Kafka

[Anonymous No.11196192]

Thoughts on Franz Kafka?

[Anonymous No.11196198]

OP is a faggot.

[Anonymous No.11196431]

>>11196192
I’m reading the castle at the moment. It’s very uneasy at parts. I like his style though and I wish I had a Freida waifu

[Anonymous No.11196492]

>>11196431
>I wish I had a Freida waifu
so did Kafka

[Anonymous No.11196502]

As a teenager, The Metamorphosis felt like it was written just for me. I related to the alienation of Gregor, and I empathized with his struggles to win the approval of his father.
As a young man, The Trial grabbed me. I related to the way that problems seemed to branch out into further, absurd complications. I often wondered: is everything truly pointless? Are we all just guilty of being alive?
After my divorce I felt like the animal from The Burrow: weak, pretending to be brave, vulnerable, lonely, misanthropic, and lost in my own labyrinth.
Today's world feels like the land described in The Great Wall of China.

tl;dr: I don't begrudge anyone for not liking Kafka, but he speaks to me. I've grown out of almost every writer that I admired as a teenager, but not Kafka.

[Anonymous No.11196506]

>>11196192
Brilliant, The Metamorphosis is the greatest work of fiction of the 20th century

[Anonymous No.11196511]

not bad, he gets credit for pioneering the style that david lynch would perfect

[Anonymous No.11196550]

he's good

[Anonymous No.11196668]

>>11196431
same. some parts are hilarious tho, like the throwing around all the papers, or the two assistants on the rail pining through the window. I was in hysterics.

[Anonymous No.11196701]

>>11196502
When you grow up, you'll grow out of Kafka, too.

[Anonymous No.11197276]

>>11196701
Then when you grow up a bit more, you’ll grow back into him.

[Anonymous No.11197282]

Amerika is peak Kafka.
Also, Great Wall of China is the best of his stories.

[Anonymous No.11197292]

>>11196192
I don’t know if he’s the most esoteric and god-tier writer of the 19th century to present, or if he’s just okay.

Reading his parables and paradoxes makes me think he was on another higher plain.

[Anonymous No.11197781]

>>11196668
He's just SO funny amirite guys lol xD

[Anonymous No.11198285]

>>11196192
i don't want to turn out like him

[Anonymous No.11198477]

>>11196192
Whiny little bitchboy.

[Anonymous No.11198508]

>>11197282
who dis thot is

[Anonymous No.11198518]

>>11196192
He was depressed, everything comes back to dad

[Anonymous No.11198522]

>>11196192
Terrible. He wrote only for himself and it shows.

[Anonymous No.11198529]

>>11196192
I'm unfortunate enough to only have been exposed to one of his works; The Metamorphosis, which I consider a masterpiece.
Soon enough I will remedy this and branch out to his lesser known works.

[Anonymous No.11199848]

I'd say pretty good desu. He projects a little bit but whatever.

[Anonymous No.11199889]

>>11196192
thought he was a hack until i read the zürau aphorisms
check out roberto calasso's book on him shit's remarkable

[Anonymous No.11200079]

>>11196502
>After my divorce I felt like the animal from The Burrow:
That is shit. I love Kafka to death but reading 50 pages of that jsut the end mid sentence and ... pissed me off I didn't pick up the Short Story novel for a couple days.
My opinion on Kafka's literary style, how much he himself interprets into his works, how much is subconsious I got from reading the Burrow.
I recommend everything Kafka ever wrote but to anyone starting out with Kafka I tell them to avoid the Burrow like the plague.
>>11196502
>The Great Wall of China.
10/10; his work of his that speaks the most to me.

[Anonymous No.11200360]

>>11196431
Read it to the "end" and see if you still feel the same

[Anonymous No.11200371]

>>11196431
>he thinks freida isn't an unloyal whore like the rest of them

hate to break it to you mate...

[Anonymous No.11200383]

>>11196668
I never found the assistants to be funny. For the most part, I found myself perplexed (at their behavior and their agenda) and even wondering whether they were human or not.

