Kafka: what the fuck's up with you, dude?

'Even the most fleeting contact with Franz Kafka, the strangest and purest of all German-speaking authors, prompts the central question raised by his work as much as his life: is it decipherable or not? Is Kafka’s fiction allegorical – does it have a sense that can be translated into concepts? And is his life really an enigma – implying that there is a solution and explanation of it? Or is it a mystery, that forever eludes such explanation? If we take the work, the problem can be demonstrated by a fragment picked at random: “Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; it happens again and again; finally it can be reckoned on beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony”. Does Kafka want to tell us something about leopards in this tale? Does he want to represent a cultural-historical process – the taming of the Dionysiac in an Apollonian ritual – in an image? Or is he thinking of something private, of driven habits gradually installing themselves in a ceremonial-ascetic life such as he lived? The work lets slip no answer. Among the reasons why it has attracted such legions of philologists and leopard-tamers is that it allows of so many interpretations.' Further ruminations here. A troubled lad, Kafka. If only they had acid in his day.