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Konundrum

Selected Prose of Franz Kafka

Archipelago Books

WORDS ARE MISERABLE MINERS OF MEANING

(to Max Brod)

How many words grace the pages of this book!

They are supposed to bestir memory. As if words could remember!

For words are miserable mountain climbers and miserable miners of meaning. They do not retrieve the hidden treasures from the heights or dredge them from the depths!

But there is a living commemoration that softly strokes everything worthy of remembering with its soft caress. And when a red hot little flame leaps forth, poignant and piercing, from such retrospective ash, and you fix your gaze upon it, as if gripped by its magic spell, then ...

But how with a shaky hand and coarse writing instrument can one possibly inscribe oneself in such pure remembrance, other than to stain these white unassuming pages? That is what I did on September 4, 1900.

Franz Kafka

LETTER TO ERNST ROWOHLT

Prague, August 14, 1912

Dear Mr. Rowohlt,

Enclosed herewith is the short prose you asked to see; it amounts to enough, I think, for a little book. In the course of making the selection with this end in mind, I sometimes had to choose between appeasing my sense of responsibility and the craving to have a book of mine included in your splendid series. No doubt my selection was not always strictly unbiased. But I would now, of course, be glad if these pieces pleased you perhaps enough to publish them. My literary failings should not, I believe, be immediately apparent to the most astute and discriminating reader. Every writer's painstakingly propagated individuality consists, after all, in the idiosyncratic way in which he conceals his faults.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Franz Kafka Manuscript to follow

REFLECTIONS

What an incredible world I have in my head! But how to free myself from it and it from me, without tearing it out? And it would be a thousand times better to tear it than to keep it locked up or buried in me. That is, after all, what I'm here for, of this I am quite convinced.

* * *

As soon as I say something it immediately and irretrievably loses its significance, when I write it down it also always loses it, but sometimes attains a new significance.

* * *

What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself, and really ought to go stand myself perfectly still in a corner, grateful to be able to breathe.

CONCERNING PARABLES

Many complain that the words of the wise are always only presented as parables, useless in daily life, and this is all we have. When the wise man says: "Get thee hence," he does not mean that we should go to the other side, a task we could in any case easily accomplish were the crossing worthwhile, he rather means for us to hasten to some fabled yonder that we don't know, a place moreover which he cannot describe any more precisely, and which is perfectly useless to us here and now. What all these parables really mean to say is just that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and that much we already knew. But what we wrestle with every day, that's something else.

To which a wise one said: "Why do you resist? Were you to follow the wisdom of the parables, you yourselves would become parables, and would thereby be relieved of the burden of everyday toil."

Another one said: "I bet that that's a parable too."

Where upon the first one said: "You win."

To which the second said: "But only figuratively speaking." Said the first: "No, in reality; figuratively speaking, you lose."

CHILDREN ON THE COUNTRY ROAD

I heard the wagon rattling past the garden gate, occasionally I also caught a glimpse of it through the gently swaying gaps in the hedge. Oh how the wood of the spokes and carriage shafts cracked in the summer heat! Workers came flocking in from the fields, laughing like there was no tomorrow.

I sat, relaxing, on our little swing, dangling from the trees in my parents' garden.

The commotion never let up outside the gate, children had just that moment passed by on the run; grain carts with men and women seated on the sheaves and others ringed around it darkened the flowerbeds; toward evening I saw a man with a cane strolling slowly by, and two girls going the other way, arm in arm, greeting him, then stepping aside in the grass.

Then a flock of birds took flight like a burst of fire, I followed them with my gaze, saw how they soared in a flash, until it felt as if they were no longer soaring, but I was falling, and holding tight to the cord out of fear, I started swinging a little. Soon I swung harder as a cooler breeze wafted by, and the spectacle of fluttering birds gave way to sparkling stars overhead.

My supper was served by candlelight. Often I had both my arms spread on the serving board, and tired already, bit into my buttered bread. The richly filigreed curtains billowed in the warm wind, and sometimes a passerby who wanted to catch sight of and exchange words with me held them in his hands. The candle that usually blew out and the gathered gnats still hovered a while in the black puff of smoke. If someone asked me a question through the open window, I peered back as though at the mountains or at thin air, and he too did not really expect an answer.

If someone leapt through the window frame and announced that the others were already gathered out front, I naturally rose with a sigh.

"Say, what are you sighing about? What's the problem? Is it some special misfortune you can't make good? Will we never be able to get over it? Is it really hopeless?"

Nothing was hopeless. We ran out in front of the house. "Thank God, you're all here at last!" – "You always come too late!" – "Why me of all people?" – "You, in particular. Stay home if you don't feel like coming." – "Is there no forgiveness?" – "What? No forgiveness? What are you talking about?"

