Amerika: The Missing Person: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text

by Franz Kafka

  T hey traveled for two days and two nights. Only then did Karl come to understand the vastness of America. Tirelessly he gazed out the window, and Giacomo kept edging over until the fellows opposite, who often occupied themselves with card games, grew weary and voluntarily gave up their window seat. Karl thanked them—it wasn’t always easy to make sense of Giacomo’s English—and as inevitably happens among compartment mates, they became much friendlier, yet their friendliness too was a nuisance, for whenever a card, say, fell down on the floor and they went looking for it, they would pinch Karl’s or Giacomo’s leg as hard as they could. Giacomo, always surprised anew, would cry out and lift his leg in the air; at times Karl tried to respond with a kick, but for the most part he bore everything in silence. Everything taking place in that little compartment, which filled up with smoke even when the windows were open, paled in comparison with the sights unfolding outside.

  On the first day they passed through a tall mountain range. The sharp angles of the bluish-black masses of rock went right up to the train; they leaned out the window and searched in vain for the peaks; dark narrow jagged valleys opened up, and with their fingers they traced the direction in which the valleys disappeared; broad mountain rivers swept forward in great waves over the craggy base, pushing along thousands of small foamy waves, plunging under the bridges over which the train passed, and coming so close that the breath of their chill made one’s face quiver.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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  I should like to thank: a cohort of students at Elizabethtown College, who patiently transcribed my scrawled corrections, especially Jamie Hudzick, Valerie Reed, Greg Rohde, and Stephen Marks; Adrian Daub, at the University of Pennsylvania, who offered useful suggestions about the translation; and the following centers, which provided congenial settings for translating—and reflecting on—The Missing Person: the Mac-Dowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire; the Ledig House International Writers Residency at Omi, in the Hudson Valley; the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, California; the European Translators Colloquium in Straelen, Germany; and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland. I should also like to thank the Office of the Federal Chancellor of Austria for financial support, Elizabethtown College for a sabbatical leave, and last but not least, my wife, Nina Menke, and daughters, Eva and Ciara, for bearing with me at times when I must have seemed like a missing person.

  CHRONOLOGY

  __________

  1883 3 July: Franz Kafka is born in Prague, son of Hermann Kafka and Julie, née Löwy.

  1889 Enters a German primary school. Birth of his sister Elli Kafka, his first surviving sibling.

  1892 Birth of his sister Ottla Kafka.

  1893 Enters the Old City German Secondary School in Prague.

  1896 13 June: Bar mitzvah, described in family invitation as “Confirmation.”

  1897 Anti-Semitic riots in Prague; Hermann Kafka’s dry goods store is spared.

  1899-1903 Early writings (destroyed).

  1901 Graduates from secondary school. Enters German University in Prague. Studies chemistry for two weeks, then law.

  1902 Spring: Attends lectures on German literature and the humanities. Travels to Munich, planning to continue German studies there. Returns to Prague. October: First meeting with Max Brod.

  1904 Begins writing “Description of a Struggle.”

  1905 Vacation in Zuckmantel, Silesia. First love affair.

  1906 Clerk in uncle’s law office. June: Doctor of Law degree.

  1906-07 Legal practice in the Landesgericht (provincial high court) and Strafgericht (criminal court).

  1907-08 Temporary position in the Prague branch of the private insurance company Assicurazioni Generali.

  1908 March: Kafka’s first publication: eight prose pieces appear in the review Hyperion. 30 July: Enters the semi-state-owned Workers Accident Insurance Company for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague; works initially in the statistical and claims departments. Spends time in coffeehouses and cabarets.

  1909 Begins keeping diaries. April: Kafka’s department head lauds his “exceptional faculty for conceptualization.” September: Travels with Max and Otto Brod to northern Italy, where they see airplanes for the first time. Writes article “The Aeroplanes in Brescia,” which subsequently appears in the daily paper Bohemia. Frequent trips to inspect factory conditions in the provinces.

  1910 May: Promoted to Concipist (junior legal adviser); sees Yiddish acting troupe. October: Vacations in Paris with Brod brothers.

