Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts

by Milan Kundera

  According to Alexandre Vialatte (L'Histoire secrete du Proces, 1947), the trial in Kafka's novel is the one that Kafka brings against himself, K. being nothing but his alter ego: Kafka had broken his engagement with Felice, and his future father-in-law "came from Malmo expressly to try the guilty fellow. The hotel room in the Askanischer Hof where this scene unfolded (in July 1914) gave Kafka the sense of a courtroom… He started the next day on 'The Penal Colony' and on The Trial. We do not know K.'s crime, and today's morality absolves it. And yet, his 'innocence' is diabolical… In some mysterious way, K. has violated the laws of a mysterious justice that has nothing to do with ours… The judge is Doctor Kafka, the defendant is Doctor Kafka. He pleads guilty to diabolical innocence."

  In the first trial (the one Kafka recounts in his novel), the tribunal accuses K. without specifying the crime. The Kafkologists were unastonished that a person could be accused without cause and were not spurred to either ponder the wisdom or appreciate the beauty of this unheard-of invention. Instead, they set about playing prosecutor in a new trial that they themselves brought against K., this time trying to figure out the true crime of the accused. Brod: he is incapable of love! Goldstucker: he acquiesced in the mechanization of his life! Vialatte: he broke his engagement! They do deserve credit for one thing: their trial against K. is just as Kafkan as the first one. For if in his first trial K. is accused of nothing, in the second he is accused of no matter what, which comes to the same because in both cases one thing is clear: K. is guilty not because he has committed a crime but because he has been accused. He is accused, therefore he must die.

  Inducing Guilt

  There is only one way to understand Kafka's novels: to read them as novels. Rather than search the character K. for a portrait of the author and K.'s words for a mysterious coded message, to pay careful attention to the behavior of the characters, their remarks, their thoughts, and try to imagine them before your eyes. Reading The Trial this way, you are immediately struck by K.'s strange reaction to the charge: without having done anything wrong (or without knowing what he did), K. immediately begins to behave as though he is guilty. He feels guilty. He has been made to feel guilty. He has been culpabilized.

  People used to see a very simple link between "being guilty" and "feeling guilty": it's the guilty person who feels guilty. In fact, the French word culpa-biliser-to induce feelings of guilt-is relatively recent; it was first used in 1966 because of psychoanalysis and its innovations in terminology; the noun derived from this verb (culpabilisation) was created two years later, in 1968. But long before that, the hitherto unexplored condition of induced guilt feelings was set forth, described, and developed in Kafka's novel, in the character K., and it was shown at different stages of its evolution:

  Stage 1: Futile struggle for lost dignity. A man absurdly accused who does not yet doubt his innocence is disturbed to see that he is behaving as if he is guilty. Acting guilty without being so has a humiliating element, which he tries to conceal. Set out in the first scene of the novel, in the next chapter this situation is condensed into a tremendously ironic joke:

  An unknown person telephones K.: he is to be interrogated the following Sunday at a house in the suburbs. Without hesitation, he decides to go; out of obedience? out of fear? Oh no, self-delusion works automatically: he wants to go there in order to be done quickly with these nuisances who are wasting his time with their stupid case ("the case was getting under way and he must fight it; this first interrogation must also be the last"). Immediately after, his chief at the bank where he works invites K. to a party on the same Sunday. The invitation is important for K.'s career. Should he therefore ignore the grotesque summons? No; he declines the chief's invitation since, without wanting to acknowledge it to himself, he is already under the sway of the trial.

  And so on Sunday he goes to the house. He realizes that the voice on the telephone that gave him the address neglected to specify the hour. No matter; he feels pressed for time, and he runs (yes, literally, he runs; in German: er lief) across the entire city. He runs in order to arrive on time, even though no hour has been specified. Granted that he has reasons to arrive as early as possible; but in that event, instead of running, why not take the streetcar, which incidentally follows the very same route? The reason: he refuses to take the streetcar because "he had no desire to humble himself before the committee of inquiry by a too-scrupulous punctuality." He runs to the tribunal, but he runs as a proud man who will not be humiliated.

  Stage 2: Proof of strength. Finally, he arrives in the room where he is expected. "So you are a house painter?" says the examining magistrate, and K., in front of the crowd filling the hall, reacts spiritedly to the ridiculous mistake: "No, I'm the chief clerk of a large bank," and then, in a long speech, he lambastes the tribunal for its incompetence. Heartened by applause, he feels strong, and in the familiar cliche of the accused turned accuser (wonderfully deaf to Kafkan irony, Orson Welles was taken in by the cliche), he challenges his judges. The first shock comes when he notices badges on the collars of everyone there and realizes that the audience he thought to win over consists of officials "here to listen and snoop." He turns to leave, and at the door, the examining magistrate is waiting to warn him: "You have flung away with your own hand the advantage an interrogation always offers an accused man." K. exclaims: "You scum! You can keep all your interrogations!"

