An old sheet
An old sheet is a short story by Franz Kafka that appeared in the volume Ein Landarzt in 1920 . The descriptions are reminiscent of the then well-known writer Lulu Countess Thürheim with her work Mein Leben. Memories from Austria’s big world , which Kafka demonstrably loved very much.
Summary
A shoemaker tells of the terrible siege of his city by foreign nomads. One episode is about how the nomads eat an ox alive. Startled by the terrible roar of the ox, even the emperor appears at the window of his apartment. But he and his guards do not defend the subjects against the nomads. Rather, the citizens of the city see themselves left alone and they know that they will perish as a result.
shape
The story about the invasion of the nomads appears in the first person or in the we form. The frightened people seem to grow closer together in the face of the horror. An anonymous narrator would not do it justice. In the introductory sentence as well as in the last sentence, as a bracket around the prose piece, the power vacuum based on a weak and indecisive empire is thematized. And only because of this was the nomadic invasion possible.
Text analysis
First of all, one wonders what the title of the story has to do with the content. Is it a story that can be read on an old sheet of paper, that is, it comes from a long time past and the content of which has therefore become obsolete? The events in the city with the imperial palace are reminiscent of the invasion of the Mongols as nomads with archaic customs into civilized, but not defensive China.
Unlike the narrative shoemaker, we know that the state will take on this problem at some point and build a great wall against the peoples in the north. Kafka continues the theme in the story The Building of the Great Wall of China . Reference is also made there to the books of the ancients with the cruelties depicted, which are used to frighten children.
The later (or distant) building of the wall does not help the shoemaker and the other citizens of the city in their current, hopeless situation. They stand helplessly against the nomads, who are not directly described as cruel, but rather mentally superior in their primitiveness and animality.
Incidentally, bloodlust similar to nomads is also thematized in the story Jackals and Arabs .
Remedy will be found through effort and the passage of time. But we also know from history when the Great Wall of China was built that this remedy was only incomplete because the wall was never completely completed.
Kafka made a reference to his name. The nomads communicate with each other using a strange language, similar to the shouting of jackdaws (jackdaw = Czech kavka). It is hardly a real language, but it is the language of the mighty.
Quotes
- “If the nomads didn't get meat, who knows what they'd think of to do; who knows what they will think of, even if they get meat every day. "
- “I was lying flat on the floor in the back of my workshop for an hour and I had piled all my clothes, blankets and pillows on top of me, just so as not to hear the roar of the ox, which the nomads jumped on from all sides to fight with To tear pieces from his warm flesh. "
reception
Scholz (p. 54) explains that the metaphors of aggression on the one hand and total powerlessness on the other hand are illustrated in sharp contours. There is an intrusion of the terrible into the familiar world, similar to that in The Blow to the Court Gate .
expenditure
- All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
- The stories. Original version, edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
- Prints in lifetime. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, pp. 263-267.
Secondary literature
- Peter-André Alt : Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 .
- Cerstin Urban: Franz Kafka: Stories I. King's Explanations and Materials (Bd. 279), Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2005, ISBN 978-3-8044-1726-7 .
- Ingeborg Scholz Franz Kafka Stories I. King's Explanations, Bange Verlag, 1991, ISBN 3-8044-0313-1 .
- Reiner Stach : Kafka: The years of knowledge. S. Fischer, ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5 .
- Bettina von Jagow , Oliver Jahraus : Kafka Handbook Life-Work-Effect. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-20852-6 .
Web links
- An old leaf in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Text from An old sheet on zeno.org
- An old sheet - text of the story spoken by Hans-Jörg Große
