काफ्कांच्या कुरणात चरतायत सगळे....Kafka@135

#फ्रांझकाफ्का१३५  #FranzKafka135

#WOKEUPLIKETHIS 

आज, जुलै ३ २०१८,  फ्रान्झ काफ्कान्ची १३५वी जयंती आहे.

जी ए कुलकर्णी:
"...मला वाटते, फार मोठी नाव घ्यायची झाली तर Kafka, Camus and Dostoevsky हे अतिशय morbid होते. त्याच्या उलट तर मला वाटते , की अनुभवाने जर लेखकाला जीवनविषयक एखाद्या आकृतीची सतत जाणीव होत राहिली नाही , तर त्याचे लेखन मोठेपणी जरीची टोपी घालून हिंडणाऱ्या माणसाप्रमाणे बालीश वाटते. मराठीतील पुष्कळशी कथा अशी अगदी फुटकळ उथळ वाटते याचे कारण तेच. कोणते तुकडे हाती लागले यावरच आपले इतके समाधान असते, की तो कशाचा तुकडा असावा याकडे आपले लक्ष नाही. Kafkaची मते पटोत अगर न पटोत, Hardy देखील असाच , पण त्यांच्या लेखनावर अशा या universal reference चा शिक्का आहे. ..."
(२८/८/१९६३, पृष्ठ १२०, 'जी एंची निवडक पत्रे', खंड २, १९९८)

 “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous vermin. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper room for a human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-known walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared...”

('The Metamorphosis', 1915)

Artist: Charlie Hankin, The New Yorker, June 27 2018