[Anonymous No.11201846]

>>11197292
>>11197292
Yeah, Kafka’s mysticism is underrated/not talked about enough, in my opinion. He definitely has a unique worldview when it came to existentialism and the Divine. It reminds me of apophatic theology, the tradition that we can only describe what God is not like. For Kafka, the Divine seems like something which is silent, utterly removed from humanity, hidden behind an impenetrable wall. You could say It speaks by its very silence and unattainability. He himself said that writing, for him, was a way of prayer. He prayed through writing. I definitely get this sense in some of better moments, particularly in his best moments. There’s something transcendent, impersonal and mysterious about his writings at their best. His parables give some of the best sense of this. I think he is the modern era’s greatest writer just when it comes to creating a new mythology. He’s so good at creating works which feel like modern parables, fables, myths or fairy tales without being archaic or corny, but instead having a genuine mystique and power.

[Anonymous No.11201867]

>>11201846
One short story I like, for instance;

My Destination

I gave orders for my horse to be brought round from the stables. The servant did not understand me. I myself went to the stable, saddled my horse and mounted. In the distance I heard a bugle call, I asked him what this meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me, asking: "Where are you riding to, master?" "I don't know," I said, "only away from here, away from here. Always away from here, only by doing so can I reach my destination." "And so you know your destination?" he asked. "Yes," I answered, "didn't I say so? Away-From-Here, that is my destination." "You have no provisions with you," he said. "I need none," I said, "the journey is so long that I must die of hunger if I don't get anything on the way. No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey."

[Anonymous No.11201924]

Liked the metamorphosis alot, hated the castle.

[Anonymous No.11201998]

>>11196192
It may be a plebby opinion, but I think he was the greatest modernist author. Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, James and Proust were all great, but it feels like they’re just continuing the tradition of the novel from Flaubert, more and more detailedly writing about the consciousnesses of relatively ordinary characters doing relatively normal things as they go through their lives. The development of stream-of-consciousness was definitely a milestone in the development of the novel, but it feels like “more of the same” of a tendency that was already there in literature before it than something truly different. From Shakespeare on you can see this progression of the great Western authors becoming more inward, more interior in how they create and follow characters. From Shakespeare to Balzac to Flaubert to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to Woolf, James, Faulkner, Joyce and Proust, it seems inevitable that there’d be more and more focus on creating more and more realistic and detailed representations of the monologues or soliloquies or inner thoughts of characters.

Kafka, on the other hand, was working on a different level. He was very influenced by great authors before him but he created a very new, unique, and almost unheralded style, in my opinion. This method of plainly writing about absurd and unrealistic situations is his big contribution. He also captured modern existentialism very well in fiction form. I think to have inspired the term “Kafkaesque”, which can be applied to so many situations and works of art, was a greater impact than Joyce inspiring “Joycean”. What’s “Joycean”? Just wordplay, a sensuous, baroque and maximalistic style. Basically, great verbal facility. “Kafkaesque”, however, is a whole mystique. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well, but it’s basically the aura that Kafka’s works has which makes me rate them so highly. Describing this aura and influence is hard to put in totally rational language.

[Anonymous No.11202009]

>>11196192
absolutely based desu

[Anonymous No.11202020]

>>11201998
Also, the tendency AWAY from psychologizing and interiority in postmodern literature is interesting to consider. It seems like Faulkner, Woolf, Proust, Joyce and James were the sort of end or ultimate logical conclusion of this tendency. There’s still good and acclaimed realist novels with a focus on the psychology and thoughts of the characters, but I think Kafka heralded the flourishing of less psychological and somewhat more absurdist and impersonal literature. I don’t necessarily view this as a negative, I think both styles are good and that literature has to develop and oscillate in all these ways or it’ll stagnate, become boring. We may see a reflourishing of more psychological literature but I think there’s a definite tendency from the 20th century on to having somewhat absurd characters and situations and eschewing psychological realism which could be seen as being influenced heavily by Kafka.

[Anonymous No.11202047]

get this subversive jewish shit out of here

[Anonymous No.11202058]

>>11201998
i like this post

[Anonymous No.11202426]

I just read “an imperial message”...straight fire senpai

[Anonymous No.11202630]

Kafka is the writer I'm most convinced would post on /lit/ if he were around today.