Procesul disoluției eului în toposul labirintic
The dissolution of the self in the labyrinthine space

Summary/Abstract: A defining writer for the evolution of prose toward modern writing, Franz Kafka offers in his novel The Trial an unusual relationship between the novelistic space and the drama of the individual annihilated by the ineluctable mechanism of the institution of Justice. In the present study, we will examine the spatial ambivalence between the profane street space and the degraded world of the Court of Justice, which is essential to the metaphor of the labyrinthine space. At the same time, we will show how this ambivalence, with its often-arbitrary boundary, profoundly influences the fate of the main character, Josef K. Our analysis will consider the following aspects of Kafka’s vision of the modern man’s drama: the Self, placed within the dimension of Kafkaesque absurdity; the Kafkaesque “sandwich” topos; the narrative principle of the labyrinth, which is relevant to the “upside-down” world of justice as imagined by Kafka.

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