INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
Some Remarks on New Research Trends and the International Reception of Franz Kafka1
This second, enlarged two-volume edition of Kafka's primary (1982) and secondary bibliography (1987, both Francke, Berne/Switzerland), is now being published in Munich by K. G. Saur, who took over the project from the Swiss publisher. This two-volume edition in three parts (Vol. I, Vol. II/Part 1, and Vol. II/Part 2) re- sulted from the decision to include the primary literature and is comprised of the following sections: Volume I is a reprint of the first edition of primary literature {Franz Kafka's Works, 1982) and new material that has been added sequentially in the same order as the original. Volume II (part one and two) includes the bib- liography of secondary literature; the first part is a reprint of the 1987 edition {Franz Kafka. A Commented Bibliography of Secondary Literature) and the sec- ond contains new material from about 1981 to 1997 (bibliographies, collected volumes, articles, books, etc.), and earlier material previously unavailable to the authors. Both the primary and secondary literature are thus divided into two parts. Each volume contains an expanded index in German and English and a bi- lingual table of contents. English language users can now conveniently search the indices by topic, name, and title, and locate articles and books on Kafka's in- dividual works.
This second edition has been anticipated by Kafka scholars, German special- ists, and students. In an effort to make the work more user-friendly and to reach an international audience, the bibliographers followed the suggestion of several scholars by adding English translations to the book commentaries.
These evaluative commentaries were designed to provide an essential service to the field of international Kafka literature. Harvard University's Judith Ryan noted, "Finally a guide through the labyrinth." Franz R. Kempf listed the 1987 edition among those works (e. g. Peter Beicken and Hartmut Binder's handbooks, Jurgen Born's chronicles of early Kafka reception, and Ludwig Dietz' bibliogra- phies) which "left behind shining bits of thread on their way to the Minotaur"
{Everyone's Darling: Kafka and the Critics of His Short Fiction, 1994, 7). The first edition had already inspired further commentaries such as those in the stud- ies of Franz R. Kempf, Ritchie Robertson, and William J. Dodd.
While that 1987 volume of secondary literature contains commentaries on ar- ticles, the second edition does not, mainly because of time constraints. But the present edition contains an additional dozen languages. In any event, a good por-
1 The authors would like to thank Laurie Adams, Giorgio Caputo, Marge Devinney and Anna Herz for assistance with the translation.
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tion of the articles listed were originally written in English. Titles of articles in less familiar languages (e. g. Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, and the Slavic languages) were translated in order to indicate their content. Books, how- ever, are commented in both volumes of secondary literature; the English trans- lations of the comments appear in an addendum to the second part of Volume II and are included in the indices. The authors hope that the second edition of this bibliography will not be used merely as a library handbook, but rather will appeal to a wider audience, particularly to English-speaking scholars, students, and gen- eral readers of Kafka.
Although Volume II begins with the year 1955, a substantial portion of earlier research is included through reprints and new editions. The authors consider their work a companion to, and continuation of such handbooks as those by Hartmut Binder and Peter Beicken from the seventies that have not yet been translated in- to English. The English translations in this edition provide non-German speaking Kafka scholars with the opportunity to "catch up". They also attest to Franz Kaf- ka's global appeal.
Readers are alerted to the following aspects of the new edition: Bilingual an- notations are not a standard feature of bibliographies of 20th century authors.
Furthermore, the second edition, appearing only twelve years after the first, has nearly doubled in size. Only a few of the many adaptations of Kafka's works into film and the performing arts were listed. The same is true of newspaper articles, with the exception of reviews. The authors have also discontinued the use of the asterisks for references not personally reviewed. The book section no longer re- fers to earlier dissertations; and book commentaries, compiled over a long period of time, vary in length. Because of time constraints they are generally shorter in the second part of Volume II. In several languages, such as Korean with its astonishing output of translations and a translation tradition different from that of the West, the authors have had to be selective. Korean language scholars are referred to the large-scale bibliography compiled by Yi Choong Sup whom the authors also wish to thank for valuable assistance. Languages such as Korean, Japanese, and Hebrew necessitated the help of various people for transcription and transliteration. This has resulted in minor discrepancies (such as "Tokyo"
and "Tokio," and the Hebrew periodical Moznayim, or Moznaim). Cyrillic trans- literations, primarily from Russian and Bulgarian, with few exceptions, follow Duden, vol. I, Rechtschreibung. In the case of new editions and translations of works that have previously been fully listed, the second edition cites only the titles and dates of a work. The authors attempted to complete partial titles appearing in the first edition. Computer technology has contributed to the com- pilation of many new titles, but the Internet is not yet a reliable method of ac- cessing information since not all diacritical signs and letters can be reproduced and have often been replaced by different letters. Even as recently as 1998 it was xxvi
not possible to access all the existing national bibliographies produced in the West.
However, direct collaboration with over 40 national libraries yielded more re- liable results. Several publishers provided valuable assistance as well. The most consistent help financially, professionally and in the spirit of generosity, came from the Deutsches Literaturarchiv of the Deutsche Schillergesellschaft in Mar- bach/Neckar, Germany, and its competent, patient, and devoted staff under the leadership of Ulrich Ott, Reinhard Tgarth, and Peter-Paul Schneider. They de- serve special thanks, as do Jürgen Born, Hartmut Binder, Walter H. Sokel, and Stanley Corngold, for invaluable advice and encouragement.
