Interesting that you bring up “community” and “inner exile." I'm commenting here on my own process. To create, I need to create an inner world and shut out the noise of the outer world, and then the art somehow brings me to community. And yet, I need to poke out my head and ask questions or do research to further mold and embellish that creation. Both exile and community at odds and alongside each other - a struggle for balance. The community that can nourish more creation or provide the audience to stoke new creation. And then the retreat to focus and create.
I so agree, JC--and you add to this discussion key components of the struggle and process of creative work. Much appreciated. I thank you for engaging here.
Wishing to offer how much of Kafka was written at night. A different animal, night is, a porcupine plodding with the energy from way back at the egg. With the wit that K brings to disaster, i like to give him credit for his daytime fantasizing in the way Freud insulted and later analysts admire. As long as it does not hurt anyone Adam Phillips says day dreaming allows us to grow maybe? Aspirational words but permission is a positive comfort in my scheme of life. I break things and lean too heavily on things when it is duty spot to cup with duty.
Excellent. Love me some Joyce. And Kafka. Yes: Nietzsche was a madman genius; most writers after him must have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by him on some level, surely. He drew the existential line in the sand. Though really Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard did it first.
One interesting comment Christopher Hitchens made once though was that it seemed odd for Nietzsche to claim ‘god is dead’ because in order to believe that you’d first have to believe that god existed, for something non-existent cannot die since it doesn’t exist in the first place. Which seems to be a contradiction. Yet we grasp what N means of course. God is an illusion; a hall of human mirrors created out of our own desire and fear. We must be our own ‘god.’ The Superman.
“Woolf, Joyce—and Kafka address how to decide what one ought to do when one is alone, separated from society and believes society may not offer a set of shared values that work.”
Yes! Which is precisely why these modernist authors provide spiritual nourishment now more than ever. Has there ever been a more isolated, lonely, disconnected time than now? It’s ironic, of course; we have the tools of almost total connection at our fingertips, and yet there’s a whole generation of young people who feel more alone than ever. I’d say they should revisit Kafka...but most of them don’t read 🤣 Modernists? Or TikTok? We know the winner. Sad but largely true.
Thank you, Mary, for this gift of your research, thoughts, insight. For us not-so-literary types, it opens worlds and reminds us of the importance of the question rather than the answer. Much to digest. I am glad to have found Inner Life and look forward to what comes from you and the other contributors.
I love this, Mary: "We know that art gets made even under the most dire of circumstances, that it gets made, most often, with no hope even of compensation, let alone fame. If the human spirit can’t help but make art, then hope, not despair, resides in that effort." I was meditating on something similar in today's post without realizing that you'd be sharing an updated version of this piece. The way I came of age as a writer was by awakening to the conversation with a reader -- moving beyond my instincts for self-expression toward an intentional craft that sought to give imagined readers gifts of insight, of beauty, and of other forms of meaning. Much of my frustration (and occasional gloom, if not actual despair) as an independent writer has stemmed from the realization that the very corporate/capitalist forces that pushed me out of academe had been working simultaneously on the publishing industry. This has really shaken my belief in writing for a general audience, and I think I need some time to understand who I'm writing for if the old notion of winning over a stranger seems to be waning in the face of sure bets: celebrity memoirs, trendy identity marketing, etc.
However, I think of our friendship and collaboration as proof that something of that old order still exists. Substack, ironically, has brought us together. We don't write for Substack the same way we once wrote in isolation and sent our manuscripts prayerfully off to editors in distant places. But we can still resist the pressure to make ourselves to the measure of the market rather than managing the more delicate balancing act of satisfying our own artistic hunger in ways that connect us to others.
Lots to consider here, but I'm grateful to be a kindred spirit in this quest for meaning and connection.
I so agree with all you've said, Josh. I do hope we're making a difference and am grateful for this collaboration with you and our guest essayists--most important, for our friendship.
There were sure bets during the times of Joyce, Kafka, and Woolf too, and not one of them enjoyed the "rewards" of pandering to them. Theirs (and yours, should you take it upon yourself) was, and continues to be, a long game. I truly believe that any conventional success any of them received in their lifetimes was a stroke of luck, just as it is now. If anything about their audiences gives evidence to their greatness, it's that they continue to grow, generation by generation.
