Kyle Stone

Philosophy in Literature
11/29/06

An Attempted Elaboration on Beckett and Kafka through Adorno

I've only read Kafka in German-serious reading-except for a few things in French and
English-only The Castle in German. I must say it was difficult to get to the end. The
Kafka hero has a coherence of purpose. He's lost but he's not falling to bits. My people
seem to be falling to bits. Another difference, you notice how Kafka's form is classic, it
goes on like a steamroller-almost serene. It seems to be threatened the whole time-but the
consternation is in the form. In my work there is consternation behind the form, not in the
form. Samuel Beckett, 1956

Dwelling on Becketts remarks regarding his experiences of reading Kafka, we

can perhaps contextualize several of the leitmotifs running through his novels as well as
Endgame. Most strikingly, Beckett points to a struggle he encountered (one which we all
encounter, as readers of Kafka) with respect to reaching the end of a novel such as The
Castle. Becketts comment points towards an aspect of both his own work which we
could guess was borrowed from or motivated by Kafkas work; I would also like to
suggest a connection between Becketts and Kafkas work which functions on several
levels - the fact that it is a somewhat incongruous or incomplete connection does not
seem to defeat the purpose of creating such a link, but rather points us towards the most
autonomous, innovative aspects of each authors works. Likewise, it does not strike me
as a mere coincidence that Theodor Adorno repeatedly seems to place Kafka and Beckett
on a similar plane, literarily-speaking: one which had tremendous consequences for his
own theoretical development. Why did Adorno, whom is often cited as one of the most
critical readers of the 20th century, hold Beckett and Kafka in such similar esteem? What
was it about their work that compelled Adorno to describe them as two of the most
difficult writers to comprehend; furthermore, why does Adorno seem to convey such a
tremendous sense of urgency with regard to the necessity of removing and rectifying the
work of Beckett and Kafka out of the clutches of popular existentialist interpretations?
It is through such questions that we may uncover not only several insights into the
structural similarities and differences between the works of Kafka and Beckett, not
merely a few of Adornos theoretical developments and postulations but also
fundamental problems which threaten to further destroy what could perhaps be described
as an already-thoroughly-destroyed world.
Adorno asserted that the work of Kafka ripped open the reader towards the
antagonisms streaming through the entirety of society: He over whom Kafka's wheels
have passed, has lost for ever both any peace with the world and any chance of consoling
himself with the judgment that the way of the world is bad". Likewise, Becketts
Endgame threatens to permanently shred philosophical theory into cultural trash: Adorno
realizes that such a threat is incredibly pertinent with regard to his own theory, which is
only hard-hitting to the degree which it is capable of distancing itself from media culture
as a critical counterforce. Adorno writes, One could almost say that the criterion of a
philosophy whose hour has struck is that it prove equal to this challenge.1 There is no
escaping from the work of either Kafka or Beckett, for Adorno; the only legitimate path
to take, so to speak, must confront Kafka and Beckett head-on.
Surely, no one could abstain from sympathizing with Becketts complaint about
the difficulty of reaching the end of The Castle; quite literally, the closest thing to an
end is the commentary (Nachwort) from Max Brod: Kafka never wrote his concluding
chapter. But he told me about it once when I asked him how the novel was to end.2 The
Castle does more than agitate an uncertain relationship between novel and commentary,
but instead seems to completely ruin the traditional distinction; deciphering authorial
intentionality was lost the moment when Kafka scribbled out each I representing the so-
called hero and replaced each one with a K. and, as we know, Kafkas actual intention
was to have the entire text destroyed, anyways. Clearly, then, authorial intentionality is
not a valid site for discerning anything about the way in which we should read Kafkas
novels. Kafkas own input into his novels utterly refuses to offer anything resembling a
clue for those readers who are attempting to read Kafka as if they were reading an
instruction manual, or a diary: He himself contributed to the spread of the untruth.3 As
Adorno persuasively writes, Kafkas works protected themselves against the deadly
aesthetic error of equating the philosophy that an author pumps into a work with its
metaphysical substance.
