The Days of the Madman

“I think you cope quite sensible with the difficulty of living. We build useless war machines, towers, walls, curtains of silk, and we could marvel at all this a great deal if we had the time. We tremble in the balance, we don’t fall, we flutter…” (Kafka 45).
Franz Kafka wrote these lines in 1909, from under an atmosphere of intense occupation. This may seem a strange statement to make, since although modern Czech history offers a number of severe political and military occupations, Kafka did not experience them. When he was born in Prague, the Czech lands were part of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, which may be called a kind of occupation, except that after 200 years this arrangement was status-quo, and as a German speaker himself Kafka would be expected to have more sympathy with Austria than with the “Czech” nation. So how can it be said that his writing is influenced by an occupation?
In the context of the Czech experience, the word “occupation” wears many masks. It can be applied to the military presence of Nazi Germany during World War II, or to the political influence of Soviet Russia from 1948-1989 (including their own military period, starting in 1968). It could even apply to the cultural oppression of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. All definitions of the word, however, have two common factors: the existence of an unwelcome outside presence, and the restrictions enforced by that outside presence upon the subject. Under these terms, this essay is aimed at exploring a very different manifestation of the word: the occupation of the psyche.
To begin shedding light on this concept we will leave Kafka for the moment and turn to one of his contemporaries: Gustav Meyrink. In The Golum, Meyrink writes about an individual living in the Jewish Quarter, which in the early 20th century was a ghetto that embodied an atmosphere of extreme claustrophobia, despair, and isolation. The residents were held there by force, meaning that legal, religious, or financial factors strictly prevented them from leaving. Thus stagnation, in every conceivable sense of the word, permeated the ghetto. “The dark, sullen life which clings to this house refuses to leave me in peace, and old images keep looming up inside me” says Athanasius Pernath, the main character of The Golum (Meyrink 13).
When applying the word “occupation” to the Jewish ghetto, it is important to understand that a “psychic occupation” need not be planned or intended by any person or entity. It is necessary only that a foreign (and probably unwanted) presence impose restrictions on the natural course of life. With this in mind it is easier to imagine the ghetto as being under occupation, not by military or political force but by the heavy psychological burden which all inhabitants lived under every day. Their lives and minds were not their own, being held captive by the environment in which they lived. No individual exhibits this better than Mr. Pernath.
Pernath finds himself caught up in a convoluted psychic haunting of the ghetto by an ancient intangible entity, the Golum. The embodied emergence of the Golum is explained as being the result of the long term psychic trauma of the ghetto: “As the electric tension builds past endurance on humid days and at last gives birth to lightning, might not the constant accumulation of the never-changing thoughts which poison the air here in the ghetto inevitably lead to a sudden, fitful discharge? – a psychic explosion which whips our dream-consciousness out into the daylight…” (46).
This “psychic explosion” that is the Golum chooses Pernath as its host, and a second level of occupation occurs in the story as he is gradually possessed by the Golum. As a result of this Pernath’s behavior changes radically, quickly isolating those around him and throwing him into a spiral of thoughts and actions that would certainly invoke the diagnosis of “insanity” from any outside observer. He begins to attribute consciousness to inanimate objects: “Often I dreamed I eavesdropped on these houses’ sinister doings and learned to my horror that they were the true secret masters of the street” (25), he has dreams and visions that are increasingly difficult to separate from reality (even for the reader), and the encounters with the Golum begin to seem more like encounters with himself.
The question is whether it is wholly justifiable to call Pernath’s reaction to this psychological occupation “insanity.” To that end we will turn to another character and another period in Czech literature. In Fuks’ Mr. Theodore Mundstock, there is no need to make a case for the existence of a hostile occupation, as the main character is a Jew during the Nazi reign in Prague. But our interest here is not the physical occupation, but rather the prying into peoples’ psyches, which in this case is very deliberate and intentional.
Mr. Mundstock exhibits seemingly “insane” behavior in two ways, which correspond to the two halves of the book. Indeed, insanity seems to be the driving point of the story, and the first introspective piece of information the main character gives the reader is that “my nerves have gone all to pieces” (Fuks 2). He comes home every day expecting to find a summons for the daily Jewish transport to concentration camps, and he spends every waking moment at home waiting for the decisive knock on his door. He explains his stress about all this to his companion, Mon, and also often receives ridicule from him. Mon, as far as can be determined, is Mr. Mundstock’s shadow personified. The conversations between these two sometimes become so animated as to alert the neighbors, and while Mr. Mundstock puts great effort into ignoring Mon, he isn’t quite strong enough to be left alone.
If Mon were to vanish, Mr. Mundstock would truly be alone (besides the ambiguous bird he keeps as a pet, a relationship which could be an argument for insanity in itself!). His reportedly active social life before the invasion has shriveled into little more than furtive glances and secret, whispered meetings. This applies to all members of the Jewish community, who live in fear of drawing attention to themselves or of implicating a friend by their presence. There is no law specifically which states that Jews must remain hidden behind locked doors and dart quietly from shadow to shadow, but the constant fear and dread enforces this behavior as firmly as any chains could. They realize that “we have been flung into a terrible hell” (95), but the whispers of news from the concentration camps constantly reminds them that a single knock on the door could trigger much worst.
