In Bertolucci's "Conformist" there is a scene in which the conformist meets his one-time professor of philosophy. They evoke old memories and, in that context, mention professor's lecture on Plato's allegory of the cave. The scene, as well as the film itself, happens in fascist Italy between two world wars. In between those old days and the time of the meeting, professor had openly declared himself as a fascist and became a member of the Party. His ex-student, like a real conformist and petit bourgeois, is still reluctant and perplexed. He hasn't yet emancipated himself from the ideology of humanism and emancipation. That's exactly why he mentions those long gone times and the things his professor had lectured then. It seems to him that professor has denied and betrayed his own words. The latter, of course, thinks differently. The scene ends before the end, in the middle of discussion. We have no way of knowing who "won", who turned out to be "right". Both positions are suspended, left to flote freely in their simultaneity and equally valuable. We are, in fact, deprived of a so-called right interpretation.

Thus, if we are, for example, used to have a positive attitude, we could acknowledge Bertolucci in the way Engels once did Balzac; namely, by saying that he, in spite of his overt anti-fascism and communism, resisted political tendency, that Bertolucci the realist overcame the communist in himself, and so on and so forth. If, on the other hand, we have this trendy negative attitude, we could say that it is just another mimicry of a communist hard-liner, that something stinks there, but we just aren't sure what. We might even say that the scene confirms Bertolucci's fascism, that he himself is a petit bourgeois, and who knows what else.

All that, however, is of no interest for us here. The scene is interesting, intriguing, manifold, and therefore good, the least because of those reasons. In fact, in itself it is not at all interesting nor worthy. But still, it is (both formally and materially) an excellent example of modern allegory. And that equally of the modern and the allegorical in it.

Everything is there: the atmosphere in which modern allegory is formed as such; its inner structure; its relation with other artistic and rhetorical (discursive) forms and devices, above all its opposition towards the symbol and the symbolic; hence the whole historical and theoretical baggage it carries with/within itself. In all this we find the strong presence of that characteristically allegorical polysemy and ambiguity. One could say that this scene is an allegory of allegory, more precisely a modern allegory of classical allegory. Within this framework, though, the question of the relationship between allegory and symbol, the opposition around which moves the whole history of the notion of allegory, necessarily imposes itself.

The Break

Just like "modern", "classic", "baroque", "romantic", etc., had long ago ceased to be denotations of artistic styles and became structures, constructions and figures/configurations of a certain spirit of the time; so "allegory" and "symbol" aren't any more (or not only) just stylistic or rhetorical figures. They have become figures of thought and representation, patterns or (arche)types of discursive procedures; and that as a result of a decisive separation, of a violent break which sharply - and, apparently, definitely - opposes allegory to the symbol. This break is unprecedented, it had never happened that way, never so strongly. It seems extremely radical and unrepeatable.

But, if one looks at it a little closer, he will see the paradox: this break owes all its radicalness to its opposite, that is, to the situation(s) in which symbol and allegory are not-yet or not-any-more mutually opposed. (Quite consequentially, not-yet and not-any-more are simultaneous, the not-yet is always already the not-any-more, and vice versa. What's more, they are not excluded from that which they precede or follow, they are its integral part and essential traits of its - spatial, temporal, logical - structure. They establish and permeate it. By limiting and encircling the structure, they are being introduced into it.) Such liminal cases, therefore, as documents of mutual emancipation, clearly point at the violence which one performs on the other and circumscribe it in all its harshness. They point at the violence itself, at its happening, and not simply at its results. To that extent, allegory can be grasped in its modernity only if it is thought and explained within the perspective of its unity with symbol. The unity which is always already some kind of dispute, strife, conflict, break - der Streit.

The first, not-yet discerned allegory is exactly Plato's allegory of the cave¹. But, it is already not-any-more a simple allegory (as we shall see, in difference to the symbol, there is no "simple allegory", such a thing is unthinkable). The Cave is a symbolic allegory. In it, speech addresses itself to somebody else and points at something else than itself, something beyond itself. In any case, with allegory we have some kind of throwing, throwing-over and, finally, throwing-away.

On the other hand, dialogue as a form presupposes and produces an irreconcilable difference. The direction and relation of that "conversation", that is discourse, is irreversible. To think that dialogue is based on exchange or that it itself is some sort of exchange, is as wrong as to think that exchange stands for some reversible relation of mutuality. Dialogue proves the fallacy of its presupposition time and again. A return never takes place in it, no change happens (change which we, of course, expect from it as a nuclear form of dialectics - but, then again, dialectics itself hasn't got much to do with change and movement). Dialogue disables any transfer of language and sense. There is no returning of the received, nor getting back of the given.

