Kafka General

[Anonymous No.12951697]

Has anyone here ever read Kafka's collected short stories? I've read the Tria, and I loved it. Loved the Castle. Loved the Metamorphosis. Penal Colony was also really good. But these short stories...man, some of them are so short I didn't even realize "short stories" could be that short. Some of them don't even seem to be stories at all. Overall I am confused as fuck. Maybe 90% of the time I have no clue what the fuck I'm actually reading, or what his point is. Am I just too brainlet for Kafka's short stories?

[Anonymous No.12951701]

>>12951697
No mate no one has read Kafka

[Anonymous No.12951704]

>>12951697
>Tria
Trial*

[Anonymous No.12951736]

>>12951697
Just read what he considered his real work. Country doctor and penal colony r my favs

[Anonymous No.12951757]

>>12951736
Coubtry doctor was weird, but engrossing. I had to read it several times. I dunno, Hunter Gracchus which is one of his unpublished stories was good. Some of his published stuff is incomprehensible to me. I don't know, for example, what to make of the series of stories titled "Meditations". The Judgement didn't really make much sense to me. The Stoker was good, but that's technically the first chapter of Amerika iirc. Don't wth is up with Eleven Sons, Josephine, etc. Forgot about Hunger Artist, that one was actually fantastic.

[Anonymous No.12951763]

>>12951736
>>12951697
I loved penal colony, but I don't understand it. I was just surprised by how they wanted to kill him at the end. What did he do to make them want to kill him?

[Anonymous No.12951766]

>>12951757
Sorry this post is so shitty, I'm phoneposting with a cracked screen and can't see what I'm typing clearly

[Anonymous No.12951773]

>>12951763
Kill who? The Sergeant dude killed himself. The explorer ended up leaving the colony.

[Anonymous No.12951924]

How are the Oxford World Classics translations of The Castle and The Trial?

[Anonymous No.12951986]

>>12951773
Yeah ok, but why did the colonists chase the explorer to his boat? I remember it being like they were going to kill him. Am I remembering it wrong? I read it in high school so I could be remembering it wrong

[Anonymous No.12951990]

What's the one where the main character goes to some house party and then just walks around like a sperg? That's a good one. The hunger artist is pretty good, the one about Poseidon is also good, the one about the slave is great. He has many excellent tales, OP. They're short, well read and you can extract a lot of meaning out of them. Remember: your role as a reader is not to sort of reverse engineer the meaning of the work (i.e. you're not trying to get inside Kafka's head).

[Anonymous No.12952033]

>>12951924
>He's reading Kafka..in translation!

[Anonymous No.12952185]

Currently reading The Trial. I don't know what the hell is going on but Kafka surely knew how to convey dread. I'm suffocated reading this.

[Anonymous No.12952243]

>>12951986
No, they were following him. They wanted to leave the colony as well, but the explorer thought they were annoying so he didn't let them get on the boat. It was the soldier and the prisoner fleeing.

[Anonymous No.12952253]

> no one has mentioned The Hunger Artist

probably my fave of his

[Anonymous No.12952254]

>>12951990
The house party one is bizarre. I did not understand what the fuck Kafka was on about there at all. According to wiki it's Kafka's earliest story (that he wrote, not published I think). I think it's called Description of a Struggle, not sure.

[Anonymous No.12952261]

>>12952253
> no one has mentioned The Hunger Artist
are you serious? did you actually read the thread?

[Anonymous No.12952324]

>>12952243
Ok, I'm gonna have to reread this.

[Anonymous No.12952345]

>>12951697
Kafka didn't really want a lot of his stuff published (though some speculate he secretly did which is why he didn't destroy them himself). The best way I ever made sense of his writings was to see them as emotional expression for the most part. It's absurd and contradicting and sometimes just doesn't make sense and I think it's written from an emotional perspective more than anything. I wouldn't be surprised if he confused even himself.

[Anonymous No.12952346]

Country doctor is the GOAT short story. Don't care much for his novellas

[Anonymous No.12952348]

>>12952261
oh shit
off to go commit samurai ritual bukkake then

[Anonymous No.12952354]

>>12952346
Can you explain what it is about it that you like?

[Anonymous No.12952358]

>>12952185
There's certainly that but the Trial is also very funny, it's practically a sitcom at some points.

