Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
111
2023
562-3
Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures
111
2023
Vanessa Barrera
More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche warned that calm and contemplation were going out of fashion, soon to be replaced by widespread haste and mindlessness. Confirming the diagnosis sixty years later, Adorno observed that metropolitan modernity had given rise to a nervousness and discontinuity so profound that reflection could only occur in its shadow; consequently, intellectual labor tends always to appear “abgestohlen” [stolen] from some other (pre)occupation. Proceeding from a study of Franz Kafka – whose rich creative and intellectual work took place almost exclusively on time borrowed from other tasks and obligations – this paper argues that such “stolen” moments are perhaps more fecund than we might at first imagine.
cg562-30261
Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 261 Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures Vanessa Barrera Independent Scholar Abstract: More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche warned that calm and contemplation were going out of fashion, soon to be replaced by widespread haste and mindlessness. Confirming the diagnosis sixty years later, Adorno observed that metropolitan modernity had given rise to a nervousness and discontinuity so profound that reflection could only occur in its shadow; consequently, intellectual labor tends always to appear “abgestohlen” [stolen] from some other (pre)occupation. Proceeding from a study of Franz Kafka - whose rich creative and intellectual work took place almost exclusively on time borrowed from other tasks and obligations - this paper argues that such “stolen” moments are perhaps more fecund than we might at first imagine. Keywords: Franz Kafka, intellectual labor, modernity, occupation, minor literatures In the fourth book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [ The Gay Science ], Friedrich Nietzsche announces the outbreak of a new disease in Europe� An import from the frenetic New World, its characteristic symptom is “athemlose Hast der Arbeit” [breathless haste in working] accompanied by “wunderliche Geistlosigkeit” [odd mindlessness] and an incapacity for sustained reflection (Nietzsche, Wissenschaft 236/ Nietzsche, Science 183). Nietzsche continues: Man schämt sich jetzt schon der Ruhe […]. Man denkt mit der Uhr in der Hand, […] das Auge auf das Börsenblatt gerichtet […]. [E]s könnte bald so weit kommen, dass man einem Hange zur vita contemplativa (das heißt zum Spazierengehen mit Gedanken und Freunden) nicht ohne Selbstverachtung und schlechtes Gewissen nachgäbe. (Nietzsche, Wissenschaft 236—37) 262 Vanessa Barrera [Already, one is afraid of keeping still […]. One thinks with a watch in hand, as one eats lunch with an eye on the financial pages […]. Soon we may well reach the point where one can’t give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.] (Nietzsche, The Gay Science 18—34) The watchword of an era so afflicted is “[l]ieber irgend Etwas thun, als Nichts” [rather do anything than nothing] for constant, in the parlance of our own times, fear of missing out, and this perennial distractibility comes paired with pangs of conscience brought on by even the briefest moment of stillness (Nietzsche, Wissenschaft 236/ Nietzsche, Science 183)� If this imperative to busyness loomed large for thinkers of the late nineteenth century, the situation was only worse for those who bore witness to the ensuing decades� One recalls a certain passage of Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia - another rich compendium of aphorisms, markedly different in tone from Die fröhliche Wissenschaft , but every bit as relentlessly diagnostic - in which the ferocious rhythm of modernity is once again couched in terms of pestilence and morality, this time with an even more explicit emphasis on scholarly work: Was seit dem Aufkommen der großen Städte als Hast, Nervosität, Unstetigkeit beobachtet wurde, breitet nun so epidemisch sich aus wie einmal Pest und Cholera. […] Der Schatten davon fällt über die intellektuelle Arbeit. Sie geschieht mit schlechtem Gewissen, als wäre sie von irgendwelchen dringlichen, wenngleich nur imaginären Beschäftigungen abgestohlen. (Adorno, Minimia Moralia: Reflexionen 258—59) [The haste, nervousness and discontinuity observable since the rise of the great cities, is spreading epidemically, as plague and cholera did before. […] The shadow of this falls on intellectual labor. It takes place with a bad conscience, as if it were moonlighting from some sort of urgent, albeit purely imaginary occupation.] (Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections 138) In more recent years, too, the seemingly limitless drive to industry has received increased attention within the academic sphere. I have in mind studies like Kathi Weeks’s The Problem with Work (2011), Jonathan Crary’s 24/ 7 (2014), and