Toward Personal Spiritual Salvation

Kafka was unknown to the public during his life, and he was discovered by the Western world after the World War II. From 195os, in reading the feelings of solitary, fear, bewilderment and despair expressed in Kafka's novels, people saw the awkwardness and absurdity of the state of their own existence and thus were struck a responsive chord in their hearts by Kafka's novels. With the explainers of Kafka emerging in large quantities, there came a prolonged upsurge in studying Kafka. There are a great variety of explaining of Kafka, among which the religious school has greater influence. The explainers of the religions school regard Kafka's novels as religious fables. Their first ancestor is Kafka's good friend, an Austrian writer named Max Brod. Kafka was not a believer of religion although he joined a Judaic denomination in the last year of his life, so it is likely not proper to regard his novels completely as vivid explaining of religious doctrine. An Austrian critic criticized Brod's viewpoint of connecting the castle's ruling directly with mercy which is a religious concept in the postscript of the first edition of The Castle. In doing so, Brod gave a precedent to those critics who want to find religious symbols and other symbols in the novel and comprehend Kafka's illusion by theological explaining. In translating art images directly into the languages of theology, philosophy and psychology, it was certain that Brod would lower the value of Kafka's art. However, Kafka's cultural background, childhood experience and inherent temperament had made him a person who had deep religious feelings, so it is also improper to deny completely the possibility of explaining Kafka's novels from the religious point of view. As a western person living in the modern society in which the traditional belief had come to decline, Kafka who had urgent need of belief tried to find a personal road to spiritual salvation throughout his life. He had tried various methods including literary creative work. Indifferent from traditional writers, the first thing he paid attention to was not the mankind's spiritual liberation but his personal spiritual salvation. Kafka's genius lies in that his extremely personal literary creative work has ascended to the mankind's height .His novels let us see how a person with strong religious temperament tries to find his own spiritual home in the western society in which the traditional belief has come to decline. They are instructive not only to western people, but also to any person of any nationality who has the similar spiritual gloomy and the similar need of belief. My thesis intends to dig up Kafka's deep religiousfeelings, reproduce his course of spiritual salvation , and explain his religious viewpoints in order to get profounder understanding and more precise grasp of his works and his thought. At the same time, in analyzing Kafka's religious viewpoints, the thesis also tries to bring to light the theoretical tendency and the trend of development of modern western religious thought, in order to unfold the various efforts the western culture has made to get rid of the crisis of belief. At the beginning the thesis brings to light Kafka's religious feelings from three aspects: First, the analysis of the writer' s religious cultural background. Secondly, the analysis of the writer's personality with Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. Thirdly, the explanation of the writer' s deep religious feelings decided by his special mental construction and his specific cultural background. Then the thesis reproduces the writer's course of spiritual salvation by combining his personal experience with his works, and mediates his course of spiritual salvation. Next, taking into consideration Kafka's religious course and his literary works, the thesis elaborates his religious viewpoints by comparing his personal viewpoints with the western theoretical thought. Kafka' s religious viewpoints includes four aspects: the personalization of religion, the emphasis of experience of existence, the thought about...