K

Franz Kafka 1883–1924

Kafka’s work first came into prominence after his death, partly background. Thus, In der Strafkolonie (1919; The Penal
through the efforts of his friend and literary executor Max Brod Colony) tells of a crisis in a society dominated by an incredibly
and partly through the influential writings of foreign admirers complex execution machine that is supposed to kill condemned
such as the French existentialist Albert Camus. During his life- prisoners by writing on their bodies the text of the rule they have
time Kafka only published some of his shorter fiction, leaving broken. The novel The Trial follows the life of Josef K. after he
the manuscripts of his three major novels unfinished and much awakens one morning to find himself under arrest for an unspec-
of his other work in a form that was evidently not meant for ified offense, which neither he nor his accusers ever even attempt
publication. He never was able to support himself with his writ- to discuss. Ein Landarzt (1919; A Country Doctor) relates the
ing, working for most of his adult life as an executive in the field unseemly and uncanny events surrounding a doctor’s otherwise
of workman’s compensation insurance. He had qualified himself ordinary visit to the home of a patient. Ein Bericht für eine
for such employment by successfully completing university train- Akademie (1917; A Report to an Academy) is delivered in sober
ing in law, a field that, although he professed to have little inter- academic style by an ape who has managed to transform himself
est in or aptitude for it, informs much of his fiction (e.g., “Vor into a human being. The tiny story “Der neue Advokat” (1917;
dem Gesetz” [1915; “Before the Law”] and Der Prozeß [1925; “The New Advocate”) describes the psychological difficulties
The Trial]). experienced by Alexander the Great’s warhorse Bucephalus after
Kafka’s first important work of fiction, the short story Das the great steed has given up carrying men into battle and has
Urteil (1916; The Judgment), was written in one sitting in the turned instead to an apparently successful career as an attorney.
fall of 1912. He wrote it directly into his notebook, adding Similar to A Report to an Academy and “The New Advo-
afterward the comment “this is the way it should be done.” The cate,” a number of Kafka’s stories deal with animals possessing
story was in large measure a response to his first meeting with human consciousness. Schakale und Araber (1917; Jackals and
the woman who would later become his fiancée, Felice Bauer, Arabs), for example, reports a conversation between a traveler
but its interest goes far beyond the biographical background. In and one of the jackals, which is found in the vicinity of an Arab
this story Kafka for the first time found his characteristic voice camp. Forschungen eines Hundes (1922; Investigations of a
and style—that striking mixture of realism and outrageous fan- Dog) is exactly what the title suggests: the “scientific” findings
tasy that is delivered in a cool, matter-of-fact manner—which is of a dog who is engaged in research about the lives of dogs. Der
now so familiar from his later works and those of his many im- Bau (1923; The Burrow) is told entirely from the point of view
itators. Later that same fall he wrote Die Verwandlung (1915; of an animal desperately seeking to ensure the security of its bur-
The Metamorphosis), the world-famous tale of the young sales- row from sinister forces that may have already penetrated its in-
man Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself terior. All these animal stories were probably written in reaction
transformed into a “monstrous vermin” resembling a giant bee- to Kafka’s view of himself as part animal, a view made all the
tle. The reactions of Gregor and those close to him to this meta- more plausible by the fact that the Czech word kavka is an ordi-
morphosis—and not the amazing transformation itself—are the nary designation for an animal, the crow or jackdaw.
focus of Kafka’s attention. The story begins after the incredible Even the Kafka novels and stories that do not depend on any
event has already taken place and takes it as an indisputable incredible event create an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty
given, examining instead the devastating and entirely plausible that is very similar to that found in the tales just mentioned.
aftereffects. In this way Kafka takes the classical German No- Kafka’s first novel, Der Verschollene (The Missing Person, pub-
velle, a form that traditionally chronicled what Goethe called an lished in 1927 by Max Brod as Amerika [America]), sends its
“unheard-of occurrence,” and moves it in a surprising new leading character on a dreamlike journey to and through a fan-
direction. tasy America, a journey that is fraught with unexpected dangers
Kafka’s stories and novels typically narrate events that follow and outrageous turns of events. The story Ein Hungerkünstler
or accompany an “unheard-of” event without paying much at- (1924; A Hunger Artist) chronicles the last fabulous achieve-
tention to the event itself, which is simply assimilated into the ment of a performer who makes his living by fasting in public.

553
554 kafka

Kafka’s last novel, Das Schloß (1926; The Castle), documents them revealing studies of repression, Oedipal conflicts, and oth-
the efforts of the newly arrived Josef K. to establish a place for er classical psychological conditions. Biographical criticism has
himself in a village dominated by the inscrutable, arbitrary found a ready explanation for many difficult elements in the
power of officials living in a nearby castle. texts by relating them to what we know of Kafka’s personal ex-
The combination of the ordinary and the amazing in Kafka’s periences and concerns. Rhetorical and “formalist” criticism has
fiction has fascinated and troubled generations of readers. The looked to Kafka’s complex play with language as the best way to
stories seem to demand a special interpretive effort to explain understand the structure of his fictions. An earlier generation of
their mysteries, yet they stubbornly resist all attempts to inter- Marxists found class conflict to be centrally important in stories
pret them. The history of Kafka’s reception, in the main, is the such as The Penal Colony and Jackals and Arabs, and, more re-
history of attempts to find a productive strategy for interpreta- cently, neo-Marxists have seen Kafka’s work as a whole as em-
tion. These efforts began already with Max Brod, a prominent bedded in particular social, political, and economic contexts.