It is impossible to provide a complete survey of even recent developments in Kafka research in this limited space. Nevertheless, the authors are convinced that a more systematic and realistic approach to questions surrounding Kafka's life and work has been achieved. The discussion of such issues was taken up in sym- posia, collected works, monographs, school- and study companions to Kafka's works, as well as in journals and societies devoted to Kafka. This trend con- tinues, especially in the wake of the new Critical Edition of Kafka's works by an international editorial team at the Gesamthochschule Wuppertal in Germany ("Forschungsstelle für Prager Deutsche Literatur"), which was begun in the late seventies and is being published by the S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt/M. The publication of Kafka's letters is imminent. Reactions to this Critical Edition are still forthcoming, and translations into other languages are just beginning (e. g.
the American translations of The Castle by Mark Harman, and of The Trial by Breon Mitchell, both of which appeared only in 1998, published by Schocken Books, New York); some translations of the Critical Edition exist and are pres- ently in progress in French, English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Czech.
In 1994, in the midst of these developments in Kafka literature, the copyright for Kafka's works lapsed, 70 years after his death. This set off an international run on the lucrative Kafka market among publishers and translators. It also en- abled the enterprising Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag to start its own critical fac- simile edition of available manuscripts, forcing editors, translators, commentators and researchers to rethink their traditional approach.
The Stroemfeld/Roter Stern edition, overseen by the team of Roland Reuss, Peter Staengle and others, and based on their experience with facsimile editions of other authors, has so far ended with the second volume, The Trial (1997).
Comments from various quarters have accompanied the Critical Kafka Edition published by the S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt/Main, subsidized by the German government, with its international editing team of Malcolm Pasley, Jürgen Born, Marthe Robert, Nahum Glatzer, Jost Schillemeit, Hans-Gerd Koch, Gerhard Neu- mann, Michael Müller, Roger Hermes, and others. The issues raised revolved around the authenticity of the text. Some have wondered why there was no per-
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manent Czech or Austrian specialist on this editing team. Kafka's original texts are, except for The Trial, still at the Bodleian Library in Oxford under the care of Malcolm Pasley. The Trial manuscript is the only large manuscript available outside Oxford (at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach/Germany), and was acquired with the help of the German Government. International scholars have appealed to Malcolm Pasley and the remaining Kafka heirs to permit the con- tinuation of the facsimile edition. Editorial techniques and Kafka's reception should be reexamined as we enter a new century. The reading public may or may not be affected by these events, but the search for authentic texts as well as the authentic Franz Kafka continues. An important step in this process is the reintegration of Franz Kafka and his work into the cultural context of his native Prague.
Secondary literature has greatly assisted Kafka's journey home. The process began with a reassessment of Kafka's reception, and the bibliographic sections of the present work reflect these efforts. They document research and translations from South America to Mexico, Poland, the old German Democratic Republic to China and Korea. Assessing the French reception of Kafka, Manfred Schmeling points out that Kafka's works have given "more opportunities to 'misunderstand- ings' and 'treason' than many others" ("Verraten und verkauft? Probleme literari- scher Kafka-Rezeption in Frankreich", 1996), a notion that explains the origin of the diverse Kafka interpretations, starting with Brod's first Kafka editions. The French critics demonstrate the characteristic "dominance of [France's] own cul- tural traditions" ("Zielkultur"), superimposing a French reading over an enigmatic artistic work. On the one hand, unclear reception theories and confusing concepts further clouded the issue; on the other hand, "misreadings" and "misunder- standings" inspired new creative expressions. The reception of Kafka thus proved to be a model of international cross-fertilization and intellectual debate.
The appropriation of Kafka by French surrealists, existentialists and religious philosophers (e. g. A. Vialatte's translation of The Trial, 1933) created the first model of an abstract, a-historical Kafka devoid of biographical and cultural con- text. This image of Kafka was slowly eroded. Marthe Robert had protested early on against such a conception of Kafka, one that changed only with Bernard Lor- tholary's new translation of The Castle, in 1983, which eliminated the mystifying, uncritical vocabulary.
The surrealist-existentialist Kafka became such an international success that he was even "reimported" into his native country and no longer viewed as a citizen of Prague. The history of his reception has made progress in recent decades as scholars have corrected and explained many puzzling issues. A case in point is Josef Cermak's 1992 article "Die Kafka-Rezeption in Bohmen 1913-1949", which presents the early Czech situation: the first mention of Kafka in a Czech language publication dates to 1913/14 (Frantisek Langer). Milena Jesenska's first Czech rendition of Kafka's The Stoker, appeared in 1920 and was approved by Kafka
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himself. It immediately became the model for a "transparent" translation true to the particularity of Kafka's language. Other translations by Milena Illova and Otto F. Babler followed. Kafka's work was interpreted according to early leftist views in Communist publications (S. K. Neumann).
Additional translations and illustrated publications appeared since the 1920's.