We butted our heads through the night. There was no difference for us between day- and nighttime. Now our waistcoat buttons rubbed up against each other like teeth, now we ran into the ever-infinite distance, with fire in our throats, like beasts in the tropics. Like cuirassier in wars of old, tramping and leaping, we chased each other down the short back street, and revved up as our legs were, kept running up the country road. Some dropped into the roadside ditch, and no sooner vanished in the dark embankment than they reappeared elsewhere like strangers looking down the lane.

"Come on down!" – "No, you come up first!" – "So that you shove us back down, no way, we weren't born yesterday!" – "You're too chicken, you mean. Come on, come on already!" – "Oh really? 'Afro's chicken? So you think you can shove us down? You haven't got the guts!"

We attacked, were struck in the chest, and played the willing victims, flinging ourselves down in the grass of the ditch. Warm all over, feeling neither warmth nor cold in the grass, we were engulfed by fatigue. Rolling to the right, a hand under the air, it would have been easy to fall asleep. Still we wanted to pick ourselves up with a proudly raised chin, only to fall into a deeper ditch. Then bracing ourselves with raised forearm, legs akimbo, we wanted to fling ourselves against the illusory resistance of thin air, and thereafter no doubt to fall into an even deeper ditch. We never wanted it to end.

We hardly gave a thought to how we would stretch ourselves out for maximum comfort, particularly in the knees, when sleep overtook us in the last ditch, and lay there like invalids on our backs, on the verge of tears. We blinked when a boy with elbows pressed to his sides leapt over us from the embankment to the road.

The moon already hung at a considerable height above us, a mail coach drove by bathed in its light. A light breeze lifted all around, we even felt it in the ditch, and in the distance the forest began to rustle. Then still nobody felt much like being alone.

"Where are you?" – "Come here!" – "All together!" – "What are you hiding for, stop that nonsense!" – "Don't you know that the mail coach already passed?" – "No way! Already?" – "Of course it did, it drove by while you were asleep." – "Me asleep? Not on your life!" – "Shut up, you can see it in your eyes." – "Gimme a break!" – "Let's go!"

We ran more tightly pressed together, some of us holding hands, unable to keep our heads held high because the road ran downhill. One of us let out an Indian war cry, our legs fell into a fast gallop, with every leap our hips were lifted by the wind. Nothing could have held us back; we were so engrossed in running that even when trying to outpace each other, with arms folded behind, we could calmly look around.

We stopped on the Wildbach Bridge; those who had run ahead came back. The water below struck stones and roots as if it were not already late evening. There was no good reason for not one of those leaning on the railing to have leapt in. A train emerged from behind a distant clump of shrubbery, all the carriages were lit up, the windows surely rolled down. One of us started singing a hit tune, but we all wanted to join in. We sang much more quickly than the train advanced, arms keeping time at our sides, and because one voice was not enough, we got into a delightful melee with our disparate voices. When you mingle your voice with others it's like being caught on a fish hook.

So we sang, the woods behind us, the distant travelers in our ears. The grownups were still awake in the village, the mothers readied the beds for the night.

It was time. I embraced the comrade at my side, reached my hands out to three others, and took off on the run, no one called to me. At the first crossroads, as soon as I was out of sight I took a turn and ran over dirt paths back into the forest. I was headed for the city to the south, of which it was said in our village:

"There are people there, can you imagine, who never sleep!"

"Why not?"

"Because they don't get tired."

"Why not?"

"Because they're mad."

"Don't madmen get tired?"

"How can madmen ever get tired!"

THE SPINNING TOP

A philosopher always hung around where children were playing. And when he spotted a boy with a top, he lay in wait. As soon as the top started spinning, the philosopher ran forward to grab it. It did not bother him in the least that the children made a fuss and tried to keep him away from their plaything; so long as he had the top and it kept turning, he was happy, but only for a moment, the next moment he flung it to the ground and walked away. For he believed that the understanding of every little thing, a spinning top, for instance, sufficed to fathom the meaning of it all. That is why he didn't concern himself with the big questions, it seemed to him to be uneconomic. If one could truly understand the most minute of minutiae, then one could understand everything, which was why he only concerned himself with spinning tops. And every time they prepared to start spinning a top, he was hopeful that he would get it at last, and when the top started spinning, breathlessly chasing after it, that hope turned into certainty. But when finally he held the dumb wooden thing in his hand he felt sick, and the shouting of the children to which he had been oblivious until then now suddenly slammed against his ears and chased him away, and he tumbled like a top whipped about by an unskilled hand.

THE STREET-SIDE WINDOW

If you live withdrawn from the world and yet seek every now and then a point of contact with the flux of life, if cognizant of the changing time of day, the weather, working conditions and the like, you still seek some arm to link to yours – you won't get by for very long without a street-side window. And even if, a tired man, you were rather inclined to seek nothing at all, but turned to peer out the window just to bat your eyes open and shut between heaven and humanity, reluctantly, and with your head held back a bit, the clip clop of the horses, the rattle of the carriages, and the hubbub of the street below will nevertheless drag you out of yourself, and so at last compel you to join the human cavalcade.