It is in this environment that Mr. Mundstock has endowed his shadow with a personality which he is no longer able to control. He can talk to Mon, ignore him, but he cannot uncreate him. Clearly this is not sane behavior, but can we blame him? Stripped of all traditional and healthy social interaction, he has adapted an imaginative solution to his need. And in this we hit upon a crucial point.
Often we hear that mankind is the most adaptable creature of the animal kingdom, being able to adapt to life in nearly any environment this planet can throw at us, and for this reason we dominate the globe. In a physical sense this might be true, but in our progression we have also developed a vulnerability to a metaphysical environment of which the animals need know nothing. Our needs within this metaphysical realm are many, and while they may vary slightly from person to person it is vital that they not be underestimated. For example, while there are animals that lead a social existence, there is no other creature that relies so fundamentally on communication that the lack of interaction becomes a question of life or death. Other needs (those which will be addressed here) besides social interaction include a sense of place in time, and hope (in one form or another), among many others. These metaphysical needs are so absolute that man is utterly unable to adapt to life without them, just as our lungs cannot adapt to life on the moon. Rather, the reaction is to drastically adapt our perception of the very fabric of reality until it becomes bearable. If we cannot successfully fool ourselves into believing that those needs are being met, then we whither and die.
In this light it becomes more difficult to label Mr. Mundstock as being insane. The military occupation has deprived him of all meaningful interaction, and in so doing has forced its way into his psyche. He must have human contact, or perish (and the number of suicides amongst his friends confirms the reality of this threat). The restrictions placed on him press from all sides except one. Every traditional and accepted path to social interaction has been systematically blocked, but there is no way (or need) to block the full extent of human creativity. Mr. Mundstock takes the only road left to him, the road that fulfills his needs through a detachment from reality. After all, “there was probably nothing on earth that you couldn’t explain away if you found the right reason” (35), and he has found the right reasons to explain away the fact that it is impossible to have a real conversation with one’s shadow. That reason is a life-or-death need for companionship. In truth he is not insane, but merely following his logical survival instincts in an insane environment. However, he goes on to provide further grounds for suspicion!
When Mr. Mundstock becomes more certain that his summons to the concentration camp is coming soon, he begins to panic, and another need quietly rises to the forefront: “The worse thing of all is to lose hope” (8). Hope, too, has been systematically and deliberately barricaded in every conceivable way. But suddenly he is struck with the thought that “method and a practical approach could save him” (111). He begins to put himself through a rigorous training routine, practicing not sleeping, not eating, doing hard labor, etc. This is clearly madness, since being prepared for a bullet will not save anyone from it. And as he vividly imagines watching his closest friends being dragged to the camps and beaten, coolly taking notes in a very “practical” manner, then the reader is left with no question as to his slipping hold on sanity. But this would be taking Mr. Mundstock at face value, for while he thinks that the purpose of these actions is to survive the camps, the subconscious and true goal is to acquire a reason to hope.
Mr. Mundstock’s callousness is appalling, and the extent to which he drowns himself in his hallucinations is disturbing. But as he himself says: “Where can you turn for strength? I don’t blame people for escaping into dreams, I don’t. You’ve got to find a refuge somewhere. How can we just go on holding out?” (153). This is the mark of the occupied psyche; he is so confined that he is unable to go on in any socially acceptable way. It forces him to a choice: a despairing death, or a disengagement from reality that equates to madness. More often then not the end result is both. There’s no question that “there are thoughts that crush” (17). In the end, after the enormous struggle for survival, Mr. Mundstock is prepared, and while crossing the street to join a transport to the concentration camps he is hit by a truck and killed instantly. The Nazis did they work thoroughly, systematically pursuing and claiming his companionship, hope, time, sanity, and finally his life.
Now we can step back to Pernath and the Golum, whom we left awaiting our verdict on his sanity. His psyche has also been invaded, pried open, and occupied by the deep communal distress of the ghetto. Before any serious entanglement with the Golum, this atmosphere had restricted his options and actions, even blocking the road to certain essential metaphysical needs. These needs rise to the surface of his consciousness, and he becomes nearly obsessed with what another Czech author of a different period of occupation called “the unbearable lightness of being” (Kundera). Seeing the wind catch up a piece of paper and wave it around in the air, Pernath wonders: “What if, in the end, we living creatures too are something like those scraps of paper? – Might an invisible, ungraspable wind chase us back and forth as well, determining our actions, while we in our innocence think ourselves governed by our own free will?” (Meyrink 41).
This notion becomes even more frightening for him as he begins to realize that he has no knowledge of his past, that almost all memories had been blocked to protect him from some tremendous trauma. That lack of memory was “making me homeless amidst the life surrounding me” (52). A man with no knowledge of the past, no hope for the future, and no link to the present desires one thing, connection. He longs to be a part of the time and space he inhabits, to know that he exists by the impact his life has on the people around him, and to affect something, anything, in the formation of the future.