In 1929 for example, the Catholic circle around the publisher Josef Florian in Moravia came out with the first illustrations of Kafka texts by Otto Coester and Albert Schamoni. Small bibliophile printings by Josef Portmann were published in 1928, and Vrana's Country Doctor-translation illustrated by Schamoni was published in 1931. Besides Kafka's German speaking friends and acquaintances in Prague only a few readers had recognized the quality of his writings (e. g. Otto Pick and Johannes Urzidil).
In Prague, aside from Pavel Eisner, a bilingual Czech/German publicist and author, interest in Kafka lagged. The academic German circles around Otokar Fi- scher did not mention the first German six-volume edition of Kafka's works pub- lished in 1937. Eisner's efforts to publish The Trial in Czech also failed and the novel appeared only in 1958; but his first translation of The Castle was published in 1935. Eisner's view of Kafka supported the "Prague interpretation" of the writ- er as a native of Prague, and he insisted on the importance of the three-fold ethnic environment, Jewish, German and Czech, for his life and work. The Prague Ger- man writers likewise, viewed Kafka as an author of the Prague "Altstadt;" the Kafka who influenced an entire generation of writers and artists, however, was the
"imported" abstract French surrealist version without local or central European connections. This notion also contrasted with Max Brod's religious view. Nor were Eisner and Hugo Siebenschein always immune to the surrealist Kafka, who persists today in the popular mind. This image of Kafka conflicted with the sub- sequent French import, namely the existentialist Kafka of Sartre and Camus, again appropriated by Prague intellectuals and artists. In the first collection of es- says on Kafka, the Czech Franz Kafka a Praha of 1947 [Memories, Considera- tions and Documents. Franz Kafka and Prague] - with contributions by Hugo Siebenschein, Emil Utitz, the English Kafka translator Edwin Muir, Pavel Eisner and Peter Demetz, only Eisner defended Kafka as a writer from Prague. Addi- tional Czech translations of Kafka appeared until the political coup of February
1948 which aborted a complete Czech edition of Kafka's works.
These developments are typical of many similar types of reception especially in the West; other developments occurred elsewhere in the world, such as in the former Communist countries, in East Asia and in South America. Recently, Kafka research has increasingly focused on placing him in the context of his native city and central European tradition. This approach followed what the Ger- mans have called the "-ismen-Sucht" of external and internal interpretations which promised a Kafka "for everyone." Fashionable neologisms such as "kaf-
kaesk, kafkärna, Kafkaesque" were created. The contextual approach also con- trasted with interpretations based on structuralism and deconstruction.
A series of illustrated volumes revisit Prague as it was in Kafka's days: Bedrich Rohan's Kafka wohnte um die Ecke. Ein neuer Blick aufs alte Prag, 1986 [Kafka Lived Around the Corner: A New View of Old Prague]; Marta Zeleznä's Kafka and Prague, 1991; Klaus Wagenbach's Kafkas Prag, ein Reisehandbuch, 1996 [Kafka's Prague: A Travel Reader], containing contemporary photographs of lo- calities, streets, coffeehouses and residences in Prague where Kafka lived. These include Hartmut Binder's and Jan Parik's Kafka: Ein Leben in Prag, 1982 and 1993 [Kafka: A Life in Prague], and Binder's Wo Kafka und seine Freunde zu Gast waren. Eine Typologie des Prager Kaffeehauses, 1991 [Where Kafka and his Friends Met: A Typology of the Prague Coffeehouse], as well as Harald Sal- fellner's Franz Kafka und Prag, 1996. Kafka's literary acquaintances are por- trayed in the volume Prager Profile. Vergessene Autoren im Schatten Kafkas,
1991 [Prague Profiles: Forgotten Authors in Kafka's Shadow], edited by Hartmut Binder. His extensive collection of material on Kafka and Prague will inspire additional insightful publications, also on the Prague German writers.
Biographies of Kafka were written from different points of view, for example, those by Hartmut Müller, Peter Mailloux, Claude David, Ernst Pawel, Frederick R.
Karl, Pietro Citati, and also Joachim Unseld's important Franz Kafka. Ein Schrift- stellerleben. Die Geschichte seiner Veröffentlichungen, 1982 and 1984 (Franz Kaf- ka. A Writer's Life, 1994), portraying the author's interaction with his publishers.
Klaus Wagenbach's Franz Kafka in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (1964) continues to be reprinted and was translated into Chinese in 1988. New documents related to the author's professional life appeared in Franz Kafka. Amtliche Schrif- ten, edited by Klaus Hermsdorf 1984 and 1991, and important facts about his final years were revealed in Rotraut Hackermüller's publication of his hospital records.
The following works further elucidate aspects of the author's life and family: An- thony Northey's study on Kafka's relatives (K a f k a ' s Relatives: Their Lives and His Writing, 1994), Josef Cermäk's publication of Kafka's Letters to His Parents, 1990, and Malcolm Pasley/Hannelore Rodlauer's edition of Kafka's travel diaries.
Important features of Kafka's works were connected to his intellectual and cultural heritage. For example Ulf Abraham's studies of Kafka's legal concepts (1985) portray Kafka as a critic of the traditional socio-scientific legal system.
Lida Kirchberger (1986) traces Kafka's ideas back to a Western Roman origin;
Klaus Hebell (1993) believes that Kafka exposes the weaknesses of the Austro- Hungarian legal system; DuSan GliSovic (1996) traces Kafka's political ideas and motifs in his literary and other writings. Kafka's insight into and criticism of bu- reaucracy has been linked to theories of Max Weber (Hans-Ulrich Derlien and Axel Dornemann); he appears to have known and been intrigued by theories of modern technology and communication. These topics were pursued by Valerie
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Greenberg (1990), Klaus Hoffer (1989), and in the essay collection Franz Kafka.
Schriftverkehr (1990), edited by Wolf Kittler and Gerhard Neumann. Kafka appears solidly connected with reality as a lawyer and an official in a large insurance company, confronted daily with files, office machines, and communication problems. His friend, Max Brod, possessed the talents of a modern communicator and public relations specialist. Joseph Vogl (1990) considers Kafka an expert on
"violence" which is so pervasive in his fictional imagery, and connects this theme to contemporary economic and capitalistic ideas as well as to the genre of the de- tective story. In Topography of Power (1992) Sylvelie Adamzik perceives power as a topographical model in Kafka's prose. Kafka's relation to women and sexu- ality received much attention, e g. by Reiner Stach's critique of Giinther Mecke's homoerotic theories (1987). Frank Môbus argues that for Kafka the act of writing was an attempt to sublimate sexuality (1995). Elizabeth Boa's Kafka. Gender, Class and Race in the Letters and Fiction (1996) investigates Kafka from a feminist/
formalist/biographical viewpoint, linking the question of sexuality to aspects of contemporary socio-political theory and practice. At the same time, however, this study also touches on issues such as the "Bluebeard"-syndrome in Kafka's female relationships. The parameters of Kafka's sexuality thus expand into a new direc- tion, culminating with Claude David's view of Kafka as a dangerous "Don Juan."
Kafka's Jewishness and his affinity with Eastern-European Jewish culture is further explored and documented, as is his familiarity with Jewish life in Prague:
The symposium volume Kafka und Prag, edited by Kurt Krolop and Hans Dieter Zimmermann (1994), deals with the difficult existence of Prague's Jews in Kafka's generation, Kafka's works in the context of central European culture and his re- ception in Prague, and presented the views of a group of important Czech Kafka scholars. Christoph Stôlzl's groundbreaking Kafkas bôses Bôhmen, 1975 and 1989 [Kafka's Evil Bohemia, The Social History of a Prague Jew], not yet trans- lated into English, had highlighted Kafka's Jewishness, his historicity and the in- fluence of anti-Semitism on his life. In 1962 in his Kafka. Romanzo e parabola (republished in 1997), Italy's Giuliano Baioni pointed to the Jewish influence on Kafka, for example in the encounter with the Yiddish actors in Prague as self- confirmation. This approach recurs in more recent studies: Ritchie Robertson's Kafka, Judaism, Politics and Literature (1985) established the author's relation- ship to the German-Jewish tradition. Mark M. Anderson edited a volume of essays, Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics and Fin de Siècle (1989) and in his monograph Kafka's Clothes (1992) elucidates Kafka's connection to contemporary intellec- tual and artistic life.
The "Prague interpretation" has now been expanded and confirmed. Kafka's life among the Jewish minority of his native city, surrounded by a Christian ma- jority, his Jewish friends, and his interest in Jewish and Yiddish culture are con-
sistent with those of his own generation. S. Gilman (K a f k a : The Jewish Patient, xxxi
1995) considers Kafka's life and works a paradigm of European internalized anti- Semitism. In 1987 the Judaic scholar Erich Grözinger was convinced that the issue of Kafka's Jewishness was a neglected aspect of Kafka scholarship; there- fore Grözinger and others edited a collection of studies entitled Franz Kafka und das Judentum, which also investigated the author's diaries from this point of view.
Grözinger's own work, Kafka und die Kabbala. Das Jüdische in Franz Kafka, 1992 (English edition 1994) presents definitive conclusions about Eastern Jewish thought including the Jewish cabala and chassidic mysticism. Further studies of this issue come from Guido Massino (Eastern European Jewish influence), Jean Jofen, Stéphane Mosès, M. Cavarocchi, and Huan-Dok Bak. A voluminous dissertation by Iris Bruce (supervised by Princeton's Stanley Corngold), Franz Kafka. The Reluctant Zionist, is in press and it places Kafka's work firmly within the Jewish narrative tradition. In a further attempt to revive the "authentic Kafka", Hans-Gerd Koch compiles recollections of eye-witnesses, friends and acquaint- ances in Als Kafka mir entgegenkam, 1998 [When I met Kafka].
Comparative studies of Kafka's affinities with Dostoyevsky (Dodd), Kierke- gaard, Nietzsche (Corngold), Dürrenmatt (Tantow), Borges, Philip Roth, Thomas Mann, Hesse, and others continue to appear. Frank Pilipp collected studies on Kafka's influence on Austrian writers such as Canetti, Aichinger, Handke, Jelinek, Turrini, Bernhard, in The Legacy of Kafka in Contemporary Austrian Literature (1997).
