The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Franz Kafka 🇨🇿 Aphorisms, Parables, Microfiction, and Fragments

[@davidnovakreadspoetry]

Sounds wonderful. I have that old collection with the aphorisms. I’m ready to get back to Kafka. My favorite story of his is “The Next Village” which sounds like it could be in there. Thanks for whetting my appetite.

[@Paromita_M]

I do like Borges' short stories a lot or at least I find his line of thought possible to follow on rereads whereas Kafka...he eludes me so far. I know Borges was influenced by Kafka but they wrote in very different literary traditions. These connections are interesting.

[@Paromita_M]

This is a very interesting video, thank you. I recently read quite a bit of Kafka's works and TL;DR mostly no idea what he was getting at. I read The Trial last year and liked it. Commentary on the relentlessness of bureaucracy is what I took from it. This time, I read three works - two fiction (Completed Stories, The Castle) and non-fiction Letters to Milena. Some of the stories I found interesting but overall sensation from the stories and The Castle was "no idea what I am supposed to be getting from this". Letters to Milena, I was very sad for what happened to Kafka and Milena, I felt bad for how troubled Kafka was reading the letters, but beyond that...not really. This one seems interesting. One thing I wonder about Kafka is so much of his output was posthumously published. Which is fine I guess but we never know had he lived what he would have chosen to publish, what he would have chosen to polish and what he would have chosen to discard completely. 🤔 It's different to Proust where he passed before he could finish editing but it's one long work and so we know that the 7 volumes were planned to be his magnum opus, his literary ouevre. What did Kafka want and what did he want to communicate? I am none the wider despite having read quite a bit of his fiction. Happy reading 👋