On Kafka's short story The Next Village

“The art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.” 

C.G. Jung

Kafka's short story The Next Village illustrates two aspects of the cycle, or the stages, of life - the experience and the memory.

You are invited to watch an 8 minute video on YouTube, excerpted from a lecture on The Cycle of Life.

I am grateful to Adam Kościuk and Karol Domański who have prepared and edited this video, as always in the most wonderful way. (The video can also be watched with Polish subtitles here).

Topics explored in the book The Cycle of Life include:

 I. The Journey

Stages and Seasons

 Jung’s Stages of Life

 All the World’s a Stage, and a Stage of Life

 Being on the Way—A Way of Being

Hermes and the Journey: Being on the Way

The Crossroads

II. The Child

The Child in the Mirror

 Psychotherapy and Childhood

 The Divine Child

 From Divine to Human

 Eros, Psyche and Pleasure

III. The Puer and the Puella

 Between Shame and Fear

 Wine, Spirit and Fire

 Prometheus—the Thoughtful Thief

IV. The Adult

 King on Earth

 Boundaries of Reality

 Celestial Jerusalem—Terrestrial Jerusalem

 The King who Refuses to Die

 The Dried-up Earth

 The Limping Ego

 The Empty Shell

V. i. The Senex

V. ii. Homage to Sophocles

V. iii. The Last Chapter: Self and Meaning

 Ancestral Roots

 An Oak and an Acorn

 We Are All Beggars, Are We Not?

The Cycle of Life is available on Amazon, Fisher King Press, and other book sellers.

100-year-old letter reveals Kafka's mouse phobia

Haaretz journalist Ofer Aderet reported the following on December 9, 2012:

“A rare letter written by Franz Kafka 95 years ago has been purchased by the German Archive of Literature, at a public auction held this weekend. This letter was apparently part of the bequest of Kafka's friend Max Brod. A court recently ruled that this collection of manuscripts should be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem, as Brod had bequeathed in his will.”

“The sale took place last Friday at the Kaupp auction house in Sulzburg, Germany, with the German archive managing to raise the required 96,000 Euros from private donors, wishing to remain anonymous. The four-page letter was written by Kafka to his friend on December 4, 1917, in the Czech town in which he was residing with his sister Ottla while recuperating from tuberculosis. In the letter, Kafka describes his fear of the mice lurking in his apartment, admitting that his phobia is irrational, and that psychoanalysts should look into the source of this fear. He suggests keeping a cat as a solution that is preferable to using mousetraps.”

While the contents of the letter have been published, “in books as well as on the Internet, the letter had not been publicly displayed before. The letter had changed hands several times over the last 30 years, passing between different private collectors. The German archive has now added the letter to its large collection of Kafka writings, and will put it on public display in April, in a special exhibition.”

“In all likelihood, the letter was part of the Max Brod bequest, which has recently been contested in an Israeli court. The parties to the dispute were the German Archive of Literature, the National Library in Jerusalem and the daughters of Max Brod's personal secretary.”

“A family court in Tel Aviv recently ruled that the entire Brod bequest be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem. An attempt by lawyers representing Hoffe to obtain a temporary injunction to delay the transfer has failed, but they plan to appeal this ruling and the main decision.”

                                               

Mice generally refer to the powers of darkness, “gnawing at the root of the Tree of Life.” They evoke anxiety and “nocturnal worries,” as Marie-Louise von Franz says. Or, in Kafka’s words,

My reaction towards the mice is one of sheer terror. To analyze its source would be the task of the psychoanalyst, which I am not. Certainly, this fear, like an insect phobia, is connected with the unexpected, uninvited, inescapable, more or less silent, persistent, secret aims of these creatures, with the sense that they have riddled the surrounding walls through and through with their tunnels and are lurking within, that the night is theirs, that because of their nocturnal existence and their tininess they are so remote from us and thus outside our power.

