On The Problem Of Oneness And Otherness In The Works Of Rilke And Kafka

The two singers,Orpheus of Rilke and Josephine of Kafka,can be traced back to their different version and acknowledgment of the two main flow of the western tradition of the myth of Greek and the Judaism.Rilke creates a total,unified world through the art of singing,and a space of collective experience and a whole consciousness(Weltinnenraum)take place of the trational worldview of the Christianity.Yet Kafka is torn by strange violence in an endless war and he could not manage his relationship with the world and self,God and others.The different insight of the stoke between Rilke and Kafka is based on there different response to the doctrine of salvation in Christianity/Judaism.As for Kafka,he engages himself a lot in the thought of the original Sin and the Jewish tradition especially the meaning and challenge of the flourishing Zionism in his time,thus somehow represents them in his most later works through the exploration of the problem of death and obligatory sufferings.While Rilke disagrees with the doctrine of Sin and otherworldliness in Christianity,he cannot agree with Kafka's religious meditation and the way he views his intention of writing.For Rilke,the ultimate salvation is through the absolute conforming of death with life,and thus a new oneness comes into being in place of the division of transcendent paradise and temporary earthly life in Christianity.While Rilke protests sex as the inexhaustible bliss and the mysterious oneness man may achieve by nature against the doctrine of sin of Christianity,Kafka acknowledges sex as the test of the possibility of salvation of one's being and thus remains an inaccessible otherness for man to accomplish.For him the sex in the relationship of male and female explains the spiritual essence of salvation from God.So Rilke's Orpheus is the poet himself who has his love in the realm of the dead and having returned to life,the song of Orpheus presents the great art of his poetry which working within death as his inspiration.While Kafka's struggles and sufferings ultimately reach the redemption of his singer Josephine,and the situation of a wholly strange other and the Jews means the responsibility and peace for Kafka and his Josephine.The paradox the two modern masters face in their life and writing also explains the crisis of modern souls.