The Trial has attracted special scholarly attention ever since the sensational acquisition of its original manuscript by the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Mar- bach/Neckar in Germany in 1990 followed by an exhibit and an international symposium the same year. Heightened interest in critiquing and interpreting Kafka's works is confirmed by Philipp Reclam jun.'s paperback commentary (1993) on the novel, which includes a history of its reception. This was followed by another interpretive volume by Oldenbourg publishers (1995) as well as Re- clam's volume on Kafka's novels and stories (1995).
Kafka societies have played a role in establishing his image in conferences and publications over the last several decades. The oldest, the Kafka Society of America has - since its foundation by M.-Luise Caputo-Mayr in 1975 - held open forums for national and international Kafka scholars during the annual convention of the Modern Language Association of America. The contributions of these sessions have been published since 1977/78 in the Journal of the Kafka Society of America edited by the authors of the present bibliography. They survey the important themes of current Kafka research in North America. The journal continues to publish information provided by the bibliographical research center at Temple University where the present bibliographies were compiled. The topics discussed not only reflect North American Kafka research, but also show the difference be- tween American and European approaches: Kafka has been explored in relation
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to Realism; to twentieth century cultural history; to women; to the new novel; to present-day literature; to philosophy; to biography; to new psychoanalytic trends;
to the age of mechanical reproduction; to his translations; to bureaucracy; to his literary contemporaries; to theater and film; to postmodernism; to culture; to ter- ritoriality, and also to his role as a critic of literature.
Kafka research in the United States has been influenced by Derrida, Paul de Man, Deleuze and Guattari, by French literary criticism, structuralism, post-struc- turalism, and by deconstruction. Important results were achieved by, among others, Stanley Corngold, Charles Bernheimer, Clayton Koelb, Henry Sussman, Ruth Gross, and among the senior scholars, prominent American Kafka special- ists, such as Walter H. Sokel continue to pursue successfully their decades-long study of Kafka.
Soon after the foundation of the American Kafka Society, an Austrian Kafka Society was established by Wolfgang Kraus in Klosterneuburg near Vienna which is administered by Norbert Winkler. It has held a series of Kafka Symposia pub- lished in eight volumes of a Schriftenreihe der Franz-Kafka-Gesellschaft. Special efforts were made to attract Kafka scholars from the former Communist world (cf. Volume five, Kafka in der kommunistischen Welt, 1993), and to maintain the house in Kierling where Kafka died. It was at one of these meetings that Eugenia Kaceva first reported on her long and patient efforts to publish Russian Kafka translations in the former USSR.
Kafka research in Holland has coalesced around the "Kafka Kring," founded by Niels Bokhove in 1992 who also publishes the quarterly Kafka Katern in Dutch.
The "Kafka Kring" organizes lectures and meetings and makes available various kinds of information on the author.
The Korean Kafka Society in Seoul has - under the leadership of Huan-Dok Bak - become an important center for the dissemination of Kafka studies. It pub- lishes works on Kafka and has contributed to the enormous number of Kafka translations in Korean. It is interesting to note that the East Asian reception of Kafka has shown an affinity for the Jewish aspects of Kafka's works.
The Czech Kafka Society under the direction of Marta Zelezna is a Kafka in- formation center which issues relevant publications, arranges exhibits and pub- lishes a newsletter, Die Verwandlung, both in Czech and in English.
Because Kafka was influenced by the figurative arts and subsequently had a remarkable influence on this field, this subject merits separate consideration. Suf- fice it here to mention one example of this life-long fascination by Hans Fronius with the Prague author which is impressively documented in his volume of col- lected illustrations, covering the period of 1926-1985.
The long chain of Kafka symposia and events continues. Karol Sauerland ar- ranged in 1983 the first international Kafka meeting in Poland. There was a sym- posium in Israel with international participation October 24-29, 1999: Ich bin
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Ende und Anfang: Franz Kafka, Zionism and Beyond. George Tabori trans- formed in 1992 the entire medieval city of Cividale del Friuli in Northern Italy into a "Kafkaland" with the help of international groups of artists in the field of theater, music and ballet, together with film showings and concerts where among other things, the Kafka reception in Slavic countries became evident. This is just a small selection of the continuing visibility of Kafka.
Adaptations for films and the stage are numerous. From Orson Welles to Mi- chael Haneke a long list of feature films and documentaries appeared. The name Kafka appears on popular TV shows, like "Jeopardy", and there is a huge number of web sites with texts by Kafka, translations, bibliographical data, etc. on the Internet.
There is no simple way to explain the initially slow and later rapid rise in Kafka's reputation around the world. It is evident despite several claims to the contrary that Kafka was not unknown at the time of his death in 1924. He already had a reputation as a writer of short stories, some of which were reprinted pri- marily in newspapers while he was still alive. Thus A Hunger Artist appeared in two American German language newspapers in New York and in Chicago in 1922. Between 1920 and 1924, translations of several stories appeared in Czech, Hungarian and surprisingly, even in Norwegian and Catalan.