 Kafka provides a particularly touching and simultaneously powerful description of complexes in his (Never sent) Letter to Father. He was unable to uphold his own separate identity vis-à-vis his domineering father. It is amazing how in relationship to him the otherwise so highly cognizant Kafka suffered from a lowering of awareness, abaisemênt de niveau mental. Kafka says, in the beginning of his letter to father,

You once asked me recently why I claim to be afraid of you. I did not know, as usual, what to answer, partly out of my fear of you …,

And later he writes,

I acquired in your presence … a hesitant, stammering manner of speaking, and even that was too much for you … I could neither think nor speak in your presence.

Kafka is afraid and the fear paralyses him. The terrifying complex – Brod speaks of an “infantile complex” – directly attacks consciousness and detracts available energy from the ego. When in the grip of the complex, ego-consciousness and identity are impaired. Feeling is then no longer a value-judgement, and affect and sensitivity overtake us. We are overcome by fear, rage, or the like and tend to project.

Kafka feels his father exposes him by “indiscriminately” speaking about his son in front of others. He sees himself as the hardworking father who sacrifices all to his ungrateful son. The feeling of being exposed is common when a complex is activated, and complexes are activated by exposure.

Excerpted from The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego, ‘Franz Kafka’s Letter to Father’ (pp. 92-103).

Available at Amazon

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

Requiem returns us to an eternal theme, a dialogue with Soul, and we know quite well what happens when one dialogues with Soul-we change, consciousness is enlarged, the impossible becomes possible and we no longer are compelled to blindly follow in the deathly path of our forefathers.

Heinrich Heine     

Existential questions accompany the narrative of Requiem. Some in the storyline, others as metaphysical discourse. While there are expressions of sadness and struggle, there is also joy and strength. The following is an excerpt from the beginning of the novella:

“If anyone had been present in that clean and tiny room in the small hostel in the heart of New York the day Professor Shimeoni arrived, watching him as he sat almost catatonically on the bed, his legs barely touching the floor, his cap awkwardly sitting on his head as if put there by a caring nurse on a schoolboy rather than the fifty-six-year-old man he was, his small unopened suitcase next to him as if he needed to protect it with strengths he no longer possessed, or as if the suitcase somehow squeezed itself quietly to his side so that it could protect him – if anyone had seen Professor Shimeoni sitting on the simple bed in the warm but alien room, they would have seen a picture of resigned defeat.”

“But no one was present, there were no witnesses. The defeat remained the private failure of Eli Shimeoni. Incidentally, Eli was short for Eliezer. However, since he had never managed to figure out if the meaning of his name was that God would be helpful to him, or if he was to be God’s servant in a scheme of contradictions that his philosophical mind could not grasp, he had formally shortened it to Eli.”

“Professor Shimeoni felt lonely and abandoned, like a redundant survivor. At fifty-six, he looked like an old man. Even when he was a child, people had told him he was an old man, but now there remained no trace of doubt. While not concretely, he profoundly experienced himself as the last survivor. It seemed to him that everybody had already left before him. True, there were those who remained behind – he thought of the many poor who had no means to get away, and the baalei teshuva, who seemed not to ask any questions, but always knew the answer so well, claiming that “in the War of the End of Days, the War of Gog and Magog, total defeat would precede the ultimate victory over evil,” as they knew to repeat by heart.”

“First his children had left, gone abroad to study. One had taken up a prominent position at the University of Stamville, while the other was doing gender research at the Institute of Harback. Then his wife had followed, accusing him of being a fanatic and archaic idealist, or plainly silly and stubborn. Friends and colleagues had discreetly taken farewell. Initially they would apologetically say “if things ever change, you can be sure I will be the first one to return home.” But then, people became increasingly forceful and determined as they said goodbye. The cultured ones would say with bleeding hearts, “this is not the country we prayed for,” and the self-proclaimed prophets would plainly tell him, “everything is collapsing, there is no future here.” Some would reinforce their doomsday prediction, relying on historical evidence that an independent Jewish nation could not survive more than a hundred years.”

Requiem is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation. While set in Israel sometime in the present, it is a story that reaches into the timelessness of history, weaving discussions with Heine and Kafka into a tale of universal implications.

