Symbol and Contextual Restraint: Kafka's "Country Doctor"

Author(s): Hans P. Guth

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 SYMBOL AND CONTEXTUAL RESTRAINT:
KAFKA'S "COUNTRY DOCTOR"
BY HANS P. GUTH

"Ich mufS es mir mit Spitzfindigkeiten aushilfs-

MODERN CRITICISM has frequently prac- journey, we should look for an interpretation
ticed symbolical analysis without develop- that does not rely on partial hints but illumi-
ing the necessary procedural controls, without es- nates the story as a whole.5
tablishing clear criteria of relevance for suggested The most obvious common thread in the story
symbolical meanings and overtones. Such unre- is that of perplexity, ineffectualness, immobility
strained symbolical analysis tends to suffer from -the inability to anticipate and control the
two typical defects. First, it tends to slight the bewildering flow of experience. The doctor, the
line-by-line texture of a work. In practice, if "I" of the story, is obsessed ("gequalt") by his
not always in theory, it tends to slight "surface" failure to carry out the practical, "adjusted"
detail. "Overt" meanings become, in Freudian man's imperative to engage in purposeful action.
terms, "disguise," to be unraveled as the deeper The very first sentence, with its rapid succession
meanings come into focus "like repressed ma- of short main clauses separated by semicolons,
terial under psychoanalysis."' Logical categories has a just barely concealed hectic, feverish tone-
become, in Jungian terms, "rationalizations," to the task confronting the doctor is urgent (the
be penetrated as the critic becomes "sensitive to seriously ill patient is waiting), but the means
the tap-roots below."2 At the same time, unre- of reaching him are missing (no horse). When
strained symbolical interpretation often does horses suddenly materialize, they appear as the
violence to the structure of a work. It threatens result of action that is absent-minded and ran-
to destroy a work's unity of fable, theme, or tone. dom (kicking the door of the sty); as the groom
Programmatic announcements to the contrary, readies them for the journey, the doctor is a
the prevailing practice of such criticism fails to
pay sufficient heed to Henry James's claim that I Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theater (Garden City,
N.Y., n.d.), p. 29.
"in proportion as the work is successful the idea
2 R. P. Blackmur, Language as Gesture: Essays in Poetry
permeates and penetrates it, informs and ani- (New York, 1952), p. 398.
mates it, so that every word and every punctua- 8 "The Art of Fiction," in Criticism: The Foundations of
tion-point contribute directly to the expression" ;3 Modern Literary Judgment, ed. Mark Schorer et. al., rev.
ed. (New York, 1958), p. 52.
to E. M. Forster's requirement that "every ac-
4 Aspects of the Novd (New York, 1927), p. 133.
tion or word ought to count."4 6 Most published criticism of the "Country Doctor"
In the interpretation of a successfully inte- assumes that the work has not only artistic unity but also
grated work, symbolical associations must be paraphrasable symbolic meaning, whether one-dimensional
subordinated to the reading of the whole play, and almost "transparent," as in Eric Marson and Keith
Leopold, "Kafka, Freud, and 'Ein Landarzt'," GQ, xxxvii
poem, novel, or story. Symbolical meanings must
(March 1964), 146-160; or multileveled and elusive, as in
fit the context-they must illuminate, rather Basil Busacca, "A Country Doctor," in Angel Flores and
than merely leave behind, details of texture as Homer Swander, eds., Franz Kakfa Today (Madison, Wis.,
well as major structural relations. The purpose 1958), pp. 45-57. For a notable dissent from the prevailing
view see Heinz Politzer's discussion of the story as an artistic
of this paper is to show how contextual restraints
failure, the "literal transcription" of a nightmare rather than
can govern the interpretation even of a work that its "literary presentation": "Its fragmentariness is not a
deliberately abandons logical cause-and-effect structural principle but an artistic deficiency. The reader
relationships and thus openly invites symbolical who finds himself unable to fathom its meaning need not
analysis. Kafka's much-analyzed "Country Doc- blame himself for his lack of understanding" (Franz Kafka:
Parable and Paradox, Ithaca, N. Y., 1962, p. 89). In empha-
tor" has the alogical surface texture of the
sizing the "opaqueness" of the story, Politzer fails to rec-
dream; details appear not as links in a chain of ognize that Kafka's dream-technique here in its own way
causation but merely because they happen to "clarifies" by concentrating on essentials: It filters out the
come to mind. Yet the story has the felt co- irrelevant; like the dreamer, the author ignores much of the
structure of intervening, merely instrumental and "realistic"
herence, the unitv of mood and impact, of much
experience, for instance the details of the doctor's journey:
of Kafka's fiction. Thus, in order to give meaning "als offne sich unmittelbar vor meinem Hoftor der Hof meines
to the non-sequiturs of the country doctor's Kranken, bin ich schon dort . . ."

