The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

Kafka in Visual Translation

“Worlds that are…stripped down to an uncanny, distorted, and persistently incomplete version of what is typically perceived as reality.”
The New Advocate. “In the quiet lamplight, his flanks unhampered by the thighs of a rider, free and far from the clamor of battle, he reads and turns the pages of our ancient tomes” (415).

This illustration series was inspired by the novelist Franz Kafka. In each of these drawings, I depict some of my favorite Kafka stories and reflect on my developing understanding of his writings. I chose this illustration style in order to visually represent Kafka's prose style, which constructs worlds that are intensely detailed and recognizable, yet stripped down to an uncanny, distorted, and persistently incomplete version of what is typically perceived as reality. I am fascinated by the inhuman figures in his stories, who seem to dwell in the threshold between animal and human. 

 

Kafka, Franz. The Complete Stories. Edited by Nahum Norbert Glatzer. Translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, Schocken Books, 1971.

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