They read so closely that they find patterns hidden underneath the text in a manner akin only to psychoanalysisโperhaps more adeptly than a critic or an academic. In our first class, we looked around the folding table curiously as enthusiasts and translators at various professional stages introduced themselves.
Some were lucky-ass native speakers, others relative newcomers to the German language, but all of us shared an attraction to the Kafkaesque. Going around the group to share our thoughts, it was strange to be thrown back into a student state so many years after graduating, and I annoyingly immediately found myself in wise-ass mode, ceaselessly sub-clausing and cracking gay jokes.
I oscillated between Malcolm Pasley and Stanley Corngold. His language may be simple, but his sentences are anything but, presenting readers and especially translators with often-labyrinthine structures that emphasize or obscure their purposes.
And though most translations have called it Meditations or Contemplation , the title of the collection can also simply be understood as Looking. In other stories, windows feature frequently, as does the idea that impressions might be deceiving.
The book starts with an odd even for K. Though he seems to eventually immerse himself into their preteen spirits, running, tumbling, and singing as one, the story ends as follows:. Our time was up. I kissed the one next to me, reached hands to the three nearest, and began to run home, none called me back. At the first crossroads where they could no longer see me I turned off and ran by the field paths into the forest again.
