Lessons from Kafka

No, freedom was not what I wanted. Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out prove to be an illusion; the demand was a small one, the disappointment could be no bigger,” writes Franz Kafka in ‘A Report to an Academy’.

Often interpreted as a grotesque metaphor for otherness, Kafka’s story presents a world, a literary equivalent of an uncanny valley, that is disconcertingly familiar yet distinctly alien—what literary scholar Matthew Powell describes as “eerily reminiscent of our own, yet not our own”.

As this year marks the centenary of Kafka’s death, his works continue to resonate globally. Celebrations are unfolding in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and beyond. In Delhi, the German Centre at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, has organised a full-day event today dedicated to Kafka’s oeuvre. Soumyabrata Choudhary, a professor and theatre practitioner, will be staging Kafka’s ‘A Report to an Academy’. The venue is the Convention Centre, JNU, at 5:30 pm.

“I have performed this several times,” he says. “The first time was at the Shri Ram Centre years ago, thanks to Rosy Singh, who introduced me to the story.” To explore the contemporary relevance of Kafka’s themes, we interviewed Choudhary.

Ape as a condition

In Kafka’s ‘A Report to an Academy’, an ape named Red Peter recounts his journey to “humanisation” after being captured and caged. To Red Peter, it was a structure that was “too low for [him] to stand up in but too narrow for [him] to sit,” and he sought “a way out”. His adaptation to human life and habits, from boozing to spitting, eventually gained him entry into human society.

Choudhary describes the story as “deep and infinitely layered,” noting its openness to countless interpretations. “What caught my attention was its form. It’s almost ready to be spoken or performed. Some see it as an allegory of colonization. Or perhaps it captures the violence of any imposed change.”

Expanding on this idea, Choudhary reflects that being an ape is a condition, “just as humanity is a condition, and between the two lies a strange encounter”. The performance lays bare a transformation that is both violent and colonising, but also tactical. The construction of the self is implicated in this: all colonisation is, in a way, self-colonisation.

“When you colonise, you are not only subjecting the other but also becoming subjected yourself. It’s a chain of imitation. After all, even the human imitates others,” says Choudhary. “This imitation is what Ambedkar described in his paper, Castes in India, as a chain, an infection. It’s not just only one person who imitates—each imitates another, forming a gradation of apes. Everyone is an ape, so who is to say otherwise?”

This irony is stark. Even the audiences watching the performance, in a sense, are “an audience of apes, each with their own ‘ape story’”, he says.

Choudhary extends this metaphor to the sociopolitical sphere, “People often see apes as a ‘lower’ stage of human evolution, but what if we saw the ape as a social condition? In Gaza, for instance, Palestinians are trapped in literal cages, seeking a way out. Yet the ones caging them—the ones bombing those cages—are themselves survivors of the world’s worst cage, the Holocaust, where the gas chamber became a ‘gas cage.’ It’s a haunting gradation of apes, each conditioned by their own captivity.”

Hope and no hope

In the performance, media paraphernalia hovers around the character. Choudhary notes, “In the media, there is so much more factual data, information, angles, archives, documents. On the other hand, there is extreme subjectivity—everyone has an opinion. In that world, Kafka actually brings both together. He affirms experience in its most unbearable singularity—no one can bear that experience—and at the same time, he puts it in the form of literature.”

This duality lies at the heart of Kafka’s genius, Choudhary explains, “The media society is in a hurry to get the story. The report is part of that, but the report itself needs patience. So, between impatience and patience, Kafka works. He once said, ‘There is infinite hope—but not for us.’ No hope—is a comment on a set of conditions. It is not about psychological problems of hopelessness. In our conditions, there is no hope; change the condition, and there is infinite hope.”

Rejecting the notion of Kafka as a purely pessimistic writer, Choudhary highlights the transformative potential in his works. “Someone who says Kafka is a 20th-century dark writer is not saying that everything is doomed. The air could have been made fine if we changed the world. He is saying it is doomed if this is the way we live.”

The centenary event

The event on November 22 has been conceptualised by Rosy Singh from the Centre for German Studies at JNU. “I did my PhD on Kafka at JNU, and students were asking me, ‘Why don’t you do something?’” she says. For Singh, the relevance of Kafka lies in his exploration of contemporary themes.

“The Kafkaesque tropes are very much contemporary. Globally, people relate to the Kafkaesque world: bureaucracy, the judiciary, totalitarian states.A being caught in labyrinthine situations, not knowing how to get out. Helmed in by bureaucracy and procedures beyond you, where trials go on indefinitely, and the accused don’t even know what they are accused of. Kafka portrays the world of protocol and rules, representing totalitarian states. These themes resonate deeply with modern audiences.”

Additionally, Singh draws attention to recently discovered Kafka drawings in Switzerland. “We have made bookmarks out of them. People are really curious about these drawings, which showcase another facet of Kafka’s creativity,” she adds.

The programme for the event includes diverse sessions, from multilingual translations of Kafka’s works to performances and exhibitions. Highlights include the BA students’ staging of Metamorphosis, a film screening titled I am only making a report by Vaibhav Abnave, and Choudhary’s much-anticipated performance of A Report to an Academy.

This article is written by Prachi Satrawal