Франц Кафка: The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

IN ENGLISH, the word that usually follows ‘Kafkaesque’ is ‘nightmare’. Hardly the thing to make you think, ‘Hurray, a new translation. No Netflix for me tonight.’ And in truth, Kafka’s work is respected far more than it is loved.

Potential book buyers sense that reading one of his novels might be unpleasantly similar to appearing in it: boring and painful at the same time. Like a circle of hell reserved for bureaucracy and anxiety dreams, where you fill in meaningless forms until the end of time, and then discover the pen is actually a beetle. That feeling only gets stronger when you flick to the back of The Castle and see how many pages there are.

I can’t say I really disagree. There’s no question about how startling Kafka’s vision is, nor about how, despite the surrealism and the grotesquerie, it all feels so familiar. But are the novels a great read? I have my doubts.

Not so about the short stories. There, the ideas that can feel interminable in the novels are quick, funny, strange and sad. Some are fables, some are jokes, some seem placid at first then throw you out the window, some put pictures in your mind that no one but Kafka ever could and that will keep resurfacing for years afterwards as metaphors for your lived reality. Some you read and think, oh I see, this is Kafka, this is why Kafka was such an earthquake, this is why he’s unforgettable.

Just to be blunt: I think the short stories you hold in your hand are the best thing Kafka ever wrote, and the best of them are as good as anything ever written by anyone. If you don’t want to take my word for it, on the back of my German edition it says, “The short stories form the actual core of all Kafka’s work.”

So why are they less known than the novels? I think it’s probably because people tend to buy novels rather than short story collections, and therefore publishers tend to push them. Kafka’s short stories have often appeared in unwieldy compendia, aimed at devotees, or appended to an edition of his most famous piece, The Metamorphosis.

Translation also creates an extra cost that makes it harder for publishers to take the gamble on an unpopular form. And although Kafka has had some excellent translators, like Michael Hofmann, in many editions you see the marks left by the economics of publishing: underpaid translators work quickly and hurry to get things finished.

I hope this collection takes these short stories out from under the novels’ shadow. I haven’t put them in chronological order, or tried to showcase his different modes; my principle for inclusion has been: only the best.

THE EMPEROR—they say—has sent you, you alone, his lowly subject, you tiny shadow thrown far off into the furthest corner by the imperial sun, you, of all people, the Emperor has sent a message from his deathbed. He had his messenger kneel down beside him and whispered the message directly into his ear; it was so important to him that he had the message repeated back into his own. With a nod he confirmed that what had been said was correct. In front of the entire audience of his death—every obstructing wall had been torn down and the great and good of the empire were gathered around, crowding onto the sweeping staircases that led up to him—in front of them all he sent the messenger on his way. The messenger, a strong, a tireless man, set off at once; pushing himself forward arm over arm, he clears a path through the crowd; if someone blocks his way, he points to the symbol of the sun emblazoned on his chest; and he gets through faster than anyone else ever could. But the crowd is so big; there’s no end to them and their city. If he could get onto the open road, he’d be flying along, and soon you’d hear the wonderful hammering of his fists on your door. But how futile his efforts are; he’s still fighting his way through the apartments of the innermost palace; he’ll never make it out of them; and even if he did, nothing would be gained; he’d still have to fight his way down the staircases; and even if he did that, nothing would be gained; he’d still have to cross the courtyards; and after the courtyards the second, outer palace; and again staircases and courtyards; and then another palace; and so on through thousands of years; and if finally he burst out of the outermost gate—but never, never can that happen—he’d still have the whole imperial capital ahead of him, the centre of the world, its buildings piled high and its streets clogged up. Nobody can push through that, least of all carrying a message from a dead man. — But you sit at your window and dream of what it says, when evening comes.

“ACH,” said the mouse, “the world gets narrower every day. At first it was so wide it was frightening; but I kept running and I was glad when I finally saw some walls far off to the left and right of me, but now those long walls are hurrying towards each other so fast that I’m already in the final room, and there in the corner is the trap I’m running into.” — “All you have to do is run in the other direction,” said the cat, and ate it.

IT SEEMS A TERRIBLE THING to stay single for good, to become an old man who, if he wants to spend the evening with other people, has to stand on his dignity and ask someone for an invitation; to be ill and spend weeks looking out of the corner of your bed at an empty room; always to say goodbye at the door; never to squeeze your way up the stairs beside your wife; to live in a room where the side doors lead only to other people’s apartments; to carry your dinner home in one hand; to be forced to admire children you don’t know and not to be allowed to just keep repeating, “I don’t have any”; to model your appearance and behaviour on one or two bachelors you remember from childhood.

That’s how it’s going to be, except that in reality both today and in the future you’ll actually be standing there yourself, with a body and a real head, as well as a forehead, which you can use your hand to slap.

POSEIDON SAT at his desk and went through his accounts. Being in charge of all the seas and oceans was an endless amount of work. He could have had assistants, as many as he wanted, and indeed he did have very many of them, but because he took his position very seriously, he checked over every calculation again himself, and so his assistants were little help to him. You couldn’t say that the work gave him pleasure; he actually just did it because it had been assigned to him. In fact he’d often asked for some work that would be what he called a bit more cheerful, but whenever suggestions were made to him it turned out that nothing suited him as well as the position he already had. It was also very difficult to find something else for him. It would have been impossible to appoint him to a particular sea, for example. Even leaving aside that the amount of bookkeeping would have been no smaller, merely pettier, the great Poseidon could of course only be given a role at a very senior level. And if he was offered something outside the water altogether, just the idea of it made him ill, his divine breathing grew laboured and his powerful ribcage started to heave. Also, his complaints weren’t taken very seriously; when a powerful person starts fretting, you have to look like you’re trying to help them no matter how pointless the matter at hand; but no one ever really thought that Poseidon would be allowed to resign his position. He’d been appointed god of the seas at the beginning of time and that’s the way things would have to stay.