Richard and Samuel

The first chapter of the book Richard and Samuel was written in 1911 as an attempt at joint work of Franz Kafka and his friend Max Brod. The subtitle is " The first long train trip (Prague- Zurich ) ".

Formation

This is the description of a real journey of both friends. They took each a travel diary, so describe from their respective view a wide variety of sequences, conditions and sensitivities on the trip. The collaboration, however, was quickly perceived by both as unsatisfactory because it always felt disturbing their great diversity. Therefore you finished this collaboration after the first chapter. At the instigation of Brod this first chapter was in the Herder- leaves ( emerged as a kind of Jewish student newspaper of the publisher Willy Haas) in June 1912 in which many well-known Prague writers, including Franz Werfel and Paul Leppin published, published.

Richard and Samuel is among the published works of Kafka's lifetime, probably the most unknown and has been rarely interpreted.

Content

By way of introduction, two fictional characters, namely Richard and Samuel, introduced and characterized. Article is not only the description of the schedule of 26 and 27 August 1911 but also the consideration of their male friendship be, bearing in their characterization here a euphoric - effusive style of language used.

The reader then experiences the description of the various events in the train. Richard begins by considering the appropriate notebook for travel. Samuel registered a passing train with coquettish women farmers. Richard then not like the way that Samuel makes confidentially with them. A girl comes into the compartment, a Dora Lippert, the cocky lossprudelt and many things reveal themselves by, inter alia, that it works in a design office with a loud men and there was a lot of fun. Richard admired her though because she is so energetic and musically, but really he only sees her anemia and tried her with missionary zeal to show that only a proper natural treatment is advised here.

The two protagonists go with the girls in the dining car and are quite familiar with it. Samuel urges her to make a short stay in Munich with a taxi a small city tour. The girl is reluctant at first, then comes yet with. Richard has to think of the white slave to a then-current film, in which at a railway station, two men lie in wait for innocent girls and kidnap it. They come back in time to the station and then put Dora in her train to Innsbruck.

Samuel revealed in his part that he would have liked to do with Dora in Munich one night stopover this but Richard could not make them understand. So it is with Richard quite dissatisfied.

A large part then assumes Richards 's description of his sleeping in the train; he is a man who normally has difficulty sleeping, here in the train but he sleeps amazingly well.

At the suggestion of Samuel still different views of Switzerland to be admired.

With Richards consideration that he the friend as a society ultimately not enough, the chapter ends. He realizes that he thinks longingly at those Dora and daily interaction with another man in his physical appearance to him emotionally can not do justice.

The promise " ( continued) " at the end of the first chapter is not cashed.

Form

The initiation sequence and the final passage - Richards late type - deal respectively with the view of the friendship between the two men. The introduction is hopeful euphoric, sobered the end of it.

In between, the very divergent statements of friends lying on the same respective events. From the text, however, it is not clear which part Max Brod and Kafka which is to be assigned. Initially yet clear that they refer to the same events. In the course of the novel chapter covers these increasingly disappear. Everyone is more likely for long passages only in his own world. It is striking that the observed world outside for Samuel, Richard, but mainly reflects his own affairs.

Text analysis

The introductory description of the two protagonists leaves no direct conclusions as to which poets through which the two travelers talking about. The diary can but conclude that the introverted Richard Kafka and Brod is the seducer Samuel.

At first, the importance of male friendship is summoned in and especially for the literary projects. No sooner, however begin the common records, unravels - half open, half-hidden - a certain envy and carping from both sides, which runs through the whole chapter, and ends with the final in a helpless discomfort.

Predominant is the voyeuristic gaze of two bachelors. But Samuel is much more directed to the outside, he comments on the events offered by the train. It takes boldness to contact the ladies and has thus partially successful. Richards thoughts revolve around his own person, to a variety of meticulous concern. Clearly on Kafka's style reference the games in which the seamless transition from sleep to waking state is described ("What I see is captured with a careless memory of the dreamer ").

Quote

• "The many nuances, whose friendship relationships are capable of men to represent and at the same time to let the countries visited peer through a contradictory double lighting in their freshness and importance, as they are often attributed wrongly only exotic places: 's the point of this book ."

Self-witness

• Kafka to Brod: " For Richard and Samuel you have always had a preference, I know. Those were wonderful times, why it must have been good literature? ".

Expenditure

• Sascha Michel ( ed.): On the road with Franz Kafka. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-596-90270-5.

Secondary literature

• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. A Biography. C. H. Beck, Munich, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4.
• Ronald Perlwitz: Richard and Samuel. In: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 130-133. ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0
• Reiner Stach: Kafka. The years of the decisions. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 2004, ISBN 3-596-16187-8 p
• Joachim Unseld: Franz Kafka. A writer lives. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1982, ISBN 3-446-13568-5 Ln.
• Hans Dieter Zimmermann: Kafka advanced. C. H. Beck, Munich, 2004, ISBN 3-406-51083-3.