Platonic dialogue is an excellent example for this. Socrates speaks, he never listens. His collocutor (in this case: Glaucon), however, only listens and never really speaks (simple affirmation and affirmative statements aren't speech, much less writing, because they lack the weaving, they lack spaciousness, in a word: substance, and thereby also speech, language in general - insubstantiality is aphasia and agnosia). Speech and listening, even hearing, exclude and negate each other.

On the other hand, the cave, the people in it, the light and the shadows emerging on its walls, the hight above it, as well as the sun that shines there and thus concurrently disperses and gathers, pulls together the blinding light (of knowledge, truth, ideas) - all this acquires a meaning different from the obvious, literal, usual one. This meaning is, of course, dependent on the context of Republic itself, that is, on the network of meaning(s) in which it is entangled or on the language game which is played there - and that one is "the game of truth", more precisely "the metaphysical game". Have they been entangled, plugged in some other network, the sun, the cave, people and things, the light as such, they would all obtain a different place, have different connotations and denote something else. Therefore, this exact meaning is relative and arbitrary. It depends on some meta-instance, which we can for now (already now) call sense (logos).

So, this (as any other) specific meaning depends on the particular "play of the signifier" (Derrida) which is on at the given moment; whereas, from the point of view of the signifier itself, the fact that Plato (that is Socrates; no, it's Plato; maybe still Socrates...; well, it makes no difference, for it is "one soul in two bodies", isn't it) here plays "the metaphysical game", remains completely irrelevant. The name of the game is utterly insignificant for the necessity of playing. The signified itself is equally irrelevant. The only thing that matters to the sender is the sending as such - the manner and the means of sending (by plane, coach, courier, logic, mail, poetry, radio, reason ..., whatever). Both the receiver and the message fall out of the game. They remain unforeseen, unpredicted, contingent, undetermined, in a word: mute.

In this addressing without an addressee and referring without a referent it doesn't matter which particular game is being played, the point is that one always has to play some game. Socrates has to speak and thereby preserve the illusion of speaking to someone, preserve the form of addressing, precisely in order to preserve the truth of the illusion in both senses: the truth as such (for which the illusion is indispensable), as well as the truth of addressing - namely, that it is always some kind of diversion, always some exclusive strategy at work there. For, Socrates never discusses. Rather, he persuades (he persuades his collocutor to stop being that and become a listener, to give up his own opinion, to listen and to obey) and thus dissuades. Hence dialogue, questions, answers, addressing, are symbolic strategies par excellence, strategies of the symbol.

Plato's writing down (listening, recording, reading, playing) of Socrates repeats precisely such strategies. Plato knows exactly why he plays the metaphysical game, he knows what he wants and to whom he wants to send an exact and determined meaning. In him, the goal and the means of signification are not merely present, but are very tightly connected and interwoven. The context of Republic - theory of ideas and the imaginary working-out of an ideal political community - is a clear key to the allegory. That context gives unequivocal instructions as to how and in what direction the polysemy of allegorical elements should be reduced. It defines the referent, that is the receiver, one-sidedly. The key, the decoder is, therefore, given. But, and that is immensely important, it is given from the outside, "on the side", it is transcendent to the thing itself. It is inscribed, i.e. subscribed, to the recording and writing only afterwards. It is something external that violently infringes on them. The key (as even the sparrows on the tree know) has its own particular form, transcendent to writing and dialogue. This form is the voice, for only voice cracks open this logic lock. And, it is not just any voice, but exactly Socrates' voice, which is at the same time close and far away, clear and blurred, brisk and husky, shouting and whispering at once. It is a voice that comes from the outside, but that only in order to be heard better on the inside and thereby more easily pull us out (deliver) from the womb/grave, from the body/sign (soma/sema)² in which we have, so very allegorically, buried and petrified ourselves. It comes from the outside in order to drag us out and carry us away towards the signifier and the signified "by one same move".³ That is why the Allegory of the Cave still isn't yet a symbol, but remains a symbolic allegory, in which and with which the symbol is intertwined and interwoven. The symbol is not yet clearly separated and different, it is not yet discerned from allegory.

