Kafka The Castle Quotes

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.

I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

You misinterpret everything, even the silence.

If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.

Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.

No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".

Illusions are more common than changes in fortune

Deceptions are more frequent than changes

There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought

It isn’t easy to understand exactly what she is saying, for one doesn’t know whether she is speaking ironically or seriously, it’s mostly serious, but sounds ironic. - “Stop interpreting everything!” said K.

and i would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

all [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters

Our winters are very long here, very long and very monotonous. But we don't complain about it downstairs, we're shielded against the winter. Oh, spring does come eventually, and summer, and they last for a while, but now, looking back, spring and summer seem too short, as if they were not much more than a couple of days, and even on those days, no matter how lovely the day, it still snows occasionally.

those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.

Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.

Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts.

Du kannst jemanden, der die Augen verbunden hat, noch so sehr aufmuntern, durch das Tuch zu starren, er wird doch niemals etwas sehen; erst wenn man ihm das Tuch abnimmt, kann er sehen.

It seemed to K. as if at last those people had broken off all relations with him, and as if now in reality he were freer than he had ever been, and at liberty to wait here in this place usually forbidden to him as long as he desired, and had won a freedom such as hardly anybody else had ever succeeded in winning, and as if nobody could dare touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him, but — this conviction was at least equally as strong — as if at the same time there was nothing more senseless, more hopeless, than this freedom, this waiting, this inviolability.

How suicidal happiness can be!

When K. looked at the castle, often it seemed to him as if he were observing someone who sat quietly there in front of him gazing, not lost in thought and so oblivious of everything, but free and untroubled, as if he were alone with nobody to observe him, and yet must notice that he was observed, and all the same remained with his calm not even slightly disturbed; and really - one did not know whether it was cause or effect - the gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there, but slid away.

Early Morning in Your Room It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep. The gray light as you pour gleaming water-- It seems you've traveled years to get here. Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery Had its way, poverty, no money at least. Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over. Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books: The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter to his Father, are all here. You can dance With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling With only one eye. Even the blind man Can see. That's what they say. If you had A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

to be sure, all that pointless standing about and waiting day after day always starting all over again without any prospect of change, will wear a man down and make him doubtful, and ultimately incapable of anything but that despairing standing about.

Faptele dumneavoastra vor lasa poate urme adînci de pasi în zapada, dar atît.

Oh, if only you knew how hard I try to find a kernel of good for myself in all you do and say, even if it torments me.

Hier war es wohl die Müdigkeit inmitten glücklicher Arbeit; etwas, was nach außen hin wie Müdigkeit aussah und eigentlich unzerstörbare Ruhe, unzerstörbarer Frieden war.

Official decisions are as elusive as young girls.

It seemed to k. as if all contact with him had been cut and he was more of a free agent than ever. He could wait here, in a place usually forbidden to him, as long as he liked, and he also felt as if he gad won that freedom with more effort than most people could manage to make, and no one could touch him or drive him away, why, they hardly had a right even to adress him. But at the same time - and this feeling was at least as strong - he felt as if there were nothing more meaningless and more desperate than this freedom, this waiting, this invulnerability.

Kafka noted in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollak that “some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

He certainly goes into the offices, but are the offices really the castle? And even if the castle does have offices, are they the offices which Barnabas is allowed to enter?

He is a land surveyor, well, perhaps that is something, he has trained at something, but if there's nothing you can do with that training then it means nothing.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Evidentemente, soy muy ignorante, la verdad es esa, y es muy triste para mi, pero esto supone una ventaja: El ignorante osa a más cosas. También estoy preparado para soportar todavía un poco la ignorancia y sus consecuencias -malas, de acuerdo- tanto como resistan mis fuerzas.

He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who merely resembles Klamm? Perhaps at the very most a secretary who is a little like Klamm and goes to great lengths to be even more like him and tries to seem important by affecting Klamm’s drowsy, dreamlike manner. That part of his being is easiest to imitate, many try to do so; as for the rest of his being, though, they wisely steer clear of it. And a man such as Klamm, who is so often the object of yearning and yet so rarely attained, easily takes on a variety of shapes in the imagination of people. For instance, Klamm has a village secretary here called Momus. Really? You know him? He too keeps to himself but I have seen him a couple of times. A powerful young gentleman, isn’t he? And so he probably doesn’t look at all like Klamm? And yet you can find people in the village who would swear that Momus is Klamm and none other than he. That’s how people create confusion for themselves. And why should it be any different at the Castle?

Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.” “Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.” “You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? 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.

When you read The Arabian Nights you accept Islam. You accept the fables woven by generations as if they were by one single author or, better still, as if they had no author. And in fact they have one and none. Something so worked on, so polished by generations is no longer associated with and individual. In Kafka's case, it's possible that his fables are now part of human memory. What happened to Quixote could happen to to them. Let's say that all the copies of Quixote, in Spanish and in translation, were lost. The figure of Don Quixote would remain in human memory. I think that the idea of a frightening trial that goes on forever, which is at the core of The Castle and The Trial (both books that Kafka, of course, never wanted to publish because he knew they were unfinished), is now grown infinite, is now part of human memory and can now be rewritten under different titles and feature different circumstances. Kafka's work now forms a part of human memory.

The feeding of the Muse then, which we have spent most of our time on here, seem to me to be the continual running after loves, the checking of these loves against one's present and future needs, the moving on from simple textures to more complex ones, from naive ones to more informed ones, from nonintellectual to intellectual ones. Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and out aside in your life. From an ever-roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from nursery rhyme to symphony, from jungle compound to Kafka's Castle, there is basic excellence to be winnowed out, truths found, kept, savored, and used on some later day. To be a child of one's time is to do all these things.

And where do you see in all this the influence of the Castle?" asked K. "So far it doesn't seem to have come in. What you've told me about is simply the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbor, specious friendship, things that can be found anywhere,...

The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself. Call center angst is one more illustration of the way that Kafka is poorly understood as exclusively a writer on totalitarianism; a decentralized, market Stalinist bureaucracy is far more Kafkaesque than one in which there is a central authority. Read, for instance, the bleak farce of K’s encounter with the telephone system in the Castle, and it is hard not to see it as uncannily prophetic of the call center experience.

answer. How else is he going to understand what is obvious to us, that Herr Klamm never will speak to him – what am I saying, never

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one's own castle.

Hers was a nature made for intrigue, apparently working for no purpose, like the wind, according to strange and distant orders of which no one ever got a sight.

Absurdo, completamente absurdo, una misma se confunde cuando juega con esos absurdos

Правда, от болезни и усталости даже крестьянские лица становятся утонченней.

Ce n’est pas à l’ampleur du travail que celle du cas se mesure, si vous avez de telles idées vous êtes encore bien loin de comprendre l’administration.

INTERVIEWER Why don’t you write tragedy? BARTHELME I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man—makes for mixtures. INTERVIEWER Apparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes—the parting of two lovers, for instance—and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle. BARTHELME The assistants. INTERVIEWER And the audience doesn’t know what to do. BARTHELME The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done. [...] I think of the line from the German writer Heimito von Doderer: “At first you break windows. Then you become a window yourself.

K. knew that there was no threat of actual compulsion, he had no fear of that, especially not here, but the force of these discouraging surroundings and of the increasing familiarity with ever more predictable disappointments, the force of scarcely perceptible influences at every moment, these he certainly did fear, but even in the face of this danger he had to risk taking up the struggle.

Ona osama koja mi je najvećim dijelom oduvijek bila prisilno nametnuta, a djelomično sam je i ja tražio, ali i to je bilo nekom prisilom – sada, idući u krajnost postaje nedvosmislena. Kamo ona vodi?

and was built into the shape of a balcony at the top, with insecure, irregular battlements, crumbling as if drawn by an anxious or careless child as they stood out, zigzag fashion, against the blue sky.

The conclusion to be drawn from this was that this was in its way a quite different sort of fatigue from K.'s. Here it was doubtless fatigue amid happy work, something that outwardly looked like fatigue and was actually indestructible repose, indestructible peace. If one is a little tired at noon, that is part of the happy natural course of the day. 'For the gentlemen here it is always noon,' K. said to himself.