David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs (2018), among others, which take up these issues in a broader sociopolitical context, but also certain meta-academic texts like “How Scholars Read” (2008), in which John Guillory reflects on the state of academic reading in particular, asking along the way if perhaps “the system of academic publication, as the servant of administrative demands for ever greater volumes of publication, has resulted in poorer scholarship” (Guillory 15). The question is a fair one, and I include it here as meaningful testimony to a frustration as urgent as it is familiar� But before conceding that modern time constraints Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 263 necessarily detract from the quality of intellectual activity, we might do well to consider other paradigms� In the passage cited above, Adorno evokes a striking critical image, namely the notion of a special kind of time in which intellectual work is able to take shape, a time seemingly “abgestohlen” [stolen] from other activities. Stolen time is juxtaposed with normal hours, during which the intellectual busies herself not with prolonged reflection or knowledge production, as we might expect, but with the maintenance of a kind of compensatory frenzy: Um sich vor sich selbst zu rechtfertigen, praktiziert [die intellektuelle Arbeit] den Gestus des Hektischen, des Hochdrucks, des unter Zeitnot stehenden Betriebs, der jeglicher Besinnung, ihr selber also, im Wege steht. Oft ist es, als reservierten die Intellektuellen für ihre eigentliche Produktion nur eben die Stunden, die ihnen von Verpflichtungen, Ausgängen, Verabredungen und unvermeidlichen Vergnügungen übrig bleiben. (Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflexionen 259) [To justify itself in its own eyes [intellectual work] puts on a show of hectic activity performed under great pressure and shortage of time, which excludes all reflection, and therefore itself� It often seems as if intellectuals reserved for their actual production only those hours left over from obligations, excursions, appointments and unavoidable amusements.] (Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections 138) This description will resonate, I think, with anyone engaged in scholarly work today, perhaps especially, although certainly not exclusively, within the academy. As a peculiar kind of labor with gestures superficially indistinguishable from those of everyday leisure activities - to say nothing of its not entirely unfair reputation for relative unprofitability - intellectual work leaves its practitioners especially vulnerable to feeling out of step with livelier sectors of the working world, a tendency which results in skewed perceptions of our own productivity� Many of my colleagues have observed that they feel more useful when, say, stockpiling materials they have only vague intentions of reading than when sitting in front of a computer for hours, immobile, in pursuit of their own thoughts. Consequently, one is tempted to engage as much as possible “den Gestus des Hektischen” [hectic activity], filling countless hours with administrative tasks and harried emailing, thereby pushing more sedate types of labor, ones requiring prolonged “Besinnung” [reflection], further and further into the marginal “Schatten” [shadow] - those fleeting moments stolen away from other preoccupations. For better or worse, however, the remarkable fact remains that a great deal of writing is nevertheless produced under these apparently inhospitable conditions, suggesting one of two possibilities: either the fruit of intellectual labor is extraordinarily resilient, or these temporal interstices are, 264 Vanessa Barrera curiously and despite - or perhaps even because of - their brevity, uncommonly well-equipped to bring it forth. The case of Franz Kafka’s literary productivity offers rich material with which to explore these hypotheses� Famously frustrated by the limits imposed by his various social and professional obligations, Kafka complained often that he had very little time to write. A long tradition of Kafka scholarship has accepted these grievances at face value, likewise insisting upon the so-called “Antinomie zwischen Brotarbeit und literarischer Produktion” (Binder, “Leben” 470) according to which Kafka’s responsibilities as an insurance official and at his family’s asbestos factory limited his writerly ambitions� Even those scholars who question the extent to which certain aspects of Kafka’s situation were as detrimental as he claimed - Peter-André Alt, for example, holds that sleepness nights were ideal for the trance-like state Kafka required to do his best writing (312—13) - have not challenged the basic assumption that his ample literary output emerged despite the circumstances of his schedule and not because of them, or, put differently, that an hour spent in the office is necessarily an hour lost for creative intellectual activity. In what follows, however, I hope to show that Kafka’s case might in fact cause us to