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Resolutions
Short Stories
- GenresClassicsShort Stories
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1912
1 person is currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,224 books38.5k followersPrague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as "
The Metamorphosis
" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including
The Trial
(1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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February 10, 2022``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.``
September 30, 2018
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)
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)
September 20, 2023
* 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."
September 15, 2024
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.
February 12, 2023
4.25⭐
December 24, 2024
Say no more, Sir Kafka.
April 2, 2025
Franz Kafka 😍🩷
June 4, 2025
felt like a math problem
September 24, 2025
i feel this in my bones and i feel so sorry for kafka, holy shit.
January 8, 2026
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.
March 3, 2024
Mistakes are unavoidable
September 7, 2018
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.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews