The Zürau aphorisms

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Zürau aphorisms are 109 aphorisms by Franz Kafka , which were written between September 1917 and April 1918. Max Brod put it under the title “Reflections on sin, hope, suffering and the true path”.

Emergence

After his tuberculosis broke out in August 1917, Kafka settled for a few months to relax in the small Bohemian village of Zürau, where his sister Ottilie "Ottla" Kafka worked in agriculture. He felt particularly comfortable there and later described it as “perhaps the best time of his life”, probably also because all responsibility towards work, parents or women was no longer there.

Kafka had decided not to do literary work there. He did, however, fill his diary and octave notebooks. Kafka has extracted 109 numbered pieces of text from the notes in these booklets. These aphorisms were published in 1931 by Verlag Kiepenheuer under the o. G. first published title chosen by Max Brod.

content

The aphorisms are strict reflections of metaphysical themes. a. the good and the bad, truth and lies, alienation and redemption, death and paradise. These are the only texts by Kafka that deal directly with theological issues. The philosophical considerations contained are inspired by Schopenhauer's world of ideas , in particular by The World as Will and Idea , as well as by Kierkegaard 's interpretations of the Fall of Man.

The individual aphorisms have nothing to do with each other, some have a narrative character, others offer individual images or represent parables .

Selection of quotes

  • 1 - “The real way is over a rope that is not stretched vertically, but just above the ground. It seems to make you stumble more definitely than to be committed. "
  • 13 - “A first sign of beginning knowledge is the desire to die. This life seems unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed to want to die; you ask to be moved from the old cell that you hate to a new one that you will only learn to hate. A remnant of faith is involved, during the transport the gentleman happened to come through the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: 'You shouldn't lock him up again. He comes to me.'"
  • 26 - “There is a goal, but no way; what we call the path is hesitation. "
  • 34 - "His weariness is that of the gladiator after the fight, his work was the whitewashing of a corner in an official's office."
  • 88 - “Death is before us, like a picture of the Battle of Alexander on the wall in the classroom . It is important to darken the picture or even to extinguish it through our actions in this life. "
  • 109 - “It is not necessary for you to go out of the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely still and alone. The world will offer itself to you to expose itself, it cannot help it, it will wriggle in front of you in ecstasy. "

reception

  • Alt (p. 467): “Here, too, the negative dimension of Kafka's concept of life becomes visible, which is supported by the view that the individual must inevitably become entangled in self-deception, lies and deception if he strives to improve his earthly situation. "
  • Stach (p. 252): "Much remains fragmentary: again and again isolated sentences running into the void, in between aphoristically flashing, pictorially penetrating formulations, interrupted in turn by diffuse and abruptly breaking search movements, which Kafka rigidly separates from one another by horizontal strokes."

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka. The Zürau aphorisms. Edited by Roberto Calasso. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-518-22408-3 .
  • Franz Kafka. Legacy writings and fragments II. Edited by Jost Schillemeit. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-596-15700-5 , pp. 113-140.
  • Franz Kafka. "You are the task." Aphorisms. Edited, commented and with an afterword by Reiner Stach. Wallstein, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3510-3 .

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope and the True Way  - Quotes
Wikisource: The Zürauer Aphorisms under the title "Reflections on sin, suffering, hope and the true path"  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Text edition in the original representation on individual sheets: Franz Kafka Die Zürauer Aphorismen Ed. Roberto Calasso 2006 Suhrkamp Verlag ISBN 978-3-518-22408-3
  2. ↑ Calasso p. 119 ff. Explanations with the title “The glorious imposed”
  3. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 462.
  4. ↑ Alt p. 463.
  5. ↑ Calasso p. 119.
  6. ↑ Alt. P. 466.
  7. ↑ Calasso p. 126.
  8. ↑ Reiner Stach, Kafka: The Years of Knowledge , S. Fischer, ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5 , p. 252