  A reader will understand nothing about this scene unless he sees its ironic connections with what comes immediately after the rebellious outburst from K. that ends the chapter. Here is the start of the next chapter: "During the next week, day after day K. awaited a new summons; he could not believe that his refusal to be interrogated had been taken literally, and having heard nothing by Saturday evening, he assumed that he was tacitly required again in the same building and at the same time. So he again made his way there on Sunday…"

  Stage 3: Socialization of the trial. Alarmed by the case being brought against his nephew, K.s uncle arrives one day from the country. A remarkable fact: the case, it's said, is utterly secret, confidential, yet everyone knows about it. Another remarkable fact: no one doubts that K. is guilty. Society has already adopted the accusation and added the weight of its tacit approval (or its nondisagreement). We would expect indignant surprise: "How could they accuse you? And for what crime, exactly?" But the uncle is not surprised. He is only frightened by the thought of the trials consequences for all the relatives.

  Stage 4: Self-criticism. In order to defend himself in a trial that refuses to declare the charge, K. ends up looking for the crime himself. Where is it concealed? Certainly somewhere in his curriculum vitae. "He would have to recall his entire life, including the most minute acts and events, and then to explain and examine it in every regard."

  The situation is not at all unreal: this is actually the way some simple woman hounded by misfortune will wonder: what have I done wrong? and begin to

  comb her past, examining not only her actions but her words and her secret thoughts in an effort to comprehend Gods anger.

  To describe this state of mind, Communist political practice coined the term self-criticism (used in this political sense since the 1930s; Kafka never used it). This usage of the term does not correspond exactly to its etymology. It is not a matter of criticism (distinguishing good features from bad with the aim of correcting faults); it is a matter of finding your offense to let you help your accuser, let you accept and ratify the accusation.

  Stage 5: The victim's identification with his executioner. Kafka's irony attains its horrifying peak in the last chapter: two men in frock coats come for K. and take him into the street. At first he struggles, but then he thinks: "All I can do now… is keep a clear head to the end… Should I show now that I've learned nothing in a year of this trial? Should I go off like a dimwit with no sense?"

  Then, from a distance, he sees some policemen walking their beats. One of them approaches this suspicious-looking group. Thereupon, on his own initiative, K. forcibly d
rags the two men away, even starting to run with them to escape the policemen who, after all, might disrupt or perhaps-who knows?-prevent his coming execution.

  Finally, they arrive at their destination; as the men prepare to stab him, an idea (his ultimate self-criticism) crosses K.s mind: "It would be his duty to seize the knife himself… and plunge it into his own body." He deplores his weakness: "He could not prove himself completely, he could not relieve the officials

  of the whole task; the responsibility for this ultimate failing lay with the one who had denied him the remnant of strength he needed."

  For How Long Can a Man Be Considered Identical to Himself?

  In Dostoyevsky, the characters' identities lie in their personal ideology, which more or less directly determines their behavior. Kirilov is completely absorbed by his philosophy of suicide, which he considers to be a supreme manifestation of freedom. Kirilov: an idea become man. But in real life, is a man really such a direct projection of his personal ideology? Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace (particularly Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky) also have a very rich, very developed intellectuality, but theirs is changeable, protean, so that it is impossible to describe them in terms of their ideas, which are different in each phase of their lives. Tolstoy thus offers us another conception of man: he is an itinerary; a winding road; a journey whose successive phases not only vary but often represent a total negation of the preceding phases.

  I've said road., a word that could mislead, because the image of a road evokes a destination. Now, what is the destination of these roads that end only randomly, broken off by the happenstance of death? Its true that, at the end, Pierre Bezukhov arrives at the state of mind that seems to be the ideal and final stage: he comes to believe that it is futile to keep searching for a meaning to his life, to struggle for this or that cause;

  God is everywhere, in all of life, in ordinary life, so it is enough to live all there is to live and live it lovingly: and he turns happily to his wife and family. Is his destination reached? The summit that, retrospectively, makes all the earlier stages of the journey into mere steps on the stairway? If that were the case, Tolstoy's novel would lose its essential irony and come to resemble a novelized morality lesson. But it is not the case. In the Epilogue that summarizes the events of the next eight vears, we see Bezukhov leaving his house and wife for a month and a half to engage in some semi-clandestine political activity in Petersburg. So again he is off to seek a meaning to his life, to struggle for a cause. The roads never end and know no destinations.

  One might say that the various phases of an itinerary do have an ironic relation to one another. In the kingdom of irony, equality rules; this means that no phase of the itinerary is morally superior to another. When Bolkonsky sets about the task of serving his country, is he seeking thereby to expiate the wrong of his earlier misanthropy? No. There is no self-criticism here. At each phase of the way, he focused all his intellectual and moral powers to arrive at his position, and he knows that: so how can he blame himself for not having been what he could not be? And just as one cannot pass judgment on the various phases of one's life from a moral viewpoint, similarly one cannot judge them as to authenticity. It is impossible to say which Bolkonsky is more true to himself: the one who withdrew from public life or the one who devoted himself to it.

  If the various stages are so contradictory, how do we determine their common denominator? What is the common essence that lets us see Bezukhov the atheist and Bezukhov the believer as the selfsame person? Where does the stable essence of an "I" reside? And what moral responsibility does Bolkonsky No. 2 have toward Bolkonsky No. 1? Must the Bezukhov who is Napoleon's enemy answer for the Bezukhov who was once his admirer? Over what period of time can we consider a man identical to himself?

