Franzlations: The Imaginary Kafka Parables - Tapa blanda

Poetry. FRANZLATIONS takes the parables and aphorisms of Kafka as a starting point, and steps a few places to the left in order to reinvent them. Sometimes this means walking off a cliff and into the empty air. (Don't look down!) Sometimes this means keeping the cage and replacing the bird. For of course, Kafka's writing is a rich source of ideas, play, structure, and wit. It looks like the real world, but in the way the bootstrap that one pulls oneself up with looks like a real bootstrap.

It is said that if Kafka had not existed, Kafka would have had to invent him. But since he did exist, FRANZLATIONS has invented an imaginary Kafka so that he could help create the Kafka that was already there. Perhaps it was that. Kafka who helped create these imaginary parables.

This, itself, is a parable.

"A man once said, 'If you only followed the parables, you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.' Another replied, 'I bet that is also a parable.' The first said: 'You have won.' The second said: 'But unfortunately only in parable.' The first said: 'No, in reality: in parable you have lost.'"—Franz Kafka