The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach, Shelley Frisch

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780691236391
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria tedesca

A splendid new translation of an extraordinary work of modern literature—featuring facing-page commentary by Kafka's acclaimed biographer In 1917 and 1918, Franz Kafka wrote a set of more than 100 aphorisms, known as the Zürau aphorisms, after the Bohemian village in which he composed them. Among the most mysterious of Kafka's writings, they explore philosophical questions about truth, good and evil, and the spiritual and sensory world. This is the first annotated, bilingual volume of these extraordinary writings, which provide great insight into Kafka's mind. Edited, introduced, and with commentaries by preeminent Kafka biographer and authority Reiner Stach, and freshly translated by Shelley Frisch, this beautiful volume presents each aphorism on its own page in English and the original German, with accessible and enlightening notes on facing pages.The most complex of Kafka's writings, the aphorisms merge literary and analytical thinking and are radical in their ideas, original in their images and metaphors, and exceptionally condensed in their language. Offering up Kafka's characteristically unsettling charms, the aphorisms at times put readers in unfamiliar, even inhospitable territory, which can then turn luminous: "I have never been in this place before: breathing works differently, and a star shines next to the sun, more dazzlingly still."Above all, this volume reveals that these multifaceted gems aren't far removed from Kafka's novels and stories but are instead situated squarely within his cosmos—arguably at its very core. Long neglected by Kafka readers and scholars, his aphorisms have finally been given their full due here.

Aphorisms and Commentary

Notes for the aphorisms and commentary can be found immediately following this section, on pages 223–228.

1

Der wahre Weg geht über ein Seil, das nicht in der Höhe gespannt ist, sondern knapp über dem Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden.

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The true path leads along a rope stretched, not high in the air, but barely above the ground. It seems designed more for stumbling than for walking along it.

Recorded on October 19, 1917. In the octavo notebook, this text opens with the words: “I digress. The true path …” Kafka later added the sentence that begins with “It seems designed more” to the octavo notebook, then copied it onto sheet 1. (See the foreword for information about Kafka’s process of copying his texts.)¹

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Kafka appears to have found the motif of the rope in a Hasidic story he had recently read, in which two men sentenced to death are able to save their lives by walking along a rope stretched across a pond. When the first of them has made it to the other side, he says to the other: “The most important thing is not to forget for a second that you’re walking on a rope and that your life is at stake.” In this story, the rope serves as an explicit metaphor for the “path … to true worship,” while Kafka relies on the logic of the image itself. As he sees it, the rope is literally lying on the path until such time as the decision is reached to walk on it.

For more on the path as metaphor, see Aphorisms 21, 26, 38, 39a, and 104.

Additional thematically related entries in the octavo notebooks are these: “The thornbush is the ancient barrier of the path. It must catch fire if you want to go farther.” “The various forms of hopelessness at the various stations on the path.” “He has too much spirit; he travels across the earth on his spirit as though he’s on a magic chariot, even where there are no paths. And he cannot figure out on his own that there are no paths there. In this way his humble plea for others to follow him turns into tyranny, and his sincere belief that he is ‘on the path’ turns into haughtiness.” “For me, the path to my fellow man is a very long one.”

In a letter to his friend Robert Klopstock in the summer of 1922, Kafka continued to develop the metaphor of the true path: “but since we are only on a path that must first lead to a second one and this to a third and so on, and then the right one doesn’t come for quite some time, and may never come at all …” In the same year, Kafka wrote his prose piece “A Commentary” (better known under the titles “Give Up” or “Give It Up”), in which a policeman is amused by the notion that he, of all people, would be asked about the right path. His reaction would be incomprehensible to us without knowledge of the deeper metaphorical meaning of the word.

1 Translator’s note: The originals of these sheets of paper are 11 cm (4.33 inches) in length, and 14 cm (5.54 inches) wide, which makes them somewhat larger than what we normally regard as slips of paper (the standard definition of Zettel). Kafka cut full-size sheets into quarters for the purpose of these brief texts. Reiner Stach’s foreword provides further details on Kafka’s arrangement of the texts on paper, the numbering system, and other textual matters.

