Madness and modernism : insanity in the light of modern art, literature, and thought by Sass Louis Arnorsson

Author:Sass, Louis Arnorsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Schizophrenia, Modernism (Art), Modernism (Literature), Modernism (Aesthetics)
Publisher: New York, NY : BasicBooks
Published: 1992-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

I, who had experienced so many pleasant diversions, stood on the bank and watched. . . .

Meanwhile the banks of the river stretched beyond all bounds, and yet with the palm of my hand I touched the metal of a signpost which gleamed minutely in the far distance. This I really couldn't quite understand. After all I was small, almost smaller than usual, and a bush of white hips shaking itself very fast towered over me. This I saw, for a moment ago it had been close to me.

Nevertheless I was mistaken, for my arms were as huge as the clouds of a steady country rain, save that they were more hasty. I don't know why they were trying to crush my poor head. It was no larger than an ant's egg, but slightly damaged, and as a result no longer quite round. I made some beseeching, twisting movements with it, for the expression of my eyes could not have noticed, they were so small.

But my legs, my impossible legs lay over the wooded mountains and gave shade to the village-studded valleys. They grew and grew! They already reached into the space that no longer owned any landscape, for some time their length had gone beyond my field of vision.

But no, it isn't like that—after all, I'm small, small for the time being— I'm rolling—I'm rolling—I'm an avalanche in the mountains! Please, passers-by, be so kind as to tell me how tall I am—just measure these arms, these legs. [46-47]

In Kafka's story, we have the entire progression of a schizophrenic illness: from schizoid self-consciousness and hyperscrutiny through self-alienation and solipsism, and on to the dissolution of both self and world. It is as if the entire story were carried along by some forceful momentum, the action moving inexorably toward its culmination: an annihilation of all differences that is barely held off by the most desperate of remedies—remedies that aggravate the very condition they oppose, thus triggering the final cataclysm.

WORLD CATASTROPHE

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