Franz Kafka: Collected Works (21 Stories Including The Metamorphosis and Others)

by Franz Kafka

COMPLETED

seems to be successful.

really leads ...

Isn’t patent. I guess This is common for shelters which necessitated a fire code for a second exit But the next page mentions a “real” and second entrance. This means that the burrow leads to the second entrance 1000 paces away

one of my many abortive building attempts,

leave this one hole without filling it

the real entrance to the burrow;

now, at the zenith of my life,

I can scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquility; at that one point in the dark moss I am vulnerable,

in my dreams I o...

despite all my vigilance, may I not be attacked from some quite unexpected quarter?

my enemies are countless;

Anything might happen!

There are also enemies

I have never seen them, but legend tells of them and I firmly believe in them.

the scratching of their claws just under you in the ground,

tolerably safe passages

scenting things from afar, and thus serve as a protection.

But the most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness.

At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over.

There I sleep the sweet sleep of tranquility, of satisfied desire, of achieved ambition; for I possess a house.

Poor homeless wanderers in the roads and woods, creeping for warmth into a heap of leaves or a herd of their comrades, delivered to all the perils of heaven and earth! I lie here in a room secured

exhaustion, I was on the point of giving up

back I went repentantly,

run with my forehead thousands and thousands of times, for whole days and nights, against the ground, and I was glad when the blood came,

Why doesn’t he consider this physical labor in addition to intellectual labor?

arrange accordingly, and make my calculations and hunting plans for the future,

constant preoccupation with defensive measures involves a frequent alteration

Or I ignore certain passages altogether and store no food in them, so as to throw any enemy off the scent,

it is not so pleasant when, as sometimes happens, you suddenly fancy, starting up from your sleep, that the present distribution of your stores is completely and totally wrong, might lead to great dangers, and must be set right at once, no matter how tired or sleepy you may be; then I rush, then I fly, then I have no time for calculation; and although I was about to execute a perfectly new, perfectly exact plan, I now seize whatever my teeth hit upon and drag it or carry it away, sighing, groaning, stumbling, and even the most haphazard change in the present situation, which seems so terribly dangerous, can satisfy me.

Then again there are times when the storing of all my food in one place seems the best plan of all.

a fault in my burrow;

did not yield to it, I felt too feeble for the enormous labor it would involve, more, I felt too feeble even to admit to myself the necessity for that labor, and comforted myself as best I could with the vague hope that a building which in any other case would clearly be inadequate, would in my own unique, exceptional, favored case suffice, presumably because providence was interested in the preservation of my forehead, that unique instrument.

I am completely gorged. Happy but dangerous hours; anyone who knew how to exploit them could destroy me with ease and without any risk.

after such lapses I make a practice of reviewing the burrow,

it is no easy job to wander about out there, for I have contrived there a whole little maze of passages; it was there that I began my burrow, at a time when I had no hope of ever completing it according to my plans;

at the time seemed to me the crown of all burrows, but which I judge today, perhaps with more justice, to be too much of an idle tour de force,

theoretically brilliant

is in reality a flimsy piece of jugglery that would hardly withstand

I keep on postponing the decision, and the labyrinth will probably remain as it is.

In spite of that, however, I do not deny that this fault worries me from time to time, indeed always.

the sight of it is painful to me,

perpetually reminded of a d...

Let it continue to exist ineradicably at the entrance; I can at least...

torments me

Sometimes I dream, that I have reconstructed it,

tears of joy and deliverance still glisten on my beard

He has a beard

I am in the upper world.

Your house is protected and self-sufficient. You live in peace,

is it not a dangerous, a far too dangerous stake that you are playing for?

Also I am not permanently doomed to this free life, for I know that my term is measured, that I do not have to hunt here forever, and that, whenever I am weary of this life and wish to leave it, Someone, whose invitation I shall not be able to withstand, will, so to speak, summon me to him. And so I can pass my time here quite without care

Akin to the stoic philosophy of death. Inasmuch as it’s unchangeable, it’s beneath consideration

and yet I cannot. My burrow takes up too much of my thoughts.