Josephine’s Song

Josephine the singer is the mouse-heroine of Kafka’s last short story, written in 1924, the year of his death. What is remarkable about Josephine is how unremarkable her singing skills are. She squeaks no better (even a little more weakly) than the other mice. It is the intensity with which she performs her squeaking which sets her apart – she does what all mice do, and yet by making a theatrical performance out of the mundane, thoughtless act of squeaking, she raises it into an art.

Of course it is squeaking. How should it be anything else? Squeaking is the language of our people; it is only that some squeak their whole life through without knowing it, whereas here squeaking is freed from all the trammels of everyday life and so, for a short while, sets us free too.

Franz Kafka, Josephine the Singer

Josephine’s Song
Artist’s Proof (Detail) 2001
Soft ground etching and aquatint
Plate: 60 x 80 cm
Printed by John Loane, Viridian Press,Melbourne
Courtesy of Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne

So there she stands, the delicate creature, shaken by vibrations especially below the breastbone, so that one feels anxious for her, it is as if she has concentrated all her strength on her song, as if from everything in her that does not directly subserve her singing all strength has been withdrawn, almost all power of life, as if she were laid bare, abandoned, committed merely to the care of good angels, as if while she is so wholly withdrawn and living only in her song a cold breath blowing upon her might kill her.

Franz Kafka, Josephine the Singer