Like Plato, one modern philosopher is also playing the metaphysical game. That philosopher is, of course (?!), Heidegger. No matter how hard he tries to change the game, no matter how much he shouts and complains against metaphysics, it always comes back to him and at him, and bursts out precisely in places where the "essential thinking" should be happening. Aside from statements such as the one about living the end of metaphysics (which, after all, isn't so exemplary, since there immediately follows the "task of thinking" after that); the fact that Heidegger plays exactly the metaphysical game, becomes obvious in the places where he differs - but does not separate - allegory and symbol.

"..das Kunstwerk über das Dinghafte hinaus noch etwas anderes ist. Dieses Andere, was daran ist, macht das Künstlerische aus. Das Kunstwerk ist zwar ein angefertigtes Ding, aber es sagt noch etwas anderes, also das blosse Ding selbst ist, allo agoreuei Das Werk macht mit Anderem öffentlich bekannt, es offenbart Anderes; es ist Allegorie. Mit dem angefertigten Ding wird im Kunstwerk noch etwas Anderes zusammengebracht. Zusammenbringen heisst griechisch sumballein. Das Werk ist Symbol. Allegorie und Symbol geben die Rahmenvorstellung her, in deren Blickbahn sich seit langem die Kennzeichnung des Kunstwerks bewegt. Allein, dieses Eine am Werk, was ein Anderes offenbart, dieses Eine, was mit einem Anderen zusammenbringt, ist das Dinghafte im Kunstwerk. Fast scheint es, das Dinghafte im Kunstwerk sei wie der Unterbau, darein und darüber das Andere und eigentliche gebaut ist"⁴.

In the work of art, therefore, we have, on one hand, pointing at the Other (das Andere), which pointing as such cannot determine that Other, so it leaves its place open, empty, undetermined, or not-yet-determined; and on the other, the gathering (zusammen-bringen) of that Other - that is, of everything that could come to (come in) its place - and thereby its determination as a negation and reduction of this possibility⁵. Thus, at the "end of metaphysics", the situation is similar as it was at its beginning, only now it is the allegorical symbol that rules philosophy. In spite of apparent allegoricalness of his language, Heidegger opts for symbol and the symbolic.

Heidegger's decision for the very thing that is to be surpassed (überwinden), especially in the domain and concept of language, cannot be elaborated extensively here. Sufficient proof is given already in the text about the origin of the work of art. Thus, for example, the revealing of the "equipmental being of the equipment, reliability", unambiguously functions as that which gathers things in itself, that is, as a symbolic center and a goal of symbolization as such⁶. The same, or at least similar move one finds later on, when Heidegger talks about the "self-subsistence" (Insichstehen or Insichselbststehen) of the work⁷.

The work of art is essentially a symbolic product, rather than allegorical. This is particularly clear when Heidegger emphasizes essentiality and necessity of the work's contextuality, of its embeddedness and entangledness in the network of relationships. Since these relationships are the ones it itself opens and holds within itself, the work is the very symbolic center mentioned earlier. Namely, Heidegger says:

"Gehört nicht zum Werk, dass es in Beziehungen steht? Allerdings, nur bleibt zu fragen, in welchen es steht. Wohin gehört ein Werk? Das Werk gehört als Werk einzig in den Bereich, der durch es selbst eröffnet wird. Denn das Werksein des Werkes west und west nur in solcher Eröffnung"⁸.

All this receives its full expression after the development of the relationship between the Earth and the World within the work of art, in which the allegorical "confusion" of self-concealing Earth is always finally illuminated and formed in the World, which as such brings it to individuation, more precisely, to its individual appearance. And, in spite of his full consciousness of the necessity of the strife (der Streit), Heidegger identifies art - as the setting-into-work of truth - with poetry (Dichtung) as "projective saying", which, "in preparing the sayable, simultaneously bring the unsayable as such into the world"⁹.

When one reminds himself of Schelling and the romantics, the emphatic symbolism of Heidegger's position comes to light. And that not only within aesthetics and art, but on the whole of "essential thinking", so that "Alle Kunst ist als Geschehenlassen der Ankunft der Warheit des Seienden als eines solches im Wesen Dichtung. Das Wesen der Kunst, worin das Kunstwerk und der Künstler zumal beruhen, ist das Sich-ins-Werk-setzen der Wahrheit... Kraft des ins Werk gesetzten Entwurfes der sich uns zu-werfenden Unverborgenheit des Seienden wird durch das Werk alles Gewöhnliche und Bisherige zum Unseienden"¹⁰.