reconsider this assumption in ways that point toward another economy of time� By his own account, the most significant obstacle to Kafka’s literary work was his professional career. After receiving his law degree in the summer of 1906, Kafka worked for one year as a court trainee before taking a temporary position at the Prague office of an Italian insurance company where the pay was low and the hours too long to allow much time for writing (Begley 29—30; see also Wagner 19). Two years later, he secured a position at the Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungsanstalt [Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute], where he would remain until 1922 (Kafka, Office Writings i ). Although the hours at the institute were more forgiving, Kafka still devoted relatively little time to his craft, despite insisting in an early letter to Felice Bauer that his entire mode of life was “nur auf das Schreiben hin eingerichtet” [devised solely for writing] (Kafka, Briefe an Felice 66—67/ Kafka, Letters to Felice 21)� Diary entries from the period suggest that the relationship between his two competing careers was to blame� One example contains the following draft of a letter to Eugen Pfohl, Kafka’s immediate superior at the institute: Wie ich heute aus dem Bett steigen wollte bin ich einfach zusammengeklappt. […] [I]ch bin vollkommen überarbeitet. Nicht durch das Bureau, aber durch meine sonstige Arbeit. […] [D]as Bureau hat gegen mich die klarsten und berechtigtsten Forderungen. Nur ist es eben für mich ein schreckliches Doppelleben, aus dem es wahrscheinlich nur den Irrsinn als Ausweg gibt. (Kafka, Tagebücher 29) Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 265 [When I wanted to get out of bed this morning I simply folded up. […] I am completely overworked. Not by the office but my other work. […] [T]he office has a right to make the most definite and justified demands of me. But for me in particular it is a horrible double life from which there is probably no escape but insanity.] (Kafka, Diaries 44) Evidently, the conflict between Kafka’s duties at the institute and his work as a writer generated an enormous amount of stress, even if the former hardly excluded the possibility of writing altogether. In fact, things may well have been easier if it had: as things stood, Kafka was writing from about half past eleven to one, two, or three in the morning, depending upon his energy and luck. Only a few hours, then, but ones quite clearly poached from sleep, which he tried, with mixed success, to recoup in the afternoons (Kafka, Briefe an Felice 67)� Between sheer exhaustion and the feeling that he was leading two irreconcilable lives, in both of which he was doomed to failure, it is hardly surprising that Kafka did not always find himself eager to greet the day. The perceived threat of being “torn asunder” by the fundamentally irreconcilable pulls of writing and office is reflected too in Kafka’s apprehensive approach to new interests (Kafka, Letters to Felice 279). Around 1911, for instance, he was drawn to philosopher and esotericist Dr� Rudolf Steiner’s work on theosophy� That spring, Steiner delivered a series of lectures in Prague, of which Kafka attended at least one (Kafka, Tagebücher 40). Two days later, Kafka met with Steiner personally and expressed concern that taking up a new pursuit would cause him undue confusion, feeling, as he did, already consumed by the tension between his calling to literature and his work as an insurance official. He described the situation to Steiner in the following way: Mein Glück, meine Fähigkeiten und jede Möglichkeit, irgendwie zu nützen, liegen seit jeher im Literarischen. […] Diesem Literarischen kann ich mich nun nicht vollständig hingeben […]. Abgesehen von meinen Familienverhältnissen könnte ich von der Literatur schon infolge des langsamen Entstehens meiner Arbeiten und ihres besonderen Charakters nicht leben […]. Ich bin daher Beamter in einer sozialen Versicherungsanstalt geworden. […] Und zu diesen zwei nie auszugleichenden Bestrebungen soll ich jetzt die Theosophie als dritte führen? (Kafka, Tagebücher 44—45) [My happiness, my abilities, and every possibility of being useful in any way have always been in the literary field. […] I cannot now devote myself completely to this literary field […]. Aside from my family relationships, I could not live by literature if only, to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character […]. I have therefore become an official in a social insurance agency. […] And to these two never-to-be-reconciled endeavours shall I now add theosophy as a third? ] (Kafka, Diaries 59) 266 Vanessa Barrera Here, Kafka lays bare the specifically temporal stakes of the conflict by attributing the impossibility of dedicating himself to intellectual work as much to the slow speed at which his literary creations develop as to their “special character�” This is particularly interesting given the shorter forms - brief stories, parables, and sometimes even aphorisms - to