In a parallel sense, the textual difference between the narrative form of The Castle
and its respective hero, K., is threadbare. Where there is difference, there is an absence
of commentary, forcing all happenings to become accessible only through K. The
narrative text is barren with regard to any decisive adjectival suggestions which might
assist the reader in developing a vantage-point from which to understand the text as any
sort of a development or progress; although there are certain clues offered by the
narratives adverbs as to how we are to perceive K. at given points, none of them create
any real distance from K.s own stubborn meanderings (K walks about aimlessly, etc). At
several times the narration is actively deceitful; when a wedge is driven in between K.s
relationship with Frieda in chapter XII, Friedas suggestion that K.s own assistants are
constantly attempting to win her over is shocking not only to K. himself, but also to the
very narration of the story. As Adorno picks up on, Kafka himself further sabotages
whatever foothold the reader might use to gain some sort of identification with K.s
perspective by announcing within the text that the messages from the castle must not be
taken literally.4 Even the very first passage of The Castle, wherein K. first arrives at
the village, is confused when we learn that Kafka could not possibly have been
summoned to the castle (K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the
people from below and said: What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle
here?5). In relation to the castle, the village operates with a negative topos it has no
special features which would allow for it to be separated from the castle, which adds to
the confusion. In the opening to The Trial, we learn that someone has been making
accusations about Josef K., but no clarity or resolution is ever brought to such a
beginning; in this way, it could perhaps be asserted that The Trial never ends, either or,
at the very least, that the conclusion to the unfinished novel provides no closure to the
work itself (indeed, the last words from the dying K. are, Like a dog! he said: it was as
if he meant the shame of it to outlive him.6
The residuum of such disclosure is that of a pressing anxiety to interpret the text.
But such interpretation is immediately barred; in the same way that Kafkas heroes are
not distanced from the narrative forms, the reader is not given a chance to remain
detached from the novel. As Kafkas prose drags on and on, the reader is simultaneously
exhausted but also not allowed to break free. The moment the assistants are kicked out
the door in the inn, they immediately climb back in the window, and continue to pester
the reader. If Adorno is correct in that the position the reader must take in relation to
Kafka is the position which Kafka takes in relation to dreams, then this position must be
understood not as an identification, but rather as a liquidation. Even when K. falls asleep
during an interview with Burgel, he still remains conscious of Burgels words. Even so,
are we to conclude that there is some freeing aspect of dreams within Kafkas work,
which translates into a stance the reader can possibly occupy in order to interpret Ks
novels? For Adorno, this is highly unlikely:
Through the power with which Kafka commands interpretation, he collapses aesthetic distance.
He demands a desperate effort of the allegedly disinterested observer of an earlier time,
overwhelms him, suggesting that far more than his intellectual equilibrium depends on whether
he truly understands; life and death are at stake. Among Kafkas presupposition, not the least is
that the contemplative relation between text and reader is shaken to its very roots. His texts are
designed not to sustain a constant distance between themselves and their victim but rather to
agitate his feelings to a point where he fears that the narrative will shoot towards him like a
locomotive in a three-dimensional film. Such aggressive physical proximity undermines the
readers habit of identifying himself with the figures in the novel. 7

Here, we see further proof that traditional strategies of interpreting Kafkas novels
are utterly impotent, both in their ability to derive real meaning from his work as well as
in their attempt to prop up some sort of distance between the reality of the reader and
that which is encountered in the novels. Consequentially, the very prospect of adequately
(via traditional standards - systematically, conceptually or theoretically) interpreting a
novel such as The Castle becomes practically impossible, and, as Adorno suggests, even
this very fact isnt exactly useful: It is a parabolic system the key to which has been
stolen; yet any effort to make this fact itself the key is bound to go astray by confounding
the abstract thesis of Kafkas work, the obscurity of the existent, with its substance. Each
sentence says interpret me, and none will permit it.8
What other tools could we use to begin to understand Kafka? If Kafkas novels
should be placed within some relation to the canon of expressionism, the relationship, for
Adorno, would automatically become a paradoxical one. In a certain way, reality is
entirely excluded from The Castle it is not simply distorted, or subjectivized. Friedas
eventual suggestion that K. and herself could leave the castle to travel to Spain or
Southern France is treated as pathetic K. does not even consider it for a moment: I
came here in order to stay here. I will stay here. Now what could have attracted me to
this desolate land other than the desire to stay?9 Of course, K. could never actually
answer his own question; he occupies a place which is beyond stubbornness, because the
mere ability to acknowledge his own desires is automatically blocked: after all, how
could K. reconcile his desire to gain access to a castle which hardly exists? K. leaving
the castle would be impossible. K. claims, I want always to be free but he is never
free from his desire to be recognized by the castle authorities. I want no grace and
favors from the castle but my rights. The realm of K.s heroes is relegated to a
communicative language which can never access the truth, which appears in the form of
gestures (The letter, began K., I have read it. Do you know the contents? No, said
Barnabas, whose look seemed to imply more than his words.10).