This is the need, and all the restrictions of his environment are aimed against him achieving it. The solution (whether of his own psychological creation or simply a rare opportunity that appeared just in time to save him from devastation) is the insane behavior involving the Golum. The Golum embodies the tortured consciousness of the entire Jewish community, and through their surreal interaction Pernath obtains a connection to his time and place. He sees a vision of many faces “on through the centuries, until the features grew more and more familiar to me and converged in one last face: the face of the Golum, ending the procession of my forebears” (144). As abstract, untraditional, and “insane” as this connection might be, that is precisely the point. Psychological occupation leaves room for nothing else.
In prison Pernath meets another man who has shared some of his experiences with the Golum. This individual has been taken to the extreme of committing murder while under the influence of the Golum, but he coolly accepts this in a way that seems like madness even to Pernath. His response is instructive: “But I am not mad. I am something quite different – something which closely resembles madness, but is its exact opposite” (238). Although it is taking his statement slightly out of context, these words eloquently communicate one point of this essay: the bitter irony of psychological occupation is that the insanity it produces springs from an entirely logical reaction to the circumstances. The most irrational deeds can be understood as absolutely imperative when taken in the context of the significance of mankind’s metaphysical needs.
At last we are prepared to return to Kafka. The quote at the beginning of this essay comes from the short story “A Description of a Struggle,” and a quick perusal of the story should reveal its similarities with the other pieces of literature already examined. In regards to the presence of insane behavior, the story jumps from one restless hallucination to the next and switches suddenly between narrators without warning. Concerning the analysis of this story, it would be difficult to even separate the characters from one another and determine what their behavior actually is, much less what needs provoke it. In fact one must wonder if the author himself is not under some sever psychological occupation, and this is where it fits.
Kafka lived in the ghetto at the same time that Meyrink was writing about it. In fact if Pernath had been a writer, we could imagine him producing something similar to Kafka’s works. Kafka was also a German speaking Jew in the Czech lands, a condition that much increased his feelings of isolation and oppression. His writing was a compulsion, his own creative way of addressing a need within him. And anyone who can write about a man waking up to discover that he has become a giant beetle is no stranger to the accusation of insanity. Therefore it is an easy jump to hypothesize that he was driven to this form of expression by a psychological occupation, the same plague which weighed on Fuks, Meyrink, Kundera, and many other principles of Czech literature.
Without going into unnecessary details, the very elements that can be identified as “insane” in Kafka’s works point to the driving force behind them; that is, a feeling of isolation and lack of intimacy, and a need to communicate those feelings. Seen in this light, Kafka becomes not nearly so Kafkaesque. After all, as he himself says, in an insane environment that restricts the natural course of the pursuit of needs, insane behavior is the only way to “cope quite sensible with the difficulty of living” (Kafka 45).
Mankind has shown itself capable of momentous things, of mobilizing mighty armies and sweeping across continents, of digging deep into the human consciousness and turning a man into a puppet, of building cities for vast masses and altering the very structure of the earth. Even though these things might be worthy of wonder, Kafka calls them “useless.” They fall on the well paved path that we have used for centuries to fulfill our needs of social intimacy, of hope, of meaning, and the road has been transformed into a battlefield full of mines and barbed wire. The human response to the dehumanizing effects of the modern age, thus far, has not been to strengthen ourselves for the fight, to charge into battle, or even to adapt to a new way of life in this distorted landscape. Even if this would end in disaster, it would be an act of courage and determination to fight and fall heavily. But no, “we don’t fall” (45); our response has been to wander bewildered across the land, tip-toeing from shadow to shadow, losing our minds to save our lives. Thus “we tremble in the balance…we flutter” (45).
It is safe to say that the human race is not as strong as we would like to think, not as prepared to adapt and overcome any obstacle. The rising frequency and strength of psychological occupations in last hundred years of turbulent history is frightening, especially when one gains an understanding of how effortless it can be for this condition to be put into effect. The effects are such that even our defenses are self-destructive, and defeat is fatal either physically or metaphysically.
Also instructive is the realization of how frail and dependent our psyches really are. The emotional and philosophical needs of our species are not luxury items that we can learn to live without. They are of mortal significance, so that our instincts will drive us to the very edge of sanity and beyond in search of these that we rarely notice until we lack them. As the world shrinks, as pressure on our instinctive way of life increases, our environment will become more and more reminiscent of the Jewish ghetto, and our desperation will likely lead us to new levels of “madness.” Kafka’s premonition of the future, of the increased restrictions imposed by the psychological occupation of this modern age, is even more chilling: “One day everyone wanting to live will look like me – cut out of tissue paper, like silhouettes… – and when they walk they will be heard to rustle” (38). In the words of Fuks, “this [is] nowadays, the days of the madman” (Fuks 118).