The Novel as a Form: Cervantes, Tolstoy, Kafka

The Novel as an Experiment on the Human Being

The novel is a young genre: it is about four centuries old. It emerged when the medieval world with its fixed roles and unambiguous moral codes disintegrated—and a need arose to explore what it means to be an individual person in an open, uncertain world. The Czech writer Milan Kundera called the novel "the great instrument for understanding being": it explores that which neither philosophy nor science can—the concrete experience of a concrete person in all its ambiguity.

Don Quixote: The First Novel and the First Self-Irony

"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes (1605, 1615) is generally considered the first modern novel. The hidalgo Alonso Quixano read too many chivalric romances and imagined himself a knight. He sees giants where there are windmills; a beautiful lady where there is a peasant girl. He lives in an imaginary world, ignoring the real one.

What is this: a satire on chivalric romances? Yes. But also—a hymn to idealism: Don Quixote is ridiculous, but he is also great. He is absolutely faithful to his values, even when reality refutes them. When he "recovers"—he dies. His "madness"—is his life.

Cervantes also created metaliterature: in the second part, Don Quixote meets people who have read the first part—and they discuss whether everything written is true. This is the first novel about a novel, the first reflection on the illusion of reality.

Tolstoy: Social Panorama and Moral Judgment

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) is possibly the greatest novelist of all time in terms of scale and depth. "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878) are two different answers to one question: how should one live rightly?

"War and Peace" depicts 600 characters against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Tolstoy refutes the "heroic" view of history: neither Napoleon nor Kutuzov control events—events control them. The force of history lies in millions of private decisions, not in the will of great individuals. This is direct polemics with the Hegelian and Romantic view of history.

Andrei Bolkonsky is brilliant, proud, seeking glory. Pierre Bezukhov is kind, awkward, seeking meaning. Natasha is the embodiment of life. Their paths are different answers to the question of how to live.

"Anna Karenina" is about the consequences of choices in a society that does not forgive a woman for breaking the rules. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" is one of the most quoted opening sentences in the history of literature.

Kafka: Absurdity as a System

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) created an entirely new kind of literary experience—the "Kafkaesque." His world: an ordinary person finds himself in a situation that is threatening and opaque, without understandable causes and with no apparent way out. Gregor Samsa ("The Metamorphosis") wakes up as an insect; Josef K. ("The Trial") is arrested without being charged and executed at the end, never understanding why; K. ("The Castle") cannot get to the officials of the Castle, although they seem to be nearby.

Kafka described the bureaucratic machine of the twentieth century—Nazi, Soviet, corporate—with an accuracy that amazes. Absurdity for Kafka is not a metaphor, but a logically consistent system that simply does not take the individual into account.

He wanted his manuscripts to be burned. His friend Max Brod did not do so. This is one of the main "what ifs" in the history of literature.

Question for reflection: Don Quixote preferred a beautiful illusion to a cruel reality. In your professional life: how do you balance between an inspiring ideal (which may be an illusion) and sober realism (which may be blindness)?