{"id":8942,"date":"2012-04-08T21:42:25","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T02:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=8942"},"modified":"2012-04-08T22:23:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T03:23:34","slug":"odradek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/04\/08\/odradek\/","title":{"rendered":"butler on Odradek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is Kafka’s short story The Cares of a Family Man<\/em> written between 1914 and 1917, the link is to Butler’s lecture.<\/p>\n

SOME SAY the word Odradek is of Slavonic origin<\/a>, and try to account for it on\u00a0that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only influenced by Slavonic.\u00a0The uncertainty of both interpretations allows one to assume with justice that neither\u00a0is accurate, especially as neither of them provides an intelligent meaning of the word.<\/p>\n

No one, of course, would occupy himself with such studies if there were not a\u00a0creature called Odradek. At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool<\/strong> for thread,\u00a0and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old,\u00a0broken-off bits of thread<\/strong>, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and\u00a0colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle\u00a0of the star<\/strong>, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle<\/strong>. By means of this\u00a0latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing\u00a0can stand upright as if on two legs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible\u00a0shape and is now only a broken-down remnant<\/strong>. Yet this does not seem to be the case;\u00a0at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface to\u00a0suggest anything of the kind; the whole thing looks senseless enough, but in its own\u00a0way perfectly finished. In any case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is\u00a0extraordinarily nimble and can never be laid hold of.<\/p>\n

He lurks by turns in the garret, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance hall.\u00a0Often for months on end he is not to be seen; then he has presumably moved into\u00a0other houses; but he always comes faithfully back to our house again. Many a time\u00a0when you go out of the door and he happens just to be leaning directly beneath you\u00a0against the banisters you feel inclined to speak to him. Of course, you put no difficult\u00a0questions to him, you treat him — he is so diminutive that you cannot help it — rather\u00a0like a child. “Well, what’s your name?” you ask him. “Odradek,” he says. “And where do\u00a0you live?” “No fixed abode,” he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of laughter that\u00a0has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves. And that is\u00a0usually the end of the conversation. Even these answers are not always forthcoming;\u00a0often he stays mute for a long time, as wooden as his appearance.<\/p>\n

I ask myself, to no purpose, what is likely to happen to him? Can he possibly\u00a0die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, s6me kind of activity, which\u00a0has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek. Am I to suppose, then, that he will\u00a0always be rolling down the stairs, with ends of thread trailing after him, right before\u00a0the feet of my children, and my children’s children? He does no harm to anyone that\u00a0one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful.<\/p>\n

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir<\/p>\n

Butler’s Lecture<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is Kafka’s short story The Cares of a Family Man written between 1914 and 1917, the link is to Butler’s lecture. SOME SAY the word Odradek is of Slavonic origin, and try to account for it on\u00a0that basis. Others again believe it to be of German origin, only influenced by Slavonic.\u00a0The uncertainty of both … Continue reading “butler on Odradek”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abject","category-butler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8945,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions\/8945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}