Решения

by Franz Kafka, Франц Кафка, Соломон Апт (Translator)

Рассказы и романы Кафки аллегоричны, но не в обычном смысле этого слова; они являются, так сказать, математическими, алгебраическими символами — столько же условными, сколько реальными. Это своеобразие творческого метода Кафки возникло не само по себе. В нем явственно ощутимы традиции романтического и даже реалистического гротеска прошлого века. Гофман, Гоголь, Достоевский, новеллы Эдгара По — вот те источники, из которых питалось воображение писателя, стремившегося раскрыть некие потаенные, невидимые простым глазом, непознаваемые здравым рассудком отношения человека с действительностью и самим собой... Такими эти отношения представлялись ему, жившему в

Genres: Classics, Short Stories

1 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1912

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

[Sofia Marsico]

``Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again.``

[Priscilla Sulli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real

[Mark Elderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franz Kafka's Resolutions is only a handful of sentences long. Resolutions is the one where a narrator, after addressing the problem of lifting oneself out of a miserable mood, rejects any active solution - surely even one little slip courts disaster? - and instead considers a passive solution. This solution means making oneself into an inert mass, and staring at others with the eyes of an animal, and without hesitation with one's own hand throttling down all remnants of life within one until a graveyard-peace broadens wider than the graveyard.

And then he writes that 'A characteristic movement in such a condition is to run your little finger along your eyebrows'. Well some of us find it funny. (https://markeldersonbooks.blogspot.com)

[↟° IRIS ⇞↟⇞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Singled out some of Kafka's sentences; it won't explain the work itself but I believe it will capture more of the quick Kafka spirit. I relate to this way of thinking personally.

✦"Hence, after all, the best advice stays: take everything as is, behave as a heavy mass, even if you felt blown away, not letting anything lead you towards a wrong move, gaze upon others with animal eyes, not to feel any remorse, in short - using your own hand to press whatever was left of life like a ghost, magnifying your last grave tranquility and quit knowing about existence of anything else except this sensation."

[Isaac Graf · Rating 5 out of 5]

In less than a page of print, Kafka can make the reader question how they live their life. His advice to take things as they come in life is an excellent thought. While it seems so simple people get bogged down in trying to do things that are opposite how they feel and Kafka's advice to be sluggish if you feel sluggish etc is very grounding.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real

[Merrycat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Say no more, Sir Kafka.

[Kinga K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franz Kafka 😍🩷

[Riya · Rating 2 out of 5]

felt like a math problem

[K.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

i feel this in my bones and i feel so sorry for kafka, holy shit.

[CH0MSKY H0NK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literally the best tips I’ve ever found for calming down are more or less contained here. And Kafka knew, and wrong eloquently about them.

[Sara 🐈‍⬛ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mistakes are unavoidable

[Joshua Morales · Rating 5 out of 5]

An undesirably yet crucial piece on the thought of a moment in which one either relates amusingly in hardly a moments time to read or is undeniably irritated from being put out having read, feeling the opposite of amusement in bewilderment from having wasted the same moment of time it took to read. A crucial part of the same existence handled in a two fold way, making both reactions equally crucial yet forgettable as air in a scene.