　　弗朗茨·卡夫卡（1883—1924）奥地利伟大的作家之一，被认为是现代派文学的鼻祖，表现主义文学的先驱，其作品大都用变形荒诞的形象和象征的手法，表现被充满敌意的社会环境所包围的孤立、绝望的个人，成为席卷欧洲的“现代人的困惑”的集中体现，并在欧洲掀起了一阵又一阵的“卡夫卡热”。主要作品有《城堡》《变形记》《饥饿艺术家》《审判》《乡村医生》等。

精彩书评

　　卡夫卡的巨大贡献并不全在于他跨出了历史发展中决定性的一步，更为重要的是，他出人意料地打开了一扇门，让人们看到：在小说这个领域，幻想能够如同在梦中一样爆炸，小说能从看似难以摆脱的逼真性要求中解放出来。
　　——米兰·昆德拉
　　
　　是卡夫卡使我发现我会成为一个作家的。我十七岁那年，读到了《变形记》，当时我认为自己准能成为一个作家。我看到主人公格里高尔·萨姆沙一天早晨醒来居然会变成一只巨大的甲虫，于是我就想：“原来能这么写呀。要是能这么写，我倒也有兴致了。”
　　——加西亚·马尔克斯

精彩书摘

　　卡夫卡的巨大贡献并不全在于他跨出了历史发展中决定性的一步，更为重要的是，他出人意料地打开了一扇门，让人们看到：在小说这个领域，幻想能够如同在梦中一样爆炸，小说能从看似难以摆脱的逼真性要求中解放出来。
　　——米兰·昆德拉

　　是卡夫卡使我发现我会成为一个作家的。我十七岁那年，读到了《变形记》，当时我认为自己准能成为一个作家。我看到主人公格里高尔·萨姆沙一天早晨醒来居然会变成一只巨大的甲虫，于是我就想：“原来能这么写呀。要是能这么写，我倒也有兴致了。”
　　——加西亚·马尔克斯

前言/序言

　　This collection includes four of the seven books that Kafka published during— or just after— his lifetime. Even if Kafka’s three novels had remained unpublished, in keeping with his professed wish, his short fiction would have given him a secure place in the modernist canon. During his life they brought him, if not fame, at least the respect of many fellow-writers. Robert Musil invited him to write for the Neue Rundschau (New Review), the leading literary magazine in Germany, though Kafka was unable to accept the invitation; Rainer Maria Rilke attended the public reading of In the Penal Colony that Kafka gave in Munich, and revealed in conversation that he knew and admired Kafka’s previous stories. Kafka was not as obscure an author as is sometimes imagined.
　　Yet Kafka’s literary output is small, and was produced under difficult conditions. He held down a day job as an extremely able and valued employee in a state-run workers’ accident insurance firm. Officially his working hours were from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. without a break, but of course he often had to stay in the office for longer, and after the outbreak of war in 1914 the absence of many staff serving in the army increased the workload for those who, like Kafka, were exempted from military service on the grounds that they were indispensable. In his early years Kafka also paid many visits to factories in the industrial zone of northern Bohemia to report on the safety standards of the machinery in use. On leaving work he would walk, swim, or rest. Since he lived with his parents in their flat until he was 30, he could not find peace to write until everyone else had gone to bed.
　　Having such limited writing time, Kafka tended to favour short fiction. Even his novels, especially The Trial, are very much series of episodes. The mood-pictures which make up Meditation are very short; eight of them appeared in the Munich periodical Hyperion in 1908, marking Kafka’s debut as a published author. Brevity had the advantage that the initial impulse could be sustained throughout the text. With longer texts, Kafka, who never planned his work, found that his original inspiration tended to flag. The great exception was The Judgement, written in a single night, but he never again achieved such a unified, coherent piece of writing; he was dissatisfied with the end of The Metamorphosis, perhaps because of the change of perspective required by the protagonist’s death.
　　As an author, Kafka was not only self-critical, but as perplexed by his own works as his readers have subsequently been. He wrote to Felice Bauer: ‘Can you discover any meaning in The Judgement — some straightforward, coherent meaning that one could follow? I can’t find any, nor can I explain anything in it.’ His writing is sharp, precise, and beautifully paced, yet his descriptions become enigmatic and bewildering on close scrutiny, and he packs into his narratives a wealth of suggestions and implications which refuse to yield any simple or single interpretation. The philosopher Adorno wrote of Kafka: ‘Each sentence says “Interpret me”, and none will permit it.’ At the same time, Kafka’s narratives and images are frighteningly direct. A father condemns his son to death. A commercial traveller is turned into an insect. Colonial justice is administered by an elaborate machine. Themes of power and violence are given palpable form. Yet the messages of the stories are complex, ambivalent, and inexhaustible.
　　Kafka’s literary skill is apparent also in the long autobiographical letter he wrote to his father (but fortunately never delivered) in November 1919. The ability to argue a case that Kafka had developed as a lawyer is exercised with eloquence, passion, cunning, and a precise and vivid recall of crucial episodes from his childhood. How far the Letter to his Father should be seen as literature is still undecided, but as a text on the borders of autobiography and imaginative fiction it remains a painful masterpiece.

牛津英文经典：变形记（英文版） [The Metamorphosis and Other Stories] 下载 mobi epub pdf txt 电子书格式