'it's a remarkable piece of apparatus'

'afternoon at werfel's with max and pick. read 'in the penal colony' aloud; I am not entirely dissatisfied, except for its glaring and ineradicable faults...'  - franz kafka, diaries, 2nd december 1914.

it is of course tempting to read kafka's diary as a story of the artist succeeding due to hard work and determination - and to assemble the quotes in such a fashion that they prove this. and we are after all in the hands of max (brod) here - kafka wanted almost all his unpublished output burnt - brod didn't do it. 

'this volume brings together everything that franz kafka himself published; none of his other works, it would appear, was intended for publication.' - max brod, epilogue, in the schocken books (NY) edition of the penal colony: stories and short pieces. 

kafka reads the penal colony  to werfel and friends at the start of december 1914, but it is not published until 1919. 

'"it's a remarkable piece of apparatus" said the officer to the explorer.' - franz kafka, the penal colony. 

kafka had something of a pre-death career and reputation, meaning that brod had publishers interested when he emerged with kafka's (unburnt) novels. 

metamorphosis (german: die verwandlung) was first published in 1915 in the october issue of the journal die weißen blätter. the first edition in book form appeared in december 1915 in the series der jüngste tag, edited by kurt wolff.

do people nowadays care about werfel and brod (and kubin)? the 'prague circle'?

barely.  

horsemouth has read kubin's one novel the other side. he has one book by werfel somewhere he thinks. nothing of brod's. 

and yet in addition to the diaries and the penal colony horsemouth has  a country doctor by kafka with him (in a nice edition for the prague tourists with illustrations by karel hruška). he will pick up more kafka when he next goes home or he may find it here, they are the kind of books that were very popular in a strange kind of way when horsemouth was younger - think of how often you see those penguin paperback editions of metamorphosis. 

the christopher priest short story the head and the hand is a kafka lift - both the penal colony and the hunger artist  at once. 

horsemouth did some digging to find kenko-koshi (as quoted repeatedly by tarkovsky). 

he is variously known as urabe kenkō (卜部 兼好, 1283–1350), yoshida kenkō (吉田 兼好), or simply kenkō (兼好), his most famous work is tsurezuregusa (translated as essays in idleness). you can get some of the text here. horsemouth downloaded the full text as a pdf. 

there are more illustrations in tarkovsky's diaries horsemouth may have to scan them (they are really quite beautiful). writing by hand you are more likely to include drawings and scribbles. 

forward to saturday

it's the wickerman day on radio 4 extra. (beginning 17:35 with a wickerman edition of the verb). horsemouth is not sure what he is up to. there may be zoom beers with howard (nope that's sunday). there may be a trip to tescos. it's a cold and frosty morning out there.