{"product_id":"k-isbn-9781400076123","title":"K.","description":"From the internationally acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eThe Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony \u003c\/i\u003ecomes one of the most significant books in recent years on a writer of perennial interest–a virtuoso interpretation of the work of Franz Kafka.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat are Kafka’s fictions about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Countless answers have been offered, but the essential mystery remains intact. Setting out on his own exploration, Roberto Calasso enters the flow, the tortuous movement, the physiology of Kafka’s work to discover why K. and Josef K.–the protagonists of \u003ci\u003eThe Castle \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e–are so radically different from any other character in the history of the novel, and to determine who, in the end, is K. The culmination of Calasso’s lifelong fascination with Kafka’s work, \u003ci\u003eK. \u003c\/i\u003eis also an unprecedented consideration of the mystery of Kafka himself.“For such a writer [as Kafka], Calasso is the ideal critic.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No one could bring more intelligence and cultural range to a fresh encounter with Kafka [than] the erudite and sophisticated Calasso. . . . His prose is a marvel, and \u003ci\u003eK. \u003c\/i\u003emakes for an exhilarating adventure.” –Frederick Crews, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Engaging. . . . As good an account of the strangeness of Kafka’s world and the reason for its bizarre coherence as anyone has offered.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Translucent and revelatory. . . . It’s a measure of Calasso’s accomplishment that his readings feel familiar, as though his erudition were inside us. . . . His tone, while epic, is also welcoming.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003eBorn in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Ruin of Kasch\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony\u003c\/i\u003e, which was the winner of France’s Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger; \u003ci\u003eKa\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eLiterature and the Gods\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eThe Forty-Nine Steps\u003c\/i\u003e.I. The Saturnine Sovereign\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At the beginning there's a wooden bridge covered with snow. Thick snow. K.  lifts his eyes \"toward what seemed to be emptiness,\" in die scheinbare  Leere. Literally: \"toward the seeming emptiness.\" He knows there's something  out in that emptiness: the Castle. He's never seen it before. He might never  set foot in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Kafka sensed that by then only the minimum number of elements of the  surrounding world ought to be named. He plunged the sharpest Ockham's razor  into the substance of the novel. To name the bare minimum, and in its pure  literality. And why so? Because the world was turning back into a primeval  forest, too fraught with strange noises and apparitions. Everything had too  much power. Thus it became necessary to limit oneself to what lay closest at  hand, to circumscribe the zone of the nameable. Then all that power,  otherwise diffuse, would be channeled there, and whatever was named--an inn,  a file, an office, a room--would fill with unprecedented energy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Kafka speaks of a world that precedes every division, every naming. It's not  a sacred or divine world, nor a world abandoned by the sacred or the divine.  It's a world that has yet to recognize such categories, to distinguish them  from everything else. Or that no longer knows how to recognize them or  distinguish them from everything else. All is a single unity, and it is  simply power. Both the greatest good and the greatest evil are saturated  with it. Kafka's subject is that mass of power, not yet differentiated,  broken down into its elements. It is the shapeless body of Vritra, which  contains the waters, before Indra runs it through with a thunderbolt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The invisible has a mocking tendency to present itself as the visible, as if  it might be distinguished from everything else, but only under certain  circumstances, such as the clearing away of mist. Thus one is persuaded to  treat it as the visible--and is immediately punished. But the illusion  remains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e are stories about attempts \u003ci\u003eto deal with a case:\u003c\/i\u003e to  extricate oneself from prosecution, to have one's nomination confirmed. The  point around which everything revolves is always \u003ci\u003eelection\u003c\/i\u003e, the mystery of  election, its impenetrable obscurity. In \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e, K. desires  election--and this thoroughly complicates every act. In \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e, Josef K.  wants to escape election--and this thoroughly complicates every act. To be  chosen, to be condemned: two possible outcomes of the same process. Kafka's  relationship to Judaism, every recess of which has been doggedly (often  fruitlessly) examined, emerges most clearly on this point, which marks the  essential difference between Judaism and what surrounded it. Much more so  than monotheism or law or higher morality. For each of these, one can look  to Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Greece for precedents and counterbalances. But the  emphasis on election--that's unique, and founded on a theology of the  unique.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The court has the power to punish, the Castle, to elect. These two powers  are perilously close, at times identical. More than anyone else, Kafka,  thanks to atavism and inclination, had antennae to recognize them. No one  else was so aware of their proximity, their overlap. But this wasn't only a  matter of Jewish heritage. It had to do with everyone, and all times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e share a premise: that election and condemnation are  \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e indistinguishable. That \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e is why we have two novels rather than  one. The elect and the condemned are the chosen, those who are singled out  among the many, among everyone. Their isolation lies at the root of the  anguish that engulfs them, whatever their fate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The main difference is this: condemnation is always certain, election always  uncertain. Unknown persons show up in Josef K.'s bedroom, devour his  breakfast, and inform him that he's being prosecuted on criminal charges.  