which he was most inclined� Smaller texts do not necessarily require less time to compose, of course - Pascal’s famous apology comes to mind: “The present letter is a long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter” (Pascal 571) - but if nothing else, Kafka’s claim forces us to acknowledge the relativity of the distinction� Eight hours hardly seems a lengthy gestation period for a text like “The Judgment” [“Das Urteil”] in the abstract; it is only by taking into account their status as stolen hours - ones traded from the realm of sleep - that we begin to understand them as a dear price to pay� In his appeal to Steiner, Kafka alludes to yet another hindrance to his creative output: his family and, we might say, other people in general. While Kafka the insurance official was engaged almost exclusively (and, it is worth noting, rather successfully) in the fulfillment of socially oriented tasks with concrete effects on his community, 1 Kafka the writer was almost pathologically committed to solitude in service of his writing. On 7 July 1913, he wrote the following in a letter to Felice Bauer: Ich kann eben das Zusammenleben mit Menschen nicht ertragen […]. Im unbeteiligten Anblick freuen mich alle Menschen, aber diese Freude ist nicht so groß, als daß ich nicht in einer Wüste, in einem Wald, auf einer Insel bei den nötigen körperlichen Voraussetzungen unvergleichlich glücklicher leben wollte als hier in meinem Zimmer zwischen dem Schlafzimmer und dem Wohnzimmer meiner Eltern. (Kafka, Briefe an Felice 423) [It is just that I cannot abide communal life […]. Seen in a detached way, I enjoy all people, but my enjoyment is not so great that, given the necessary physical requirements, I would not be incomparably happier living in a desert, a forest, on an island, rather than here in my room between my parents’ bedroom and living room.] (Kafka, Letters to Felice 287) One might be inclined to attribute this frustration to Kafka’s notoriously fraught relationship with his parents, but he was not exactly enthusiastic about the idea of his beloved’s company either. The same month, he drew up a list in his diary of all the arguments for and against his marriage to Felice� Most items speak against their union, largely for reasons having to do with “Alleinsein” [being alone], which Kafka considered essential for his work. In the third position, for instance, he writes: “Ich muß viel allein sein. Was ich geleistet habe, ist nur ein Erfolg des Alleinseins.” [I must be alone a great deal. What I accomplished was Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 267 only the result of being alone.] (Kafka, Tagebücher 228/ Kafka, Diaries 292)� Tellingly, the final line of the list reads: “Allein könnte ich vielleicht einmal meinen Posten wirklich aufgeben. Verheiratet wird es nie möglich sein.” [Alone, I could perhaps some day really give up my job. Married, it will never be possible.] (Kafka, Tagebücher 228/ Kafka, Diaries 293)� As we know, however, Kafka neither married Felice - indeed, he never married at all, though he was engaged several times - nor willingly left his post at the institute� 2 Instead, he found time for intellectual and literary aspirations alongside these various personal commitments and professional responsibilities� Given the sheer volume of writing he was nevertheless able to produce, one might assume that Kafka was rather judicious when it came to setting aside time for his creative work, but the evidence tells a different story. In November of 1912, he describes his daily routine in a letter to Felice: Von 8 bis 2 oder 2⅓ Bureau, bis 3 oder ½4 Mittagessen, von da ab Schlafen im Bett (meist nur Versuche […]) bis ½8, dann 10 Minuten Turnen, nackt bei offenem Fenster, dann eine Stunde Spazierengehn allein oder mit Max oder mit noch einem andern Freund, dann Nachtmahl innerhalb der Familie […] dann um ½11 (oft wird aber auch sogar ½12) Niedersetzen zum Schreiben und dabeibleiben je nach Kraft, Lust und Glück bis 1, 2, 3 Uhr, einmal auch schon bis 6 Uhr früh. (Kafka, Briefe an Felice 67) [[F]rom eight to two or 2: 30 in the office, then lunch till three or 3: 30, after that sleep in bed (usually only attempts […]) until 7: 30, then ten minutes of exercises, naked at the open window, then an hour’s walk - alone, with Max, or with another friend, then dinner with my family […]; then at 10: 30 (but often not till 11: 30) I sit down to write, and I go on, depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until 1, 2, or 3 o’clock, once even till 6 in the morning.] (Kafka, Letters to Felice 22) As biographer Louis Begley has pointed out, it is striking how little time has been reserved for writing in the schedule outlined above� With his afternoons mostly free, Kafka should theoretically have had ample time at his disposal to allow for both intellectual work and a full night’s sleep. All the same, when Felice suggested a reorganization of his day along those lines, his reply was uncompromising: “The present way is the only possible one; if I can’t bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it somehow” (Kafka, Letters to Felice 180)� What are we to make of this contradiction? The obvious answer, of course, is that Kafka simply wasted most of his time, an explanation emphatically supported by scores of articles published by fellow procrastinators in outlets ranging from Reader’s Digest to the New York Review of Books. 3 But taking Kafka at his word, I would like to argue - as much for our benefit, admittedly, as for his - that the situation was slightly more complex than it appears. In an effort to understand why Kafka opted, even with the resources available to him, to 268 Vanessa Barrera squeeze his writing into a few hours of stolen time, I shall turn now to one of his literary texts, which may offer further insight. “Die Prüfung” [“The Test”], a very short story written in 1920, begins with a simple declaration: “Ich bin ein Diener” [I am a servant] (Kafka, Erzählungen 379/ Kafka, Stories 441). But the narrator does not serve - there is, namely, “keine Arbeit für [ihn] da” [no work for [him]] (Kafka, Erzählungen 379/ Kafka, Stories 441). As such, he spends his time lying in bed in a kind of daze, staring at the ceiling, falling asleep, and waking up at random intervals. Sometimes, he goes to the tavern across the street, where he can watch his own building without being spotted and drink a beer that he doesn’t like. One day, the routine is interrupted: he walks into the bar and sees that someone else is occupying his usual seat. When he turns to leave, the stranger - who is also a servant, as it happens - invites him for a drink and asks several questions, none of which he understands. Assuming he has disappointed the stranger, our narrator apologizes and prepares to depart. He is promptly informed that the questions were merely a test, and he who does not answer them has passed. Now, just as Kafka insisted that writing was his only talent despite the fact that, by his own account, he did not write much and had no proper literary interests (Kafka, Briefe an Felice 250 and 444), this nameless servant lays claim confidently to an essence without providing any evidence to support the assertion. Strictly speaking, he does not serve at all - we recognize him as a servant only because of his introductory declaration: not “Ich diene” [I serve], but “Ich bin ein Diener” [I am a servant]. Additionally, the question of desire or aptitude is as moot in the servant’s case as it is in Kafka’s: neither identity is experienced as a matter of choice� The narrator tells us that he sometimes wishes to be called to service, but those who are called up more often have not, he suspects, felt such a wish more strongly (Kafka, Erzählungen 379). At the same time, however, one might argue, as Christiane Frey has suggested, that the nature of a servant is to be found not in the action of service per se, but rather in a certain kind of capacity or readiness to serve (Frey 375—76). In other words, being a servant consists not exactly in performing the function that the label implies, but in maintaining the potential to perform it. As many of us can attest, the situation is very similar with writing: one remains a writer even (or precisely) when one is not writing, insofar as one could, if inspiration struck, if one were called to it, write at any time. We know that there are other servants, but the narrator is careful to distinguish himself from these “andere[n]” [others], not only according to the frequency with which they are called, but also in terms of their behavior and character (Kafka, Erzählungen 379/ Kafka, Stories 441). He explains, for example, that “andere sind gerufen worden und haben sich nicht mehr darum bewor- Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 269 ben als ich, ja haben vielleicht nicht einmal den Wunsch gehabt, gerufen zu werden, während ich ihn wenigstens manchmal sehr stark habe” [others have been called yet they have not tried harder than I, indeed perhaps they have not even felt the desire to be called, whereas I, at least sometimes, have felt it very strongly] (Kafka, Erzählungen 379/ Kafka, Stories 441). In theory, the narrator could have discovered by speaking with them that his colleagues have not made more of an effort to be called, but he does not seem to know any of them personally. From his seat at the tavern, he occasionally catches glimpses of other servants, but does not recognize them because those who are always working, he explains, sleep in another room. The strange examiner in the tavern is also a servant, but the encounter at the bar marks their first interaction. The servant, then, is one of many, but nevertheless, like Kafka, leads a curiously isolated life. Why might this be? If, following Frey, the servant fulfills his calling by remaining available for service, then it stands to reason that it would behoove him not to answer other calls - to, so to speak, keep the lines open. This might explain why he steadfastly avoids all other