Adorno calls the ceaseless iteration of failed communications within the space of
objectless inwardness a bad infinity this zone of insanity, of which Kafka has
complete mastery, is precisely what Adorno seems to read so much significance into.
Here, as sound common sense only reinforces universal blindness; what is already-
uncertain becomes even more indeterminable, begging the question, why bother? It
seems to me that this question is also one which Adorno would demand that we confront.
If it is true that Adorno, as a thinker, should be situated in a sort of hole between
modernity and post-modernity, perhaps it is here where Kafkas work gains tremendous
significance, as well.
Adorno writes about The Castle, It expresses itself not through expression but by
its repudiation, by breaking off. This breaking-off is carried to an extreme: Kafka, the
epic writer, follows the expressionist impulse father than any but the most radical of the
poets. His world has the tone of the ultra-left; to level it down to the universally human
is to falsify it conformistically.11 In fact, human-ness, or subjectivity, is completely
estranged in conjunction with the same forceful dejection of objects, or the objective
the entire realm of The Castle is already outside of K.s life from the very beginning.
Adorno suggests, it is in this sense that the tired description of Kafkas novels as a
trilogy of solitude actually hits upon something important: Absolute subjectivity is also
without subject; K., Josef K. and Gregor Samsa are selves in their very transformation
into otherness. The more the I of expressionism is thrown back upon itself, the more
like the excluded world of things it becomes. By virtue of this similarity Kafka forces
expressionism into the form of a torturous epic; pure subjectivity, being of necessity
estranged from itself as well and having become a thing, assumes the dimensions of
objectivity which expresses itself through its own estrangement.12 Here, we see the
obscene human-ness which Kafka is really getting at: The boundary between what is
human and the world of things become blurred.13
Kafkas prose, then, results in an external determination (damnation) of an inward
existence in which we become trapped a depersonalized, almost infantile realm
between man and thing. It is impossible for K. to ever reach the castle because a
metaphysical limit is encountered first, which, strangely enough, seems to take the form
of physical exhaustion within The Castle. State bureaucracy, purity, history, and death
all seem to be somewhere beyond this limit. If the Metamorphosis turned a man into an
insect, K. is turned into a surveyor in the same way and this is only the beginning!
Right at the beginning, the traditional idea of man is not to be found only what is
animal, alien, and parasitic. The way that Gregor Samsa wants to be an artist, to live on
air as an insect to society (this metaphor must be taken literally it seems) is refracted
through a much more brutal lens as K. becomes infinitely imprisoned in the bureaucratic
emptiness of The Castle.
The impossibility of ending is also the starting point for Becketts Endgame,
where the end is the beginning which, of course, never ends: in the words of Hamm,
The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.14 Clov, who ruptures or and severs the
already fragmented conversation which Hamm attempts to create, who again and again
ruins Hamms attempted communications, opens Endgame tonelessly reciting, Finished,
its finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finishedI cant be punished any
more...Ill lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.15
Hamm, on the other hand, begins with, Me to playEnough, its time it endedAnd
yet I hesitate, I hesitate toto end. Yes there it is, its time it ended and yet I hesitate to
to end.16 What, then, would be this end in Becketts Endgame? Perhaps Adorno gives
us a clue within a description of Kafkas The Hunter Gracchus: Gracchus is the
consummate refutation of the possibility banished from the world: to die after a long and
full life. In Beckett, neither a long and full life nor a finalizing death is possible.
One possible way of understanding this would be to assert that Endgame takes
place in some sort of pre-consciousness; hence, leaving would only be fully arriving at
the very subjectivity which cannot end, and the impossibility would be re-iterated ad
infinitum. Clov himself seems to insinuate that they cannot exactly be described as alive
as he bemoans, No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we. Indeed, these
seem to be at least a few aspects of what makes it so difficult for Hamm and Clov to end,
which seems to be doubled by the possibility for Clov to leave. Even when Clov finally
does leave (it is slightly unclear as to whether he actually leaves or not, due to so many
hesitations), it is only after admitting, But I feel too old, and too far, to form new habits.