Zionist as well as a successful writer, who wanted Kafka’s work Indeed, the historical “embeddedness” of Kafka’s stories has
to be understood in a primarily religious context. Brod’s view of been a prominent theme in some of the most recent criticism.
his friend’s fiction was based both on a long personal association There can be little question that an understanding of Kafka’s
and on Brod’s own agenda, but it was well rooted in elements historical context is crucial to an understanding of his work, and
that are clearly present in Kafka’s writing. Kafka had been fasci- nearly all schools of criticism (with the possible exception of the
nated with his Jewish heritage at least since the time of his visits most extreme adherents of “new critical” formalism) would
to the Yiddish theater in 1911, and there are countless traces of agree on the need for an effort at appropriate contextualization.
religious concerns throughout his stories and notebooks. Biblical What is appropriate may remain a point of contention, but there
echoes abound, and there are even stories such as Das Stadwap- are a number of features of Kafka’s background whose impor-
pen (1920; The City Coat of Arms) that rework Old Testament tance are not much in dispute. Among them we may certainly
material. At the time of his death, Kafka was seriously engaged count Kafka’s experience as a German-speaking Jew in the pre-
with Zionist activities, working conscientiously at his Hebrew dominantly gentile and frequently Czech-speaking society of
studies, and considering a move to Palestine. Austro-Hungarian Prague. Kafka could never ignore his status as
Another strain of Kafka criticism arose early on through the the member of a minority, but the meaning of that minority status
influence of the French existentialists, who saw in Kafka a pre- and its impact on him is not absolutely clear. As a Jew, Kafka was
cursor who shared their own concerns. For them, Kafka was clearly part of an embattled minority that sought at times to as-
clearly a philosophical writer attempting to deal with the univer- similate into the majority (as Kafka’s father wished to do) and at
sal human problem of the irrationality of the universe. As a con- times to distinguish itself as a separate society (as his friend Max
sequence, they saw the novels The Trial and The Castle as Brod wished to do). As a speaker of German, however, Kafka was
Kafka’s defining texts; both tell tales of individuals thrown into a associated with the upper social stratum and with the predomi-
bizarre and ultimately unfathomable world in which they strug- nant cultural heritage of central Europe. Kafka, for example, had
gle to survive and which they try in vain to comprehend. Kafka’s no trouble identifying himself with the Prussian nobleman Hein-
protagonists were seen as existentialist heroes who followed the rich von Kleist, despite the latter’s social and religious distance.
pattern of the mythic Sisyphus, eternally struggling to roll a What counted for Kafka was that both men were writers facing
stone up a hill and eternally certain that it would roll down similar personal and philosophical dilemmas.
again. Kafka grew up in a world that pulled him constantly in differ-
Both Brod and Camus understood Kafka as a writer who was ent directions. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late 19th
concerned with the most important questions of human exis- and early 20th centuries was an experiment in multiculturalism,
tence, and this understanding has set the tone of all subsequent and similar to many such experiments, it had a distinctly mixed
discussions of Kafka’s work. Although Brod considered his success. Kafka the writer belonged (and saw himself as belong-
friend to be a sort of “humorist,” Kafka’s undeniable comic side ing) to a highly prized German tradition of fiction writing that
has never figured very prominently in the mainstream of Kafka went back to the age of Goethe. At the same time, however, he
scholarship. Readers have always believed that, in spite of his could not ignore his participation in an alternative Jewish liter-
powerful sense of humor, Kafka took an earnest if not down- ary heritage that not only included the Torah and its enormous
right somber or tragic view of human life. The world may be body of commentary but also folk traditions such as the Yiddish
bizarre and even silly, but it inevitably crushes us. It is that com- theater, which in turn many, including his own father, thought of
bination of outrageous strangeness with crushing power that has as more than a little disreputable. Kafka’s family background,
come to define the now popular adjective “Kafkaesque.” The too, may have pulled him in opposite directions. His father was
Kafkaesque world is goofy, but also lethal. a self-made middle-class merchant, a man who had risen from
If readers generally agree on their overall sense of what Kafka’s poverty and who valued practicality, physical vigor, and a keen
world is like, however, they do not agree at all on the meaning eye on the cash box. On his mother’s side, however, were people
of the individual texts. Various interpretive strategies have of a more intellectual bent: rabbis and doctors who valued
been employed, all leading in different directions. The problem words higher than coins.