Literary readings were far more popular in the 1920's than these days, and in this connection Ludwig Hardt should be mentioned for making Kafka better known. Among the names of reviewers of Kafka's books we notice Otto Pick, Camill Hoffmann, Albert Ehrenstein, Felix Braun, Heinrich Eduard Jacob and Robert Musil. Extended obituaries were published not only in Prague (in German and Czech) but also in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, and in Bratislava (in Hungarian).
And Kafka's family was unable to answer personally all the letters of condolence.
Memorial services took place in Prague and Vienna.
It is nevertheless obvious that the works which Kafka himself prepared for publication - not a single novel among them - were not sufficient to establish his world-wide fame. The slowly growing recognition of Kafka can be attributed to the appearance in very quick succession (between 1925 and 1927) of his three novel fragments. Max Brod accomplished this single-handedly despite his pro- fessional career and many other obligations. Determined to make Kafka famous he arranged and edited these fragments in such a way that they appeared to be fairly complete. He also added postscripts, published some of Kafka's other un- published manuscripts, and wrote a lot about him including articles. Yet as editor and administrator of Kafka's literary estate he received very little money; it was for him a labor of love. All through his life he continued to publicize his friend's works and inspired a growing circle of Kafka readers.
Already in the 1920's highly regarded German writers, among them Kurt Tu- cholsky, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, and Alfred Doblin were greatly im- xxxiv
pressed by Kafka; among the younger German writers from Bohemia we ought to mention Josef Mühlberger who was the editor of the journal Witiko. Kafka is listed and discussed in several history of literature volumes particularly in con- nection with the movement of expressionism. He was well on his way to be rec- ognized as a serious literary figure in the German-speaking countries although he was still very far from world-famous.
However, around that same time frame, a development outside the German- speaking area, first in southern and western Europe, began to take shape and gain momentum which was the decisive factor in Kafka's global fame. The precise reasons why Kafka of all people was translated into several languages within a short period of time and made such an impact have not been fully studied. In 1925 five short pieces appeared in Flemish translation in Belgium, and in the same year the respected Madrid journal Revista de Occidente edited by Ortega y Gasset published La metamorfosis, perhaps translated by Jorge Luis Borges. Two years later, Un artista del hambre (A Hunger Artist) appeared in the same pe- riodical, and shortly after that a partly critical book review, four pages long on Kafka's The Trial and The Castle written by Ramón María Tenreiro. All this hap- pened at a time, 1927, when there were no French or English Kafka translations anywhere. In 1928, the first Italian translations of short stories were published in Milan by the journal II Convegno, the same year when La Nouvelle Revue Fran- çaise published La Métamorphose translated by Alexandre Vialatte who - together with the Surrealists - was primarily responsible for making Kafka a household name in France. The French - and that is worthy to note - did not see Kafka as a representative of German literature which was, not that long after the sufferings of World War I, a positive factor in making his works popular. To this day, a number of authors and even reference works and library catalogues identify Kaf- ka's ethnicity differently; at times he is called a German, a Jewish, an Austrian, and also a Czech writer. For some authors he is simply a Prague writer. It was also 1928 when the first English translation, The Sentence, appeared in the USA;
later translations were better known under the title The Judgment. Several distant relatives of Kafka live in the USA, among them - apparently - also a writer by the name of (Frances) Kimberly Kafka who made her home in Wisconsin.
Kafka's global fame is primarily due to Max Brod and the translating talents of the Scottish writer Edwin Muir and his wife Willa who starting in 1930 intro- duced the writer from Prague to the English speaking world. To a large degree the popularity of Kafka's works in the many languages is a credit to the transla- tors many of whom are outstanding scholars or writers in their own right. In ad- dition to the translators already mentioned we could list at random Bruno Schulz, Marthe Robert, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt, and Sadeq Hedayat. Was Kafka merely lucky by attracting excellent translators? New translations appear on the book market, both because of the new Critical Edition texts and also due to the xxxv
language changes in the 20th century. Not all Kafka translations were taken from the original German texts. Thus we have Spanish editions based on the French translation, a French edition translated from Czech, and several Chinese trans- lations were done from the English.
Initially in Germany and for German publishers, Kafka was not a great success as an author. Because of the critical economic situation there, Brod was forced to change publishing houses from Die Schmiede to Kurt Wolff, later to Kiepen- heuer and finally to Schocken. Yet the circle of readers grew slowly; the post- World War II period changed the situation drastically.
Impressive are the numerous translations in the Scandinavian countries com- pared to their relatively small populations, yet clear popularity trends are difficult to establish. Why more Kafka editions were published in Norway in the 1990's than in Sweden or Denmark may not be easy to explain.
Here and there interesting yet not generally known facts emerge. Books by Kafka were printed during Mussolini's rule, in Germany in 1934 and 1935, and even in Japan in 1940 when it had an alliance with the Third Reich. That some Danish and German publications appeared during the German occupation of Denmark and the Netherlands is also startling, with censorship and certainly pa- per rationing under some German control.
