The Hidden Non-God: Theological Dimensions in Interpretations of Franz Kafka's The Castle
Author: LEI Ayong, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China; Associate Professor, Foreign Language Department, Minjiang University
Abstract:
Interpretations of Kafka’s The Castle always involve understanding of “meaning” in the novel. Interpretations of religious allegory and spiritual relevancy both show that, in terms of existential significance, The Castle always leads to a kind of theological speech, an interpretation of the “atheos absconditus” (a hidden, non-existent God, or religious atheism) which Georg Lukács argues. Thus, both the “modern-theological pattern” of Karl Barth and Gerhard Ebeling and the “postmodern-theological logic” of Jacques Derrida offer possible, and more meaningful channels for interpreting The Castle. What the “theological interpretation” of the “textual meaning” of the novel mostly reveals to us might be that, as Ludwig Wittgenstein holds, “the sense of the world must lie outside the world.”
Keywords:
The Castle, Franz Kafka, Hidden Non-God, theological interpretation
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