FRANZ KAFKA’S “THE JUDGEMENT” AND THE PETERSBURG TEXT OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

• Main Author: Zherebin Alexey Iosifovich
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural State Pedagogical University 2019-02-01
• Series: Филологический класс
• Subjects: avant-garde; hermeneutics; catachresis; expressionism; reading formation; petersburg text; psychoanalysis; austrian literature; austrian writers; literary creativity; novels; russian literature
• Online Access: https://filclass.ru/en/archive/2019/1-55/franz-kafka-s-the-judgement-and-the-petersburg-text-of-russian-literature
• ISSN: 2071-2405; 2658-5235

The article inserts Kafka’s short story “The Judgement” (1912) into the context of the “Petersburg text of Russian literature” and offers an example for the analysis of one of the most famous texts of German literature using the other “reference frame”. By “reference frame” or “reading formation” modern hermeneutics mean historical and cultural suppositions, that manage the act of reading. A formation can be designated as other cultural formation if these suppositions (models of self-description, statements of questions, concepts, approaches to research) belong to foreign cultural space with its own cultural tradition. Reading formation’s function remains unchanged: as control mechanism for the searches of sense it must define how a text can be read, which sense is possible and convincing in this context. What changes when you change the reading formation, is the role of the interpreter and semantic orientation of piece of art. The interpreter accepts the role of cultural mediator, his interpretation becomes a way of cultural transfer and the piece of art gets semantic dynamics. The story of Kafka with its open structure and “catachretic logic” provokes the reader to the formation of meaning on its territory, in the sphere of its perception. This right, proclaimed by receptive aesthetics, is also confirmed by the statements of the writer himself in his diaries and letters. Such, above all, is his indication to the presence in the narrative of the psychoanalytic code. He is the link between the German story and the Petersburg myth in his Russian interpretations. Including of “The Judgement” into the complex system of relations that describes “Petersburg text of Russian literature”, grounds the possibility to read this story as the variant of the “Petersburg tale” (“петербургская повесть”) and enrich his semantic potential with new meanings.