Kafka: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #115

by Ritchie Robertson

Franz Kafka is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the last century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation . His other three novels, published after his death, helped to found his reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century.Discussing both Kafka's crisis-ridden life and the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson provides an intriguing and accessible look at the life of this fascinating author. Using Metamorphosis as a recurring example, Robertson shows how Kafka's work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed "the death of God."

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Philosophy, Literature, Literary Criticism, Criticism, History

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 3 out of 5]

By writing, he could escape futile self-analysis through assuming a higher perspective.

I was tempted to pick this up as I struggled through The Castle. This VSI presents a minutely personal and deliberately non-literary exploration of Kafka. The literary works are treated as works of self-analysis. I am not qualified to comment on the correctness of this approach, but I can say that it was quite unsatisfactory.

In any case, it would have been impossible to decode Kafka or say baldly what Kafka’s work is ‘about’. There is no way into Kafka except by reading Kafka and puzzling over Kafka.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually I avoid these sorts of "introductions" and especially anything "for dummies," but this is published by the Oxford University Press, so I have high hopes.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

High hopes justified! This was like a mini course on Kafka's life and major themes in his work. On the whole, very helpful.

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good (i accidentally deleted this from my bookshelves so i lost my original review ☹️)

[MG · Rating 5 out of 5]

kaffkaa...
detailed and relevant facts and overall a pleasure to read. mainly because it's about kafka :)

[Hannah L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is Ritchie Robertson obsessed with sex or is Kafka obsessed with sex? Who knows. Men don’t understand religion, it seems.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kafka’s life story presents us with one of the greatest literary counterfactuals: What if Kafka’s friend, Max Brod, had honored the writer’s deathbed wish to burn his novels and other unpublished works? After all, Kafka had an outsized influence on modern literature; “The Trial” and “The Metamorphosis” alone have had profound reverberations across the world of literature. It’s with this hook that we are pulled into Kafka’s short, tragic, but brilliant life.

This book presents sketches of both the life and the body of work of Kafka, but subsequent chapters apply three different lenses to Kafka’s canon. The first of these is the body. It’s easy to see this theme’s influence in “The Metamorphosis” (in which the protagonist wakes up to find he’s a huge bug,) but Robertson shows us how the body cuts through other works and was influenced by skinny Kafka’s turbulent relations with his imposing father as well as by his difficulties in intimate relationships.

The second lens is institutions. Again, one of Kafka’s more famous works springs to mind, “The Trial,” but we also see that this, too, is a recurring theme -- not only with respect to government / bureaucratic institutions (e.g. “In the Penal Colony”) but otherwise, as well. The final lens is religion and secularity. Kafka was living in the wake of Nietzsche and other nihilist and existentialists, and the atheist worldview was coming to dominate among the erudite segment of society. But Kafka straddled a line; the spiritual had appeal for him, but his life felt governed by nihilistic patterns.

I learned a great deal from this book. I think it offers important insight into Kafka and his writings.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this I think I understand Kafka's books a bit better and feel motivated to reread them. I have a better sense of his intellectual sources, why his major themes were so important to him, and the historical context. But I also feel very weirdly about Kafka himself, who is the focus of this book. On the one hand, I now dislike him more than I previously did. He is an eminently weak person. He exhibited guilt, indecisiveness and fear. He was privileged, yet anxious. He was like a rich bohemian artist kid who was a disappointment to his family. He sucked with women and was self-loathing. Yet, if you brought any of this up with him he would probably agree with you. He was very self-aware about all of this. And in a way that makes me admire him more. He really embraced his own psychology and laid it bare on the page (although, he did want to have those pages burned, but that nonwithstanding...) He was weak, confused, indecisive and frightened on our behalf. Through his suffering, he allows us to occasionally introspect on the negative aspect of our own psychology without fully committing to it like he did. So thanks Kafka, the messiah of horrific existential confusion.

[Serhii Rafalskyi]

Short but tough. Ugh.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference, especially the chapter on "How to read Kafka."

