in his essay on lightness, one of his Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino closes by describing Kafka’s story ‘The Knight of the Bucket.’ he shares and interprets: This is a very short story written in 1917 in the first person, and its point of departure is plainly a real situation in that winter of warfare, the worst for the Austrian Empire: the lack of coal. The narrator goes out with an empty bucket to find coal for the stove. Along the way the bucket serves him as a horse, and indeed it takes him up as far as the second floor of a house, where he rocks up and down as if riding on the back of a camel. The coal merchant’s shop is underground, and the bucket rider is too high up. He has a hard time getting his message across to the man, who would really like to respond to his request, but the coal merchant’s wife wants nothing to do with him. He begs them to give him a shovelful of even the worst coal, even though he can’t pay immediately. The coal merchant’s wife unties her apron and shooes away the intruder as if he were a fly. The bucket is so light that it flies off with its rider until it disappears beyond the Ice Mountains.. ………………….But the idea of an empty bucket raising you about the level where one finds both the help and the egoism of others; the empty bucket, symbol of privation and desire and seeking, raising you to the point at which a humble request can no longer be satisfied—all this opens the road to endless reflection.
love your "emphasis" which arrives at a precisely good time for my bucket ponderings...
Thanks Kendall. I liked that, a lot. Welcome to 2024, hope it's a good one for you. xo
Happy New Year, Toby! Thank you for reading!