1
Der wahre Weg geht über ein Seil, das nicht in der Höhe gespannt ist, sondern knapp über dem Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden.
The true path leads along a rope stretched, not high in the air, but barely above the ground. It seems designed more for stumbling than for walking along it.
2
Alle menschlichen Fehler sind Ungeduld, ein vorzeitiges Abbrechen des Methodischen, ein scheinbares Einpfählen der scheinbaren Sache.
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of a methodical approach, an apparent use of posts to prop up the apparent objective.
3
Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück.
There are two cardinal human sins, from which all others derive: impatience and laxity. Impatience got them expelled from Paradise; indolence keeps them from returning. Perhaps, though, there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Impatience got them expelled; impatience keeps them from returning.
4
Viele Schatten der Abgeschiedenen beschäftigen sich nur damit die Fluten des Totenflusses zu belecken, weil er von uns herkommt und noch den salzigen Geschmack unserer Meere hat. Vor Ekel sträubt sich dann der Fluss, nimmt eine rückläufge Strömung und schwemmt die Toten ins Leben zurück. Sie aber sind glücklich, singen Danklieder und streicheln den Empörten.
Many shades of the departed are occupied solely with lapping at the waters of the river of death because it comes from us and still bears the salty tang of our seas. Then the river writhes in revulsion, its current flowing backward, washing the dead back into life. But they are happy, sing hymns of thanksgiving, and caress the indignant river.
5
Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr mehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen.
From a certain point on, there is no turning back. This is the point that needs to be reached.
6
Der entscheidende Augenblick der menschlichen Entwicklung ist immerwährend. Darum sind die revolutionären geistigen Bewegungen, welche alles Frühere für nichtig erklären, im Recht, denn es ist noch nichts geschehen.
The decisive moment of human development is everlasting. That is why the revolutionary movements grounded in intellect, which deem invalid everything that has gone before, are correct, for as yet nothing has happened.
7
Eines der wirksamsten Verführungsmittel des Bösen ist die Auforderung zum Kampf. Er ist wie der Kampf mit Frauen, der im Bett endet.
One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil employs is the call to battle. It is like the battle with women, which ends in bed.
8/9
Eine stinkende Hündin, reichliche Kindergebärerin, stellenweise schon faulend, die aber in meiner Kindheit mir alles war, die in Treue unaufhörlich mir folgt, die ich zu schlagen mich nicht überwinden kann, vor der ich aber, selbst ihren Atem scheuend, schrittweise nach rückwärts weiche und die mich doch, wenn ich mich nicht anders entscheide, in den schon sichtbaren Mauerwinkel drängen wird, um dort auf mir und mit mir gänzlich zu verwesen, bis zum Ende — ehrt es mich? — das Eiter- und Wurm-Fleisch ihrer Zunge an meiner Hand.
A stinking dog, mother of numerous pups, already rotting in spots, but who was everything to me in my childhood, who follows me faithfully all the time, whom I cannot bring myself to strike, yet I shrink back from her, step by step, even avoiding her breath, and who will wind up driving me into a corner, already in sight, if I don’t decide otherwise, and rot away altogether on me and with me until I end up with — does this dignify me? — the pus-filled and worm-infested flesh of her tongue at my hand.
15
Wie ein Weg im Herbst: kaum ist er rein gekehrt, bedeckt er sich wieder mit den trockenen Blättern.
Like a path in autumn: no sooner has it been swept clean than it is once more covered with dry leaves.
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from Reiner Stach’s introduction —
Kafka’s aphorisms are among the most original intellectual creations of the twentieth century, yet no aim is more alien to them than to drive home a point, produce an unprecedented effect, or astound an imagined readership. Exaggeration for the sake of effect — which we might think inherent in the literary genre of the aphorism — is barely in evidence here; even where well-versed readers expect it, where they savor their anticipation of it, Kafka almost always sacrifices aesthetic effect in favor of a maximal linguistic and visual compactness, right to the edge of comprehensibility and sometimes even a step beyond, which makes these texts forbidding, inscrutable. They show nothing, demonstrate nothing, move along their trajectory as they follow the path of an idea. And even the occasional you is not directed at us; it is the monological you that emerges from a state of deep concentration. Some readers of Kafka have been mightily disappointed. Having learned to navigate, and derive aesthetic pleasure from, the world of “The Metamorphosis” and The Trial, which is marked in equal measure by nightmarish logic and humor, they can find their expectations dashed here; apart from a few incomparably memorable images and paradoxes, they will have trouble recognizing their author. The same applies to readers who gauge Kafka by the repository of German aphorisms by Lichtenberg, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Nietzsche, Karl Kraus, and Adorno. The aphorist Elias Canetti, drawing on his own reading experience, pinpointed the expectations of these readers when he noted: “The great aphorists read as though they had all known one another well.” This was certainly not true of Kafka. He did not belong to any circle or club, let alone to the group of “great minds” whose conversations he listened to attentively without joining in. This unique position brings us straight to an awkward definitional dilemma. In reading the collection of Kafka’s short texts, which is generally published with the title Aphorisms or Zürau Aphorisms, we have trouble assigning the term “aphorism” to them, no matter how modern and open-minded an approach we adopt. It is hard to picture a self-respecting literary scholar agreeing to call an exclamation like the one in Aphorism 93 (“Psychology, for the last time!”) an aphorism, yet Kafka considered it significant enough to single out for inclusion here from the chaotic set of his notes.
…
In comparison with Kafka’s other writings, his aphorisms have been overlooked by researchers and even more by his general readership. The aphorisms, like everything Kafka wrote, require interpretation, but in contrast to his fictional prose, for example The Trial, they do not reward the reader with the sensory and aesthetic pleasure of a story. Readers of the aphorisms wind up in unfamiliar, sometimes inhospitable territory, which can then turn terribly beautiful. “I have never been in this place before: breathing works differently, and a star shines next to the sun, more dazzlingly still.” Kafka might as well have placed this aphorism — designated number 17 — at the beginning, to serve as the motto for the entire collection.
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The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka, published by Princeton University Press on April 19, 2022, may be purchased at Bookshop.org by clicking here …