Custom Search. Karl Marx on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. This text is a slightly revised version of the original lecture in , revised in November ]. For comments or questions, please contact Ian Johnston. Preliminary Note. The lecture was part of a symposium on The Metamorphosis in which there were three other lectures—Anne Levitt played the role of the cleaning woman, Russell McNeil played the role of Friedrich Nietzsche, and Norm Cameron played the role of Sigmund Freud.
The premise was that Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were the three roomers in the Samsa household and thus had first-hand knowledge of the events in Kafka's story. The speech by Karl Marx was the last one in the series. Marx's Remarks. Gute Morgan, ladies und gentlemen. My name is Karl Marx und ich bin today hier in front of you all in Liberal Studies standing because I believe you have all been reading that story which is Die Verwandlung the Metamorphosis called.
This person, this oppressed member of the Lumpenproletariat here, this clearning woman, tells me that you are puzzled by the events in this parable and would like the truth of it to know. If you want the only truth it is good that you ask me. For two reasons. First, as you know, because you have all my books been reading and studying, you are aware that only through die historische Materialismus, the historical materialistic enquiry, can the truth of any cultural phenomenon be properly kritische understood.
This method of historical materialismus, as I have again und again und again in many books pointed out, is true because it is in the empirischen facts of science firmly grounded. I will have about that in a little while more to say. The other reason why I have the truth of this event is that I was there. As a junge man I spent some time in Prague as a lodger at Charlottestrasse 33, and it was during that time that the young man of the house, a certain Herr Gregor Samsa, became an Ungeziefer what you call a.
So in addition to possessing the only true method of kritische understanding, that is, die historische Materialismus, of which I am the world's leading authority, you have also my personal verification of the facts. Now, it is true there were in that place at the time two other young men lodgers living: Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Und I believe that they too have their versions of the events provided. I must, however, urge you to dismiss what they have had to say.
