The Burrow: Posthumously Published Short Fiction

by Franz Kafka

  I flatter myself that by my questions I may have stirred up these things. One begins to seek causes, to stammer together a kind of aetiology – yes, one begins, and of course will never get beyond the beginning. But it’s something – a beginning. The truth may not appear – one won’t get that far – but at least something of the deeply rooted nature of the lie. All the nonsensical aspects of life, most especially the most nonsensical ones, allow themselves to be justified. Not completely – that’s the fiendish nature of what one is up against – but enough to guard against difficult questions. I’ll take the air-dogs by way of example again. They are not arrogant, as one might at first have supposed; they are if anything perhaps especially needy of their fellow dogs. If you try and put yourself in their position, you will understand. Even if they can’t do so openly – that would violate the rule of silence – they are obliged in one way or another to seek absolution for their way of life, or at least to distract from it, obscure it, which they do, so I am told, by their almost unbearable garrulousness. They are forever holding forth, whether about their philosophy, to which, since they have almost completely abandoned physical exertion, they are able to devote themselves, or about the observations they are able to make from their comparative altitude. And even though they don’t shine in terms of their intellect, which is only too understandable given the frivolous nature of their lives, and their philosophy is as worthless as their observations so that they become almost useless to science, which fortunately doesn’t depend on such miserable auxiliary sources, even so, when you ask what air-dogs are for, the answer you keep hearing is that they contribute an awful lot to science. ‘True,’ you reply, ‘only it’s a lot that is worthless and maddening.’ The next answer is a shrug of the shoulders, a change of subject, a show of irritation or laughter, and in a while, the next time you ask, it is only to be told again that they contribute to science, and finally, should the question be put to you, you don’t think about it too much and you make the very same reply. And maybe it’s a good thing not to be too obdurate and to give in, maybe not conceding those air-dogs already extant have some purpose in their lives, which would be impossible, but at least to tolerate them. You can’t ask for more than that, and then of course you do. You ask for tolerance to be extended to more and more air-dogs as they multiply. You don’t exactly know where they come from. Do they procreate by the conventional method? Do they have the strength? After all there’s not much more to them than a beautiful pelt, so what there is going to actually procreate? And if the improbable should happen, when would it take place? They are only ever seen in splendid isolation and if they condescend to run around at all, it’s only for a little while, a few sashaying strides and always lost – it is claimed – in solitary thought, from which, even if they tried, they cannot break free. At least so they tell us. If these creatures don’t manage to procreate, is it conceivable that dogs would come forward who freely renounce life on terra firma, in order to become air-dogs, and in exchange for a modicum of comfort and a certain technical prestige, choose that arid, pillowed life?

  I say no. I think neither procreation nor voluntary renunciation is conceivable. But the facts prove to us that there are always new air-dogs around; from this we are driven to conclude that even if the hindrances are insuperable in our understanding, a breed of dogs once in existence and however peculiar will not be rendered extinct – or at least not easily, not without some aspect in each breed that will stick up for itself long and hard. And then, am I not compelled to think, if this holds true for such an eccentric, meaningless, visually freakish, unviable breed as the air-dog, will it not equally hold true for my own? And I am externally not at all out of the run of dogs that is very often met with, at least in these parts, in no way either conspicuous or contemptible; certainly in my youth and still to some degree into manhood, as long as I didn’t neglect myself and took a modicum of exercise, I was a moderately attractive specimen, my front aspect especially came in for praise, my trim legs, the graceful carriage of my head, but also my grey-white-yellow fur, curling at the ends was much admired; but none of it stood out, the only remarkable thing about me is my nature, but even that, as I never tire of pointing out, is squarely rooted in the general canine character. Now, if the air-dog is not left celibate, and here and there in greater dogdom a willing individual is found, and they can produce heirs even ex nihilo, then why may I not be certain that I have not been abandoned? Of course my fellow dogs must have a particular destiny, and their existence will never visibly help me, not least because I will never acknowledge them. We are those who are oppressed by silence, who break it merely in order to breathe; the others seem to feel at ease in it, though that is only in appearance, as with the musical dogs, who were in harmony and apparent tranquillity, while in reality they were tremendously agitated. But the outward appearance is strong – one may seek to outwit it, but it mocks all our attempts.

