The Castle by Franz Kafka & Willa Muir & Edwin Muir

Author:Franz Kafka & Willa Muir & Edwin Muir [Kafka, Franz & Muir, Willa & Muir, Edwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bureaucracy, Fiction, Literary, Literary Criticism, General, Classics, European
ISBN: 9780805210392
Google: zYdkPwAACAAJ
Publisher: Schocken Books
Published: 1953-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

All this depressing information of Olga's certainly affected K., but he regarded it as a great consolation to find other people who were at least externally much in the same situation as him with whom he could join forces and whom he could touch at many points, not merely at a few points as in Frieda's case. He was indeed gradually giving up all hope of achieving success through Barnabas, but the worse it went with Barnabas in the Castle the nearer he felt drawn to him down here; never would K. have believed that in the village itself such a despaired struggle could go on as Barnabas and his sister were involved in. Of course it was as yet far from being adequately explained and might turn out to be quite the reverse, one shouldn't let Olga's unquestionable innocence mislead one into taking Barnabas's uprightness for granted. "Barnabas is familiar with all those accounts of Klamm's appearance," went on Olga, "he has collected and compared a great many, perhaps too many he even saw Klamm once through a carriage window in the village, or believed he saw him, and so was sufficiently prepared to recognize him again, and yet

- how can you explain this? - when he entered a bureau in the Castle and had one of several officials pointed out to him as Klamm he didn't recognize him, and for a long time afterwards couldn't accustom himself to the idea that it was Klamm. But if you ask Barnabas what was the difference between that Klamm and the usual description given of Klamm, he can't tell you, or rather he tries to tell you and describes the official of the Castle, but his description coincides exactly with the descriptions we usually hear of Klamm. Well then, Barnabas, I say to him, why do you doubt it, why do you torment yourself?

Whereupon in obvious distress he begins to reckon up certain characteristics of the Castle official, but he seems to be thinking them out rather than describing them, and besides that they are so trivial - a particular way of nodding the head, for instance, or even an unbuttoned waistcoat - that one simply can't take them seriously. Much more important seems to me the way in which Klamm receives Barnabas. Barnabas has often described it to me, and even sketched the room. He's usually admitted into a large room, but the room isn't Klamm's bureau, nor even the bureau of any particular official. It's a room divided into two by a single reading-desk stretching all its length from wall to wall. One side is so narrow that two people can hardly squeeze past each other, and that's reserved for the officials, the other side is spacious, and that's where clients wait, spectators, servants, messengers. On the desk there are great books lying open, side by side, and officials stand by, most of them reading. They don't always stick to the same book, yet it isn`t the books that

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