What Would Kafka Do? [by Stacey Harwood]

On October 21, 1985, The New Yorker published this poem by Raymond Carver:
 
Kafka’s Watch

I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns, and
an infinite eight to nine hours of work.
I devour the time outside of the office like a wild beast.
Someday I hope to sit in a chair in another
country, looking out the window at fields of sugarcane
or Mohammedan cemeteries.
I don’t complain about the work so much as abou
the sluggishness of swampy time.  The office hours
cannot be divided up!  I feel the pressure
of the full eight or nine hours even in the last
half hour of the day.  It’s like a train ride
lasting night and day.  In the end you’re totally
crushed.  You no longer thing about the straining
of the engine, or about the hills or
flat country, but ascribe all that’s happening
to your watch alone.  The watch which you continually hold
in the palm of your hand.  Then shake.  And bring slowly
to your ear in disbelief. 

            To a devoted Carver fan, the poem seemed uncharacteristic: more lush than the spare style that tagged Carver as “minimalist.”  I loved the poem, clipped it, and committed it to memory.

            Ten years later while reading Kafka’s letters, I came across this passage, written in October 1907, when Kafka was 24 and had begun work for the Italian insurance company Assicuraziono Generali:

 

             My life is completely chaotic now.  At any rate, I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns and an immense eight to nine hours of work; but I devour the hours outside the office like a wild beast.  Since I was not previously accustomed to limiting my private life to six hours, and since I am also studying Italian and want to spend the evenings of these lovely days out of doors, I emerge from the crowdedness of my leisure hours scarcely rested . . .

            I am in the Assicurazioni Generali and have some hopes of someday sitting in chairs in faraway countries, looking out of the office windows at fields of sugar cane or Mohammedan cemeteries; and the whole world of insurance itself interests me greatly, but my present work is dreary.

            I don’t complain about the work so much as about the sluggishness of swampy time.The office hours, you see, cannot be divided up; even in the last half hour I feel the pressure of the eight hours just as much as in the first.Often it is like a train ride lasting night and day, until in the end you’re totally crushed; you no longer think about the straining of the engine, or about the hilly or flat countryside but ascribe all that’s happening to your watch alone, which you continually hold in your palm . . .

My immediate reaction was dismay. Although I know all about collage and "sampling"  I wondered about the propriety of what RC had done. Did he take too many liberties? Does the title indicate that this is a “found” poem? When Carver later published Kafka’s Watch in a collection, he added the epigraph “from a letter.” Does that addition make it right? Or is it plagiarism pure and simple?

Would Kafka approve?  Do you?

-- sdh

Comments

First of all, congratulations to you for putting the pieces together & revealing the truth of the matter. Credit must be given to Carver,too, for seeing that there was this very good poem hidden in Kafka's letter. But, Ray, c'mon, you're ripping off Franz, taking credit you don't deserve: very bad form.
---Terence Winch

[Laura Orem]

I have to agree - just cutting up someone else's work into lines does not an original poem make. Troubling, especially for a writer as powerful as Carver at his best, even more so when considering the saga of Carver and Gordon Lish in the publication of Carver's first book of stories. Interestingly, last semester, a colleague of mine had her students read both the Lish-edited versions and the "pure" Carver versions of several stories. The students overwhelmingly preferred the Carver versions. As we all know, Carver wanted to pull the Lish-edited stories prior to publication, but did not succeed. So perhaps the Kafka "poem" is another instance of a writer who is still not sure of his own voice and abilities. I'd like to think so, anyway, rather than it just being cheating, although then I have to ask why he republished it later on. Sigh. Why can't writers behave?

As for Kafka, he probably would just chalk it all up as just one more example of the unfair universe crashing down on his head.

[Mitch Sisskind]

aside from the ethics of the poem there is something to be said about the content. anyone who has read kafka's diaries and/or letters knows that this guy was a huge kvetch about everything -- his job, his family, his writing, etc. but although he's conventionally thought of as a fragile poetic type he was actually a kind of superman who worked full time and then stayed up all night writing despite his poor health. i've also read, though have not confirmed,that he was in fact really into his job and was one of the architects of the workers compensation programs that were just beginning around the world. also -- and this was also true of einstein's work in the patent office -- kafka's job writing descriptions of accidents etc helped his essentially visionary talent to express itself in his characteristically precise and icily clear sentences and paragraphs that we all get such a kick out of. maybe raymond carver should have woked in an insurance office. maybe i should have.
mitch s.

[Stacey]

For me, the Carver "poem" doesn't pass the smell test. But there's more: Some time ago I came across a picture book about Kafka, featuring his childhood home and places he worked and such and as a caption to one of the pictures was an excerpt of the letter. Carver's poem is closer to the excerpt which makes me think he may have used the picture book version as the basis for his poem. I have the book somewhere.
Yes Kafka was a kvetch. And I too have read that he was an architect of workers comp. Apparently when he and his friends would gather in cafes and read their stories aloud, Kafka would crack himself up. His reading of his own work made it hilarious.

[Karen Resta]

It doesn't seem right, no. But one has to wonder whether an editor at The New Yorker was at work in this case, rather than Raymond Carver . . . could be . . .

[Sarah Arvio]

Stacey, there's another fold to this, and that is, who "wrote" the translation? Kafka wrote in German, and the "letter" was translated by someone into English. It's an odd translation, I mean, "the sluggishness of swampy time" sounds--well, like a translator's despair. Would Kafka have written his English in that style? So when Carver was borrowing the language of the letter, he was borrowing someone's words, but not Kafka's--a representation in English of Kafka's words. Another translation might have been quite different.
So it's questionable on both scores: lifting verbatim out of another author's writings, and also at the same time stealing a translation. If Carver had gone to the original and made a new translation, that poem would be perfectly honorable, don't you think? But he would have to say "After Kafka."

I found a poem in a fine book by an American poet, our contemporary, which was tagged "After..." I won't name the foreign poet because I don't want to shame our peer. But in fact, the poem was an exquisite, exact translation--there was nothing "after" about it. I marveled at its perfection, but it too was a stolen poem.