Aforismos, visiones y sueños

by Franz Kafka, José Rafael Hernández Arias (translator)

208 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2024

About the author

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up amid German, Czech, and Jewish cultural influences that shaped his sense of displacement and linguistic precision. His difficult relationship with his authoritarian father left a lasting mark, fostering feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy that became central themes in his fiction and personal writings.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.

Reviews

[Raúl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dentro de la obra póstuma de Kafka constituyen una singularidad los Aforismos. O como los llamó Max Brod, con un título tan efectivo como un tanto irónico (puede que en cierto momento hablaran Kafka y él y el primero citara este título) Consideraciones acerca del pecado, el dolor, la esperanza y el camino verdadero. Estos son 109 aforismos, reflexiones, asertaciones y hasta pequeños relatos, que van desde textos de una línea y pocas palabras, a una extensión de varios párrafos.

Nacen estos aforismos de las anotaciones de los llamados ocho cuadernos en octavo. Los cuatro primeros abundan en ese tipo de reflexiones, mientras los últimos desarrollan comienzos y fragmentos de posibles relatos. Fueron escritos entre 1916 y 1918.

De ellos, Kafka fue eligiendo los 109 aforismos, y copiándolos en hojas sueltas numeradas.

Tal vez, estas líneas en las que la Culpa, la Vida, el Pecado, la Vida, la Muerte, la Verdad, la Mentira, el Bien, el Mal... no se sostengan filosóficamente. La mayor baza en cada ellos es su capacidad de sugerencia narrativa desde la abstracción. La paradoja, la contradicción, el retruécano abundan en ellos. Constituyen, creo, la constatación de un sistema en que, anticipando a Gödel, la coherencia y la completitud no son posibles. SI intentamos hacer un sistema coherente con ellos, caeremos muchas veces en deslizamientos y contradicciones. Por otra parte, un sistema completo se declara desde los mismos aforismos imposible. Caériamos en la contradicción y la paradoja de forma cíclica, eterna. Dudando siempre de la validez de la eternidad o naufragando ante su peso.

Otro motivo de interés de los aforismos es cuando la figura abstracta se personifica, y nos encontramos en que lo filosófico se convierte, a veces con mucho humor, en un relato.

Tras la edición clásica de Brod, hay varias ediciones recientes de estos, destacando la de Roberto Calasso y sobre todo la de Reiner Stach, que llamó "Tú eres la tarea".

José Rafael Hernández Arias, responsable de esta versión, completa el volumen con una selección temática de textos de diversa procedencia de Kafka, que nos da una visión que quiere ser un poco ordenada pero no por ello cerrada del pensamiento de Kafka.

[Marti · Rating 5 out of 5]

“El mundo horrible que tengo en la cabeza. Pero cómo liberarme y liberarle sin tener que desgarrar. Y es mil veces mejor desgarrar que retenerlo o enterrarlo en mi interior”.

[galilea · Rating 4 out of 5]

una fe como una guillotina

[Etrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Altamente recomendable.

Primer libro que leo sobre y de Kafka. Y debo decir que al terminarlo me pareció que es la mejor opción para empezar a leer a Kafka.

Resumidamente, trata la mayor parte de los aspectos de la vida de Kafka. Puntos importantes sobre su biografía, pensamientos , estilo de vida, ideas , relaciones amistosas y sentimentales.

Ya me da nostalgia no poder experimentar lo que es leer este libro por primera vez