Body and mind
Another logical inconsistency is to do with the mind–body problem. As Gregor
Samsa wakes up in the morning, he finds himself transformed into a giant insect.
Thus begins Franz Kafka’s story ‘The Metamorphosis’ (1915). Gregor hears
raindrops hitting against the window. The world seems rather normal, except for
the enigmatic detail of Gregor’s body swap. But Gregor is Gregor, and as the
story unfolds, nothing suggests that it could be otherwise, notably Gregor
himself continues to believe that he is himself, a different body, but the same
mind.
Thomas Mann’s 1940 novella The Transposed Heads: A Legend from India calls
into question the mind over matter notion that ‘The Metamorphosis’ suggests,
and indeed the mind/body dualism of the Western tradition. There are two
friends, an athlete and an intellectual, who love the same woman. Only one can
marry her; the other one decides to get out of the way, cutting off his own head.
His distraught friend follows his example, leaving the woman without friend or
husband. With the help of a goddess, the friends are revived, but heads and
bodies are switched in the process. The clever head on the strong body looks like
the ideal spouse, but this turns out to be a delusion. Both men are misfits; as time
goes by, personalities change and in the end all three of them perish in
desperation. In hindsight, this peculiar tale seems eerily prescient of current
discussions of a whole body transplant, also called a brain transplant, which
focus not only on what is technically possible, but also on the ethical
implications of such an operation and the question of what makes an integrated
self. The morale of Mann’s story affirms the psychosomatic unity of our identity
as human beings.
Lost in modernity
For a person to be whole and at ease with him or herself, it is not just body and
mind that have to be in harmony, but also the individual and the social self. The
difficulties of achieving this are a leitmotif of 20th century literature.
Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities (1930) is set in Vienna as the curtain
falls on the Habsburg monarchy, where the protagonist struggles to adjust to
modernity, mentally, politically, and culturally. Albert Camus’s The Stranger
(1942), set in French Algeria, revolves around the role of death for finding one’s