Of the two, only “The Cares of a Family Man” was published in Kafka’s lifetime.
“The Hunter Gracchus” was never finished. The version reproduced below in translation is one of several fragmentary and incompatible drafts that Kafka worked on intermittently over several months and finally abandoned.
There is a theory that “The Cares of a Family Man” describes, through a series of coded references, Kafka’s feelings about this other, problematic work which had been occupying his imagination on and off for some time without ever, in his judgment, fully coming to life.
Which, if true, would be weird because there’s no way Kafka could have expected anyone to follow these references to a work he never intended to publish and his own private struggles with it.
On the other hand, you could argue that a lot of Kafka’s writing seems to work that way.
But who really knows?
The Cares of a Family Man
Some say the word Odradek is of Slavonic origin, and try to account for it on that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only influenced by Slavonic. The uncertainty of both interpretations allows one to assume with justice that neither is accurate, especially as neither of them provides an intelligent meaning of the word.
No one, of course, would occupy himself with such studies if there were not a creature called Odradek. At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs.
One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinarily nimble and can never be laid hold of.
He lurks by turns in the attic, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance hall. Often for months on end he is not to be seen; then he has presumably moved into other houses; but he always comes faithfully back to our house again. Many a time when you go out of the door and he happens just to be leaning directly beneath you against the banisters you feel inclined to speak to him. Of course, you put no difficult questions to him, you treat him–he is so diminutive that you cannot help it–rather like a child. “Well, what’s your name?” you ask him. “Odradek,” he says. “And where do you live?” “No fixed abode,” he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves. And that is usually the end of the conversation. Even these answers are not always forthcoming; often he stays mute for a long time, as wooden as his appearance.
I ask myself, to no purpose, what is likely to happen to him? Can he possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek. Am I to suppose, then, that he will always be rolling down the stairs, with ends of thread trailing after him, right before the feet of my children, and my children’s children? He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful.
The Hunter Gracchus
Two boys were sitting on the harbor wall playing with dice. A man was reading a newspaper on the steps of the monument, resting in the shadow of a hero who was flourishing his sword on high. A girl was filling her bucket at the fountain. A fruitseller was lying beside his wares, gazing at the lake. Through the vacant window and door openings of a cafe one could see two men quite at the back drinking their wine. The proprietor was sitting at a table in front and dozing. A bark was silently making for the little harbor, as if borne by invisible means over the water. A man in a blue blouse climbed ashore and drew the rope through a ring. Behind the boatman two other men in dark coats with silver buttons carried a bier, on which, beneath a great flower-patterned fringed silk cloth, a man was apparently lying.
Nobody on the quay troubled about the newcomers; even when they lowered the bier to wait for the boatman, who was still occupied with his rope, nobody went nearer, nobody asked them a question, nobody accorded them an inquisitive glance.
The pilot was still further detained by a woman who, a child at her breast, now appeared with loosened hair on the deck of the boat. Then he advanced and indicated a yellowish two-storeyed house that rose abruptly on the left near the water; the bearers took up their burden and bore it to the low but gracefully pillared door. A little boy opened a window just in time to see the party vanishing into the house, then hastily shut the window again. The door too was now shut; it was of black oak, and very strongly made. A flock of doves which had been flying around the belfry alighted in the street before the house. As if their food were stored within, they assembled in front of the door. One of them flew up to the first storey and pecked at the windowpane. They were bright-hued, well-tended, lively birds. The woman on the boat flung grain to them in a wide sweep; they ate it up and flew across to the woman.
A man in a top hat tied with a band of black crêpe now descended one of the narrow and very steep lanes that led to the harbor. He glanced around vigilantly, everything seemed to distress him, his mouth twisted at the sight of some offal in a corner. Fruit skins were lying on the steps of the monument; he swept them off in passing with his stick. He rapped at the house door, at the same time taking his top hat from his head with his black-gloved hand. The door was opened at once, and some fifty little boys appeared in two rows in the long entry hall, and bowed to him.
The boatman descended the stairs, greeted the gentleman in black, conducted him up to the first storey, led him around the bright and elegant loggia which encircled the courtyard, and both of them entered, while the boys pressed after them at a respectful distance, a cool spacious room looking toward the back, from whose window no habitation, but only a bare, blackish-gray rocky wall was to be seen. The bearers were busied in setting up and lighting several long candles at the head of the bier, yet these did not give light, but only disturbed the shadows which had been immobile till then, and made them flicker over the walls. The cloth covering the bier had been thrown back. Lying on it was a man with wildly matted hair, who looked somewhat like a hunter. He lay without motion and, it seemed, without breathing, his eyes closed; yet only his trappings indicated that this man was probably dead.
