ABSTRACT
From the examination of Freud's prose we are easily led to approach aesthetic discourse itself—after all, it was Greek literature par excellence that served to stimulate Freud's fertile mind and even to furnish him with immemorable terms; and we, joining forces with a host of his contemporary colleagues, admire his prose not only for its scientific but also for its artistic qualities. Sheerly aesthetic discourse, however, presents its own challenges for comprehension, and in my exploration of them I shall follow a path indicated by Victor Rosen 1 and attempt to trace further the relationship between content and form in aesthetic discourse, beginning with Kafka's classic piece of German fiction. I might say immediately that I recognize the potential perilousness in using such terms as content and form—meaning, for example, possesses as well as confers structure; then again, on another level of reference, plot may be readily relegated to either content or form. Still in all, in spite of their problematic dichotomy, the terms content and form continue to retain a heuristic value for many critics, myself included.