A few words about publishing houses. In most cases they are among the best and made money on Kafka. Since 1946 S. Fischer has been the leader in the Ger- man-speaking area. German pocket editions of The Trial and The Stories pub- lished by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag surpassed the million mark long ago.
Several book clubs published Kafka editions through licensing agreements with Fischer. Only during the last few years, after the copyright expired, did other publishers come out with various Kafka editions: Reclam, Suhrkamp, Stroem- feld/Roter Stern, Ullstein, Diogenes, Aufbau Verlag, etc.
Schocken Books dominated in the USA, Seeker & Warburg as well as Pen- guin Books were the Kafka publishers in Great Britain. Now other well-known companies, among them Scribner/Macmillan, A. A. Knopf/Random House, and Simon & Schuster are in the competition; there are also Czech publishers putting out German and English editions.
Kafka's collected works which appeared years ago exist in French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Netherlandic, Spanish, and Serbo-Croatian; the surprise is that there is no edition of the complete works in English.
Gallimard has controlled the market in France, Gyldendal in Denmark and Norway, Querido in the Netherlands, Wahlstrom & Widstrand in Sweden. On the other hand, we see a wide open field in Italy where names like Mondadori, Riz- zoli, Einaudi, Feltrinelli, Newton & Compton stand out. As expected there is plenty of diversity in the Spanish-speaking countries where Emece, Alianza, Edaf, Losada, Seix Barral, Bruguera, Akal, Teorema, Planeta are among the better xxxvi
known companies which are concentrated in Barcelona, Madrid and Buenos Ai- res, but many other cities and countries are represented, even Fidel Castro's Cuba (1968). As before, the traditional publishing centers of Portuguese books are Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon where Kafka's works have also appeared; Bra- siliense, Clubo di Livro, Tecnoprint, Europa-América are major publishers. The importance of Portuguese as world language on three continents is not always recognized.
In the Slavic world before World War II, there were Kafka translations only in Czechoslovakia and in Poland. After 1945 intellectuals and artists in these coun- tries had to struggle with the rather drastic restrictions dictated by the authorities and the rules of Socialist realism. To a certain extent Yugoslavia was an excep- tion. In the Marxist camp, strange as it may seem, Kafka became the bone of con- tention after the death of Stalin when attempts were made to modify the strict concepts of Socialist realism. The debates focused on the demarcation and the possible redefinition of concepts like "alienation", "modernism", and "realism".
Kafka, the radical individualist, became the symbol of alienation and decadence, the study of his works was usually viewed as western inspired revisionism and at the same time as criticism of the Communist ideology of collectivism. Kafka schol- ars, like Eduard Goldstücker and Stefan Kaszyñski wrote about the fear of Kafka in the Communist world. In several countries and for a number of years it was prohibited to publish or to discuss Kafka's works. Later the number of published works by Kafka as well as the articles and books about him, could be considered a yardstick of the de-Stalinization and liberalization both in the Soviet-Union and the countries dependent on her. Yet the prior "suppression" of Kafka was not total. Merely one year after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising Kafka trans- lations were published in Hungary and Poland (in 1957), and a short time later in Prague too. In cultural matters a more tolerant tendency was noticeable especially in Poland. According to St. Kaszyñski the reprints of The Trial went way beyond 300,000 by the end of the 1980's, The Castle was printed in 300,000 copies, the secondary literature - for the main part book reviews and short contributions - exceeded 200 titles, and theaters in eight cities frequently performed stage adapta- tions of Kafka's novels and stories. Several Polish television plays probably had an even greater impact. In Prague, a city of theaters, numerous stage adaptations were performed which in May 1989 led to a ten day Kafka festival.
The first book by Kafka in the Soviet Union appeared in 1962 in Estonian, soon to be followed by Russian and Ukrainian translations; but editors, translators and authors, in a delicate balancing act of brinkmanship had to very carefully cal- culate the risks of going to the limits of the possible. The 1960's however, show increasingly liberal tendencies almost everywhere ("Prague Spring"). During these years, the first Bulgarian and Rumanian translations were printed. It was almost miraculous that in the Soviet Union Kafka was being discussed at all,
even by members of the Communist Party, and that significant studies were pub- lished, primarily by Dmitry V. Zatonskij and Boris Sudkov (Suchkov).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Communist governments, interest in Kafka grew in some countries, primarily in the Czech Republic, less so in Slo- vakia (where most people do read Czech). Except for his stay in Matliary, Kafka most likely had no contact with Slovaks.
There seems to be some desire to make up for lost time not just in Kafka's homeland but in Russia and Poland, too. The small numbers of translations in the Ukraine are most likely due to the prevalence of the Russian language in many areas there. During the last few years, several Czech scholars have rendered a valuable service by sifting through, analyzing and translating materials in the ar- chives of Bohemia in connection with Kafka. The financial support of the Czech Kafka Society by the Czech, German, and Austrian governments is a further posi- tive step in Kafka studies. Soon there will be a complete Czech edition of Kaf- ka's collected works.