A little further follows tour de force of gathering, that is, of symbol and symbolization: "Das entwerfende Ansagen wird sogleich zur Absage an alle dumpfe Wirrnis, in der sich das Seiende verhüllt und entzieht. Das entwerfende Sagen ist Dichtung"¹¹.

Heidegger's differences (between Earth and World, work of art and equipment, thing and its thingly element, poesy and poetry, and, of course, between Being and beings) are, therefore, essentially symbolic - which is to say that they don't discern nor defer, but rather decide, separate, they are not differences in the sense of differing and deferring, but rather exclusions and "renunciations". His separations do not let the separated subsist concurrently in their difference and as different. Heideggerian difference negates that which is essential for difference as such: the simultaneousness of the different. Rather, it brings forth (in itself and with itself) decision as exclusion and negation of the other, it is a decision in favour of one (or some) against other form (forms), where the presence of one means the absence of others, renunciation of all others. As in allegory, the relationship between signifier and the signified here remains undecided, precarious, reluctant, changeable and constantly alternating. But, Heidegger does not leave it at that, or at least doesn't let it exist simultaneously in its entirety. He immediately animates the typically allegorical relationship by a series of decisions he takes. Refusal, renunciation, Absage of the decision is allegorist's major decision. But, exactly that decision we do not (and never will) find in Heidegger.

Allegorical relationship is, on the contrary, a petrified coexistence of signifier and the signified, standstill and frozenness of the significative relation as an undecidedness between those two, ambiguity in respect to each of them. Refusal of decision, or the decision to remain undecided is surely the hardest one to make, the one that requires greatest courage and strength. It costs so much. It sentences an allegorist to a life-long solitude and melancholy. Still, he must never give up on it if he wants to survive as allegorist; for, exactly that decision survives, manifests itself in and as allegory and the allegorical.

To decide and take a stand for allegory means, above all, to reject symbolic order and its coercion. For, it is characteristic of symbol to preserve the choice of a definite meaning, to point at some specific referent or object, and to do that in a decisive manner. That is to say that symbol, in pointing to something other than itself, always carries a definite and strict intention within itself. This other, the intended, is determined in advance and, in fact, already given in the symbol. The otherness of the other is limited. As intended, it completely falls within the logic of symbolizing and its claim for completeness and totality. And, no matter how many detours and deferments it makes and undergoes, its direction is firm and determined - so that all those detours are counted in it in advance. Symbol has an exact intention and a pre-established manner of intending. It seems implacable, inexorable on its way to the intended, especially in eliminating the unfit intentions. One can be sure that it will reach its destination sooner or later. Hence, the structure of symbolizing resembles a significative relation, its intentionality is of a signifying nature, and the symbol appears as a sign. But, whereas there can still be some doubt about the necessity of sign, whereas the sign can still be regarded as arbitrary and conventional; symbol, symbolizing, and the symbolic order as such, are based on the decidedness of this relationship, they are based on the necessity of decision(s) and exclusion(s).

Allegory, on the other hand, negates signification by means of its abundance and over-saturation. It multiplies signifying relations in itself. This superfluity of symbolization prevents its accomplishing and holds on to the arbitrariness of meaning, for "in their meaninglessness the emblems are arbitrarily exchangeable"¹². As an expression of convention, allegory emphasizes the conventionality as such. In doing that, it leaves the intention floating in its not-yet-decided state, so that the intended meaning cannot show itself, it cannot be formed because it is over-formed. By stopping symbolizing half-way, allegory forbids the decision indispensable for symbol's becoming what it is; it excludes the exclusion inherent in symbol and thereby dissolves and breaches the barrier between the word (name, text) and the world, or between the work of art and its environment.

