Franz Kafka
The Great Wall
of China
This translation by Ian Johnston of
Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, has certain copyright
restrictions. For information please use the following link: Copyright.
For comments or question please contact Ian
Johnston. This text was last revised March 2009.
For more links to Kafka e-texts in English click here
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of
China was finished at its most northerly location. The construction work moved
up from the south-east and south-west and joined at this point. This system of
building in sections was also followed on a small scale within the two great armies
of workers, the eastern and western armies. It was carried out in the following
manner: groups of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take
on a section of the wall, about five hundred metres long. A neighbouring group
then built a wall of similar length to meet them. But then afterwards, when the
sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any further at
the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups of workers were
shipped off again to build the wall in completely different regions. Naturally,
with this method many large gaps arose, which were filled in only gradually and
slowly, many of them not until after it had already been reported that the
building of the wall was complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which
have never been built in at all, although that’s merely an assertion which
probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the structure
and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to prove with their
own eyes and according to their own standards, because the structure is so
immense.
Now, at first one
might think it would have been more advantageous in every way to build in
continuous sections or at least continuously within two main sections. For the
wall was conceived as a protection against the people of the north, as was
commonly announced and universally known. But how can protection be provided by
a wall which is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not
protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of the
wall left standing abandoned in deserted regions could always be destroyed
easily by the nomads, especially by those back then who, worried about the
building of the wall, changed their place of residence with incredible speed,
like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps had an even better overall view of how the
construction was proceeding than we did, the people who built it. However,
there was really no other way to carry out the construction except the way it
happened. In order to understand this, one must consider the following: the
wall was to become a protection for centuries; thus, the essential
prerequisites for the work were the most careful construction, the use of the
architectural wisdom of all known ages and peoples, and an enduring sense of
personal responsibility in the builders. Of course, for the more humble tasks
one could use ignorant day labourers from the people—the men, women, and
children who offered their services for good money. But the supervision of even
four day labourers required a knowledgeable man, an educated expert in construction,
someone who was capable of feeling sympathy deep in his heart for what was at
stake here. And the higher the challenge, the greater the demands. And such men
were in fact available—if not the crowds of them which this construction could
have used, at least in great numbers.
This work was not
undertaken recklessly. Fifty years before the start of construction it was
announced throughout the whole region of China which was to be enclosed within
the wall that architecture and especially masonry were the most important areas
of knowledge, and everything else was recognized only to the extent that it had
some relationship to those. I still remember very well how as small children
who could hardly walk we stood in our teacher’s little garden and had to
construct a sort of wall out of pebbles, and how the teacher gathered up his
coat and ran against the wall, naturally making everything collapse, and then
scolded us so much for the weakness of our construction that we ran off in all
directions howling to our parents. A tiny incident, but an indication of the
spirit of the times.
I was lucky that at
twenty years of age, when I passed the final examination of the lowest school,
the construction of the wall was just starting. I say lucky because many who
earlier had attained the highest limit of education available to them had no
idea for years what to do with their knowledge and wandered around uselessly,
with the most splendid architectural plans in their heads, and a great many of
them just went downhill from there. But the ones who finally got to work as
supervisors on the construction, even if they had the lowest rank, were really
worthy of their position. They were masons who had given much thought to the construction
and never stopped thinking about it, men who, right from the first stone which
they let sink into the ground, had a sense of themselves as part of the wall.
Such masons, of course, were driven not only by the desire to carry out the
work as thoroughly as possible but also by impatience to see the structure finally
standing there in its complete final perfection. Day labourers do not experience
this impatience. They are driven only by their pay. The higher supervisors and,
indeed, even the middle supervisors, see enough from their various perspectives
of the growth of the wall to keep their spirits energized. But the subordinate
supervisors, men who were mentally far above their outwardly trivial tasks, had
to be catered to in other ways. One could not, for example, let them lay one
building block on top of another in an uninhabited region of the mountains,
hundreds of miles from their homes, for months or even years at a time. The
hopelessness of such a hard task, which could not be completed even in a long
human lifetime, would have caused them distress and, more than anything else, made
them worthless for work. For that reason the system of building in sections was
chosen. Five hundred metres could be completed in something like five years, by
which time naturally the supervisors were, as a rule, too exhausted and had
lost all faith in themselves, in the building, and in the world. Thus, while
they were still experiencing the elation of the celebrations for the joining up
of a thousand metres of the wall, they were shipped far, far away. On their
journey they saw here and there finished sections of the wall rising up; they
passed through the quarters of the higher administrators, who gave them gifts
as badges of honour, and they heard the rejoicing of new armies of workers
streaming past them out of the depths of the land, saw forests being laid low,
wood designated as scaffolding for the wall, witnessed mountains being broken
up into rocks for the wall, and heard in the holy places the hymns of the pious
praying for the construction to be finished. All this calmed their impatience.