Good, itll never end, Ill never go.17
If the unattainable end of Endgame is the death after a long and full life, this is
in no way any sort of exaltation of living. To assert that the mere existence of the
characters in Beckett or Kafka (a claim which itself is questionable) is freeing in any way
is to escapist to a form of existentialism which cannot seem to adequately understand
their works. Naked existence is portrayed in its grotesque form in Kafka and Beckett in
such a way so that existentialism itself is parodied. Individuation is both prison and
illusion; Adornos insight is that art can no longer break the spell of a detached
subjectivity; it can only give concrete form to solipsism.18 However, the subjects of
the Endgame are already ripped open, torn in half; without time and space, history, or any
universalizing function, the self-identity of Hamm and Clov is completely empty, a form
of existence which drags on without any point of reference. pure identity becomes
the identity of what has been annihilated, the identity of subject and object in a state of
complete alienation.19 The characterization of Becketts figures are entirely mutilated,
and absolutely traumatized; their existence is driven to an absurd abstraction which
renders it entirely meaningless. Their existence has no significatory referential function
because nothing is pointed towards symbolically. The objects which are constantly
asked-of by the characters, whether they are pain-killers, pap, and sugar plums, or alarm
clocks or even the earth itself, are either eradicated or no longer serve any definitive
function. Consider the following passage, where not only the window, but also its point
of reference, externality, are useless (and yet, still, Hamm and Clov trudge on, without
purpose):
Hamm: Open the window.
Clov: What for?
Hamm: I want to hear the sea.
Clov: You wouldnt hear it.
 Hamm: Even if you opened the window?
Clov: No.
Hamm: Then its not worth while opening it?
Clov: No.
Hamm (violently): Then open it!
(Clov gets up on the ladder, opens the window. Pause.)
[Hamm:] Have you opened it?
Clov: Yes.
Hamm: You swear youve opened it?
Clov: Yes.20

The same sense of absolute pointlessness seems define the characters themselves as well:
([Hamm] whistles. Enter Clov with alarm-clock. He halts beside the chair.)
Hamm: What? Neither gone nor dead?
Clov: In spirit only.
Hamm: Which?
Clove: Both.

K., the land surveyor employed by The Castle was supposedly hired to measure and
estimate the castles estate. However, the German vermesser, also meaning seeing and
delimitating, brings in a few other aspect as well to misestimate, to be arrogant, or to
elevate. Perhaps these latter aspects also explain why the German version of the text
demeans K. as a Blindschleiche, a small-eyed snake with narrowed vision. Along the
same line, when K. first enters Lasemanns house, his vision is fogged up and he cannot
see a thing, despite simultaneously claiming to be the land surveyor. Perhaps this could
be one possible back-story as to why Beckett would center Endgame on Hamm, the blind
character who is fixed in his seat. While the body in Kafka was animalistic and/or
mythological, it is perhaps entirely dysfunctional or nonexistent in Beckett. Nagg and
Nell are literally infantile torsos who sit starving to death in trash cans, toothless, and
unable to eat the biscuits which seem to be their only food source. Adorno identifies the
entire dramaturgy as presenting something zoological: This too has its infantile
prototype in visitors to the zoo who wait to see what the hippopotamus or the chimpanzee
will do next.
In a certain way, many of the incredibly radical aspects of Becketts work were
also foreshadowed by Kafka, whose heroes were so thoroughly self-contained that they
could hardly be described as existing at all. And yet, such a totalized self-enclosure does
not even come close to self-identity; Kafka himself once stated with regard to the
possibility of self-reflection or self-realization, Mans own frontal bone bars his way.