AT NIGHT

Drowned in the dark of night. Just as you sometimes sink your head, rapt in thought, so to be completely submerged in night. People are asleep all around you. It's a little charade, an innocent self-delusion that they sleep in houses, in solid beds, under sturdy roofs, stretched out or pressed together on mattresses, swathed in sheets, under blankets; in fact, they lie gathered together as they did long ago, and thereafter, in a desolate wasteland, having pitched camp in the open, a vast multitude of people, a horde, a nation, flung down where once they stood on the cold ground, beneath a cold sky, forehead resting on an arm, face pressed against the ground, breathing tranquilly. And you lie awake, a watchman, aware of the next one over from the flickering flames of the brushwood fire. Why are you awake? Custom prescribes that someone must stand watch. Someone must always keep his eyes open.

UNHAPPINESS

Once toward evening, in November, when things had gotten altogether out of hand, and I'd been pacing around the rim of the narrow carpet in my room as around a racetrack, frightened at the glow of the illuminated street below, I turned around again, found a new object of interest in the depths of the mirror to the rear of my room, and cried out, just to test the timbre of my scream, a scream that kept soaring without counterweight and sounding in the inner ear even when it fell silent which nothing could drain of its force, eliciting no reply, when a door suddenly swung open out of the wall with such great urgency, unrest being so rife in the air, that even the carriage nags down below bared their throats and reared like frenzied war horses in battle.

A little ghost of a child burst out of the pitch-black corridor, in which the lamp was not yet lit, and remained standing on tiptoe on an inconspicuously seesawing floorboard. Immediately blinded by the light in the room, about to bury its face in its hands, it took unexpected solace in the view from the window, in the crossed slats of which the haze of the street lights driven upwards by the dark had finally settled. With its right elbow resting on the wall before the open door, it held itself upright and let the puff of light from outside play about its ankles, but also its neck and temples.

I peered at it a while, then said hello and took my coat off the screen in front of the fireplace where it hung and put it on, as I did not wish to stand there half-naked. For a little while I kept my mouth open, so that my upset might drain from my open lips. I tasted a bitter spittle, my eyelashes trembled uncontrollably, there was nothing wrong except for this altogether unexpected visit.

The red-cheeked child remained standing pressed against the wall at the same spot, and could not seem to get enough of the rough surface of the whitewashed wall, against which it kept rubbing its fingertips. I said: "Did you really mean to visit me? Was it not a mistake? It's so easy to make a mistake in such a big house. My name is So-and-so, I live on the third floor. Am I indeed the person you intended to visit?"

"Silence, silence!" the child said over its shoulder, "everything is as it should be."

"Then do step closer into the room, I'd like to shut the door."

"I just shut the door myself. Don't trouble yourself. I'd calm down if I were you."

"It's no trouble. But a lot of people live on this corridor, all, of course, my acquaintances; most are just getting home from work; when they overhear talking in a room, they feel they simply have the right to open their doors and see what's going on. These people are done with their daily work; they're not likely to respect propriety in the flash of freedom that evening provides! This you must surely know all too well. Permit me to shut the door!"

"What is it? What's bothering you? As far as I'm concerned, the entire house is welcome to come in. And again, as I already said: I did shut the door, do you think only you can do it? I even turned the key."

"That's fine. That's all I really ask. You wouldn't have needed to lock it with a key. And now that you're here, just make yourself comfortable. You're my guest. You can count on me. Don't hesitate to make yourself at home. I will neither compel you to stay nor force you to leave. But do I really need to say it? Don't you know me already?"

"No. It really wasn't necessary to say it. In fact, you shouldn't have said it at all. I'm a child; why make such a big fuss about me?"

"Please don't take it badly. Of course, you're a child. But you're not all that little. You're pretty grown up, in fact. If you were a girl, it wouldn't be seemly to lock yourself up in a room with me."

"We don't need to worry about that. I just wanted to say the fact that I know you as well as I do hardly shields me, it just spares you the effort of fabricating lies. Even so, you flatter me with compliments. Stop it, I ask you to stop it. In addition to which, I don't really know you through and through and under all circumstances, certainly not in the dark. It would be much better if you turned on the light. On second thought, better not. In any case, I will make note of the fact that you already threatened me."

"What's that? You claim that I threatened you? You can't be serious. I am so very happy that you've finally come to visit. I say 'finally' because it's already so late. I cannot fathom why you took so long to get here. It's perfectly possible that in my joy at welcoming you at last I might have muddled my words and that you took it in that way. I readily admit ten times over that I might have spoken out of hand, that it sounded like I was threatening who-knows-what. – But please, let's not get into a tizzy, for heaven's sake! – How could you ever suspect such a thing of me? How could you hurt my feelings? Why do you insist on deliberately spoiling my pleasure at having you here with me for this short while? A perfect stranger would be more accommodating than you."

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Excerpted from Konundrum by Franz Kafka, Peter Wortsman. Copyright © 2016 Peter Wortsman. Excerpted by permission of Archipelago Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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