From the perfumed moustache to ornaments of speech: the visuality of writing “In the Cathedral” from Franz Kafka’s Trial
Abstract
My paper deals with a chapter from Franz Kafka’s novel through a visual mode which shapes the writing of the text. This mode is represented by the architecture of the gothic cathedral, the principles of which were formulated by art historian Wilhelm Worringer in relation to his notion of “the gothic will to form”, and which are embodied in the figure of ornament.
The space of the cathedral (intepreted as an “invention of writing”, not as a real construction), created by gothic lines resigning from representation, inspires an approach to literary speech not from the point of view of its message, but from the perspective of its motion and physiognomy. This staged encounter of literary speech and gothic space allows for experimentation and the possibility to avoid a classical interpretation focusing on the historical context or the author’s work, and to concentrate on the anonymous “movement of writing”, which runs through the text, on the understanding of its visuality and its resonance with space.