Kafka also commented, I am separated from all things by a hollow space, and I do not
even reach its boundaries. Adorno brings such quotes into the context of Kafkas
paradoxical expressionism: Dissociated into the compulsive moments of its own
restrictive and confined existence, stripped of identity with itself, its life has no
continuity: objectless inwardness is space in the precise sense that everything it produces
obeys the law of timeless repetition. Precisely in these statements about the place of
Kafkas novels, we seem to find the subversive core which Adorno appreciated in Kafka
so much: Kafkas novels have the capability of demonstrating the empty meaning of
every system or, in Adornos words, Everything that he narrates belongs to the same
order of reality. All of his stories take place in the same spaceless space.21
If Kafkas novels shatter the illusion of the possibility of integrated individuality
by rupturing the possibility of inner meaning via the impossibility of a rounded temporal
experience, Becketts Endgame completely annihilates time and space. All that is left is
fragmentation, which cannot be situated historically, either. Endgame seems to take place
in a sort of middle ground, between two hells. (Apparently, in the original version,
Hamm states that what was Beyond was the OTHER hell, of which the capitalization
of OTHER was excluded from the English translation). Adorno writes, Endgame takes
place in a neutral zone between the inner and the outer, between the materials without
which no subjectivity could express itself or even exist and an animation which causes he
materials to dissolve and blend and thought it had breathed in the mirror in which they
are seen. This middle ground, too, seems to be inhibited by Kafkas epics: A middle
ground was created, inhabited by living skeletons, and putrefying bodies, victims unable
to take their own lives, Satans laughter at the hope of abolishing death. In Kafkas
twisted epics, what perished there was that which had provided the criterion of
experience life lived out to its end. Gracchus is the consummate refutation of the
possibility banished from the world: to die after a long and full life.22 Within this
strange zone, both Kafka and Becketts works appear to be offering or suggesting
something symbolic, something significant it is precisely this thing which is withheld,
for Adorno. Thomas Trezise, a Beckett scholar, has contributes a suggestion as to why
this technique would be not only implemented but also why it would be significant: The
point, then, is neither to endorse, with the literature of commitment, a deceptive denial of
form, nor to privilege form for its own sake, but to valorize those moments "denounced
as formalist" at which form in its very conspicuousness focuses critical attention on itself,
at which art "dismantles" its own illusion, or at which, in Beckett's words, "to be an artist
is to fail."23
Such elements of Becketts work, it seems, are precisely why Beckett earns the strange
label as a realist writer, for Adorno. The reality of Becketts work is that they shatter the
illusory nature of any modern conception of reality. This also seems to be why Beckett is
so valuable when conceived as a modernist writer. Adorno describes Becketts works
as, modernism as what is obsolete in modernity. Language, regressing, demolishes that
obsolete material. In Becket, this kind of objectivity annihilates the meaning that culture
once was, along with its rudiments. And so culture begins to fluoresce. The only
remaining bits of culture are reduced to rubbish in Endgame. Philosophy, as well,
becomes cultural trash, and continues to regress; the way that Nell and Naggs trash cans
are first filled with sawdust and then dissolves into sand could be said to represent what
continues to happen as society progresses, for Adorno. Once again, it is precisely here
that Adorno seems to suggest a necessary commitment to philosophy and culture: it is
through the realism of Beckett and the warped reality of Kafka that we must proceed.
The sand in Nagg and Nells trash bins is not yet nothing however, it is so fragmented
and dissolved that it is impossible to inject with meaning, or to imbue with the aura of
nature. Adorno adds, In the realm between life and death, where it is no longer
possible even to suffer, everything rides on the distinction between sawdust and sand;
sawdust, wretched byproduct of the object-world becomes a scarce commodity, and being
deprived of it means an intensification of ones life-long death penalty. Trash is the
home of these characters of Endgame; as in Kafka, the colloquial phrase is taken
literally. Today the old people are thrown on the garbage heap, and it happens.
Endgame is true gerontology. By the criterion of socially useful labor, which they are no
longer capable of, the old people are superfluous and should be tossed aside; this notion
is distilled from the scientific fussing of a welfare system that underlines the very thing it
denies. Endgame prepares us for a state of affairs in which everyone who lifts the lid of
the nearest trashcan can expect to find his own parents in it. The natural connection
between the living has now become organic garbage.24
 What else, then, is left to be uncovered about the connection Adorno points
towards between the work of Beckett and Adorno? First, both seem to display Freudian
overtones. Adorno suggests that Kafka and Freud are in agreement with their conceptions
of hierarchy; from Freuds Totem and Taboo:
A kings taboo is too great for his subject because the social difference between then is
too great. But a minister may serve as a harmless intermediary between them. Transposed from
the language of taboo into that of normal psychology this means the following: the subject, who
fears the great temptation involved in contact with the king, can still tolerate dealings with an
official whom he does not need to envy so much and whose position may even appear within his
grasp. The minister, however, can temper his envy of the king by considering the power which he
has been allotted. Thus smaller differences in the magical power leading to temptation are less to
be feared than particularly great ones.

