A Hunger Artist & Other Stories; Poems and Songs of Love

by Franz Kafka, Georg Mordechai Langer

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Pub Date Jul 01 2014 | Archive Date Aug 05 2015

Description

Kafka's writings are characterized by an extreme sensitivity manifested in absurdity, alienation, and gallows humor, and these two particular collections of short pieces, A Country Doctor (1919) and A Hunger Artist (1924), represent later works in the corpus. Poems and Songs of Love is a translation of the collection Piyyutim ve-Shirei Yedidot by Georg Mordechai Langer, which contains an elegy to Langer's friend and mentor Franz Kafka. Langer and Kafka hailed from the same middle-class, assimilated, Jewish Prague background and shared a mutual interest in Hasidic culture, literature, and Hebrew. This collaborative translation by Elana and Menachem Wolff brings the fascinating work of Langer - poems as well as an essay on Kafka - to the English-reading public for the first time, and sheds light on a hitherto unexplored relationship.

Advance Praise

"With an ear for both tone and authenticity of language, Thor Polson’s translation of 'A Country Doctor' and 'A Hunger Artist' further illuminates Kafka’s humor as one full of sadness, frustration, and irony. Whether it is the messenger in 'A Message From The Emperor,' playing at a game of Zeno’s Paradox and never truly being able to reach his destination, or the ape in 'A Report For An Academy,' who glibly forgives his oppressors in telling the story of how he came to resemble them, this translation—as suggested in the Translator’s Note—exposes what I can only assume was at the heart of Kafka’s narrative intentions. I am also of the belief that it is a worthwhile investment of anyone’s time to read all of Kafka’s work, if only to arrive, at some point on that journey, at 'A Hunger Artist.' Thor Polson’s translation of this beautiful story does not disappoint." -Ben Warner

"Thor Polson’s translation manages to recreate the atmosphere of the Kafka texts, rendering them in clear and pleasantly fluent English, while at the same time staying very close to the original German wording. This translation will be useful to anyone looking for both a faithful and readable Kafka translation, and in particular to students of German in need of help with their own translations of the text." -Babette Puetz, Ph.D.

"Polson translates Kafka with a sensitivity and insight faithful to this often enigmatic writer. Polson’s translation is not only accurate, but he has gone to great lengths to preserve the linguistic style of the original while at the same time presenting the text in an English version which is readable and which avoids the clumsiness and ambiguity so often found in translations of stylistically complex texts. The reader who is familiar with the German original of the Kafka texts will be pleased to recognize the work of the author in Polson’s English transformation." -Paul A. Schons, Prof. of German

"The Wolffs have given us a rare gift: a view of Franz Kafka through the poetry and prose of Georg Mordechai Langer, one of Kafka’s most imaginative and unconventional friends. Those interested in Kafka – and I think by now this includes just about everyone who reads seriously – will find this book absorbing" -Ken Sherman

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EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781550718676
PRICE	$20.00 (USD)

Additional Information

Average rating from 11 members

Featured Reviews

La La C, Reviewer

The Kafka I adored. The rest was good. This is why I gave it four stars instead of five.

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Konstantina P, Reviewer

I love Kafka, but I prefer him in his novels. The short stories have the same perplexity and the same sense of paradox that is so profound in his works, but in some cases I felt that the story would not finish. Some were very powerful such as "In front of the law", but others were an argument after the other.

The poems were great. I can't really say much since I don't know their original language, but I believe the translation was good.

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Laura L, Reviewer

Oh my. Kafka was beautiful. absolutely beautiful. I would recommend to ALL Kafka fans alike. Just phenomenal. Thank you for the opportunity.

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John L, Reviewer

Sterling work from the publishers in presenting two collections of the master of modernism's short works – the collection he published as ''A Country Doctor'' is the rarer of the two, and perhaps hard to get a grip on with its very short pieces. Still, while it shows up the limitations to the modern ear of the modernist style – all lengthy, multi-clause sentences and page-long paragraphs – it shows how varied and diverse Kafka's output could be (even if no less than the first four works all mention horses strongly). ''A Hunger Artist'' as a collection of four works was always going to be a bit more awkward, for the longer works don't always particularly carry their values as easily – twenty pages on a mouse (or not) that sings (or not) aren't the most easy-going.

Attached to these works are poems, more or less long lost and hardly ever (if at all) translated into English, from a man Kafka's letters and diaries mention a few times each, but one who perhaps was secretly in love with him – certainly there's a spread of mentions of secrets, lost loves and more in there alongside the eulogy to Kafka that the translators based their biographical search around. Some of the verse works, mostly it doesn't, and while it's a detail that's going to rouse some academic thought it won't set the world alight as a published entity. We should turn to the Kafka for that – if not for the first time, as he was and still is a must-read, canonical entity. The translations read fine – brighter than I remember a certain married couple's works of old as being. For the concentration on the shorter pieces, then, this book is unusual, and completely necessary.