most of these rats here are just rats

but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him

he used to be a poet himself

night after night I have written poetry for you

on your typewriter

and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet

comes out of his hole when it is done

and reads it and sniffs at it

he is jealous of my poetry

…

and after he has read it he sneers

and then he eats it

Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel

I had almost as much trouble copying that out of my copy of archy and mehitabel as Archy, the vers libre poet reincarnated into a cockroach, had leaving messages on Don Marquis' office typewriter in the 1920s. My problem, of course, was Word, which is bossy. Of course, Archy could have used Word, being unable to press the SHIFT key.

I fell in love with Archy many years ago, as a teenager. I fell instantly out of love with this book a few years later:

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen, von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichem Niedergleiten bereit, kaum noch erhalten konnte.

Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung

Don't panic. I'll translate in a minute. German instructors used to be dumb enough to assign this text to intermediate students, with predictably awful results.

'Herr Gheorgheni, I'm going to have to give up German. I don't understand it at all. I mean, I thought I did, but now I'm not sure.'

'What did you think it said?'

Gulp. 'I thought it said the guy woke up and was a giant bug.'

'That's right…it's a German thing, you'll get used to it.'

When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found himself in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect. He lay there on his armoured back; when he raised his head a bit, he could see his concave, brown, articulated belly, upon whose promontory the coverlet, on the point of sliding away completely, was scarcely able to maintain its position.

DG Translation of Kafka's mess

If you're philosophically or philologically inclined, you could get into a long and absorbing argument about that translation. Is the insect 'monstrous' or merely 'enormous'? Did Kafka want to lead us to a nuanced understanding of his first sentence by using that multivalent word 'ungeheuer'?

If you like to chew on things like this – and it's just another form of nerdiness, neither more nor less irritating than rambling on about dinosaurs or motorcycle engine numbers – then you'll really enjoy Kafka's Die Verwandlung. Just please don't call it Metamorphosis at your oral exam. I know of someone who failed his master's exam that way. (He'd been reading the syllabus in translation, and that's a no-no.) If you can chew this kind of thing up and spit out thesis papers, then you also know that Kafka isn't meant to be fun.

Kafka is Art. And Art, to these people, is not fun.

A colleague of mine in graduate school was just this sort of nerd. He took it all (and himself) very seriously. That's why he was really unhappy with Professor Dr Quackenbusch. Dr Q, a bibliographer, wasn't really interested in the contents of books. He was interested in their archive details: where they were stored, how to locate them for reference, who was in charge of them, etc. He was also an inveterate gossip and heavy name-dropper, so he spent a lot of time regaling students with anecdotes about all the famous writers and historical figures he'd known.

The story he didn't tell us, which we heard from other students, was about how much time the professor had spent hanging around Somerset Maugham in the hopes of getting to be in charge of his Nachlass   – the books and papers he'd leave behind, usually to a university or major research institute. Apparently, Maugham found this so funny that he'd parodied our professor in one of his books. I'm not sure which one, because I'm not a Maugham fan and he didn't write in German, so nuts to him, I don't have to.

Anyway, one evening the Champion of Real and Earnest Study confronted Prof Dr Quackenbusch with the demand that we actually discuss and analyse the book we'd just read. The Professor looked taken aback.

'Are you sure you want to do this?' he asked mildly. The Champion nodded grimly. Prof Dr Q smiled. 'All right. Did you like the book?'

Dead silence around the seminar table. Nobody had ever asked us this question. Not in 18 years of education. The Champ was beside himself.

'Did. I,' through clenched teeth, 'Like. The. Book?' Prof Dr Q nodded, appearing genuinely interested in the answer.

The Champ looked lost. 'Well, er, not really….' Stiffening his resolve, 'But you aren't supposed to like or dislike literature. You're supposed to study it.'

I was present at this seminar. Somehow, I managed not to burst out laughing. We got through the next two hours, though I don't quite remember how.

So what were we talking about?

Oh, yes. Art versus Entertainment.

My view is that Don Marquis' book archy and mehitabel, which is about people who have undergone metempsychosis and reflect on their condition, is Art with a capital A. The poems are also wildly entertaining. How to prove it? I know! Y'all like animated films! Here's the musical 'Shinbone Alley'. It's based on archy and mehitabel and has Carol Channing in it.

In my humble opinion, bearing in mind that I have Degrees in This Stuff, Kafka's Die Verwandlung, which is about a man who undergoes metempsychosis in his own lifetime and reflects on his condition, is also Art with a capital A. However, it fails to be very entertaining. Trust me on this. In order to make it entertaining, you need the Doctor.

More specifically, you need Peter Capaldi. Who wrote and directed Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. Generations of perplexed German students will thank him. They will remain perplexed, but at least now they will have been entertained.

PS

If you were expecting me to say something cogent about the difference between Art and Entertainment, or deliver a sermon on how you can do both, dream on. Read archy and mehitabel. Read Kafka, if you can stand to. Watch the videos. Ruminate and draw inspiration. Try not to turn into a bug at the same time.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

02.09.19 Front Page

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