  1911 Travels with Max Brod to northern Italy and Paris; spends a week in a Swiss natural-health sanatorium. Becomes a silent partner in the asbestos factory owned by his brother-in-law. 4 October: Sees Yiddish play Der Meshumed (The Apostate) at Café Savoy. Friendship with the Yiddish actor Yitzhak Löwy. Pursues interest in Judaism.

  1912 18 February: Gives “little introductory lecture” on Yiddish language. August: Assembles his first book, Meditation; meets Felice Bauer. Writes the stories “The Judgment” and “The Transformation” (frequently entitled “The Meta morphosis” in English). Begins the novel The Missing Person (first published in 1927 as Amerika, the title chosen by Brod). October: Distressed over having to take charge of the family’s asbestos factory, considers suicide. December: Gives first public reading (“The Judgment”).

  1913 Extensive correspondence with Felice Bauer, whom he visits three times in Berlin. Promoted to company vice secretary. “The Stoker” published by Kurt Wolff. Takes up gardening. In Vienna attends international conference on accident prevention and observes Eleventh Zionist Congress; travels by way of Trieste, Venice, and Verona to Riva.

  1914 June: Official engagement to Felice Bauer. July: Engagement is broken. Travels through Lübeck to the Danish resort of Marielyst. Diary entry, 2 August: “Germany has declared war on Russia—swimming club in the afternoon.” Works on The Trial; writes “In the Penal Colony” and the Theater of Oklahama chapter in The Missing Person.

  1915 January: First meeting with Felice Bauer after breaking engagement. March: At the age of thirty-one moves for the first time into own quarters. September: In diary entry compares fate of Karl Rossmann with that of Josef K. November: “The Transformation” (“The Metamorphosis”) appears; Kafka asks a friend: “What do you say about the terrible things that are happening in our house?”

  1916 July: Ten days with Felice Bauer at Marienbad. November: In a small house on Alchemists’ Lane in the Castle district of Prague, begins to write the stories later collected in A Country Doctor.

  1917 Second engagement to Felice Bauer. September: Diagnosis of tuberculosis. Moves back into his parents’ apartment. Goes to stay with his favorite sister, Ottla, on a farm in the northern Bohemian town of Zürau. December: Second engagement to Felice Bauer is broken.

  1918 In Zürau writes numerous aphorisms about “the last things.” Reads Kierkegaard. May: Resumes work at insurance institute.

  1919 Summer: To the chagrin of his father, announces engagement to Julie Wohryzek, daughter of a synagogue custodian. Takes Hebrew lessons from Friedrich Thieberger. November: Wedding to Julie Wohryzek is postponed. Writes “Letter to His Father.”

  1920 Promotion to institute secretary. April: Convalescence vacation in Merano, Italy; beginning of correspondence with Milena Jesenská. Comments on Milena’s Czech translation of “The Stoker.” May: Publication of A Country Doctor, with a dedication to Hermann Kafka. July: Engagement to Julie Wohryzek is broken. November: Anti-Semitic riots in Prague; Kafka writes to Milena: “Isn’t the obvious course to leave a place where one is so hated?”

  1921 Stays at sanatorium at Matliary in the Tatra Mountains (Slovakia). August: Returns to Prague. Hands all his diaries to Milena Jesenská.

  1922 Diary entry, 16 January: Writes about nervous breakdown. 27 January: Travels to Spindlermühle, a resort on the Polish border, where he begins to write The Castle. 15 March: Reads beginning section of novel to Max Brod. November: After another breakdown, info
rms Brod that he can no longer “pick up the thread.”

  1923 Resumes Hebrew studies. Sees Hugo Bergmann, who invites him to Palestine. July: Meets nineteen-year-old Dora Diamant in Müritz on the Baltic Sea. They dream of opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv, with Dora as cook and Franz as waiter. September: Moves to inflation-ridden Berlin to live with Dora. Writes “The Burrow.”

  1924 Health deteriorates. March: Brod takes Kafka back to Prague. Kafka writes “Josephine the Singer.” 19 April: Accompanied by Dora Diamant, enters Dr. Hoffman’s sanatorium at Kierling, near Vienna. Corrects the galleys for the collection of stories A Hunger Artist. 3 June: Kafka dies at age forty. 11 June: Burial in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Strašnice.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  PRIMARY

  While all of Kafka’s works are interrelated, the following titles have a direct bearing on The Missing Person.

