The Castle

by Franz Kafka

denigrate

“show how one can live marginally with complete integrity and without loss of background.”

pantheon

style. As in much first-person fiction, the tempo of the prose charts the state of the central character.

somnambulist.

prolixity

seminal

The voice we hear at such moments in the Muirs’ translation is not so much Kafka’s as Brod’s.

In The Castle the process of interpretation becomes an integral part of the novel.

laconically

The ideal solution would be to re-create Kafka’s wonderfully elastic syntax without making him sound less natural or more jarring—and he can be both—than he is in German. However, modern English shies away from inversions of word order, and this restricts the options available to the translator.

pithy

contrapuntal

He felt an irresistible urge to seek out new acquaintances, but each new acquaintance had only increased his weariness.

“This lack of hospitality may surprise you,” said the man, “but there is no custom of hospitality here, we do not need guests.”

congenial

How you divide up the work is immaterial to me so long as you do not try to excuse yourselves by blaming each other, I consider you one person.”

conciliatory

deferentially;

He had let himself be spellbound by the shimmering, silky, tight-fitting jacket, which Barnabas now unbuttoned, revealing underneath a coarse, dirt-gray, often-mended shirt over the powerful square chest of a farmhand.

The people in the village, who sent him away or at least feared him, were less dangerous, it seemed to him, since they essentially threw him back on his own resources and thus helped him to preserve his strength, whereas those seeming helpers who, instead of taking him to the Castle, led him by means of a little masquerade to their family, distracted him, whether intentionally or not, and were draining all his strength.

her. Her hands were indeed small and delicate, but they could also be called weak and expressionless.

person has reached the ultimate goal? Absurd question! Your eyes, don’t laugh at me now, Miss Frieda, your eyes speak not so much of the past struggle as of that to come. But the world puts up great resistance, the higher the goals, the greater the resistance, and it’s no disgrace to secure help, even that of a little man without influence who is struggling just as much.

Yet he still wasn’t strong enough to resist their offers, he saw that in this way he was becoming somewhat dependent on them, which could have negative consequences, but he simply had to let it happen.

but I have gone through life with my eyes open and have come to know many different people and have had to carry the entire weight of the inn alone,

marriage. You’re not from the Castle, you’re not from the village, you are nothing. Unfortunately, though, you are something, a stranger, one who is superfluous and gets in the way everywhere, one who is a constant source of trouble and who, for instance, makes it necessary for us to dislodge the maids, one who seduces our dearest little Frieda, one whose intentions are utterly unknown here, but who is unfortunately the very person to whom we must give her away.

“Oh, Landlady,” said K., “you’re such a clever woman, so worthy of respect and yet you’re frightened by every little thing.

You’ve been in the village a few days and already think you know everything better than everyone here, better than me, an old woman, and better than Frieda, who has heard and seen so much at the Gentlemen’s Inn. I’m not denying it’s possible to accomplish something that runs absolutely counter to the rules and the old traditions, I myself have never experienced anything of the sort, but such instances are said to occur, this may be so, but they certainly don’t occur the way you go about it, simply by saying ‘no, no’ all the time and by swearing to do what you think and by ignoring the most well-meant advice.

She rescued you and sacrificed herself. And now that this has happened and Frieda has given up all she had in exchange for the happiness of sitting on your knee, you come and pass off as your greatest trump card the fact that you once had the opportunity to spend the night at Barnabas’s.

Your ignorance cannot be remedied all at once, and perhaps not at all, but many things can get better if you would only show a little faith in me and always keep in mind how ignorant you are.

Wherever you go, keep in mind that you’re the most ignorant person here and be careful;

I am ignorant, that at least is true, sadly enough for me, but the advantage here is that those who are ignorant take greater risks, and so I’ll gladly put up with my deficient knowledge and its undoubtedly serious consequences for a little while, for as long as my energy holds out.

Nowhere else had K. ever seen one’s official position and one’s life so intertwined as they were here, so intertwined that it sometimes seemed as though office and life had switched places.

That’s why a slightly more frivolous approach, a certain easing of tension, was appropriate only when dealing directly with the authorities, whereas otherwise you always had to exercise great caution and look about on all sides before each step you took.

You were, as you say, taken on as a surveyor, but we don’t need a surveyor. There wouldn’t be the least bit of work for a person like that.

“Nothing ever happens here without due thought,”

“It amuses me,” said K., “only because it gives me some insight into the ridiculous tangle that may under certain circumstances determine a person’s life.”

One of the operating principles of the authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account.

There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”

my ambition is not to have big stacks of files concerning me piling up and then crashing down, but to work quietly as a little surveyor at his little drawing board.”

he’s not a speaker but a shouter, and that’s good enough for some.

caution is always necessary, not only here, and the more important the statement, the greater the need for caution.

only possible conclusion is that everything is very unclear and insoluble except for my being thrown out.”

Nobody is keeping you here, but that still doesn’t mean you’re being thrown out.”

“what I want from the Castle is not charity, but my rights.”

You misinterpret everything, even the silence. You simply cannot help it.

Klamm is the cause of your illness since even before your marriage your heart was drained by that unfortunate passion.

ignominious

solicitous,

incitement