In The Castle, it seems as if the power of the king isnt even comprehendible, since its
very mediation (state bureaucracy) has been elevated to a metaphysical limit, for K. The
magical power of temptation is mythological. In The Trial as well, the gatekeeper to the
Law, whom Josef K. cannot pass, cannot even bear the sight of the third door keeper
and yet Josef K.s efforts are already insatiable when he tries to pass the first; Kafkas
emphasis on the psychological consequences of such passages are made clear when he
actually repeats the gatekeepers line I take this only to keep you from feeling that you
have left something undone from Josef K.s inward reflection. (And how pathetic the
idea of the gift becomes in light of such passages!) To stick with the Freudian notion of
a father-figure, is this not the role which Klamm seems to play in relation to K.? The
suggestion that K. would possibly kill Klamm is even brought to our attention as K.
converses with the landlady: So what are you afraid of? Surely you arent afraid those
who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible here K. opened the door
surely you arent afraid for Klamms sake? The Landlady looked after him in silence. as
he hurried down the stairs.25 If Klamm could indeed be described as a father-figure
within The Castle, what is the psychoanalytical significance of the fact that even he is so
unapproachable, despite clearly only representing a point which K. must pass through in
order to plunge further into the system of the castle? For one, it would entail that
entrance into the symbolic order, into language, is impossible.
Communication is revealed as yet another illusion, and a rather impotent one, at
that; language never approximates towards the truth in Kafka, which seems to be
contained within the gesture as Adorno puts it. The language of K. never approaches
the meaning of the gestures we witness as we encounter the characters of The Castle:
Calmer now, K. turned to Barnabas, he would have liked to remove the assistants but
couldnt find a pretext, besides they were staring silently at their beer. I have read the letter, K.
began. Do you know the contents? No, said Barnabas. His expression seemed to convey
more than his words. Perhaps K. was being mistakenly positive now, just as he had been
mistakenly negative with the peasants, but the presence of Barnabas remained a source of
comfortOf course, he was only a messenger and wasnt familiar with the contents of the letters
he had to deliver, but his expression, his smile, his gait, seemed to bear a message, even if he
himself was unaware of it.26

Such gestures hint at the way it is, that which the characters broken and fragmented
language cannot provide us insight towards. It is in this way that Kafkas literature seems
rife with the pathological, with the compulsion to write the result is the insatiable
attempt to communicate something that is impossible to communicate. It is often said
that a writer will never be able to completely shed his/her connection to a finished work;
Kafka, on the other hand, seems to have never gotten at what he stove to write in the first
place. Without wanting to reduce Kafkas writing to his personal life, it seems important
to mention that Kafka once claimed that all of his writing was produced in an attempt to
deal with his problematic relationship to his own father; whether it is connected or not,
we seem to encounter the same thing through K.s relationship to Klamm, which strikes
me as pathological itself. Such pathology may be further proof of the position of
characters such as K. as being one which is still pre-conscious (or, possibly one of the
living dead.)
We encounter several of these themes in Becketts Endgame, as well. The text
also suggests that Hamm is something of a father figure to Clov:
Hamm: Do you remember when you came here?
Clov: No, Too small, you told me.
Hamm: Do you remember your father.
Clov (wearily): Same answer.
Youve asked me these questions millions of times.
Hamm: I love the old questions
(With fervour.) All the old questions, the old answers, theres nothing like them!
(Pause.) It was I was a father to you.
Clov: Yes.
(He looks at Hamm fixedly):
This was that for me.27

Despite Hamms efforts to drill his status as father-figure into Clovs head, it does not
seem insignificant that Clov cannot, will not, remember. If Hamm is playing
psychoanalyst here, it has no positive effect no progress is made. The line Imagine if
a rational being came back to Earth implies that the materials for rational progress are
simply not to be found, anyways. As Adorno writes, Communication, the universal law
of the clich, proclaims that there is no communication any more.28 Communication
seems to fail because language itself is a disruption. Adorno makes an important
connection to Freud here, writing, As Freud and Pareto understood it, the ratio of verbal
communication is always rationalization as well. But ratio itself sprang from the interest
of self-preservation, and hence its compulsive rationalizations demonstrate its own
irrationality. The contradiction between rational faade and unalterable irrationality is
itself already the absurd. This absurdity is perhaps so extreme because Hamm and Clov
dont seem to give a damn about self-preservation; quite the contrary they yearn to end,
to die.
