Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzählungen
Fourteen tales of bureaucratic nightmare and existential dread. In the title story, a physician is summoned through a snowstorm to a dying patient, but the machinery of rescue collapses into something grotesque and impossible. A man stands before the Law, that famous door meant only for him, and waits until death. Another reports to an academy that he has become human by abandoning his true self. The empire's messengers cannot deliver their message. A father discovers his children have become animals. These are not fables with morals. They are fever dreams of modern consciousness, where systems devour meaning and identity dissolves under pressures we cannot name. Kafka wrote these in the winter of 1916-17, in a tiny house near Prague Castle, during a war that had already dismantled the old world. A century later, they anticipate every dystopia, every dehumanizing institution, every night when the phone rings with an impossible demand. You will recognize this world. You will not find comfort here.
Editions
X-Ray
“What am I doing in this eternal winter?””
— Franz Kafka
“I have discovered your great wound. You are dying from this flower blooming on your side.””
— Franz Kafka
“Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat and whispers in my ear, "Doctor, let me die.””
— Franz Kafka
“Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.””
— Franz Kafka
“Always asking the doctor for the impossible. They've lost their old faith; the priest sits home and picks his vestments to pieces, one after another; but the doctor is supposed to accomplish everything with his gentle, surgical hands.””
— Franz Kafka
“Gaunt, without any fever, not cold, not warm, with vacant eyes, without a shirt, the youngster heaved himself up from under the feather bedding, threw his arms around my neck, and whispered in my ear: 'Doctor, let me die.””
— Franz Kafka
“That's what people are like in my district. Always asking the impossible of their doctor. They have lost their old faith; the priest sits at home and picks his vestments to pieces, one by one; but the doctor is expected to accomplish everything with his sensitive surgical hand.””
— Franz Kafka
“Once one responds to a false alarm on the night bell, there’s no making it good again”
— Franz Kafka
“My grandfather used to say: "Life is astonishingly short. Now in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village without being afraid - that apart from accidents - even the time allotted to a normal, happy life is far too short for such a journey." (From: the next village)””
— Franz Kafka