is not really that these strategies have failed; rather, the problem Kafka’s linguistic situation was also full of conflict, since he
seems that too many of them have been at least plausibly suc- spoke German but lived in a society in which Czech was the pre-
cessful. Psychoanalytic critics, for example, taking their cue from dominant local language. Kafka’s command of Czech was, in his
Kafka’s own statement in his notebooks that he had been think- own opinion, only minimal, but it is clear from the documents
ing of Freud when he wrote The Judgment have produced he produced at the insurance company that he was quite capable
Freudian readings of most of the stories and novels and find in of speaking and even writing this language well when necessary.
 kafka 555

Although he relied upon Milena Jesenska to translate his fiction some with a nearly scholarly diligence. One need only cite the
into Czech, he reviewed her translations and at times made sug- case of novelist Philip Roth, who not only poured over Kafka’s
gestions. Two other languages figure importantly in Kafka’s stories, letters, and notebooks but even went so far as to make
background, Yiddish and Hebrew, both of which he studied and Kafka into one of his fictional characters. Even the film industry
valued highly as an essential part of his heritage. Although he has been influenced not only in the films that explicitly treat
never mastered either, his belief in the desirability of doing so re- Kafka’s works (The Trial has been the most recent Hollywood
mained strong. Traces of Kafka’s knowledge of Czech, Yiddish, effort) but also in the “Kafkaesque” atmosphere and techniques
and Hebrew can be found in his fiction, and these traces at times of dozens of others.
offer important clues to his literary intentions.
Clayton Koelb
Kafka’s place in literary history, although secure, has been dif-
ficult to assess properly, in part because his contribution is so See also Prague
unique and in part because he legitimately belongs to so many
different traditions. Efforts to align his work with the Expres- Biography
sionist movement, for example, have not been entirely success- Born in Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Czech Republic), 3
ful. While his work clearly shows some Expressionist traits, July 1883. Studied law at Karl Ferdinand University, Prague, 1901–6;
including the use of dreamlike plot structures, he does not share qualified in law, 1907; unpaid work in law courts, 1906–7; employed
the political or social goals that were so prominently portrayed by Assicurazioni Generali insurance company, 1907–8, and Workers
Accident Insurance Institute, 1908–22; confined to a sanatorium for
within Expressionist writing. His style also owes something both
tuberculosis, 1920–21. Died 3 June 1924.
to the Romantics, especially E.T.A. Hoffmann and his beloved
Kleist, and to the realists, particularly Gustave Flaubert, whose
Selected Works
use of a first-person point of view within a third-person narra-
tive (style indirect libre or erlebte Rede) Kafka emulated in many Collections
of his novels and stories. Kafka’s material, moreover, comes not Gesammelte Werke, edited by Max Brod and Heinz Politzer, 6 vols.,
only from his own imagination, personal experiences, and, occa- 1935–37
sionally, actual dreams but from a wide variety of literary Gesammelte Werke, edited by Max Brod et al., 11 vols., 1950–74
sources. He drew on the Old Testament, as already mentioned, Sämtliche Erzählungen, edited by Paul Raabe, 1970
The Complete Stories, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, 1971
and he also frequently turned to classical mythology, as in Das
Shorter Works, edited and translated by Malcolm Pasley, 1973
Schweigen der Sirenen (1917; The Silence of the Sirens), Posei-
The Complete Novels, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir, 1983
don (1920), and a number of other stories. His profession as a Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, edited by Jürgen Born et al., 1983–
lawyer also had a profound influence on his work, providing Collected Stories, edited by Gabriel Josipovici, 1993
material for many of the stories and the entire framework for the
plot of The Trial. Kafka read widely, and the documentable Fiction
sources for his work range equally widely. Betrachtung, 1913
It is perhaps not surprising, given all the variety of his affilia- Der Heizer: Ein Fragment, 1913
Die Verwandlung, 1915; edited by Peter Hutchinson and Michael
tions, that Kafka should be claimed by many different groups,
Minden, 1985; as Metamorphosis, translated by Eugene Jolas, in
all with some legitimacy. One finds him described as a German Transition (Paris), 1936–38; translated by A.L. Lloyd, 1946; as The
writer (although he never lived in Germany), a Jewish writer (al- Metamorphosis, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, in The Penal
though he struggled to find his identity as a Jew), an Austrian Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, 1948; translated and edited by
writer (although the then present nation of Austria did not in- Stanley Corngold, 1972; translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The
clude his home city), a Czech writer (although his Czech was not Metamorphosis and Other Stories, 1993
strong and the Czech nation did not exist during his formative Das Urteil, 1916
years), and more. Although Kafka did not live to see the Holo- In der Strafkolonie, 1919; as In the Penal Settlement: Tales and Short
caust, its aftermath has figured strongly in the vehemence with Prose Works, translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, 1949
which these various claims are pressed. Those who state the case Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzählungen, 1919
Ein Hungerkünstler: Vier Geschichten, 1924
for understanding Kafka as part of the German tradition are
Der Prozeß, edited by Max Brod, 1925; as Der Process, edited by
confronted with the strong likelihood that, had he lived, he Malcolm Pasley, 1990; as The Trial, translated by Edwin and Willa
would have been taken by German soldiers, as were so many of Muir, 1937 (also published with revisions and additional material
his friends and relatives, to die in a concentration camp. Those translated by E.M. Butler, 1956); translated by Douglas Scott and
who insist that his Jewish roots are far more important than his Chris Waller, 1977; translated by Idris Parry, 1994
participation in the German cultural tradition are confronted Das Schloß, 1926; edited by Malcolm Pasley, 1982; as The Castle,
with the overwhelming evidence of Kafka’s own letters and note- translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, 1930 (also published with
books, which clearly document his strong sense of affiliation revisions and additional material translated by Eithne Wilkins and
with that tradition. Such apparent contradictions demonstrate Ernst Kaiser, 1953); translated by Mark Harmon, 1998
the difficulty of categorizing the richly complex phenomenon Amerika, 1927; original version, as Der Verschollene, edited by Jost
Schillemeit, 1983; as America, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir,
that Kafka and his work have become.