427

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428 Kafka's "Country Doctor"

passive, nonplussed spectator. When the groom Paradoxically, in a story that is in many ways
attacks the doctor's maid, the doctor's protests bleak and foreboding, we find in the "Country
are cut short, as he is "swept away" on the Doctor" a determination to think positively, to
journey that a little earlier he had given up as give due acknowledgment to the satisfactory or
impossible. Communication with the patient's "correct" aspects of experience: "Mit so schonem
family fails completely ("den verwirrten Reden Gespann, das merke ich, bin ich noch nie
entnehme ich nichts"); the air of the sickroom gefahren, und ich steige frohlich ein" (p. 107).
is oppressive; the patient (a bony, empty-eyed, Even the unthinkable is treated as if it were part
shirtless boy) pleads with the doctor, not to of a familiar story: "Aus dem Schweinestall muss
save him, but to let him die. Diagnosed as a ich mein Gespann ziehen; waren es nicht
malingerer, the patient on second sight is found zufallig Pferde, milf3te ich mit Sauen fahren. So
to suffer from an incurable wound. The specta- ist es" (p. 110). The most implausible explana-
tors turn against the doctor (stripping him and tion is preferred to the horror of stark irration-
putting him in bed with the patient); his at- ality: "Ach, jetzt wiehern beide Pferde; der
tempt to escape leaves him stranded in the wastes Larm soll wohl, hohern Orts angeordnet, die
of winter, unable ever again to reach his home Untersuchung erleichtern" (p. 111).
and office-naked, exposed to the elements, The doctor draws on the full arsenal of
drifting aimlessly-lost, deserted, betrayed.6 rationalizing devices that help us create a
The events of the story thus repeatedly frus- counterweight of complacency and self -righteous-
trate the common human impulse toward effec- ness to the sense of inadequacy that overtakes
tive control of experience. Strangely, however, us in our unguarded moments. Some of these
preoccupation with his own inadequacy is by no devices are commonplace and perfunctory-the
means uppermost in the doctor's mind. Only creditable excuse ("nur aus diesem Grunde lehne
intermittently does he face his recurrent inability ich es ab zu trinken"); straight wishful thinking
to solve the puzzle, to cut the knot: "Was tue ich ("Ich fahre gleich wieder zuriick"); the injunc-
hier in diesem endlosen Winter!" (p. 110). More tion to see apparent evil as part of the larger
often he employs a tone reminiscent of other whole ("Du hast keinen Vberblick"). Other such
Kafka heroes-a paradoxical gallantry, becoming devices are more integral to the story. The
at times a pathetic bravado: "Ich bin durchaus doctor's image of himself is the self-approving
gefaf3t und allen tiberlegen" (p. 112). The driver one of the public servant; he is the officially
whose horses are "unbeherrschbar," the doctor appointed district doctor, underpaid and yet
whose patients threaten and humiliate him, pic- "doing his duty to the utmost, " "generous and
tures himself as thoroughly composed and "quite ready to help the poor." He shares the public
above them." servant's tendency to think of himself as a
The central interest of the story is indeed in martyr-confronted by unreasonable demands,
its interplay of event and attitude, of experienceroused from his well-earned sleep by calls from
and thought. The doctor's mental monologue patients not really seriously ill: "man hat mich
provides the events with a running commentary. wieder einmal unn6tig bemiiht, daran bin ich
As in much of his other fiction, Kafka is fasci- gewohnt, mit Hilfe meiner Nachtglocke martert
nated here by the untiring ingenuity, the imper- mich der ganze Bezirk" (p. 110).
turbable officiousness of the human mind in In keeping with the defensive purposes of a
coming to terms with reality. Each irruption rationalizing turn of mind, the doctor's style
of the incongruous is a new challenge to the frequently disguises, rather than reveals, his
human genius for putting a rational fagade on the
underlying anxiety. He is not averse to the re-
irrational, for finding a mental formula for sounding self-congratulatory phrase: "Nimm
things that are intolerable and yet must be das Ehrenwort eines Amtsarztes mit hiniiber."
somehow accommodated. As Mark Spilka says He frequently imitates the style of a man com-
in Dickens and Kafka, "the humanity of Kafka's plimenting himself on his energetic, emphatic
heroes lies precisely in their ability to accom- dealings with reality: "ich verzichte auf die
modate horror, to make a way of life out of their
own limitations."7 Like the paradoxical naivete 6 Franz Kafka, Das Urteil und andere ErzdJdungen (Frank-
that Max Brod ascribes to Karl Rossmann in furt am Main, 1952), pp. 106-114. Subsequent page refer-
Kafka's Amerika, the doctor's capacity for ences are to this edition.
7 Bloomington, Ind., 1963, p. 295.
rationalization during much of the story "just
8 Franz Kafka, Anzerika (Frankfurt am Main, 1956), p.
barely manages to keep the monstrous under 234. This quotation is from Brod's "Nachwort" to the first
control."8 edition.

