I would have ...

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I would have myself ... is a prose piece by Franz Kafka , only a few lines (166 words) long , which opens the author's so-called Oxford Octave Book 3, which was described between February and April 1917. It was published in the context of the critical edition of Kafka's writings, which S. Fischer Verlag had obtained since 1982, based on the handwritten model.

Content and context of the text

A first-person narrator regrets that he does not know more about the nature of a certain staircase and that he has not made any effort to gain knowledge about it: "I should have taken care of what happened to this staircase earlier [...] ". He wonders whether he may have looked too superficially for information about these stairs, and even the vague assumption that he may have read about a similar staircase in a children's book does not help him.

The story was first published from Kafka's estate. For another story that Kafka published during his lifetime, namely An old sheet as part of the story volume Ein Landarzt , and which he drafted in the same octave book, he chose a very similar entry: “It is as if a lot had been neglected in the defense of our fatherland . So far we have not taken care of it [...] ”.

Possibilities of interpretation

Like several Kafka texts, the text reflects the process of text production itself. In this case, this can be linked to the ambiguous word “paragraph”, where “the line between the 'real' object of stairs and the 'literary' dispositive is [] blurred”: "You were often absent-minded, left out paragraphs [sic], even contented yourself with headlines [...]".

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: Stories and other selected prose. Edited by Roger Hermes. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 978-3-596-13270-6 .
  • Franz Kafka: Oxford Oktavhefte 3 & 4. Historical-critical edition of all manuscripts, prints and typescripts. Edited by Roland Reuss and Peter Staengle. Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-86600-107-7 .

literature

  • Doreen Densky: Literary advocacy with Franz Kafka . Walter de Gruyter, 2019. P. 53 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roland Reuss: The Oxford Octave Books 3 and 4. For an introduction. In: Franz Kafka: Oxford Oktavhefte 3 & 4. Historical-critical edition of all manuscripts, prints and typescripts. Edited by Roland Reuss and Peter Staengle. Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-86600-107-7 . "Franz Kafka-Heft 6", p. 3.
  2. ↑ Oxford Octave Book 3, Bl. 1 r , Z. 1 ff.
  3. ↑ Oxford Octave Book 3, Bl. 28 r , Z. 2 ff.
  4. ↑ Roland Reuss: The Oxford Octave Books 3 and 4. For an introduction. In: Franz Kafka: Oxford Oktavhefte 3 & 4. Historical-critical edition of all manuscripts, prints and typescripts. Edited by Roland Reuss and Peter Staengle. Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-86600-107-7 . "Franz Kafka-Heft 6", p. 8.
  5. ↑ Oxford Octave Book 3, Bl. 1 v , line 8 ff.