A Country Doctor / Ein Landarzt

Bilingual Edition: English - German / Zweisprachige Ausgabe: Englisch - Deutsch

Franz Kafka

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9783734778155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Historische Romane

This edition contains the English translation and the original text in German."A Country Doctor" (German: "Ein Landarzt") is a short story written in 1919 by Franz Kafka. It was first published in the collection of short stories of the same title.Die Erzählung "Ein Landarzt" von Franz Kafka entstand im Jahr 1917 und wurde 1918 veröffentlicht. Im Jahre 1920 erschien – nach mehreren kriegsbedingten Verzögerungen – das Buch "Ein Landarzt" mit der Erzählung gleichen Titels und dreizehn weiteren Prosatexten im Verlag Kurt Wolff. Das Buch enthält die Widmung: "Meinem Vater". Drei Stücke hiervon waren vorab bereits in der Zweimonatsschrift "Marsyas" erschienen. Zahlreiche Prosastücke des Erzählbandes wurden durch Träume Kafkas angeregt, die er vorab in seinen Tagebüchern beschrieb.

A Country Doctor

I was in great difficulty. An urgent journey was facing me. A seriously ill man was waiting for me in a village ten miles distant. A severe snowstorm filled the space between him and me. I had a carriage—a light one, with large wheels, entirely suitable for our country roads. Wrapped up in furs with the bag of instruments in my hand, I was already standing in the courtyard ready for the journey; but the horse was missing—the horse. My own horse had died the previous night, as a result of over exertion in this icy winter. My servant girl was at that very moment running around the village to see if she could borrow a horse, but it was hopeless—I knew that—and I stood there useless, increasingly covered with snow, becoming all the time more immobile. The girl appeared at the gate, alone. She was swinging the lantern. Of course, who is now going to lend her his horse for such a journey? I walked once again across the courtyard. I couldn’t see what to do. Distracted and tormented, I kicked my foot against the cracked door of the pig sty which had not been used for years. The door opened and banged to and fro on its hinges. A warmth and smell as if from horses came out. A dim stall lantern on a rope swayed inside. A man huddled down in the stall below showed his open blue-eyed face. “Shall I hitch up?” he asked, crawling out on all fours. I didn’t know what to say and bent down to see what was still in the stall. The servant girl stood beside me. “One doesn’t know the sorts of things one has stored in one’s own house,” she said, and we both laughed. “Hey, Brother, hey Sister,” the groom cried out, and two horses, powerful animals with strong flanks, shoved their way one behind the other, legs close to the bodies, lowering their well-formed heads like camels, and getting through the door space, which they completely filled, only through the powerful movements of their rumps. But right away they stood up straight, long legged, with thick steaming bodies. “Help him,” I said, and the girl obediently hurried to hand the wagon harness to the groom. But as soon as she was beside him, the groom puts his arms around her and pushes his face against hers. She screams out and runs over to me. On the girl’s cheek were red marks from two rows of teeth. “You brute,” I cry out in fury, “do you want the whip?”. But I immediately remember that he is a stranger, that I don’t know where he comes from, and that he’s helping me out of his own free will, when everyone else is refusing to. As if he knows what I was thinking, he takes no offence at my threat, but turns around to me once more, still busy with the horses. Then he says, “Climb in,” and, in fact, everything is ...