Parables and Paradoxes is a bilingual edition of selected writings by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

 edited by Nahum N. Glatzer (Schocken Books

Schocken Books

Schocken Books is a publishing company that was established in Berlin with a publishing office in Prague in 1931 by the Schocken Department Store owner Salman Schocken. It published the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka and S. Y...

, 1961). In this volume of collected pieces, Kafka re-examines and rewrites some basic mythical tales of Ancient Israel, Hellas

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, the Far East

Far East

The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

, and the West

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

, as well as creations of his own imagination.

The material in the book is drawn from Kafka's notebooks, diaries, letters, short fictional works and the novel The Trial

The Trial

The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...

. An earlier version of the collection appeared under the title Parables, and included a smaller selection of works.

Contents

• On Parables
  On Parables
  On Parables is a short story fragment by Franz Kafka. The piece consists of a narrative on the merit of parables. If in fact, the debate over if they are useful or merely folklore handed down from one generation to the next...
  
  

I

• An Imperial Message
• Pekin and the Emperor
• The News of the Building of the Wall: a Fragment
• The Great wall and the Tower of Babel

II

• Paradise
• The Tower of Babel
• The Pit of Babel
• The City Coat of Arms
  The City Coat of Arms
  -Plot:The short story details the creation of the Tower of Babel. The narrator notes how many different people, from various nationalities had a hand in the construction. The massive scale of the project creates so many logistical and societal complications that it becomes impossible for...
  
  
• Abraham
• Mount Sinai
• The Building of the Temple
• The Animal in the Synagogue
• Before the Law
  Before the Law
  "Before the Law" is a parable in the novel The Trial , by Franz Kafka. "Before the Law" was published in Kafka's lifetime, while The Trial was not published until after Kafka's death.-"Before the Law":...
  
  
• The Watchman
• The Coming of the Messiah

III

• Prometheus
  Prometheus (Kafka)
  "Prometheus" is a short story by Franz Kafka written between 1917 and 1923. The story presents four versions of the myth of Prometheus, concerning his fate after he was chained to a cliff for betraying the secrets of the gods to men...
  
  
• Poseidon
  Poseidon (Kafka)
  -Plot:In the story, Poseidon sits not on Mount Olympus but at a desk. He is bored with his job, and discouraged that many believe the fables told of him. Abandoning his trident years ago, he has not seen much of the sea, only when he has to go to Olympus. Even then the sea is seen in flashes as he...
  
  
• The Silence of the Sirens
  The Silence of the Sirens
  The Silence of the Sirens is a short story by Franz Kafka.The story briefly discusses and re-analyzes the famous journey of Ulysses in which he confronts the deadly Sirens. Canonically, Ulysses tied himself to his ship's mast and blocked his ears so that he could experience the Sirens without...
  
  
• The Sirens
• Leopards in the Temple
• Alexander the Great
• Diogenes
• The New Attorney
  The New Advocate
  The New Advocate is a short story by Franz Kafka. It is a very brief piece, but bears importance because it illustrates Kafka's view on lawyers. A firm has hired a new associate, Bucephalos...
  
  

IV

• The Building of a City
• The Imperial Colonel
• The Emperor
• In the Caravanary
• The Cell
• The Invention of the Devil
• The Savages
• The Hunter Gracchus
  The Hunter Gracchus
  The Hunter Gracchus is a short story written by Franz Kafka.The story presents a death boat carrying the long dead Hunter Gracchus as it arrives at a port. The Burgomaster of Riva enters the boat and inside he meets Gracchus who gives him an account of his death while hunting and how he is...
  
   + Fragment
• The Vulture
  The Vulture (Kafka)
  "The Vulture" is a short story by Franz Kafka, written sometime between 1917 and 1923.-Plot summary:A vulture hacks at the protagonist's feet until a man passing by asks him why he doesn't do anything about it...
  
  
• The Green Dragon
• The Tiger
• The Problem of Our Laws
  The Problem of Our Laws
  The Problem of Our Laws is a short story by Franz Kafka.The story is actually a short narrative, where laws of the land are described as esoteric, created by the elite. Thus, being such they are out of the hands by the common people, yet binding. Nobility is seen as the authority, the creator and...
  
  
• The Refusal
  The Refusal
  The Refusal is a short story by Franz Kafka. Written in the autumn of 1920, it was not published in Kafka's lifetime.The story involves the narration of a young boy living in a small town that is fairly distanced from its capital...
  
  
• Couriers
• A Chinese Puzzle
• The Truth about Sancho Panza
  The Truth about Sancho Panza
  The Truth about Sancho Panza is a short story by Franz Kafka. As much a parable as a story, the short piece centers on the role of Sancho Panza, a principal character in Don Quixote. The narrator theorizes that Panza was in fact a well of tales, lore and wisdom, as well as having a particular demon...
  
  
• The Test
  The Test (Kafka)
  The Test is a short story by Franz Kafka. It is classified more of a parable thשn one of his formal stories, although it shares the ambiguity ubiquitous among much of his work. The story consists of a conversation between two men. The test is in the mind of one man, who sees if another behaves the...
  
  
• Robinson Crusoe
• The Spring
• The Hunger Strike
• My Destination

Translations

Parables and Paradoxes brings together short texts from the wide variety of Kafka's works. Since different texts were handled by different translators this volume allows readers to compare the various ways Kafka's works have been rendered into English. The translators included are:

• Clement Greenberg
  Clement Greenberg
  Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
  
  
• Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins
• Willa and Edwin Muir
  Edwin Muir
  Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
  
  
• Tania and James Stern
  James Stern
  James Stern Anglo-Irish writer of short stories and non-fiction.The son of a British cavalry officer of Jewish descent and an Anglo-Irish Protestant mother, Stern was born in County Meath, Ireland. After working in Southern Rhodesia as a young man, he worked for his family's bank in London and...