The quiet life of home, where they spent some time, reinvigorated them. The
high regard which all those doing the building enjoyed, the devout humility
with which people listened to their reports, the trust that simple quiet
citizens had that the wall would be completed someday—all this tuned the
strings of their souls. Then, like eternally hopeful children, they took leave
of their home. The enthusiasm for labouring once again at the people’s work
became irresistible. They set out from their houses earlier than necessary, and
half the village accompanied them for a long way. On all the roads there were
groups of people, pennants, banners—they had never seen how great and rich and
beautiful and endearing their country was. Every countryman was a brother for
whom they were building a protective wall and who would thank him with
everything he had and was for all his life. Unity! Unity! Shoulder to shoulder,
a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the
limited circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning
through the infinite extent of China.
In view of all
this, the system of piecemeal building becomes understandable. But there were
still other reasons, too. And there is nothing strange in the fact that I have
held off on this point for so long. It is the central issue in the whole
construction of the wall, no matter how unimportant it appears at first. If I
want to convey the ideas and experiences of that time and make them
intelligible, I cannot probe deeply enough into this particular question.
First, it has to be
said that achievements were brought to fruition at that time which rank
slightly behind the Tower of Babel, although in the pleasure they gave to God,
at least by human reckoning, they made an impression exactly the opposite of
that structure. I mention this because at the time construction was beginning a
scholar wrote a book in which he drew this comparison very precisely. In it he
tried to show that the Tower of Babel had failed to attain its goal not at all
for the reasons commonly asserted, or at least that the most important causes
were not among these well-known ones. He not only based his proofs on texts and
reports, but also claimed to have carried out personal inspections of the
location and thus to have found that the structure collapsed and had to
collapse because of the weakness of its foundation. And it is true that in this
respect our age was far superior to that one long ago. Almost every educated
person in our age was a mason by profession and infallible when it came to the
business of laying foundations. But it was not at all the scholar’s aim to
prove this. Instead he claimed that the great wall alone would for the first
time in the age of human beings create a secure foundation for a new Tower of
Babel. So first the wall and then the tower. In those days the book was in
everyone’s hands, but I confess that even today I do not understand exactly how
he imagined this tower. How could the wall, which never once took the form of a
circle but only a sort of quarter or half circle, provide the foundation for a
tower? But it could be meant only in a spiritual sense. But then why the wall,
which was something real, a product of the efforts and lives of hundreds of
thousands of people? And why were there plans in the book—admittedly hazy
plans—sketching the tower, as well as detailed proposals about how the energies
of the people could be strictly channelled into the new work in the future.
There was a great
deal of mental confusion at the time—this book is only one example—perhaps for
the simple reason that so many people were trying as hard as they could to join
together for a single purpose. Human nature, which is fundamentally careless
and by nature like the whirling dust, endures no restraint. If it restricts itself,
it will soon begin to shake the restraints madly and tear up walls, chains, and
even itself in every direction.
It is possible that
even these considerations, which argued against building the wall in the first
place, were not ignored by the leadership when they decided on piecemeal
construction. We—and here I’m really speaking on behalf of many—actually first
found out about it by spelling out the orders from the highest levels of management
and learned for ourselves that without the leadership neither our school
learning nor our human understanding would have been adequate for the small
position we had within the enormous totality. In the office of the
leadership—where it was and who sat there no one I asked knows or knew—in this
office I imagine that all human thoughts and wishes revolve in a circle, and
all human aims and fulfillments in a circle going in the opposite direction.
But through the window the reflection of the divine worlds fell onto the hands
of the leadership as they drew up the plans.
And for this reason
the incorruptible observer will reject the notion that if the leadership had
seriously wanted a continuous construction of the wall, they would not have
been able to overcome the difficulties standing in the way. So the only
conclusion left is that the leadership deliberately chose piecemeal construction.
