Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Everyman’s Library, 1992.
Reason read: While this is not “The Verdict”, I am reading The Castle in honor of the month “Verdict” was written.
Do you remember the story of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet following the trail of a woozle? They think the woozles are multiplying because their own footprints are multiplying as they circle the tree? The absurdity of following your own footprints without conclusion – that is exactly what reading The Castle is like. K. is a land surveyor who thinks he has been hired to do a job for the Castle only for some inane reason he cannot gain entry. Barriers abound everywhere. How can he measure and estimate if he cannot visit this very important castle? K. is literally thwarted at every turn. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how many schemes he concocts, he never does any surveying for anyone. On a deeper level, it seems Kafka is trying to tell us K. abandons his home for a quest for meaning.
Beside the strangeness of K.’s insistence to do a job he obviously wasn’t hired for, there are other bizarre moments: K. randomly throwing snowballs at people or calling both assistants by the same name because he cannot tell them apart (and why does he need assistants when he can’t do the job in the first place?). All of a sudden he is engaged to Herr Klamm’s lover, Frieda. They are given classrooms as a place to live as they are hired to take care of the school and vegetable garden, only they have to vacate the room if a class is in session. Of course a class is going to be in session and heaven forbid K. is left alone with the cat! So many absurdities that I’m back to the analogy of Pooh and Piglet.
As an aside, listen to a song by Josh Ritter called “The Torch Committee”. In the lyrics, Josh lists rules and regulations that are reminiscent of the hoops K. must go through in order to gain entry to the castle. If K. is not dealing with the Control Official or Department A, he is negotiating with Town Council or the Superintendent or the Mayor.
Author fact: I also read The Trial by Kafka as part of the Book Lust challenge.
Book trivia: of course The Castle was made into a movie. It has also been a radio program and a graphic novel. For another thing, translation matters! For the first time I have paid attention to the words translators pick: annoyed versus exasperated, defend versus vindicate, quickly versus hastily. What a difference the choise of a word makes!
Nancy said: Pearl said Kafka had a “frightening view” of Prague.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Czech It Out” (p 70).
~*LunaSea*~ 