What did Kafka mean when he said: "You are the task. Not a single student around"?

One Answer

1. Let us recall that Kafka began his work a hundred years after the end of the Enlightenment. In terms of the development of literature and human thought, a hundred years is not such a long time. Processes that now seem obvious to us, then smacked of novelty. That is, when it flourished in literary terms, not so much time has passed since people stopped living according to the ideas of an ideal and rationally based system of life for a person who has a divine origin.�

   Kafka, as a bright representative of modernism and Expressionism, found himself in a world that raised many questions and offered no answers. He felt like a very lonely person, while experiencing strong anxiety from the realization of the tragedy of life.

   This disturbing loneliness is evident in all his works, especially in the famous Transformation, where the main character turns into an insect, completely alienated from the closest people. Kafka was, as it is now fashionable to say, an introvert, deeply immersed in his own experiences and reflections. The inner world seemed no less mysterious to him than the outer one, and he was meticulously dissecting his own mental structure, his disturbing loneliness.�

   This “task” was to understand oneself, to understand the essence of human nature, to overcome one's demons, to overcome one's existential fear, to jump into the depths of one's Self.�

   This also includes another popular quote from him: “Love is a knife with which I dig into myself.” That is, he even used relationships with other people as a tool for understanding himself. “Not a single student around” is again about existential loneliness, which at that time had not yet managed to fill the literature with its teeth.

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