Excerpts from Steve Zemmelman's essay Containing A Jungian Light: The Books of Erel Shalit, in Spring, 2015:

Requiem is unique among Shalit’s books in that it is a novella in which the narrator, a professor Eliezer Shimeoni (who shares the same initials as the author) gives voice to the unique combination of despair and hope that is the legacy of the ideal of the socialist pioneers no less than the decades of mutual shadow projections and resulting polarization by Palestinians and Jews alike which underlie a culture of militarization and terrorist attacks.  

     It is also a story of the alienation of the Western intellectual Jew from their Jewish religious heritage and the potential for finding a way back to a renewed Judaism and humanism through a new understanding of self and other.  For Professor Shimeoni it is a fight against denial, a battle for consciousness, and the courage to take a stand against evil that define the integrity one can maintain even in a situation that is seemingly hopeless in so many ways.  He writes, “Consciousness will determine the future of Israel, and the preservation of Jewish civilization and its cultural heritage.  When denial collaborates with demonization in the collective consciousness of the world, catastrophe lies in wait for its victim.”

      It is through self-scrutiny that essential elements in the often neglected and untold story of loss and despair can be identified and understood.  While following this path may be the only way to find ourselves, to do so is to risk becoming lost in the depths of our own suffering.  Shalit poses the essential question underlying all forms of depth psychology: “What witness is more trustworthy than the sitra achra (the other side, the story which is not told) which holds so many secrets, even secrets that we have forgotten, and secrets that are hidden from ourselves?”

      Requiem is ultimately a story of the possibilities of the spirit and its capacity to transform fate into destiny, for the human capacity to surpass mere repetition or adherence to collective thought and action, and to find the courage and creative intelligence that can lead to a new way in the face of despair.  This story is an appeal to the power of the symbolic life as an alternative to the literalism and concretism of fundamentalist and militaristic ideologies that underlie war and terror.  This central concern is woven throughout this book that returns over and over to the story of the akedah, the binding of Isaac, and the fact that it was sufficient for the sacrifice to occur as a symbolic act that did not need to be acted out.  Shalit writes, “By substituting the sacrificial animal for the actual son, the story of the akedah represents the separation of meaning from act, which is essential to culture and civilization.”

      Like all Shalit’s books, in Requiem one finds literary and historical treasures.  For example, he reminds us of Elie Wiesel’s observation that we may one day have an explanation for the Shoah (Holocaust) on the level of man but how Auschwitz was possible on the level of God will always be a mystery.  The narrator then complicates this further, turning Wiesel’s comment on its head, when he notes that Abraham substituting the ram for his son passed God’s test but questions whether he passed the human test. The patriarch showed his complete devotion to God but how is a parent ever justified in being willing to murder his own child?  

*******

Erel Shalit's narrative has a unique, fascinating and powerful style, which touches you strongly. He has a way of leading the reader to grasp complicated historical processes with unusual ease.

... We find not only the narrator of a story, but also the spiritual and lyrical face of the author. I highly recommend this fascinating and important book.

         Marcela London, poet, author

From the first pages of this book, the tone of a masterpiece emerges powerfully.

This book makes us realize that the "Israel problem" cannot be understood in a journalistic frame of mind. Politics, war, land, culture, and contemporary experience are expressions of the deep core of human life, the core of the human soul.

This is an important book for anyone who thinks about "cultural identity" and the love of one's own country and culture.

        Junko Chodos, artist

The book is available (in English as well as in Hebrew) at Amazon and Fisher King Press.

my human condition. original painting by Benjamin Schiff

Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father

An excerpt from the beginning of the chapter 'Kafka's (never sent) letter to father,' in The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego:

"A more vivid description of a negative father-complex than Kafka’s (Never sent) Letter to Father can hardly be conceived of. Mairowitz refers to it as an “uncanny level of self-revelation.” Kafka had intended to actually hand over the letter to father by means of his mother, hoping to clear up their relationship. Max Brod , however, makes it unmistakably clear that

    in reality the opposite would probably have happened. The explanation of himself to his father that the letter aimed at would never have been achieved. And Franz’s mother did not pass on the letter but gave it back to him, probably with a few comforting words.

   Kafka primarily identified with his maternal ancestors, the Löwys, whom he saw as representing sensitivity and intelligence. However, he also found in himself 

    a certain Kafka foundation [shrewd and aggressive in business] that, however, just isn’t set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business and conquest, but by a Löwy spur that operates more secretively, more timidly, and in a different direction, and which often fails to work at all. (Italics mine)

That is, his father identification was not activated, due to his lack of extraverted (business) and aggressive (conquest) energy (will to life). While Franz Kafka was extremely sensitive and introverted, his father, on the other hand, was extraverted, depicted by Franz as

    a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly superiority, stamina, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain generosity.

Lest we be tempted to believe Franz idealized his father, he quickly corrects this erroneous impression, adding that father also possesses “all the failings and weaknesses that go with these advantages, into which your temperament and sometimes your violent temper drive you.”

Max Brod and others have pointed out and criticized Kafka’s description of his father for being exaggerated. He says,

    Here and there I feel the perspective is distorted, unsupported assumptions are occasionally dragged in and made to fit the facts; on what appear to be negligible, immediate reactions, a whole edifice is built up, the ramifications of which it is impossible to grasp as a whole, which in fact in the end definitely turns on its own axis and contradicts itself, and yet manages to stand erect on its own foundation.

Of course Kafka’s description is exaggerated, self-contradictory and yet “stands erect on its own foundation!” This merely reflects that we are dealing not with a scientific description of the object, as if there were such a thing, but with Kafka’s imago of his father, and seemingly unbeknownst to himself Brod here draws the very contours of an autonomous complex.

Kafka’s father is perceived through the tinted lens of his complex, and as complex and object interact in the psyche, perceptions will be drawn into the complex and cluster around its core. This does not necessarily mean that Kafka’s view of his father is entirely wrong or distorted. Portraying his father, Kafka himself says, “I am speaking only of the image through which you influenced the child.”

....

Contents:

I. Complexes - The Historical Link                               

Introduction                                                                                                           

The Complex in the History of Psychoanalysis                                                  

A Plenitude of Complexes                                                                                      

Jung’s Personal Complexes                                                                                     

Complex Psychology                                                                                              

The Complex as Path and Vessel of Transformation                                              

The Complex – Cluster, Core and Tone                                                                  

Archetype and Ego                                                                                                 

II. Oedipus – The Archetypal Complex                           

Freud, Jung and Oedipus                                                                                         

Oedipus - The Myth                                                                                                  

Hero and Complex                                                                                                   

Mars and Eros – the Drive of the Complex                                                          

Mother Self – Father Ego                                                                                        

The Primal Scene                                                                                                    

The Sword and the Shield                                                                                       

The Complex Path – From Archetype to Ego                                                       

The Wounding of Oedipus – Ego Defences and the Autonomous Complex           

Oedipus’ Journey                                                                                                    

From Delphi to Thebes - From Archetype to Ego                                                    

Patricide at the Cleft Way Crossroad                                                                       

The Riddle                                                                                                              

The Cancerous Complex                                                                                         

III. The Complex in the Shadow                                   

The Autonomous Complex                                                                                     

The Complex and the Call                                                                                      

The World Parents                                                                                                 

The Archetypal Core of the World Parents                                                             

The Abandoned Child                                                                                             

A Mother Complex                                                                                                  

Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father                                                                 

The Tower of Babel                                                                                                 

Inflation                                                                                                                  

Hubris                                                                                                                     

The Tower of Babel                                                                                                

The Inflated Ego - The Emptied Self                                                                       

Integration of the Complex                                                                                   

Castration at the Gateway to Individuation                                                      

References                                                                                                        

      Available on Amazon 

Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father

Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father

A more vivid description of a negative father-complex than Kafka’s (Never sent) Letter to Father can hardly be conceived of. Mairowitz refers to it as an “uncanny level of self-revelation.” Kafka had intended to actually hand over the letter to father by means of his mother, hoping to clear up their relationship. Max Brod, however, makes it unmistakably clear that

in reality the opposite would probably have happened. The explanation of himself to his father that the letter aimed at would never have been achieved. And Franz’s mother did not pass on the letter but gave it back to him, probably with a few comforting words.

Kafka primarily identified with his maternal ancestors, the Löwys, whom he saw as representing sensitivity and intelligence. However, he also found in himself

a certain Kafka foundation [shrewd and aggressive in business] that, however, just isn’t set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business and conquest, but by a Löwy spur that operates more secretively, more timidly, and in a different direction, and which often fails to work at all. (Italics mine)

That is, his father identification was not activated, due to his lack of extraverted (business) and aggressive (conquest) energy (will to life). While Franz Kafka was extremely sensitive and introverted, his father, on the other hand, was extraverted, depicted by Franz as

a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly superiority, stamina, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain generosity. 

Lest we be tempted to believe Franz idealized his father, he quickly corrects this erroneous impression, adding that father also possesses “all the failings and weaknesses that go with these advantages, into which your temperament and sometimes your violent temper drive you.”

Max Brod and others have pointed out and criticized Kafka’s description of his father for being exaggerated. He says,

Here and there I feel the perspective is distorted, unsupported assumptions are occasionally dragged in and made to fit the facts; on what appear to be negligible, immediate reactions, a whole edifice is built up, the ramifications of which it is impossible to grasp as a whole, which in fact in the end definitely turns on its own axis and contradicts itself, and yet manages to stand erect on its own foundation. 

Of course Kafka’s description is exaggerated, self-contradictory and yet “stands erect on its own foundation!” This merely reflects that we are dealing not with a scientific description of the object, as if there were such a thing, but with Kafka’s imago of his father, and seemingly unbeknownst to himself Brod here draws the very contours of an autonomous complex.

Kafka’s father is perceived through the tinted lens of his complex, and as complex and object interact in the psyche, perceptions will be drawn into the complex and cluster around its core. This does not necessarily mean that Kafka’s view of his father is entirely wrong or distorted. Portraying his father, Kafka himself says, “I am speaking only of the image through which you influenced the child.”

This is an excerpt from the chapter 'Kafka's (Never Sent) Letter to Father', in The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego, available at Amazon, now at a 20% discount.

Book Review: Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return by Erel Shalit

A review by Marcella London, author and poet

Erel Shalit’s Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return touched me deeply, deep into the waters of my soul. From that ocean, I will choose to mention a few of the many emerging waves.

The book traces historical events, in which the longing for home can be felt: a real home, a collective home, and the personal and internal home that the author aims at, by means of the narrator of the book, Eliezer Shimeoni.

This is his private odyssey, but in distinction from Ulysses, he chooses not to relate to the siren’s song as merely a danger, but rather as a call to make the journey towards the soul’s home.

Erel Shalit’s narrative has a unique, fascinating and powerful style, which touches you strongly. Particularly, he has a way of leading the reader to grasp complicated historical processes with unusual ease.

Interwoven in a narrative of fiction and seeming non-fiction, we meet familiar figures from philosophy and literature, such as Kafka, who asked his friend Max Brod to burn his books after his death, a wish which, to the great fortune of humankind, the latter did not fulfill. In Requiem the author brings us both to Heine and the burning of books, and back to the fate of Hananiah ben Terdion in the second century.

The story of the second-hand bookshop reminded me of Borges’s famous library; Shimeoni also found refuge in the many old books: “The old bookshop granted an escape into a world of history books and timeworn atlases in which he could sail across the sea of time and continents, where fear and excitement and heroism were free and asked no price. It was a world of books that he could browse but never buy, an odyssey that could only be traveled, but never owned.”

