Kafka, a true great?

[burntpunk]

Haven read The Trial and The Metamorphosis, I deeply enjoyed them and can see why many regard Kafka as one of the Literature Gods.

Other than the obvious, I've struggled to pinpoint what quantifies his brilliance. Any ideas?

Don't state the obvious.

[stlukesguild]

What would be the "obvious"?

[kelby_lake]

I think he's cool :) I didn't think people wrote such things in the 1910's...

[Barbarous]

What would be the "obvious"?

Most likely the fact that he penned numerous short stories, maybe a handful of novels, finished or unfinished and is partly accessible and susceptible due to an ambiguous relevance to modern readers of today's world.

But on topic I'll say that the stories he wrote were really unique and original, and I've heard his novels were good even though some maybe be unfinished. I believe most people read him because they feel an inclination of importance of his work to the civilization they have built since Kafka's death. :lol:

[JCamilo]

Kafka short stories are masterful, he ranks with (or even above) Borges as the XX century master of short stories. His romances are tipically a development of his short style writing, endings are irrelevant to him.
But that is obvious...

[Manchegan]

We analyzed The Country Doctor in a psych class I took. The story works on at least 3 or 4 levels - the guy's trying to validate his god complex in light of a personal fear of mortality, or else it's a dream symbolizing his lust for his house servant. there were other things too, but i forget. it was like four years ago. that said, I've never fully understood what was so great about metamorphosis. that's probably more a short coming on my part, though. Kafka's the genius.

[Thom_H]

I've yet to read any of Kafka's works, but it's something I will be looking into very soon. Could anybody please give me an idea of a good place to start?

[weltanschauung]

its appaling to me the extreme ellegant eloquence used to state absurdly laughable pathetic situations.

[mayneverhave]

I've yet to read any of Kafka's works, but it's something I will be looking into very soon. Could anybody please give me an idea of a good place to start?

Traveling salesmen turned into gigantic insects. What's not to love?

I'd start with his most famous work - The Metamorphosis.

[stlukesguild]

My initial question was not meant to challenge or question Kafka's merit... but rather to clarify what the OP considered as "obvious" versus not.

Considering the scale and fragmented state of Kafka's work it may be difficult to place him along side of Joyce or Proust at the pinnacle of Modernist literature... but in spite of this Kafka succeeds in giving a voice to the century that may surpass that of both Joyce and Proust. Certainly Modern life seems far more "Kafkaesque" than "Joycean" or "Proustian". I agree that his fictions rank along side those of Borges. I say fictions because Kafka really blurs a lot of genres... and often presents with fragmented or truncated forms: incomplete novels, germs of a story, aphorisms, etc... In many ways his fragmented forms echo the fragmentation that one finds in T.S. Eliot, Joyce, and Picasso.

All to often Kafka is defined as a "Surrealist"... but he is actually far from Surrealism... or at least the sort of Surrealism epitomized by Dali or Breton. Where traditional Surrealism suggest a sensuous atmosphere of the unreal... Poe transcribed into the Modern world or dream state... Kafka presents us with the absurd... but then proceeds to explore it in the most pedestrian, deadpan manner. The style of his prose is often the most disconcerting element to the first-time reader who comes to Kafka expecting something "Kafkaesque": fantastic, rich in atmosphere, and other-worldly. Instead Kafka presents the most ridiculous themes in a manner as if he were but one of his own bureaucrats... a reporter who is reporting "Just the facts, Ma'am". The contrast between the deadpan manner and the absurdity of the narratives lends the works a brilliant sense of irony... a black humor. The reader who does not laugh at Kafka is missing the point, as he himself knew. In this manner he is perhaps the most obvious predecessor for J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar and a great deal of the Latin-American "magic realists" as well as writers such as John Barth, Donald Barthleme, Tomaso Landolfi, even Italo Calvino.