1938
It would be hard to overestimate the influence Kafka’s work Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer, edited by Max Brod and Hans
has had on literature and culture around the world. Much of the Joachim Schoeps, 1931; as The Great Wall of China, and Other
Latin American fiction of the 20th century, for example, has de- Pieces, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir, 1933
veloped out of an impulse that was first delivered by an exposure Parables in German and English, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir,
to Kafka’s stories. American writers have also studied his work, 1947
556 kafka

The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, translated by Willa and son; first published as Amerika, 1927; translated as both Ameri-
Edwin Muir and C. Greenberg, 1948 ka and America) and Das Schloß (1926; The Castle), Der Prozeß
Wedding Preparations in the Country, and Other Posthumous Prose (1925; The Trial) remained a fragment and was among the
Writings, translated by Ernst Kaiser et al., 1954 (also published as works that the author asked to have burned after his death by
Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings, 1954)
his friend Max Brod; in contrast to the other two novels, how-
Parables and Paradoxes: Parabeln und Paradoxe (bilingual edition),
1958
ever, it has a clear and decisive ending. It was thanks to this fact
Metamorphosis and Other Stories, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, that Brod chose Der Prozeß, or—as Kafka had tentatively titled
1961 it—Der Process, as the first of his friend’s manuscripts to be pub-
Description of a Struggle and Other Stories, translated by Willa Muir et lished posthumously. Brod was trying to make Kafka, who hith-
al., 1979 erto had only been known for his shorter works, known as an
author of longer fiction. In addition to making numerous small
Other textual changes, Brod first published the work without the exist-
Tagebücher 1910–1923, 1951; edited by Hans Gerd Koch, Michael
ing fragmentary chapters, and he arranged the unnumbered
Müller, and Malcolm Pasley, 1990; as The Diaries of Franz Kafka,
edited by Max Brod, vol. 1, 1910–1913, translated by Joseph Kresh,
chapters on the basis of his memory of discussions with Kafka.
1948, vol. 2, 1914–1923, translated by Martin Greenberg with He later expressed doubt about the correct chapter sequence
Hannah Arendt, 1949 and, in his second edition of the novel, added the unfinished
Briefe an Milena, edited by Willy Haas, 1952; as Letters to Milena, chapters as well as the passages that Kafka had deleted. Due to
translated by Tania and James Stern, 1953; translated by Philip the historical circumstances, this second edition of 1935 did not
Boehm, 1990 reach many readers—in fact, it caused the banning of all of
Briefe 1902–1924, edited by Max Brod, 1958; as Letters to Friends, Kafka’s works in Germany—but it is in this form that the work
Family, and Editors, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, 1977 became known worldwide—and, after 1945, in Germany—in
Briefe an Felice, edited by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, 1967; as many reprints as well as translations. As a result, the influence of
Letters to Felice, translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth,
the recent critical edition, which includes not only all textual
1973
Briefe an Ottla und die Familie, edited by Hartmut Binder and Klaus
variations but also Kafka’s original spelling, has so far been re-
Wagenbach, 1974; as Letters to Ottla and the Family, translated by stricted to academic circles and scholars.
Richard and Clara Winston, 1982 The immense attraction that The Trial has held for both critics
Max Brod, Franz Kafka: Ein Freundschaft, 2 vols., 1987–89 and general readers can only be explained by the way in which
Briefe an die Eltern aus den Jahren 1922–1924, edited by Josef Cermak the novel uses realistic language to invite a literal understanding
and Martin Svatos, 1990 of the story while challenging those interpretations with the no-
ticeable presence of an abstract meaning. The novel’s all-
Further Reading encompassing metaphor is that of a 30-year-old man’s sudden
Citati, Pietro, Kafka, London: Secker and Warburg, and New York:
and unexplained arrest and his struggle against the invisible
Knopf, 1990
Deleuze, Gilles, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana powers that have indicted him. They continue to let him go
Polan, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 about his personal life and his professional duties until he gives
Gilman, Sander, Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, New York: Routledge, up his resistance and accepts his execution. The protagonist’s
1995 name, Josef K., as well as his personal circumstances as a bank
Gray, Ronald, Franz Kafka, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, employee and would-be lover of a neighboring roomer called
1973 Fräulein Bürstner (abbreviated in the manuscript as F.B., the ini-
Heller, Erich, Kafka, London: Fontana, 1974, and New York: Viking, tials of Kafka’s twice-betrothed Felice Bauer), has led many early
1975 critics to favor an autobiographical interpretation.