  So how do my fellow dogs help one another? What kind of attempts do they make to live in spite of everything? What do they look like? There are probably different answers. I tried with my attempts at questioning, while I was young. It might be an idea to stick to those who are given to asking questions themselves, and then I would have some company. For a time I tried that too, in spite of myself, because the ones that most bother me are the ones from whom I want answers; the ones who keep butting in with questions I usually can’t answer are merely repulsive to me. Anyway, who doesn’t like to ask questions while he’s still young? How am I to find the right ones among the many, many questioners? One question sounds much like another, it’s a matter of the intention behind it, which is often concealed even from the questioner. Anyway, questioning is an idiosyncrasy among dogs; they ask their questions all at once, as though to conceal the traces of the real questioner. No, I won’t find a confederate among the questioners, the young ones, any more than I do among the silent ones and the old ones, to whom I now belong. What’s the point of questions anyway, I’ve failed with them; probably my fellow dogs are far cleverer than I am, and apply different and excellent methods of their own for coping with this life, methods, admittedly, that may be useful to them in appeasing or disguising who they are, may calm or lull or disguise what they are, but in general they will be just as ineffectual as mine because, look about me as I may, I see little sign of success in any quarter. I fear I will recognize a confederate by anything but success.

  So where are they then? Yes, that’s what lies at the heart of my complaint. Where are they? Everywhere and nowhere. It may be my neighbour, three steps away – we often call out to one another, he comes and sees me from time to time – I never visit him. So is he my twin soul? I don’t know, I see nothing in him that I recognize, but it’s possible. Possible, but hardly likely; if he’s somewhere out of sight, in play and using all my imagination, I can indeed discern various suspiciously familiar qualities in him, but when I see him standing in front of me, I have to laugh at my fantasy. An old dog, a little shorter than I am (and I am barely average height), brown, short-haired, with a tired, drooping head, shuffling gait, and trailing his left hind leg, the consequence of some illness. I’ve not been on such close terms with anyone for a long time; I’m glad I can manage to tolerate him, and when he goes home I call out the friendliest things after him, not out of affection, but out of self-contempt, because as I watch him turn and go, I find him perfectly repulsive, the way he slinks off with that dragging foot of his and his hindquarters so dismally low to the ground. Sometimes I have the feeling I’m humiliating myself when I think of him as an associate at all. In our conversations he certainly doesn’t indicate any sort of association: he is clever, and by our standards here, fairly cultured, and I’m sure there’s much I could learn from him, but is it really cleverness and culture I’m looking for? We mostly talk about parochial things and I am regularly astonished – sensitized as I am in this respect by my solitariness – how much mind is required even for an ordinary dog, even in normal, not unduly adverse
circumstances, to preserve himself from the standard perils of life. Science gives us rules, but understanding them only from a distance and in rough outline is not easy, and if one has understood them, then the difficult part begins, which is how they apply to local conditions. Hardly anyone can help you with that, almost every hour poses new problems, and every new patch of ground has special difficulties; no one can claim to be well-set for the long run, or that his life takes care of itself, not even I, whose requirements seem to dwindle from one day to the next. And all this effort – to what end? Only to bury yourself so deeply in silence that no one will ever be able to pull you out of it.

