Franz Kafka

卡夫卡預言了 人在現代社會中的處境

"卡夫卡生前的作品都未能發表，不聲不響，卻深刻把握了二十世紀現代工業社會中人的處境。卡夫卡把現代社會中人的真實處境做了一個恰如其分的描述。在種種社 會關係中，乃至於家人之中，人不過如同一個蟲子，這麼渺小可憐，別說主宰世界，連自己的命運都把握不了，莫名其妙，毫無緣由，卻受到審判。卡夫卡清醒認識 到那莫須有的烏托邦就像他小說中的城堡，是進不去的。

上個世紀之初，卡夫卡就預言了人在現代社會中的處境。現時代，這同樣處境中的人，只越來越脆弱，越來越喪失自主，人消失在各種各樣的認同中。在龐大的社會 機制裡，面臨鋪天蓋地的市場，文化也充分商品化，媒體並沒有不受政治牽制而真正的獨立。一個人如果企圖發出個人的聲音，僅僅是個人的聲音而不同某種政治聯 繫在一起的話，這聲音是很難發得出來的。這種個人的聲音只有在超越現實功利、超越政治又不追隨時尚也不依賴市場這種嚴肅的文學創作中，才有可能，才可能保 持個人的獨立不移。這種個人的聲音當然非常微弱，然而卻擺脫了炒作，是人真實的聲音。"╱高行健

Wikipedia article "Franz Kafka".

簡明大英

Franz Kafka

(click to enlarge)
Kafka (credit: Archiv fur Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin)

(born July 3, 1883, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary — died June 3, 1924, Kierling, near Vienna, Austria) Czech writer who wrote in German. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, he earned a doctorate and then worked successfully but unhappily at a government insurance office from 1907 until he was forced by a case of tuberculosis to retire in 1922. The disease caused his death two years later.

Hypersensitive and neurotic, he reluctantly published only a few works in his lifetime, including the symbolic story The Metamorphosis (1915), the allegorical fantasy In the Penal Colony (1919), and the story collection A Country Doctor (1919). His unfinished novels The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927), published posthumously against Kafka's wishes, express the anxieties and alienation of 20th-century humanity.

His visionary tales, with their inscrutable mixture of the normal and the fantastic, have provoked a wealth of interpretations. Kafka's posthumous reputation and influence have been enormous, and he is regarded as one of the great European writers of the 20th century.