Little soul

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A poem by Franz Kafka , which he wrote down on a calendar sheet from September 17, 1909, begins with the words Kleine Seele .

Text of the poem

Little soul
jumps in the dance, put
your head in warm air,
lift your feet out of shiny grass
that the wind drives in gentle movement

classification

Kafka had little interest in contemporary poetry (such as Mörike). From himself “only occasional lyrical attempts have been passed down, mostly a few thrown out verses without title. Neither in the autobiographical testimonies nor in Max Brod's memoirs has there ever been any mention of Kafka thinking of publishing these lines, “as Reiner Stach in his book Is that Kafka? formulated.

The author obviously had a closer connection to the above verses. Two years later he entered the lines in the register of a friend from the coffee house. It was preserved between the pages of an octave notebook from 1917/18 and appeared in the estate after Kafka's death.

A second poem

A few years earlier, in the course of describing a struggle in 1904, Kafka had already written a poem as an introduction with the following content:

And people walk in their clothes
swaying on the gravel
under this great sky
that
spreads from distant hills to distant hills

However, this five-line line is not entirely original Kafka's work, it is rather based on a poem by Stefan George ( We pace up and down in rich tinsel ... ), which Kafka admired in contrast to various other poets.

output

  • Post-processed writings and fragments I Edited by Malcom Pasley (Born / Neumann / Schillemeit) Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag p. 181 ISBN 3-596-15700-5

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stach, p. 111.
  2. ↑ Alt, p. 142.
  3. ↑ Alt, p. 143.