Untitled episode

if if only if I can only pull myself onto my front if I can pull myself onto my front and his legs and his arms are waving frantically and if I can pull myself under my front I can get onto the floor because [Music] everybody to see you all and I'm here to talk a little bit about our dear friend and devoted and most beloved author

Francis Kafka who I'm sure all of you know quite well probably a lot of him better than I do so all I can talk about is my experience with him how I absorbed a Kafka within my own being and how I identified with him and um how he meant so much to me when I first read him I was just so taken aback because unlike most

authors that build to a climax using a huge amount of detail and references and and narrative and experience building up eventually boiling like a kettle to a climax France Kafka seems to start he starts his work with the climax so so many of his plays and books stories begin with the climax so it's like in the trial when he said somebody must have been lying about

Joseph K but without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning the landlady is cooked whom only brought his breakfast at eight o'clock failed to appear that had never happened before okay waited a moment longer people opposite were staring at him with distinct curiosity see starts with a climax before before the people the detectives the police gradually encircle him same with metamosis Greg and

Sam's woke from a night of uneasy dreams and found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect his numerous legs which were bitterly thin compared to the rest of his bulk waved helplessly before him our what's happened to me he thought was no dream he looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest half past six in the hands were quietly moving on oh Gregor

said a voice that gentle voice it was his mother's the devotion of the mother to son is so is strong and kafka's work very very strong obviously particularly more metamorphosis when his mother really is here only she nourishes him suckers him defends him protects him stands up for him his mother is everything in the world to him he relies on his mother and he also realized

on his sister Greta his lovely sister Greta who he is paying from his work to go to the academy in whatever it is Vienna Prague studying the violin and yet Frank Kafka or as he is the beetle like the samsa I've been working every day going to work packing his samples in his bag traveling on the train on the bus day after day day after day

to earn enough money to pay for Greta his sister's violin lessons and keeping the family because his father Mr Sampson or in real life his real father Herman Sansa was a very gritty Gravelly man he was a very tough man he had little little kind of small tiny wholesale business and the square in front of Prague the Prague Cathedral where he sold Bricker bracken's Nick nacks

and and bits of kind of kitchen pots and cups and sauces and all sorts of little things and he was a hard worker he was a hard dedicated worker than he he never spared himself never took a day off and he was tough he was strong and he saw in Frank Kafka he saw this week febrile delicate sensitive curious is this my this my son it

work with him his father could be proud of him could introduce him and instead he seems to be producing this rather ungainly highly sensitive curious bizarre creatures stays in his little room Reading omnivorously Writing endlessly and he thinks what what is this stuff he's writing I mean well what is peculiar what is this putrid things he's writing is horrible and one day uh Franz Kafka wrote

a letter to his dad he wanted to show his dad what he felt he wanted to be to Bear himself to be naked and it's something we very rarely do in front of our fathers I never spoke to my father his entire life I don't think I exchanged more than one or two sentences at a time throughout his entire life except at the end at the

very end and so he funded to write a letter to explain to divulge to in a way expiate to expel what he was feeling and he said to his father I know I know I know I disappoint you I know you're disappointed in me I know that I don't fulfill your expectations and I know that somehow in your eyes and somehow in your eyes you see

me as some kind of insect you have no moral respect for me than you would for an insect that you crush he dare to say this dare to say this to his father his father couldn't understand this that's how it was bizarre it was just just in fathomable but he had to bear this letter he had to tell and this letter perhaps was the jam that

may have led to him writing one of the most notorious most fantastic most bizarre most surrealistic most uncanny most dreamlike stories that has ever been written and yet writing it with such forensic detail with such care every single blade of grass is counted every little gem every crumb as he describes and he wakes up in the morning and you can see the segments of his belly

and on the segments are little spots and neither spots is a kind of shell and outside the shell is a kind of rib cage and outside this ribcage a rather little tiny mini spots and the legs are kind of too small for his body and he's he's laying there on his back and he thinks himself oh oh oh oh if if only if I can only

pull myself onto my front if I can pull myself onto my front and his legs and his arms are waving frantically and if I can pull myself onto my front I can get onto the floor because the family are alarmed they're saying Gregor Gregor it's half of six already break isn't it time to get up Vega regret has a sister greca Greco what's wrong what's wrong

