The Airplanes in Brescia

"And nothing better symbolized the technological modernity of Kafka's time than the airplane. At least this is the case if we are to believe Kafka's essay "The Aeroplanes at Brescia," which is an account of a trip he took with Max and Otto Brod to an airplane race and exhibition in Brescia, Italy. The essay, which was published in the newspaper Bohemia in 1909, was one of the first literary descriptions of the airplane to appear in German. On a stylistic level, "The Aeroplanes at Brescia" is important as a reminder of Kafka's writing skills: we are already aware of his remarkable ability to distort our world into something strange and different, as he does for example in The Trial or Metamorphosis; that he was also capable of so brilliantly bringing to life an event that was completely of this world helps to show us why he was one of the world's great writers."

"A Report to an Academy"

"A Report to an Academy" ("Ein Bericht für eine Akademie") is a short story by Franz Kafka, written and published in 1917. In the story, an ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of how he effected his transformation. The story was first published by Martin Buber in the German monthly Der Jude, along with another of Kafka's story "Jackals and Arabs" ("Schakale und Araber"). The story appeared again in a 1919 collection titled "A Country Doctor" (Ein Landarzt).

From the "Westfield Leader" 27-March-97

"A hearing regarding the embattled Scotch Plains Zoo, which had been scheduled for last Thursday in Superior Court in Elizabeth, was adjourned until Thursday, April 10, in order to give a court-appointed attorney and an independent veterinarian additional time to prepare reports regarding conditions at the 6.5-acre facility.

Zoo owner Harold Kafka, meanwhile, pleaded guilty Monday in Scotch Plains Municipal Court to charges related to the housing of some of the animals at his establishment, which is located three miles south of Route No. 22 on Raritan Road. The zoo is home to approximately 150 animals, including a number of exotic or endangered species.

The penalties imposed on Mr. Kafka are expected to be either reduced or dismissed, however, if he meets conditions which were previously agreed upon between him and the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife by Monday, April 14, according to Municipal Court Clerk Yvonne Rude. The division opted not to renew Mr. Kafka’s operating permits in January, citing multiple violations concerning public safety and animal welfare......

The division issued summonses to Mr. Kafka following a March 12 inspection by a conservation officer and a zoologist, who found the zoo’s orangutan house unheated due to a lack of oil and the lights turned off, according to division spokeswoman Sharon Southard. Heat was restored to the unit, which houses several primates, as well as alligators, after an anonymous benefactor offered to have the oil tanks replenished.

Mr. Kafka also was issued a summons for failure to repair cages which house wolves at the zoo, and another for failure to properly house an otter at the facility, the Court Clerk said."

K and F

Love Letter From Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer-11-11-1912 (Exerpt)

Fräulein Felice!

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday—for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?...

The Wish to become an Indian

Deseo de ser un indio

Si pudiera ser un indio, ahora mismo, y sobre un caballo a todo galope, con el cuerpo inclinado y suspendido en el aire, estremeciéndome sobre el suelo oscilante, hasta dejar las espuelas, pues no tenía espuelas, hasta tirar las riendas, pues no tenía riendas, y sólo viendo ante mí un paisaje como una pradera segada, ya sin el cuello y sin la cabeza del caballo.

Insurance Man-Asegurador

El tasador de seguros de Assicurazioni Generali de Praga, Herr Franz Kafka, calcula los costos de un reclamo.

The loss adjuster of Assicurazioni Generali of Prague, Herr Kafka, asseses a claim.

Night-Noche

"Miedo de la noche-Miedo a que no haya noche" de los Diarios de Kafka

Lowy Cirk

K and F

The Great Wall of China

"The Great Wall of China was finished at its northernmost location. The construction work moved up from the south-east and south-west and joined at this point. The system of building in sections was also followed on a small scale within the two great armies of workers, the eastern and western. It was carried out in the following manner: groups of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take on a section of the wall, about five hundred metres. A neighbouring group then built a wall of similar length to meet it. But afterwards, when the sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any further at the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups of workers were shipped off again to build the wall in completely different regions. Naturally, with this method many large gaps arose, which were filled in only gradually and slowly, many of them not until after it had already been reported that the building of the wall was complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which have never been built in at all, although that’s merely an assertion which probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the structure and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to prove with their own eyes and according to their own standards, because the structure is so immense......."

"Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer" by Franz Kafka-Extract

The Oklahoma Theatre And Kafka's Salvation

"....Examination of Kafka's ‘Diaries’ suggests that an important factor in this response was his infatuation with two actresses. They evoked fantasies of avoiding oedipal conflict by surrendering adult male sexuality and its threat of castration by regressing to a prephallic relationship with a maternal woman who would provide a nurturing relationship. Later, when writing the final chapter of his novel ‘Amerika’ in 1914, he creatively expressed a derivation of this fantasy when the protagonist, Karl Rossman, achieved a sort of salvation by joining the Oklahoma theatre. In the final year of his life Kafka was able to leave home to live with a woman, and in this achievement he fulfilled aspects of this fantasy."

(Ext. From The Yiddish Theatre, The Oklahoma Theatre And Kafka's Salvation by William D. Jeffrey)

The Trial-El Proceso

"On the last day of K.'s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"

From Wikipedia

Premonition About Milena Jesenská

Milena Jesenská (1896-1944) was Kafka's lover and translator. They broke in 1920 because Milena was unable to separate with her husband.
After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German army, Jesenská joined an underground resistance movement and helped many Jewish and political refugees to emigrate. She herself decided to stay, however, despite the consequences. In November 1939 she was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned first in Prague's Pankrác and later in Dresden. In October 1940 she was deported to a concentration camp in Ravensbrück in Germany. Here she provided moral and psychological support to other prisoners and befriended Margarete Buber-Neumann, who wrote her first biography after the war. Jesenská died of kidney failure in Ravensbrück on May 17, 1944.

From Wikipedia

Gracchus, el cazador

The Hunter Gracchus (Der Jäger Gracchus) is a short story written by Franz Kafka. The story presents a death boat carrying the long dead Hunter Gracchus as it arrives at a port. The Burgomaster of Riva enters the boat and inside he meets Gracchus who gives him an account of his death while hunting and how he is destined to wander aimlessly and eternally over the seas. An additional fragment presents an extended dialogue between Gracchus and an unnamed interviewer, supposedly the same Burgomaster.

Immortal Last Words-Ultimas Palabras

Many consider Chaplin to be cinema's greatest comedian. When the priest who was attending him on his deathbed said "May the Lord have mercy on your soul," Chaplin quickly replied, "Why not? After all, it belongs to him."

As Kafka lay dying , he begged his physician for an overdose of morphine to end his suffering and said: "Kill me, or else you are a murderer!"

Cura: "Que Dios se apiade de tu alma!"
Chaplin: "Y claro, si total le pertenece a El!"

Kafka, mientras moria le pidio al medico una sobredosis de morfina para acabar con su sufrimiento diciendole: "Matame, no te comportes como un asesino!"