[Anonymous No.12952367]

>>12952033
>German prose translated into English, a Germanic language
I bet you think Cervantes’ Don Quixote is better than every English translation by default

[Anonymous No.12952387]

>>12952254
>AT ABOUT MIDNIGHT A few people rose, bowed, shook hands, said it had been a
pleasant evening, and then passed through the wide doorway into the vestibule, to put
on their coats. The hostess stood in the middle of the room and made graceful bowing
movements, causing the dainty folds in her skirt to move up and down.
>I sat at a tiny table -- it had three curved, thin legs -- sipping my third glass of
benedictine, and while I drank I surveyed my little store of pastry which I myself had
picked out and arranged in a pile.

Yep, that's the one. Thank you for reminding me of the title. It's bizarre as hell but somehow comfy.

[Anonymous No.12952395]

this is by far one of my favorite books

[Anonymous No.12952398]

>>12952395
Could you take a pic from the summary or table of contents?

[Anonymous No.12952400]

[Anonymous No.12952405]

[Anonymous No.12952407]

[Anonymous No.12952410]

(1/2)

[Anonymous No.12952412]

lets try that again
(1/2)

[Anonymous No.12952417]

(2/2)

[Anonymous No.12952428]

>>12952398
(1/2)

[Anonymous No.12952435]

>>12952398
(2/2)

[Anonymous No.12952450]

[Anonymous No.12952455]

[Anonymous No.12952459]

[Anonymous No.12952469]

>>12952428
>>12952435
Shit, thank you. I actually have his complete stories but I was looking for a selection of them to guide me a bit. This will be a good start.

[Anonymous No.12952678]

>>12952395
This is out of my price range here in the EU. Very jealous. Our bilingual stuff seems to be mostly bargain paperbacks

[Anonymous No.12952693]

>>12952358
>the Trial is also very funny

How do you perceive The Trial as funny? I don't get this feeling.

[Anonymous No.12952698]

>>12952693
you didn't laugh when he find the bureaucrats getting flogged? or anything with Leni?

[Anonymous No.12952700]

>>12952693
apparently when Kafka read the ending to his friends, he couldn't contain himself and almost fell out of his chair laughing

[Anonymous No.12952714]

>>12952698
No, I was rather unsettled but now that you recall that scene, I admit it can be certainly comic. For me, The Trial has been discomforting.

[Anonymous No.12952717]

>>12952714
I think it's a very particular form of humour, you have to be kind of off to really get it

[Anonymous No.12952787]

K.'s helpers in The Castle are really annoying but the way K. treats them is just mean and uncalled for.

[Anonymous No.12952875]

>>12952714
The about of it is both comical and disturbing

[Anonymous No.12952878]

What are you all's thoughts on the stoker? I really enjoyed it

[Anonymous No.12952948]

that was my first reaction to his stories too. i put them on the shelf for a few years and gave them another read and found them incredibly funny and emotionally relatable and honest in ways I didn't expect from kafka. sometimes youre just not in a good place to be recieving it

[Anonymous No.12953014]

>>12952407
This is an awesome extract and like the supposedly time-efficient Borges further compressed.

The translation feels a bit weird to me though. There's this tendency towards latinisms (concerning, perpetually renewed, remained, substratum) which feels weird to me. I'm not a Kraut, but the original reads a lot plainer than the English to me. "Goading" is also a striking addition from the translator, but I think I like it.

[Anonymous No.12953868]

>>12952693
He's just parroting DFW.

[Anonymous No.12953964]

>>12951697
I had to read the Metamorphosis in school and I hated it.

[Anonymous No.12953978]

>>12953964
School can do that to a story. Try the Penal Colony story though. It's fantastic and really not the same sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.12954006]

>>12952714
Reading Kafka is always disturbing, even unpleasant to me. But then afterwards thinking about the stories they have a comical aspect

[Anonymous No.12954037]

>>12951736

But everything he wrote is good.

[Anonymous No.12954110]

This is a reminder that Kafka was a Platonist.

[Anonymous No.12954312]

>>12952878
Yes, it's excellent. It's too bad he never completed the full novel (Amerika).

[Anonymous No.12954320]

>>12954110
I really need to read a good Kafka biography. Any recommendations? What's the Kafka biography to end all Kafka biographies? The definitive biography.

[Anonymous No.12954333]

>>12954320

Stach has a three volume biography that is considered definitive by many.

[Anonymous No.12954348]

>>12954333 (checked)
Have you read it? Any comments?

