There's more than a grain of truth in the following statement by Richard Mabey:
"I think we may be lucky that insects are too small and remote ever to have entered our understanding in the way that birds and flowers have. If we saw their lives for what they really are I think it might be too much for us to bear."
And yet, sometimes, one can't help looking at the bees, bugs and beetles with a mixture of admiration and envy and thoughts of becoming-insect; i.e., of entering an alien life free from all compassion and compromise, but with its own inhuman beauty. Not that this ever ends well, as the cases of Gregor Samsa and Seth Brundle demonstrate ...
1: The Case of Gregor Samsa
One might argue that Gregor Samsa doesn't in fact become-insect in the very special sense that Deleuze and Guattari mean by the term. For his is primarily a change at the molar level of form - a metamorphosis - whereas becoming-animal is a demonic event played out at the molecular level of forces that enables one to: "stake out the path of escape in all its positivity ... to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone ..."
However, as Deleuze and Guattari refer in their own work to this case as an example of becoming-animal - albeit one that fails due to Gregor's refusal to take his deterritorialization all the way - I'm not going to press the issue here. Let's just agree that Kafka's tale doesn't simply concern an imaginary identification with an insect taking place in Gregor's mind; it's neither a mad fantasy, nor a terrible dream.
His, rather, is an essential transformation of the kind that troubles Freudians and theologians alike and one misses the point of the story if one fails to appreciate this. The six-legged critter that Gregor becomes isn't archetypal nor mythological; nor is it in need of any dreary psychoanalytic interpretation (it doesn't merely signify oedipal anxiety, for example).
On the other hand, as Walter Benjamin points out, neither is it particularly rewarding to read the story too naturalistically and become obsessed with classifying what kind of animal Gregor becomes. English translations sometimes indicate a giant cockroach, but the German terms used by Kafka - ungeheuer Ungeziefer - are non-specific and suggestive of many types of unclean animal or vermin, not just those that belong to the class of creatures we usually think of as the worst sort of creepy-crawly.
It's doubtless because he wanted to keep things vague that Kafka also prohibited illustrations for his book. In a letter to his publisher he insisted that images of Gregor post-transformation were not to be included, even if depicted from a distance or in shadow. But it's clear from his own descriptions that Gregor was some kind of large insect scuttling about and Kafka uses the terms Insekt and Wanze [bug] in his correspondence when discussing the story.
Interestingly - and I think rather amusingly - despite Kafka's wish for indeterminacy and Benjamin's dismissal of readings that attempt to root themselves in taxonomy, Nabokov - who was not only a great novelist, but also a great entomologist - claimed he knew exactly what species of insect Gregor turned into; basically, a big beetle just over 3 feet long.
What's more, in his heavily annotated copy of Kafka's novella that he used for teaching purposes, Nabokov even provided an illustration:
Whatever type of pest he became, sadly, Gregor the Mensch-Insekt, is allowed and encouraged to die a lonely, sordid death by his family, raising the question of where true horror and monstrosity begins.
Notes
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan, (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
Josh Jones, 'Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway', essay on openculture.com (Oct 21 2015): to read, click here.
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Michael Hofmann, (Penguin Books, 2007)
Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, (Collins, 1973).
Readers interested in a related post to this one, which also refers to the case of Gregor Samsa, should click here.
To read part two of this post on becoming-insect: the case of Seth Brundle, click here.
1: The Case of Gregor Samsa
One might argue that Gregor Samsa doesn't in fact become-insect in the very special sense that Deleuze and Guattari mean by the term. For his is primarily a change at the molar level of form - a metamorphosis - whereas becoming-animal is a demonic event played out at the molecular level of forces that enables one to: "stake out the path of escape in all its positivity ... to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone ..."
However, as Deleuze and Guattari refer in their own work to this case as an example of becoming-animal - albeit one that fails due to Gregor's refusal to take his deterritorialization all the way - I'm not going to press the issue here. Let's just agree that Kafka's tale doesn't simply concern an imaginary identification with an insect taking place in Gregor's mind; it's neither a mad fantasy, nor a terrible dream.
His, rather, is an essential transformation of the kind that troubles Freudians and theologians alike and one misses the point of the story if one fails to appreciate this. The six-legged critter that Gregor becomes isn't archetypal nor mythological; nor is it in need of any dreary psychoanalytic interpretation (it doesn't merely signify oedipal anxiety, for example).
On the other hand, as Walter Benjamin points out, neither is it particularly rewarding to read the story too naturalistically and become obsessed with classifying what kind of animal Gregor becomes. English translations sometimes indicate a giant cockroach, but the German terms used by Kafka - ungeheuer Ungeziefer - are non-specific and suggestive of many types of unclean animal or vermin, not just those that belong to the class of creatures we usually think of as the worst sort of creepy-crawly.
It's doubtless because he wanted to keep things vague that Kafka also prohibited illustrations for his book. In a letter to his publisher he insisted that images of Gregor post-transformation were not to be included, even if depicted from a distance or in shadow. But it's clear from his own descriptions that Gregor was some kind of large insect scuttling about and Kafka uses the terms Insekt and Wanze [bug] in his correspondence when discussing the story.
Interestingly - and I think rather amusingly - despite Kafka's wish for indeterminacy and Benjamin's dismissal of readings that attempt to root themselves in taxonomy, Nabokov - who was not only a great novelist, but also a great entomologist - claimed he knew exactly what species of insect Gregor turned into; basically, a big beetle just over 3 feet long.
What's more, in his heavily annotated copy of Kafka's novella that he used for teaching purposes, Nabokov even provided an illustration:
Whatever type of pest he became, sadly, Gregor the Mensch-Insekt, is allowed and encouraged to die a lonely, sordid death by his family, raising the question of where true horror and monstrosity begins.
Notes
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan, (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
Josh Jones, 'Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway', essay on openculture.com (Oct 21 2015): to read, click here.
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Michael Hofmann, (Penguin Books, 2007)
Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, (Collins, 1973).
Readers interested in a related post to this one, which also refers to the case of Gregor Samsa, should click here.
To read part two of this post on becoming-insect: the case of Seth Brundle, click here.
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