Kafka's world isn't pleasant. It feels in many ways like a nightmare, and yet it's a place where many of us will, even if only for a time, in the dark periods of our lives, end up.

カフカの世界は楽しいものではない。多くの点で悪夢のように感じられるが、人生の暗黒期に、一時的にせよ、私たちの多くが行き着く場所なのだ。

We're in the world defined by Kafka when we feel powerless in front of authority, judges, aristocrats, industrialists, politicians, and most of all, fathers.

権力者、裁判官、貴族、実業家、政治家、そして何よりも父親の前で無力感を感じるとき、私たちはカフカが定義した世界にいる。

When we feel that our destiny is out of our control, when we're bullied, humiliated, and mocked by society, and especially by our own families. We're in Kafka's orbit when we're ashamed of our bodies, of our sexual urges, and feel that the best thing for us might be to be killed or squashed without mercy, as if we were an inconvenient and rather disgusting bedbug.

自分の運命は自分ではどうにもならないと感じるとき、社会から、特に自分の家族からいじめられ、辱められ、嘲笑されるとき。自分の身体や性的衝動を恥ずかしく思い、殺されるか、容赦なく潰されるのが最善かもしれないと感じるとき、私たちはカフカの軌道の中にいる。

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883, the eldest child of a terrifyingly psychologically abusive father, and a mother who was too weak and in awe of her husband to protect her boy as she should have done. Kafka grew up timid, bookish, meek, and full of self-hatred.

フランツ・カフカは1883年、プラハに生まれた。恐ろしく精神的に虐待する父親と、夫を畏怖するあまりに弱く、息子を守るべきことを守れなかった母親の間に生まれた長男である。カフカは臆病で、本好きで、おとなしく、自己嫌悪に満ちて育った。

He wanted to become a writer, but it was out of the question in his father's eyes.

彼は作家になりたかったが、父親の目には問題外だった。

So one of the greatest German literary geniuses since Goethe was forced to spend his brief life on earth working in a series of jobs utterly beneath him, in a law office and then an insurance company. He had a number of unsuccessful relationships with women, he couldn't marry or raise a family, and was tormented by the strength of his sex drive, which made him constantly turn to brothels and pornography. Kafka published very little in his lifetime, just three collections of short stories, including his best-known work, The Metamorphosis, and he was entirely obscure and unnoticed. His gigantic posthumous reputation is based on three novels, The Trial, The Castle, and America, which were all unfinished because Kafka was so dissatisfied with them. He gave orders that they be destroyed after his death. Fortunately for humanity, these were disobeyed. It shouldn't sound prurient or reductive to suggest that one of the major keys to understanding Kafka is to fathom the nature of his relationship with his father. Kafka never wrote directly about this man in any of his works, but the psychology of the novels is directly related to the dynamics he endured as the very unfortunate son of Hermann

そのため、ゲーテ以来の偉大なドイツ文学の天才の一人は、この世での短い生涯を、法律事務所、そして保険会社と、まったく自分には見合わない仕事の連続で過ごすことを余儀なくされた。女性関係もうまくいかず、結婚もできず、家庭を築くこともできず、性欲の強さに苛まれ、売春宿やポルノグラフィに頼ってばかりいた。カフカが生涯に出版したものはほとんどなく、代表作『変身』を含む3冊の短編集だけで、まったく無名で注目されることもなかった。彼の死後の巨大な名声は、『裁判』、『城』、『アメリカ』という3つの小説に基づいている。カフカ

Kafka. Any boy who was ever felt inadequate in front of or unloved by a powerful father will at once relate to what Kafka went through in his childhood. In November 1919, at the age of 36, five years before his death, Kafka wrote a 47-page letter to Hermann, in which he tried to explain how his childhood had deformed him. Like many victims of abuse, Kafka never stopped hoping for some kind of forgiveness from the person who had so wronged him.