Allegory thus appears as an interrupted and excessive symbolization. The meaning, the precise referent intended by the symbol, remains unknown, precarious and uncertain. The uncertainty of meaning destroys it. By not letting meaning emerge as such, allegory obstructs, prevents, and finally destroys the chain of signification. For, in the first place, allegory can mean anything. If not literally everything, then at least more than one thing; and when it comes to meaning, more than one is always too many. On the other hand, since the presence of convention in allegory is always obvious, it not only destroys the illusion of necessity of significative connection, but emphasizes its looseness and contingency. In meaning too many things, then, allegory means nothing - meaning everything is as good as having no meaning at all. This meaningless multiplicity of meaning is due to the lack of decision on the meaning. Decision falls out of allegory, it has to come from the outside, to be interpolated into it, or imposed on it. Thanks to this excess in signifying, e.g. symbolizing, all possibilities are still in play, all options are still open, and allegorical image is really "the living image open for all possible corrections"¹³. In other words, by holding all the options together and not-yet-resolved, this image freezes the course of time and holds it as such, thus enabling any motif or impulse to recur at any time.

When the whole of space and time, the whole of reality and history, is seen allegorically—and, thereby, simultaneously, all together and at once, in a single glance and image—everything is expressible, everything can be said or written. For allegory, and in it, there is nothing unsayable. In allegorical scene there is neither anything concealed, nor any obscenity. Or, if there is, than it is in/on the scene, and have thereby already ceased to be such. For, allegory takes over the original sense of the word obscene, equally respecting both its elements. In allegory, obscenity is obscene, that is, ob-scenae, ob-scenicum - where ob means: towards, to, by, in front of; whereas scena, scenicum, means a scene, publicity, the scenic, appearing, imitative. Understood in this way, the obscene is that which awaits in front of the scene, somewhere by it, or which goes towards it, something that strives for publicity, something that wants to appear on the scene and imitate (anything). In difference to obscenity, the obscene is by all means something that will certainly enter the scene, the public sphere. The waiting of the obscene in front of the scene (or by, behind it) is only temporary, it ends somewhere sometimes.

In allegory and for it, therefore, exists only the obscene, whereas only in symbolization and the symbolic order is obscenity as such possible. And not only obscenity, but also the lie, the imaginary, etc.

The Closest Thing to Heaven

Both before and after the break with allegory and his domination over it, symbol was already dominant. Liminal, marginal cases turn out to be central. To that extent, then, the modern operation of separation and removal, performed by Descartes' rational (speculative) surgery, brings nothing really new and unexpected. On the contrary. His strife in the cleft between symbol and allegory, the boiling and melting which are in him so clare et distincte, emerge as the very scene of "renunciation". Symbolic operation denounces and removes allegorical residues and their malignant metastases, it cuts off the remaining tissue of (baroque) "doubt, ambivalence, sadness and the like".

The "final solution" of the allegorical, its erasure from Cogito, so that the latter doesn't "get any ideas", happened in Meditations. With the proving of God's existence, a determined symbolic center, the very goal of symbolization emerges in all its clarity and articulateness.

"Quod autem ad Deum attinet, certe nisi praejudiciis obruere, & rerum sensibilium imagines cogitationem meam omni ex parte obsiderent, nihil illo prius aut facilius agnoscerem; nam quid ex se est apertius, quàm summum ens esse, sive Deum, ad cujus solius essentiam existentia pertinet, existere?"¹⁴.

The similarity of God's proper place with Heidegger's "Mitte", which opens across a being and holds it in openness, is so obvious that it cannot be fortuitous. The side-story about the menace of imagines, which obsess cogitatio, clearly points at this place as a place of strife, dispute, break (Streit) between body and soul, matter and spirit, picture and thought, signifier and the signified, appearance and the being. In both cases, this strife is established as past. God is cleared of appearances and accidents, and thereby of the dualism that is founded upon him. That's why God is the warrant for every "true and certain knowledge"¹⁵ (which is to say, in fact, the guarantee of knowledge acquired through meditation, that is, of the dualism of body and soul, of res extensa and res cogitans), and therefore can emerge as the ultimate signifier (the one who is always at the same time also the signified), as the center and the goal, the base and the purpose of symbolic order and symbolization as such¹⁶.

Everything gathers (sumballein) in this one unique substance-signifier. Particular signifiers, such as res cogitans and res extensa, receive their signifying force from the outside, from this one and only, ultimate and underlying substance (substantia as subjectum), which is "still/yet" distributed among them. They are only knots of the net weaved around this absolute signifier, of the net which is that signifier itself¹⁷. Therefore I (ego, Cogito) "am not present to my body as a sailor to a ship, but am rather very tightly [arctissime] conjoined and, as it were, mixed to it, so that I make one with it"¹⁸.

Nothing remains from that famous dualism. Symbolism is monism. And that necessarily and completely, for dualism is (as any other pluralism) the source of deceit¹⁹.