[Anonymous No.12954428]

>>12954348

I haven't read it yet. It's on my list of things to read.

[Anonymous No.12954490]

>>12954428
>>12954348

I heard Kafka used to read his stuff to friends and was unable to contain his laughter. Not exactly the image he has today (see everyman cover from op). Another maybe surprising thing about him was that he loved movies.

[Anonymous No.12955188]

bump

[Anonymous No.12955255]

Speaking of Kafka:

>A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe-deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s national library.

...

>Experts have speculated the cache could include endings to some of Kafka’s major works, many of which were unfinished when they were published after his death.

>Israel’s supreme court has already stripped an Israeli family of its collection of Kafka’s manuscripts, which were hidden in Israeli bank vaults and in a Tel Aviv apartment. But the Swiss ruling would complete the acquisition of nearly all Kafka’s known works.

...

>Israel’s National Library claims Kafka’s papers as cultural assets that belong to the Jewish people. “We welcome the judgment of the court in Switzerland, which matched all the judgments entered previously by the Israeli courts,” said David Blumberg, the chairman of the library, a nonprofit and non-governmental body.

>“The judgment of the Swiss court completes the preparation of the National Library of Israel to accept the entire literary estate of Max Brod, which will be properly handled and will be made available to the wider public in Israel and the world.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/17/unseen-kafka-works-may-soon-be-revealed-after-kafkaesque-trial

[Anonymous No.12955310]

>>12955255
wow, Israel being based for once

[Anonymous No.12955409]

>>12951697
I remember first reading Kafka's stories when I was 15 or so, and they still make me feel a very specific and strange kind of way. I always thought the atmosphere somewhat lacks time and space, it feels like dreaming, it's so unsettling. I especially like Penal colony, perhaps because I still don't understand it as much as I would like. Country doctor offers a more satisfying interpretation, however, I despise overanalyzing literature. I just appreciate Kafka for how intense the read is.

[Anonymous No.12955426]

How do you feel about Kafka being appropriated like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOTn_wRwDE0

[Anonymous No.12955448]

>>12955426
eh, try THIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDxQXzT_9F4

[Anonymous No.12955489]

>>12955426
he's just using Descartes argument for non-extended substance, Kafka was just a way of demonstrating the argument

[Anonymous No.12955499]

>>12953964
I was also forced to read Metamorphosis at school and though I didn't particularly hate the story, it was just incoherent and weird to me. Years afterwards I reread the story and I grasped a lot of more things than in the first time. Kafka manages to mix a sensation of despair with a peculiar sense of dark comedy. Since that point of view, the Metamorphosis conveys both dread, melancholy, despair and humor.

[Anonymous No.12955756]

Here's an animated version of A Country Doctor. The stream has some artifacts but at least the video itself is visually stimulating.

https://vimeo.com/81164828

[Anonymous No.12955901]

>>12955756
Started watching it. Looks awesome. I'll watch the whole thing when I get back from work

[Anonymous No.12955946]

>>12951697
>Maybe 90% of the time I have no clue what the fuck I'm actually reading, or what his point is. Am I just too brainlet for Kafka's short stories?
Nah, many was him jsut writing in a stream of consciusness sense.
I have read all his work (but not his letters or diaries), and I greatly recommend reading all the short stories. I loved them all, but "der Bau", because it frustrated me so much, though that is what I now take away as frankly having been its purpose.
"Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer" and the parts related to it, are my personal favorite but only distinguishably prefered because I rarely hear them get praised from others.
Read them all, and read them twice, also read Amerika.

[Anonymous No.12956037]

>>12955946
What did you think about Josephine and Investigations of a Dog?

[Anonymous No.12956039]

>>12955946
>Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer
I loved this one, by the way. I feel that it is very closely related to both the Castle and the Trial, in its meaning.

[Anonymous No.12956071]

>>12955756
>>12955901
Since we're dropping random stuff here's Kafka Band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fymn_pdIXW8 In Czech/German.

[Anonymous No.12956909]

>>12952693
Right at the beginning K catches his arresters trying to steal his underwear. If that's not sitcom writing nothing is. Right at the end, too, K is being taken to his execution but he's steering his escorts around while they're arm in arm, that's funny too. It's funny how he storms out of court saying "You have no power over me!" and then gladly walks straight back in the next time. It's all funny, but because of the undertone of dread you might not laugh.

[Anonymous No.12956922]

Excuse me but what the fuck is this?