The officials are very well educated, but only in a one-sided way; in his own department, an official will see a whole train of ideas behind a single word, but you can spend hours on end explaining matters from another department to him, and while he may nod politely he doesn’t understand a bit of it. Of course that’s all perfectly natural, you just have to think of the little official matters affecting yourself, tiny things that an official will deal with merely by shrugging his shoulders, you just have to understand that thoroughly, and then you will have plenty to occupy your mind all your life and never run out of ideas.

Por más que animes tanto como quieras, a alguien que tiene los ojos vendados, a mirar a través de su venda, no verá jamás. No empezará a ver más hasta que se quite la venda. Es ayuda lo que Barnabás necesita, no ánimos.

Amalia smiled, and that smile, although a sad one, lit up her sombre face, made her silence eloquent and her strangeness familiar. It was like the telling of a secret, a hitherto closely guarded possession that could be taken back, but never taken back entirely.

Under the conditions prevailing here the servant could not work unerringly, some time the accumulated annoyance, the accumulated uneasiness, must break ou t, and if it manifested itself only in the tearing up of a little piece of paper it was still comparatively innocent.

In Steven Soderbergh’s film Kafka, Jeremy Irons, in the lead role, sneaks into a creepy castle (based, of course, on The Castle) through a cabinet filled with rows of drawers. When I saw that scene, it struck me that it looked like a spatial representation of my own brain. It’s a really interesting film, so check out that scene if you get the chance.

İşte bütün bunlar K.’ya kendisiyle bütün bağların koparıldığı, şimdi doğal olarak her zamankinden daha özgür olduğu ve ona başka zaman yasak olan bu yerde istediği kadar bekleyebileceği hissini verdi; sanki özgürlüğünü kimsenin yapamayacağı bir mücadeleyle elde etmişti ve kimse ona dokunamazdı, onu kovamazdı, hatta onunla konuşamazdı bile; ama bu inanç öylesine güçlüydü ki, sanki aynı zamanda bu özgürlükten, bu bekleyişten, bu dokunulmazlıktan daha anlamsız ve çaresiz bir şey yoktu.

From the mouthpiece came a humming, the likes of which K. had never heard on the telephone before. It was as though the humming of countless childlike voices — but it wasn't humming either, it was singing, the singing of the most distant, of the most utterly distant, voices — as though a single, high-pitched yet strong voice had emerged out of this humming in some quite impossible way and now drummed against one's ears as if demanding to penetrate more deeply into something other than one's wretched hearing.

In Kafka’s novel The Castle,{9} the chief character devotes his life to a frantic and desperate endeavor to communicate with the authorities in the castle who control all aspects of the life of the village, and who have the power to tell him his vocation and give some meaning to his life. Kafka’s hero is driven “by a need for the most primitive requisites of life, the need to be rooted in a home and a calling, and to become a member of a community.” {10} But the authorities in the castle remain inscrutable and inaccessible,

Kafka is an ethical, not an aesthetic, writer. There is no conclusion to his books. The Castle was actually unfinished, but what ending could there be to it? And there is some doubt about the proper order of the chapters in The Trial—it does not really seem to matter very much in which order you read them, since the book as a whole does not get you anywhere. (An uncharitable reader might disagree, and say that it throws fresh light on the Judiciary.) In this it is faithful to life as we actually experience it. There is no 'happy ending' or 'tragic ending' or 'comic ending' to life, only a 'dead ending'—and then we start again. We suffer, because we refuse to be reconciled with this lamentable fact; and even though we may say that life is meaningless we continue to think and act as if it had a meaning. Kafka's heroes (or hero, 'K.'—himself and not himself) obstinately persist in making efforts that they understand perfectly well are quite pointless—and this with the most natural air in the world. And, after all, what else can one do? Notice, in The Trial, how the notion of guilt is taken for granted. K. does not question the fact that he is guilty, even though he does not know of what he is guilty—he makes no attempt to discover the charge against him, but only to arrange for his defence. For both Kierkegaard and Heidegger, guilt is fundamental in human existence. (And it is only the Buddha who tells us the charge against us—avijjā.)