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 Hans P. Guth 429

Fahrt "; "es fallt mir nicht ein "; "ich reality. His struggle is the struggle of human
bin kein Weltverbesserer"; "tue meine Pflicht reason trying to subdue brute unreasoning fact.
bis zum Rand." At the same time, he has the It is the refusal of reality to stay exorcised, the
saving genius for extenuation that enables him grim need for improvising new explanations
to rationalize non-commitment when direct con- however threadbare, that give Kafka's "ap-
frontation with bestial, destructive evil (as in prehensive clowning" (Thomas Mann) its char-
the person of the groom) would seem to call for acteristic tragicomic quality. The inadequacy of
energetic action:" 'Du Vieh,' schreie ich wiutend, our rationalizations would be ludicrous if it were
'willst du die Peitsche?' besinne mich aber not so shattering. The opaqueness of reason as a
gleich, daB es ein Fremder ist; daB ich nicht means of understanding reality, and its limited
weiss, woher er kommt, und daB er mir frei- control over experience, provoke in the eigh-
willig aushilft, wo alle andern versagen" (p. teenth-century skeptic the wry private irony of a
107). The groom, after all, is a perfect stranger. Hume or a Voltaire; they leave the Victorian
He was doing his best to help, where all others agnostic with the solemn determination to carry
had failed. on. In the work of Kafka, they produce a para-
Only once in the story does the doctor verge lyzing fear imperfectly held in check by our re-
on the direct expression of rage ("Du Viehl"), sources for extenuation, evasion, and reassur-
abandoning with self-destructive relief the ance.
laborious effort to maintain a civilized surface. Once the details of Kafka's story are seen as
The rest of the time he is dominated by the com- part of this pattern, the critic can restrict sym-
pulsion to play the role of enlightened modern bolical association by respecting the constraints
man-to think purposefully even when purpose- exercised by the full context. For instance, is the
ful action is impossible, to behave with com- open wound belatedly discovered near the pa-
posure even when relations with other human tient's hip "the wound in the side of Christ"?9
beings are breaking down. This "civilized" over- The blood-and-worms imagery of the story asso-
all tone of the story is reminiscent of the seem- ciates the wound with death and decay. The
ingly obtuse politeness found in "The Penal wound is caused by the axe at work in the forest,
Colony"-the remarks about the climate, the coming closer to all of us, though we may scarcely
