The Way Home

As I opened my copy of Kafka's complete short stories, I realized that, though I am quite fond of the text, it had been quite some time since I last read from the book, a half year perhaps.  Turning the pages with no specific intent, I happened upon a gem called "The Way Home."  It seemed familiar to me, I'm sure I'd read it before. Yet, for a reason I ignore, the feeling of the story was unique this time around. I read it a second then a third time.  Upon completing my final reading a troublesome thought occurred to me, "I don't know that this story (what is a short story?) could be accurately described as Kafkaesque." Faced with this apparent paradox I wasted away the afternoon planning a trip that I will never take, to visit the world's oldest libraries.

    See what a persuasive force the air has after a thunderstorm! My merits become evident and
overpower me, though I don't put up any resistance, I grant you.
    I stride along and my tempo is the tempo of all my side of the street, of the whole street, of the whole quarter. Mine is the responsibility, and rightly so, for all the raps on doors or on the flat of a table, for all toasts drunk, for lovers in their beds, in the scaffolding of new buildings, pressed to each other against the house walls in dark alleys, or on the divans of a brothel.
    I weigh my past against my future, but find both of them admirable, cannot give either the
preference, and find nothing to grumble at save the injustice of providence that has so clearly
favored me.
    Only as I come into my room I feel a little meditative, without having met anything on the stairs worth meditating about. It doesn't help me much to open the window wide and hear music still playing in a garden.


-Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
Franz Fafka. The Complete Short Stories. New York: Shocken, 1971. 387.