kafka

Giorgio de Chirico - The Enigma of The Hour.

-- david laughner (david/laughne...), February 8th, 2006.

I took a course with a German Kafka scholar who talked about the same thing -- for example The Trial is actually called Der Process (sp?) which doesn't quite literally translate to trial and can also just mean, well, process. This is especially great since part of the joke, as it were, of The Trial is that there's never actually a trial.

OTOH scholars of every foreign writer make the same argument about every foreign writer. I still think there's plenty to get out of Kafka in English.

i think the castle might be my favourite book, sometimes

kafka is one of the few authors who it really really pays to reread: i've probably read "the metamorphosis" like 5 times since high school and it feels fresh and interesting each time.

i like the welles film of "the trial" a lot but he really mucked up the ending!

i think it was nabokov who wondered, why didn't he just fly out the window?

James Hawes in today's guardian:

If the mere prospect of a few new letters throwing light on his relationship with Max Brod is enough to send scholars all over the world into raptures, why has no one ever thought fit to show kafka's readers and students the pornography he owned?
There is a footnoten in Brod's first biography of kafka, which would have enabled anyone to to find this material 85 years ago. His letters to Brod reveal, to those with eyes to see, exactly where he kept his porn - in a locked bookcase in his parents' house (an image that sets off echoes throughout the work). The mystery is why it has remained such a secret. The underlying reason is, I suspect, that admitting to Kafka's porn also unlocks the truth of his whole truth of his whole literary life.
The man who delivered porn to Kafka in 1906-07 turns out to be the same man who first published him in 1908 - and who, as judge of Berlin's major literary prize, fixed things so that kafka would get the glory. it seems the Kafka industry doesn't want you to know such things about its idol - which means, academics being the gatekeeprs of the artefacts, that they don't want you, the reader, to know.
Once we realise this, the light of historical reality floods in through the holes in the hagiographic myth. We find a millionaire's son addicted to whores all his adult life; a writer backed by an influential clique who was admired (and knew it)by almost every major German-language author of his day; a loyal Hapsburg citizen with a senor state-sector job who expected (and wanted) the Germab and Austrian empires to win ww1, right to the end; a man who had no more inkling of the Holocaust than anyone else.
with the rubble cleared away, perhaps we'll at last see Kafka's work for what it really is - not the gloomy stuff we anglo-Saxons received via post-Auschwitz French existentialists, but wonderful black comedies writen by a mansoaked in the writings of his predecessors and of his own day.

Jesus Christ. Take 2

James Hawes in today's guardian:

If the mere prospect of a few new letters throwing light on his relationship with Max Brod is enough to send scholars all over the world into raptures, why has no one ever thought fit to show Kafka's readers and students the pornography he owned?
There is a footnote in Brod's first biography of Kafka, which would have enabled anyone to find this material 85 years ago. His letters to Brod reveal, to those with eyes to see, exactly where he kept his porn - in a locked bookcase in his parents' house (an image that sets off echoes throughout the work). The mystery is why it has remained such a secret. The underlying reason is, I suspect, that admitting to Kafka's porn also unlocks the truth of his whole literary life.
The man who delivered porn to Kafka in 1906-07 turns out to be the same man who first published him in 1908 - and who, as judge of Berlin's major literary prize, fixed things so that Kafka would get the glory. It seems the Kafka industry doesn't want you to know such things about its idol - which means, academics being the gatekeepers of the artefacts, that they don't want you, the reader, to know.
Once we realise this, the light of historical reality floods in through the holes in the hagiographic myth. We find a millionaire's son addicted to whores all his adult life; a writer backed by an influential clique who was admired (and knew it) by almost every major German-language author of his day; a loyal Hapsburg citizen with a senor state-sector job who expected (and wanted) the German and Austrian empires to win ww1, right to the end; a man who had no more inkling of the Holocaust than anyone else.
with the rubble cleared away, perhaps we'll at last see Kafka's work for what it really is - not the gloomy stuff we Anglo-Saxons received via post-Auschwitz French existentialists, but wonderful black comedies written by a man soaked in the writings of his predecessors and of his own day.

what a twat. link? I can't find it.

no link. i typed it (as you can see)

which is to say: look, it's certainly admirable to attempt to unseat a lot of the myths that swirl around Kafka, to separate the actual work from the legend, to unsettle conventional wisdom that's settled into received fact. But why the paranoia and deliberate overstatement of your own in tempering what you see as falshoods? Why "admitting to Kafka's porn also unlocks the truth of his whole literary life"? WTF does that even mean? Why paint acadamics, of all people, as evil lords of information who don't want readers to know the truth? Or: "a man who had no more inkling of the Holocaust than anyone else"? Who does he think claimed that Kafka had actual foreknowledge of the Holocaust, rather than suggesting that his works seem to foreshadow it in retrospect?

Yeah, that's...yeah.

Anyway, a timely revival as I've finally read The Trial. The various eternal explications of legal policy had me in stitches.

I love the novels (had a soft spot for parts of 'America', its been years since I've read him tho'). Funnily enough I never got round the short stories so I'll do that now.

He's certainly not the first to point out that Kafka had a sense of humor. What I really want to know is, exactly what was in that locked bookcase? Titles, please.

Anyway, a timely revival as I've finally read The Trial. The various eternal explications of legal policy had me in stitches.

I also just finished it. A few thoughts:

1. The traditional existentialist interpretation is an ill fit.
2. There's a lack of focus, compared to his short stories.
3. It feels like Kafka wrote about 1/2 of it before he died, not 7/8ths.

Also, fixed:

Titties, please.

"Wow, she has a nice set of Kafkas!"

that is a joke like Jeffrey Dahmer was a chef

I find the novels dull, but that's the point, in a way. However, I can read the short fiction and letters over and over.

Kafka is totally a porn name

K.

terrible writer

I remember Orson Welles speaking about his (seriously underrated IMHO) "Trial" adaptation as part of that epic BBC interview he did , and saying that people didn't realise that Kafka's work was meant to be funny. Couple of significant references to Pr0n in the movie, too.

And "titties please'? Excuse me for being interested, and excuse me for having a sexuality, but I seriously want to know: If he had first editions of Sade, or Sacher-Masoch, or whomever, that becomes an influence and throws a whole different light on his work.

I love Welles' movie.

yeah alot of his work was definitely meant to be comedic.

"The clarity and concreteness of Kafka’s sometimes Chaplinesque vision underlie another comic moment, a great moment in Western civilization. In 1914, shortly after war broke out, Kafka read aloud the first chapter of The Trial. Now keep in mind what happens there: Joseph K. awakens one fine morning to find himself rudely arrested under dubious authority for an unspecified crime. So Kafka sat and read. "We friends of his," Brod says, "laughed quite uncontrollably when he let us hear the first chapter of The Trial. And he himself laughed so much that at moments he couldn’t go on reading."

Can't a dude just enjoy some fine titties without having to bring the Marquis de Sade into it?

Hey, you're the one that pulled me over for asking for specifics. And, yes, I want to know.

Even if it is just Bohemian Farmers Wives Vol III

I didn't pull you over, and I can see why nobody "gets" Kafka's humor now 'cause everyone who reads him is a humorless sniffer!

joeks, de bruv

OK. But I think that there's a legitimate interest in Kafka's erotica collection (porn stash) as a literary influence. Particularly when looking at, say, 'In the penal colony', for example.

For example, you can't look at Bruno Schulz without acknowledging he was a total foot-freak.

am i right in thinking that kafka meant us to assume that

uh SPOILER i guess

gregor samsa didn't literally transform into a "monstrous vermin," and that stress plus living with a truly shitty family had just driven him insane?

Dude you can interpret it all you want, but the fact is that Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect.

I saw a staged production of this, it was v well done with Samsa's bed mounted vertically high on the rear wall, and the actor playing him was athletic circus dude who climbed and swung all around the walls. But he never actually turned into an insect (except for one bit where they showed an insect form in silhouette) so yah I was basically disappointed.

g00b otm

Yeah, Samsa definitely actually transformed into an insect.