I’ve never seen Klamm, Frieda doesn’t like me very much, as you know, and she would never have let me have a look at him; but of course they know very well what he looks like in the village, some people have seen him, they’ve all heard of him, and from these glimpses and rumours, as well as some deliberately misleading reports, a picture of Klamm has emerged that is probably generally accurate. But only generally; otherwise it varies, and perhaps it doesn’t even vary as much as Klamm’s actual appearance. He is supposed to look quite different when he arrives in the village and when he leaves, different before and after he’s been drinking beer, different when he’s awake and when he’s asleep, different when he’s alone and when he’s talking to someone – and then, as you can imagine, almost completely different up at the Castle. And even when he’s in the village there are reports of quite substantial differences, differences in his height, his shape, his weight, his beard. Fortunately, there’s one thing the descriptions agree about, his clothes – he’s always dressed the same: in a black frock coat with long tails. Of course, all these differences are due to magic, they are quite understandable because they depend on the present mood, the level of excitement, the countless degrees of hope or despair on the part of the observer, who is in any case only able to catch a momentary glimpse of Klamm. I’m telling you all this just as Barnabas has often explained it to me, and on the whole it’s reassuring as long as one’s not directly or personally involved. It doesn’t affect me, but for Barnabas it’s a matter of vital importance whether it’s really Klamm he is talking to or not.’ ‘It’s

The Feeding of the Muse then, which we have spent most of our time on here, seems to me to be the continual running after loves, the checking of these loves against one’s present and future needs, the moving on from simple textures to more complex ones, from naïve ones to more informed ones, from nonintellectual to intellectual ones. Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life. From an ever-roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from nursery rhyme to symphony, from jungle compound to Kafka’s Castle, there is basic excellence to be winnowed out, truths found, kept, savored, and used on some later day. To be a child of one’s time is to do all these things. Do not, for money, turn away from all the stuff you have collected in a lifetime. Do not, for the vanity of intellectual publications, turn away from what you are—the material within you which makes you individual, and therefore indispensable to others.

I haven't re-read Kafka for forty years. I had a second read-through when first teaching English at the University of Warwick in the 1970s, but since then have not been tempted to return. The reason for this, I suspect, is that he is a young person's writer, not in the sense that only the young can appreciate him, but because on first exposure he is so comprehensively and unexpectedly formative that you may never feel the need to read him again. He becomes part of you, and your mind and spirit and view of the human condition are inhabited by his stories, his views, and especially his characters: by poor persecuted Josef K., by Gregor Samsa trapped in his rotting shell, by the hunger artist, yearning to find something, anything, that is actually good to eat, by poor K., who can't get into the castle to visit the Authorities. Kafkaesque: a world incomprehensible, alienating and threatening, absurd. We visit it with incomprehension and at our peril, lost at all points, disorientated, inoculated against faith, searchers for meaning in a book - and universe that either has none, or in which it lurks inaccessibly. Once you have read Kafka, you know this.

Stătea întinsă pe spate cu braţele desfăcute, ca într-o sfârşeală din dragoste ; de atâta voluptate timpul i se părea de bună seamă fără sfârşit şi cânta, mai mult în suspine, un cântecel oarecare. Văzând că el rămâne tăcut, dus pe gânduri, tresări speriată şi începu să-l smucească apoi ca un copil, spunându-i : - Hai, vino, aici ne sufocăm. Se îmbrăţişară, trupul ei puţintel ardea sub mâinile lui K., se rostogoliră cu câţiva metri mai încolo într-o inconştienţă din care K. încerca mereu să se smulgă făcând eforturi zadarnice, se loviră cu un zgomot surd de uşa lui Klamm şi apoi rămaseră culcaţi în micile băltoace de bere şi în alte gunoaie răspândite pe podea. Acolo petrecură ore întregi, ore de răsuflare în comun, de bătăi de inimă comune, ore în care K. avea mereu senzaţia că se rătăceşte pe meleaguri străine sau că a ajuns atât de departe ca nimeni înaintea lui, într-o străinătate unde nici măcar aerul nu avea vreun comportament din atmosfera de acasă, unde trebuie să te sufoci de înstrăinare şi unde, împresurat de tentaţiile ei absurde, nu poţi face totuşi altceva decât să mergi înainte, să rătăceşti mai departe. Aşa că nu simţi spaimă în primul moment, ci mai degrabă o revenire consolatoare din obnubilaţie, când auzi că o voce profundă, poruncitor-calmă, o strigă pe Frieda din camera lui Klamm. "Frieda !" îi zice K. la ureche, transmiţându-i astfel chemarea. Mânată de o supunere de-a dreptul înnăscută, Frieda voia să sară în picioare, dar apoi îşi aminti unde se află, îşi întinse braţele, râse încetişor şi zise : - Cum îţi închipui că o să mă duc. Nu mai mă duc niciodată la el. K. voia să o contrazică, s-o convingă să se ducă la Klamm, începu să strângă de pe jos ce mai rămăsese din bluza ei, dar nu era în stare să spună nimic, era prea fericit s-o ţină pe Frieda între mâinile lui, prea fericit şi temător în acelaşi timp, căci i se păre că dacă Frieda îl părăseşte, îl părăseşte tot ce-i al lui.