The gentleman stepped up to the bier, laid his hand on the brow of the man lying upon it, then kneeled down and prayed. The boatman made a sign to the bearers to leave the room; they went out, drove away the boys who had gathered outside, and shut the door. But even that did not seem to satisfy the gentleman, he glanced at the boatman; the boatman understood, and vanished through a side door into the next room. At once the man on the bier opened his eyes, turned his face painfully toward the gentleman, and said: “Who are you?” Without any mark of surprise the gentleman rose from his kneeling posture and answered: “The Burgomaster of Riva.”
The man on the bier nodded, indicated a chair with a feeble movement of his arm, and said, after the Burgomaster had accepted his invitation: “I knew that, of course, Burgomaster, but in the first moments of returning consciousness I always forget, everything goes around before my eyes, and it is best to ask about anything even if I know. You too probably know that I am the Hunter Gracchus.”
“Certainly,” said the Burgomaster. “Your arrival was announced to me during the night. We had been asleep for a good while. Then toward midnight my wife cried: ‘Salvatore’–that’s my name–‘look at that dove at the window.’ It was really a dove, but as big as a cock. It flew over me and said in my ear: ‘Tomorrow the dead Hunter Gracchus is coming; receive him in the name of the city.’”
The Hunter nodded and licked his lips with the tip of his tongue: “Yes, the doves flew here before me. But do you believe, Burgomaster, that I shall remain in Riva?”
“I cannot say that yet,” replied the Burgomaster. “Are you dead?”
“Yes,” said the Hunter, “as you see. Many years ago, yes, it must be a great many years ago, I fell from a precipice in the Black Forest–that is in Germany–when I was hunting a chamois. Since then I have been dead.”
“But you are alive too,” said the Burgomaster.
“In a certain sense,” said the Hunter, “in a certain sense I am alive too. My death ship lost its way; a wrong turn of the wheel, a moment’s absence of mind on the pilot’s part, the distraction of my lovely native country, I cannot tell what it was; I only know this, that I remained on earth and that ever since my ship has sailed earthly waters. So I, who asked for nothing better than to live among my mountains, travel after my death through all the lands of the earth.”
“And you have no part in the other world?” asked the Burgomaster, knitting his brow.
“I am forever,” replied the Hunter, “on the great stairway that leads up to it. On that infinitely wide and spacious stair I clamber about, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, always in motion. The Hunter has been turned into a butterfly. Do not laugh.”
“I am not laughing,” said the Burgomaster in self-defense.
“That is very good of you,” said the Hunter. “I am always in motion. But when I make a supreme flight and see the gate actually shining before me I awaken presently on my old ship, still stranded forlornly in some earthly sea or other. The fundamental error of my one-time death grins at me as I lie in my cabin. Julia, the wife of the pilot, knocks at the door and brings me on my bier the morning drink of the land whose coasts we chance to be passing. I lie on a wooden pallet, I wear–it cannot be a pleasure to look at me–a filthy winding sheet, my hair and beard, black tinged with gray, have grown together inextricably, my limbs are covered with a great flowered-patterned woman’s shawl with long fringes. A sacramental candle stands at my head and lights me. On the wall opposite me is a little picture, evidently of a bushman who is aiming his spear at me and taking cover as best he can behind a beautifully painted shield. On shipboard one often comes across silly pictures, but that is the silliest of them all. Otherwise my wooden cage is quite empty. Through a hole in the side the warm airs of the southern night come in, and I hear the water slapping against the old boat.
“I have lain here ever since the time when, as the Hunter Gracchus living in the Black Forest, I followed a chamois and fell from a precipice. Everything happened in good order. I pursued, I fell, bled to death in a ravine, died, and this ship should have conveyed me to the next world. I can still remember how gladly I stretched myself out on this pallet for the first time. Never did the mountains listen to such songs from me as these shadowy walls did then.
“I had been glad to live and I was glad to die. Before I stepped aboard, I joyfully flung away my wretched load of ammunition, my knapsack, my hunting rifle that I had always been proud to carry, and I slipped into my winding sheet like a girl into her marriage dress. I lay and waited. Then came the mishap.”
“A terrible fate,” said the Burgomaster, raising his hand defensively. “And you bear no blame for it?”
“None,” said the Hunter. “I was a hunter; was there any sin in that? I followed my calling as a hunter in the Black Forest, where there were still wolves in those days. I lay in ambush, shot, hit my mark, flayed the skins from my victims: was there any sin in that? My labors were blessed. ‘The Great Hunter of the Black Forest’ was the name I was given. Was there any sin in that?”
“I am not called upon to decide that,” said the Burgomaster, “but to me also there seems to be no sin in such things. But then, whose is the guilt?”
“The boatman’s,” said the Hunter. “Nobody will read what I say here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were commanded to help me, every door and window would remain shut, everybody would take to bed and draw the bedclothes over his head, the whole earth would become an inn for the night. And there is sense in that, for nobody knows of me, and if anyone knew he would not know where I could be found, and if he knew where I could be found, he would not know how to deal with me, he would not know how to help me. The thought of helping me is an illness that has to be cured by taking to one’s bed.
“I know that, and so I do not shout to summon help, even though at moments–when I lose control over myself, as I have done just now, for instance–I think seriously of it. But to drive out such thoughts I need only look around me and verify where I am, and–I can safely assert–have been for hundreds of years.”
“Extraordinary,” said the Burgomaster, “extraordinary. And now do you think of staying here in Riva with us?”
“I think not,” said the Hunter with a smile, and, to excuse himself, he laid his hand on the Burgomaster’s knee. “I am here, more than that I do not know, further than that I cannot go. My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”
*
p.s. Hey. If there are two things I know, those things are that Franz Kafka and writer/d.l. Alan are two guys who will never steer you wrong, so their coupling up here constitutes one of those once in a blog's lifetime guarantees of value for your minutes-type situations that this proprietor constantly dreams about, often wistfully, but not today. Let the commenting begin, and thank you so very kindly for the crowning, Alan. Me: another night of okay sleep last night, so maybe what I'm feeling right now is normality. The new issue of Time Out New York has denounced 'TMS' as 'torture porn', which mostly just seems like a bizarre assessment to me. I got interviewed by the fine writer Brian Joseph Davis at Huffington Post. I found out yesterday that I am, in fact, being flown to NYC for one day early next week to do this photo shoot thing for the NYT, which is a cool thing for me, or so I'm told, but it will probably have some kind of negative impact on the blog posting schedule, and I'll let you know what that effect will be when I know more. And ... yeah. ** Andrew, Hi, Andrew! Wait, are you new here? I think you are. If so, welcome! If not, sorry for the space out. As for your question, yeah, ideally, the impossible beauty of those characters is meant to be unnerving or at least provoking. The reactions to that construct have really varied, from the kind of self-reflection that you mention experiencing, which is something my work hopes for at best but doesn't rely upon or count on, to, all the way across the board, people who take the characters' beauty at face value and try to fit them into a kind of pristine teen idol mold. I don't personally feel any jealousy towards those characters, no. My interest lies in trying to imagine the hindrances and cautiousness and isolation it would create for the guys inside those bodies and work with the conflict between their hostage status and the inability or unwillingness of people to see who's inside that beauty, if that makes sense. I really appreciate your question, and I'm happy to say more about that, if you want. Oh, and d.l. little foal wrote something to you yesterday, if you didn't see it. Take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Good morning, Mr. E! ** Oliver, Hi, Oliver! Great to see you! Thanks a lot for answering my question. Chinese, very interesting. Of course I'm interested as to why you've chosen that as your concentration, but don't feel you have to say why if it's too complicated. Oh, fantastic about the Day you're working on. Thank you so much! I find making blog posts to be a useful mnemonic too, as you can probably imagine, so I both understand and am very glad if using this forum will prove useful for your work as well. So, yeah, great! Good luck with the essays and everything else. ** Katalyze, Hey, Kat! Oh, wow, thank you about 'TMS'. Obviously, I guess, I share that block between thought and communication big time, and, well, hence 'TMS', for instance, ha ha. I'll give Cody a nudge re: his dub step Day promise since I suspect he'll need one now that his head is back in the cloud of university and other things. Korn dubstep album, yikes. Sounds like a genre killer to me. Yeah, I'm still feeling kind of suspended in Paris, it's true, but Xmas looks so beautiful here, and the lights and decorations are going up as we speak, and there's a nice anchoring quality to that. Love to you. ** Steevee, Yeah, me too about Cody's dub step faves. Skrillex came up a few times in our conversation, but I can't remember what he had to say about him. Great about the new Film Comment gig! Congrats! ** Bill, It's uncommon though not totally rare that a highlighted slave will discover his inclusion here and write to me to say something, usually a variation on 'weird/cool/wtf' but occasionally a 'hey, wait, you're that writer', so perhaps you'll be right about bytheriveron3rdstreet. Heavy envy re: you getting to attend that Curt McDowell fest. How was 'Taboo (The Single and the LP)'? I've been wishing to see that film for forever. Wow. ** Pilgarlic, Tan is a total Rolls Royce. I mean if you're into that kind of thing. I wouldn't know, ha ha. 