  Kafka, Franz. The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York, 1983.

  ———.The Diaries, 1910-1923. Ed. Max Brod. New York, 1988.

  ———. Letters to Felice. New York, 1973.

  ———. Letter to His Father. Bilingual edition. New York, 1966.

  SECONDARY

  BIOGRAPHICAL

  Begley, Louis. The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay. New York, 2008.

  Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. Trans. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston. New York, 1960.

  Citati, Pietro. Kafka. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York, 1990.

  Harman, Mark. “Biography and Autobiography: Necessary Antagonists?” Journal of the Kafka Society 10 (1986): 56-62.

  ———. “Missing Persons: Two Little Riddles about Kafka and Berlin.” In New England Review 25 (2004): 225-32.

  Murray, Nicholas. Kafka: A Biography. New Haven, 2004.

  Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York, 1985.

  Stach, Reiner. Kafka: The Decisive Years. Trans. Shelley Frisch. New York, 2005.

  Wagenbach, Klaus. Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life. Trans. Arthur S. Wensinger. New York, 1984.

  ———. Kafka. Boston, 2003.

  THE MISSING PERSON

  Alter, Robert. “Franz Kafka: Wrenching Scripture.” New England Review 21, no. 3 (2000): 7-19.

  Anderson, Mark. “Kafka in America: Notes on a Travelling Narrative.” In Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg “Fin de Siècle,” pp. 98-122. Oxford, U.K., 1992.

  Bamforth, Iain. “Self-Made Man: Kafka and America.” PN Review 30, no. 3 (2004): 43-47.

  Bergel, Lienhard. “Amerika: Its Meaning.” In Franz Kafka Today, ed. Angel Flores and Homer Swander, pp. 117-125. Madison, Wisconsin, 1958.

  Boa, Elizabeth. “Karl Rossmann, or the Boy who Wouldn’t Grow Up.” In From Goethe to Gide, ed. Mary Orr, pp. 168-83. Exeter, U.K., 2005.

  Doctorow, E. L. “Franz Kafka’s Amerika.” In Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993-2006, pp. 129-41. New York, 2006.

  Duttlinger, Carolin. “Visions of the New World: Photography in Kafka’s Der Verschollene.” German Life and Letters 59, no. 3 (2006): 423-45.

  Emrich, Wilhelm. “The Modern Industrial World: The Novel The Man Who Was Lost Sight Of.” In Franz Kafka, trans. S. Z. Buehne, pp. 276-315. New York, 1968.

  Fuchs, Anne. “A Psychoanalytic Reading of The Man Who Disappeared. ” In The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, ed. Julian Preece, pp. 25-41. Cambridge, U.K., 2002.

  Harman, Mark. “Kafka Imagining America: A Preface.” New England Review 29, no. 1 (2008): 10-22.

  Hermsdorf, Klaus. “Kafka’s America.” In Franz Kafka: An Anthology of Marxist Criticism, ed. and trans. Kenneth Hughes, pp. 22-37. Hanover, N.H., 1981.

  Northey, Anthony. “The Discovery of the New World: Kafka’s Cousins and Amerika.” In Kafka’s Relatives: Their Lives and His Writing, pp. 51-68. New Haven, Conn., 1991.

  Payne, Kenneth. “Franz Kafka’s America.” Symposium 51, no. 1 (1997): 30-42.

  Politzer, Heinz. “Der Verschollene: The Innocence of Karl Rossmann.” In Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox, pp. 116-62. Ithaca, N.Y., 1966.

  Ruland, Richard E. “A View from Back Home: Kafka’s Amerika.” American Quarterly 13 (1961): 33-42.

  Spilka, Mark. Kafka and Dickens: A Mutual Interpretation. London, 1963.

  Shaked, Gershon. “The Sisyphean Syndrome: On the Structure of Kafka’s Amerika.” In The Dove and the Mole: Kafka’s Journey into Darkness and Creativity, ed. Moshe Lazar and Ronald Gottesman, pp. 135-49. Malibu, Calif., 1987.

  Steiner, Carl. “How American Is Amerika?” Journal of Modern Literature 6, no. 3 (1977): 455-65.