2

Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache.

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All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of a methodical approach, an apparent use of posts to prop up the apparent objective.

Recorded on October 19, 1917. In the octavo notebook, this text opens with “Psychology is impatience, all human errors are impatience …” The definitive message, which omits any mention of psychology, is thus the outcome of Kafka’s decision to broaden the scope and thereby obscure the more limited sphere of reference.

These ideas were evidently prompted by a letter he had recently received from Felix Weltsch in which Weltsch tried to come to grips with Kafka’s inconsistent behavior in psychological terms, particularly with regard to his illness. Kafka responded that Weltsch’s remarks belonged “to that damned circuit of psychological theory, which you love, or rather which you don’t love, but which obsesses you (and me apparently as well). The nature theories [?]¹ are wrong, as are their psychological counterparts.”

One day after writing this aphorism, Kafka returned to the more general theme of impatience and composed Aphorism 3.

Sheets 1 and 2 are the only ones that Max Brod published back in 1926 in Die Literarische Welt as facsimiles, and the only ones that are housed with Brod’s literary estate at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem instead of at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Kafka was presumably acquainted with the term Einpfählen from horticulture; it refers to the use of posts to prop up and stabilize young fruit trees with (usually three) posts or to the use of fence posts to enclose a pasture. Kafka had ample opportunity to observe this work in Zürau.

1 Translator’s note: The question mark is in the original letter to Weltsch.

3

Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück.

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There are two cardinal human sins, from which all others derive: impatience and laxity. Impatience got them expelled from Paradise; indolence keeps them from returning. Perhaps, though, there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Impatience got them expelled; impatience keeps them from returning.

Recorded on October 20, 1917. When Kafka copied the text onto sheet 3, he changed both instances of “banished” to “expelled.” Afterward, however, he crossed out the entire text.

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Aphorisms 64, 74, 82, and 84 also comment on the expulsion from Paradise. The topic had obviously been on Kafka’s mind for quite some time; in the previous year he wrote to Felice Bauer about two idyllic spots he had discovered near Prague: “Both places silent as the Garden of Eden after the expulsion of man.”

Additional thematically related entries in the octavo notebooks are these: “Adam’s first house pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.” “In one sense, the expulsion from Paradise was a stroke of luck, for if we had not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.” “According to God, the immediate consequence of eating of the Tree of Knowledge was to be death; according to the serpent (or at least it could be understood this way), becoming like God. Both were wrong in similar ways. Humans did not die but rather became mortal; they did not become like God, but they did receive an indispensable capacity to become so. Both were also correct in similar ways. Humans did not die, but paradisiac humans did; they did not become God, but did get divine knowledge.” [all crossed out] “There were three possible ways of punishing man for the Fall: the mildest was the way it actually happened, the expulsion from Paradise / the second, the destruction of Paradise / the third—and this would have been the most terrible punishment—blocking off the Tree of Life and leaving all else unaltered.” “If … thou shalt die” means that knowledge is both at once: a step toward eternal life and an obstacle to it. If you wish to attain eternal life after having gained knowledge—and you will not be able to want otherwise, for knowledge is this will—you will have to destroy yourself, the obstacle, in order to build the steps; that is the destruction. The expulsion from Paradise was thus not an act but an event.” [crossed out, with the exception of the last sentence]

4

Viele Schatten der Abgeschiedenen beschäftigen sich nur damit die Fluten des Totenflusses zu belecken, weil er von uns herkommt und noch den salzigen Geschmack unserer Meere hat. Vor Ekel sträubt sich dann der Fluss, nimmt eine rückläufige Strömung und schwemmt die Toten ins Leben zurück. Sie aber sind glücklich, singen Danklieder und streicheln den Empörten.

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Many shades of the departed are occupied solely with lapping at the waters of the river of death because it comes from us and still bears the salty tang of our seas. Then the river writhes in revulsion, its current flowing backward, washing the dead back into life. But they are happy, sing hymns of thanksgiving, and caress the indignant river.

Recorded on October 20, 1917. The last sentence was added later in the octavo notebook.

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