""I am an insect" does not refer to Kafka - anyone who's read 'The Metamorphosis' will recall that the main character was displeased to be an insect."
The song lyrics do NOT indicate a man who is "pleased" to be an insect. And the reference to Kafka is then quite obvious.
Like the narrator of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground", the singer is also filled with self-loathing. As is indicated throughout when he refers to himself.
"My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as hell of that fact"
is therefore meant to be ambiguous, containing the words "confess" and "hell".
Where Howard Devoto's song goes beyond both Dostoevsky and Kafka - the real beauty and creative genius of the song lyrics - is the real affirmation of truly transcendent qualities of "beauty"; "the highest and the best".
And most obviously the MUSIC of the song is full of lyrical beauty. As well as Magazine's signature discordance.
It is only that the singer is always dismayed at his failure to be worthy of these transcendent aspects of the world.
The song lyrics do NOT indicate a man who is "pleased" to be an insect. And the reference to Kafka is then quite obvious.
Like the narrator of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground", the singer is also filled with self-loathing. As is indicated throughout when he refers to himself.
"My force of habit, I am an insect I have to confess I'm proud as hell of that fact"
is therefore meant to be ambiguous, containing the words "confess" and "hell".
Where Howard Devoto's song goes beyond both Dostoevsky and Kafka - the real beauty and creative genius of the song lyrics - is the real affirmation of truly transcendent qualities of "beauty"; "the highest and the best".
And most obviously the MUSIC of the song is full of lyrical beauty. As well as Magazine's signature discordance.
It is only that the singer is always dismayed at his failure to be worthy of these transcendent aspects of the world.