In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

366 CODES COLLAPSED
blurring of the distinction between Center and Periphery. Without this
distinction, space can be neither measured nor mastered, because it may
oscillate between infinite expansion and infinite contraction. Thus, the
most outrageously ironic detail in Kafka's Schloss is the fact that K. is a
surveyor (Landvermesser, literally "land-measurer"). For space seems
constantly to be expanding and contracting around him. A case of such
spatial instability is the passage that explains why K. never reaches the
castle: "For the street he was on, the main street of the village, did not
lead up to the castle hill. It only headed toward it and then, as if
deliberately, turned aside; and though it did not lead away from the
castle, it led no nearer to it either ... He was also amazed at the size of
the village, which seemed to have no end" (Kafka, 14). Sometimes,
Kafka introduces images that make such distortions of space partly
plausible, but he never returns to a Euclidean context. The parents of
K.'s colleague Barnabas, for example, make strenuous efforts to come
closer to K., despite mysterious spatial constraints: "The gouty old father
... progressed more with the aid of his groping hands than by the slow
movements of his stiff legs, and the mother, with her hands folded on
her bosom, . . . was equally incapable of any but the smallest steps
because of her stoutness. Both of them, father and mother, had been
advancing from their corner toward K. ever since he had come in, and
were still a long way off" (29). A space in which the distinction between
Center and Periphery has collapsed, a space of Infinitude, is a space in
which measuring distance and speed has become problematic (if not
impossible). This difficulty corresponds to one that pilots frequently
encounter when flying over desert landscapes: "You have no clear picture
of the speed at which you're moving in an airplane ... There are no
indications by which you can measure the speed, because you're passing
through nothing but air" (Berliner Tageblatt, April 8). [see Airplanes]
Incalculable spaces cannot be neutral frame-conditions for human
actions and human behavior. Unlike the stable spaces that are based on
the distinction between Center and Periphery, they sometimes exert
magical influence. This is the implication of Siegfried Kracauer's description
of a square in Marseilles: "See what is happening in the middle of
the empty square: the power of the quadrangle pushes the prisoner
toward the center. He is alone and not alone at the same time. He cannot
see any observers, but their gaze penetrates the shutters and the wall.
Groups of them cross the square and intersect in its center. Naked