Gregor Samsa and Josef K., amongst others, are eternal strangers in hostile environments, enduring long-lasting bouts of discomfort which often only resolve in death. From a “sort of monstrous insect” who worries more about being late to work than his newfound carapace ( The Metamorphosis), to a bank employee prosecuted for an unspoken – and probably unfounded – crime ( The Trial) and a land-surveyor prevented from working by the very fortress-state which summoned him in the first place ( The Castle), Kafka’s weary protagonists inhabit tiresome worlds where the concept of a home, both literal and abstract, emerges as an unattainable luxury. At the time of Auden’s writing – the apex of Kafka’s popularity – rarely had an author been so scrutinized for their uncanny merging of the realistic and fantastical, a literal take on the most seemingly surrealistic situations. Auden’s 1962 essay The I Without a Self, figures as a poet’s attempt to describe the uncapturable essence of Franz Kafka’s oeuvre. To take a single step exhausts the strength.” This quote, from W. “n no other imaginary world, I think, is everything so heavy.
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