Is there any hope in the situation? This is where on our darker days, Kafka is a bleak New Orleans prophet. He was often dark, though never a nihilist. He lived, always, at the edge of faith. Once, his friend Max Brod asked him if there was any such thing as hope in the universe. “Yes,” Kafka replied, “of course there’s hope, plenty of hope—for God. Just none for us.”
I know that punch line sounds grim, but right now it hurts so much it’s funny. In the land of disaster, even a bitter laugh is a start.
Kafka offers wonderful insights through his works. It is too bad that many universities provide enough and more pathways for students to completely bypass Kafka--they can graduate and earn diplomas without ever even having heard about Kafka. Unfortunate. There is one college that has apparently been requiring incoming freshmen to read Kafka and Charles Darwin's works in the summer before they start college, and then the first few weeks of college is nothing but Kafka and Darwin all the time
[We] have asked incoming first-year students to read two texts in the summer before they arrive at Bard---Kafka's The Metamorphosis and the fourth chapter of Darwin's The Origin of Species, "Natural Selection." On some level, students will find something familiar about these summer readings as well as something counterintuitive and obscure. A simplified version of what takes place in Kafka's short story has some presence in popular culture, and at a minimum most students will have heard someone use the word "Kafkaesque." A direct encounter with the writing of this remarkable German-speaking Jew from Prague who was reluctant to have his writings published can be inspiring precisely because of the tension between image, reception, and textual reality that characterizes both The Metamorphosis and Kafka's life.
The disjunction between image and reality could not be more pronounced than in the case of Charles Darwin. The claims of no other thinker or scientist, with the possible exception of Einstein, have been so mangled and distorted in the popular imagination. Somehow every citizen thinks he or she knows what Darwin thought without actually having read his writings. Direct engagement with Darwin's work not only makes the character and significance of modern biology more apparent, exciting, and vital, but the brilliance and subtlety of Darwin's thought quickly dispel the distortions that dominate scientific journalism in the popular media.
Colleges must counter the experience of conventional high school education in the United States, where learning is little more than a standardized test-driven chore with utilitarian benefits. In college, students should discover that most of the important writings and discoveries they will study were not generated for their benefit, but rather came into being in order to illuminate and improve life. It is precisely the connection between learning and living that justifies the life of the mind and makes study and inquiry a treasured form of human activity and among the most rewarding.
This belief cannot be preached; it can only be experienced. What better mechanism to set this experience in motion than assigning common readings in the summer?
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