Kafka, according to lovers

Of Franz Kafka's novels, I have read
none. But his short stories, I have
read all that were left. He wanted

them burned. But good old Max Brod,
confidante and literary executor, best
friend, told him "I will burn none of them."

Kafka apparently kept the guy on, so.
He'd protested sufficiently, it seems.
I am glad for the cordial betrayal

that played out between these two.
The stories are quite weird. Theirs
is dream logic. People remember things

halfway through that had never any sign
of happening, or reflect upon laws (as if
of nature) that obtain where they are,
that cannot make sense to anyone,

apologizing, "If things were otherwise,
how could we go on living?" Eventually
it seems anything could happen at all,

so long as most people remain cheerful
under the brutal logic of it, which they
at least can see. And

they do. That's the thing. It's much
like life.

Kafka wrote originally in German,
in an elevated and formal style -
ironically, I'm told. The effect
of his voice,
reporting such
embarrassing facts
as he could come up with,

with such exaggerated courtesy and dignity,
is supposed to be magical by all reports.

But one can't very well learn German
well enough to appreciate Kafka
just to appreciate Kafka.

Very well.

Instead, I make do in English,
in translation. I am angered
at the introduction to this book,

informing me of Franz's adorable Germanic
magic tricks, inimitable in any other tongue
- taunting me with the inadequacy of what

is to follow, but assuring me
they did all they could. By John Updike
no less! I bet Updike pulls such hatchet jobs

with every introduction he writes - trying
to get out of being asked. I call it passive
-aggressive. But the translations, I thought

were lovely enough, if alas! I hadn't
known better. A real life of dreams
still waking in stages, where attacks
of pain to make one's eyes water
break no spells, and unpleasant things
intrude upon the notice of practical,

serious,
ambitious men
and dogs, and burrowing creatures,
and one big bug, and some mice,
and women of course,

who all scold themselves
for their ridiculous anxieties
in the process of disappearing
increasingly into them. Abandoned
to self by self, alone and naked in the night

under an infinite sky of stars crowding close
to the point of claustrophobia:

In a world of Free Will, only not yours -
and whose, then? Each of them bedeviled

by a question, not the sort of question
one asks, if one isn't ready to die more or less
alone.

And after each story, a duo of translators
is credited: always
two. Either:

Translated by Tania and James Stern

or

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

or once,

Translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins,

- who must have been lovers. Yes, they were.

Perhaps translators always pair up this way.
The only way to cross through, maybe, and

safely over.