Der explodierende Kopf

VISION OF THE WORK

The exploding Head

Kafka’s work is permeated with moments of extreme anxiety. Moments in which adrenaline surges and blood pressure rises. Veins that appear to constrict pump vast quantities of blood, the pressure of which could make one believe that one’s head is about to explode.
Many of the great author’s works contain such situations, which, triggered by the protagonist, spill over onto the reader. It is not uncommon for entire works to be staged with such oppressive anxiety that climaxes do not occur at all, but act as a permanent state.

In The Judgement, a story that begins innocently enough culminates in one of the most unusual showdowns in world literature: the beloved father sentences his son to death by drowning, and the son promptly carries out the sentence, as his life and existence explode, blur and dissolve at the moment the sentence is pronounced. As is so often the case with Kafka, this moment happens almost silently, as if in slow motion. Georg does not run noisily out of the house, but rather, trapped in the inevitability of the sentence, he is magically drawn outside onto the street, towards the bridge, from which he then throws himself down without hesitation. It is not his father who seems to drive him into the river; he himself is pulled by his own inner world on an invisible string.
The ‘I’ that drives him – I imagine it as a bright sound in my inner ear – could only be a soprano for me. Thus, the actual ‘fall’ is bright, almost friendly, during which Georg wants to whisper only a soft, quiet ‘Dear parents, I have always loved you’ before death takes hold of him, almost casually.

Christian Jost

HIRE SHEET MUSIC

THE WORK IN THE MEDIA