  Only the novel can, in concrete terms, explore this mystery, one of the greatest known to man; and Tolstoy was probably the first to do so.

  Conspiracy of Details

  The metamorphoses of Tolstoy's characters come about not as a lengthy evolution but as a sudden illumination. Pierre Bezukhov is transformed from an atheist into a believer with astonishing ease. All it takes is for him to be shaken up by the break with his wife and to encounter at a post house a traveling Freemason who talks to him. That ease is not due to lightweight capri-ciousness. Rather, it shows us that the visible change was prepared by a hidden, unconscious process, which suddenly bursts into broad daylight.

  Gravely wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz, Andrei Bolkonsky is regaining consciousness. At this moment his entire universe, that of a brilliant young man, is set rocking: not by rational, logical reflection, but by a direct confrontation with death and a long look at the sky. It is such details (a look at the sky) that play a great role in the decisive moments experienced by Tolstoy's characters.

  Later on, emerging from his deep skepticism, Andrei returns to an active life. This change is preceded by a long discussion with Pierre on a ferry crossing a river. Pierre at the time is positive, optimistic, altruistic (such is that brief stage in his evolution), and he disputes Andrei's misanthropic skepticism. But in their discussion he shows himself rather naive, spouting cliches, and it is Andrei who shines intellectually. More important than Pierre s words is the silence that follows their discussion: "Stepping off the ferry he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had pointed. For the first time since Austerlitz he saw that high everlasting sky he had seen while lying on the battlefield, and something that had long been slumbering, something better that was within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul." The sensation is short-lived and vanishes immediately, but Andrei knows "that this feeling, which he did not know how to develop, was alive in him." And one day much later, like a dance of sparks, a conspiracy of details (the sight of an oak trees foliage, the happy talk of girls overheard by chance, unexpected memories) kindles that feeling (that "was alive in him") and sets it blazing. Andrei, still content the day before in his retreat from the world, abruptly decides "to go to Petersburg that autumn" and even "re-enter government service… And Prince Andrei, clasping his hands behind his back, paced back and forth in the room for a long time, now frowning, now smiling, as he reflected on all those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a crime, that were connected with Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, with the oak, with woman's beauty and with love, which had altered his whole life. And if anyone came into the room at such moments he was particularly curt, stern, firm, and, above all, disagreeably logical… as if to punish someone for all the secret, illogical work going on within him." (I emphasize the most significant lines.) (Let us recall that it is a similar conspiracy of details- the ugliness of faces around her, conversation overheard by chance in the train compartment, intractable memories-that, in Tolstoy's next novel, touches off Anna Karenina's decision to kill herself.)

  Still another great change in Andrei Bolkonsky's internal world: mortally wounded in the battle of Borodino, he lies on an operating table in a military encampment and is suddenly filled with a strange sense of peace and reconciliation, a sense of happiness, which will stay with him; this state of happiness is all the stranger (and all the more beautiful) for the enormous harshness of the scene, which is full of the hideously precise details of surgery in a time before anesthesia; and strangest of all about this strange state: it is provoked by an unexpected and illogical memory: when the doctors assistant removed his clothes, "Andrei recalled his earliest, most remote childhood." And some lines farther on: "After the agony he had been enduring, Prince Andrei enjoyed a blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the best and happiest moments of his life, especially those of early childhood-when he had been undressed and put to bed, and when his nurse had sung him lullabies and he had buried his head in the pillow and felt happy just to be alive-rose to his mind, not as something past, but as a present reality" Only later does Andrei recognize, on a nearby operating table, his rival, Anatol, Natasha's seducer, whose leg has just bee
n cut off by a doctor.

  The usual reading of this scene: Wounded, Andrei sees his rival with his leg amputated; the sight fills him with immense pity for the man and for man in general. But Tolstov knew that these sudden revelations are not due to causes so obvious and so logical. It was a curious fleeting image (the early-childhood memory of being undressed in the same way as the doctors assistant was doing it) that touched everything off-his new metamorphosis, his new vision of things. A few seconds later, this miraculous detail has certainly been forgotten by Andrei himself just as it has probably been immediately forgotten by the majority of readers, who read novels as inattentively and badly as they "read" their own lives.

  And another great change, this time Pierre Bezukhov's decision to kill Napoleon, a decision preceded by this episode: He learns from his Freemason friends that in Chapter 13 of the Apocalypse, Napoleon is identified as the Antichrist: "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." When the French alphabet is given numerical values, the letters in "I'empereur Napoleon" add up to the number 666.

  "This prophecy greatly surprised Pierre, and he often asked himself what exactly would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and tried, by the same system of turning letters into numbers and adding them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He wrote the words l'empereur Alexandre and la nation russe and added up their numbers. But the sums were either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French, comte Pierre Besouhoff; the sum was far from right. He changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then it occurred to him that if the answer to the question were contained in his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he wrote le Russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was only five too much; five was represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the word empereur. By omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought: l'Russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery greatly excited him."