Dilip Simeon's blog

How to describe Kafka, the man? Like this, perhaps: It is as if he had spent his entire life wondering what he looked like, without ever discovering there are such things as mirrors. A naked man among a multitude who are dressed. A mind living in sin with the soul of Abraham. Franz was a saint. Or then again, using details of his life, as found in Louis Begley’s refreshingly factual  The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay : over six feet tall, handsome, elegantly dressed; an unexceptional student, a strong swimmer, an aerobics enthusiast, a vegetarian; a frequent visitor to movie houses, cabarets, all-night cafes, literary soirees and brothels; the published author of seven books during his brief lifetime; engaged three times (twice to the same woman); valued by his employers, promoted at work. But this last Kafka is as difficult to keep in mind as the Pynchon who grocery-shops and attends baseball games, the Salinger who grew old and raised ...

Each torpid turn of the world has such disinherited children, to whom no longer what’s been, and not yet what’s coming, belongs: Rainer Maria Rilke Yet I felt no certainty about anything, demanding from every single moment a new confirmation of my existence… in truth, a disinherited man – Franz Kafka NB : Both the above citations come at the opening of Erich Heller : The disinherited mind: essays in modern German literature and thought (1952, 1961) DS Read Kafka's A Hunger Artist (1922)  An e xtract:  Many more days went by, however, and that too came to an end. An overseer's eye fell on the cage one day and he asked the attendants why this perfectly good cage should be left standing there unused with dirty straw inside it; nobody knew, until one man, helped out by the notice board, remembered about the hunger artist. They poked into the straw with sticks and found him in it. "Are you still fasting?" asked the overseer, "when on earth do you mean t...

Kafka: The Years of Insight By Reiner Stach  Kafka: The Decisive Years By Reiner Stach  Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt  By Saul Friedlander   reviewed by Kevin Jackson Lost in Transformation Someone must have been telling lies about K., for the popular image of him as the great Gloomy Gus of 20th-century letters (close rivals: Beckett, Cioran, maybe Céline) does not bear very much scrutiny. Consider this incident, which took place as he was dying of tuberculosis, and knew it. One day, when he was walking in a Berlin park, Kafka saw a little girl crying. He asked her why she was sad and she told him that she had lost her doll. Oh no, Kafka said, her doll was not lost - the toy was simply off on an exciting adventure. Understandably sceptical, the girl asked for proof. So Kafka went home and wrote a long, detailed letter from the doll, and gave it to the little girl the following day. Then, every day for the next three weeks, he gave her an additional le...

Kafka’s characters are almost always trapped – in a cage, a court case, an insect’s body, a false identity – and they share a feeling that the walls are closing in, and that a door, once there, is disappearing into the distance. This existential claustrophobia, at once vague and intense, resonates today, particularly under lockdown.   In A Report to an Academy , a short story published by Franz Kafka in 1919, an ape named Red Peter gives a lecture to a scientific conference, recalling how he was hunted in the jungle and then awoke one day in a cage, unable to return to the old way of life he had loved.  “For the first time in my life I could see no way out,” the ape says of his captivity. “Hopelessly sobbing, painfully hunting for fleas, apathetically licking a coconut, beating my skull against the locker, sticking out my tongue at anyone who came near me – that was how I filled in time in my new life. But over and above it all only the one feeling: no way out.” In ou...

The Lost Writings  by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hofmann    THE UNFINISHED DRAFT OF  THE CASTLE , Franz Kafka’s third and final novel, ends mid-sentence. But when the manuscript made its initial entree into the world, the text had been edited into completion. Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, who prepared the original 1926 edition, later reflected that his “aim was to present in accessible form an unconventional, disturbing work which had not been quite finished: thus every effort was made to avoid anything that might have emphasized its fragmentary state.”  To accomplish this obfuscation of the novel’s incomplete form, Brod redacted nearly a fifth of the text. He eventually thought better of the choice, and in the second edition restored most of what he’d cut - but by then, his success at attracting interest in Kafka’s work had led to its placement on the Nazis’ “List of Harmful and Undesirable Literature.” This prevented the more faithful...

