Hello,
The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
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Franz Kafka[a] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those found in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education, was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Betrachtung (Contemplation) and Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), and individual stories (such as "Die Verwandlung") were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Der Verschollene (translated as both Amerika and The Man Who Disappeared), but Brod ignored these instructions. His work has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Kafka died before he could finish the novel, and it is questionable whether he intended to finish it if he had survived his tuberculosis. At one point he told his friend Max Brod that the novel would conclude with K., the book's protagonist, continuing to reside in the village until his death; the castle would notify him on his deathbed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there." However, on 11 September 1922 in a letter to Brod, he wrote he was giving up on the book and would never return to it. As it is, the book ends mid-sentence.
Although Brod was instructed by Kafka to destroy all of his unpublished works on his death, he instead set about publishing many of them. Das Schloss was originally published in German in 1926 by the publisher Joella Goodman of Munich. This edition sold far less than the 1500 copies that were printed. It was republished in 1935 by Schocken Verlag in Berlin, and in 1946 by Schocken Books of New York. Brod heavily edited the work to ready it for publication. His goal was to gain acceptance of the work and the author, not to maintain the structure of Kafka's writing. This would play heavily in the future of the translations and continues to be the center of discussion on the text. Brod donated the manuscript to Oxford University.
The title Das Schloss may be translated as "the castle" or "the palace", but the German word is a homonym that can also refer to a lock. It is also phonetically close to der Schluss ("conclusion" or "end"). The castle is locked and closed to K. and the townspeople; neither can gain access. The name of the character Klamm is similar to "Klammer" in German, which means "clip, brace, peg, fastener" and may hold a double meaning; for Klamm is essentially the lock that locks away the secrets of the Castle and the salvation of K. In ordinary usage, "klamm" is an adjective that denotes a combination of dampness and chill and can be used in reference both to weather and clothing, which inscribes a sense of unease into the main character's name. In Czech, "klam" means delusion, deceit.
Two-part BBC Dramatisation of Franz Kafka's mind-warping novel, set in a bureaucratic wonderland.
The hapless land-surveyor known only as K answers a summons to work at the mysterious Castle, only to find himself drawn into a labyrinth of terror and absurdity.
The cast included
Dominic Rowan as "K.",
Sammy T. Dobson as Frieda,
Mark Benton as Jeremias,
Daniel Weyman as Artur,
Stephen Greif as Teacher,
Rachel Bavidge as Gardena/Amalia,
Victoria Elliott as Olga,
Neil Grainger as Barnabas.
Jonathan Cullen as Chief Superintendent
Dominic Deakin as Hans.
Franz Kafka - The Castle (Das Schloss) 2 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
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previously
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four - Part 1 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four - Part 2 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
Franz Kafka - The Castle (Das Schloss) 1 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Franz Kafka[a] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those found in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education, was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Betrachtung (Contemplation) and Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), and individual stories (such as "Die Verwandlung") were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Der Verschollene (translated as both Amerika and The Man Who Disappeared), but Brod ignored these instructions. His work has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Kafka died before he could finish the novel, and it is questionable whether he intended to finish it if he had survived his tuberculosis. At one point he told his friend Max Brod that the novel would conclude with K., the book's protagonist, continuing to reside in the village until his death; the castle would notify him on his deathbed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there." However, on 11 September 1922 in a letter to Brod, he wrote he was giving up on the book and would never return to it. As it is, the book ends mid-sentence.
Although Brod was instructed by Kafka to destroy all of his unpublished works on his death, he instead set about publishing many of them. Das Schloss was originally published in German in 1926 by the publisher Joella Goodman of Munich. This edition sold far less than the 1500 copies that were printed. It was republished in 1935 by Schocken Verlag in Berlin, and in 1946 by Schocken Books of New York. Brod heavily edited the work to ready it for publication. His goal was to gain acceptance of the work and the author, not to maintain the structure of Kafka's writing. This would play heavily in the future of the translations and continues to be the center of discussion on the text. Brod donated the manuscript to Oxford University.
Two-part BBC Dramatisation of Franz Kafka's mind-warping novel, set in a bureaucratic wonderland.
The hapless land-surveyor known only as K answers a summons to work at the mysterious Castle, only to find himself drawn into a labyrinth of terror and absurdity.
The cast included
Dominic Rowan as "K.",
Sammy T. Dobson as Frieda,
Mark Benton as Jeremias,
Daniel Weyman as Artur,
Stephen Greif as Teacher,
Rachel Bavidge as Gardena/Amalia,
Victoria Elliott as Olga,
Neil Grainger as Barnabas.
Jonathan Cullen as Chief Superintendent
Dominic Deakin as Hans.
Franz Kafka - The Castle (Das Schloss) 2 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
previously
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four - Part 1 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four - Part 2 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
Franz Kafka - The Castle (Das Schloss) 1 ( 57min mp3 52mb).
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
