Salvation And Runaway:An Interpretation Of Kafka's Ein Landarzt:Kleine Erzahlungen

Kafka scholarship has long focused on his three posthumous novels,while less attention has been paid to the last book published before his death,Ein Landarzt:Kleine Erzahlungen,there are even fewer articles or monographs to interpret the fourteen works in the colletion as whole.Actually,the book embodies Kafka's continuous thinking and profound insight into the human condition.During his lifetime,Kafka not only attached great importance to the publication of the book,but also highly appraised the works in it.Only a holistic interpretation of Ein Landarzt:Kleine Erzahlungen can better clarify the issues encountered in Kafka studies.Ein Landarzt:Kleine Erzahlungen contains fourteen piece of works,and Kafka's arrangement principle when he published the book can be summarized as follows:the first and last works "surround" the rest of the works,and in the remaining twelve works,every two works are connected by the common theme;simultaneously,the latter theme is to some extent a continuation of the former."Der neue Advokat",as the opening piece,has many references to the plots of the later works in the book,which opens the curtain for a world without "guide" and presents various forms of its "weakness";as the final piece,"Ein Bericht fur eine Akademie" strengthens the "report" nature of all the works in the book,which is the irony and summary of the whole "weak" world and reveals the real situation of human self-deception."Ein Landarzt" and "Auf der Galerie" respectively contain two distinct scenes.Through the conversion between the two scenes,Kafka inverted reality and illusion,deconstructed the mendacious "self" of human beings,and gained insight into modern people's illusion of salvation and the desire for salvation.In "Ein altes Blatt," Kafka points out the weakness of external forces on individual existence,while in "Vor dem Gesetz," he attributed the "law" of human life to the inner strength of mind,thus further leading the issue of "salvation" to"self-salvation"."Schakale und Araber" and "Ein Besuch im Bergwerk" are both stories generated by "travel" or "visit"."Schakale und Araber" focuses on religious arguments,while"Ein Besuch im Bergwerk" focuses on professional discussions.The two pieces are the reflections of Kafka,who is both a Jew and a writer,on his era.Kafka's writing of extreme circumstances in "Das nachste Dorf' and "Eine kaiserliche Botschaft" can be regarded as his study on the values and forms of individual life.The riddle of "Odradek" in "Die Sorge des Hausvaters" and the riddle of "eleven sons" in "Elf Sohne",both involve the theme of "father-son".Kafka's thoughts on individual existence are transferred from outside to the inside of family,and are expressed most intensively in the two stories."Ein Brudermord" and "Ein Traum" are strongly irrational.Kafka's continuous attention to irrational factors is not only his most artistic resource,but also his way of metaphysical thinking.The description of non-realistic factors outlines Kafka's inner self-strugle,it also highlights his efforts to integrate poetry and philosophy.The fourteen masterpieces in Ein Landarzt:Kleine Erzahlungen are the products of Kafka's "piecewise construction" strategy,whose rich and consistent spiritual connotation cast the "Great Wall" that Kafka always yearned for.The collection thus became the so-called "indestructible thing" in Kafka's literary vision.