Sunday, July 03, 2005

Kafka's Birthday

In 1984 today I was in Recife, on the beach of Boa Viagem... Happy birthday, Franz.

Quotability goes hand in hand with the art of mini-story telling. Maybe short-ness is to my taste; to my nature of restlessness and impatience in just about everything. What about Kafka?

"Kafka read the Hasidic stories translated and reworked by Martin Buber, and treasured a pocket anthology from the Talmud." (Ritchie Robertson, Kagka: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford UP, 2004, 109)

Buber was born in 1878, only 5 years older than Kafka, so it must have been a work of the Martin of a very young age. I'd like to get hold of a copy.