'Miss Cooper' was a bit of a dead giveaway, yes. I'm happy to report that the French do not know the Kardashians from John Smith. They were into the Paris Hilton thing, but I think her name made the difference. Thank you a lot about 'TMS', man. Maybe he does have meta-Asberger's syndrome, hm. I hadn't thought about that. So all the stories about James Dickey as letch are true. You can kind of see it in his face in his 'Deliverance' cameo. The biggest writer/letch I've ever met is Ginsberg, but he kind of employed this whole eager puppy dog routine that kind of masked the boner aspect until it was almost too late. Anyway, I totally took that as a compliment, and thank you very, very much, my friend. How are you feeling? ** Tomáš, Wow, hey, man! Oh, fuck, yes, I somehow didn't see your comment yesterday. I know that happens with comments sometimes, but I never know why that happens. Sorry. I'm good, yeah. I do know how to SMS now. I've got an iPhone. I think I'm even very good at SMSing now. Try me. Send me an SMS, and I'll prove it. If you can read Scientific American articles in English, your English must be pretty good. We should meet up when you get some free time, and I can test your English, and you can test my French, which I'm afraid is still really bad. But you can test me and see for yourself. You take care, T! ** Eli Jürgen, Dude, the rant was coolsville, trust me. That z thing you were doing with some of our words was really nice. So, did you want and then take the garden gnome? That's the burning question. You're having an Xmas party already? Wow. But won't that make the rest of the month really depressing and a big let down? That would be my fear. Maybe you should make that party just a Part 1. Or a prequel party. That's what I would do. Nice that you got to see and be snapped with John W. ** Ken Baumann, Video game eyes, right, exactly. Which is also a very particular, time-sensitive malady. Yesterday someone who read what I wrote to you about jet lag tried to argue that historical people had insomnia and that insomnia was basically the same thing as jet lag. But, as you know and I certainly know, they are not the same things at all. And I told that guy to take his generalizations and shove them, albeit in my nice DC way. Anyway, point is, historical people were totally missing out. But then I guess they could argue that we're totally missing out on polio and covered wagon rash. I'm very glad that you hear me on the chapbook thing 'cos it's important. And, well, a book in the meantime, for goodness sake! Surely some innovative publisher would love the challenge of fast-issuing a book by you. Oh, you should do a Kiddiepunk zine/chapbook! Kiddiepunk, you should do a zine/chapbook by Ken Baumann! Okay, I've started that ball rolling even if you didn't want it to roll, sorry. You know me: Mr. Exuberance! I think the 'Ugly Man' piece that I had the biggest, failed plans for is the fragment about the intellectual stoner skateboarder guys called, mm, oh, 'The Brainiacs'. That was the beginnings of an attempt to fulfill my dream of writing a novel that would be like a Jacques Tati film, so it was going to be an intricate physical comedy. The guy at 7-11 was going to convince them to form a terrorist cell, and they were going to go to Afghanistan or somewhere and get trained by Al Qaeda and then return to the US and try to cause havoc, but it ended up seeming more like a Keystone Cops comedy than a Tati film, and I bailed. Sad. Yours, me. ** Little foal, Hey, Darren. You were so generous yesterday. That was totally awesome! Oh, email, right, thanks for the nudge. Sorry, I'm ... you know. It's great that you're submitting your work to journals. I'm very happy to hear that. And you sound braced for the difficulties re: succeeding when you first start out and aren't known yet, so cool. Yeah, don't take the no's personally at all. It'll work for you, for sure, but the tempo with that kind of stuff is completely up in the air. Anyway, hooray! Let me know how it goes in as much detail as you can spare. I agree with you that getting a smartphone is a good, immediate move. I resisted them for years, and then I got one, and I realized I'd been a curmudgeon without a cause. I haven't gotten Ariana's 'Mercury' yet. I tried to get it in LA, but it was either sold out or not there yet, so I'll be ordering it. Today, in fact, thanks to your inadvertent nudge. No doubt it's great. Oh, absolutely do not worry about the influence thing, and you're not worrying, so that's good. That fear of being overly influenced is one of the great lies that younger writers are most unnecessarily intimidated by. I learned way more than half the tricks I know by trying to imitate writers I liked. The copycat stuff always melts away. I loved what you said to Andrew. The huge lucky break (for me) occasioned by your entree into here via that slave post is an ultra-proud moment, man. I will try to have an awesome day. I think I'll figure something out. You too, okay? Promise. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, I just read about Hieroglyphic Being the other day and was most intrigued. Thank you the link/possibility of sampling some. I will immediately post-post. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Very interesting about your younger brother's research/ reading plans re: his next novel. 'Mason & Dixon' isn't that tough once you get used to the style Pynchon is using. I love that book. It's one of my very fave Pynchons. With you, yeah, I think of you as a writer who changes approaches and styles regularly and fluidly. I wonder if the scrapbook thing will work for you re: the next novel? Obviously, that method has always really helped me. ** Alan, Hey, A! Thank you, thank you for today. I hadn't read either of those Kafka stories before, and they're fascinating. I looked up the origin of the term 'blow job', and here's what I found: 'Linguists think the sexual connotation of "blow job" evolved from "blowoff," an expression meaning to finish off, to climax, to end. "Blowoff" in this sense is related to "blow off steam," to put an end to a emotionally frustrating experience. When a prostitute gave a client a blow job she was helping him "blow off" the steam of sexual arousal. In the 1930s, street-walkers offered oral sex with the phrase "I'll blow you off." It suggests "I'll cool you down," "I'll release your steam." Some linguists think the term "blow job" evolved gradually from an eighteenth century European name for a prostitute, blower. A popular name for penis at the time was "whorepipe," and it is easy to see how the woman who played the instrument came to be called a "blower." But was the act called a "blow job?" There's no indication of that.' So, there you go? ** Chris Cochrane, Hey. Kind of wayward here too. Strange. 2012 tours: yeah, get on them! Why the heck not? ** Misanthrope, And then there's your guess at the term blowjob's origin. Freud would have had a lot of fun with you. So, when you eventually quit smoking, it probably won't be so bad maybe. Whereas I'm probably going to have to get a lung transplant. ** 5strings, Me, a sweetie? Tell that to the 'torture porn' guy. Yeah, I think it's that you -- and I, for that matter -- don't rock hard enough. Rocking hard is probably the key to immortality. Seriously, don't expect much from the Amsterdam sex museum. Expect to mostly just be amused by the items in their gift shop. Nutella baguettes don't really work. The bread is too dominant. Nutella needs sliced bread, I think, and sliced bread is considered kind of weird in France. There's hardly any in the supermarkets here, and it's usually in the specialty section with wasabi peas and stuff like that. I think it's okay to eat mostly vegetables, but you do need other nutrients too, but maybe you can just pop pills full of those nutrients, I don't know. Blog post? Really? Wow, thanks, cowboy! That's mighty kind of you. As was your rich, thoughtful take on my array of slaves. The post can die now. RIP. ** STOVALLSTOVALL, Hey. My arm went through a window at a birthday party once, so high five. Actually, it was my elbow. I was just leaning on the window really gently, and it broke. It didn't make any sense. It was the birthday party of the film director Kirby Dick before he was a film director about, gosh, 15 years ago at least. He was nice about it. But when I was on my book tour last week, I read at this one store, and Kirby Dick's daughter was working there, and she introduced herself, and the first thing out her mouth was that her father had told her I broke a window at his house. So, I guess it was a big deal. The landscape/silkscreen piece looks really terrific already, man. A pleasure to see it. I also love those new photos/pieces with the crosses in them. They're awesome. Thanks for your kind words. Mutual admiration is such a cool thing, right? One of the best things, really. Good day to you! ** Jeff, I just caught you pre-post launch. Oh, no, I know you didn't mean that. I probably expressed myself too vaguely. Yes, Dalkey is publishing Leve's 'Autoportrait', which people say is even better. I quite liked what I listened to by The White Birch, so thank you. I think I'm going to buy some. Talk Talk, yeah, that's a good comparison. Your hallucination/ sleep experience was beautiful, at least to read about without the undoubted unnerving reality of it. That note thing was especially pretty. I didn't think of it as melancholy until you said it made you feel melancholy, and then I was, like, yeah, I'll bet it was. Interesting. May your today be a cradling one. ** So, the end is nigh. Use your eyes on Kafka and Alan's steerage today, please. Thanks! See you tomorrow.