A great deal of Kafka's strength comes from his building upon his own Jewish tradition: the Kabbalistic commentaries, the dead-pan story telling of Yiddish story-tellers and even rethinking Old Testament narratives. Who can read Job again after Kafka without taking a Kafkaesque interpretation: One day J. awoke to find that everything he owned had been taken away by the authorities in charge for no reason. A vast majority of Kafka's works explore the relationship between the modern man and a higher authority that he cannot question or understand. Certainly this is as much an allegory of the modern dilemma of a man trapped in bureaucratic hell as it is an allegory of the relationship of man with God in the Hebrew texts.

Kafaka is his strongest in his short fictions. The Metamorphosis is the most well-known... but there are even greater works: The Hunger Artist, Gracchus the Hunter, The Penal Colony, The Great Wall of China. Many of his strongest writings are even shorter: aphorisms, ideas, parables. Beside his Complete Short Stories Kafka's essential writings include the fragmentary novels The Trial and The Castle, (Amerika is probably the least "Kafkaesque and best saved for later) Parables and Paradoxes, and The Blue Octavo Notebooks.

And now I must log off... as I've had a few too many good Belgian and German beers to continue thinking strait (thank God for the on-line spell check!:wave:)

[JCamilo]

The Hunger artist is in my opinion, the single greatest short story every writen, anyways...
We can not eliminate the jewish heritage from kafka. There is his allegories, there his capacity to consider a text under virtual impossible measumerements, and the style. Kakfa is basically a parable writer. Except he eliminated any moralism or last moral setence. Kafka does not often us a single explanation, he offer us a multitple use, he does not need explanation. Kafka certainly proofs that we do not need to write to make sense. He does not, and not at language level, like Joyce. He does not because reality also does not.
In latin america his reading will be always related to Magical Realism. Kafkanesque is something bizzarre under daily occurances.
Kafka is full of humor. His diary shows it.
Now, Umberto Eco likes to say the XX century was split between Joyce and Borges. I would say the truth is rather unsettling. It is century that Kafka split between both. He ties both sides.
Now, Umb

[mortalterror]

I'd say he's pretty great. He's definitely in the top ten of twentieth century writers and probably the top fifty of all time, if you want to limit things to the West. Before anybody asks who I think is better, I will forestall them with this list:
Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Rabelais, Ariosto, Shakespeare, De Vega, Cervantes, Calderon, Moliere, Racine, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Goethe, Fielding, Pushkin, Dickens, Balzac, Leopardi, Hugo, Melville, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Twain, Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Chekov, Ibsen, Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, Proust, Beckett.

"If in such a crowd of writers my own reputation is thrown into the shade, I would console myself with the renown and greatness of those who eclipse my fame."- Livy

[JCamilo]

so, Kakfa is 45th ? Not bad, considering he wrote such short stuff :D

[mortalterror]

so, Kakfa is 45th ? Not bad, considering he wrote such short stuff :D
I don't consider The Trial, The Castle, Amerika, and The Metamorphosis that short. Nor do I consider him, as you do, the greatest short story writer. Hemingway, Maupassant, and even O'Connor far surpass him in that respect. However, I will say that, like Borges, his parables have a certain intellectual interest. I think as a stylist he is probably the equal of Henry James or Joseph Conrad. His artistic ambition was large, but somewhat marred by the fact that he never completed anything on a grand scale.

[JCamilo]

heh, I said on XX century. Your list give me Chekhov, I would think of Poe if I was considering all time short stories writers... and even so, moderm short stories writers. Of course, I was jesting (altough Metamorphosis is short, not "that" short)... I wont discuss Hemingway as short story writer near to Borges or Kafka, imagine far surpassing him...
Now, about his Artistic Ambition as high, how it works? How come someone who did not bothered to write a few final pages for The Castle, already knowing what would happen, is that ambitious? And how come, for example, Chekhov would compare to Dostoievisky and Tolstoy... Would the ambition of Philiph Roth help him out ?

[mortalterror]

And how come, for example, Chekhov would compare to Dostoievisky and Tolstoy...
Chekhov wrote good plays: The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters.

[Dr. Hill]

Kafka certainly is a true great. The atmosphere of his work is totally unmatched, and I definitely think a lot of the rest of the 20th century writers tried to match it.

[JCamilo]

Chekhov wrote good plays: The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters.

