變形記

by Franz Kafka, 法蘭茲·卡夫卡, 柳如菲 (Translator)

格里高爾．薩姆沙做了一連串的噩夢，等早上清醒過來的時候，他發覺自己已經變成了一隻巨大的蟲子，正在床上躺著。他的背上背負著堅硬的甲殼，面朝上躺在那裡，只要微微抬起頭來便能看見自己高聳的肚皮。肚皮是褐色的，表面由很多呈弧狀的甲殼組成。由於肚子膨脹得太大，被子顯然不夠蓋了，滑落下去已是迫在眉睫。跟龐大的軀幹相比，他的腿則又細又小，這會兒正在不停地抖動著，在他眼中，愈顯得可憐兮兮的。

　　他心想：「我這是怎麼了？」這並不是在做夢。他的確待在自己的臥室裡，整個房間除了看起來比之前小了一些，其餘根本沒有任何異狀，毫無疑問的，長期有人在這裡居住。周圍是他再眼熟不過的擺設。作為一名旅行推銷員，他的貨物樣品還在桌子上擺放著。先前他從畫報上剪下了一幅畫，畫上畫的是一名女士，她安坐在那裡，頭上戴著裘皮帽子，頸間圍著裘皮圍巾，手肘以下被厚厚的裘皮套筒包裹得紮實，她將手臂抬起，那姿勢就像在向觀眾展示自己的裘皮套筒一樣。格里高爾用一個精美的金色畫框將這幅畫裝起來，並將其掛到了桌子上面的牆壁。這時候，畫仍在那裡懸掛著。

　　格里高爾又朝窗外望去，外面的天色陰沉沉的，雨珠敲打在鐵製的窗簷上發出清晰的響聲，傳入他

169 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2018

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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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

[Yu Jie · Rating 3 out of 5]

一覺醒來就變成過街老鼠的男人，頓時感到人生的一忙碌全是一場空；不斷工作、為家裡犧牲奉獻，到頭來自己的存在竟如此容易被取代，委實可悲。

很奇幻又有深度的古典小說。