Vivisection

Dear Mr. Franz Kafka, 

I hope this letter finds you at peace. I am writing in regards to your story “The Metamorphosis”. Now, I do not usually read what has been termed by some as modernist literature because I find it depressing, grey and bleak. But your story was mentioned again and again in my reading and research, so I decided I should give it a try. And I found the story depressing and grey, yes, but I enjoyed it.  

I bought it at a used book store-I have no qualms about that since you no longer own the copyright. The particular edition I bought was a Bantam Classic, most likely used in high school or college classes, complete with “Explanatory Notes On the Text”, a hand full of “Documents”, and “Critical Essays”, all of which, when combined, take up more pages than your story. I have since ripped the book up,and I am keeping only your story and putting the rest in my garden compost. 

What I like about your story is the way you have taken the reactions and emotions that come from repression and unwarranted guilt, and expressed them–not like they often do today, where authors make their readers re-live their trauma in detail after graphic detail–but in a way that, no matter what state your relations are in your family, any person can come to understand and empathize with how Samsa (the main character) sees himself. It gives insight into the way abuse (imagined or real, mental or physical), especially from authority figures, makes a person feel trapped, hated and repulsive at times. And you presented it in a way that the reader won’t have to go to therapy after reading it. To me, the most striking part was at the end where you illustrated Samsa’s belief that his family would be much better off without him. 

A good book or story is rarely just a story to me-it is an experience, that’s why I choose my books carefully. Usually I want to know about the author’s life and what other people thought of the work. But when I started to peruse the Critical Essays included in my copy of your story, it all felt very, very wrong. I wish I would have just read the story and left it at that. 

On your death bed, you asked your friend Max Brod to destroy any unpublished manuscripts or writings after your death. As you may or may not know, he did not honor your wishes (don’t be angry, I hear that the stories that were published posthumously are good).

One person's interpretation
 of a dragonfly

Because of the imagery in your story (and the culture and time period in which it was written and the influences of the world at that time) the Freudian psychologists took your “Metamorphosis” and with the help of your journals and writings (the ones you did not want published), they have nailed your story to the dissecting table, sliced it open and have deconstructed it down to the least adjectival phrase. They read every element of your story as a symbol and then presume to translate your whole psychology.  

Your Freudian psycho-therapy sessions and your psychological profile is published over and over for all to see and some of it was in the book I read. Now, in the 21^sst century, Freudian psychology has fallen a bit out of favor-he is still revered for the pioneering work he had done, but now, therapy often consists of making the adult understand and come to terms with their childhood and pain, helping them to move on and equipping them to become a stronger and whole person. Long sessions digging into hyper-detailed pasts is not done much anymore. This is why I am appalled at how you’ve been treated. By just scanning the “Explanatory Notes”, I wanted to cry, but I was too angry. From Weinberg announcing (without your confirmation) that Samsa is a cryptogram for Kafka, to Hellmuth Kaiser’s interpretation of the apple in the bug Samsa’s back as ... (for propriety’s sake, I will not mention that here), I feel they are deconstructing your story and the picture you painted to the point where it is exploitation. 


Do you know, just about every single physical object mentioned in your story is interpreted as a symbol of an obsession or a Freudian psycho-sexual state? I did not read anywhere that you were a scholar of Freudian psychology, so I wonder, how did you know to include all those symbols in your story? 

I wonder what you would think if you saw the towering pile of psychological, literary and social commentary on your story and your life. Maybe you would be appalled, but I hope that in the afterlife it isn't so disturbing.  

Living,
 breathing dragonfly

I wonder how your dear friend Max Brod would feel if his life were dissected on Freud’s operating table? It’s as if all those literary critics and psychoanalysts were trying to explain you through their respective terms. But you did it so much better. A bunch of psychological symbols as explanation does not compare to the picture you drew for me. They picked apart your masterpiece into the very atoms that make up the paint. It’s not meant to be seen that way; you loose all effectiveness and all the beauty. It’s the difference between a bunch of well-placed, planned trees and a thick, rich beautiful forest teeming with life.
I am sorry they did this to you and your story.
  

I am relieved by the fact that you will never read my letter or will never know or have reason to care about all the erudite fodder–good and bad–that people write about you.
  

And lastly, I can’t help but think that these deep thinkers who tore your masterpiece to pieces seem to have treated you much like your father did when you were alive. They could not let your story stand "as is" for people to appreciate in an organic, natural way, it had to be put to work, they had to pick it apart and put it to use. 

Thank you for your stories and your insight. 

Forever a admirer, but never a deconstructive critic, 

A J Tanek