Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) - Franz Kafka

Ich habe Die Verwandlung von Franz Kafka viele Male in Englisch Übersetzung gelesen. Dieses war das erstes Mal, der ich es in Deutsch zu lesen versucht habe. 

Die Verwandlung ist Kafkas berühmteste Arbeit und vielleicht auch sein Bestes. Es wurde im Jahr neunzehnhundertfunfzehn publiziert. Die Geschichte geht um Gregor Samsa, ein Handlungsreisender, der seine Familie durch seine Arbeit ernährt. Die Zeit und Ort der Geschichte wird nie in dem Text erklärt, aber es wird allgemein vermutet, dass es in Prag stattfindet, und zur gleichen Zeit, in der das Buch geschrieben wurde. Samsa verdient nicht viel Geld, aber er ist stolz auf seine Rolle als Ernährer, und träumt davon, seine Schwester eines Tages auf das Musikkonservatorium zu schicken, wo sie Geige lernen kann. 

Das Buch beginnt mit einem dramatischen und berühmten ersten Satz, der die Geschichte in Gang setzt: “Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.” Der ungeheuren Ungeziefer, obwohl nie so genannt, wird durch die Beschreibung im Text als ein riesiger Käfer verstanden.

Anfangs scheint Sansa seine Position zu akzeptieren. Er scheint zu glauben, dass sie nur vorübergehend ist, und macht sich meistens Sorgen, ob er spät für Arbeit wird. Als sein Chef kommt, um ihn zu sehen, versucht er eine Ausrede zu machen. Leider, obwohl sein Verstand unandert ist und er andere Leute verstehen kann, niemand kann ihn verstehen. Sein Chef flieht in Furcht, und seine Familie ist entsetzt. Sie sperren ihn in seinem Zimmer ein, wo er über seinen neuen Körper lernen muss. Wie er fühlt, wie er bewegt, welche Art Essen er essen kann, alles ist für ihn neu und seltsam.  

Gregors Familie wisst nicht, wie Gregors Verwandlung zu reagieren. Sein Vater greift ihn an, wenn er versucht, sein Zimmer zu verlassen. Seine Mutter weint immer aber sie kann es nicht ertragen, ihn zu sehen. Nur seine Schwester kümmert sich um ihn. Sie bringt ihm Essen und putzt sein Zimmer auf. Sie übernimmt seine Fürsorge und weigert sich, die anderen Familienmitglieder in sein Zimmer zu lassen. Letztlich beginnt sie, ihn zu verübeln, weil er eine Bürde wird. Gregor verübelt seine Familie auch, weil sie ihn nicht verstehen kann, und langsam wird er krank. Schließlich er stirbt, und seine Familie ist zu erleichtert, um ihn zu trauern.

Was bedeutet diese seltsame Geschichte? Einige Gelehrte glauben, es geht um seine Gefühle gegenüber seiner Familie, besonders sein Vater, der angeblich wütend und anmaßend war, so wie der Vater, der in der Geschichte steht. Für Andere ist Die Verwandlung eine Geschichte von Kafkas Depressionen und Selbsthass. Man kann auch Die Verwandlung als eine Prophezeiung darüber lesen, die Behandlung der europäischen Juden in den kommenden Jahrzehnten. Als ein Jude konnte Kafka vielleicht vorstellen, dass eine Tag seiner christlichen Landsleute plötzlich dazu geführt werden könnte, einen Mann wie ihn als Ungeziefer anzusehen.

Die Verwandlung ist kein leichtes Buch. Seine Sprache ist komplex und seine Themen sind subtil und düster. Jedoch ist es eine ausgezeichnete Geschichte, psychologisch komplex und gut geschrieben und verdient ihren Platz im literarischen Kanon.

Petersburg - Andrei Bely

I continue my Russian kick with Andrei Bely’s seminal symbolist novel Petersburg. The book’s history is interesting, in that it had two different publications straddling the Russian Revolution. First released in 1913, it received little notice. It was reissued in 1922 with significant cuts, particularly around anything seen as critical to the revolutionary movement. The first version is widely considered superior, and is the basis of the translation I read.

The story is fairly simple: Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukov, son of prominent bureaucrat Apollon Apollonovich, is recruited by radicals to assassinate his father with a bomb stored in a sardine tin. There are other components, like the moral quandary of his contact among the radicals, Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin, who faces his own pressure form their leader Lippanchenko; the unhappy marriage of Sofya Petrovna Likhutina and her husband Sergei, the former of whom Nikolai pines for; and Nikolai’s unusual tendency to dress up in a red domino costume and make a fool of himself around Petersburg.

