Contemplation (Kafka)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Consideration is an anthology with 18 mostly short prose texts by Franz Kafka , which was published at the end of 1912 . It was Kafka's first published book and was published - with the year 1913 - by the Rowohlt Verlag , which was young at the time . The small anthology bears Kafka's dedication “For MB”, that is, for his friend Max Brod .

As early as 1908, eight of the prose pieces with the title contemplation had been published in the magazine Hyperion , edited by Franz Blei .

content

Publisher's cover of the first print in 1912

In consideration , topics are presented that Kafka repeatedly picked up on, namely youthful sociability, interpersonal demarcation, bachelor loneliness and the troubles of being a merchant.

The anthology includes the following stories in detail:

Narrative

Eight of the 18 pieces deal with the position of the voyeuristic viewer. In this context, the critic Paul Friedrich speaks of “Kafka's bachelor art”. Life failures are depicted, because Kafka's heroes remain stuck in a bourgeois everyday world without being able to meet its criteria.

The texts are determined by cinematic vision; they initially only transfer the possibilities of the new medium to short sequences. With the help of the cinematographic process, Kafka does not tell closed stories, but rather offers experimental sequences in which images of movement, light effects and snapshots expand and complement the variety of narrative representation.

reception

  • v. Jagow (p. 403): “The 18 partly very small texts combined in this volume revolve around the motif of fleeing from the you, a community or the family, the complex of getting on your way; they stage looks at the body, girls, children and also at the self. Structures can be seen in them that are repeated in Kafka's work, that are spun on ... "

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Franz Kafka: Prints during his lifetime. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-10-038152-1 , pp. 7-40.
  • Franz Kafka: The stories. Edited by Roger Herms. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Collected Works. Anaconda Verlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3866478497 , pp. 13–31.
  • Franz Kafka: Complete Works . With an afterword by Peter Höfle. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-42001-0 .

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: Viewing (anthology)  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alt Kafka / Sohn p. 248
  2. ↑ Wagenbach p. 179
  3. ^ Kafka manual by Jagow, p. 403
  4. ↑ Unseld p. 26
  5. ↑ Alt Kafka / Sohn p. 251
  6. ↑ Alt Kafka / Sohn p. 254
  7. ↑ Alt Kafka / Film p. 47