Franz Kafka today PDF
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ACPL ITEM DISCARDED Franz Kafka Today Franz Kafka Today ANGEL FLORES Edited by HOMER SWANDER and The University of Wisconsin Press MADISON, 1962 Published by the University of Wisconsin Press, 430 Sterling Court, Madison 6, Wisconsin Copyright © 1958 by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin Paperback edition, 1962 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 57—9818 A 0'r?7^rQ Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank Professors Harold Lenz, Herman Salinger, and Dr. Ernst J. Schlochawer for invaluable assistance in translating and editing. And for permission to reprint the works indicated, they thank the following publishers and periodical publications: Quarterly Review of Literature for “The Judgment” by Kate Flores Modern Language Review for “The Metamorphosis” by F. D. Luke Modern Language Quarterly for “A Report to An Academy” by Wil¬ liam C. Rubinstein Accent and Rinehart and Company, Inc., publishers of The Art of Modern Fiction, for “A Hunger-Artist” by R. W. Stallman Scott, Foresman and Company, publishers of Reading Modern Short Stories, for “The Married Couple” by Jarvis Thurston Etudes Germaniques for “The Trial: Its Meaning” by Rene Dauvin The Northern Review for “Kafka’s Divine Comedy” by Donald Pearce Critique and Librairie Gallimard for “The Diaries: The Exigency of the Work of Art” by Maurice Blanchot (all rights reserved) The Germanic Review for “Letter to His Father” by Heinz Politzer v . ■ . • • • ' ■ ' . • - ■ ■ ' . . . . . . . ■ V \ • ■ . . . t ' ' Contents Introduction . . Angel Flores and Homer Swander 1 Part One. The Short Stories The Judgment . .Kate Flores 5 The Metamorphosis . .F. D. Luke 25 A Country Doctor .Basil Busacca 45 A Report to an Academy . William C. Rubinstein 55 A Hunger-Artist .... .R. W. Stallman 61 Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk .Carl R. Woodring 71 At the Building of the Great Wall of China . .Clement Greenberg 77 The Married Couple . .Jarvis Thurston 83 Part Two. The Novels Amerika: Its Genesis.Mark Spilka 95 Amerika: Its Meaning.Lienhard Bergel 117 The Trial: Its Structure .'.Herman Uyttersprot 127 The Trial: Its Meaning Y.Rene Dauvin 145 The Castle: Its Genesis.Max Brod 161 The Castle: Kafka’s Divine Comedy .... Donald Pearce 165 The Castle: K/s Village.. Homer Swander 173 Vll vm Contents Part Three. Diaries and Letters The Diaries: The Exigency __ of the Work of Art ..Maurice Blanchot 195 Letter to His Father.Heinz Politzer 221 Letters to Milena: The Writer as Advocate of Himself.Werner Vordtriede 239 Part Four. Bibliographies and Index Bibliographical Index of the Works Available in English.251 Biography and Criticism: A Bibliography.259 Index.287 Angel Flores and Homer Swander Introduction “Had one to name the author who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe bore to theirs, Kafka is the first one would think of.”—W. H. Auden “Besides Racine, who is for me the greatest writer, there is one other—Franz Kafka—before whom I doff my hat.”—Paul Claudel If today the greatness of Racine is obvious, and the figures of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe stand out clearly both above their age and as representatives of it, they do so largely because of the light imparted to them by the passage of time, by the decades of their re¬ moval. And if Kafka, on the other hand, speaking out of our own baf¬ fling times, often frustrates and even repels us, if we cannot place him, and do not always understand him, it may be largely that the light of time is even more relentlessly necessary. For he was, as he described himself despairingly in his diary, “a man with too great a shadow.” And as yet we are, in a sense, still living within that shadow. We are, however, making progress. It is now nearly a third of a century since his death, and this much may be said with certainty: those who were closest to him knew him least, misunderstood him most. His friends, despite glimpses here and there of intimacy, failed to see the individual under their noses—the slippery creature, so charming, so human, yet so complex, so ferociously intelligent and infrared—failed especially to see that part of him which informs the writings. In every case, they contributed a personal image which, how-
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