Quite simple,” said the chairman, “you haven’t really come into contact with our authorities. All those contacts are merely apparent, but in your case, because of your ignorance of the situation here, you think they’re real. As for the telephone: look, in my own house, though I certainly deal often with the authorities, there’s no telephone. At inns and in places like that it may serve a useful purpose, along the lines, say, of an automated phonograph, but that’s all. Have you ever telephoned here, you have? Well then, perhaps you can understand me. At the Castle the telephone seems to work extremely well; I’ve been told the telephones up there are in constant use, which of course greatly speeds up the work. Here on our local telephones we hear that constant telephoning as a murmuring and singing, you must have heard it too. Well, this murmuring and singing is the only true and reliable thing that the local telephones convey to us, everything else is deceptive. There is no separate telephone connection to the Castle and no switchboard to forward our calls; when anyone here calls the Castle, all the telephones in the lowest-level departments ring, or all would ring if the ringing mechanism on nearly all of them were not, and I know this for certain, disconnected. Now and then, though, an overtired official needs some diversion—especially late in the evening or at night—and turns on the ringing mechanism, then we get an answer, though an answer that’s no more than a joke. That’s certainly quite understandable. For who can claim to have the right, simply because of some petty personal concerns, to ring during the most important work, conducted, as always, at a furious pace? Nor can I understand how even a stranger can believe that if he calls Sordini, for instance, it really is Sordini who answers. Quite the contrary, it’s probably a lowly filing clerk from an entirely different department. But it can happen, if only at the most auspicious moment, that someone telephones the lowly filing clerk and Sordini himself answers. Then of course it's best to run from the telephone before hearing a sound.

Kafka’s The Castle came to mind, a book I had not read but that fell into that category of literature that culture reads on your behalf and deposits somewhere inside you.

K. wydało się, że przerwano z nim wszelką łączność i że jest teraz jakby wolniejszy, niż był kiedykolwiek, i może tu, na tym skądinąd zakazanym miejscu, czekać, jak długo zechce. Zdawało mu się, że wywalczył sobie wolność, której nikt inny zdobyć by nie potrafił, i nikt nie ma prawa dotknąć go albo wyrzucić, a nawet przemówić do niego. Ale wydawało mu się także - i to przekonanie było co najmniej równie silne - że nie ma nic bardziej bezsensownego i rozpaczliwego niż ta wolność, to czekanie i ta nietykalność.

But is all your earlier life really so remote from you (except, of course, for the landlady, and there’s no getting rid of her) that you no longer know how one must fight to make any progress, particularly when you start from so far below? How any method offering any kind of hope must be used?

It was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay deep in snow. There was nothing to be seen of Castle Mount, for mist and darkness surrounded it, and not the faintest glimmer of light showed where the great castle lay. K. stood on the wooden bridge leading from the road to the village for a long time, looking up at what seemed to be a void. Then he went in search of somewhere to stay the night. People were still awake at the inn. The landlord had no room available, but although greatly surprised and confused by the arrival of a guest so late at night, he was willing to let K. sleep on a straw mattress in the saloon bar. K. agreed to that. Several of the local rustics were still sitting over their beer, but he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He fetched the straw mattress down from the attic himself, and lay down near the stove. It was warm, the locals were silent, his weary eyes gave them a cursory inspection, and then he fell asleep.