But building in sections was something merely makeshift and impractical. So the
conclusion remains that the leadership wanted something impractical. An odd
conclusion! True enough, and yet from another perspective it had some inherent
justification. Nowadays one can perhaps speak about it without danger. At that
time for many people, even the best, there was a secret principle: Try with all
your powers to understand the orders of the leadership, but only up to a
certain limit—then stop thinking about them. A very reasonable principle, which
incidentally found an even wider interpretation in a later often repeated
comparison: Stop further thinking, not because it could harm you—it is not at
all certain that it will harm you. In this matter one cannot speak in general
about harming or not harming. What will happen to you is like a river in
spring. It rises, grows stronger, eats away more powerfully at the land along its
banks, and still maintains its own course down to the sea and is more welcome
as a fitter partner for the sea. Reflect upon the orders of the leadership as
far as that. But then the river overflows its banks, loses its form and shape,
slows down its forward movement, tries, contrary to its destiny, to form small
seas inland, damages the fields, and yet cannot maintain its expansion long,
but runs back within its banks, in fact, even dries up miserably in the hot
time of year which follows. Do not reflect on the orders of the leadership to
that extent.
Now, this
comparison may perhaps have been extraordinarily apt during the construction of
the wall, but it has at least only a limited relevance to my present report.
For my investigation is merely historical. There is no lightning strike
flashing any more from storm clouds which have long since vanished, and thus I
may seek an explanation for the piecemeal construction which goes further than
the one people were satisfied with back then. The limits which my ability to
think sets for me are certainly narrow enough, but the region one would have to
pass through here is endless.
Against whom was
the great wall to provide protection? Against the people of the north. I come
from south-east China. No northern people can threaten us there. We read about
them in the books of the ancients. The atrocities which their nature prompts
them to commit make us heave a sigh on our peaceful porches. In the faithfully
accurate pictures of artists we see these faces of damnation, with their mouths
flung open, the sharp pointed teeth stuck in their jaws, their straining eyes,
which seem to be squinting for someone to seize, someone their jaws will crush
and rip to pieces. When children are naughty, we hold up these pictures in front
of them, and they immediately burst into tears and run into our arms. But we
know nothing else about these northern lands. We have never seen them, and if
we remain in our village, we never will see them, even if they charge straight
at us and hunt us on their wild horses. The land is so huge, it would not
permit them to reach us, and they would lose themselves in the empty air.
So if things are
like this, why do we leave our homeland, the river and bridges, our mothers and
fathers, our crying wives, our children in need of education, and go away to
school in the distant city, with our thoughts on the wall to the north, even
further away? Why? Ask the leadership. They know us. As they mull over their
immense concerns, they know about us, understand our small worries, see us all
sitting together in our humble huts, and approve or disapprove of the prayer
which the father of the house says in the evening in the circle of his family.
And if I may be permitted such ideas about the leadership, then I must say that
in my view the leadership existed even earlier. It did not come together like
some high mandarins quickly summoned to a meeting by a beautiful dream of the
future, something hastily concluded, a meeting which by evening saw to it that
the general population was driven from their beds by a knocking on the door so
that they could carry out the decision, even if it was only to set up a lantern
in honour of a god who had shown favour to the masters the day before, so that
he could thrash them in some dark corner the next day, when the lantern had
only just died out. On the contrary, I imagine the leadership has existed since
time immemorial, along with the decision to construct the wall as well.
Innocent northern people believed they were the cause; the admirable and
innocent emperor believed he had given orders for it. We who were builders of
the wall know otherwise and are silent.
Even back then
during the construction of the wall and afterwards, right up to the present
day, I have devoted myself almost exclusively to the histories of different
people. There are certain questions for which one can, to some extent, get to
the heart of the matter only in this way. Using this method I have found that
we Chinese possess certain popular and state institutions which are uniquely
clear and, then again, others which are uniquely obscure. Tracking down the
reasons for these, especially for the latter phenomena, always appealed to me,
and still does, and the construction of the wall is fundamentally concerned
with these issues.
