Silence, Speech, and Speculative Music in Kafka’s ＂Investigations of a Dog＂

In his late story ”Investigations of a Dog” Kafka presents us with a philosophical canine whose speculations on the origins of ”nourishment”-the dogs' food is apparently placed on the ground for them by humans who remain invisible-illuminate, parody, or ironically deflate mankind's own speculations on the gods/God and the meaning of life. In the story ”silent music” plays a central role: at the beginning the soaring dogs motivate, with their silent performance, the young narrator-dog to commence his metaphysical ”investigations”; at the end another dog's love song, heard only by the narrator, prompts him to turn to the study of the ”science of incantation,” which he feels can mediate between the science of music and that of nourishment. Here I approach this labyrinthine, parabolic tale via an interpretation, which compares the exploratory, expansive, opening force of speculative questioning with that of music. To develop this interpretation I turn to Deleuze and Guattari's biology-based discussion of the ”refrain”-the rhythmic music of the natural and in particular animal world-in A Thousand Plateaus, and also to Deleuze's discussion of speculative-ironic questioning in Difference and Repetition. Kafka seems to suggest a condition which is further explored via my speculative-music reading: that of the apparent ignorance, thus isolation of each level (e.g. canine, human) in the order of being together with the implied commonality of this universal ignorance-even if this is a commonality (a ”common refrain”) we cannot know or understand.