I was carried away by the ruminations of the protagonist who wonders if he was “a mere actor in the play? What he believed to be his own, free and individual will, his personal determination, his choice and his decisions, his own peculiar thoughts, were they nothing but the manifestation of his allocated role, the text he had been given, none of his own creation?” And, “Without soul, there is no water and no liquid, no stream, no steam, and perhaps also no dream, he told himself, almost speaking out loudly. Soul does not have material substance,” says Shimeoni in the book, in his Zen-like reflections. And he is reminded of the film Smoke, based on a script by Paul Auster. The film tells the story of Sir Walter Raleigh who asked Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century, “How do you weigh smoke?” Clever as she was, she supposedly answered him, “How can you weigh smoke? It’s like weighing air or someone’s soul,” we are told. But the narrator contemplates and eventually provides us with the surprising answer.

In Requiem we are presented with two distinct styles of writing, so that we are almost led to believe that two different authors wrote the book. We find not only the narrator of a story, but also the spiritual and lyrical face of the author.

I highly recommend this fascinating and important book, which presents the reader with the simultaneously intellectual and emotional landscapes of Erel Shalit.

Marcela London, poet, author of The Beginning Was Longing (Hebrew, 2013)

TITLE: Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return
AUTHOR: Erel Shalit
PUBLISHER: Fisher King Press
ISBN: 978-1926715032
Available in English and Hebrew Editions, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and directly from Fisher King Press.

Heart and the (Philosopher's) Stone in Prague

'Rooftops and Towers of Prague,' a drawing by
Petr Ginz, 1928-1944 (Yad vaShem).

Born in Prague, Petr spent his adolescence in the children's home in the Theresienstadt ghetto. He was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the fall of 1944. In 2003, Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut that perished in the space shuttle Columbia, took Petr Ginz's drawing 'Moon Landscape' (see below) with him from the Yad Vashem collection.

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Czech Society for Analytical Psychology, to deliver a lecture and a workshop on the Cycle of Life.

Following several years of experience with the impressive Bulgarian Jung Society, as well as visiting the groups in Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, I can testify to the admirable devotion and seriousness found among the analysts, therapists and students in these countries. Their thirst for knowledge is a source of inspiration, and in only a few years the therapists in these countries have gained increasing psychotherapeutic experience.

It was a great joy to lecture to the members of the Czech Society, to an attentive audience of analysts and analysts to be, Jungian oriented therapists and students.

The weekend was particularly moving and meaningful because of Dvorah Kutzinski, who gave two related seminars – one on Erich Neumann’s Origins of Consciousness, and a seminar on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, including the screening of Bergman’s wonderful movie.

At 87, Dvorah Kutzinski, the Grand Old Lady of Jungian Analysts in Israel, is as sharp, witty and vital as ever. Coupled with her awareness of old age and death, she is full of life and energy, leaving many of us behind.

Her charismatic personality comes across in lectures and seminars, therapy and supervision, as her students, analysands and colleagues of more than fifty years will attest.

The person she is and her individual life are deeply intertwined with the history and culture of the 20th Century. She grew up in the house in which Kafka was born, with Max Brod, to whom we owe the preservation of Kafka’s manuscripts, among the weekly guests in their home. Her father, the philologist Prof. Zeckendorf, later one of the famous lecturers at Theresienstadt, predicted Kafka’s future long before his rise to fame.

After years in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, she arrived at the shores of Israel, and met Erich Neumann. She became a close friend and his foremost disciple, making his writings accessible to generations of Jungians. And the Czech she hasn’t spoken for seventy years, emerged from the depths of memory. She was received, as she so rightly deserves, with great warmth and appreciation.

Regarding the whereabouts and recent findings about the Golem of Prague, I have been sworn to silence and cannot yet disclose anything. It will have to remain shrouded in mystery, until it eventually will emerge from the hiding place in the shadows of science. Let me only mention that the story about the golem of Prague, based on the legend of the sixteenth century Rabbi Loew from Prague, was revived at the turn of the century by several authors, notably Gustav Meyrink. Meyrink had been a bank manager, before turning to alchemy and Kabbalah. He was convinced that the Philosopher’s Stone was to be found in the Prague sewer system, and from serious research into this matter, I have found conclusive evidence that the stone probably is to be found in the nigredo of Prague’s shadow.

The Jewish Cemetery in Prague

Petr Ginz, 'Moon Landscape' (Yad vaShem)