Kafka's End: A Reassessment of the Burrow

Abstract

The Burrow comes to end where it does because Kafka could not, or would not, finish it. Like much of his best work it remains a large-scale fragment, nearly but not quite complete, with our conception of how it would have ended, had he completed it, ultimately less than certain. There has been considerable disagreement among scholars on this issue, and it is by no means proposed to resolve it here, although-as will emerge-I do have a particular view of the matter. A good deal of argument has arisen over the question whether the creature involved is a mole or a badger (or even perhaps a hamster), or bits of all of these (cf. e.g., Binder, pp. 303f.; Fingerhut, p. 190; Henel, p. 224; Politzer, p. 319f.; all below). Kafka actually used the mole metaphor at least as early as 1904,' but moles, as Henel points out,2 do not eat rats, as this creature appears to do, and for that matter badgers do not collect supplies of food for use in winter. Identifying the animal is a fascinating but ultimately futile occupation; more relevant are his all-too-human characteristics, namely his greed, his masochism, his pusillanimity, his Angst, and a vanquished perfectionism. Dora Dymant, of course, regarded herself as the center (Hauptplatz)' of the burrow, which may or may not be justified, though it must be pointed out that in some instances she is very possibly in error.4 When Kafka coughs, as he often does these days,5 he makes a noise which seems to him to speak in terms of some Other, the hissing and whistling (Zischen and Pfeifen) of a monster which advances, slowly and relentlessly upon him, and will eventually kill him in a frenzied engagement. The Burrow is the nearest Kafka ever came in his fiction to introducing autobiographical element, so that there is, as Weigand observes, an intimate relation, often amounting to identity, between the author and the persona of his story.6 Kafka makes a serious slip when he refers to my hands (von meinen HAnden, p. 181), but the work remains, in its way, convincing, and it deals, in effect, with a man-animal-the thoughts and feelings of a man, the impulses (at times, at least) of animal. The burrow itself is elaborate construction of underground tunnels, with a maze or labyrinth (e.g., pp. 180 and 181) on the way in. This last word, labyrinth, is used to describe the small section that was built first. The great size of the burrow is clearly indicated (ungeheure(n) Ausdehnung, p. 173); its seclusion appears to be absolute; the