カフカ力強い父親の前で物足りなさを感じたり、父親から愛されていないと感じたりしたことのある少年なら誰でも、カフカが子供時代に経験したことにすぐに共感するだろう。1919年11月、死の5年前、36歳の時、カフカは47ページに及ぶ手紙をヘルマンに書き送った。多くの虐待の被害者と同じように、カフカも自分を不当に扱った相手から何らかの許しを得ることを望んで止まなかった。

Dearest Father, went the letter. You asked me recently why I maintain that I am so afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that

親愛なる父へ、手紙が届いた。あなたは最近、なぜ私があなたを恐れているのか、と私に尋ねました。いつものように、私はあなたの質問に対する答えを思いつかなかった。

I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could ever keep in mind while talking. The grown Kafka abased himself before this father. What I would have needed was a little encouragement, a little friendliness, but I wasn't fit for that. What was always incomprehensible to me was your total lack of feeling for the suffering and shame you could inflict on me with your words and judgements.

私があなたを恐れているのは、この恐れの根拠を説明すると、私が話しながら心に留めておくことができないほど詳細に踏み込むことになるからでもある。成長したカフカは、この父親の前で自分を卑下した。私に必要だったのは、ちょっとした励ましや親しみだっただろうが、私にはそれができなかった。私がいつも理解できなかったのは、あなたの言葉や判断が、私に与える苦しみや恥辱に対してまったく無感情だったことだ。

It was as though you had no notion of your power. Kafka complained of one particularly traumatic incident when, as a young boy, he called out for a glass of water and his irritable father pulled the boy out of his bed, carried him out onto the balcony and left him there to freeze in nothing but his nightshirt. Kafka writes, I was quite obedient after that period, but it did me so much incalculable inner harm. Even years afterwards, I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the balcony and that meant I was a mere nothing for him.

まるで自分の力というものがわかっていないかのように。カフカは、特にトラウマになった出来事として、幼い頃、水を一杯飲みたいと言ったところ、苛立った父親が少年をベッドから引きずり出し、バルコニーに運び出し、ナイトシャツ一枚で凍えるように置き去りにしたことを挙げている。カフカはこう書いている。「その時期以後、私は非常に従順になった。その後何年もの間、私は、巨大な男、私の父、究極の権威が、ほとんど何の理由もなくやってきて、夜中にベッドから私を連れ出し、バルコニーに私を運び出す。

Boys need their father's permission to become men and Hermann Kafka didn't give France a chance.

男の子が男になるには父親の許可が必要だが、ヘルマン・カフカはフランスにそのチャンスを与えなかった。

At a very early stage, you forbade me to speak. Your threat, not a word of contradiction, and the raised hand that accompanied it have been with me ever since. France's sense of inadequacy was total.

非常に早い段階で、あなたは私に話すことを禁じた。一言の矛盾もないあなたの脅しと、それに伴う挙手した手は、それ以来ずっと私の中にある。フランスの不全感は完全なものだった。

I was weighed down by your mere physical presence. I remember, for instance, how often we undressed in the same bathing hut. There was I, skinny, weakly, slight. You, strong, tall, broad. I felt a miserable specimen. When we stepped out, you holding me by my hand, a little skeleton, unsteady, frightened of the water, incapable of copying your swimming strokes. I was frantic with desperation. It could hardly have been worse, except it was. Kafka finished the letter, gave it to his mother Julie to pass to Hermann, but, typical of her weakness and cowardice, she didn't. She held onto it for a few days, then returned it to France and advised that it would be better if her busy, hard-working husband never had to read such a thing. The poor son lacked the courage ever to try again.

私は、あなたが物理的に存在するだけで、重く感じていた。例えば、同じ風呂小屋で何度も服を脱いだことを覚えている。私は痩せていて、弱々しく、小柄だった。あなたはたくましく、背が高く、大柄だった。私は惨めな標本だと思った。水から上がると、あなたは私の手を握り、小さな骸骨のようで、不安定で、水が怖く、あなたの泳ぎ方を真似することができなかった。私は必死だった。これ以上悪いことはなかった。カフカは手紙を書き終え、母ジュリーにヘルマンに渡すようにと渡したが、典型的な弱虫で臆病な彼女は渡さなかった。彼女は数日間それを持

In The Judgment, Kafka's great short story, written in 1912, a young businessman, Georg, is engaged to be married and lives in a flat with his widowed father. He's about to get away from home. The father is old and frail. Georg tucks him up in bed. But then the father mysteriously regains his strength, springs upright, towers over Georg and denounces him for betraying everyone, his friends, his father and the memory of his mother. Georg can make only feeble protests.

1912年に書かれたカフカの偉大な短編『審判』では、若い実業家ゲオルグは結婚を約束し、未亡人となった父親とアパートで暮らしている。彼は家を出ようとしている。父親は年老いて弱っている。ゲオルグは彼をベッドに寝かせる。しかし、父親は不思議なことに力を取り戻し、直立し、ゲオルクの上にそびえ立ち、ゲオルクが皆を、友人を、父親を、そして母親の思い出を裏切ったことを糾弾する。ゲオルクは弱々しい抗議しかできない。

Eventually, the father condemns Georg to death by drowning, and Georg obediently rushes out and plunges into the nearby river. After passing sentence, the father cries out,

結局、父親はゲオルクに溺死を宣告し、ゲオルクは従順に駆け出して近くの川に飛び込む。判決を下した後、父親は泣き叫ぶ、

You were an innocent child, really, but at heart you were a diabolical human being.

本当は無邪気な子供だったが、心は極悪非道な人間だった。

The idea of horrific, arbitrary judgment was to be a constant in Kafka's fiction.

おぞましく恣意的な裁きという考え方は、カフカの小説に一貫して見られるようになった。

It reappears in the unfinished novel The Trial, written two years later. But now Kafka had developed it away from a father to a vast legal apparatus with judges, lawyers, guards and extensive bureaucratic procedures. When Joseph K. is arrested on the morning of his 30th birthday, he isn't told what he is charged with. He barely makes any attempt to find out. He feels so guilty inside, he just knows that he deserves punishment. He does try to declare in court that he's innocent, still without knowing what the charge is, and hires a lawyer. But the court gradually grinds him down. He becomes unable to think of anything. Words fail him. He can no longer do his job properly and is defeated in the game of office politics. Finally, a year after his arrest, two grotesque-looking officials come to Joseph K.'s flat. They lead him to a quarry outside the city and execute him by plunging a knife into his heart. Between the judgment and the trial,

それは2年後に書かれた未完の小説『裁判』に再び登場する。しかし今やカフカは、裁判を父親から、裁判官、弁護士、看守、官僚主義的な手続きを持つ巨大な法的組織へと発展させている。ヨーゼフ・Kが30歳の誕生日の朝に逮捕されたとき、彼は何の罪で起訴されたのか知らされなかった。彼はそれを知ろうともしない。彼は心の中で罪悪感を感じており、自分が罰に値することをただ知っている。罪状が何なのかもわからないまま、法廷で自分は無実だと宣言しようとし、弁護士を雇う。しかし、法廷は次第に彼を追い詰めていく。彼は何も考えられなくなる

Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis, a short story in which a travelling salesman,

カフカは『変身』という短編小説を書いた、

Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning transformed into an insect akin to a beetle or a bedbug.

グレゴール・サムサはある朝目覚めると、カブトムシやナンキンムシのような昆虫に変身していた。

It's a story of self-disgust, about the treachery of family and, like The Trial, about terrifying arbitrary power. When Gregor crawls across the floor, he is in danger of being stamped on by his own father. Gregor's family find they manage quite well without him. They confine him to his room and chuck rubbish at him. The family hold a council and decide that the insect in the bedroom can't really be Gregor. They start to refer to the insect as It instead of Him. They decide that somehow the insect has to go. Gregor, listening, agrees and dies quietly. After Gregor's death, the family are slightly ashamed of their behaviour. But only slightly.