Allegory, however, continues to subsist. It subsists within the symbol itself as the perspective and repository of its past, of its "truth", its "true face". And that face is "Medusa head [in which] all features of the world are petrified, a frozen agony" (Nietzsche); for, allegory sees everything post mortem. It recognizes symbolization as mortification.

The critique of this symbolic mortification is the central point of Nietzsche's critique of Descartes²⁰. Nietzsche realized that and how Descartes fell into the trap of language, more precisely grammar, which is a symbolic order par excellence. Grammar presupposes a purely symbolic goal: the universal language, in which the difference between signifier and the signified would disappear, or at least be overcome. That is to say that the difference ought to exist without separation. The structure of Cogito is to serve exactly that purpose. And, exactly this "ought to", according to Nietzsche, witnesses the forcefulness and arbitrariness of that structure - above all, its dependence on God as the (symbolic) center. It (the "ought to") is a clear example of will to power as the very substance of Cogito, and therefore also the substance of language as such. For, in the ergo from Cogito ergo sum there doesn't appear, as Descartes would like it, simple recording of a fact, but the establishment of the "belief in the concept of substance",²¹ as well as the belief in grammar and subject. And, "to believe in grammar is to believe in God"²². That's why Nietzsche was "afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar"²³. The faith in grammar, however, means faith in logic. But, faith in logic excludes the world of existing and becoming things. By their contradictoriness, they only create problems for logic, which then tries to eliminate and replace them with entities compatible to it, i.e. with grammar and its elements. In a word, instead of being, there is "the illusion of being" (Nietzsche), a symbol of being, so that "to opt for logic is to give proof of a lack of virility of the instincts, and it is, definitely, to opt for a truth that is inertia, to opt for death"²⁴.

But, this "opting for death" is recognizable as such only from a developed allegorical perspective, only if it is seen allegorically, if the polysemy of a "simple" idea - of that which, within the symbolic order, takes a precisely determined, constant place, and always has an irreversible, linear relationship with other links in the chain - is realized. That is, polysemy of every single meaning comes to light only in a posthumous perspective.

Posthumous perspective, contrary to the symbolic (mortifying) one, is a de-centred perspective of brokenness, separation, dispersion, fragmentariness and ruinousness. It is a perspective of death and dying/murdering. Exactly because of that, the corpse is the highest emblematic requisite and character, the center of any allegorical constellation. For, the corpse is cold and impersonal, soulless. It has no fixed meaning. In fact, it has no meaning at all (not any more), and is therefore suitable for any use. What is even more important, it is always something late, some after which reveals the truth and purpose of that which precedes it. Thereby it is not only the epitome of death, but also its apotheosis.

In this posthumous perspective lies the greatness and the power of allegory over symbol and Modernity itself. But, this is paid dearly by immense sadness and melancholy. Allegory is what it is always only afterwards. That's why it is always melancholic. In itself, deep down inside, it holds sadness and grief because of the pastness of the past. Just like Gregor Samsa.

But, what about Gregor Samsa?

Well, Gregor Samsa awakes one morning from "uneasy dreams". Since we already know (from Calderon) that "life is a dream", we know that this "one morning" Gregor died. He awakes after death, that is, after life. He is a fresh, not yet cooled-off corpse.

Just awakened from life, still not leaving it entirely, being partly awakened and partly asleep, Gregor still remembers his dreams. The images of his room, of his family house, his sister, mother, father, his neighbours and colleagues from work..., all this is still fresh and so lively. Being thus half asleep, he still communicates with them, as well as with the dream. The story moves in an interspace, in certain meantime in which this communication, this touching, happens. It equilibrates on the edge between life and death.

Let us, therefore, read Metamorphosis as a story about what happens with an allegorical emblem when it is directly confronted with symbols. More precisely, about that which happens when the symbolic becomes allegorical.

Gregor Samsa, then, becomes an emblem of death (death of the symbolic), and Metamorphosis a parable of dying. But, this dying has nothing really tragic in itself. It is not an exceptional event. It happens every day, little by little. It is a normal thing. That's why Gregor Samsa dies many times. He is constantly dying. He is an emblem of death, and death is never only one²⁵.

Death is one only in the symbolic order. Only in such order destruction and dissolution become definite and irreversible. Only there death happens once and for all, irreparably. Death is there without return.