Karl, Frederick, Franz Kafka, Representative Man, New York: Ticknor
In an essay written when Kafka was still alive (1921), how-
and Fields, 1991
ever, Max Brod called the novel “the standard digest of pangs of
Pawel, Ernst, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka,
London: Harvill, and New York: Farrar Straus, 1984 conscience” and thus cleared the path for a series of theological
Robertson, Richie, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature, Oxford: interpretations. Furthermore, the uncanny aspects of the invisi-
Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 ble “Court” and the dreamlike experiences of the protagonist
Stern, J.P., editor, The World of Franz Kafka, London: Weidenfeld and have invited a string of psychological and psychoanalytic inter-
Nicolson, and New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980 pretations. Josef K.’s human isolation and loneliness also became
the object of many existentialist analyses. From a more
historical-philosophical side, K.’s fate has been seen by Walter
Benjamin and his school of followers as the human situation in
its primeval state, one which we have still not overcome today. A
Der Prozeß 1925 clear shift to more political-historical interpretations occurred
during Hitler’s reign over Germany, when German and Austrian
Novel by Franz Kafka exiles, among them Hannah Arendt, saw Josef K.’s dilemma as
representative of the “fate of the Jewish people” and the author
More than any other work, this novel of approximately 300 of the novel as a prophet of things to come after his death. Simi-
pages has contributed to the coinage of the term Kafkaesque for lar political interpretations were also used to criticize communist
a situation that is both threatening and hopeless. Similar to dictatorships. In some communist countries themselves (includ-
Kafka’s other two novels, Der Verschollene (The Missing Per- ing East Germany), however, Josef K.’s weak and ineffective
 kafka 557

struggle against the “Court” was usually criticized as a sign of Critical edition: Der Process, edited by Malcolm Pasley, in Schriften,
the author’s yielding to the capitalist state. Tagebücher, Briefe, edited by Jürgen Born et al., Frankfurt: Fischer,
Following the reception of French philosophers in Germany 1990
during the immediate post-war period, existentialist readings be- Translations: The Trial, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, London:
Golancz, and New York: Knopf, 1937 (also published with revisions
came once more popular and stressed the absurdity of the pro-
and additional material translated by E.M. Butler, New York:
tagonist’s situation. During the 1950s, the ideological Random House, 1956); translated by Douglas Scott and Chris Waller,
interpretations gradually gave way to new looks at the novel London: Picador, 1977; translated by Idris Parry, Harmondsworth,
from more literary angles, which investigated such phenomena Middlesex: Penguin, 1994
as the narrator’s perspective (being both that of the protagonist
and that of a separate narrator) and the frequent repetition of
Further Reading
the protagonist’s acts of assertion and frustration. More recent
Bloom, Harold, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Modern Critical
critics have developed this trend further by denying that the Interpretations, New York: Chelsea House, 1987
novel has any ideological meaning and by instead relating it to Dodd, W.J., Kafka: Der Prozeß, Glasgow: University of Glasgow
contemporary linguistic theories such as those promoted by Fer- French and German Publications, 1991
dinand de Saussure and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jaffe, Adrian H., The Process of Kafka’s Trial, East Lansing: Michigan
Today the most common modes of looking at the novel are State University Press, 1967
those concentrating on the poetic reflection of the act of writing, Müller, Michael, Franz Kafka: Der Proceß, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993
which at every moment both creates and destroys form, or those Rolleston, James, Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Trial”: A
highlighting a literary representation of modern man’s thirst for, Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall, 1976
and simultaneous lack of, personal responsibility and human in-
Zimmermann, Hans Dieter, editor, Nach erneuter Lektüre: Franz
teraction. In either case, the critics no longer claim to possess the
Kafkas “Der Process,” Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann,
one and only clue to the novel’s meaning, and some even suggest 1992
that every reader must find its meaning for him- or herself by re-
lating it to their personal life’s “process” and “trial”—both
meanings are implied in the German title.
