Hybrids in F. Kafka’s stories as religious allegories

The article is devoted to the study of “hybrids” that perform the functions of religious allegories in F. Kafka’s stories. Through the analysis of the images, the idea of the story “Eine Kreuzung” (“Hybrid”) is revealed: the nature and fate of Christianity, which, according to the writer, is a kind of “hybrid” of the Old and New Testaments. The narrator here is the Son of God, the father is the Lord God, and the four-faced animal (cat-lamb-dog-man) is a parody of the gospel tetramorph (lion-taurus-eagle-man) and Christianity in general. In the context of the new interpretation, a number of features of the animal are clarified: the sweetened milk that the narrator feeds it is a symbol of the Eucharist and Christian wisdom; whispers are prayers addressed to Jesus; meeting children on Sundays is a reference to Sunday schools and church attendance; changes in appearance are the ever-changing face of Christianity according to Schleiermacher. The title of the story, “Eine Kreuzung”, is a language play: “Kreuz” is both a “Christian cross” and part of the word “hybrid, crossing”. The author of the article also examines various interpretations of another story about a hybrid animal, “In Our Synagogue”, and explains why, of all the interpretations existing today, the religious one has the greatest reliability: the one according to which the mysterious creature is nothing more than an incarnation of the spiritual path of the prophetess Hulda. In addition, an attempt is made to recreate Kafka’s religious search based on religious allegories in his other stories (“Gemein-schaft”, “Die Sorge des Hausvaters”, “Die Prnfung”) and to determine the place of “Eine Kreuzung” in this series.