Gregory are you ill are you needing something each pleading each knocking on the door each rapping on the door as if the door would be the signal the morse code to him opening the door revealing himself he must reveal himself because why has he suddenly stayed in his room not getting up and he has never done this in years not in all the years nor the

days nor the nights nor the weeks know the months never he has never stayed in his room he has never refused to get up never never never so what what could be going on McGregor knows only if he could he's on the bed he's on the bed and his legs are waving frantically he's trying trying to make sense of them trying to find some some coordination

and then he can't he's finding it difficult but he rocks ah he rocks he has control of his Rocky and he rocks and rocks and then suddenly slides off the bed Bang and they hear that oh Gregor Gregor are you all right you're right now the reason they can't get in it's because he has locked the door he has locked the door in his own bedroom

naive and I even with my my father I never locked the door but he's locked the door in his own bedroom as if he was living with aliens as if he was living with Waters as if he was living with sadistic SS he has locked the door so how can he get in they can't get in they're trapped they're absolutely as we say I'm trying to

think of the word in German besides gifts to send it they are astonished they can't get in and so the Gregor thinks the only way is for me to get onto the floor I'll crawl along the floor and then I'll crawl up I'll crawl up the door and then if I crawl up the door slowly slowly because he has sticky pads here and these sticky pads

enable him to hold on and the sticky pads he reaches the key opens his jaw wide thousands it on the key and they go you think it hurts his jaw my God or if they smear that is painful but still he keeps on keeps on then the key opens the key snaps back and then the door slowly opens and maybe Greta just pulls it a little

bit more and they see this poor thing has fallen back on his little feet with a bit of gooey stuff dripping out of his jaw and that's what they say that's what they say they see a huge unbelievable monstrous insects huge is this sickening beyond belief is beyond belief they're frozen they're frozen now what is brilliant about France Kafka is that he doesn't think in a

linear fashion he doesn't think in a naturalistic or realistic fashion reality to him is merely merely if you like the outer layer merely the skin realism is merely the kind of I wish there was the right word for it but it's somehow the trivial kind of outer husk of real life it's just what we do we eat we drink we get married we jump in the

bars we sit at the table eating we we talk we discuss we write letters We complain mistake we have babies realism and I've noticed that in spite of England and Stephen Scotland having some very skilled writers very skilled dramatists and novelists Poets they are in a way at the end of that spectrum of realism where they feel if they put a character on stage that is

real that it will touch us and we will somehow feel for them so if they put do something like anything of any play I'm trying to think of something maybe like a usual new play Long Day's Journey Into Night the two sons are frustrated they have Ambitions and dreams but they can't be fulfilled because the father maybe has a into self-obsessed with his own life as

an actor he was a great actor the Elder O'Neill and the sons are frustrated one wants to be in the Navy he talks about that and the wife is a drunkard and she's always drinking the cover-up a kind of she has some problem pulses she's taking pills every day and she's getting hooked on these pills so this is what we see which is what we see

on the stage he says the banality of the outer skin but what someone like after but someone like even as a painter Dolly with someone like Stravinsky as someone like even her own beautiful Dylan Thomas or like her own JoJo penetrates beneath the skin it is surreal it is a dream we investigate our inner lives our unconscious life those dreams we have at night which don't

quite make sense because time and space have congealed twisted so there is no reality we discuss and our works the inner mind the torments and what are they they are somehow Illustrated in dreams symbolically because the dream wants to teach us something so it symbolizes the ACT to continue watching this video click the link in the top left or in the description below or visit iai.tv

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