traveler's courteous nods at the officer's de- hear its ominous sound. "Im spitzen Winkel mit
scription of the mechanism of torture and execu- zwei Hieben der Hacke geschaffen"-not, as in
tion, the officer's apologies for minor imperfec- the familiar translation, "done in a tight corner
tions, the ingratiating preambles disguising with two strokes of the axe"'10-but "done in a
tangential criticisms. wedge-shaped cut" by the two strokes of the
The urgent, hectic undertone, here as in the axe used in felling the tree. The axe in the forest
"Counltry Doctor," results from the only im- is what the "slow persistent breeze" from the
perfectly suppressed realization that these de- dark horizon of the future is in Camus's The
vices are inadequate-and yet cannot be given Stranger: the notice that man is born to die, that
up. The social graces must not fail, since they none of the ideas and ideals men "foist" on one
are among the last ties with sanity. Kafka's another can touch the grim certainty of their
characters are not allowed to rest secure in the inevitable fate." The wound so caused is the
protection gained by their expedients and eva- dark flower that spells man's ruin: "an dieser
sions. In the very process of rationalization they Blume in deiner Seite gehst du zugrunde" (p.
are likely to be called back to their original 111). In the context of the story, the wound
perplexities:" 'Ja,' denke ich lasternd, 'in solchen symbolizes the basic existential fact that makes
Fallen helfen die Gotter, schicken das fehlende our intellectual exertions a palliative rather than
Pferd, fiigen der Eile wegen noch ein zweites a cure, that dooms our attempts at controlling
hinzu, spenden zum Ubermal3 noch den Pferde- reality to ultimate failure.
knecht-.' Jetzt erst fallt mir wieder Rosa ein; was
tue ich, wie rette ich sie, . .. ." (p. 109).
9 Margaret Church, "Kafka's 'A Country Doctor'," The
If our symbolical interpretation of the
Explicator, xvi (May 1958), item 45. Reprinted with Kafka's
"Country Doctor" is to accommodate at least story and other critical interpretations in Maurice Beebe,
as much of the surface detail as the preceding ed., Literary Symbolism: An Introduction to the Interpretation
account, we shall have to sum up somewhat as of Literature (San Francisco, 1960), pp. 138-139.
10 Willa and Edwin Muir, trans. Selected Short Stories of
follows: The country doctor is Kafka's Every-
Franz Kafka (New York, 1952), p. 155.
man, quixotically trying to maintain at least the 11 Albert Camus, The Stranger, Stuart Gilbert trans. (New
appearance of rational control over an irrational York, 1958), p. 152.

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430 Kafka's "Country Doctor"

