LA METAMORPHOSE, SUIVI DE : DANS LA COLONIE PENITENTIAIRE

by Franz Kafka

Genres: Classics

96 pages, Pocket Book

Published November 5, 1998

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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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

[manon]

la couverture la plus moche que j’ai
(il va falloir que je le relise)

[Manon · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est pour le moins étrange
Je ne suis pas bien sûr de ma notation étant donné que je viens tout juste de le finir. Mais l'histoire est tellement hors du commun.
Je pense avec aimé sans toutefois avoir accroché au style très particulier de Kafka

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je ne sais pas pourquoi je m'étais mis ça en tête, mais je m'attendais à une écriture difficile, tout le contraire, j'ai trouvé ma lecture très plaisante et facile. J'ai apprécié ces petites aventures dans un fantastique tout de même sombre à mon goût. Mais j'avais envie de connaître la suite et de continuer ma lecture. J'ai trouvé les personnages caricaturaux et pour la plupart détestables, mais je suppose que c'est voulu. Un miroir et une dénonciation de la société intéressants, bien que certains passages soient d'une crudité un peu trop légère pour moi.

[Romane Marceau · Rating 4 out of 5]

🪳Deuxième écrit de Zweig que je lis. 🪳

Une nouvelle touchante au cours de laquelle le protagoniste se réveil un matin transformé en cafard.
Il se retrouve confronté au regard de la société mais aussi de sa propre famille, qui ne le considère plus comme un fils ou un frère mais comme un animal répugnant, handicapant,…
La métamorphose des relations, des regards, des comportements …
Zweig dénonce le changement des sociétés, l’aliénation au travail, le capitalisme.

Spoiler: il meurt à la fin, s’étant laissé mourir de fin, rejeté par sa famille, abandonné dans une pièce de la maison où l’on entasse les encombrants.

On éprouve de la compassion pour Gregor qui subit totalement ce nouvel état ne trouvant aucun soutient, et au contraire, de la haine envers cette famille dépourvue de morale.

[Maëlys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grosse déception.
Je pensais franchement que ce livre me plairait parce que d'habitude j'aime beaucoup la littérature absurde, mais pour le coup, je n'ai pas du tout accroché. Je pense que c'est plus à cause d'une question de style et d'approche que du contenu en lui-même.
Toutefois, je doute que le livre mérite la note que je lui ai donnée puisqu'il y a de superbes réflexions, qui font d'ailleurs tout l'intérêt de ces nouvelles. Mais je me suis ennuyée à la lecture et je me vois difficilement mettre davantage d'étoile.
Désolée Kafka, j'avais envie d'aimer. Peut-être une autre fois.

[Anh-Thy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je suis un peu déçue, la réflexion derrière est vraiment bien mais je crois que c’est simplement le style de l’auteur qui m’a pas fait accrocher. L’histoire aurait pu être plus poussée, il manquait quelque chose, c’était plat et j’aurais aimé que la psychologie des personnages soit plus développée.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tragi-comique et absurde. 7/10

[Pikasoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai bien aimé La Métamorphose, un peu moins Dans La Colonie Pénitentiaire