Milan Kundera , whose Czech citizenship was restored last year after he had spent more than 40 years in exile, has won one of the Czech Republic’s most prestigious literary awards, the Franz Kafka prize. The $10,000 (£7,800) award, organised by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, is chosen by an international jury.  Franz Kafka  Society chairman Vladimír Železný said Kundera won for his “extraordinary contribution to Czech culture”, and for an “unmissable response” in European and world culture. According to Železný, when the 91-year-old Kundera was reached by phone, the author said he “joyfully” accepted the prize, particularly because of his admiration of Kafka. Kundera was expelled for  “anti-communist activities”  from the Czechoslovakian party in 1950. He became a hate figure for the authorities and eventually fled to France in 1975. His Czech citizenship was revoked in 1979 following the publication of his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting...

We are in a global pandemic that is at least 15 times more fatal than seasonal influenza. When people argue otherwise it puts more lives at risk; more families will mourn. Covid-19 conspiracies are dangerous. In New Zealand those conspiracies were driven by arguments against lockdowns and misinformation about the seriousness of the virus. As our country was gearing up for an election, those fringe theories were mainstreamed and amplified by a sitting MP, Jami-Lee Ross. Ross had plummeted from grace this parliamentary term: a high-profile implosion and resignation from the centre-right National party, with allegations of bullying and harassment as well as facing fraud charges in the high court. In a final desperate attempt at political relevance Ross hitched his wagon to the “plandemic” crowd. He led rallies and marches even during lockdown when the rest of us were doing everything to try to stop the spread of the virus. He posted misleading videos about forced vaccinations bound to whi...

On 15 January an unprecedented scene was witnessed in the Kashmir Press Club (KPC) when a few journalists accompanied by government forces entered into the premises and appointed themselves as the new “interim body” to look after the club affairs. Many journalists termed the incident a “coup” and condemned the arbitrary takeover of the club and accused the new interim body for working at the behest of the government. However, the new interim body led by senior journalist Salim Pandit denied the accusation.  The sudden takeover drew severe criticism from journalist associations across India and abroad. Reputed organizations like Editors Guild of India (EGI), Press Club of India (PCI), Mumbai Press Club (MPC), Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ), Chennai Press Club (CPC) condemned the “forcible takeover” of the KPC…. https://thekashmirwalla.com/lockdown-of-kashmir-press-club-another-onslaught-on-journalism/?utm_source=pocket_mylist Bharat Bhushan - Pegasus impact: Loss to Indian Republi...

Before the Law by Franz Kafka  Translation by Ian Johnston ( NB : This parable first appeared in 1915, and became a part of Kafka's book The Trial ) Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has n...

Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. The report reveals that 488 journalists were detained in 2021 – an increase of 20% compared to the previous year – while a total of 46 were killed and 65 held hostage. Of those detained, 60 were women (33% higher than 2020). As you might expect, it tends to be autocratic regimes with dismal records for freedom of speech and human rights which crop up once again as the worst offenders. The latest report notes an upturn in repression against journalists in Belarus – where opposition politicians and commentators have been targeted in the government crackdown since the August 2020 election – as well in Myanmar, where the military coup of February has bee...

In the ‘cancel culture’ era, universities should remember that the original purpose of free speech was to empower the weak, not to shelter them. Universities in the US and the UK have become a battleground in the war between safe speech and free speech. I believe that this is a false dilemma – and understanding its falsity can enable us to detect the social forces imposing it on us. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” wrote George Orwell in 1945 in an  introduction  to  Animal Farm. The introduction was so controversial that it was not made public until 1972. In it, Orwell relays how hard it was to get the novel published. Significant sections of the English intelligentsia in the 1940s held Stalin in high regard, so a book that was a thinly veiled attack on the Soviet Union and its dictators was scarcely timely. Four publishers, afraid to expose themselves to public scrutiny, rejected it. One said: “I think ...

The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gon...

In a strongly-worded statement, more than  170  Gujarat cultural personalities, activists and academics have strongly protested against “threats" issued against Gujarati writers in the Gujarat Sahitya Academi journal “Shabdsrushti” through an anonymous writeup under the titled “No, This Is Not a Poem, It Is Misuse of a ‘Poem’ for Anarchy…” Supposedly an editorial, published, ironically on page 89 of the journal, says the statement, seeks to accuse the writers seeking to criticise the government handling of the pandemic as “anti-national literary Naxals” and "attempts to create an atmosphere of hostility" towards them. It is said to have been  written  by Gujarat Sahitya Akademi chief Vishnu Pandya, a known Narendra Modi protege, in response to sharply critical poems by Parul Khakhar, hailing from from the Saurashtra region.  Shav Vahini Ganga (Hindi Punjabi English) शव वाहिनी गंगा While one Khakhar's poems, Shav Vahini Ganga  says, “Saheb, the Ganga carr...