  We like to celebrate the progress of dogdom; though probably what we mean is the progress of science. Indeed, science makes great strides, it is unstoppable; it even seems to accelerate, move ever more quickly, but what is worth celebrating about that? It’s as if someone were to make a great fuss of becoming older with the passing years and approaching death ever more rapidly. I call that a natural process, and not even an attractive one at that, and I find nothing worth celebrating in it. All I see is decline, by which I don’t mean that previous generations were superior – no, they were just younger, their memory was not so burdened as ours today, it was easier to get them to speak, and even if no one succeeded in doing it, the sense of possibility was greater, and it is this greater potential that so rouses us as we listen to those old, really rather unsophisticated stories. Every now and again we hear a promising word, and it’s almost enough to get us to leap up, if it wasn’t that we felt the burden of the centuries weighing us down. No, whatever I have against my own time, previous generations were no better, and in some respects they were much feebler and much worse. Miracles weren’t performed in the streets then to be apprehended by all and sundry, but the dogs were somehow – I can think of no other way of saying this – not as doggish as they are today, dogdom was more loosely associated, the true word could have played a role, to change or revise the structure, at anyone’s will, even turning it into its opposite, and the word at least felt close at hand, it was on the tip of the tongue, anyone could learn it. Today, where has it got to, today one could reach into the bowels of language and not find it! Our generation may be lost, but it is more innocent than its predecessors. I can understand our hesitation; in fact it’s no longer just hesitation, it’s the forgetting of a dream dreamed and forgotten for the first time a thousand nights ago. Who would hold it against us that we have forgotten it for the thousandth time?

  But I can understand the hesitation of our forefathers too. We probably wouldn’t have behaved any differently: I almost feel like saying, good for us, that it wasn’t us who had to shoulder the guilt; rather that, in a world already darkened by others, we had to hasten towards death in an almost guilt-free silence. When our forefathers lost their way, they probably wouldn’t have thought of an unending wilderness; they could probably still see the crossroads and it would have been easy enough to return there at any time, so only because they wanted to enjoy their dogs’ lives a little longer – it wasn’t really a dog’s life, and if it already struck them as intoxicatingly lovely, imagine what it would be like later, at least a little later – they wandered on. They didn’t know what we can now sense from our contemplation of history, that the soul changes faster than life does, and that when their dog’s life began to please them, they must already have had ancient souls, and they weren’t as close to the starting point as maybe they thought, or as their eye, delighting in all those doggish joys, tried to convince them was the case. Who today can still speak of youth in any meaningful way? They were the true young dogs, but unfortunately their only ambition was to become old dogs, something they couldn’t fail at, as every subsequent generation proves, and ours, the latest, proves best of all.

  All these were things that of course I didn’t speak of to my neighbour, but I often think of them when sitting with him, that typical old dog, or bury my muzzle in his fur, which already has something of the smell of a carcass. It would be pointless to talk about those things, with him or anyone else. I know what course the conversation would follow. He would offer a few little objections here and there, but in the end he would agree with me – agreement is our best defence – and the issue would be laid to rest. Why even bother digging it up in the first place? And yet, in spite of everything, there is perhaps a deeper accord with my neighbour that goes beyond mere words. I won’t stop insisting on it, even though I have no evidence for it, and am perhaps subject simply to a very basic delusion, because he’s the only party I’ve been in communication with for a long time, and so I am obliged to stick to him. ‘Are you perhaps my comrade after all? In your own way? And you’re ashamed because it’s all gone wrong? See, I feel exactly the same way. When I’m alone, I cry about it; come, if there are two of us, it’ll be sweeter.’ That’s what I think sometimes and fix his eye. He doesn’t lower his glance, but there’s nothing to be heard from him either; he looks at me expressionlessly, and wonders why I have allowed a break in our conversation, and don’t say anything. But perhaps that look is his way of asking, and I disappoint him, just as he disappoints me. In my youth, if no other questions had seemed more important to me and I had had enough of myself, then I might have asked him out loud, might have got his quiet agreement in response, less than today, when he’s silent. But isn’t everyone silent? What keeps me from believing that they’re all my comrades, that I didn’t just find the occasional fellow researcher, sunk and forgotten along with his insignificant results, inaccessible beyond the darkness of the times, or the hustle of the present; but instead that I have had comrades in everyone always, all of them, in keeping with their nature, trying hard, all without success, all taciturn or gabby, as is inevitable. But then I would never have had to keep myself separate, I could have remained among the others, wouldn’t have had to barge my way out like an ill-bred child through lines of grown-ups, who all wanted to go as much as I did, and whose sense is all that confuses me, that tells them that no one will get out, and that all attempts to push are foolish.