Similar contextual restraints render dubious comment on the hubris of the scientist, who in
the possible Freudian interpretations suggested the agnostic modern world has taken the place
by the sexual overtones of the opening section of the priest now sitting at home, "unraveling
of the story. In context, Rose, the servant girl, his vestments?" It is indeed a crucial irony in the
is not an Oedipal relative; she is not a "mother story that the doctor is used by the gaping popu-
figure."'2 She is the maid. For her master, to be lace "for sacred ends": The physician is popu-
deprived of her cheerfully rendered services larly expected to banish the specter of the irra-
would be an inconvenience. Though beautiful, tional, to exorcise fear. His mastery over disease
she had lived in the doctor's house for years and death is expected to make the inevitable
"hardly noticed." Her impending violation by avoidable. The irony here is exactly that the
the groom arouses in her absent-minded master country doctor is no miraculous healer; never
a passing and ineffectual indignation, which was physician more subject to the rejoinder of
later returns as the guilty memory of an obliga- "Physician, heal thyself !" Kafka's doctor has the
tion he has failed to meet. The closest bond be- style and mentality of the petty official, the
tween doctor and maid is a hollow conversa- perennial subaltern. He is, in fact, Kafka's
tional humor ("You never know what will come archetypal clerk in doctor's clothes. The re-
in handy in your own house"). Neither is Rose in sentment and retaliation he incurs when the
a more general way "protective, feminine. " popular illusion fails are merely a special case of
For the purposes of the story, her femininity is a the unreasonable demands made by life upon the
mere abstraction. The groom's lust is "brutish" individual: "Immer das Unmogliche vom Arzt
because he is ready to violate any female; the verlangen"; "der Arzt soll alles leisten" (p. 112).
"inevitability" of Rose's fate results from a mere The best he can do is to engage in a reassuring
accident of birth. As the relationship between semblance of activity, which will not in the end
the doctor and Rose is not familial but social, so stave off his patients' disappointed fury. He be-
the relationship between the groom and Rose is comes the ideal scapegoat: "Und heilt er nicht,
not familial but grossly biological. As it is part so totet ihn!" (p. 112). In sum, the doctor's
of Everyman's burden to be born to die, so it is attitude toward his task has none of the arro-
part of Everywoman's possible fate to become gance humanists often ascribe to the scientific
the object of crude male lust. The groom repre- "other culture." Instead, it is marked by the
sents a familiar type of antagonist in Kafka's long-suffering patience of the imposed-upon func-
fiction: the person driven by some kind of energy tionary, fortified by a wishful thought that his
not paralyzed by thought-whether, as here, services cannot be replaced: "ein Nachfolger
crude animal energy; or, as with the officer of the bestiehlt mich, aber ohne Nutzen, denn er kann
"Penal Colony," rigid fanaticism; or, as with mich nicht ersetzen" (p. 114).
Karl's antagonists in Amerika, sneering malice. Obviously, an interpretation that stresses the
Viewed by the protagonist with baffled dis- role of context cannot be content simply to fit
belief, these people have, on their own terms, the details into a pattern like so many pieces of
established control over experience; they live in a jigsaw puzzle. The importance of a given de-
the world of purposeful action of which the pro- tail, the bearing of a crucial passage, are often
tagonist's own behavior is only an unconvincing determined by tone. Thus, the interpreter of the
imitation. In context, it is fitting that the groom "Country Doctor" must take into account
controls the steaming, powerfully thrusting Kafka's irony. Wilhelm Emrich, for instance, in
horses: others make reality serve their own ends; Franz Kafka, analyzes the story as a profound
others brutally pursue and obtain sexual satis- comment on man's nature and his relation to
faction; others know the secret whose mastery modern society. In doing so, he fails to make
escapes Kafka's anti-hero. In the story as a allowance for ironies that warn us to take some
whole, sex is not the crucial dimension in which of the details of the story perhaps only half-
to discover the writer's "burdens," presented to seriously. Crucial to Emrich's reading of the
us in symbolic disguises borrowed from other story is his interpretation of the horses as un-
areas of experience. The reverse is more nearly earthly representatives of "spirit," potentially
true: The doctor's inability to restrain the de- "liberating" but in the setting of a rootless
structive sexual energy of the groom is symbolic modern society also potentially destructive."3 In
of a more general failure to establish control over the story, the animals (apart from their being
reality.
12 Stanley Cooperman, "Kafka's 'A Country Doctor':
A third avenue of symbolical interpretation is
Microcosm of Symbolism," UKCR, xxiv (Autumn 1957),
suggested by the doctor's profession: Does his 75-80; in Beebe, ed., Symbolism, p. 140.
role as the ineffectual physician-healer imply a 13 Zweite Auflage (Frankfurt am Main, 1960), pp. 129-137.

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 Hans P. Guth 431

powerful, warm, steaming, smelling-aggres- how straighten things out in my head; I must
sively physical) are only "accidentally" horses. for want of something better fall back on sophis-
Commenting that otherwise he would have had tries and fit things somehow into a pattern (p.
to drive with swine, the doctor adds his prepos- 110). This program is parallel to that of K. in
terously complacent "So ist es"-thus giving The Trial, who from the moment he first wakes
the whole passage a comic note out of keeping up attempts to sort things out in his mind
with Emrich's solemn sociological interpretation through A ufmerksamkeit and Uberlegung-
("Jedes Mittel ist unserem Zeitalter recht").14 through careful attention and "good thinking."
There is irony in other references to the horses: As he finally says on his way to his execution:
their sharing of ordinary human curiosity in "Das einzige, was ich jetzt tun kann, ist, bis zum
thrusting their heads through the windows for a Ende den ruhig einteilenden Verstand behal-
look at the patient ("unbeirrt durch den Auf- ten."'8 The last resolve of the victim of irra-
schrei der Familie"); the doctor's misplaced ap- tional horror is to keep his five wits about him,
preciation of their apparent docility ("Noch "calmly putting everything in its place."
standen treu die Pferde an ihren Platzen"); the As Austin Warren has observed, Kafka's is a
energetic command belied by their erratic per- world "in which unnatural situations are ration-
formance (" 'Munter!' sagte ich, aber munter ally worked out-in which everyone is able, like
ging's nicht"). As Politzer says of another of Lewis Carroll's creatures, to argue long, ingeni-
Kafka's tales, "Its scene is plunged in a twilight ously, and convincingly."19 The appointed task
in which the horrible freely blends with the ab- of Kafka's Sisyphus-characters is to do what
surd, and if we are in the right mood, even with critics like Eliseo Vivas blame Kafka's work as
the funny."15 A symbolic interpretation that does a whole for failing to do: to provide a vocabulary
not assign Kafka's irony an organic role fails to and a way of thinking "required to complete a
do justice to an essential element in the story. rational picture of the world."20 XVith loving pa-
Kafka's irony is that of the observer rather tience, Kafka traces the struggle of his charac-
than of the participant; the wry humor in their ters to preserve their sanity. It is to the dogged
situations is not recognized by his characters. pursuit of this goal that "The Country Doctor,"
Unlike their author, they are often essentially like many of his other parables, owes it paradox-
humorless.'6 The absurdity of their predicament ical atmosphere of quixotic gallantry, heart-
is to them the object, not of liberating (or at breaking irony, and sinister farce.
least reconciling) irony, but of a determined
SAN JOSE STATE COLLEGE
effort to re-establish rational control-or to act
San Jose, Calif.
as if that control had never been lost.
Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus, claims
Kafka as one of the "existential novelists and
14 Ibid., p. 136.
philosophers," asserting that in his work "the 15 Franz Kafka, p. 8.
absurd is recognized, accepted, and man is re- 16 "All who knew Kafka personally have maintained that
signed to it."'" Whatever may be said of Kafka, he was possessed of the gift of humor to a very high degree.
the basic trait of the country doctor, as of other ... Generally speaking, Kafka's humor is derived from the
extreme lack of humor displayed by his figures. Colliding
Kafka characters, is the refusal to recognize and
with this deadly seriousness, the world reveals itself as non-
accept the underlying absurdity of human exis- sensical. Kafka's laughter is the response to this revelation"
tence: "Ich will es nicht ausdenken"-I do not (Politzer, Kafka, pp. 353-354).
want to think it through in its full implications 17 In Ronald Gray, ed., Kafka: A Collection of Critical
(p. 114). The doctor is the pre-existentialist whose Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962), p. 153.
18 Franz Kafka, Der Prozel3 (Frankfurt am Main, 1960),
motto is "Ich muf3 es mir mit Spitzfindigkeiten
pp. 7, 163.
aushilfsweise in meinem Kopf irgendwie zurecht- 19 In Gray, ed., Kafka, p. 124.
legen"-I must with improvised ingenuity some- 20 "Kafka's Distorted Mask," in Gray, ed., Kafka, p. 146.

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