Nathanimal’s Comments (group member since Jan 28, 2011)

Nathanimal’s comments from the Franz Kafka group.

After your description of the contemporary usage of Ungeziefer I went away thinking that vermin is pretty much the perfect correlate. To me, vermin connotes just the same amount of ambiguity, disgust, and even smallness that you described with the German word.

Thank you, J. That was really enlightening.

Who's got some rotten tomatoes lying around? Any slimy avocados? Personally I've come loaded for bear with some moldy stone fruit (imagine a snowball with a rock packed in the middle, only stickier and stinkier). Okay, one . . . two . . . three . . . FIRE!

Perhaps we should vote . . .

Department of Motor Vehicles. Kafkaesque?

The Republican Party. Kafkaesque?

A weekend at my in-laws. Kafkaesque?

Joking aside, I do think it's a useful adjective. After all, the point is that Kafka described a kind of modern anxiety that had not been described before. And we need new words for new things.

I think the point of the article that I linked to is that the meaning of "Kafkaesque" has been so reduced by over use that it only cartoons what is actually going on in Kafka's work. Or perhaps like all clichés it's just stopped meaning anything a long time ago. Sure, these are reasonable complaints.

Still, every time some scholar smugly rolls his eyes when someone says "Kafkaesque" all I hear is: "You think you know Kafka? You don't know Kafka. I know Kafka." Which seems worse to me than the sin of uttering a cliché.

I just want to say that whining about the term "Kafkaesque" having become a cliché has itself become a cliché.

This sounds pretty exciting. Susan Bernofsky, famous for translating Robert Walser, has a forthcoming translation of The Metamorphosis.

An interview with Bernofsky on the subject.

I like that she's slanting towards humor in the translation. We forget that Kafka's hilarious.

Scott wrote: "Kafka's greatest story, IMHO."

I think I agree with Scott's HO.

I love this story. I'm in.

Thanks, Jimmy. That was interesting. I had no idea the road trip his manuscript had taken.

Also, somebody please get that guy a drink of water.

I'm not well versed on the different translations, but of the few stories and excerpts I've read in multiple translations, I really like the Muirs. Something about the other translations, like Stanley Corngold's, feel a bit turgid, like maybe they're clinging too religiously to the syntax of the original text. While faithfulness is appreciated, the Muirs seem to me to capture a tone that's both funnier and, somehow, more of its time.

My six weeks of German taught me only enough to know that I will never read Kafka in the original.

Oh, and I was just thinking. Kafka didn't want the Ungeziefer to be depicted on the cover of The Metamorphosis. That probably suggests that it was well within his intention to keep Gregor's transformation ambiguous.

Because, afterall, part of the danger of what he is is that he (to a certain degree) represents the unknown. "

That's a really good point, Jimmy.

I agree, for the reasons you state here, that cockroach is too specific. I do like it though, because it elicits that cringe quality that the others don't quite. A cockroach is the quintessential house intruder i.e. a cockroach has a special relationship to a house that other insects don't. It also brings to mind something to be fumigated, exterminated, which adds cred to Kafka as a Jewish prophet of modernity.

Vermin comes close, but to my mind it's too unspecific. I can't picture it because a vermin can also be a rat, or really any kind of virulent pest. It works for that "unknown" quality you talked about, Jimmy, but for nuts-and-bolts storytelling reasons I object.

A bug actually conjures something cute to my mind, so no. Insect is okay. It's pretty transparent, connotation-wise, but that allows the modifier (gigantic, monstrous) to do the heavy lifting.

Sorry, Nabokov, but beetle just fails all around, except maybe on the level of entomological pedantry.

Cool. My birthday is coming up and it's at the top of my birthday wishlist. (Personal note: right under Satantango.)

I've read some excerpts from letters and journals but I doubt I could pick out his voice either, especially if it's Kafka speaking instead of writing.

I've been interested in it, but I haven't read it yet. Part of what interested me was, like you say, that it's considered apocryphal. I kind of hope it IS apocryphal, because again it fits the kind of hermeneutical (rabbinical), Torah-like aura around Kafka to have people writing works of pseudepigrapha, appealing to his authority in order to find an audience.

Did you think the book sounds like Kafka? Most of all, are you digging it?

Okay, so this seems to be the most famous and questioned translation issue in Kafka's work. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an ungeheueren Ungeziefer."

This has been translated many different ways. In the Muir translation above it's rendered "gigantic insect." Norton Critical translated by Stanley Corngold renders it "monstrous vermin." I've also heard cockroach. Have you heard other renderings?

How do you feel the connotations of the differing renderings color the story? Do they change your reading at all?

I don't speak German but it's my understanding that "Ungeziefer" was a common way to refer to a bug. But it also transliterates to something like "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice," and that's certainly a connotation that's missing from any of the English translations. That gives a religious shading to the story, I think. It's interesting that early German readers like Thomas Mann and Max Brod thought of Kafka as a religious writer, something I've not heard from modern English readers. I'd love to hear a "religious" take on this story from someone.

Nabokov was adamant (when was he not?) that Samsa was, in fact, a beetle and even went so far as to make sketches. He felt that it added to the meaning of the story that Gregor had wings but never used them. Nabokov was a bug collector, so I guess he'd know.

Sheila, this is a fertile topic. Let's start a new discussion thread around it!

Seriously, Michael. That is the question. What the flip?

I, for one, am a little curious about this Alireza fellow, of Iran, who started this group but has yet to show himself around here at all. He's like our very own Herr Klamm. We might peek through a hole in the internet and find him asleep at his laptop.

What an interesting discovery, Sheila.

And I identify with the burrower, too. I bet there are a lot of us Burrowers who are subterranean neighbors and don't even know it.

Phillip wrote: "The "absurd creature" in the burrow is not in the least bit absurd (unless modern man is absurd - it's us guys!)

Heh. Well, yeah. As Camus would point out, we are absurd (or perhaps Absurd) and Kafka portrays that better than anyone. Though, I like Kafka's specificity. One hears his own personal crisis ringing through everything he wrote. So on one level his stories are about him and his predicament. But on a broader level his predicament can be read as the predicament of all the Jews of his day. And on an even broader level that predicament, of himself and of the Jews of his day, can be read as the predicament of everyone in a modern, inimical, unknowable world. As you say, Phillip: It's us.

Kafka is so nebulous. I love that about him.

Camus says: "It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of [Kafka's] work that it offers everything and confirms nothing."

And Walter Benjamin says: "Kafka had a rare capacity for creating parables for himself. Yet his parables are never exhausted by what is explainable; on the contrary, he took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings. One has to find one's way in them circumspectly, cautiously, and warily."

My only disagreement with Benjamin's quote is that he makes it sound scary and no fun. It is fun. Just as Kafka's work repels interpretation, it also invites interpretation (and re-interpretation). That inexhaustible depth gives his stories a kind of glow that brings me back to them again and again.

Never thought I'd get such a kick out of secondary literature (lit about lit). There's something very, ahem, Kafkaesque about the hermeneutics that surrounds Kafka's work. Reminds me of (what little I know about) the Torah: the "hedge" around the Law.

Oh, and Sheila, though it's kinda long (my only real beef with the piece) it's considered one of his short stories, so you can find it in the Complete Stories or probably even a Selected Stories edition.