by Franz Kafka
Be that as it may, K. had now decided to go; among other distressing things, he had recently noted a certain tendency toward self-pity, an almost irresistible urge to give in to every desire—well, in this case his weakness was at least serving a good purpose.
He stepped to the window to gather his thoughts, then had his meal cleared away at once, sent his assistant to Frau Grubach to inform her of his departure and bring back an attaché case in which Frau Grubach was to pack whatever she thought necessary, then gave Herr Kühne a few business assignments to handle in his absence, scarcely even irritated this time by Herr Kühne’s rude manner, which had now become habitual, of receiving assignments with his face averted, as if he knew quite well what needed to be done and endured the communication of these assignments merely for form’s sake, and last of all went to see the president. When he requested a two-day leave of absence because he needed to visit his mother, the president naturally asked if K.’s mother were ill. “No,” said K., without further explanation. He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. Frowning, he thought things over. Had he perhaps made preparations for departure too hastily? Wouldn’t it be better to remain here? What did he want there? Was he going out of mere sentimentality? And out of sentimentality possibly neglecting some important matter here, an opportunity to intervene, which might turn up any day or hour now, since the trial seemed to have been at a standstill for weeks and scarcely a single piece of concrete news about it had reached him? And might he not shock the old woman as well, without wishing to of course, but against his will, since so many things were happening now against his will. And his mother was not even asking for him. Previously, pressing invitations from his mother had appeared regularly in his cousin’s letters, but for some time now they had not. He wasn’t going for his mother’s sake then, that was clear. But if he was going in hopes of something, for his own sake, then he was a total fool and would reap only final despair as a reward for his foolishness. But as if all these doubts were not his own, but being pushed upon him instead by strangers, he suddenly snapped out of his reverie and stuck with his decision to go. In the meantime the president, either by chance, or more likely out of special consideration for K., had bent over a newspaper; now he raised his eyes, held his hand out to K. as he arose, and without a single further question wished him a pleasant journey.
K. then waited in his office for his assistant, pacing up and down; saying as little as possible, he warded off the vice president, who came in several times to try to discover the reason for K.’s departure; when K. finally had his attaché case, he hurried straight down to the cab, which he had ordered in advance. He was already on the stairs when, at the last moment, Kullych the clerk appeared at the top, holding in his hand a letter he had started, apparently wanting to ask K. for some instruction about it. K. tried to wave him off, but dull-witted as this big-headed blond fellow was, he misunderstood the gesture and raced after him in perilous leaps and bounds, waving the sheet of paper in his hand. K. was so exasperated by this that when Kullych caught up with him on the stairs he grabbed the letter from his hand and tore it to pieces. When, once in the cab, K. turned around, there stood Kullych, who probably still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, still in the same spot, gazing after the departing cab, while beside him the porter tugged his cap sharply. K. was still one of the highest officials in the bank; if he tried to deny it, the porter would refute him. And in spite of all his arguments to the contrary, his mother thought he was the president of the bank and had been for years now. He wouldn’t fall in her opinion, no matter what damage his reputation had suffered otherwise. Perhaps it was a good sign that just before leaving, he had convinced himself he could still seize a letter from a clerk, even one who was connected with the court, and tear it to pieces without a word of apology. Of course what he would have liked to do best he couldn’t: give Kullych two loud slaps on his pale round cheeks.
THE LIFE OF FRANZ KAFKA
1883 July 3: 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 June 13: 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.
1906–1907 Legal practice in the Landesgericht (provincial high court) and Strafgericht (criminal court).
1907–1908 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. July 30: 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 advisor); 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. October 4: Sees Yiddish play Der Meshumed (The Apostate) at Café Savoy. Friendship with the Yiddish actor Yitzhak Löwy. Pursues interest in Judaism.
1912 February 18: 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 Metamorphosis” in English), begins the novel The Man Who Disappeared (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. 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, August 2: “Germany has declared war on Russia—swimming club in the afternoon.” Works on The Trial; writes “In the Penal Colony.”
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. 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 tuberculos
is. 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. May: Publication of A Country Doctor, with a dedication to Hermann Kafka. July: Engagement to Julie Wohryzek 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 Sanatorium at Matliary in the Tatra mountains (Slovakia). August: Returns to Prague. Hands all his diaries to Milena Jesenská.
1922 Diary entry, January 16: Writes about nervous breakdown. January 27: Travels to Spindlermühle, a resort on the Polish border, where begins to write The Castle. March 15: Reads beginning section of novel to Max Brod. November: After another breakdown, informs 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.” April 19: Accompanied by Dora Diamant, enters Dr. Hoffman’s sanatorium at Kierling, near Vienna. Corrects the galleys for the collection of stories A Hunger Artist. June 3: Kafka dies at age forty. June 11: Burial in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Strašnice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary
While all of Kafka’s works are interrelated, the following titles have a direct bearing on The Trial.
Kafka, Franz. Letters to Felice. Ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born. New York: Schocken Books, 1973.
——. The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken Books, 1983.
