We have come a long way from Max Brod’s original packaging of the aphorisms under the title “ Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way,” which nudged Kafka’s words in the theological direction Brod hoped to take them. The inclusion of the original German wording serves to highlight where Kafka was tugging at the borders of “proper” German ( Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld: “All human errors are impatience”), and has allowed my translations of the aphorisms to adhere more closely to Kafka’s wording without seeming off-or more off, at any rate-than they appeared in German. In this bilingual edition, word usages and repetitions can be tracked in both languages. Kafka’s aphorisms can be so cryptic that the discerning reader stands to benefit from every possible route of entry to them. And by learning the details of Kafka’s revisions, we gain deeper insight into Kafka’s conceptual grapplings, such his choice of “invalid” ( nichtig) after trying out and rejecting “incorrect,” then “false,” for Aphorism 6.Ī second feature of this new edition is its inclusion of Kafka’s original German for each of the aphorisms, thus furnishing readers who know German with still more interpretive tools. An aphorism such as number 93 (“Psychology, for the last time!”)-which scarcely fits the category of “aphorism” at all-cries out for context, and here, again, the annotations connect this potentially baffling outburst to Kafka’s readings at the time, his correspondence, and his overall outlook on psychology. Stach’s details about the dating and updating of the aphorisms clue us in to the evolution of Kafka’s thought and what he was reacting to at the time of their composition. Kafka had ample opportunity to observe this work in Zürau.” Hence, it is more specific in its origins and imagery than the pinning down one might find in other renderings of this aphorism. We learn from Stach’s commentary that Einpfählen, in Aphorism 2, is a word that Kafka presumably knew from horticulture, and “refers to the use of posts to prop up and stabilize young fruit trees with (usually three) posts or to the use of fence posts to enclose a pasture. But this repetition is never sterile… it functions as an intensification of the problems at hand, affording discovery and experimentation.” Its concision invites repetitions and modulations. As Andrew Hui points out in A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter, “aphoristic writing can become a recursive exercise of saying the same thing in many different ways. My translation, which uses path throughout, underscores the linkages between the aphorisms. The German word Weg, for example, traces a path throughout the aphorisms and is a significant connecting thread, which unspools when the word-which can mean way, route, road, etc.-is rendered in a variety of ways, as it has been in previous translations. My challenge here was to pick up on the nexus of interconnections that Reiner Stach laid out in his commentaries and take a fresh approach to the translations of the aphorisms with these interconnections in mind. First and foremost, Reiner Stach’s meticulous and astute interpretive guidance, which follows the translation of each aphorism, situates the individual aphorisms within the larger context of Kafka’s writings and in doing so sheds light on both the elusive aphorisms themselves and the entirety of Kafka’s writings. The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka is not the first translation into English of Kafka’s “Zürau aphorisms,” but this new edition differs from all older ones in two notable respects. Translating this slim but seminal volume has deepened my understanding of all of Kafka’s writings, even after the extremely deep dive I did for the biography. I am delighted to oblige, and I hope you will be tempted to savor the main course of The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka.Īfter translating Reiner Stach’s magnificent three-volume Kafka biography-published by Princeton University Press-I have now had the pleasure of returning to Franz Kafka, to Reiner Stach, and to the Press to work on this new annotated edition of Kafka’s aphorisms. As Princeton University Press celebrates the launch of a new annotated and freshly translated edition of Kafka’s aphorisms, the Press has invited me to supply a couple of amuse-bouches from the two introductory passages to the collection, namely my Translator’s Note plus a brief excerpt from Reiner Stach’s Foreword.
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