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> To program any more was pointless. My programs would never live as long as [Kafka’s] The Trial. I found it a touch ironic considering that Kafka, on his deat

• gwern 12y ago
  The request was the final grand gesture. > BORGES: "In the case of Kafka, we know very little. We only know that he was very dissatisfied with his own work. Of course, when he told his friend Max Brod that he wanted his manuscripts to be burned, as Virgil did, I suppose he knew that his friend wouldn't do that. If a man wants to destroy his own work, he throws it into a fire, and there it goes. When he tells a close friend of his, “I want all the manuscripts to be destroyed,” he knows that the friend will never do that, and the friend knows that he knows and that he knows that the other knows that he knows and so on and so forth."
  • huxley 12y ago
    As much as it pains me to disagree with Borges, Kafka had already burnt almost 90% of his unpublished work [1] before his health declined due to starvation from a then untreatable laryngeal tuberculosis. I think Kafka did truly want to burn his work, but also feel Max Brod was right to save what he could. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html?_r...
    • gwern 12y ago
      He had burnt a lot, it's true, but that raises another question: given that he did burn a lot of it regularly throughout his life before his fatal illness, why did he not burn the remainder while healthy and instead later asked Brod (who claims to have immediately told Kafka he would not do that) to do it? Borges's reading here makes more sense; it was simply the final Kafkaesque gesture.