[Pak · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. A good start for reading Kafka
2. love the excerpt from different Kafka’s novels
3. I read the traditional Chinese version, nice typesetting as Oxford always do
4. Can finish it within an afternoon

[Jimgosailing · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Kafka, by his own account, felt overwhelmed by his father. Hermann Kafka’s massive body (which would seem huge to a child), noisy, self-confidence, and absolute authority, made him seem like a giant. ‘ I was oppressed by your sheer corporeality’, Kafka writes…at table Hermann Kafka would devour the food, piping hot, in large mouthfuls, crunching the bones while forbidding the others to do so (we can see here the origin of many brutal flesh eating characters and Kafka fiction from the glutenous Green in The Man Who Disappeared to the cannibal in a draft of “A Fasting Artist” [aka “A Hunger Artist]

“So since every subject was unattractive, he might as well study one—law— which was completely repellent. ‘ in the months before the exams,’ Kafka recalled bitterly, ‘ I suffered great and nervous tension and lived on an intellectual diet of sawdust, which, moreover, had been previously chewed by 1000 mouths.’

“Gustav Janouch in his Conversations with Kafka… so shameless in making Kafka pontificate on modern ill that few possibly authentic material materials are submerged; Janouch’s book, the often credulously cited as evidence of what Kafka really thought, is best regarded as spurious.

“But it is not my aim to decode Kafka or say baldly what Kafka’s is work is ‘ about’. There is no way into Kafka, except by reading Kafka and see puzzling over Kafka. The next chapter will therefore consider not so much what Kafka’s texts mean, but rather how they ask to be read

Reading Kafka

Reading Kafka is a puzzling experience. Impossible events occur with an error of inevitability, and no explanation is forthcoming…. Not only are the characters bewildered: so is the reader. As in the cinema, events are shown only from the viewpoint of the main character. With very rare exceptions we see only what he sees. As early as 1934, Theodor Adorno wrote that Kafka’s novels read like texts accompanying silent films. The readers knowledge is similarly limited we learned no more than the central character knows about his situation., and therefore share his bewilderment

Why does Kafka disoriented the reader in this way? In part, he is taking to an extreme a widespread tendency of modern literature. many years ago Roland Barthes distinguished modern from early literature by asserting that the former produces writerly texts, the latter readerly texts. By a ‘readerly’ text, Barthes meant one for which in authoritative interpretation already exists and has simply to be accepted by the reader, whereas a ‘writerly’ text has no definite interpretation and invites the reader to participate actively in making sense of the text.

Kafka may be compared to Conrad in that both …perplexing the attentive reader with psychological and epistemological enigmas. Kafka, like Conrad, focuses on uncertainty, ambiguity, perplexity. unlike Conrad, however, he has no Marlow figure, no narrator to conduct inquiries on behalf of the reader. if one is puzzled by Kafka it is not because one has somehow missed the point: Kafka’s text are puzzling and they are so because uncertainty and perplexity are essential features of the reality Kafka is writing about.

He cannot ‘defend’ the most casual action, like strap hanging on the tram. Nor can he ‘defend’ the casual behavior of people in the street. Why should such a thing need defending? We are not told, but it’s typical of Kafka that by using a word that seems inappropriate to its context he should evoke a different way of looking at the familiar world. perhaps the world is not just an assemble of people and objects, but also an entity requiring - moral? Legal? Religious? - justification for its existence and that justification has now vanished or become impossible to find.

Realism and/or Expressionism

The focus of the story is not so much the transformation as Gregor’s delayed response to his transformation.
This focus confirms Kafka distance from realism. realism presupposes an agreement on what reality is. even though, as George Elliott says in Middlemarch, it is always seen from ‘an equivalent center of self, whence the lights and shadows must always fall with a certain difference’, a consensus exists on the nature of the world that is seen. In Kafka, that consensus has vanished and seeing becomes problematic. There is no longer a stable reality out there on which the realist text can offer a window. there are only versions of reality, which may be profoundly inadequate or mistaken, and the narrative focuses on the protagonist’s consciousness and his or her attempts to make sense of the world.
Kafka shows his distance from the memetic realism by his treatment of pictures and photographs.

How much is that steak in this epistemological uncertainty can be seen from the humorous tale “The Nrw Advocate,” …in A Country Doctor: Little Tales… another tale of transformation, only Bucephalus has moved in the opposite direction from Gregoire. McGregor has regressed from human to insect form, Bucephalus has Advanced from being a war horse to being a human lawyer. Or has he? There is ‘ little to recall’ his career as a charger; only ‘a thing or two’ that distinguishes Bucephalus from a human

“The Top”…[in this story] The philosopher seeks knowledge of the world. The tiniest part of the world will suffice to give him knowledge of the whole. The trouble is, the world does not stand still. it is in constant motion, like the spinning top and will not stop for the philosopher to scrutinize it. If you stop the world as the philosopher does the top, it no longer tells you anything. so the philosopher can never obtain the knowledge he seeks, and has driven away by the children, who with their noise and play are closer to the ever-moving life than he is.

Chapter 3 Bodies
The modern body

In his prophetic book Thus Spake Zarathustra (1884), Nietzche proclaimed that the faculty known as mind or intelligence was merely a small part of the great instinctive intelligence residing in the body
Following Nietzsche’s summons much modern literature explorers are bodily existence. The greatest such undertaking is Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, an epic of illness in which Hans Castorp explores among much else the wonders of medical science during his seven years stay in a Swiss senator

Gregoire’s sexual life has been limited to a few brief encounters into the pin-up that hangs opposite his bed showing ‘a lady complete with fur hat and fur stole, who was sitting upright, and extending to view a thick fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished’. Clearly Kafka kept an eye on the fashion magazines, for such fur costumes were especially vogue in the summer 1912, when who wrote this story. The blatant sexuality of this image, enhanced by the hint of coition in the description, lets us guess what Gregor’s ‘troubled dreams’ were about and suggest too that the ‘mass of little white spot spots which he was unable to interpret’ covering his belly may result from a nocturnal emission

in The Transformation active sexuality is the domain of the parents from which Gregoire is excluded. Just before he lose his consciousness from the pain caused by the apple his father throws at him. He almost witnesses a primal scene:

With his last conscious look, he saw the door of his room being flung open and his mother rushing out ahead of his screaming sister; in her chemise, for his sister had taken off her dress to help her breathe when she fainted; he saw his mother running towards his father, shedding her loosen petticoats one by one on the floor behind her; and how she stumbled over her skirts to fling herself upon him and embraced him, quite united with him-but here Gregor’s sight went dim - imploring him, with her hands around her his father‘s neck, to spare Gregor’s life.

Gregor’s site goes dim to prevent him seeing what he must not see, an act of parental coition, which in sparing his life, re-enacts the one that gave him life. But his own sexuality reappears later when, hearing his sister play the violin, he fantasize about inviting her into his room, keeping her there permanently and kissing her bare neck.

Once Gregor is dead, his father ejects the lodgers from the Family flat, and as the lodgers trail down the stairs up comes the butcher’s boy carrying a tray of meat— the antithesis to the star of Gregor. The guards who ensure that the Fasting Artist does not eat on the sly are also butchers.

Gregor is wounded, perhaps fatally, by his father, and we are told that ‘the apple remained embedded in his flesh as a visible reminder’. A reminder of what? Given the story’s Christian context (the Samsa parents cross themselves on learning of Gregor’s death), it recalls the ‘thorn in the flesh’ which afflicted Saint Paul (2 Cor. 12:7) and which has often been read as a nagging reminder of sexuality

Often Kafka shows an inclination to reject bodily existence, especially in so far is it is sexual. His story. ”The Silence of the Sirens” (1917) retells the myth by explaining that it is not the song of the Sirens that is really dangerous, but they’re silence. Not knowing this Odysseus stuffs wax his ears and has himself tied to the mast. although the Sirens keep silent, Odysseus observes ‘the twisting of their necks, their panting, their tear-filled eyes, their half-opened mouths’, but interprets this as gestures accompanying song, not as an extravagant display of erotic desire. Thus, by a mere misunderstanding, he remains secure from the sexual temptations of the physical world

One of Kafka’s most provocative early interpreters, Erich Heller, found here a gnostic outlook, according to which phenomenon are most beautiful when most ethereal, most nearly spiritual, but become gross and common place when embodied in matter or…by making direct contact with the body

Chapter 4: Institutions

The first institution that anyone encounters is the family. For Kafka the family is the place where oppression starts.

Being put on trial is itself proof that one must be guilty.
The same law seems to operate in The Trial, but in a subtler way. Although the novel was inspired partly by the ‘trial’ to which Kafka was subjected by Felice and her supporters when their engagement was dissolved, it contains no actual court proceedings.

The Austrian legal code…defined crime not only as an act but also with reference to the ‘evil intent’ of the defendant, thus making the defendant’s motivation crucial to the determination of guilt. Accordingly, it became an axiom of Austrian law that there could be guilt without illegality; somebody might plan a crime but be prevented from carrying it out by an external accident….The warders who arrest [Josef K] assert…he must be guilty in order to have been arrested…

Habituation to routine prevents Kafka’s characters from perceiving realties that are at odds with their institutional mentalities. But his narratives repeatedly show how these incongruous realities, breaking in from outside, assail, weaken, and finally destroy the uncomprehending protagonists.

In his portrayal of bureaucracy, Kafka captures another characteristic of modern institutions: the invisibility of their rulers.

One of Kafka uncles …worked as an administrator on a railway which was being built using forced labor; his experiences seemed to have inspired a fragment in Kafka’s notebook about ‘building the railway in the interior of the Congo’ and to have shaped In the Penal Colony by coalescing reports of Captain Dreyfus’s unjust imprisonment in the French penal settlement of Devil’s Island.

One of the most depressing aspects of institutions is that they gain their power from the acquiescence of their inmates…a germ of hope…if one withdraws one’s acquiescence, one can in theory deprive the institution of power.

When Kafka envisages true freedom from authority, he thinks not of opposing authority head on…but of quietly stepping aside from it. A model of such freedom appears in his diaries as early as 1911 in the form of some notes on minor literatures, * inspired by his knowledge of contemporary Yiddish and Czech literature. A minor literature, in contrast to a major literature like German, is not dominated by the authority of any single great writer (like Goethe in German), so that there is scope for lively discussion and wide participation in literary life. Such a literature is sustained by national feeling. It is a ‘diary of a nation’, a reservoir of national memory.
[*see Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature]

. . . . .

Ya know, don’t judge a book by its cover. The cover on this one’s bland enough* and for me, would seem to have been one of those quasi academic “studies“ that just recount the basic plot of the story. but that wasn’t so with this. this was actually an interesting and deep dive in the Kafka and his works, with some very cogent insights into stories and actually making connections across his stories. Five stars.

*though, duh, I could’ve noticed it was Oxford University Press…a problem with thumbnail icons…

[Ellen F · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Do you feel - this is the main thing - unbroken connections between yourself and some reassuringly remote, possible infinite, height or depth? Anyone who constantly feels that does not have to run around like a lost dog, looking around beseechingly but mutely, he need not feel the desire to slip into the grave as thought it were a warm sleeping-bag and life a cold winter night, and when he climbs the stairs to his office, he does not have to think he sees himself simultaneously falling from above down the entire staircase, shimmering in the uncertain light, revolving with the rapidity of his motion, shaking his head with impatience." - letter from Kafka to Felice, 1913

This reminds me of one of my favorite poems, excerpted below:

". . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know. . ." - Morning Song of Senlin, by Conrad Aiken, 1889

[Raghunath · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had tried reading Kafka about a year back and couldn't complete.

This book made me revisit Kafka again. The great depth in his literature is explained and contemplated in this introduction. His work really has dizzying depth and very wide scope for personal interpretation.

(I guess this is where David Lynch gets his inspiration from, to be willingly obscure so as to let individual perception of the audience thrive.)

Worthwhile my time. Bought more books of Kafka to read again! :)

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best Very Short Introductions I have read. It covers many of Kafka's works and studies them from various angles (and does not even shy away from the autobiographical element). I found the links to other writers like Foucault and to the Yiddish theatre particularly interesting. In my view Ritchie Robertson is far and away the best English-speaking Kafka expert. If you have to study Kafka (or you are just interested in him and his art), start here!

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction. Confusing at times, but then so was Kafka.

[Mehadi ßhuiyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read several books about Kafka. But this 136 pages book seemed the best.

[Lucas Sipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lively look into the different ways to read, understand, and think about the work of Franz Kafka. Ritchie Robertson gives a brief account of Kafka's life but spends most of the work discussing how one might understand Kafka's corpus without giving a definitive reading. Throughout the text you will come to know more about the life and times of Kafka. his eccentric interests, his more common likes, and some things you didn't care to know (like his time in the nudist colony).
As the greatest author of the 20th century, the ways of understanding Kafka are inexhaustible. Robertson does, however, give a great account of the many different ways one might read his works. There are very common ways (but great nonetheless) and some less well-known. I'm excited to re-read Kafka again, armed with some new ways to interpret his texts with newfound respect for some texts I disliked at first. Of course, Kafka isn't perfect, and the account Robertson gives of his more, for lack of a better word, spiritual reading leaves a lot to be desired. It's clearly not disdain but Robertson does have an odd way of slighting Kafka the artist here and there that was odd.
Overall, a really good introduction and one I would easily recommend to others. As far as VSI go, it was pretty good but the bibliography at the end leaves a lot to be desired. About 2-3 books per chapter are suggested and they're often not even directly related to Kafka. For the chapter on Institutions, for example, Robertson recommends Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Certainly, a way to read Kafka but far from related to him.