Now, among our most
obscure institutions one can certainly include the empire itself. Of course, in
Peking, right in the court, there is some clarity about it, although even this
is more apparent than real. And the teachers of constitutional law and history
in the high schools give out that they are precisely informed about these
things and that they are able to pass this knowledge on to their students. The
deeper one descends into the lower schools, the more the doubts about the
students’ own knowledge understandably disappear, and a superficial education
surges up as high as a mountain around a few precepts drilled into them for
centuries, sayings which, in fact, have lost nothing of their eternal truth,
but which remain also eternally unrecognized in this mist and fog.
But, in my view,
it’s precisely the empire we should be asking the people about, because in them
the empire has its final support. It’s true that in this matter I can speak
once again only about my own homeland. Other than the agricultural deities and
the service to them, which so beautifully and variously fills up the entire
year, our thinking concerns itself only with the emperor. But not with the
present emperor. We would have concerned ourselves with the present one if we had
recognized who he was or had known anything definite about him. We were
naturally always trying—and it’s the single curiosity which consumed us—to find
out something or other about him, but, no matter how strange this sounds, it
was hardly possible to learn anything, either from pilgrims, even though they
wandered through much of our land, or from the close or remote villages, or
from boatmen, although they have travelled not merely on our little waterways
but also on the sacred rivers. Of course, we heard a great deal, but could
gather nothing from the many details.
Our land is so
huge, that no fairy tale can adequately deal with its size. Heaven hardly
covers it all. And Peking is only a point, the imperial palace only a tiny dot.
It’s true that, by contrast, throughout all the different levels of the world
the emperor, as emperor, is great. But the living emperor, a human being like
us, lies on a peaceful bed, just as we do. It is, no doubt, of ample proportions,
but it could be merely narrow and short. Like us, he sometime stretches out his
limbs and, if he is very tired, yawns with his delicately delineated mouth. But
how are we to know about that thousands of miles to the south, where we almost
border on the Tibetan highlands? Besides, any report which might come, even if
it reached us, would get there much too late and would be long out of date.
Around the emperor the glittering and yet murky court throngs—malice and enmity
clothed as servants and friends, the counterbalance to the imperial power, with
their poisoned arrows always trying to shoot the emperor down from his side of
the balance scales. The empire is immortal, but the individual emperor falls
and collapses. Even entire dynasties finally sink down and breathe their one
last death rattle. The people will never know anything about these struggles
and suffering. Like those who have come too late, like strangers to the city,
they stand at the end of the thickly populated side alleyways, quietly living
off the provisions they have brought with them, while far off in the market
place right in the middle foreground the execution of their master is taking
place.
There is a legend
which expresses this relationship well. The Emperor—so they say—has sent a
message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a
tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial
sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his death bed and whispered the
message to him. He thought it was so important that he had the herald repeat it
back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal message by nodding his
head. And in front of the entire crowd of those who have come to witness his
death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down and all the great ones of
his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of
stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started
off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another,
he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to
his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike
anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If
there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the
marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile
are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of
the innermost palace. He will never he win his way through. And if he did manage
that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the
steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He
would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards the second
palace encircling the first, and, then again, stairs and courtyards, and then,
once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally did
burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal
capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled
high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not
with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream to
yourself of that message when evening comes.
That’s exactly how
our people look at the emperor, hopelessly and full of hope. They don’t know
which emperor is on the throne, and there are even doubts about the name of the
dynasty. In the schools they learn a great deal about things like the
succession, but the common uncertainty in this respect is so great that even
the best pupils are drawn into it. In our villages emperors long since dead are
set on the throne, and one of them who still lives on only in songs had one of
his announcements issued a little while ago, which the priest read out from the
altar. Battles from our most ancient history are now fought for the first time,
and with a glowing face your neighbour charges into your house with the report.
The imperial wives, overindulged on silk cushions, alienated from noble customs
by shrewd courtiers, swollen with thirst for power, driven by greed, excessive
in their lust, are always committing their evil acts over again. The further
back they are in time, the more terrible all their colours glow, and with a
loud cry of grief our village eventually gets to learn how an empress thousands
of years ago drank her husband’s blood in lengthy gulps.
