LOOKING FOR THE SMALL IDENTITY. FRANZ KAFKA’S EINE KAISERLICHE BOTSCHAFT AND AUF DER GALERIE
LOOKING FOR THE SMALL IDENTITY. FRANZ KAFKA’S EINE KAISERLICHE BOTSCHAFT AND AUF DER GALERIE

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the multifaceted concept of identity in Franz Kafka’s short stories Eine kaiserliche Botschaft and Auf der Galerie, focusing on the structural and symbolic tensions between center and periphery, power and powerlessness, presence and absence. Identity in Kafka’s narratives is not fixed or essential but emerges as a fragmented and unstable construct, deeply embedded in narrative structure and linguistic ambiguity. In Eine kaiserliche Botschaft, the journey of a royal messenger—tasked with delivering a message from the emperor to a distant subject—symbolizes the existential dislocation of the individual. The spatial metaphor of the imperial center and the unreachable periphery underscore the paradox of identity: the periphery becomes the new center, and the authoritative source is rendered impotent. The individual remains trapped in a cycle of longing and deferred meaning, revealing the collapse of traditional hierarchical values.Similarly, Auf der Galerie presents a dual narrative structure that contrasts a harsh, exploitative performance with a more romanticized, dignified spectacle. The reader is caught in a hermeneutic loop between illusion and reality, with the figure of the passive gallery observer reflecting the disempowered modern subject. The fluidity of perspectives and the ambivalence of emotional responses expose identity as something constructed, imagined, and constantly shifting. Ultimately, Kafka’s texts subvert established norms of authorship, representation, and meaning, depicting identity not as a stable essence but as a text-dependent, contingent phenomenon, always negotiated within the space between center and periphery, between inner self and external world.

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