So don't lose heart. If you're in the business of "winning over strangers," this data-heavy culture will record your output and hold onto it for future readers to find. In the meantime, create what your heart prompts you to create. For all the faults of the Internet, you can rely on it for one thing: it never forgets.
Mary put it more eloquently:
"I’m saying that the search for meaning makes a difference in the world. It defies nihilism by the very act of making something, something “other,” that is of the self but not the self."
And then this:
"A writer’s work, the novel in a trunk in the attic, the poems unpublished and in a drawer, the painting stored against the wall may very well be a call with no hope of an answer. But each is still a call."
What a lovely and generous comment. Your advice, too, so appreciated. Thank you so, Andrew, for engaging here and with such kindness. You give me hope.
It’s hard to think of Kafka as part of modernism the way Joyce and Woolf were, simply because his works were not translated into English until the 30s, well after peak modernism. So while Pound and Eliot could be big fans of Joyce in 1922 (Woolf was not), it’s really the postmodernists who were influenced by Kafka.
For example, The Trial was translated into very British English by the Muirs in 1937; our first postmodernist, Borges, wrote “Pierre Menard” in 1939; Borges also wrote a fascinating piece called “Kafka and His Precursors.”
And while it’s tempting in retrospect to think of them as contemporaries, Kafka wrote The Trial as a citizen of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian empire, whereas Joyce and Woolf wrote under the aegis of the more stable British empire, which alone among the European empires survived WWI.
Those are two very different worlds. Kafka’s is one of bureaucracy, which he also saw in his legal work, and obscurity (a German-speaking Jew in Czech-speaking Prague, a backwater city of the empire); Joyce and Woolf by contrast were living the artist’s life in Paris and London, mostly free of the day-to-day demands of work, speaking and writing the King’s English.
The Trial is also an unfinished work and was probably not well-served by its first translation. It appears you have the Muirs’ translation; I would recommend Breon Mitchell’s 1998 translation and his translator’s preface.
You're absolutely correct about the period for Kafka and you are correct that I read the translation by Muir, but I do think my overall point holds. Hope you agree. And yes, I knew that Woolf was not a fan of Ulysses. Thank you, Frank, for engaging here. Much appreciated.
It’s an overstatement to say that Mitchell’s translation of Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial) is a different book than the one Willa and Edwin Muir produced, but his brief preface points out some of the ways they botched the translation, from the first sentence of the book to the penultimate one.
If you can tolerate a bit of German in the comments section, let me add a couple thoughts on their translation.
"Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben”: So it begins, the famous start to this famous novel, with its six trochaic feet. And while Kafka was not writing poetry, Mitchell’s translation does retain that poetic feel: “Someone must have slandered Josef K.”
But Kafka’s first translators, poets Willa and Edwin Muir, spoiled the meter with “traduced” instead of “slandered,” and marked this passage with a kind of literary shibboleth: a word with a whiff of 19th century Victorian novels about it. Perhaps that gives a sense of where the Muirs and their English were coming from.
(Interestingly, one of the examples of bad writing that George Orwell cited in his essay “Politics and the English Language” also happened to use “traduced.” Note traduce is directly from Latin, slander from Anglo-French. Orwell preferred Anglo-Saxon words to Latin and Greek ones.)
Worse, traduce is not an accurate translation of verleumden and lacks the legal sense that the more accurate slander possesses. This novel is about a legal process, after all, even if it seems like an absurd one, and Kafka was a lawyer, so he probably picked that word with care.
For me, traduce also doesn’t work because it’s such a literary word, meaning a word you only see in print and never hear in conversation. Even Shakespeare used this word, in Hamlet (1.4.18).
But I don’t think of Kafka as a “literary” writer like Joyce and Woolf. Perhaps the Muirs, accomplished poets and self-taught translators, thought they were improving Kafka.
If anyone is thinking about seeking out this novel, be sure to get Mitchell’s translation; it’s been out long enough that there ought to be used copies around by now too.
Interesting that you bring up “community” and “inner exile." I'm commenting here on my own process. To create, I need to create an inner world and shut out the noise of the outer world, and then the art somehow brings me to community. And yet, I need to poke out my head and ask questions or do research to further mold and embellish that creation. Both exile and community at odds and alongside each other - a struggle for balance. The community that can nourish more creation or provide the audience to stoke new creation. And then the retreat to focus and create.