That, then, is how
the people deal with the rulers from the past, but they mix up the present
rulers with the dead ones. If once, once in a person’s lifetime an imperial
official travelling around the province chances to come into our village, sets
out some demands or other in the name of the rulers, checks the tax lists, attends
a school class, interrogates the priest about our comings and goings, and then,
before climbing into his sedan chair, summarizes everything in a long sermon to
the assembled local population, at that point a smile crosses every face, one
man looks furtively at another and bends over his children, so as not to let
the official see him. How, people think, can he speak of a dead man as if he
were alive. This emperor already died a long time ago, the dynasty has been
extinguished, the official is having fun with us. But we’ll act as if we didn’t
notice, so that we don’t hurt his feelings. However, in all seriousness we’ll
obey only our present ruler, for anything else would be a sin. And behind the
official’s sedan chair as it hurries away there arises from the already
decomposed urn someone high up who is arbitrarily endorsed as ruler of the
village.
Similarly, with us
people are, as a rule, little affected by political revolutions and
contemporary wars. Here I recall an incident from my youth. In a neighbouring
but still very far distant province a rebellion broke out. I cannot remember
the causes any more. Besides, they are not important here. In that province
reasons for rebellion arise every new day—they are an excitable people. Well,
on one occasion a rebel pamphlet was brought into my father’s house by a beggar
who had travelled through that province. It happened to be a holiday. Our
living room was full of guests. The priest sat in their midst and studied the
pamphlet. Suddenly everyone started laughing, the sheet was torn to pieces in
the general confusion, and the beggar, although he had already been richly
rewarded, was chased out of the room with blows. Everyone scattered and ran out
into the beautiful day. Why? The dialect of the neighbouring province is
essentially different from ours, and these differences manifest themselves also
in certain forms of the written language, which for us have an antiquated
character. Well, the priest had scarcely read two pages like that, and people
had already decided. Old matters heard long ago, and long since got over. And although—as
I recall from my memory—a horrifying way of life seemed to speak irrefutably
through the beggar, people laughed and shook their head and were unwilling to
hear any more. That’s how ready people are among us to obliterate the present.
If one wanted to
conclude from such phenomena that we basically have no emperor at all, one
would not be far from the truth. I need to say it again and again: There is
perhaps no people more faithful to the emperor than we are in the south, but
the emperor derives no benefits from our loyalty. It’s true that on the way out
of our village there stands on a little pillar the sacred dragon, which, for as
long as men can remember, has paid tribute by blowing its fiery breath straight
in the direction of Peking. But for the people in the village Peking itself is
much stranger than living in the next world. Could there really be a village
where houses stand right beside each other covering the fields and reaching
further than the view from our hills, with men standing shoulder to shoulder
between these houses day and night? Rather than imagining such a city, it’s
easier for us to believe that Peking and its emperor are one, something like a
cloud, peacefully moving along under the sun as the ages pass.
Now, the consequence
of such opinions is a life which is to some extent free and uncontrolled. Not
in any way immoral—purity of morals like those in my homeland I have hardly
ever come across in my travels. But nonetheless a way of life that stands under
no present law and only pays attention to the wisdom and advice which reach
across to us from ancient times.
I guard again
generalizations and do not claim that things like this go on in all ten
thousand villages of our province or, indeed, in all five hundred provinces of
China. But on the basis of the many writings which I have read concerning this
subject, as well as on the basis of my own observations, especially since with
the construction of the wall the human material provided an opportunity for a
man of feeling to travel through the souls of almost all the provinces—on the
basis of all this perhaps I may state that with respect to the emperor the
prevailing idea again and again reveals everywhere a certain essential feature
common to the conception in my homeland. Now, I have no desire at all to let
this conception stand as a virtue—quite the contrary. It’s true that in the
main things the blame rests with the government, which in the oldest empire on
earth right up to the present day has not been able or has, among other things,
neglected to cultivate the institution of empire sufficiently clearly so that
it is immediately and ceaselessly effective right up to the most remote
frontiers of the empire. On the other hand, however, there is in this also a
weakness in the people’s power of imagining or believing, which has not
succeeded in pulling the empire out of its deep contemplative state in Peking
and making it something fully vital and present in the hearts of subjects, who
nonetheless want nothing better than to feel its touch once and then die from
the experience.
So this conception
is really not a virtue. It’s all the more striking that this very weakness
appears to be one of the most important ways of unifying our people. Indeed, if
one may go so far as to use the expression, it is the very ground itself on
which we live. To provide a detailed account of why we have a flaw here would
amount not just to rattling our consciences but, what is much more serious, to
making our legs tremble. And therefore I do not wish to go any further in the
investigation of these questions at the present time.
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