You had hardly described our meeting in Berlin when I was already dreaming of it…we weren’t walking arm in arm, admittedly, but we were closer to each other than when people are arm in arm. Oh God, it’s difficult to describe on paper my invention for not walking arm in arm, not being conspicuous, but still walking very close to you…
But wait, I’ll draw it. Walking arm in arm is like this. But we were walking like this.
Franz Kafka, Letter to Felice Bauer, February 11th/12th, 1913
“I was stiff and cold, I was a bridge, I lay over a ravine. My toes on one side, my fingers clutching the other, I had clamped myself fast into the crumbling clay.” The Bridge - Franz Kafka Illustration by Isidre Mones
It’s about some nameless mook who gets arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.
What for?
He doesn’t know. No one knows.
How is that possible? Surely someone knows?
Maybe. He certainly never finds out. The dark forces controlling his life never reveal themselves.
That sounds like the paranoid delusions of a madman.
Yes. It reads like that too. What Kafka gave to the world is the idea that projecting an atmosphere, a gut emotional response and nothing else, through a novel can be as valid as narrative technique, plot or character development. You won’t find much of any of that “normal” novel-meat on Kafka’s bones.
There is a total disconnection from any influence over the decisions that affect his characters, and a sense that the impassive system will crush him like a bug without blinking. Objectively horrific things keep happening, and no one cares as long as the right form was filled out.
What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?
“I took my malfunctioning toaster back to the electrical store. I didn’t get to talk to anyone about it, but I came out with a crossbow and two ironing boards. What the hell is going on?”
What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?
“Imagine what things would be like without government bureaucracy? Total chaos.”
Should I actually read it?
Yes. Read it. Remember that it was written in 1914, and we are now living inside Kafka’s nightmare.
“Because I love you (you see, I do love you, you dimwit, my love engulfs you the way the sea loves a tiny pebble on its bed—and may I be the pebble with you, heaven permitting) I love the whole world and that includes your left shoulder—no, the right one was first and so I’ll kiss it whenever I want to (and whenever you’re kind enough to pull down your blouse a little)”
I guess we all have a little bit of ‘i want to save the world’ in us, but i just want to put it out there that it’s okay if you are able to only save one person and it’s also okay if that person is you.
![[mermaid]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3a6c0b9086fcf8e87e4d1845a428fcd4/db3c7672f8b8806f-69/s30x30u_c1/f3afdd9ba6b939344664a081260d2a8f0371dc08.png){kind=small}
