essay

Abdullah

Professor Lawson

English113A

April15

The Dialogue

Early evening. Twilight. Franz Kafka and Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) are sitting in the ruins of a gothic temple, apparently destroyed by bombing. The buildings of the small European town (Polish, one might assume), also damaged by bombs, are visible in a distance.

Ovid: You never can tell the exact moment, when the day turns into the night, can you?

Kafka: No. Because night is the same thing as a day but older, I guess. That is how it happens with all transformations they do not actually change anything.

Ovid: You do not know what you are talking about. Metamorphosis is not about becoming different it is about facing something different.

Kafka: If you are right, then there is no any metamorphosis at all. There is no one, to whom metamorphosis happens just two beings meeting each other on an island of time.

Ovid: You understood it wrong. The essence of the thing can not be changed even by the powers of Gods. But Gods can change the way it prove itself: Caesar shone as bright in form of mortal man, as in a form of star. He still orders planets to move as he ordered people to obey. A thing meets its new look the moment it accepts it, is transformation.

Kafka: A thing is its semblance. Or, put more correctly, a semblance of a thing is a thing itself.

Ovid: Nonsense. Thundering Zeus did not become an ox, when seducing beautiful Europe he just appeared as ox instead.

Kafka: (Smiling) But would thundering Zeus be able to appear as a dog?

Ovid: (Eyebrows raised in surprise) If we were in Rome, they would slaughter you for such words. But we are not. (Smiles bitterly) What are you saying the thunder keeper is the same as stubborn animal?

Kafka: No, I am saying that Zeus was already an ox a golden rain a King Amphitryon a thunder and a cloudy storm before he chose to reveal himself in all these likenesses.

Ovid: Of course he was! And many other things too, because he is the head of Gods, the titan`s son. We, mortals, are not the same. The Gods can turn you in a dog, a frog or cog, if they will soo.

Kafka: Can they turn me in God, then? And if they cant, what interferes them?

Ovid: You, Scythian, are blasphemous, but in a funny way. You make me feel sorry for immortals.

Kafka: You should not be.

Ovid: Still, I do not know the answer to your question.

Kafka: The answer is simple they cant transform me into God, because I am not alike to God. I am brother to the dog and fog`s nephew, but I am not anything close to God. Both yours or mine. No metamorphosis can change this.

Ovid: But metamorphosis can show what you are hiding. Even from yourself.

Kafka: To others maybe, but not to you. The transformation that reveals something hidden about yourself to you is revelation

Ovid: (Interrupts) What a strange word. What does it mean?

Kafka: Hmm… It means the moment when God learns that he is also a human not only ox, rain, and thunder.

Ovid: Once I met a man, who talked like this. He was a worshiper of some sort of Jewish sect. Are you?

Kafka: (Smiles mysteriously)

Works cited

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2010. Print.