[I]n a certain sense I am alive … My death ship lost its way; a wrong turn of the wheel, a moment’s absence of mind on the pilot’s part, the distraction of my lovely native country, I cannot tell what it was; I only know this, that I remained on earth and that ever since my ship has sailed earthly waters. So I, who asked for nothing better than to live among my mountains, travel after my death through all the lands of the earth.
Franz Kafka, “The Hunter Gracchus“
Although I already used Kafka’s 1917 story for Yule, its careful depiction of an innocent’s ignoble fate compels me to pay it more attention for today’s holiday.
The narrator gives us a detailed description of part of a sleepy imaginary town named “Riva.” (I found no translation of the word, but there had been a band by that name formed in Zadar (then Yugoslavia, now Croatia) in 1986. The uncanny enters subtly, as the author mentions a bark “silently making for a little harbor, as if borne by invisible means…,” a bark on which men in dark coats are carrying a bier. Kafka drives home the uncanniness by mentioning – three times – that no one seems to notice the newcomers. Then, “the pilot was … detained by a woman who, a child at her breast, now appeared with loosened hair on the deck of the boat.” The author now tells us that the arrival is noticed. First, a little boy opens a window, then quickly shuts it; next, a flock of doves “assemble” in front of the house door through which the carriers and their bier vanish. After the woman flings grain to these doves, a man in a hat tied with a funereal band of crepe shows up, and knocks at the door. After this gentleman enters and walks by some 50 deferential little boys, the boatman descends the stairs and conducts him to the room where the body has been taken. The boatman motions for his assistants and the children to leave, and, at a glance from the gentleman, himself leaves. The body immediately opens his eyes and talks with the unsurprised gentleman, who introduces himself as the burgomaster of the town. We learn that the man we had thought dead is the titular Hunter, and that the Burgomaster had been told of his arrival and identity by a very large dove, who instructed him to “receive him in the name of the city.” Gracchus then tells the gentleman his story, of having died while hunting and of being taken to the boat that should have taken him to “the other world.” The boat unaccountably lost its way, a mishap for which Gracchus blames the pilot. The Hunter recounts his original eagerness to get to the next life and the frustrations and tediousness of his fate. “I am always in motion. But when I make the supreme flight and see the gate actually shining before me I awaken presently on my old ship, still stranded forlornly in some earthly sea or other.” The Burgomaster empathizes, and asks if the Hunter is thinking of staying in Riva, and Gracchus answers that he doesn’t think so … “I am here, more than that I do not know, further than that I cannot go. My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”
Decoding a text from such a foreign source feels impudent on my part, but I’d like to share some thoughts.
The Hunter had lived “hundreds of years ago” in the Black Forest, an area that had once been named for a Celtic goddess associated with Diana. In line with our present series, Wikipedia’s entry on the name says, “According to Tacitus’s Germania, Abnoba was the name of a mountain, from a grassy slope of which flows the source of the River Danube.”
What might be important is that there were other Celtic and Slavic goddesses associated with this deity – perhaps enough to merit their own Wikipedia page – that are not mentioned in the Diana entry. This blog has a number of references to her, identifying her with The Integral and her twin, Apollo,* with “The Sensual/The Shadow.” The pair has complex symbolism reaching back to the prehistoric era, a pair that interact with a manifestation of Jove/The Temporal in the Hattian ritual of “Tarhunna vs. Illuyanka.”
But where does Hannahanna, The (Hattian) Potential/mother goddess, fit into this? Kafka’s story mentions a woman on the bark with a child at her breast, a woman who detains the boatman. She seems to control the doves, one of whom the Burgomaster reveals as the bird who instructed him to welcome Gracchus. It seems the more I think about this story, the more complicated it gets… Since this entry is getting fairly long as is, I should continue in another post.
*To begin to unravel these complexities, I’ll link the fullest list of my correspondences of “The Four” here. Since it also seems relevant, I’ll remind my readers of a discussion we had here regarding father of Italian literature Dante’s calling on Apollo in The Divine Comedy’s section on Paradise. Lastly, I want to note that Kafka’s story was written during the first half of 1917, and not only that World War I began with an attack motivated by a Slavic attempt to free Bosnia and Herzegovina from what had been part of the Holy Roman Empire that we had been discussing, but that the first Russian Revolution was in February of that year. The below picture and quote from Doctor Zhivago should give a sense of what the revolutionaries were fighting.
Komarovski (Lara’s “guardian”/“lover”): There’s another kind [of man]. Not high-minded. Not pure. But alive. Now that your taste at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable. But for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there’s two kinds of women…[Lara covers her ears, he forces her arms down.] There are two kinds of women and you – as we well know – are not the first kind. [Lara slaps him, he slaps her back.] You, my dear, are a slut.
Lara: I am not!
Komarovski: We’ll see. [He grabs her and attacks her.]
The above photo is in several places on the internet as of 8/29/23. I tried to paste the url from two of them, but was not allowed, even from a “free” social encyclopedia. I believe, since one of the places that displays it is Alamy, that it is in public domain, especially since it was in a movie poster. I therefore saved a copy on my hard drive and uploaded it. If it disappears, I’ll have to find another pic, though this one expresses the theme best. – Viola
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