The Complete Stories
Franz Kafka
Copyright © 1971 by Schocken Books Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York.
Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
The foreword by John Updike was originally published in The New Yorker.
Foreword copyright © 1983 by John Updike.
Collection first published in 1971 by Schocken Books Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.
The complete stories.
(Kafka Library)
Bibliography: p.
1. Kafka, Franz, 1885-1924 — Translations, English.
I. Glatzer, Nahum Norbet, 1903- . I. Title.
ü. Series.
PT2621.A26A2 1988 833'.912 88-18418
ISBN 0-8052-0873-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Contents
Copyright
Foreword by John Updike
TWO INTRODUCTORY PARABLES
Before the Law*
An Imperial Message*
THE LONGER STORIES
Description of a Struggle
Wedding Preparations in the Country
The Judgment*
The Metamorphosis*
In the Penal Colony*
The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole]
Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor
The Warden of the Tomb
A Country Doctor*
The Hunter Gracchus
The Hunter Gracchus: A Fragment
The Great Wall of China
The News of the Building of the Walclass="underline" A Fragment
A Report to an Academy*
A Report to an Academy: Two Fragments
The Refusal
A Hunger Artist*
Investigations of a Dog
A Little Woman*
The Burrow
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk*
THE SHORTER STORIES
Children on a Country Road*
The Trees*
Clothes*
Excursion into the Mountains*
Rejection*
The Street Window*
The Tradesman*
Absent-minded Window-gazing*
The Way Home*
Passers-by*
On the Tram*
Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockeys*
The Wish to Be a Red Indian*
Unhappiness*
Bachelor's Ill Luck*
Unmasking a Confidence Trickster*
Sudden Walk*
Resolutions*
Dream*
Up in the Gallery*
A Fratricide*
The Next Village*
A Visit to a Mine*
Jackals and Arabs*
The Bridge
The Bucket Rider
The New Advocate*
An Old Manuscript*
The Knock at the Manor Gate
Eleven Sons*
My Neighbor
A Crossbreed [A Sport]
The Cares of a Family Man*
A Common Confusion
The Truth About Sancho Panza
The Silence of the Sirens
Prometheus
The City Coat of Arms
Poseidon
Fellowship
At Night
The Problem of Our Laws
The Conscription of Troops
The Test
The Vulture
The Helmsman
The Top
A Little Fable
Home-Coming
First Sorrow*
The Departure
Advocates
The Married Couple
Give it Up!
On Parables
Postscript
Bibliography
Editors and Translators
On the Material
Chronology
Selected Writings on Kafka
Back Cover
* Published during Kafka's lifetime.
FOREWORD
By John Updike
All that he does seems to him, it is true, extraordinarily new, but also, because of the incredible spate of new things, extraordinarily amateurish, indeed scarcely tolerable, incapable of becoming history, breaking short the chain of the generations, cutting off for the first time at its most profound source the music of the world, which before him could at least be divined. Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself.
— KAFKA, "He" (Aphorisms)
THE century since Franz Kafka was born has been marked by the idea of "modernism" — a self-consciousness new among centuries, a consciousness of being new. Sixty years after his death, Kafka epitomizes one aspect of this modern mind-set: a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated; a sense of an infinite difficulty within things, impeding every step; a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage and religious belief, must record every touch as pain. In Kafka's peculiar and highly original case this dreadful quality is mixed with immense tenderness, oddly good humor, and a certain severe and reassuring formality. The combination makes him an artist; but rarely can an artist have struggled against greater inner resistance and more sincere diffidence as to the worth of his art.
This volume holds all of the fiction that Kafka committed to publication during his lifetime:* a slender sheaf of mostly very short stories, the longest of them, "The Metamorphosis," a mere fifty pages long, and only a handful of the others as much as five thousand words. He published six slim volumes, four of them single stories, from 1913 to 1919, and was working on the proofs of a seventh in the sanatorium where he died on June 3rd, 1924, of tuberculosis, exactly one month short of his forty-first birthday. Among his papers after his death were found several notes addressed to his closest friend, Max Brod. One of them stated:
Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these: The Judgment, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Country Doctor and the short story: Hunger-Artist. . . When I say that those five books and the short story can stand, I do not mean that I wish them to be reprinted and handed down to posterity. On the contrary, should they disappear altogether that would please me best. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them.
* The single exception is "The Stoker," published as Der Heizer, Ein Fragment in 1913 but now incorporated, in German and in English, as the first chapter of Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika.