>
>May I ask what Mondrian has to do with Kafka? The Kafka-[ab]world
>is all too much with us (I've spent much of the past year in a
>couple of the less extreme places where it is flourishing today
>on earth).
It's a long time since I read Kafka and almost equally long since I last
viewed a Mondrian. I must admit that I'm not sure of the relationship
either, though perhaps it is that both attempted to show us how we make
ourselves accept the absurd and irrational as sensible and rational. The
Mondrians I recall seeing consisted of straight lines, right angles and flat
colours much like the land- and city-scapes we have built. Whether this
portrays the absurd or sensible is of course a matter of judgement.
During the 1970s I spent a lot of time in the little Indian villages of
northern Canada. Generally, the layout of these villages appears somewhat
random but on closer inspection makes a lot of sense. For example, if the
village is on a lake or river, it's not too difficult to get to the water.
People who are closely related live near each other so that younger people
can look in on the old. With the exception of one or two streets, the
layout is not based on straight lines and right angles.
I recall flying over the Canadian prairies after spending some time in these
villages and noticing how absolutely straight and right-angular the
landscape was. A north-south road every few kilometers; an intersecting
east-west road every few kilometers; all the land between bounded by
straight east-west or north-south fences. Every so often the pattern was
interupted by a lake, river or slough, natural features of the landscape
which seemed odd and out of place. Viewed from above, and after the Indian
villages, it seemed an absurd landscape. Yet it too makes a good deal of
sense when, as a farmer, one is down in it and has to work on it.
I'm not sure of what this is supposed to tell us other than that what is
absurd to one person makes perfect sense to another -- something the
Chinese probably recognized 4,000 years ago.
Ed Weick
