Great Stories by Kafka and Rilke/Meistererzählungen von Kafka und Rilke: A Dual-Language Book

by Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stanley Appelbaum (Editor)

At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Prague hosted a cosmopolitan culture whose literary scene abounded in experimental writers. Two of the city’s natives are featured in this dual-language Franz Kafka, whose fiction is synonymous with the anguish of modern life; and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose stories unfold in the same transcendent lyricism as his verse.
Twelve of Kafka’s stories from the compilation Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) appear here, along with two tales from Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist) . Rilke's stories include "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" (The Ballad of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke), "Die Turnstunde" (The Gym Class), and Geschichten vom lieben Gott (Stories About the Good Lord) .
Stanley Appelbaum has provided an introduction and informative notes to these stories, along with excellent new English translations on the pages facing the original German.

Genres: German Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2003

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

[Gastjäle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es ist irreführend, diese Novelle "Meistererzählungen" zu nennen. Hier gibt es nur ein, die man so nennen könnte: Ein Hungerkünstler von Kafka, eine richtig tolle (und lustige) Erzählung über absurde Beschäftigung und die Begierde, akzeptiert zu werden. Der Rest von Kafkas Geschichten ist zu kurz oder zu entwurfsartig, um mich zu imponieren. Rilke habe interessante Ideen und einen schönen Sinn für Humor gehabt, aber seine obskure Kurzgeschichte schienen mir nicht viel zu bieten zu haben. Unsichere Ahnungen eines dunklen Gottes, voll Metaphern und meta-artiger Selbstsabotage, fern von der andächtigen und nachdenklichen Schönheit von Rilkes Gedichten.