I can not deny it. Chekhov wrote good plays. But any of those plays, he would never get a single scratch over Dostoieviksy or Tolskoy writing. Chekhov is a master of short story, as a dramaticist he is only one of the good guys. (probally worse than Pushkin, but I wont discuss it)...
Point taken, Chekhov would not be great without his short stories, woundlt you agree?

[mortalterror]

Point taken, Chekhov would not be great without his short stories, woundlt you agree?
I actually appreciate his plays more than his short stories. Stuff like his Lady With the Dog really don't do it for me. I'd much rather read The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Everything That Rises Must Converge, The Most Dangerous Game, Ball of Fat, The Cask of Amontillado, To Build a Fire, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Things They Carried, The Lottery, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, or The Gift of the Magi, than anything Borges, Kafka, or Chekhov wrote.

[Babak Movahed]

I'm sorry but I have to completely disagree Kafka a "literature god?" that's a gross over exaggeration. Look I read The Metamorphosis and The Trial and both novels don't constitute the claim of Kafka as a "god". The Metaorphosis was a pretty good novella for sure in the top ten of all novellas. However The Trial was extremely overrated, the theme wasn't bad but the plot was mundane, the text itself lacked literary devices to make seem more appealing, and for a book attempting to be humorous it wasn't funny at all. Kafka isn't bad but there are plenty of writers that are much better.

[JCamilo]

I actually appreciate his plays more than his short stories. Stuff like his Lady With the Dog really don't do it for me. I'd much rather read The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Everything That Rises Must Converge, The Most Dangerous Game, Ball of Fat, The Cask of Amontillado, To Build a Fire, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Things They Carried, The Lottery, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, or The Gift of the Magi, than anything Borges, Kafka, or Chekhov wrote.


That is not much of an argument, is it? I could say that I would read Ode to a Nightingale, She walks with Beauty or Autopsicografia than anything Petrarca wrote. It would be true, but it would not mean anything, just my preference.
I would really wonder if you can make a case for Chekhov (prefering his plays or not) as to be one of the giants without his short stories.
Or te list of authors you bought, Poe and Maupassant are head and shoulder above the rest when dealing with Short stories, but even Garcia-Marquez or Hemingway, It would be very hard to build an argument favorable to their aesthetical contribution to short stories while compared to Borges, Kafka or CHekhov.
Anyways, I am just curious, sometimes your rankings do not match well with arguments I have seen you making, but maybe you just do not take the ranking very seriously...

Anyways, about short stories and Kafka "unfinishism" (not being him the only one to do such thing, but usually they die)... It is not really necessary. Poe, Chekhov, etc, those basically defined the rules, work with short stories as fragments, they do not need to tell all story, only the bit necessary for that scene. Cortazar said they are pictures. It is a frame. Just put the ending if necessary (sometimes I think about the classical drama, where the plays shows a fragment of a bigger and traditional story, already know since the oral transmition helped out)...
Kafka longer stories are usually a short story that he added elements until turning in a romance, so they basically follow short stories rules. I would not think that a final is necessary for The Castle. The absence of the ending (proposital or just because he was lazy bum) would be helpful? I do not think so...

[stlukesguild]

I'd much rather read The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Everything That Rises Must Converge, The Most Dangerous Game, Ball of Fat, The Cask of Amontillado, To Build a Fire, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Things They Carried, The Lottery, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, or The Gift of the Magi, than anything Borges, Kafka, or Chekhov wrote.

Acck! You wound me!:sick: Not that I underestimate Hemingway as a short story writer... certainly far more than as a novelist. And yes, there are any number of other marvelous short fictions out there... but then I am an avowed Borgesian as you are sworn to the macho camp of Ernest. I'll take Borges over anyone listed... even Kafka.:D

[stlukesguild]

I'm sorry but I have to completely disagree Kafka a "literature god?" that's a gross over exaggeration. Look I read The Metamorphosis and The Trial and both novels don't constitute the claim of Kafka as a "god".

Few writers attain that status on the merits of a single short story and one novel. I don't think anyone here would suggest as much. The body of his brief fictions, aphorisms, parables, notebook entries, and the fragmentary novels are far more than impressive. Read The Penal Colony, The Hunter Gracchus, The Great Wall of China, The Hunger Artist, An Old Manuscript, etc...

