Woman as the Obstacle and the Way

Abstract

Der Prozef and Das SchloJ3 are steeped in sexuality and eroticism. They literally proliferate with women. Very few events, in either text, proceed without some kind of female involvement-either marginal (in the shadows, in neighboring rooms, in antechambers, on stairs, behind doors in Der Prozefi) or central (the case of Frieda, Olga and the landlady in Das Schlofi). This seeming obsession with women is paralleled in Kafka's life, which is filled with many intense and troubled relationships with women: Felice Bauer, Julie Wohryzek, Milena, Dora Diamant as well as Miss Bloch, an unknown woman from Zuckmantel, and an adolescent from Riva. The close attachments Kafka forms for women sometimes lead to formal engagements, which are then invariably broken, whereupon Kafka makes efforts to renew the interrupted relations. Numerous passages in Kafka's Tagebucher and in his correspondence support the conviction that these disruptive involvements are profoundly bound up with writing, with the conflict between life and writing that haunted Kafka's existence. For on the one hand Kafka was convinced that he existed and could continue to exist only as a writer, as writing itself.1 Therefore he continually sought the solitude that would enable him to totally devote himself