occupations, preferring instead to idle in his quarters or in close proximity to his building, such that he can be ready to serve at a moment’s notice. Here, though, it would seem that we have stumbled upon a significant difference between the servant’s life and Kafka’s. Whereas Kafka’s literary calling was confined to a few odd hours appropriated from other activities, the servant’s case is still more extreme, for he is a servant only insofar as he shapes his entire life into an answer to his calling by remaining forever ready to be of service, or dienstfertig [ready to serve]. Paradoxically, then, a servant with only one job might be said to have even less time at his disposal for non-work activity than Kafka, for to steal even a second for other things would be already to undermine his very essence and trigger a change of state - to acquire, effectively, an entirely different mode of being, or, if you like, a new Bestehen [existence]. Which brings us to the test� I will not dwell on the word Prüfung [test] itself, except to note in passing that it contains, as a kind of happy coincidence, a sly nod to the Ruf [call], and by extension of course, Beruf [career]. And indeed, it is only in the context of this exam that our servant is finally “gerufen” [called] - as he puts it, the man sitting in his usual place “rief mich zu sich” [called me over] (Kafka, Erzählungen 380/ Kafka, Stories 442)� But this call is precisely not a call to service; on the contrary, the servant is himself served a drink, and as an invited guest no less. As a result, the narrator - whose status qua servant depends, as we have established, in large part upon his ongoing capacity to serve - violates his own essence by answering the call and enters in the process a separate temporal sphere, a short but momentous length of time snatched away from his rightful occupation� 270 Vanessa Barrera On the linguistic level, this evolution is signaled by the introduction of speech, an altogether different kind of language that breaks the flow of internal monologue. Consistent with this shift, too, is the sudden intimacy of the exchange - despite never having spoken before, the narrator and his fellow servant slip seamlessly into the informal “du” - predicated, we might assume, upon the characters’ shared social status. Taking these changes into account, the test itself becomes more than a test, although it is that as well - for all its peculiarities, it possesses the basic elements of test-giver, test-taker, and questions. But its idiosyncratic implementation of these serves only to undermine the exam form as such� In this way, the tavern exchange resembles a “minor utilization” of language as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: an instance (or instant, as the case may be) of speech or writing created by a minority in a major language (Deleuze and Guattari 26). Not unlike Bartleby’s humble yet forceful “I would prefer not to,” Kafka’s test thus “carves out a kind of foreign language within language” by marshalling the components of a regulatory structure towards a refreshing elimination of hierarchies and celebration of incompetence (Deleuze 69 and 71)� In this sense, I believe the final scene of Kafka’s story holds the key to what we might otherwise have called its author’s incapacity for effective time management. For such brief, stolen moments afford us special freedoms unavailable during those longer periods properly dedicated to the “obligations, excursions, appointments and unavoidable amusements” that occupy most of our lives (Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections 138)� At once outside of and in direct opposition to conventional norms around time - which have, at least in the West, unilaterally condemned idleness and all other forms of perceived inefficiency for centuries - these fugitive interruptions are always essentially transgressive, making them fertile ground for experimentation, invention, and even resistance. But just as the minor can only assert itself vis-à-vis the major, stolen time depends in large part upon the same oppressive mechanisms it challenges. This, perhaps, is why we are hard-pressed to conjure independently that singular sense of urgency which so often takes root in the dark shadow of competing deadlines and commitments. Equally, however, we cannot bear the immense pressure of these demands for more than a short while before being overwhelmed. On the one hand, then, a thrilling window to alterity presents itself only when all doors have been closed by time constraints; on the other, that window threatens at each moment to be snapped shut by the very force which pried it open� As inauspicious as these circumstances might appear for the kind of work that requires protracted reflection, the inherent brevity of these intervals, in conjunction with their radical potential, may indeed be their most valuable feature. After all, as Freud tells us, “[d]er Vergänglichkeitswert ist ein Stolen Time: Kafka, Work, and the Potential of Small Literatures 