The Metaorphosis was a pretty good novella for sure in the top ten of all novellas. However The Trial was extremely overrated, the theme wasn't bad but the plot was mundane, the text itself lacked literary devices to make seem more appealing, and for a book attempting to be humorous it wasn't funny at all.

"Theme"? "Plot"? These sound like high-school terms in analyzing or judging a work of literature. Was the plot mundane? Certainly... but I would suggest that such was the intention... a suggestion of the mundane nature of bureaucracy... It conveys something of the feeling of the individual trapped in an absurd situation... a horrible wrong... while the powers-that-be (be they God or the modern bureaucracy) continue on their way oblivious... like some much machinery. The literary devices employed seem perfectly suited or adequate to what is intended. As for the humor... this is not the humor of slapstick... of Philip Roth or Gore Vidal... rather this is a bleak dark humor... laughing in the face of helplessness. This is the humor of irony in the face of fear... horror... and the absurd. Certainly there are many writers who are far better (Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, Homer, Cervantes, etc...) but his is a unique and resonant voice that may just be the best representative of the last century. Surely Kafka, far more than Proust or Joyce or any number of others epitomized the absurdity and horrors of a century that gave us two world wars, the Bureaucratic efficacy of the Holocaust, and the looming threat of nuclear annihilation that brought us back to a fear of Armageddon unknown since the middle ages.

[JCamilo]

Somehow, Kafka is God and Hemingway his father...

[stlukesguild]

For a trinity I'll take Kafka, Borges, and Calvino.:D

[JCamilo]

and Poe the holy ghost :D (altough I would take Cortazar over Calvino, he would be a wonderful son)

[mono]

What makes Kafka great in one word? Absurdism, one of its innovators. Personally, I tend to side with Camus a bit more for the fictional preaching of the philosophy, but Kafka does so much better in framing the attributes of absurdism in the unspoken scenarios, internal monologues, and formations of plots - that "where's-he-going-with-this" feeling; to read him requires a lot of reflection, and to understand him even more, in the same manner as Joyce. Kafka perfected the art of narratives and engendering the psychology of his characters into the unique plots of his novels; I did not connect quite as well with The Castle as I did with The Trial or The Metamorphosis, but his absurd genius speaks so loudly to preach a philosophy virtually of nothingness.

[stlukesguild]

Throw in Alejo Carpentier as Pope and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez as Arch-Bishop.:D

[JCamilo]

Then Felisberto Hernandez, Bioy Casares and Juan Rulfo will say "Amem!"

[stlukesguild]

No... Machado de Assis, Augusto Monterroso, and Carlos Fuentes.

[meg1231]

the metamorphasis is actually one of my favorites i read it in school and i can honsestly say it was a great peice of literature! it almost made me cry! lol:bawling:

[David R]

I read translations of Kafka when I was younger. I remember his prose as being so limpid and pure, even in translation. A unique writer, very hard to pin down. An angelic writer. A lot of people would say that his only limitation is that he excludes the social from his work but this essentially is his purity. It is amazing that a writer can produce such a substantial amount of great work without real engagement with this huge sphere of human reality. Looking forward to reading him again.

As for whether he is as good as Joyce I would have to reserve judgment until I learn German and read him in the original and that wont be any time soon. :yawnb:

And to the question, is he a literature god? I would say he is like Beckett, a saint of writers.

David

[JCamilo]

No... Machado de Assis, Augusto Monterroso, and Carlos Fuentes.

Machado ? Nah, Lima Barreto. He is very kafkanian... before kafka, which is very kafkanian...

[libernaut]

the brilliant descriptions of the human condition and all of its absurdities.

[Dr. Hill]

Machado ? Nah, Lima Barreto. He is very kafkanian... before kafka, which is very kafkanian...

Lol, you mean Kafkaesque?

[Helga]

I really enjoyed reading his letter to his father, a very interesting letter that he never gave him. his fathers way of teaching a child was very strange to say the least. and their relationship was unusual, so were Kafka's relationships later in life..