The same device is used in Forschungen eines Hundes ( Investigations of a Dog), where a dog tries to make sense of the world around it but is hampered by its inability to recognise the presence and influence of humans in its own life and those of other dogs. Like Ein Bericht für eine Akademie, Der Bau is narrated by its animal protagonist. Reproduced in Klaus Wagenbach, Franz Kafka in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek, 1965) British Libray X.908/8786 The fragment ‘In unserer Synagoge’ (‘In our Synagogue’) features a strange marten-like creature with blue-green fur which lives in the synagogue of a dwindling Jewish community, while in Der Bau ( The Burrow) an unspecified tunnelling animal becomes obsessed with securing its elaborate burrow against a supposed enemy or predator.įranz Kafka with (appropriately blurred and undefined?) dog, 1905. In the short piece ‘Eine Kreuzung ‘ (‘A Crossbreed’) the narrator possesses a creature which is part lamb, part kitten, the kitten-like characteristics having increased since he inherited the beast from his father.Īn uncertainty about the species depicted in Kafka’s animal stories is also a recurrent theme. He now considers that he has left ape-hood behind and become to all intents and purposes human.

Ein Bericht für eine Akademie ( A Report to an Academy), for example, is narrated by an ape who, having been captured by a hunting expedition, began learning to imitate his captors, continuing this ‘education’ as part of a music-hall act. Indeed, Kafka’s stories contain a veritable menagerie of creatures, and Gregor’s is not the only case where metamorphosis plays a role. If Gregor Samsa is the most famous ‘animal’ in Kafka’s work, he is not the only one.

The (insect-free) cover illustration from the 1916 edition of Die Verwandlung (Image from Wikimedia Commons) English translators sometimes refer to a ‘cockroach’ and illustrators tend to depict a beetle of some kind, although Kafka himself apparently vetoed any idea of showing an actual insect on the cover of an early edition. The German text initially refers to an ‘ungeheures Ungeziefer’, literally ‘monstrous vermin’, and the description of Gregor’s transformed body definitely suggests some kind of insect. In what is probably Kafka’s best-known work, travelling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself transformed into – well, it’s never made quite clear.

One of the exhibits in our current Animal Tales exhibition is a translation of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung ( Metamorphosis) illustrated by Bill Bragg.

Kafka the cockroach