The Trial has left its imprint on many works by other writers
and has inspired new works of art in different realms. For exam-
ple, its traces have been detected in works of fiction originating Das Schloß 1926
in Germany, including Peter Weiss’s Fluchtpunkt: Roman (1962;
Exile: A Novel) and Walter Jens’s Nein—Die Welt der Novel by Franz Kafka
Angeklagten (1977; No—The World of the Accused); in France,
including Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée (1938; Nausea) and Al- When Kafka’s posthumous novel, Das Schloß (The Castle), was
bert Camus’s La peste (1947; The Plague); in Spain, including about to appear in December 1926, the publisher’s advertise-
Luis Martín-Santos’s Tiempo de silencio (1962; Time of Silence) ment described the work as “Franz Kafka’s Faust.” This striking,
and Antonio Martínez-Menchén’s Cinco variaciones (1963; Five although not entirely accurate, designation stood in stark con-
Variations); and in the United States, including Saul Bellow’s The trast to the reputation Kafka had built up during his lifetime as
Victim (1947) and Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 (1961). There have the author of numerous carefully polished stories, novellas, and
been a number of stage adaptations of the novel, among them in short prose pieces. The executor of his testament, Max Brod,
Paris by André Gide and Louis Barrault in 1947, in Prague by was eager to present Kafka as a major author, and The Castle
Jan Grossman in 1966, in Bremen by Peter Weiss in 1975, and in was the work that Brod believed was destined to fulfill this
London by Steven Berkoff in 1976. Two films based on the nov- claim. The Castle is the third and last of Kafka’s unfinished at-
el are by Orson Welles (1962) and—with a script by Harold Pin- tempts to wrestle with the novel genre; it is also his most ambi-
ter—by David Jones (1992). Gottfried von Einem’s opera Der tious. While most readers and critics prefer his short stories, The
Prozeß, also based on Kafka’s work, had its world premiere at Castle is the work that has assured Kafka’s international fame.
the 1953 Salzburg Festival; and pictorial renderings of events in Indeed, due to the fact that Kafka’s works as a whole were
The Trial, as well as in other works by Kafka, were shown at an placed, in 1935, on the National Socialists’ list of “degenerate
exhibit titled “Kunst zu Kafka” (“Art in Connection with writing,” Kafka’s third novel was at first better known in its En-
Kafka”), which toured European cities in 1974–75. Thus, the glish and French translations. Through these translations, The
novel that was to be burnt before it was published has now tak- Castle exerted an extraordinary influence on mid-century litera-
en on a life of its own, and its resonance keeps growing far be- ture outside of Germany. In 1940, the exiled Thomas Mann
yond the realm of literature. wrote an “homage” to Kafka centering on The Castle, which he
called “this very remarkable and brilliant novel.” Within
Helmut F. Pfanner German-speaking nations, The Castle first began to attain classic
status after its republication in 1951.
Editions Kafka’s friend and first editor, Max Brod, played a significant
First edition: Der Prozeß: Roman, edited by Max Brod, Berlin: Verlag role in the early reception of the novel. Appropriating Kafka’s
Die Schmiede, 1925; with unfinished chapters and passages deleted writing to his own special interests, Brod saw his friend’s writ-
by the author, edited by Max Brod, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, ings—notably the three unfinished novels—as representations of
Berlin: Schocken, 1935 a constantly frustrated quest for divine grace. Thomas Mann
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also saw The Castle, with its “puzzling, remote, incomprehensi- family, in particular the story of Amalia’s disgrace, have the
ble” central symbol, the Castle itself, in religious terms. At the same numbing effect on the reader as they do on the bewildered
same time, Mann was keenly aware of Kafka’s other face: his tal- K. In its tendency to almost excessive narrative proliferation,
ent for inventing absurd episodes akin to slapstick comedy. The Castle forms a counterpart to Proust’s In Search of Time
Mann termed Kafka a “religious humorist.” Lost and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Other early readings focused more on the novel’s social dy- Recent Kafka scholarship has paid increasing attention to the
namics than its religious ones. Kafka’s protagonist, cryptically cultural contexts of his work. The 1950s insistence on the uni-
designated only as “K.,” finds himself caught from the outset be- versality or even otherworldliness of his writing—the idea of
tween two domains: the obscure and uncaring Castle and the Kafka as “timeless and placeless”—has given way to a more his-
primitive and poverty stricken village. Rex Warner’s 1941 novel, toricized vision. Kafka’s position among the German-speaking
The Aerodrome, inspired by Kafka’s The Castle, adapts this po- Jewish minority in Prague; his engagement with the political and
lar structure for socialist purposes by opposing the elitist and social issues of his day; his extensive reading of works by writers
ruthless air force to the unintelligent and oppressed underclass in and thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
the village. After the end of World War II, scholars in the early Freud; and his deeply ambivalent relationship to history and tra-
years of the German Democratic Republic similarly emphasized dition have all received increasing attention. Unlike many of the
the novel’s presentation of a social dystopia. shorter works, The Castle has been less thoroughly mined for in-
Another strain of reception saw The Castle as a variant of the dications of Kafka’s various cultural involvements. Nonetheless,
French existentialist world view promulgated most famously by it is one of the richest examples of Kafka’s aesthetic modernism.