I so agree, JC--and you add to this discussion key components of the struggle and process of creative work. Much appreciated. I thank you for engaging here.
Wishing to offer how much of Kafka was written at night. A different animal, night is, a porcupine plodding with the energy from way back at the egg. With the wit that K brings to disaster, i like to give him credit for his daytime fantasizing in the way Freud insulted and later analysts admire. As long as it does not hurt anyone Adam Phillips says day dreaming allows us to grow maybe? Aspirational words but permission is a positive comfort in my scheme of life. I break things and lean too heavily on things when it is duty spot to cup with duty.
Poetic thought. Thank you, Nathan, for engaging and adding.
Excellent. Love me some Joyce. And Kafka. Yes: Nietzsche was a madman genius; most writers after him must have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by him on some level, surely. He drew the existential line in the sand. Though really Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard did it first.
One interesting comment Christopher Hitchens made once though was that it seemed odd for Nietzsche to claim ‘god is dead’ because in order to believe that you’d first have to believe that god existed, for something non-existent cannot die since it doesn’t exist in the first place. Which seems to be a contradiction. Yet we grasp what N means of course. God is an illusion; a hall of human mirrors created out of our own desire and fear. We must be our own ‘god.’ The Superman.
“Woolf, Joyce—and Kafka address how to decide what one ought to do when one is alone, separated from society and believes society may not offer a set of shared values that work.”
Yes! Which is precisely why these modernist authors provide spiritual nourishment now more than ever. Has there ever been a more isolated, lonely, disconnected time than now? It’s ironic, of course; we have the tools of almost total connection at our fingertips, and yet there’s a whole generation of young people who feel more alone than ever. I’d say they should revisit Kafka...but most of them don’t read 🤣 Modernists? Or TikTok? We know the winner. Sad but largely true.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Love this comment, Michael. So thoughtful and expansive. You add to what I've written and I thank you!
❤️❤️
Thank you, Mary, for this gift of your research, thoughts, insight. For us not-so-literary types, it opens worlds and reminds us of the importance of the question rather than the answer. Much to digest. I am glad to have found Inner Life and look forward to what comes from you and the other contributors.
❤️❤️🫰
So generous and I thank you for such a lovely comment.
I love this, Mary: "We know that art gets made even under the most dire of circumstances, that it gets made, most often, with no hope even of compensation, let alone fame. If the human spirit can’t help but make art, then hope, not despair, resides in that effort." I was meditating on something similar in today's post without realizing that you'd be sharing an updated version of this piece. The way I came of age as a writer was by awakening to the conversation with a reader -- moving beyond my instincts for self-expression toward an intentional craft that sought to give imagined readers gifts of insight, of beauty, and of other forms of meaning. Much of my frustration (and occasional gloom, if not actual despair) as an independent writer has stemmed from the realization that the very corporate/capitalist forces that pushed me out of academe had been working simultaneously on the publishing industry. This has really shaken my belief in writing for a general audience, and I think I need some time to understand who I'm writing for if the old notion of winning over a stranger seems to be waning in the face of sure bets: celebrity memoirs, trendy identity marketing, etc.
However, I think of our friendship and collaboration as proof that something of that old order still exists. Substack, ironically, has brought us together. We don't write for Substack the same way we once wrote in isolation and sent our manuscripts prayerfully off to editors in distant places. But we can still resist the pressure to make ourselves to the measure of the market rather than managing the more delicate balancing act of satisfying our own artistic hunger in ways that connect us to others.
Lots to consider here, but I'm grateful to be a kindred spirit in this quest for meaning and connection.
I so agree with all you've said, Josh. I do hope we're making a difference and am grateful for this collaboration with you and our guest essayists--most important, for our friendship.
There were sure bets during the times of Joyce, Kafka, and Woolf too, and not one of them enjoyed the "rewards" of pandering to them. Theirs (and yours, should you take it upon yourself) was, and continues to be, a long game. I truly believe that any conventional success any of them received in their lifetimes was a stroke of luck, just as it is now. If anything about their audiences gives evidence to their greatness, it's that they continue to grow, generation by generation.