The prosecution is itself already the sentence. And nothing could be as  undeniable as that intrusion in front of witnesses. For K., on the other  hand, doubt remains: had he really been named land surveyor? Was K. called,  or did he only wish to be called? Is he the legitimate holder of an of\u003cbr\u003ece,  however modest--or a braggart who claims a title that isn't his? On this  point K., who is nimble and tenacious in his analyses, proves evasive. His  history, prior to the \"long, difficult voyage\" that brought him to the  Castle, remains murky. Had he received a summons--or did he set out on his  voyage in order to obtain one? There's no way to know for certain. But there  are many ways to aggravate and exacerbate the uncertainty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The village superintendent tells K.: \"You've been taken on as a land  surveyor, as you say, but unfortunately we have no need for a surveyor.\" The  cruelty is not in the final phrase but in the piercing \"as you say.\" Nor do  Castle authorities ever admit anything else, leaving open until the end the  possibility that K.'s belief is delusory or simply feigned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    One fact only is certain, according to the superintendent, who likes to make  clear that he is \"not enough of an of\u003cbr\u003ecial\"--and therefore not of sufficient stature to handle such questions--since he is \"a peasant and nothing more.\"  And the fact is this: one day long ago a decree was issued ordering the  appointment of a land surveyor. But that remote decree, which the  superintendent would no doubt have forgotten had his illness not offered him  the chance to \"think back on the silliest matters,\" couldn't have had  anything at all to do with K. Like all decrees, it hovered above everyone  and everything, without specifying when and to whom it would be applied. And  it has languished ever since among the papers crammed in the cabinet in the  superintendent's bedroom. Though buried in that intimate, unsuitable place,  it has maintained its irradiant energy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But uncertainty's torment never ends. On one hand the superintendent  continues to converse with K., implying that K. has good reasons for  questioning him. On the other, he never goes so far as to recognize the  legitimacy of K.'s claim--and we've known at least since Hegel that the  human animal requires only recognition. The superintendent continues: \"Even  your summoning was carefully considered; it was just a few incidental  details that caused confusion.\" K.'s summoning, then, was in fact the object  of reection on the part of the authorities--but what of their conclusion?  Was K. ever called? It's a question the superintendent is careful not to  answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A further stage of torment emerges when the superintendent--while  reconstructing the complex history of the decree to appoint a land surveyor  and of the village's misdirected reply, issued by the superintendent  himself, to that decree (a misdirected reply evidenced, according to the  reconstruction, by an \"empty envelope,\" now misplaced)--lets it be  understood that sometimes, especially \"when a matter has been considered at  great length,\" it may resolve itself \"with lightning speed,\" \"as if the  official apparatus could no longer tolerate the tension,\" the prolonged  irritation of the unresolved question, and so proceeded to eliminate it by  reaching a decision \"without the help of the officials.\" Such a possibility,  therefore, does exist, as the superintendent himself admits. But could this  be what has happened in K.'s case? Here again the superintendent retreats,  offering no guarantees: \"I don't know whether such a decision was reached in  your case--some elements speak for it, others against.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    K. appeals to two other pieces of evidence to support his appointment: the  letter from the official Klamm, addressed to him, and the phone call from the  Castle the night he first arrived at the Bridge Inn, and these also--indeed  these above all--are cast into doubt. The letter from Klamm is (as the  salutation alone makes plain) a personal letter, and thus worthless as an  official declaration, even if it might be invaluable for other reasons. And  the telephone communication can't be anything other than misleading, since  \"there is no definite telephone connection to the Castle.\" The murmur, the  song that issues audibly from the phone as soon as any receiver is lifted in  the village, is the Castle's only acoustic manifestation. It is indistinct  and, moreover, nonlinguistic, a music composed of words gone back to their  source in pure sonic matter, prior to and stripped of all meaning. The  Castle communicates with the outside world through a continuous,  indecipherable sound. \"All the rest is misleading,\" says the superintendent.  Starting, then, with the clear and limpid word. At this point, like a great  academic who ends a seminar by sending the students off to other places and  classes to continue their debates, the superintendent tells K.: \"You should  know by now that the question of your being called here is too diffcult for  us to answer for you in the course of one little conversation.\" But all of  life is no more than a \"little conversation.\" And so the principle of the  irrepressible uncertainty of election is once again affirmed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The worlds of \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e run parallel to all other worlds but  not to each other. Each is, rather, the extension of the other. Josef K.  becomes K. Between them, a sentence and an execution. But the story is the  same--and it keeps going. Now it's not someone else who comes looking for  Josef K., but K. who goes looking for something. The terms are reversed. The  climate changes but remains familiar. Women, officials, clothes. Long  conversations, often terribly intimate, with strangers. A nagging feeling of  estrangement. \"I don't yet know a great deal about your legal system,\" says  Josef K.--despite the fact that at that moment he's in a suburb of his own  city, whose legal system he, as chief officer of a bank, is used to dealing  with every day. It's as if two incompatible laws hold sway simultaneously.  This is strange, but for Josef K. it will quickly cease to seem so, and not  just for him, but for the reader too--which is stranger still. Nothing is  further from The Trial than the sense of the fantastic, the visionary, the  \"extraordinary\" that we might associate with Poe. Indeed for the reader the  ever present suspicion is that it's a kind of verism. The reading catches  the reader by surprise, just as the guard Franz, wearing his \"travel  clothes,\" catches Josef K. by surprise in the \"riskiest moment of all\": that  of waking. The moment when one can be easily \"dragged off,\" if one isn't  prepared. And no one, on waking, is prepared. To be so, one would need to  find oneself already in an office. As K. says to Mrs. Grubach, \"For example,  in the bank I'm prepared; something like this could never happen to me  there.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e take place within the same psychic life. After the  execution of his sentence, Josef K. reappears under the name K. and  distances himself from the large city. \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e is Josef K.'s \u003ci\u003ebardo\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The world of the \u003ci\u003ebardo\u003c\/i\u003e--that \"intermediate state\" that the Tibetan Book of  the Dead teaches how to traverse--doesn't look drastically different from  the world of the living. But it doesn't easily permit return. Frieda's  fantasy of running away with K.--maybe \"to the south of France or to  Spain\"--seems as far-fetched and unattainable as a longing to live in the  Egypt of the pharaohs. Entering the \u003ci\u003ebardo\u003c\/i\u003e, like entering a dream, requires  only a slight twist of what is, but it's irreversible and skews all  relations. The procedures of the court in Josef K.'s city bear an obvious  kinship to those of the Castle administration, but nothing assures us that  their objectives coincide. The only sure things are certain differences of  style: at the Castle there is no need to expel or to kill, practices that  \u003ci\u003eThe Trial's\u003c\/i\u003e court, perhaps more primitive, still engages in. At the Castle,  it's enough that life goes on. The simple passing of time is the judgment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    What distinguishes both \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Castle\u003c\/i\u003e is that, from the first line  to the last, they unfold on the threshold of a hidden world that one  suspects is implicit in this world. Never had that threshold been such a  thin line or so ubiquitous. Never had those two worlds been brought so  terrifyingly close as to seem to touch. We can't say for sure whether that  hidden world is good or evil, heavenly or hellish. The only evidence is  something that overwhelms and envelops us. Like K., we alternate between  ashes of lucidity and bouts of torpor, sometimes mistaking one for the  other, with no one having the authority to correct us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Compared with all other fictional characters, K. is potentiality itself.  That's why his physical appearance can never be described, directly or  indirectly. We don't even know whether he has \"dark eyes\" like his  precursor, Josef K. And it isn't because K. undergoes, as Klamm does,  continuous metamorphoses, but rather because K. is the shape of what  happens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    December 1910--a barren, sullen time. Kafka uses his diary now mainly to  record observations on his own inability to write. \"With what can I justify  the fact that so far today I've written nothing? With nothing,\" we read in a  fragment. And immediately after: \"I hear in my head a continuous  incantation: 'O were you to come, invisible tribunal!'\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    With these words, as if he'd resorted to a powerful left-handed spell, Kafka  crosses the threshold into the enclosed space of \u003ci\u003eThe Trial\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe  Castle\u003c\/i\u003e--and indeed of all the rest of his work. This is the site of his  writing, where one awaits one's sentence, endures the delays of a  never-ending case. It's an agonizing place, but the only one where Kafka  knows he belongs. Newly arrived in the village beneath the Castle, having  already been rebuffed and harassed, K. knows only that he has \"come here to  stay,\" as if any other kind of life were already closed to him. And he  repeats: \"I will stay here.\" Then, as if \"talking to himself,\" he adds:  \"What could have drawn me to this wasteland, if not the desire to stay  here.\" The \"wasteland\" is the Promised Land. And the Promised Land is the  only land about which one can say, as K. does: \"I cannot emigrate.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    To be put on trial or to have dealings with the Castle is to enter into that  hidden, dangerous, elusive life from which every other life issues--and of  which every other life is only a poor counterfeit. The operation of a great  bank, like the one where Josef K. works, with its bright offices, its  spacious lobbies, and its corridors, imitates the sordid attic that houses  the court offices--not the other way around. And one needs only to open the  door to a junk room, in the bank's own offices, to find the court at work, as  represented by a persecutor (\"the flogger\") and two victims. It is the court  that encompasses daily life--not daily life that accommodates the court.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300423717093,"sku":"NP9781400076123","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400076123.jpg?v=1767730605","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/k-isbn-9781400076123","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}