Subject
Kafka & absurd
From
Date
Body
In the latest issue of the magazine Kreschatik
(http://www.kreschatik.nm.ru/31/29.htm) there is an essay devoted to VN and
his attitude to Kafka and absurd. Its author insists that VN was familiar
with Kafka's works but that their notions of the absurd were very
dissimilar.
Dmitry Bykov in his new biography of Boris Pasternak (in the ZhZL series,
2005) wrote insightfully that the world of INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
"differs from Kafka's gothic fantasies, so appropriate in the damp
Meyrinkesque streets of Prague, by its very German rainbow color, its
cloying treacly sweetness, its jolly trills of the harmonica in the
background" (p. 68).
Sergey Karpukhin
(http://www.kreschatik.nm.ru/31/29.htm) there is an essay devoted to VN and
his attitude to Kafka and absurd. Its author insists that VN was familiar
with Kafka's works but that their notions of the absurd were very
dissimilar.
Dmitry Bykov in his new biography of Boris Pasternak (in the ZhZL series,
2005) wrote insightfully that the world of INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
"differs from Kafka's gothic fantasies, so appropriate in the damp
Meyrinkesque streets of Prague, by its very German rainbow color, its
cloying treacly sweetness, its jolly trills of the harmonica in the
background" (p. 68).
Sergey Karpukhin