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Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.

Monday, December 12, 2011 - 5:47am

—Franz Kafka, from a letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27, 1904.

Clorindo KafkaWalter Brueggemann loosely cited this passage from Kafka in our interview being released this week and so, while fact-checking the script, we thought we’d verify for attribution. And, we wanted to read what he originally wrote. Following is the German version from which the English was translated:

“Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich.”

Photo by Celeste RC/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0


books, Franz Kafka, frozen sea within us, literature, reading, Walter Brueggemann

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2 Comments

Submitted by buy textbooks on Sun, 2012-03-11 23:22

If you need these items, then be weary.  Most rental services do not
send CDs or access codes with rentals.  In fact, only one rental service
guarantees supplemental material and CDs with their rentals (shameless
plug for PageTurns).  Be sure to check the fine print!

Submitted by Gordon C. Stewart on Sun, 2012-12-02 20:34

I love this Kafka quote and Walter Brueggeman's use of it. "...the ax for the frozen sea within us.." That's what profetic imagination does. It breaks up the ice within the human heart and mind. Wonderful.

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