Abandoned Fragments by Franz Kafka

Author:Franz Kafka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 978-1-909923-29-4
Publisher: Elektron Ebooks
Published: 2016-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

[15]

A young ambitious student who was fascinated by the case of the Elberfeld horses and had thoroughly read and pondered everything published on the matter, decided to carry out his own experiments on the subject and right from the start to go about it in an entirely different and to his mind incomparably more correct manner than his predecessors. His financial means as such, however, were insufficient to allow experiments on a large scale, and if the first horse he intended to buy for his experiments turned out to be stubborn, which, even with the most vigorous work can only be determined after weeks, he would not have any chance to undertake any new experiments for a while. But he was not too worried about it because his method could most likely overcome any stubbornness. At any rate, in keeping with his cautious nature, he proceeded quite systematically even when calculating the expenditure that would incur and the means he could raise.

Thus far his parents, poor merchants in the countryside, had sent him the amount he needed for his measly sustenance as a student each month, and he was not planning to do without it either, even though, of course, he was forced to give up his studies, which his parents were following with great hopes from afar, if he wanted to achieve the anticipated great success in the new territory he was about to enter. It was out of the question that his parents would appreciate his efforts or even support him, so he had to conceal his intentions to them, as painful as that was, and lead them to believe that he was making continuous progress in his current studies.

Deceiving his parents was only one of the sacrifices he wanted to impose on himself for the benefit of the cause. His parents’ allowance would not be enough to cover the expected large costs he needed to expend for his project.

Therefore, the student planned to spend the majority of the day, thus far devoted to his studies, to private tutoring. The majority of the night, however, was to be used for the actual work. It was not only forced by his unfavorable external circumstances that the student chose the nighttime for training the horse, the new principles he planned to introduce for the horse’s training also suggested the nighttime for several reasons. He believed that even the slightest distraction of the horse’s attention caused irredeemable harm to its training, from which they were relatively safe during the night. The irritability that overcomes humans and animals alike when they stay awake and work at night was an explicit requirement of his plan. Unlike other experts he did not fear the wildness of a horse, rather he demanded it, even sought to generate it, if not with the whip but by the irritant of his unremitting presence and of his unremitting training. He claimed that when the horse was taught correctly there could not be any partial progress; partial progress that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.