebuttal.

Two clearly written sentences, each one setting out a series of highly imaginative images, clause following clause, and the second sentence before it launches off, succinctly placing its relationship to the first. The first sentence is what 'might have been' the case: the second sentence however is what actually 'is' the case.

'If some ( - ) were to ( - ), and if this ( - ) amid the ( - ) were to ( - ), perhaps then  . . . '  This long structure alone, devoid of its content, can please. To then fill in the gaps with some vivid images - a tubercular lady circus-rider galloping round the ring for months and months without interruption, applause which dies down and rises up again, hands which clap like steam hammers - will do quite nicely.

And then a long second sentence begins with a rebuttal of the first one - 'Since things are not like that' - and a rebuttal is stretched-out and attention is drawn to it, to the grammar (as a film director sometimes suddenly shows the cameras working on the set), and some of us are very pleased that Up In The Gallery exists.