——. “Letter to His Father.” In The Sons, trans. Arthur S. Wensinger. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
Secondary
BIOGRAPHICAL
Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. Trans. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston. New York: Schocken Books, 1960.
Citati, Pietro. Kafka. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. Trans. Goronwy Rees, rev. and enl. 2nd ed. New York: New Directions, 1971.
Karl, Frederick. Representative Man: Prague, Germans, Jews, and the Crisis of Modernism. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991.
Northey, Anthony. Kafka’s Relatives: Their Lives and His Writing. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991.
Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985.
Wagenbach, Klaus. Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life. Trans. Arthur S. Wensinger. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
THE TRIAL
Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Canetti, Elias. Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice. Trans. Christopher Middleton. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.
Müller, Michael. “Kafka, Casanova, and The Trial.” In Reading Kafka, ed. Mark Anderson. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
Pasley, Malcolm S. “Two Literary Sources of Kafka’s Der Prozess.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 3 (1967): 17–29.
——, ed. “Der Prozeß: Die Handschrift redet.” Marbach 52 (1990).
Rolleston, James, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Trial”: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
Stach, Rainer. “Kafka’s Egoless Woman: Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character.” In Reading Kafka, ed. Mark Anderson. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
GENERAL
Adorno, Theodor W. “Notes on Franz Kafka.” In Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber. London: Spearman, 1967.
Alter, Robert. Necessary Angels: Kafka, Benjamin, Scholem. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Anders, Gunther. Franz Kafka. Trans. A. Sicer and A. K. Thorlby. London: Hillary, 1960.
Anderson, Mark, ed. Reading Kafka. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
——. Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg “Fin de Siècle.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Arendt, Hannah. “Franz Kafka: A Revaluation.” Partisan Review 11 (1944): 412–22. Reprinted in Essays in Understanding, 1930–1945, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994.
Beck, Evelyn Torton. Kafka and the Yiddish Theater: Its Impact on His Work. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971.
Benjamin, Walter. “Franz Kafka on the Tenth Anniversary of His Death.” In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
Bernheimer, Charles. Flaubert and Kafka: Studies in Psychopoetic Structure. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982.
Boa, Elizabeth. Kafka: Gender, Class and Race in the Letters and Fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
Corngold, Stanley. Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Crick, Joyce. “Kafka and the Muirs.” In The World of Franz Kafka, ed. J. P. Stern. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980.
Deleuze, Giles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Flores, Angel, ed. The Kafka Debate: New Perspectives for Our Time. New York: Gordian, 1977.
Gilman, Sander. Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Grözinger, Karl Erich. Kafka and Kabbalah. Trans. Susan H. Ray. New York: Continuum, 1994.
Kundera, Milan. Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts. Trans. Linda Asher. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Politzer, Heinz. Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966.
Robert, Marthe. As Lonely as Franz Kafka. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Rolleston, James. Kafka’s Narrative Theater. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974.
Sokel, Walter H. Franz Kafka. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
Udoff, Alan, ed. Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary Readings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
FILMS
The Trial: A Film by Orson Welles. English translation and description by N. Fry. London, 1970 (Modern Film Scripts).
The Trial. Filmed by David Jones, script by Harold Pinter. Great Britain, 1992. (Script published as The Trial. Adapted from the novel by Franz Kafka. London, 1993.)
THE SCHOCKEN KAFKA LIBRARY
AMERIKA
translated by Willa and Edwin Muir,
with a foreword by E. L. Doctorow
Kafka’s first and funniest novel tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, “packed off to America” by his parents, finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.
THE CASTLE
a new translation by Mark Harman,
based on the restored text
This haunting tale of a man known only as K. and his endless struggle against an inscrutable authority to gain admittance to a castle is often cited as Kaf
ka’s most autobiographical work.
“Will be the translation of preference for some time to come.”
—J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books
THE COMPLETE STORIES
edited by Nahum N. Glatzer,
with a foreword by John Updike
All of Kafka’s stories are collected here in one comprehensive volume; with the exception of the three novels, the whole of his narrative work is included.
“The Complete Stories is an encyclopedia of our insecurities and our brave attempts to oppose them.” —Anatole Broyard
THE DIARIES OF FRANZ KAFKA
edited by Max Brod
For the first time in this country, the complete diaries of Franz Kafka are available in one volume. Covering the period from 1910 to 1923, the year before Kafka’s death, they reveal the essential Kafka behind the enigmatic artist.
“It is likely that these journals will be regarded as one of [Kafka’s] major literary works; in these pages, he reveals what he customarily hid from the world.” —New Yorker
LETTERS TO FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND EDITORS
translated by Richard and Clara Winston
Kafka’s letters to the people closest to him form a deeply revealing—and unexpectedly charming—portrait of one of this century’s greatest writers.
“Affords us an inside view of a writer who, perhaps more than any other novelist or poet in our century, stands at the center of our culture.” —Robert Alter, New York Times Book Review
THE METAMORPHOSIS, IN THE PENAL COLONY,