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

RR writes with sincerity and clarity on KK, and to me any such effort on the topic is likely to be engaging. This book is worth a read even for those who need no introduction, although it comes without much reference to the contents of superb collection The Burrow or, naturally, the recent Lost Writings, which I am now looking forward to reading.

I didn’t know that the name Josef K. originated from an error in a hotel booking, nor that Kafka was associates with the lover of Frieda Weekely, who was later DH Lawrence’s wife and a friend of Frida Kahlo. I like that kind of detail, although the final part to it was gleaned from internet.

The most impressive part of the book comes when Robertson ties together his analysis of ‘institutions’ by observing that the Barnabas family ‘are the victims of their own belief in the authority of the Castle’ (93). Amalia and her family fail to defy the Castle because they live in fear of the repercussions of her single defiance – it is astutely noted that no repercussions ever actually materialise. The true power of the institution is the terror which blooms organically in the mind of its subject.

Among the disappointments are some awkward formulations and a few generic observations on things such as ‘capitalism’. And I have not found here, or yet elsewhere, satisfying discussion of the spread of Kafka’s texts after his death and the impression that this has left on the literary world.

[ALM · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was interesting to read about Kafka. As I was midway through this book, I felt a strong compulsion to read Kafka, since I had not done so before. However, by the end, my compulsion turned into revulsion. I think this book is like a Kafka espresso—so concentrated that it might be too much to process at once, with its dark symbolism, disturbing visuals, and pervasive feelings of isolation, angst, and rebellion. Something in me feels sick and perturbed. I will read Kafka later on, once this feeling has long passed, because this book really does provide good insight into Kafka’s world—the complexities, the symbolism, and the style. This book is perfect for anyone who wants to learn how to read Kafka or to understand more about the psychological and symbolic depth of his writings.

[Hanif Salim · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who wished to understand who is Kafka or what is meant by Kafkaesque in the world of literature may find this a complementary read. Looking at the life of Franz Kafka, it also dissects the works of Kafka and how his life, philosophy and environment shaped his style.

I read this book not having read any of his works yet (do have his works on to-read), so I did not so much immersed in reading (it is not necessary to read his works or have a background in Kafka though) but I am quite familiar with the Kafkaesque style seen in writers such as Haruki Murakami. This (very) short introduction gave me the understanding of Kafka's style.

[Sergej van Middendorp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice introduction which I read most of while in Prague. Many connections to philosophy and spirituality that resonates with me, including Nietzsche and the Embodied Mind.

Especially the references to form: exploration, aphorism, ideal and real.

A surprise was the reference to my fellow Fielding scholar Evi Beck. I knew she studied Kafka, which was one reason for wanting to read more about him. But I did not know she was so famous for having explored his relationship to Kaballism that she would be quoted here.

[Ruby Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to help my essay about "Der Heizer" for an essay competition. It gave me some interesting insights but also felt a little bit too clever. Maybe it would've helped if I'd read some of the books he was referring to. Anyway, "The Castle" sounds really cool so I've ordered a copy to read soon. :).

[Michael Jarvie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful introduction to Kafka's life and work.

[Adia]

I don't agree with most of Kafka's views on theology, sociology, philosophy, etc., but the book was incredibly interesting. New favorite fact on Kafka: he was a nudist for 2 weeks. (??)

[Daniel Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 1: Life and myth
Chapter 2: Reading Kafka
Chapter 3: Bodies
Chapter 4: Institutions
Chapter 5: The last things

[J Grimsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good short introduction. I liked the detail and it will get me to read more.

[Napalmlolita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Illuminates a lot of Kafka's works, but I still don't like his works very much.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So boring

[Romero Leco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biografía entendible y acertada sobre Kafka, aunque un poco sesgada por lo que respecta al impacto de Brod y del padre.

[Kevin S · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5