Who are they?’ asked K. ‘Klamm’s servants,’ said Frieda. ‘He always brings them with him, and their presence upsets me. I hardly know what I was discussing with you just now, Mr Land Surveyor, and if there was anything wrong in it you must forgive me. I blame it on the company here, they are the most contemptible and repulsive people I know, and here am I, obliged to fill up their beer glasses. How often I’ve asked Klamm to leave them behind! I have to put up with other gentlemen’s servants too—he might think of me for once, but whatever I say it’s no use, an hour before he arrives they come barging in like cattle into the cowshed. And now they really must go to the stables where they belong. If you weren’t here I’d open that door and Klamm himself would have to drive them out.’ ‘Doesn’t he hear them, then?’ asked K. ‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s asleep.’ ‘What!’ cried K. ‘Asleep? When I looked into the room he was awake and sitting at the desk.’ ‘He’s still sitting there like that,’ said Frieda. ‘He was already asleep when you saw him—would I have let you look in otherwise? That’s the position he sleeps in, the gentlemen sleep a great deal, it’s hard to understand. Then again, if he didn’t sleep so much, how could he stand those men? Well, I’ll have to chase them out myself.’ And picking up a whip from the corner, she took a single awkward leap high into the air, rather like a lamb gambolling, and made for the dancers. At first they turned to her as if she were a new dancer joining them, and indeed, for a moment it looked as if Frieda would drop the whip, but then she raised it again. ‘In the name of Klamm,’ she cried, ‘out into the stables, all of you, out into the stables.’ Now they saw that she was serious, and in a kind of terror that K. couldn’t understand, they began crowding away to the back of the room. A door was pushed open by the first to get there, night air blew in, and they all disappeared with Frieda, who was obviously driving them across the yard to the stables.

K. was not afraid of the landlady’s threats, and he was tired of the hopes in which she was trying to entangle him. Klamm was far away; the landlady had once compared Klamm to an eagle, which had struck K. as ridiculous at the time, but not any more; he thought of Klamm’s remote distance, his impregnable residence, his silence, perhaps interrupted only by such screams as K. had never heard. He thought of Klamm’s piercing glance from on high that would brook no contradiction and couldn’t be tested either, of the immutable circles in which he soared, free from any interference by the likes of K. down below, moving by inscrutable laws and visible only for brief moments—Klamm and the eagle had all this in common.

Barnabas goes to the offices, mingles with the servants as if he were one of them, even occasionally sees an official in the distance, he is regularly given important letters to carry, why, even oral messages are entrusted to him to be delivered. That’s a great deal, and we can be proud of what he has already achieved at such a young age.’ K. nodded. There was no thought of going home in his mind now. ‘Does he have his own livery too?’ he asked. ‘The jacket, you mean?’ said Olga. ‘No, Amalia made that for him even before he was a messenger. But you are close to touching a sore point. For a long time he’d have liked to have, well, not a livery, because there is no such thing at the castle, but an official suit, and he was promised one too, but they are very dilatory about such things at the castle, and the worst of it is that you never know what the delay means. It could mean that the matter is going through official channels, but then again it could mean that the official process hasn’t even begun, that—for instance—they want to test Barnabas more first. And finally , it could also mean that the case has already been through official channels, and Barnabas will never get that suit. Nothing can be discovered in more detail, or only after a long time. We have a saying here—maybe you know it—“ Official decisions are as elusive as young girls.

he couldn’t refrain from contributing his own mite of experience, thereby convincing himself more clearly of its existence as well as his own.

They embraced one another, her little body burned in K.’s hands, they rolled, in a semi-conscious state from which K. tried constantly but unsuccessfully to surface, a little way on, bumped into Klamm’s door with a hollow thud, then lay there in the puddles of beer and the rubbish

perhaps he made too much of the assistants’ bad habits; they were young fellows, cheerful and a little simple, taken into a stranger’s service for the first time, away from the stern discipline of the castle and so a little surprised and excited all the time, and in that frame of mind, yes, they did sometimes do silly things. Of course it was natural to get annoyed about that, but it would be more sensible to laugh.

There are obstacles, questionable matters, disappointments, but this merely shows, as we already knew, that nothing is given to you on a platter, that you yourself have to fight for every trifle, another reason for being proud, not dejected.

