“Aphorisms” by Franz Kafka (translated by Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, and Michael Hofmann)

In this collection of aphorisms, Kafka sets down some riddles to live by. Or, at least, to try to wrap your mind around. How many are worth a ponder? “A cage went in search of a bird.” What does that even mean? When a metaphor is so obscure does it have any worth? Or is it not obscure at all for those capable of an esoteric reading? “Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.” Is this a comment on organized religion? Or on the origins of religion? Sometimes his comments can strike the reader as a truism. “Grasp the good fortune that the ground on which you stand cannot be any bigger than the two feet planted on it.” Or a humorous jab at the commonality of man. “It is inconceivable that Alexander the Great—for all the military successes of his youth, for all the excellence of the army he trained, for all the desire he felt in himself to change the world—might have stopped at the Hellespont, and never crossed it, and not out of fear, not out of indecisiveness, not out of weakness of will, but from heavy legs.” Sometimes Kafka just gives helpful guidance. “Dealings with people bring about self-scrutiny.” He ends with this friendly advice, “It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”