271 Seltenheitswert in der Zeit” [[t]ransience value is scarcity value in time] (Freud, Gesammelte Schriften 292/ Freud, Standard Edition 305)� While Kafka may well have bristled at the suggestion that his writing actually benefitted from the strain caused by his Brotberuf [day job], his diaries leave no doubt that part of him relished the experience of working on stolen hours� Recounting the night of 22 August 1912 - during which he wrote “Das Urteil” [“The Judgment”] in a single sitting from ten o’clock at night to six in the morning - he speaks fondly of the stiffness that settled into his legs and of the “in der Mitte der Nacht vergehende Müdigkeit” [weariness that disappeared in the middle of the night]. Wistfully, he recalls that extraordinary but familiar feeling of endless possibility - “[w]ie alles gesagt werden kann, wie für alle, für die fremdesten Einfälle ein großes Feuer bereitet ist, in dem sie vergehn und auferstehn” [[h]ow everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again] - as the sky turned blue and the maid’s arrival announced the night’s end (Kafka, Tagebücher 214/ Kafka, Diaries 276)� Exhausted as he must have been after yet again trading rest for writing, and with the dreaded workday looming on the horizon, his verdict is nevertheless decisive: “ Nur so kann geschrieben werden” [Only in this way can writing be done] (Kafka, Tagebücher 214/ Kafka, Diaries 276)� Notes 1 At the institute, Kafka’s duties included: preparing annual reports on accident prevention and safety standards; investigating claims (from his office and in person); composing addresses on behalf of his colleagues; making recommendations for the improvement of various kinds of machinery� For more on the nature of his work and his respected status as an employee, see Begley; Kafka: The Office Writings ; and Stach� 2 Kafka retired in 1922, but only after the insurance institute’s physician “declared him unfit for duty” (Begley 43). 3 See Specktor as well as Smith� Works Cited Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life . Trans. E. F. N Jephcott. London: Verso, 2005. ---� Minima moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben � Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975. Alt, Peter-André. Franz Kafka: Der ewige Sohn. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2005. 272 Vanessa Barrera Begley, Louis. The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay . New York: Atlas, 2008. Binder, Hartmut. Kafka: Der Schaffensprozeß. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature � Trans� Dana Polan. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1975. Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Schriften � Ed� Anna Freud and A� J� Storfer� Vol� 11� Leipzig: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1928. ---� The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud � Ed� James Strachey et al. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth, 1957. Frey, Christiane. “Kafka’s Test.” Monatshefte 103.3 (2011): 372—84. Guillory, John. “How Scholars Read.” ADE Bulletin 146 (2008): 8—17. Kafka, Franz. Briefe an Felice � Ed� Erich Heller and Jürgen Born� Tübingen: Schocken Books, 1970. ---. The Complete Stories . Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. ---. The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1913 . Ed. Max Brod. Trans. Joseph Kresh. London: Secker & Warburg, 1948. ---� Die Erzählungen und andere ausgewählte Prosa . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer TB, 2014� ---� Franz Kafka: The Office Writings . Ed. Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner. Trans. Eric Patton and Ruth Hein. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. ---� Letters to Felice � Ed� Erich Heller and Jürgen Born� Trans� James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth. New York: Schocken Books, 1973. ---� Tagebücher 1910-1923 . Ed. Max Brod. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Nietzsche Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe . Ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Fünfte Abteilung, Zweiter Band. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 1973. 13—335. ---� The Gay Science . Ed. Bernard Arthur Owen Williams. Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. The Provincial Letters � Trans� William Finlayson Trotter and Thomas McCrie. New York: The Modern Library, 1941. Smith, Zadie. “F. Kafka, Everyman.” The New York Review 17 Jul� 2008: n� pag� Web� 14 Sep� 2020� Specktor, Brandon. “5 Geniuses with Serious Procrastination Problems.” Reader’s Digest n�d� Web� 14 Sep� 2020� Stach, Reiner. Kafka: The Decisive Years . Trans. Shelley Frisch. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. Wagner, Benno. “Kafka’s Office Writings: Historical Background and Institutional Setting�” Franz Kafka: The Office Writings . Ed. Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner. Trans. Eric Patton and Ruth Hein. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. 19—50.