Sartre and Camus. In these readings, K.’s repeatedly frustrated
attempt to establish his identity as a land surveyor who has been Judith Ryan
summoned by the Castle becomes a metaphor for the crisis of
human existence in an absurd world. Much of what today’s cul-
Editions
ture calls the “Kafkaesque” stems from this understanding of
First edition: Das Schloß: Roman, Munich: Wolff, 1926 (a shortened
K.’s efforts: to win recognition from the Castle is a Sisyphean la- version Kafka’s manuscript)
bor that is doomed to remain unsuccessful. Critical edition: Das Schloß: Roman, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4,
There are as many different ways of reading The Castle as Berlin: Schocken, 1935; Das Schloß: Roman, in der Fassung der
there are critical approaches and theories. Allegorical readings Handschrift, edited by Malcolm Pasley, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1982
such as those developed in the early phases of the work’s recep- Translations: The Castle, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, New
tion tend to be excessively reductive. Given the complexity and York: Knopf, 1930; The Castle: A New Translation, Based on the
subtlety of the novel—and of all of Kafka’s writing—it is unwise Restored Text, translated by Mark Harman, New York: Schocken,
to privilege one allegory over any other. 1998
The Castle was composed using the same narrative technique
that distinguishes Das Urteil (1912; The Judgment), the work Further Reading
Kafka had described as a “breakthrough” ten years earlier. Al- Cohn, Dorrit, “K. Enters the Castle: On the Change of Person in
though written in the third person, these narratives restrict their Kafka’s Manuscript,” Euphorian 62 (1968)
perceptual field to that of their protagonists, allowing the reader Emrich, Wilhelm, Franz Kafka, Königstein: Athenäum, 1981
to see, hear, and know nothing that is not present to the mind Ronnel, Avital, “Doing Kafka in ‘The Castle’: A Poetics Desire,” in
and senses of this central figure. Kafka had originally intended to Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary
write The Castle in the first-person form, which he had used in Readings, edited by Alan Udoff, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1987
many of his later works (notably his animal tales), but after he
Sokel, Walter, Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie: Zur Struktur seiner
had made some headway into the novel, he switched to the Kunst, Munich: Langen, 1964
third-person and replaced the pronoun “I” with the initial “K.” Sussman, Henry, Franz Kafka: The Geometrician of Metaphor,
in the opening chapters. Kafka’s choice of limited third-person Madison, Wisconsin: Coda Press, 1979
narration is not merely of formalist interest; rather, it under- Unseld, Joachim, Franz Kafka: Ein Schriftstellerleben, Munich: Hanser,
scores his continued adherence to the principles of late-19th- 1982; as Franz Kafka: A Writer’s Life, translated by Paul F. Dvorak,
century empiricism, with its belief in the centrality of individual Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 1994
consciousness. The unreliability that seems to characterize the
world outside K., whether it be the world of the village or the
Castle, is a direct function of this emphasis on subjectivity. This
does not mean to say, however, that there is no way for the read-
er to escape K.’s blinkered vision and imperfect understanding;
Kafka’s method of presenting K.’s convoluted and often contra- Die Verwandlung 1915
dictory thoughts and responses draws attention to his protago-
nist’s limitations. Novella by Franz Kafka
The Castle puts its readers to an exacting test. A modernist
adaptation of 19th-century realism’s predilection for extensive Kafka wrote Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis), his most
detail, the novel contains lengthy passages that highlight both its popular work, shortly after he had made his literary break-
protagonist’s inability to comprehend the situations with which through with the publication of his story Das Urteil (1912; The
he is confronted and his sensation that time has been peculiarly Judgment). It was published three years later in an Expressionist
stretched and distorted. The inset narratives of the Barnabas journal edited by René Schickele and then in the famous series of
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German avant-garde literature published by Kurt Wolff. The of her name also suggests her closeness to Gregor. The noticeable
story was immediately praised by the critics, who marveled at its rejuvenation of the Samsa family that results from its riddance of
relentless suspense and the minute description of detail with the shameful vermin reflects the irony with which the narrator—
which the author drives the fantastic event to its logical conclu- who obviously survives Gregor’s fate—looks upon the optimistic
sion: a traveling salesman wakes up one morning and finds him- outlook of the three remaining family members, who with their
self transformed into a giant vermin; he loses the trust of his celebration of a bourgeois lifestyle and materialism enter the
employer and the love of his family members; but while they ex- same path that resulted in Gregor’s transformation, and thus,
perience a boost in their lives, he gradually vanishes from their also leads to death.