Small nations, like the Finns have published and reprinted large parts of Kaf- ka's works. Iceland with a population of about 270,000 has translated and pub- lished some. The first Kafka translations appeared in Belgrade and Zagreb in
1953; numerous others were published in all states of post-World War II Yugo- slavia including Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia. Mirko Krivo- kapic reported that by he end of the 1960's almost all of Kafka's works were available in Serbo-Croatian and that after 1969, perhaps due to the efforts of scholars of German literature, The Trial was required reading in Serbian college preparatory secondary schools.
In the Islamic world Turkey is the leader in publishing the works of Kafka. A diplomat in Germany is now planning an Arabic translation of his collected works, and we wish him good luck and patience.
If we look chronologically at the expanded part of the primary literature, the increase in the translations and its cycles, an interesting Kafka geography emerges, and it becomes evident that Kafka has established himself in continents and lati- tudes besides Europe and North America. The evaluation of dry statistical figures provides some astonishing insight. It is not possible to guess or estimate the printed numbers of Kafka publications in book form, in journals and newspapers.
But a brief statistical count of the number of Kafka editions - including reprinted editions - in our category of Collections of Stories in this bibliography broken down according to languages reveals that German editions are still the most nu- merous followed by Spanish, English, Italian and - a little further down the list - French; the somewhat surprising numbers are: 194 German, 87 English, 72 French,
100 Italian, 39 Japanese, 24 Netherlandic (Dutch), 14 Norwegian, 43 Portuguese, 26 Swedish, 9 Serbo-Croatian, 188 Spanish. For the novel The Trial the equi- valent numbers are: 78 German, 61 English, 28 French, 35 Italian, 9 Japanese, xxxviii
18 Netherlandic, 16 Norwegian, 25 Portuguese, 17 Swedish, 24 Serbo-Croatian, 43 Spanish.
The centers of Kafka's popularity in Asia are Japan and above all Korea. The Japanese have translated almost everything by Kafka and in addition to that have contributed to scholarship. The first Korean translations were published in the journal Munhak-Yeschul in June 1955, i. e. only two years after the armistice in Korea. Perhaps here too, as in Europe after 1945, a sceptical post-war generation discovered Kafka.
The Kafka reception in the People's Republic of China is much more subdued and actually starts in 1979 after the Cultural Revolution. Some of their transla- tions are based on the English texts by Edwin and Willa Muir. An earlier Chinese translation was accessible only to a limited circle of Communist Party members (Tingfang Ye). The 1990's however, showed a strong upturn in the interest for Kafka. In Taiwan the first translations of stories were published in 1960. On the other hand, some of the other Asian countries continue to have reservations about Western literary influences.
Political and economic crises in Africa make it difficult for a central European writer to become established there, yet Camara Laye's novel Le regard du roi shows connections to Kafka.
Some other surprising details: Norway published a translation of The Trial in 1933, and Harry Järv lists no less than 29 "anonymous" book reviews of it. 24 years after the Rumanian journal Secolul 20 published the first translations of stories in 1964, the Jassyer Beiträge zur Germanistik 3 included a bibliography with 102 Kafka titles of primary and secondary literature in Rumania. Even the prov- ince of Kosovo, one of the poorer regions of Europe, came out with an Albanian translation of The Trial in 1972, The Castle followed in 1980. And the first Cata- lan translation of A Fratricide in Barcelona in 1924 deserves special mention.
It becomes evident, especially from the second, new part of this Primary Bib- liography that the South American countries and Mexico have accepted Kafka with open arms. In this respect, Spain and Latin America have undergone dif- ferent developments. There was an early interest in Kafka in Spain during the
1920's; this interest did not last. By 1936 Buenos Aires became a center of trans- lations and publications. While Europe was dominated by nationalism and totali- tarianism, Kafka became popular in Spanish translations. Important writers like Eduardo Mallea and Jorge Luis Borges and translators, above all David J. Vogel- mann, were fascinated by Kafka whose reputation later in the 1950's and 1960's spread through other Latin American countries. Towards the middle of the 1960's and for the subsequent two decades Spain became the center of Kafka pub- lications where they reached their pinnacle, and in the 1990's a fast decline set in.
Besides these examples of triumphant successes there are other interesting de- tails in the history of his reception which were not noticed in the West and were
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unknown before the fall of Communism. The translating efforts in countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria or Rumania resulted in a colorful range of Kafka's short prose in journals and volumes. Most noteworthy however, were the activi- ties of private bibliographers as in the case of Petr Sevcik, a physician and poet from Ostrava (in Moravia), who generously provided us with valuable material from his typewritten 245 page long bibliographic collection.
The development of the German-speaking area shows a constant rise begin- ning in 1946 and was able to reestablish the links to Kafka's contemporaries who were still productive. The young post-war generation of writers in their search for new models understood Kafka now and spoke up. If we want to take stock at the end of the 20th century, it can be expected that due to modern Kafka scholarship the importance of the Brod edition will fade. The 21st century will deal with the new critical work editions of the two last decades.
Like Shakespeare, Dante, and Molière, Kafka is now the common property of the civilized world and this bibliography tries to convey that.
Finally, the authors want to thank Marge Devinney, Temple University, and dedicate this work to their families and wish to thank them again for their pa- tience during all these labors for this second edition.
Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr Julius M. Herz New York Riegelsville, PA
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