Of course, we are not that eager to admit this consequence of the symbolic; but, on the other hand, we have been subjected to it too long to renounce it (symbolic). So, we once again reach for symbolic requisites. We invent tales and create images of life after life. We build beliefs and argue about the existence of an afterlife.

But, Gregor Samsa and the likes of him remind us how wrong we are. Death is neither final nor definitive, and therefore there is no afterlife. In other words, there is no life beyond life.

Surely, it's not being wrong that bothers us, but the fear that urges us to be wrong. The fear that we are perhaps already dead, that we already live that afterlife, that we are in heaven (or at least as close as one can get to it). The only heaven accessible to us is this hell here - and that's exactly what we refuse to admit. We are afraid, we refuse to admit that "life is a dream", and indeed not so different from the dream of death.

In Metamorphosis, Kafka merges both concepts-images: life/death and dream/awakening, and thus shows that, not only there isn't just one death, but also that Earth is heaven; that we, the earthlings, are heavenly people, and that every awakening is dying. We are reminded of that infinitesimal closeness of death in every moment of our earthly existence. With each its sentence, the story tells us: memento mori! The no-man's land between life and death that extends there, the land which we inhabit, becomes palpable. Our lives do move within that interspace, and hang on a thin thread strung above the abyss of Nothing. This Nothing is not merely death, nor is it just a non-being. It is an absence of either life or death, Nothing as the real total End of everything, even of presence and absence themselves.

In front of this Nothing we feel quite helpless. Nothing that we know, feel, want, etc., seems to hold there. Nothing can be said or done there. First and foremost, all our questions disappear and dissolute into its vastness and emptiness. Nothing can be asked, nothing said about it. Also, because of that, nothing can be thought or felt about it. One can call it total numbness, but that too would be a worthless approximation. No word finds itself in its vicinity. (Gregor Samsa, who is there, remains mute.) Nobody and nothing comes close to it, and yet everything necessarily, sooner or later, falls into it. No matter how many deaths and births one has, it eventually gets him²⁶.

The real loser in this case is the real reality of everything real: language. Especially language in its elementary form of question and questioning. The question form is now not only inappropriate, but also impossible and non-existent. This Nothing, with which we are dealing here, means the absence of question. There is nothing to ask and nothing to ask about, because there is Nothing. Or, to put it reversely, since there is no question, there is Nothing. For, it is question - or rather, the form of question - that constitutes reality by constituting language as a discourse (and language is always, save for some exceptions that confirm the rule, some sort of discourse), and vice versa: language as a discourse constitutes being, the real as such, as something questionable.

The only exit for language, as well as for ourselves, seems to be art as a relief and salvation from truth. For, on the one hand, art mortifies its objects, it sees and treats them as dead and cold (thus in Kafka, thus in music, thus in the genre painting - in which, for example, the difference between nature morte, landscape and portrait rests not upon the treatment of the object, but only upon the quantity of its assumed vividness), thereby mortifying itself to the extent that the artefacts, works of art themselves, now become dead and cold, the dead-cold objects. These are mortified by and through art, and thus promised and secured for eternity. Art itself is mortification: a beautiful mortification. But, by being such beautiful mortification, art also warms up its objects and works. The corpse is being warmed up just enough to reach the temperature level of living corpses, just enough for us to feel cosy in its presence and to make our own death more agreeable - or, better, not completely repulsive. (But, in its agreeableness, art offers no real comfort, no real hope. The agreeability of art reveals total hopelessness and meaninglessness of life as we know it and, for that matter, of death too. Art is not, or not any more, promesse du bonheur! It does not answer to any human need. For, human needs are not human any more. People have the need for happy endings, and desire them as unlimited perpetuations of the present life, as an infinite duration of the closest thing to heaven, as actual presence of Heaven on Earth. These are, however, to be found only in kitsch, media, in the products of the entertainment industry and the like.)

This is all more than obvious in everyday life. We wake up every morning urged to answer all the questions anew. They are the same old ones, but still, even if there are to be given the same answers, they have to be given every day, every moment, over and over again. And we do answer, although we are seldom aware of it. We are not aware of that just as we are not aware of the constant dying and rebirth. In fact, we are desperately trying to avoid such consciousness, to be unaware, not to know, not to remember. Both answering and oblivion represent the art of everyday survival. And, in both cases, Nothing is the utter and ultimate limit. There is no life without language. The absence of speech and writing means the absence of life and death. Muteness is Nothing.