existence. Early readers also saw the story as a symbolic portray- As Kafka criticism in general, and here more specifically, has
al of the German-speaking Jewish minority in Prague’s predomi- tried to come to grips with both the symbolic and the allegoric
nantly Czech population, which in turn was situated in the meanings of his work, there has been a gradual shift from the
multi-cultural population of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy; earlier rather narrow and often mutually contradictory readings
Kafka’s personal life in the oppressive atmosphere of a bourgeois of The Metamorphosis to a wider perspective, which allows for
family under the dominance of an authoritarian father; or the more universal interpretations. Not overlooking other view-
dissatisfaction that Kafka experienced in his profession as an points, today’s reader may still see Gregor’s fate from a pre-
employee of an insurance company. Although some critics have dominantly historical, sociological, philosophical, Marxist,
tried to categorize the work within the framework of German psychoanalytic, autobiographic, or religious perspective; but the
Expressionism, such attempts fall short in explaining the full sig- major common denominator shared by recent criticism of The
nificance of the story, which has fascinated readers worldwide Metamorphosis is the assumption that the story presents the
and has been Kafka’s most frequently published and most often reader with the metaphor for a human existence in which spiri-
translated work. tual reflection and interpersonal communication have been sacri-
The dramatic content of The Metamorphosis is underscored ficed for the sake of materialistic efficiency. What makes it
by its tripartite structure. In each section, the protagonist, Gre- difficult to understand the total impact of this situation on Gre-
gor Samsa, loses another connection to his surroundings—first gor’s life is the fact that Kafka has endowed his protagonist and
his job, then his place as a family member, and, finally, his phys- the figures around him with both positive and negative elements,
ical existence. Each part also ends with a new blow: his flank is which reflect their ongoing loss of humanity. While Gregor him-
wounded by a door slammed closed by his father; then he is hit self suffers from the loss, he also senses a strong nostalgia in his
by an apple thrown at him by his father, which causes a mortal craving to hear his sister play the violin, but he hoards an object
wound; and ultimately he is swept away as a lifeless piece of of art, the picture of a fur lady in his room, as if it were a mater-
waste by the family’s charwoman. Significantly, the more Gre- ial—and, by implication, also sexual—object; conversely, Gre-
gor—his name recalls the protagonist in Hartmann von der gor’s sister, who tries to charm the ruthless roomers with her
Aue’s medieval epic Gregorius, who was abandoned as a child in violin play and who cares for Gregor more than their parents, ul-
a small boat—falls into oblivion with his family, the more he rel- timately performs a complete turnabout vis-à-vis her brother
ishes the memories of his past. Looking through the door into and condemns him. It is the mother whose love for Gregor lasts
the kitchen, he sees his father reading the newspaper, as he had the longest, although she finds it almost impossible to express it
done when he was the family’s only bread earner. Also, the office due to the constraints put upon her by her husband, whose cold-
manager who reminds him of his duties must report to the direc- ness, however, does mellow in the course of the story. Gregor’s
tor of the firm in a similar dependency that Gregor earlier expe- state, too, is in transition rather than an absolute status quo.
rienced vis-à-vis the office manager. Gregor is also reminded of However, most critics agree that the protagonist’s yearning for
his present affliction when he sees the facade of a hospital out- food—different from the food eaten by others—expresses the ex-
side of his window. But the most direct reminders of his past are istential dilemma between his spiritual and bodily needs.
the three roomers taken in by his family in order to make up for Although Kafka also used the motif of equating men with an-
the loss of income due to Gregor’s transformation: in their bour- imals in other works—a man’s change into a bug in Hochzeits-
geois behavior, with one of them acting as their spokesperson, vorbereitungen auf dem Lande (written 1907; published 1953;
the three men reflect both the father’s position as head of the Wedding Preparations in the Country) and the change of an ani-
household and Gregor’s standing in the family at the moment mal into a human being in Ein Bericht für eine Akademie (1917;
when he had chosen their apartment. In their marionette-like re- A Report to an Academy)—nowhere has this equation been de-
action to the vermin’s appearance, they act similarly to the picted as convincingly as in this story. While critics have pointed
Samsa family when they first witness Gregor’s transformation. to possible influences by such writers as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Dos-
As the cryptograph of the name Samsa suggests, Kafka closely toyevsky, Freud, Adler, and Kierkegaard, the literary coinage of
identified with the hero’s plight. The Metamorphosis is uniquely Kafka’s and has exerted a con-
Despite its autobiographical undertones, The Metamorphosis tinuing effect upon readers. Later writers of various ranks and
traces a growing distance between the narrator and his protago- nationalities have declared their indebtedness to this story (or
nist. While in the beginning the reader finds it difficult to distin- have been related to it by critics), including Jorge Luis Borges,
guish Gregor’s fate from that of the narrator, the narrator’s André Breton, Peter Handke, Mario Lancelotti, Alain Robbe-
separate perspective becomes more evident when he expresses as- Grillet, Ernesto Sábbato, and Martin Walser. The Metamorpho-
sumptions about Gregor’s inner experiences (“Gregor could not sis was adapted for German television (ZDF) by Jean Nemec
recall hearing [the music] all this time”), and when he ultimately (1975), and it has inspired several stage adaptations, including
refers to Gregor’s relatives no longer as “father,” “mother,” and those by Steven Berkoff in London (1969), Brad Davis in Los
“sister,” but as “Mr. and Mrs. Samsa,” and “Grete”—the sound Angeles (1982), Tim Roth in London (1986), Roman Polanski in