Tag: Franz Kafka

‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka, translated by David Wyllie

I’ve thought about this story a lot over the years and each time I reread it, I see it slightly differently. Its beginning will be familiar to many readers: Gregor Samsa, a mild-mannered and well-meaning young man, who has been supporting his family as a travelling salesman since his father’s business collapsed five years before, wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Comically, his first reactions include an extreme anxiety about being late for work and he focuses on the physically difficult task of turning over in his shell and getting off his bed, still hoping to make the next train, so that his boss won’t be inconvenienced.

His family are horrified by his transformation. His father reacts aggressively and his sister, who he’s especially close to, and who even now tries to find food that he will like, reacts with an instinctive revulsion which she tries to hide, but which progresses, as the story continues, into outright rejection.

This is a story about difference and alienation, about wanting to belong and about what it means to be human. It’s also a story about the extreme toll that caring for someone especially vulnerable and dependent over a long period of time can take on a family, but the love Gregor feels for his younger sister, and the extent to which he’s hurt by her ultimate rejection of him are what gives it its real emotional power.

First published in 1915 in Die Weissen Blätter; first published in English in 1937, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. Read online here

‘Before the Law’ and ‘The Imperial Message’ by Franz Kafka

Albert Einstein has said, “Kafka is too much for the human mind to grasp”. There are many fascinating short stories that lend themselves to a myriad of interpretations, stories such as ‘The Metamorphosis’, ‘The Country Doctor’, and ‘The Burrow’. However, many of his main themes and concerns appear in condensed albeit recondite form in his short parables, in particular in ‘Before the Law’ and ‘The Imperial Message’. To quote the definition, a parable is a short allegorical story designed to teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson. What exactly are the truths and moral lessons that Kafka is imparting in these two brief works? ‘Before the Law’ is a scant two pages and ‘The Imperial Message’ is barely one.

In ‘Before the Law’, a man from the country arrives before the Law and prays for admittance from a gatekeeper, who replies that admittance is possible, but not at this time. The man thinks that “the Law should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone.” Years go by and the man sits there waiting for admittance. As he nears death, he asks a final question. How is it that he is the only one seeking admittance to the Law? The reply is, “no one else could ever be admitted since this gate is only for you. I am going to shut it now.” This very brief story suggests a myriad of questions, the first being what exactly is the Law? Are we speaking in terms of religion? Is it God? Or, does it represent our society? Our parents? The government? What else might it represent? Other questions then immediately insinuate themselves. Are we always before some version of the Law? What does the doorkeeper/gateway represent?

What does it mean to be “outside” as opposed to “inside”? Is it not only about admittance, but also acceptance, as well as the idea of permission? Do we always strive for something that is beyond us, forever inaccessible, like the Castle is for K, in Kafka’s last unfinished book? We do live in a world of prohibitions and restrictions, where the concept of permission is central. We never understand why admittance is so important to the man. For whatever reason, and most likely he does not understand it himself, he seems to have wasted his life hoping to pass through the gate. The French literary critic Hélène offers some interesting perspectives. She suggests “the law cannot be defined.” “The law is in the man, so how can he enter the law?” The law represents a divided desire in the man, since he desperately wants but needs permission.

In ‘The Imperial Message”, a dying Emperor entrusts a message to a messenger intended for a man who awaits, “the humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun.” The parable is addressed to this man. However, due to insurmountable obstacles, the messenger is unable to reach him. The story ends with the enigmatic rejoinder to the waiting man. “But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.”

In what sense are the parables similar? Perhaps knowledge and salvation are possible, and we can try to approach them, as long as we understand we will never reach them. It may be the case that the Emperor’s wisdom lies within him in the same sense that the law is within the man. This brings to mind a quote from Gerald Murnane. “Everything is possible except, of course, the actual.”

(It should be noted that there is a longer version of ‘Before the Law’ with much more detailed philosophical discussion between the man and the gatekeeper, but I prefer this gnomic version.)

in The Complete Short Stories and Parables, Quality paperback Book Club, New York, 1983

‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka, tr. Willa and Edwin Muir

It was almost certainly ‘The Metamorphosis’ that I read first, when it comes to Kafka. I’m not sure I was ready—it was more perplexing to me than anything else. Despite the striking premise, I couldn’t make out what the story was about, and it seems that was important to me at the time because I set it aside—not unimpressed, exactly, but unengaged. In the years since I’ve gone back to it many times, a different and evolved reader on each occasion with a deeper understanding of both life and literature and . . . just kidding—I still don’t know what it’s about and still very much perplexed. It’s just that, now, those are good things.

So much is glimpsed in this story—but only glimpsed. Glimpses of Gregor’s new body, glimpses of him under the sofa in the gloom at floor level where the light from the streetlamps doesn’t reach, glimpses beneath the sheet he uses to conceal himself, glimpses of his family when they leave the door open. Glimpses of a troubled self-loathing, of longstanding resentment. From the other side of a door, familial dynamics will flash in the glint of an overheard interaction. Anything more than a glimpse spells trouble: for Gregor to be in the full presence of his family, and they in his, is for something bad to happen—some escalating, uncomprehending confrontation to send him scurrying and injured.

A happy ending is delivered that costs us the protagonist. Real life, happy life, good life is only possible sans Gregor Samsa.

First published in German, as ‘Die Verwandlung’, in Die Weißen Blätter, 1915. This translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, is from Metamorphosis & Other Stories, Penguin Modern Classics, 1987

‘A Little Fable’ by Franz Kafka translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir

I first read this story when I was 16, during a period when I was very lost and unhappy in the wake of my father’s death. It was one of the first texts to open up the possibilities of literature for me and it still lifts my spirits. The story is tiny, so short that I can insert the whole thing here:

Alas,’ said the mouse, ‘the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.’ ‘You only need to change your direction,’ said the cat, and ate it up.

First published as ‘Kleine Fabel’ in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1931, and in English in The Great Wall of China, Schocken, 1946

‘Josefine the Singer, or The Mouse People’ by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hofmann

I first read Kafka as a teenager and fell in love with his ideas. When I read him now it is the language that I love, the way he uses words with such precision. Reading him is like having a world built around you brick by brick (word by word) relentlessly until you are an inhabitant. Strangely, the experience is quite joyous, even when the subject matter is extremely dark and unsettling. It is the joy of being in the company of a completely liberated imagination. I could have chosen almost anything, but have gone for this slightly lesser-known story. Although we are never quite sure if we are reading about mouse-like people, or people-like mice, the story of the hold Josefine has on her downtrodden and fearful people, who otherwise have no understanding or appreciation of music (“when she is gone, music will disappear – perhaps for ever – from our lives”), is entrancing, terrifying, heartbreaking and hilarious all at once. Oh – and it breaks all the rules of short story writing.

First published as ‘Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse’ in Ein Hungerkünstler, Verlag Die Schmiede, 1924. Translation published in Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Penguin, 2007

‘Eleven Sons’ by Franz Kafka

I am, regrettably, a Kafka fan. I know what this says about me, but I can’t help it. I am a particular fan of his extremely slight, barely there at all stories, which function as oddly-shaped parables. One of these is Eleven Sons, which Kafka wrote as a means of expressing frustration with a pile of unfinished stories. The ‘sons’ are the pieces of writing he is grappling with, and the form of the story follows a description of each in turn. There is a freshness to this format, in lots of ways it’s deeply antithetical to what is apparently necessary for narrative prose fiction: the story has no plot, no setting, it relies entirely on the narrator’s reporting of these characters, who are not even really characters at all, but metaphors. The boldness of Kafka’s minimalism here is addictive; I wanted to see how far I could push the envelope in the same direction.

Written between 1914 and 1917. In 1919, it appeared in Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzählungen (A Country Doctor)

‘Neptune’ by Franz Kafka

In this story Kafka imagines the god Poseidon sitting at his desk under the waves and crunching numbers. Kafka presents us with a Poseidon whose job as god of the sea no one truly understands. Because he is so busy in his management position, he never gets to enjoy the sea over which he rules. Poseidon would love to find a new job, but what else is he really qualified to do? Kafka ironically and humorously concludes his story, “He liked to joke that he was waiting for the end of the world, then he’d find a free moment right before the end, after completing his final calculation, to take a quick spin in the sea.” I read this story in a new translation of Kafka’s prose done by Peter Wortsman and published by Archipelago Books. Wortsman has chosen a wonderful selection of shorter writings that showcase the range of the author’s brilliance.

Written in 1920 in German but never published during the author’s lifetime. Translated into English by Peter Wortsman, collected in Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka, Archipelago Books, 2016; also by Michael Hofmann in Investigations of a Dog and Other Creatures, New Directions, 2017. Hofmann’s version is available to read online in the Paris Review, here

‘Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor’ by Franz Kafka

You are born in Prague 1883, a Jewish German Bohemian in Austria-Hungary. You are lonely, an isolated man. You become a lawyer and an insurance office worker. You want to write, but work consumes all your time. You work in a textile factory, a small tyrant at work and at home. You become a partner in an asbestos factory, but it too takes up all your time. You want companionship without having to have responsibility or empathy. You develop tuberculosis and are forced to take a pension and spend most of your time in sanatoriums. You are dying, but you have time to write. You get your wish. It is a curse. You are shy, you are hilarious, you are a womaniser, you are tormented by your family. Your life is invaded by two celluloid balls, constantly bouncing, which take over your home. You are incredibly sensitive to noise. The noise of the balls haunts you. You produce a series of idiosyncratic masterpieces, many of them unfinished at your death, including this story. You are haunted by duality: the balls, the Mädchen, the apprentices. You will die a couple of decades into the century which, perhaps more than any other writer, you will capture in its bureaucratic, savage, mechanised horror. You are Blumfeld, an Elderly Batchelor. You are Franz Kafka.

First published by Mercy Sohn, 1936; first published in English in The Partisan Review, translated by Philip Horton, 1938, Vol 6 Nos 1 & 2. Collected in Description of a Struggle, Schocken, 1958, and The Complete Short Stories, Penguin, 1983

‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka

I know, I know. I did try and choose a less famous Kafka story. I thought long and hard about including The Giant Mole, with its magnificent first line: “Those, and I am one of them, who find even an ordinary sized mole disgusting, would probably have died of disgust if they had seen the great mole that a few years back was observed in the neighbourhood of one of our villages, which achieved a certain transitory celebrity on account of the incident.” But in the end I realised that a large part of what I loved about the mole was that it reminded me of Gregor Samsa, the giant insect or beetle or cockroach (depending on translation), his legs spinning in his single bed.

First published in German, as ‘Die Verwandlung’, in Die Weißen Blätter, 1915. Widely translated

‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hofmann

Picking ‘The Metamorphosis’ out of Kafka’s stories feels a bit like saying your favourite Beatles album is The Best of the Beatles, but I chose it because I had a transformational experience on my second reading. I first read it in my teens, when I understood this to be the ne plus ultra of young alienation, and I didn’t like it. The story was too long, the central horror of the transformation felt somehow undetailed, and what seemed to be the most compelling element – Gregor’s transformation – became increasingly sidelined in favour of the family’s troubles, culminating in a final scene, in which Gregor’s sister Grete stands up on a tram, that seemed utterly inconsequential to me. Some years later, I returned to the story and it was a revelation. Some of my most enduring experiences with art have involved a work that I’ve disliked on first impression; the experience of understanding its complexity or tone on a second reading seems to double the pleasure. When reading again, I realised that it was a mistake to assume that Gregor was the centre of the story’s gravity, and that Kafka’s bone-dry humour is easily missed. The final scene – where Gregor’s pupal sacrifice precedes the butterfly-like opening up of Grete – clicked into place, and the beauty and sadness of the story came into focus. And then I read all the Kafka I could find.

First published in German, as ‘Die Verwandlung’, in Die Weißen Blätter, 1915. Widely translated in English. Hoffman’s translation is from Metamorphosis & Other Stories, Penguin Classics, 2015

‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hofmann

Readers might get bored three-quarters of the way through The Trial. Readers might not finish The Castle (I hear some of you thinking even Kafka couldn’t). But there’s no excuse not to read ‘Metamorphosis.’ Surely, you’ve read it? Shame on you if you haven’t. Kafka makes Gregor Samsa more human the more Gregor transforms into a bug. The scene of Gregor with an apple lodged in him! If Kafka had an ounce of arrogant motherfucker in him he could have dropped his pen right then and there.
 
A few errant Kafka thoughts. I was with a group of writers talking about ‘Metamorphosis’ and all of them agreed that the ending was a complete mystery. What does Grete stretching at the end mean? they kept asking. I wanted to say that the Samsas looked pretty happy to be rid of Gregor but there was such a passion amongst those writers for understanding Kafka solely as an unknowable puzzle I sadly kept my mouth shut. Later, one of the writers said they had a friend who spent ten years reading only Kafka and that after ten years announced, “The meaning of Kafka is that there is no meaning.” I’ve worried about that writer’s friend far more than is necessary.

First published in German, as ‘Die Verwandlung’, in Die Weißen Blätter, 1915. Widely translated in English. The translation I read is from Metamorphosis & Other Stories, Penguin Classics, 2015

‘A Country Doctor’ by Franz Kafka

By contrast, this is a story I read maybe once a month, because I never know how it’s going to make me feel. It’s more of a full-on anxiety dream than many of Kafka’s, and I’ve already deleted a couple of attempted summaries of what happens, because there’s no point. I can’t get to the bottom of it, probably because there is none. I only started into Kafka about ten years ago, but it’s become a total addiction. I’m not especially interested in the man himself, though that stage of the disorder may well be coming. For now, I just marvel at what he uncovered and left us with, and how much of the writing I love from the hundred years since has its source in his remarkable spirit.

First published in German in the eponymous collection, 1917. Widely translated and collected, including in The Complete Short Stories, Vintage Classics. Available online here, translated by Ian Johnston

‘Vor dem Gesetz’ (Before the Law) by Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

One of the luckiest things that ever happened to me was that, at the age of eleven, I had the opportunity to learn German. One of the many ways in which learning a second language changed my life was that it introduced me to short stories, and German ones at that. As any language-learner knows, short stories are perfect classroom fodder: they’re brief enough to be assigned for homework and it’s usually easy enough to find one to suit a particular proficiency level. The stories I struggled through in high school, and later university, were probably the first short stories I ever read with care: Heinrich Böll’s ‘Du fährst zu oft nach Heidelberg’, Ben Witter’s ‘Das nächste Mal andere Blumen’, eventually Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist and Emine Sevgi Özdamar.

This six-inch Kafka parable was first published in 1915, and it went on to make a cameo in his novel The Trial. It’s so short that to give a precis would be to retell it. I don’t even have anything particularly insightful to say about it. I’m including it here because, after two decades of thinking about it, I’m still thinking about it.

Collected in Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Penguin, 2008, and available widely online in translations of varying quality