That's why Nothing, as the final death, can emerge only when symbol ceases to be taken as a symbol, when Gregor stops being Gregor, son and brother, and for the symbolic world becomes something undetermined - something never really expressed - that, or it (maybe id?)²⁷. And indeed, it (vaguely, distantly) appears in language only as "it".

At that moment, something that has been there from the very beginning, even before the metamorphosis took place, comes to light: the problem of typically modern, incommunicable experience. Neither Gregor can explain and communicate his state, situation and his feelings to his parents and sister (the little compassion and sympathy the latter have for him in the beginning, quickly withers away), nor can they explain, justify, communicate their thoughts and feelings - nor, for that matter, the reasons of their actions - to Gregor. But, whereas they don't seem to have much interest in doing that, Gregor is full of compassion and understanding for them. He tries to understand. With less and less success, though. All he eventually manages to understand is that they'd all be better off without him.

Surely, it is hard to live with a creature such as Gregor. Every day the situation gets worse, more and more untenable, intolerable, insufferable. For, Gregor is obviously a living dead. He is a corpse, an emblem of death, a constant reminder of how close we all are to death. And that not only because we are fragile and weak, but because we are confronted with death literally every second of our life. Our life is scarcely anything but constant death and rebirth. We are always and all the time dying and always reborn - we must die if we are to be born, born to the life-giving death. We are not beings-towards-death (Sein-zum-Tode), we are dead. Life is a deadly adventure - an adventure of death. Life is nothing but dying and the only certain thing in life is death.

Gregor's family, like everybody else, might admit this at a certain point; but, like everybody else, they aren't ready for the continuous awareness of their deadly reality. They prefer sweet dreams of life. They not only loath, but are profoundly afraid of awakening. We all hate the reality of death, that only reality of life. Death is a monster, a spoiled, disfigured, mutilated creature. It is most often represented as something ugly and obnoxious, as the defaced reaper, as a rat, or an insect, as the transformed Gregor Samsa.

Yes, a cockroach is perfect for the role of an emblem of death. It has all the necessary traits: it is ugly, slimy, dirty, it moves around in sewers and places we don't want to know anything about (especially during and after dinner²⁸). An insect is pictured like a vulture roaming around garbage and corpses devouring everything still alive and everything life (the life we recognize as such) rejects. Cemeteries and ruins, the scenes of death, are considered to be insect's natural environment. Moreover, insect is a low form of life, a simple organism, and therefore abides on the border between organic and inorganic nature, between life and death.

Indeed, it is best for Gregor to disappear. As an insect, as an emblem of death, he is the obscenity which repels and which is rejected by its environment. For the symbolic order, dying is always some obscenity²⁹.

Of course, if we understand the whole thing allegorically, the question of the key, that is, of the code, is decisive. It was such for the old allegory, and it is even more for this new, modern one. The importance of the key is emphasized in Modernity by the fact that it isn't given from the outside, not on the margins of the "text" - there are no subtitles, captions, prologues etc., which explain what the writer "had in mind", or, if there are, then they don't explain anything, but rather lead to a misunderstanding.

Kafka didn't give keys for his allegories (parables, satires) either. This maybe because the gates (like those Before the Law) have all the time been unlocked and wide open. If that is so, then one can say that modern allegory points at itself as the Other, that it is its own Other and contains it in itself. That also means that now everything (or at least a lot) depends on viewers and readers, that now everybody is free to choose and give his own key.

Thus, Metamorphosis doesn't at all have to be the story about corpse, death and dying. It might as well be a social satire (we have enough elements for that: lower middle class, bureaucracy, several types of hierarchy, generation gap, etc.). It might be a satire of the modern family, or an allegory of the Kafka family itself. It might be a story about the "adventures" of the patriarchal core of Modernity, or about the general alienation and reification of the modern citizen. And so on and so forth.

What Metamorphosis really is, therefore, always depends on the key in which it is read. For, Kafka's writings are much like Torah: they have at least forty-nine different levels of meaning. Metamorphosis can be all that, and yet none of them. Any which way we take it, only one thing is certain: Metamorphosis is the story about a man who turned into an insect.

Webmaster: Slobodan Markovic (twiddle@eunet.yu)

All rights reserved. Belgrade Circle Journal encourages the reproduction of material appearing on its pages, provided that the source and the author are cited, except in cases where this would constitute violation of copyright held by other organisations or individuals.