Philosophy
Anniversary of author's birth honoured with image from classic short story
by
Liz Bury
July 3rd, 2013
guardian.co.uk
Did you feel OK when you woke up this morning? Spare a thought for Gregor Samsa, that most unlucky of literary heroes. "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed … "
Thus Franz Kafka opens one of the most resonant stories of 20th-century literature, about an ordinary man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into an bug of indeterminate kind – an insect, a beetle, a cockroach – the original German "ungeheueren Ungeziefer" leaves his exact species ambiguous. (There has been much debate about this point over the years).
This nightmarish image of the human-insect lodged in our imaginations is now a Google doodle marking the 130th anniversary of Kafka's birth on July 3 1883 - but so far, in a machination worthy of the master himself, in almost all of the world except for the UK.
Why should this be? Is it that the powers-that-be at the global search engine don't feel he has universal appeal, or that he's too weird and European for British readers? That conclusion would seem odd, as Kafka was a master at finding universal metaphors that have grown ever more powerful with time.
And why, anyway, has Google chosen Metamorphosis rather than The Castle or The Trial to represent the master? John Banville would probably have opted for the "great and terrible novel of guilt, judgment and retribution", The Trial, while Guardian blogger William Burrows is not the only reader to believe that The Castle is Kafka at his most beautiful and most emotional. "The Trial and Metamorphosis are full of their own depth, and their own complicated sadness, but they don't strike the heart with the same poignancy as Kafka's final, unfathomable novel," he wrote.
Perhaps it's the beauty of beetles that was the draw, or maybe it's because the transformation of poor Gregor Samsa illustrates more clearly than any other of Kafka's images John Banville's view that "Kafka's work is a perfect illustration of Freud's conception of the uncanny as the familiar re-presented to us in unfamiliar guise".
Either way, Google's nod to the great Czech mythmaker seems appropriate in the creepy-crawly world of modern surveillance, where whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are trapped in a no-way-out nightmare reminiscent of The Trial.
And what would Kafka, the great miserabilist, have made of his sudden elevation? Judging by one diary entry for 1910, not much. "Today," he wrote, "I do not even dare to reproach myself. Shouted into this empty day, it would have a disgusting echo."
Metamorphosis [audio presentation]...
Kafka again
More on Kafka
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Franz Kafka...existentialism...birthday today
- Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
130 years ago today, in a world which no longer could be seriously understood as the effect or providence of the deliberate choice of a deity with a comprehensible, or even a coherent plan, one of the first men to viscerally understand and feel the essence...
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Philosophy
A bug on Google search...Kafka's cockroach
"Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis becomes Google doodle"
Anniversary of author's birth honoured with image from classic short story
by
Liz Bury
July 3rd, 2013
guardian.co.uk
Did you feel OK when you woke up this morning? Spare a thought for Gregor Samsa, that most unlucky of literary heroes. "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed … "
Thus Franz Kafka opens one of the most resonant stories of 20th-century literature, about an ordinary man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into an bug of indeterminate kind – an insect, a beetle, a cockroach – the original German "ungeheueren Ungeziefer" leaves his exact species ambiguous. (There has been much debate about this point over the years).
This nightmarish image of the human-insect lodged in our imaginations is now a Google doodle marking the 130th anniversary of Kafka's birth on July 3 1883 - but so far, in a machination worthy of the master himself, in almost all of the world except for the UK.
Why should this be? Is it that the powers-that-be at the global search engine don't feel he has universal appeal, or that he's too weird and European for British readers? That conclusion would seem odd, as Kafka was a master at finding universal metaphors that have grown ever more powerful with time.
And why, anyway, has Google chosen Metamorphosis rather than The Castle or The Trial to represent the master? John Banville would probably have opted for the "great and terrible novel of guilt, judgment and retribution", The Trial, while Guardian blogger William Burrows is not the only reader to believe that The Castle is Kafka at his most beautiful and most emotional. "The Trial and Metamorphosis are full of their own depth, and their own complicated sadness, but they don't strike the heart with the same poignancy as Kafka's final, unfathomable novel," he wrote.
Perhaps it's the beauty of beetles that was the draw, or maybe it's because the transformation of poor Gregor Samsa illustrates more clearly than any other of Kafka's images John Banville's view that "Kafka's work is a perfect illustration of Freud's conception of the uncanny as the familiar re-presented to us in unfamiliar guise".
Either way, Google's nod to the great Czech mythmaker seems appropriate in the creepy-crawly world of modern surveillance, where whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are trapped in a no-way-out nightmare reminiscent of The Trial.
And what would Kafka, the great miserabilist, have made of his sudden elevation? Judging by one diary entry for 1910, not much. "Today," he wrote, "I do not even dare to reproach myself. Shouted into this empty day, it would have a disgusting echo."
Metamorphosis [audio presentation]...
Kafka again
More on Kafka
Kafka manuscripts
Franz Kafka...existentialism...birthday today
- Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
130 years ago today, in a world which no longer could be seriously understood as the effect or providence of the deliberate choice of a deity with a comprehensible, or even a coherent plan, one of the first men to viscerally understand and feel the essence...
- An Existentialist Take On Christmas
Sure, everyone loves Christmas. And what's not to like? Good company, good food, exchanging gifts, the priceless look of uninhibited happiness in children, to say nothing of the delicious milk and cookies left by the fireplace? :) But have you ever...
- Picking Up An Existentialist Babe
Suppose you're wandering around an art museum and you stumble upon a suicidal hottie who's read a bit too much Sartre or Camus for her own good and who's more than overwhelmed with existential angst. If there's no hope of talking her out...
- Kafka Again
"Why Kafka Matters" by David L. Ulin June 24th, 2013 Los Angeles Times In the July/August issue of the Atlantic [see below], Joseph Epstein uses the release of Saul Friedlander’s book “Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt" to pose the larger...
- Kafka Manuscripts
"Swiss bank to lift lid on hidden Kafka works" by Imogen Foulkes July 19th, 2010 BBC News Safe deposit boxes believed to contain manuscripts and drawings by the late author Franz Kafka are due to be opened at a bank in Zurich. The move is the latest...