Perhaps, if Kafkas heroes operate with some sort of pre-conscious mode of
existing, Becketts characters cannot be described as existing at all. Becketts characters
cannot simply be treated as if they were traumatized, because there doesnt seem to be
any reference point on which such a trauma could act. It is not as if their environment
had somehow been changed into the apocalyptic state presented within Endgame; rather,
this IS there environment, originally destroyed. Trezise makes several suggestions as to
how we can understand the position of characters such as Hamm and Clov:
Precisely because the "I" is structured in this way, however, it can not only create the
illusion that Adorno denounces; it can just as well disrupt that illusion by calling attention
to the referential difference it suppresses, and thus respond to the "suffering [that]
demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids." In Freudian terms, it is only
by bringing the "protective shield" back into play that one can assess the damage it has
sustained. Yet it is not for nothing that I earlier referred to the Beckettian notion of
failure. For it can hardly be sufficient, especially in regard to Holocaust representation, to
expose the self-dissimulation of formal illusion if that exposure delights in its own
virtuosity. The works that, in Adorno's words, "explode art from within" by "dismantling
illusion" are those that, in exposing the figurative, manage to articulate the radical
disjunction or dissonance of its "terms." Practically speaking, this can take as many forms
as there are forms to disarticulate. But in one of the most telling statements of Holocaust
testimony in its entirety--telling insofar as, in its very simplicity, it not only reveals the
illusion of post-traumatic identity and of its "literal" representation but also precludes the
felicity of successful figuration--a fellow survivor of Charlotte Delbo's remarks: "I died
in Auschwitz but no one knows it."29
If Adornos assertion that writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric, perhaps such a
statement necessarily implies that there are very serious consequences for creating any
literature after Auschwitz as well; it seems to me that Adorno sees a sensitivity hinted at
by Kafka and thematized by Beckett which is sensitive to this very point. This could be
yet another reason as to why their work was so crucial, for Adorno. As a final question, it
seems important to consider whether or not Kafka and Beckett offer a suggestion as to
how we are to proceed with literature through their works. Adorno seems to be conscious
of this as well after all, in the context of both Kafka and Beckett, Adorno identifies their
ability to tell us something about how it is, in a way that is possibly separate from their
destruction of several illusory means of understanding literature and its connection to
reality. In Kafka, the suggestion of how it is is presented via the gesture, which words
can never fully account for; in Beckett, the gap between words and how it is seems to
have been extended even further, so that no speech or communication is ever adequate to
being. And yet, Hamm and Clov, as well as the narrator of the Unnamable, must go on,
despite being tortured, despite the gap between words and how it is. What is it that this
realism tells us about our social reality? Such a question is complicated by the fact that
the very point of Becketts realism seems to function as a demonstration (de + monstrare,
to point out wonder in Adornos context, perhaps to show what is aporatic) of the
impossibility of translating from aesthetic categories into social categories (after all, is
this not a central aspect to autonomous art?) Trezise describes the continuance to
engage with literature after Auschwitz as a double bind, and he summarizes Adornos
stance with regard to this tremendous problem rather succinctly:
When Adorno characterizes the situation of literature as "paradoxical," in the sense that
"suffering . . . demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids," he articulates
what could be called the ethical double bind of post-Holocaust art. On the one hand, the
artistic representation of the Holocaust can itself be "indescribably or inexpressibly bad,
objectionable, or hateful" to the extent that even the most "uncompromising radicalism"
runs the risk of affording an exploitative pleasure, a spurious understanding, or both (and
not excluding the comfort of believing that one cannot understand, that the Holocaust is
simply "unspeakable" just as, in Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, wit is always
sparkling and baldness premature). 17 As such, it might even be "forbidden," since it
would betray those who suffered as well as those who continue to suffer. On the other
hand, this suffering demands what it forbids, to the extent not only that the artistic
representation of the Holocaust constitutes the indictment of a certain silence, or that its
own formal self-contestation creates both an antidote to aesthetic pleasure and a
disruption of complacent familiarity, but that this contestation challenges the very norms
of the culture or civilization that produced the Holocaust. 30
Still, it seems that we must ask, what else seems to be suggested by the work of Beckett
and Kafka perhaps elements which even Adorno ignores, perhaps rightfully so? One
aspect which Adorno does not engage with entirely seems to be the suggested
significance of an adventure: at the close of Endgame, Clov is depicted as someone who
is leaving for an adventure. Enter Clov, dressed for the road. Panama hat, tweed coat,
raincoat over his arm, umbrella, bag.31 In Kafka, (and Adorno does indeed observe
this), we see the constant attempt to write novels with the style of adventure novels and
travel books. Kafka was especially fond of a series entitled The Little Green Books,
especially The Sugar Baron, which was actually about a land surveyor in South
America.:
The book narrates the tale of a former military officer who seeks his fortune in South America.
Among other scenes of colonial brutality, The Sugar Baron describes a stockade used by
plantation owners to punish disobedient workers. Other volumes in the series also describe scenes
of both native and foreign brutality in Central America and East Africa as recounted by German
travelers.17 Kafka was fascinated by these adventure tales set that were set in foreign locales. 32

Judging by Adornos commentary on Kafkas novels, if there were any profundity in the
idea of the adventure, it would have to be understood as another example of Kafkas
alliance with death death would have to become the only emancipatory gesture for a
figure such as K., and even death itself seems to elude his actions. Perhaps placing some
sort of significance on the role of death is the only way to understand the end of Adornos
essay, which quotes a passage where K. only truly awakes precisely when he is buried,
when he seems his name flashing across the stone above him; Adorno writes, The
name alone, revealed through a natural death, not the living soul, vouches for that in man
which is immortal. And yet, the very idea of a natural death becomes problematic, as
we have seen (and what does it even mean to have a natural death now, after Auschwitz,
anyways?) Perhaps, for Adorno, it isnt even possible to take Kafkas message this far.
Adorno also showed us that, Nowhere in Kafka does there glimmer the aura of the
infinite idea; nowhere does the horizon open. Each sentence is literal and each signifies.
Returning to Becketts Endgame, as Clov makes his final oration before leaving,
he mentions that, if he opens his eyes, he can see a little trail of black dust between his
legs as he begins to leave. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never
saw it lit.33 Is this black dust to be understood as a further regression of the sand, which
was once sawdust? Or is it something resembling gunpowder by attempting to leave,
by finding a way to actually be alive via our own death we leave nothing but an
explosive residue, adding further to the destruction? Does the stancher which remains,
covering Hamms face as the play closes, signify a further stagnantation, or a cease-
flow?34 Or, rather darkly, is the residual stancher itself worthless -- yet another piece of
garbage, which itself cannot function as something which would jam or prevent static
decay.

Works Cited
1
Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame. Notes to Literature: Volume One. Columbia University Press, New
York. 1991. Pg. 244
2
Excerpt from Max Brods commentary on Kafkas The Castle.
3
Adorno, Theodor W. Notes on Kafka. Prisms. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1981. Pg. 247
4
K. is told this by an official of the Castle.
5
Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Schocken Books, New York. 1998. Pg. 2
6
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Vintage, Great Britain. 1999. Pg. 251.
7
Adorno, Theodor W. Notes on Kafka. Prisms. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1981. Pg. 246
8
Ibid., 246
9
Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Schocken Books, New York. 1998. Pg. 136
10
This passage is found both in Adornos essay, and in The Castle.
11
Adorno, Theodor W. Notes on Kafka. Prisms. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1981. Pg. 261
12
Ibid., 262
13
It is also here that an important connection between the mythlogical, nature, and human-ness must be developed.
14
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Grove Press, New York. 1958. Pg. 69
15
Ibid., 1
16
Ibid., 2,3
17
Ibid., 81
18
Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame. Notes to Literature: Volume One. Columbia University Press,
New York. 1991. Pg. 249
19
Ibid., 251
20
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Grove Press, New York. 1958. Pg. 65
21
Adorno, Theodor W. Notes on Kafka. Prisms. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1981. Pg. 256
22
Ibid., 260
23
Trezise, Thomas. Unspeakable. The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1. .2001. Pgs. 9-66
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/yale_journal_of_criticism/v014/14.1trezise.html#authbio>
24
Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame. Notes to Literature: Volume One. Columbia University Press,
New York. 1991. Pg. 266.
25
Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Schocken Books, New York. 1998. Pg. 56
26
Ibid., 26
27
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Grove Press, New York. 1958. Pg. 38
28
Adorno, Theodor W. Notes on Kafka. Prisms. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1981. Pg. 263
29
Trezise, Thomas. Unspeakable. The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1. .2001. Pgs. 9-66
30
Trezise, Thomas. Unspeakable. The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1. .2001. Pgs. 9-66
31
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Grove Press, New York. 1958. Pg. 682
32
Kohn, Margaret. Kafkas Critique of Colonialism. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2005.
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tae/v008/8.3kohn.html>
33
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. Grove Press, New York. 1958. Pg. 81
34
Online Etymology Dictionary entry stanch.