The essential philosophical writings of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers are now gathered into a single volume with an introduction and afterword by the celebrated writer and publisher Roberto Calasso.
Illness set him free to write a series of philosophical fragments: some narratives, some single images, some parables. These “aphorisms” appeared, sometimes with a few words changed, in other writings–some of them as posthumous fragments published only after Kafka’s death in 1924. While working on K., his major book on Kafka, in the Bodleian Library, Roberto Calasso realized that the Zürau aphorisms, each written on a separate slip of very thin paper, numbered but unbound, represented something unique in Kafka’s opus–a work whose form he had created simultaneously with its content.
The notebooks, freshly translated and laid out as Kafka had intended, are a distillation of Kafka at his most powerful and enigmatic. This lost jewel provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the collective work of a genius.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Heroism
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2007
Writing about Kafka is just as difficult and always more useless (in the Kafka-esque sense) than reading Kafka. Really the only people who ought to be allowed to write about Kafka are those who live in caves or at the bottom of wells or in high mountain towers and have studied Kafka’s work for fifty years. He evades interpretation, as Harold Bloom pointed out, which is another way of saying he is hard to understand.
I think the best way to take these aphorisms is with something like the steely commitment of a scholar-monk in the dark ages piecing together out of rare manuscripts the arcane glories of a past world. The extreme heroism of the writer must summon forth a similar heroism in the reader. One must live with Kafka rather than devour him.
Only a fool would seek to interpret Kafka in an amazon review. I am, of course, a fool so I would suggest that the phrase “The impossibility of spirit” would be not too much more deceptive, partial, or misleading a statement than any other when considering Kafka’s work. Certainly for Kafka the spiritual and the political are both present (or absent; one sees what I mean!); great writers like Theodor Adorno are simply wrong to read Kafka as only or primarily a political writer. Both possibilities must be kept in mind.
These days, in literature, Kafka is often made the signatory of many more minor literary projects engaged in by lesser though esteemable writers. It is helpful to return to the reluctant master himself to be aware of life’s inextinguishable distances. Kafka wasn’t trying to create the “Kafka-esque” or be strange in a way that would appeal to hoardes of white middle class semi-intellectuals. He was trying to set down in clear and readable prose what he thought and what he felt whether he had anything in common with it or not.
Amazon will not permit me to give Mr. Franz Kafka as many stars as I would like. My choices are limited to only five
5.0 out of 5 stars The Impossibility of Crows
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2009
For those familiar, primarily, with Kafka’s fictions, these aphorisms come as a pleasant surprise. Everything is here in a compressed way. One of my favorites: “The crows like to insist a single crow is enough to destroy heaven. This is incontestably true, but it says nothing about heaven, because heaven is just another way of saying: the impossibility of crows.”
Prague-born writer Franz Kafka Author Of The Zürau Aphorisms pdf wrote in German, and his stories, such as ” The Metamorphosis ” (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include “The Metamorphosis” (1912) and ” In the Penal Colony ” (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short “The Metamorphosis.” Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: “Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me … in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread.” Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
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