So don't lose heart. If you're in the business of "winning over strangers," this data-heavy culture will record your output and hold onto it for future readers to find. In the meantime, create what your heart prompts you to create. For all the faults of the Internet, you can rely on it for one thing: it never forgets.
Mary put it more eloquently:
"I’m saying that the search for meaning makes a difference in the world. It defies nihilism by the very act of making something, something “other,” that is of the self but not the self."
And then this:
"A writer’s work, the novel in a trunk in the attic, the poems unpublished and in a drawer, the painting stored against the wall may very well be a call with no hope of an answer. But each is still a call."
What a lovely and generous comment. Your advice, too, so appreciated. Thank you so, Andrew, for engaging here and with such kindness. You give me hope.
It’s hard to think of Kafka as part of modernism the way Joyce and Woolf were, simply because his works were not translated into English until the 30s, well after peak modernism. So while Pound and Eliot could be big fans of Joyce in 1922 (Woolf was not), it’s really the postmodernists who were influenced by Kafka.
For example, The Trial was translated into very British English by the Muirs in 1937; our first postmodernist, Borges, wrote “Pierre Menard” in 1939; Borges also wrote a fascinating piece called “Kafka and His Precursors.”
And while it’s tempting in retrospect to think of them as contemporaries, Kafka wrote The Trial as a citizen of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian empire, whereas Joyce and Woolf wrote under the aegis of the more stable British empire, which alone among the European empires survived WWI.
Those are two very different worlds. Kafka’s is one of bureaucracy, which he also saw in his legal work, and obscurity (a German-speaking Jew in Czech-speaking Prague, a backwater city of the empire); Joyce and Woolf by contrast were living the artist’s life in Paris and London, mostly free of the day-to-day demands of work, speaking and writing the King’s English.
The Trial is also an unfinished work and was probably not well-served by its first translation. It appears you have the Muirs’ translation; I would recommend Breon Mitchell’s 1998 translation and his translator’s preface.
Good points.
You're absolutely correct about the period for Kafka and you are correct that I read the translation by Muir, but I do think my overall point holds. Hope you agree. And yes, I knew that Woolf was not a fan of Ulysses. Thank you, Frank, for engaging here. Much appreciated.
It’s an overstatement to say that Mitchell’s translation of Kafka’s Der Prozess (The Trial) is a different book than the one Willa and Edwin Muir produced, but his brief preface points out some of the ways they botched the translation, from the first sentence of the book to the penultimate one.
If you can tolerate a bit of German in the comments section, let me add a couple thoughts on their translation.
"Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben”: So it begins, the famous start to this famous novel, with its six trochaic feet. And while Kafka was not writing poetry, Mitchell’s translation does retain that poetic feel: “Someone must have slandered Josef K.”
But Kafka’s first translators, poets Willa and Edwin Muir, spoiled the meter with “traduced” instead of “slandered,” and marked this passage with a kind of literary shibboleth: a word with a whiff of 19th century Victorian novels about it. Perhaps that gives a sense of where the Muirs and their English were coming from.
(Interestingly, one of the examples of bad writing that George Orwell cited in his essay “Politics and the English Language” also happened to use “traduced.” Note traduce is directly from Latin, slander from Anglo-French. Orwell preferred Anglo-Saxon words to Latin and Greek ones.)
Worse, traduce is not an accurate translation of verleumden and lacks the legal sense that the more accurate slander possesses. This novel is about a legal process, after all, even if it seems like an absurd one, and Kafka was a lawyer, so he probably picked that word with care.
For me, traduce also doesn’t work because it’s such a literary word, meaning a word you only see in print and never hear in conversation. Even Shakespeare used this word, in Hamlet (1.4.18).
But I don’t think of Kafka as a “literary” writer like Joyce and Woolf. Perhaps the Muirs, accomplished poets and self-taught translators, thought they were improving Kafka.
If anyone is thinking about seeking out this novel, be sure to get Mitchell’s translation; it’s been out long enough that there ought to be used copies around by now too.
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69327/pg69327-images.html
Again, thank you, Frank for adding to the discussion. Lovely to find you. Hope you feel the same. ~ Mary