quote: We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me an look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.
quote: There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return.
quote: I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
quote: "The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me."
quote: "Wisdom is thus not what men first of all seek They seek, instead, the justification for what they happen to cherish,"
quote:Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrifical chalices dry. This is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and becomes a part of the ceremony.
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Ak..."Metamorphosis", in truth, is about all of us. The moden world strives to weaken our sense of "self". We wake up, go to work, follow the same mind-numbing schedule day after day and end-up losing the sense of individuality which caracterizes us as "human beings" (self-conciousness). Without a strong of self, we are not human anymore, but simple scavengers, as the cocroach the protagonist turns into.
At least, these are my thoughts about the book. Feel free to disagree, everyone. I luuuv Kafka!
Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I read Metamorphosis to my 16-year-old sister and it officially freaked her out. Rather than agreeing with me about its brilliance, I think she questioned my morbid tastes. But I find it brilliant.
Kafka is fabulous.
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But to look only at external pressures (and to characterize them as wholly modern) is to view just one part of the picture, imo.
This is not to say that I can provide the complete picture because I'm not sure there is a complete one.
The beauty of Kafka is that his texts not only support but actively invite a multiplicity of interpretations. They move towards the parabolic.
And asserting the primacy of any one interpretation is an exercise in trying to carry an arm full of sand (or mice, or leopards, or vermin). This is especially true of those who think that the key to all of his texts is Kafka's biography -- esp. his relationship with his father and with Felice Bauer.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Of course, I wouldn't push any literary interpretation as "THE" interpretation. What I provided was only my humple oppinion, of course. I think Kafka, as many writers in his time, wrote in (and about) a world in which the self-conciousness was being shattered time and time again, as a sacrifice to a yet almost unperceived entity called "modern life". Every change is a pitfall, and that one was a huge one. I tend to view Kafka's works as literature written as its author sinks into quicksend. And he does not write about the horrors of drowning in quicksend. He writes about the sinking as if it was a dream, albeit a sad and almost unavoidable one.
Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Yes, quicksand. And notice that you fell back on metaphor in attempting to describe Kafka and modernism.
I think that's one of the most tempting (and even fruitful) ways to approach Kafka. It's certainly something I've done.
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That's the only way I know to talk about literature: metaphors. Of course, when we're talking about Kafka, it's a given. Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I both love Kafka and find him incredibly nerve-racking. I squirmed the whole way through The Metamorphosis (not because of the bug or even the overall weirdness, just because I felt so bad for Gregor) and banged my head against the wall all through The Castle (made worse by the fact that Kafka never finished the novel, so it just sort of leaves you there. It would have been one of the most frustrating things I had ever read even with some sort of ending; as it is, there's no competition.).
On a barely related note, in a German book-to-film adaptations class I took, I was the only person who had ever heard the term Kafkaesque. That just blew my mind and made me want to cry. (There were also people in that class who had never heard of Prague . . .)
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I love the unfinished novels -- they're masterpieces even without an ending.
But for those who want to read beyond _Metamorphosis_, I'd especially recommend the short story collections "A Country Doctor" and "In the Penal Colony."
Finally, there's an out-of-print book of Kafka's aphorisms called _Parables and Paradoxes_. It's amazing. Of course, the copy in my college library has been stolen (not by me). ::grumble, grumble::
<<<<<<<hugs Rahul>>>>>> Rahul rocks my socks too! Thanks for putting the powers of darkness to flight.
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Agreed. Translating Kafka is incredibly difficult. The 'vermin' (Ungeziefer) example that Poulakis gives on the site you linked to is a very good one.
The South African writer J.M Coetzee has a great essay about the problems with translating Kafka called "Kafka: Translators on Trial."
The thing about Kafka is that your German doesn't have to be *that* good to get the brilliant effect of his language. Part of that is that his works are so short so it takes less effort than, say, reading Mann's "Magic Mountain." But part of it is also that for Kafka, German was 'BlattDeutsch" (Paper German) -- it was a language for reading and writing. There are a few colloquial word usages in his work, but in general anything complicated or weird about Kafka's syntax and word usage is a product of his own genius. Because of that, one's knowledge of German and of German literature doesn't have to be that deep in order to 'get' Kafka.
Go for it. It's so worth reading in the original.
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No return email yet from Zalmoxis.... I'm so curious as to what this could be.
Kafka is certainly a genius. This story is ripping my guts out. I'm having to take it in small sections, with time in between to recover.
I think what I would best like to read would be a version (since I don't read German) in which each sentence were translated, somewhat like those on the website Richard linked, first literally word by word, then giving the literal meaning of the sentence, then giving some commentary on the shades of meaning contained in the original German. One could dip into it that way as deeply or shallowly as one liked.
I have a translation of the Bhagavad Gita which is like this (with the added step of transliteration of the original Sanskrit text) and not only can you really understand what the original is saying, but you can use it as a basis for learning the language.
I wish all translations would be like that. It's the only real way to do an adequate job of translating anything truly important.
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Sent it 58 minutes ago so if you haven't received it yet let me know and I'll e-mail it again.
---- While literal translations can be useful, they still can be quite problematic. There are so many words that just don't have the same impact from one language to another or where there is no 'ideal' analogue [for example, Ungeziefer]. And it's not just nouns and verbs -- prepositions can be very bedeviling. And there's the fact that tenses don't always work from one language to another. And while commentary can help, I'm not sure it can completely capture the experience of reading the text.
You just need to learn German, ak. .
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Yes, I did get it. Thank you. I plan to read it tomorrow.
The cool thing about my Bhagavad Gita is that you get the literal translation word by word, then the translated meaning, sentence by sentence. Then above that you get commentary that helps flesh out the meaning.
I think that multileveled system is the very best method. I agree that I need to learn German but that is the method I would choose to do so. With some great work of writing like Goethe or Kafka. Maybe you should do me some translations that way. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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<laughs> I really hoped you would appreciate that one. You should browse through some of the other entries on that site. They are much scarier than Metamorphosis! Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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You filled that empty space with the love I used to chase and as far as I can see it don't get better than this So butterfly, here is a song and it's sealed with a kiss and a thank you miss.
Posts: 3061 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I wish Sasha would come and post on this thread. He's the one who got me to read Kafka. He'd be such a great hatracker! You guys would love him! He's awesome.
<<<<<<<tries to summon Sasha>>>>>>>>
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Never fearing of spiders, generally gentle despite their clawriform terrinsicality. I can't figure out why the tubular attachment to my Best Buy is providing substandard insectizoid annhiliation powers?
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