The Castle: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text

“It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay under deep snow. . .K. stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness.” Thus begins one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, Franz Kafka’s The Castle, written during the last two years of Kafka’s life while he was suffering from the chronic tuberculosis that eventually killed him in 1924, and first published in 1926 as Das Schloss with Max Brod’s significant deletions, changes, revisions and ‘corrections.’ This, however, is the Mark Harmon translation from Kafka’s actual original manuscript (i.e., without Brod’s alterations), which wonderfully captures both Kafka’s flowing, lucid, unpunctuated prose and the frenetic, anxious space of Kafka’s dreamworld.Kafka deftly sketches the stories and characters and scenes that consist of his dreamworld. Be forewarned: It’s a postmodern novel: there is no foreshadowing of events, no character development, no history behind any of the characters that inhabit this dreamworld; indeed, some denizens are not even characters, they are mere caricatures—just placeholders in Kafka’s dreamworld—for example, the two ‘Assistants’ that K. decides to call by the same name, or the ‘Peasants’ that frequently occupy space at the inns where K. seeks to find lodging.The Castle itself is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, “Keeping his eyes fixed upon the Castle, K. went ahead, nothing else mattered to him. But as he came close he was disappointed in the Castle, it was only a rather miserable little town, pieced together from village houses, distinctive only because everything was perhaps built of stone.” K. is summoned to the Castle as the new ‘surveyor.’ Yes, K. is surveying the landscape of his world, and publishing the truth of it for all the world to see, including all the corruption and internecine conflict that authoritarian bureaucracies suffer from. He is an outsider to that world, and he reports as a dissident: “K. did not hesitate to choose, nor would he have hesitated to do so even if he had never had certain experiences here. It was only as a village worker, as far from the Castle gentlemen as possible, that he could achieve anything at the Castle, these people from the village who were so distrustful of him.”It is not just with the people from the Castle that K. experiences anxiety, sometimes flowing intensely and other times ebbing to merely an undifferentiated dread, all these friendly characters presenting themselves to his consciousness: Olga, Barnabas, Frieda, Amalia, Pepi, the Landlady, the Commissioner, the Teacher, always perfectly sketched in their dreamlike essence, and always perfectly balanced in their ambiguous connection to K. Olga says to K., “But you’re spending the night with us,” to which K. replies, “To be sure” . . . “leaving it to her to interpret the words he had spoken.”

Awesome!!!

First off this is an excellent book, as you might expect given that it was written by, arguably, one of the most influential writers of the last 150 years. I would recommend this novel to anyone with an interest in contemporary philosophical and existential literature.However, I would also suggest that anyone wanting to read this should read 'The Trial' (also by Kafka) first, simply because it's a slightly gentler starting point with regards to style and narrative and is an easier way to become acquainted with Kafka's works, before tackling 'The Castle' which is a trickier and more unfinished novel, but ultimately just as challenging and interesting a story.(PS: Check out his short stories as well, most are similar works of genius from one of the most unique and tragic authors who ever put pen to paper.)

この作品が醸し出すものは、現在サイコサスペンスとかサイコホラーと呼ばれるジャンルの先駆けになるのではという印象を持ちました。有名な作品なので内容はよく知られていると思います。ユダヤ人であるカフカが生きた時代を比喩したものであるということは判るのですが、全体を見回してみると謎だらけの作品です。奇怪で滑稽、そして不可解。謎だけにその分面白いです。

Very good