clearly, and the novel preserves its great long breath.
Let's go back to that third-chapter sentence: it is relatively long, with commas but no semicolons (in the manuscript and in all the German editions). So what disturbs me most in the Vialatte version of this sentence is the added semicolon. It represents the end of a logical segment, a caesura that invites one to lower the voice, take a short pause. That caesura (although correct by the rules of syntax) chokes off Kafka's breath. David then even divides the sentence into three parts, with two semicolons. These two semicolons are all the more incongruous given that throughout the entire third chapter (according to the manuscript) Kafka uses only one semicolon. In the edition established by Max Brod there are thirteen. Vialatte reaches thirty-one. Lortholary twenty-eight, plus three colons.
You can see the long, intoxicating flight of Kafka's prose in the text's typographical appearance, which is often a single 'endless' paragraph, over pages, enfolding even long passages of dialogue. In Kafka's manuscript, the third chapter is divided into just two long paragraphs. In Brod's edition there are four. In Vialatte's translation, ninety. In Lortholarv's translation, ninety-five. French editions of Kafka s novels have been subjected to an articulation that is not their own: paragraphs much more numerous, and therefore much shorter, which simulate a more logical, more rational organization of the text and which dramatize it, sharply separating all the dialogue exchanges.
In no translation into other languages, to my knowledge, has the original articulation of Kafka's texts been changed. Why have the French translators (all, unanimously) done this? They must certainly have had a reason for it. The Pleiade edition of Kafka's novels contains over five hundred pages of notes. Yet I find not a single sentence there giving such a reason.
And Finally, a Remark on Type, Large and Small
Kafka insisted that his books be printed in very large type. These days that is recalled with the indulgent smile prompted by great men's whims. Yet nothing about it warrants a smile; Kafka's wish was justified, logical, serious, related to his aesthetic, or, more specifically, to his way of articulating prose.
An author who divides his text into many short paragraphs will not insist so on large type: a lavishly articulated page can be read rather easily.
By contrast, a text that flows out in an endless paragraph is very much less legible. The eye finds no place to stop or rest, the lines are easily 'lost track of.' To be read with pleasure (that is, without eye fatigue), such a text requires relatively large type that makes
reading easy and allows one to stop anytirne to savor the beauty of the sentences.
I look through the German paperback edition of The Castle: on a small page, thirty- nine appallingly cramped lines of an 'endless paragraphe': it's illegible; or it's legible only as information; or as a document; in any case not as a text meant for aesthetic perception. In an appendix, on some forty pages: all the passages Kafka deleted from his manuscript. They disregard Kafka's desire (for thoroughly justified aesthetic rea-sons) to have his text printed in large type; they fish out all the sentences he decided (for thoroughly justified aesthetic reasons) to destroy. In that indifference to the authors aesthetic wishes is reflected all the sad-ness of the posthumous fate of Kafka's work.
FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF THE SENTENCE
Des heures passerent la, des heures d'haleines melees, de battements de coeur communs, des heures durant lesquelles K. ne cessa d'eprouver l'impression qu'il se perdait qu'il s'etait enfonce si loin que nul etre cirant lui n'avait fait plus de chemin; a l'etranger, dans un pays ou l'air meme n'arait plus rien des elements de l'air natal, ou l'on derait etouffer d'exil et ou l'on ne pouvait plus rien faire, au milieu d'in-sanes seductions, que continuer a marcher, que continuer a se perdre.
– Alexandre Vialatte
Des heures passerent la, des heures d'haleines melees, de battements de coeur confondus, des heures durant lesquelles K. ne cessa d'eprouver l'impression qu'il s'egarait, qu'il s'enfoncait plus loin qu'aucun etre avant lui; il etait dans un pays etranger, ou l'air meme n'avait plus rien de commun avec l'air du pays natal; l'etrangete de ce pays faisait suffoquer et pourtant, parmi de folles seductions, on ne pouvait que marcher toujours plus loin, s'egarer toujours plus avant.
– Claude David
La passerent des heures, des heures de respirations melees, de coeurs battant ensemble, des heures durant lesquelles K. avait le sentiment constant de s'egarer, ou bien de s'etre avance plus loin que jamais aucun homme dans des contrees etrangeres, ou l'air lui-meme n'avait pas un seul element qu'on retrouvat dans l'air du pays natal, ou l'on ne pouvait qu'etouffer a force d'etrangete, sans pouvoir pourtant faire autre chose, au milieu de ces seductions insensees, que de continuer et de s'egarer davantage.
– Bernard Lortholary
La, s'en allaient des heures, des heures d'haleines communes, de battements de coeur communs, des heures durant lesquelles K. avait sans cesse le sentiment qu'il s'egarait, ou bien qu'il etait plus loin dans le monde etranger qu 'aucun etre avant lui, dans un monde etranger ou l'air meme n'avait aucun element de l'air natal, ou l'on devait etouffer d'etrangete et ou l'on ne pouvait rien faire, au milieu de seductions insensees, que continuer a aller, que continuer a s'egarer.
– Milan Kundera
PART FIVE. A la Recherche du Present Perdu
In the middle of Spain, somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid, two people sit in the bar of a small railroad station: an American man and a girl. We know nothing about them except that they are waiting for the train to Madrid, where the girl is going to have an operation, certainly (though the word is never spoken) an abortion. We don't know who they are, how old they are, whether or not they are in love; we don't know the reasons that brought them to their decision. Their conversation, even though it is reproduced with extraordinary precision, gives us no understanding either of their motivations or of their past.
The girl is tense and the man is trying to calm her: 'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It's not really an operation at all.' And then: 'I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time…' And then:
'Well be fine afterward. Just like we were before.'
When he senses the slightest agitation on the girl's part, he says: 'Well, if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to.' And eventually, again: 'You've got to realize that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.'
Behind the girl's replies, one can sense her moral scruples. Looking at the landscape, she says: 'And we could
