The Complete Stories

1 The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka / Notes at the end Back Cover : "An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating.. The Stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic.. numinous and prophetic." -- New York Times "The Complete Stories is an encyclopedia of our insecurities and our brave attempts to oppose them." -- Anatole Broyard Franz Kafka wrote continuously and furiously throughout his short and intensely lived life, but only allowed a fraction of his work to be published during his lifetime. Shortly before his death at the age of forty, he instructed Max Brod, his friend and literary executor, to burn all his remaining works of fiction.

2 Fortunately, Brod disobeyed. Page 1 The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka's Stories , from the classic tales such as "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony" and "The Hunger Artist" to less-known, shorter pieces and fragments Brod released after Kafka's death; with the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka's narrative work is included in this volume. The remarkable depth and breadth of his brilliant and probing imagination become even more evident when these Stories are seen as a whole. This edition also features a fascinating introduction by John Updike, a chronology of Kafka's life, and a selected bibliography of critical writings about Kafka.

3 Copyright 1971 by Schocken Books Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New York. Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. The foreword by John Updike was originally published in The New Yorker. Foreword copyright 1983 by John Updike. Collection first published in 1971 by Schocken Books Inc. Page 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924. The Complete Stories . (Kafka Library) Bibliography: p. 1. Kafka, Franz, 1885-1924 -- Translations, English. I. Glatzer, Nahum Norbet, 1903.

4 I. Title.. Series. 1988 833'.912 88-18418 ISBN 0-8052-0873-9 Manufactured in the United States of America 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Page 3 Contents Foreword by John Updike Two Introductory Parables Before the Law* An Imperial Message* The Longer Stories Description of a Struggle Wedding Preparations in the Country The Judgment* The Metamorphosis* In the Penal Colony* The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole] Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor The Warden of the Tomb A Country Doctor* The Hunter Gracchus The Hunter Gracchus: A Fragment The Great Wall of China The News of the Building of the Wall: A Fragment A Report to an Academy* Page 4 A Report to an Academy.

5 Two Fragments The Refusal A Hunger Artist* Investigations of a Dog A Little Woman* The Burrow Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk* The Shorter Stories Children on a Country Road* The Trees* Clothes* Excursion into the Mountains* Rejection* The Street Window* The Tradesman* Absent-minded Window-gazing* The Way Home* Passers-by* On the Tram* Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockeys* The Wish to Be a Red Indian* Unhappiness* Bachelor's Ill Luck* Page 5 Unmasking a Confidence Trickster* Sudden Walk* Resolutions* Dream* Up in the Gallery* A Fratricide*

6 The Next Village* A Visit to a Mine* Jackals and Arabs* The Bridge The Bucket Rider The New Advocate* An Old Manuscript* The Knock at the Manor Gate Eleven Sons* My Neighbor A Crossbreed [A Sport] The Cares of a Family Man* A Common Confusion The Truth About Sancho Panza The Silence of the Sirens Prometheus The City Coat of Arms Poseidon Page 6 Fellowship At Night The Problem of Our Laws The Conscription of Troops The Test The Vulture The Helmsman The Top A Little Fable

7 Home-Coming First Sorrow* The Departure Advocates The Married Couple Give it Up! On Parables POSTSCRIPT BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITORS AND TRANSLATORS ON THE MATERIAL INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME CHRONOLOGY SELECTED WRITINGS ON KAFKA * Published during Kafka's lifetime. Page 7 FOREWORD By John Updike All that he does seems to him, it is true, extraordinarily new, but also, because of the incredible spate of new things, extraordinarily amateurish, indeed scarcely tolerable, incapable of becoming history, breaking short the chain of the generations, cutting off for the first time at its most profound source the music of the world, which before him could at least be divined.

8 Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself. -- KAFKA, "He" (Aphorisms) THE century since Franz Kafka was born has been marked by the idea of "modernism" -- a self-consciousness new among centuries, a consciousness of being new. Sixty years after his death, Kafka epitomizes one aspect of this modern mind-set: a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated; a sense of an infinite difficulty within things, impeding every step; a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of Page 8social usage and religious belief, must record every touch as pain.

9 In Kafka's peculiar and highly original case this dreadful quality is mixed with immense tenderness, oddly good humor, and a certain severe and reassuring formality. The combination makes him an artist; but rarely can an artist have struggled against greater inner resistance and more sincere diffidence as to the worth of his art. This volume holds all of the fiction that Kafka committed to publication during his lifetime:* a slender sheaf of mostly very short Stories , the longest of them, "The Metamorphosis," a mere fifty pages long, and only a handful of the others as much as five thousand words. He published six slim volumes, four of them single Stories , from 1913 to 1919, and was working on the proofs of a seventh in the sanatorium where he died on June 3rd, 1924, of tuberculosis, exactly one month short of his forty-first birthday.

10 Among his papers after his death were found several notes addressed to his closest friend, Max Brod. One of them stated: Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these: The Judgment, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, Country Doctor and the short story: Hunger-Artist.. When I say that those five books and the short story can stand, I do not mean that I wish them to be reprinted and handed down to posterity. On the contrary, should they disappear altogether that would please me best. Only, since they do exist, I do not wish to hinder anyone who may want to, from keeping them. * The single exception is "The Stoker," published as Der Heizer, Ein Fragment in 1913 but now incorporated, in German and in English, as the first chapter of Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika.