An Old Manuscript

An old leaf is a short story by Franz Kafka, the band appeared in the 1920 A Country Doctor. The descriptions remind you of the then-known writer Lulu Countess Thürheim with their writing my life. Memories from Austria's large world that Kafka has proven very loved.

Summary

A shoemaker tells of the terrible siege of his city by foreign nomads. An episode is about how the nomads eat an ox alive. From the terrible roar of the Ox startled, even the emperor appears at his rooms window. But he and his guards did not defend their subjects against the nomads. Rather, the citizens of the city to see left alone and they know that they are going to it is based.

Form

The story about the invasion of the nomads appear in the first-person or in the we- form. The frightened people seem move together closely in the face of terror. An anonymous narrator would not do it justice. In the introductory sentence as the last sentence, so to speak, as a clamp to the piece of prose, the power vacuum is discussed starting from a weak and indecisive Empire. And the only way has been possible so the nomads incidence.

Text analysis

First, one wonders what the title of the story has to do with the content. Is it a story that should be read on an old sheet, so comes from the distant past and their content has thus already obsolete? The operations in the city with the Imperial Palace are reminiscent of the invasion of the Mongols as nomads with archaic customs of the civilized, but not fortified China.

Unlike the narrative shoemaker, however, we know that the state power of this problem sometime takes quite and a great wall built against the peoples of the north. The subject performs Kafka continued in the narrative in the construction of the Great Wall. There also is referred to the books of the ancients with the illustrated cruelty with which we are accustomed to frighten children.

The shoemaker and the other citizens of the city will help the future (or distant ) construction of the wall but not in their current, hopeless situation. They are helpless against the nomads, which are not described directly as cruel, but superior in its primitiveness and animality as mentally.

Incidentally, a similar nomadic bloodlust is also addressed in the narrative Jackals and Arabs.

Through effort and the progression of time remedial action is taken. But we also know from the history of the construction of the Great Wall that this workaround was only imperfectly, since the wall was never fully completed.

Kafka has introduced a reference to its name. The nomads communicate with each other with a peculiar language, similar to the cries of the jackdaws ( Dohle = Czech kavka ). It is hardly a proper language, but it is the language of the powerful.

Quotes

• " Nomads, if on the no meat, who knows what could think to do them; who knows but what will occur to them, even if they get meat every day. "
• "I was about an hour in the back of my workshop flat on the floor and all my clothes, blankets and pillows I had heaped on me, not just to hear the roar of the ox, the leaping from all sides, the nomads to the teeth to tear pieces from his warm flesh. "

Reception

Scholz (p. 54) states that the imagery of aggression on the one hand and total powerlessness on the other hand illustrates in sharp contours. It takes place here an intrusion of terror into the familiar world, similar to the shock to the gate.

Expenditure

• All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
• The narratives. Original Version, Edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3.

Secondary literature

• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. A Biography. Publisher C. H. Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4.
• Cerstin Urban: Franz Kafka: narratives I. King explanations and Materials (Vol. 279), Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2005, ISBN 978-3-8044-1726-7.
• Ingeborg Scholz Franz Kafka stories I. King explanations Bange Verlag, 1991, ISBN 3-8044-0313-1.
• Reiner Stach: Kafka: The years of knowledge. S. Fischer, ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5.
• Bettina von Jagow, Oliver Year in Kafka 's Guide Life -works effects. Cambridge University Press, 2008 ISBN 978-3-525-20852-6.