But the core of the story is almost besides the point. Much more focus rests on the tone and language of the book, which translators Robert Maguire and John Malmstad take plains to situate in a context comprehensible to English readers yet faithful to the original Russian, and especially on details of place. The main character of Petersburg is ultimately Petersburg itself, manifest at one point by the living Bronze Horsemen, a symbol drawn from the Pushkin poem of the same name quoted regularly throughout.

As a Symbolist work, Petersburg has moments of impenetrability, but there is a playfulness and sardonic wit that you can appreciate even if some of the details escape you. I would not be surprised to learn that Salman Rushdie read and admired this book, as it feels aligned with his work in tenor if not in form. Ulysses by Joyce is also a good comparison (the only book, incidentally, that Nabokov ranked higher than Petersburg in his personal list of the great 20th century masterpieces of literature).

This is not an easy read, but it deserves its place in the canon.

The Man who Was Thursday: A Nightmare - G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was one of those writers whose name I absorbed during University without knowing much about what he actually wrote. I’d heard of him primarily as an essayist and Christian apologist, and was surprised to learn he’d written a novel. After starting The Man Who Was Thursday, I was even more surprised to learn exactly what kind of novel he’d written.

The Man Who Was Thursday is a strange and remarkable work, earnest and funny and rich in philosophical thought. In its surrealism, its humor, its persistent questioning of reality, it it antecedent to everything from Kurt Vonnegut to Franz Kafka to Philip K Dick. I can think of only one author who serves as a clear inspiration, and I like to think Chesterton would agree, for he namechecks the man in the novel (the first of the moles to fall goes by the name Gogol).

The story begins with two poets in the park: the fierce anarchist Gregory and the logical but single-mindedly anti-anarchist Syme. Syme goads Gregory into revealing his anarchist club, at which point Syme reveals himself to be an undercover policeman charged by an unseen man (or perhaps entity is a better word) to root out anarchy. Through manipulation of Gregory, Syme is elected Thursday, one of seven figureheads of a European anarchist cabal led by the enormous and enigmatic Sunday.

One by one, Syme’s fellow figureheads are revealed to be other than they claim, until the whole conspiracy folds in on itself and becomes something of a metaphysical puzzle for its principal members. The ending felt a bit weaker than the rest, settling into convention for a novel that was otherwise totally unconventional, but I’m not sure how such an odd book could end.

Chesterton’s prose is exquisite, whip-smart and hilarious, masterfully contorting ideas into impossible forms that somehow hold firm. More than most authors, his intellect is on plain display in his writing, not because he is showing off, but because it was so fill to bursting in his head that it had to go somewhere, and the page was as good a destination as any.

I’ve already started Orthodoxy and will be reading a lot more of him in the near future.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

What do you even say about a book like If on a winter’s night a traveler? I normally start these things by writing what the book was a bout, but what would that be in this case? I suppose Winter’s Night is, more than anything else, about the act of reading itself.

The story—or should I say, the book, since we’re not being told a story as such at this point—starts with a description of our physical act of reading, presupposing a specific example of us (the book is in second person, so it really is you, assuming you’re a guy, but he’ll get to that) going to the bookstore and purching the eponymous title. From there, we begin a type of espionage story in which a character follows cryptic advice in order to deliver an unspecified package at a train station. Except the story cuts off at a key moment, leaving us (the fictional us, and maybe also the real us) wanting to know more.

A second trip to the bookstore brings a new book and a chance encounter with a fellow reader—a woman, and presumed love interest—who was likewise bamboozled by the misprinted copy of Winter’s Night. What follows is a trail of different books, each masquerading as something they are not, juxtaposed with an increasingly byzantine—dare I say Kafkaesque—quest to retrieve this growing wishlit of incomplete literature, as stories pile upon stories, styles upon styles, and mysteries upon mysteries. The story caromes satircally of such topics as editors, the fidelity of translation ,and repressive regimes, all the while maintaining a throughline from its very disorientation.

You can’t say much for the character,s since they are either the reader themself or set up as a clear archetype, yet strange undercurrents keep their appearances form feeling cheap or lazy. Even Ludmilla, the prototypical love interest, becomes more than she seems in an interesting passage where the perspective flips, second person beocmes third, and the “you” the narrator speaks to becomes female instead of male.

The entire thing is a metaphysicla exercise that should be taxing, but isn’t. I’m not sure how many writers could have pulled it off. Between this and The Baron in the Trees, it’s clear Calvino is one of the 20th centuries greatest writers. I’ll be reading more soon.