Aforismos

by Franz Kafka, Joan Parra Contreras (Translator), Andrés Sánchez Pascual (Translator)

Una recopilación inédita que nos habla del hombre, de las dificultades del artista, de sus miedos más profundos y de la vigencia de sus lecciones.

En los cuadernos en octavo y en los diarios de Franz Kafka existe una gran variedad de textos dispersos, pensamientos condensados que fueron designados por el mismo autor como aforismos o que han sido considerados como tales en las diferentes ediciones de la obra del autor y, sobre todo, en la edición crítica y canónica que la editorial S. Fischer viene publicando desde 1982 y que es la que recoge la biblioteca Kafka en DeBols!llo.

Este volumen, editado por Ignacio Echevarría y Jordi Llovet, ofrece al lector un cuidado compendio de aforismos que incluye, además del «Legajo de los aforismos» (1918), una serie de textos espigados de los cuadernos y legajos póstumos (1916 a 1923) y de los diarios (1920-1921). Una recopilación inédita que nos habla del hombre, de las dificultades del artista, de sus miedos más profundos y de la vigencia de sus lecciones.

Reseñ

«Kafka comprendía que los viajes, el sexo y los libros son caminos que no llevan a ninguna parte, y que sin embargo son caminos por los que hay que internarse y perderse para volverse a encontrar o para encontrar algo.»

Roberto Bolaño

82 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 21, 2022

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

[Guillermo]

No sé bien cómo juzgar este libro porque es difícil interpretar el sentido de casi todo lo que los editores han considerado aforismos, hay mucho misticismo y muchas reflexiones religiosas pero sólo por los tres primeros aforismos la lectura está justificada:
1. El verdadero camino pasa por una cuerda que no está tendida en lo alto, sino muy cerca del suelo. Parece hecha más para tropezar que para caminar por ella.
2. Todos los errores humanos son fruto de la impaciencia, de la interrupción prematura de lo metódico, de un enquistamiento aparente de la cosa aparente.
3. Hay dos pecados humanos principales de los que se derivan todos los demás: la impaciencia y la neglicencia. Por la impaciencia los expulsaron del paraíso, por la negligencia no vuelven a él. Aunque en realidad quizá sólo haya un pecado principal: la impaciencia. Por la impaciencia los expulsaron, por la impaciencia no vuelven.

[Carol R. Amézquita · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Me he pasado la vida resistiéndome al placer de acabar con ella».

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Con la misma firmeza con que la mano sostiene la piedra. Pero la mano la sostiene con tanta firmeza para lanzarla más lejos. No obstante, el camino conduce también por esa distancia".

Con este librito, he podido seguir adentrándome en la obra de Kafka, a quien la ciudad de Praga rinde un homenaje casi constante. Normal, porque, junto a Kundera, quizá sea su escritor más internacional. Consiste en un conjunto de retazos mentales, pensamientos (a veces, filosóficos; a veces, intelectuales; en otras ocasiones, más personales...) que se agrupan de manera más o menos temática.

[Emiliano Macdu · Rating 4 out of 5]

hermosos. hay algunos aforismos que son pura poesía.

[Carmen Moreno · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Lo más cruel de la muerte: un final aparente provoca un dolor verdadero”