DER ZWEIFEL AN DER METAPHER. BETRACHTUNGEN ZU FRANZ KAFKAS STIL

In the article “The Rejection of the Metaphor. Thoughts on the Kafkian Style” we argue that the simplicity of the Praguean writer’s style and the purposeful avoidance of metaphor are based on the conviction that reality is one, indivisible and uninterpretable, and that literature should express this reality. For Kafka, metaphor is not a way to reveal the essence of reality, but a trap that alienates the writer from the essence of things. By trying to find the limits of the correspondence between literature and reality and attempting to reach the utopia of the total correspondence between word and world, Kafka builds his own style, one characterized by great simplicity, clearness and concreteness, where metaphor is used parsimoniously.