I seen it with my own two eyes!

evidence for:

— everyone in the story accepts that the giant bug is gregor (instead of, like, "hey, there's this bug in the room, where'd gregor go?")
— several people in the story (cleaning woman, three boarders) are amused by gregor rather than terrified
— the family IS terrified, but it could be argued that they act the way any family might if one of its members started chirping like a bug and crawling around
— gregor becomes increasingly ill throughout story and loses his appetite -- because he's eating rotting food!
— kafka said he didn't want any picture of an actual bug used to illustrate the story

evidence against:

— people can't climb walls and ceilings
— "hello, you old dung beetle!"

has anyone ever done a film of this story?

surely there must be a Polish animation from the 80s or something.

Having spent a lot of time reading Kafka, I think you're looking for a neat, simple explanation of the kind that doesn't generally exist in Kafka. Yes, the fact that he transforms into an insect probably has some metaphorical significance for the condition of a stressed out, alienated traveling sales dude living with his shitty family, but Kafka stories are never that literal (it was really a dream, he went insane, etc.). You have to take Kafka stories at face value and as existing on their own plane of reality.

Nabokov gave a marvellous, marvellous lecture on The Metamorphosis, in which he discusses this (there is a great passage where he tries to entomologically determine exactly which kind of insect Samsa becomes). It was published in Lectures on Literature, but the text is also here.

am i right in thinking that kafka meant us to assume that

uh SPOILER i guess

gregor samsa didn't literally transform into a "monstrous vermin," and that stress plus living with a truly shitty family had just driven him insane?

in a german class i took a while ago where we read the metamorphosis this was one of the interpretations we discussed. one of the things i like best about the story, and kafka's work in general, is that there are dozens of ways of interpreting it — i would go so far as to say that the best way to enjoy the story is to interpret it in as many different ways as possible. i don't know if i would say that kafka means for us to assume anything that specific, because he seems to have avoided making points that direct and clear-cut, but i do think it's entirely possible that he deliberately left it open as one of several possibilities.

It was no dream.

If I had the money, I would. If you live outside, there is one single monthly amount, regardless of your income. So I would probably pay more than someone who owes $100k.

They only lower your monthly payment (drastically) if you live in the country.

To your point, though, I would much rather move back and pay whatever I need to, because it would probably be pretty darn low and doable, and it would save me this headache. But I have no one left in Canada. I'm currently saving up to move back, though. It's a slow process, because we pay thousands of dollars for my grandparents' due to their illnesses and such.

happy birthday franz kafka!

also, sorry to hear about all of that crimson hexagon.

Thanks, Treeship.

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/jackson_07_13.php

Consider this incident, which took place as he was dying of tuberculosis, and knew it. One day, when he was walking in a Berlin park, Kafka saw a little girl crying. He asked her why she was sad and she told him that she had lost her doll. Oh no, Kafka said, her doll was not lost - the toy was simply off on an exciting adventure. Understandably sceptical, the girl asked for proof. So Kafka went home and wrote a long, detailed letter from the doll, and gave it to the little girl the following day. Then, every day for the next three weeks, he gave her an additional letter. It seems that the doll had met a boy doll, and become engaged, and then married. By the end of the three weeks, the doll was setting up her marital home and the little girl no longer missed her mute companion.

The last translation of The Diaries is totally fine. Kafka is very, very transmissible.

But still the cover looks rad and it's great to see talk of this collection.

Kafka’s last surviving diary entry. @rossmbenjamin has accomplished something truly monumental with this translation. https://t.co/FxadScmJMJ pic.twitter.com/cLdtD1NqHo

— Merve Emre (@mervatim) January 6, 2023

Does gaydar exist and if it does would it have been detected in Kafka's writing, e.g., his diaries, and how much suffering could not have occurred? I remember precise descriptions of male antagonists in The Trial. How does gender make you aware of other people?

Well, chew on that, youn.

Me reading that Franz Kafka had a *lot* of sex with women because he adored femininity but found the act physically uncomfortable and considered himself extremely unattractive despite being conventionally good looking:

🤔🤔🤔🤔

— Matilda, Battle Maiden 🐶 (@DESTINOOOOOOOO1) January 24, 2023