  Tambling, Jeremy. “The States and the Statue: Kafka on America.” In Lost in the American City: Dickens, James and Kafka, pp. 181-229. Basingstoke, U.K., 2001.

  Tedlock, E. W., Jr. “Kafka’s Imitation of David Copperfield.” Compara tive Literature 7, no. 1 (1955): 52-62.

  Zilcosky, John. “The ‘America’ Novel: Learning How to Get Lost.” In Kafka’s Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing, pp. 41-70. New York, 2003.

  GENERAL

  Adorno, Theodor. “Franz Kafka.” In Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber, pp. 243-71. Boston, 1997.

  Alter, Robert. Necessary Angels: Kafka, Benjamin, Scholem. Cambridge, Mass., 1990.

  Anderson, Mark, ed. Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Siècle. New York, 1989.

  Arendt, Hannah. “Franz Kafka: A Reevaluation.” In Essays in Understanding, 1930-1945, ed. Jerome Kohn, pp. 69-80. New York, 1994.

  Beck, Evelyn Torton. Kafka and the Yiddish Theater: Its Impact on His Work. Madison, Wis., 1971.

  Benjamin, Walter. “Franz Kafka on the Tenth Anniversary of his Death.” In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, pp. 111-45. New York, 1969.

  Borges, Jorge Luis. “Franz Kafka: The Vulture.” In Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger, pp. 501-3. New York, 1999.

  ———. “Kafka and His Precursors.” In Selected Non-Ficitons, ed. Eliot Weinberger, pp. 363-65. New York, 1999.

  Bruce, Iris. Kafka and Cultural Zionism. Madison, Wis., 2007.

  Corngold, Stanley. Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form. Ithaca, N.Y., 1988.

  Calasso, Roberto. K. Trans. Geoffrey Brock. New York, 2005.

  Gilman, Sander. Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient. New York, 1995.

  Harman, Mark. “Making everything a ‘little uncanny’: Kafka’s deletions in the manuscript of Das Schloss.” In Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, ed. James Rolleston, pp. 325-46. Rochester, N.Y., 2002.

  ———. “Life into Art: Kafka’s Self-Stylization in the Diaries.” In Franz Kafka (1883-1983): His Craft and Thought, ed. Roman Struc and J. C. Yardley, pp. 101-116. Waterloo, Ontario, 1986.

  Robert, Marthe. As Lonely as Franz Kafka. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York, 1982.

  Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics and Literature. Oxford, 1985.

  Rolleston, James. Kafka’s Narrative Theater. University Park, Pa., 1974. Sokel, Walter H. The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka. Detroit, Mich., 2002.

  Spector, Scott. Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle. Berkeley, Ca., 2000.

  Weinberg, Helen. The New Novel in America: The Kafkan Mode in Contemporary Fiction. Ithaca, N.Y., 1970.

  Zischler, Hanns. Kafka Goes to the Movies. trans. Susan H. Gillespie. Chicago, 2002.

  TRANSLATING KAFKA

  Coetzee, J. M. “Translating Kafka.” In Stranger Shores: Literary Essays: 1986-1999, pp. 74-87. New York and London, 2001.

  Corngold, Stanley. “On Translation Mistakes, with Special Attention to Kafka in Amerika.” In Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, pp. 176-93. Princeton, N.J., 2004.

  Crick, Joyce. “Kafka and the Muirs.” In The World of Franz Kafka, ed. J. P. Stern, pp. 159-75. New York, 1980.

  Damrosch, David. “Kafka Comes Home.” In What Is World Literature?, pp. 187-205.
Princeton, N.J., 2003.

  Durrani, Osman. “Editions, Translations, Adaptations.” In Cambridge Companion to Kafka, ed. Julian Preece, pp. 206-25. Cambridge, U.K., 2002.

  Gray, Ronald. “But Kafka wrote in German.” In The Kafka Debate, ed. Angel Flores, pp. 242-52. New York, 1977.

  Harman, Mark. “ ‘Digging the Pit of Babel’: Retranslating Franz Kafka’s Castle.” New Literary History 27, no. 2 (1996): 291-311.Kundera, Milan. “A Sentence.” In Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts. Trans. Linda Asher. New York, 1995, pp. 97-118.