And if you daren’t go to see Klamm on that kind of subject, maybe you wouldn’t be let in to see him on far more important business, if Klamm is entirely inaccessible—though only to you and your like, because Frieda, for instance, can pop in and see him whenever she wants—well, if that’s the case, you still can find out, you’d think you only had to wait. Klamm wouldn’t allow such a false rumour to circulate for long, he really likes to know what’s said about him in the bar and the guest-rooms, all that is very important to him, and if it’s false he’ll soon put it right. But he hasn’t put it right, so people think there’s nothing to put right and it is the truth. What you see is only Frieda taking the beer to Klamm’s room and coming out again with the payment, but Frieda tells you what you haven’t seen, and you have to believe her. Although in fact she doesn’t tell you, she wouldn’t reveal such mysteries, no, the secrets spread of their own accord around her, and once they’ve spread she doesn’t shrink from speaking of them herself, but in a modest way, without claiming anything, just referring to what’s common knowledge.

Amália sorriu e, apesar de triste, o sorriso iluminou o rosto sombrio e fechado, fez falar o que silenciava, tornou familiar o que era estranho: era a entrega de um segredo, de uma posse até então bem guardada, que na verdade podia ser tomada outra vez de volta, mas nunca por completo.

.تۆ به‌ هه‌ڵه‌ له‌ هه‌موو شتێك تێ ده‌گه‌یت، ته‌نانه‌ت بێده‌نگیش

The church tower, firm in line, soaring unfalteringly to its tapering point, topped with red tiles and broad in the roof, an earthly building – what else can men build? – but with a loftier goal than the humble dwelling-houses and a clearer meaning than the muddle of everyday life.

A fine setting for a fit of despair,” it occurred to him, “if I were only standing here by accident instead of design.

Those who choose to despise us find themselves in the best company.

The grid of Circuits I and II creates four quadrants. Note that Hostile Strength (the tyrant) is inclined to paranoid withdrawal; he must govern, but he is also afraid. Cf. the careers of Hitler, Stalin, Howard Hughes, etc. and the inaccessible Castle and Court in Kafka’s allegories. Note also that the dependent neurotic is not in retreat at all; he or she advances upon you, demanding fulfillment of emotional “needs” (imprints).

None of this was too painful, it was another of life's perpetual little torments, that was all, nothing when measured against what K. aspired to, he had not come to this place to lead a life of peace and honour

Usted es muy severo, dijo el alcalde, pero multiplique esa severidad por mil y seguirá siendo una minucia comparada con la severidad que aplica la administración contra si misma

Her şeyi yanlış değerlendiriyorsunuz, sessizliği de.

Konu yalnızca unutmak değil, çok daha ötesi. Çünkü insan unuttuğuyla yeniden tanışabilir.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self

Los testimonios no concuerdan sino el tema de su ropa: lleva siempre el mismo traje, un chaqué negro con largos faldones. Como es natural, esas diferencias no son efecto de una operación mágica, sino que dependen del humor con el que se mira a Klamm y de que los demás no tienen sino un breve instante para mirarle; las diferencias dependen del grado emocional del espectador y de los innumerables matices de su esperanza o de su desesperación.

No lo haces de forma intencionada, son las circunstancias las que te empujan a ello, pues quieres demasiado a Amalia y deseas verla superior a todas las demás; pero al no hallar nada suficientemente elogiable en la propia Amalia para justificar ese pedestal, rebajas a las demás mujeres para lograr tus propósitos.

onu yalnızca unutmak değil, çok daha ötesi. Çünkü insan unuttuğuyla yeniden tanışabilir.

who still hadn’t lost interest in him and who, with their bulging lips, open mouths, and almost tortured faces—their heads looked as if they had been beaten flat on top and their features shaped in the pain of the beating

anything that man could approve must be worthless.

And in a spirit of contradiction which he didn’t even try to explain he added, as if to himself: ‘What could have lured me to this desolate part of the country but a longing to stay here?

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self.

One does not have to believe everything is true, one only has to believe it is necessary.' 'Depressing thought,' K. said. 'It makes the lie fundamental to world order.

Usted no pertenece al castillo, no es del pueblo, usted es un don nadie

Le ha salvado y al hacerlo se ha sacrificado