Franz Kafka's 'Eine kaiserliche Botschaft' through an Hasidic prism

That Franz Kafka had a developed interest in the Hasidic tale and Hasidism we know, for example, from his retelling of several legends of the Ba'al Sh em Tov (master of the Good Name), the Besht, a rabbi and healer - in his Di ary, under October 1915, five to six months before he wrote his parable - t hat he received from his new wartime friend, Jiri Langer, an enthusiast for (esp. mystical) Hasidic stories, who later wrote the classic Seven Gates [ to Chassidic Mysteries], 1935 (Czech, 1937; [English], 1961). I don't seek to gaze at the parable in question through a four-square analytical window; but rather, to refract Kafka's parable through a prism of Hasidic stories and Hasidism, the last great movement of Jewish mysticism: an endeavor whic h will throw off many and varied hues, and bring transcendent and negative dialectics into play. To gaze directly at the Messenger, or Thee, would rob the former of his Way, and strip you of your Dreaming: Eine kaiserliche Bo tschaft.