  Such thoughts are undoubtedly influenced by my neighbour; he confuses me, he makes me melancholy; and yet he’s happy enough by himself, at least when I hear him on his patch, calling out and singing in that irritating way of his. It would be good to dispense with this last element of society, not to pursue vague dreams of the sort that any dealings with dogs are bound to produce, no matter how tough you think you’ve become, and to use the little bit of time remaining to me exclusively for my investigations. The next time he comes calling, I will hide away and pretend to be asleep, and I will do that until he finally gives up altogether.

  Also a measure of disorganization has crept into my research. I am falling behind, I am getting tired, I just trot along mechanically, where once I would leap ahead enraptured. I’m thinking back to the time when I first began to investigate the question ‘Where does the earth take our nourishment from?’ Then, admittedly, I lived amongst the crowd, I forced my way in where they were at their densest, I wanted everyone to be a witness to my work, their observations were even more important to me than my work, since I was still in expectation of some sort of general effect. That of course gave me huge encouragement, which as a solitary dog I no longer get. At that time, though, I was so strong that I did something unheard of, something that flies in the face of all our principles, and that any eye-witness from the time will recall as extraordinary. I found in one aspect of the science, which generally favours extreme specialization, a curious simplification. It teaches us that it is principally the earth that produces our food, and, having stated that, goes on to list the methods by which the various foods can be produced in their best condition and their greatest abundance. Now it’s true of course, food does come from the ground, there is no doubting that, but it’s really not so simple as in that bald statement, to the extent that it excludes all further research. Take the type of primitive incident that occurs every day. If we were wholly idle (as I in fact alr
eady almost am) and after perfunctorily tending the soil we rolled ourselves up and waited for what was coming, then we would indeed find our food on the ground – assuming, that is, that there was any food forthcoming at all. But this is hardly the rule. Whoever has managed to retain a modicum of open-mindedness vis-à-vis the science – and there are not many, as the circles that science likes to trace are ever-expanding – will easily see, even in the absence of specific observations, that the greater part of the nourishment on the ground will have come from above; sometimes, depending on our dexterity and the degree of our hunger, we even manage to intercept most of it before it touches the ground at all. Now, I’m not saying anything against the science; of course it’s the earth that produces this nourishment, whether it summons it up from itself or calls it down from above hardly matters, and the science that has established that working the ground is necessary perhaps doesn’t need to get itself involved in any more detail than that; after all, as we like to say: ‘If you’ve got your munchies in your mouth, your problems are over for the time being.’ But it seems to me that at least in a veiled way, science is partly concerned with these things, seeing that it does acknowledge there are two principal methods of sourcing food, namely working the soil and then the subtly complementary activities of speech, dance and song. While this may not be a complete dichotomy, it does seem to bear out my distinction. In my opinion, tilling the ground works to secure both types of nourishment and is always indispensable; speech, dance and song are less concerned with ground provisioning in the strict sense, and more with the drawing down of sustenance from above. In adopting this view, I am supported by tradition. Here the populace corrects science without apparently knowing it, and without science daring to oppose it. If, as science likes to claim, those ceremonies are exclusively concerned with serving the soil, say by giving it strength, then to be logical they would have to be performed on the ground, and everything would have to be whispered, chanted and danced in the direction of the ground. So far as I know, that’s what science would have us do anyway. But here’s the thing: the popular ceremonies are directed at the air. It’s not a violation of science, science doesn’t seek to stamp it out, it leaves the ploughman his discretion; in its teachings it is focused entirely on the soil, and if the ploughman performs these teachings on the ground, then it is satisfied, but its thinking, to my mind, should really be more sophisticated. And I, who was never deeply inducted into science, cannot for the life of me imagine how learned men can tolerate our people, passionate as they are, calling out the magic words into the air, wailing our old folk lamentations at the air, and performing leaping dances as if, quite forgetting the ground, they wanted to hang in the air forever. My starting point was to stress these contradictions. Each time that, according to the principles of science, harvest time drew near, I confined my attentions to the soil; I scraped it in my dancing, I twisted my head to be as close to it as I could; later I dug a furrow for my muzzle and sang and declaimed in such a way that only the ground might hear it and no one else above me or beside me.