自己嫌悪の物語であり、家族の裏切りについての物語であり、『裁判』のように、恐るべき恣意的権力についての物語でもある。グレゴールが床を這うとき、彼は実の父親に踏みつけられる危険にさらされている。グレゴールの家族は、グレゴールがいなくてもうまくやっていけることに気づく。グレゴールは部屋に閉じ込められ、ゴミを投げつけられる。家族は協議会を開き、寝室の昆虫はグレゴールのものではないと判断する。彼らは昆虫のことを「彼」ではなく「それ」と呼ぶようになる。どうにかしてその虫を追い出すことにする。グレゴールはそれに同意し

Kafka suffered from ill health for a lot of his life. In 1924, when he was 41, he developed laryngeal tuberculosis, which prevented him from eating almost anything without huge pain. He wrote a short story, his last, called The Hunger Artist. It tells the story of a public performer who makes his living undertaking fasts for the pleasure of the public.

カフカは生涯、不健康に苦しんだ。1924年、41歳のときに喉頭結核を発症し、激痛なしにほとんど何も食べられなくなった。彼は『飢餓芸術家』という短編小説を書いた。これは、大衆の喜びのために断食を請け負い、生計を立てている大道芸人の物語である。

One time, he manages to fast for 40 days. But gradually, the Hunger Artist's audience gets bored of his work. However hard he fasts, they're no longer impressed. He gets put in a dirty old cage and weakens terribly. Before he dies, he asks for forgiveness and confesses that he should never have been admired, since the reason he fasted was simply that he couldn't find any food he enjoyed. Shortly after he dies, he is replaced in his cage by a panther, an animal full of vigour, whom the crowd love and who has a voracious appetite. A few days after finishing The

ある時、彼は40日間の断食に成功する。しかし、次第にハンガー・アーティストの観客は彼の作品に飽きてくる。彼がどんなに断食しても、もはや彼らは感動しない。彼は汚い古い檻に入れられ、ひどく衰弱する。死ぬ前、彼は許しを請い、断食したのは単に美味しい食べ物がなかったからで、自分は賞賛されるべきではなかったと告白する。彼が死んだ直後、檻の中では、群衆に愛され、旺盛な食欲を持つ元気いっぱいの動物、豹に取って代わられる。を読み終えて数日後、彼は檻の中にいた。

Hunger Artist, Kafka died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Prague. Within a few years of his death, his reputation began. By the Second World War, he was recognized as one of the greatest writers of the age. Notwithstanding, all his close family were gassed by the Germans in the Holocaust.

飢餓芸術家のカフカは亡くなり、プラハのユダヤ人墓地に埋葬された。死後数年のうちに、彼の名声は始まった。第二次世界大戦の頃には、彼はその時代の最も偉大な作家の一人として認められていた。とはいえ、ホロコーストでは近親者全員がドイツ軍によってガス処刑された。

He is a monument in German literary history, and at the same time, he is a sad, ashamed, terrified part of us all. Kafka once wrote that the task of literature is to reconnect us with feelings that might otherwise be unbearable to study, but which desperately need our attention.

彼はドイツ文学史上の記念碑であると同時に、私たちすべての悲しく、恥ずかしく、恐怖に満ちた部分でもある。カフカはかつて、文学の仕事とは、そうでなければ研究することに耐えられないかもしれないが、私たちの関心を切実に必要としている感情と私たちを再び結びつけることだと書いた。

A book must, he wrote, be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

本とは、私たちの中にある凍てつく海を切り裂く斧でなければならない。

His books were among the most touching, frightening and accurate axes ever written.

彼の著書は、これまで書かれた中で最も感動的で、恐ろしく、正確な軸を持つものだった。

you

あなた