Saturday, May 08, 2010

Kafka on Dogs and Animals Pursued in Burrows


"All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog."
- Franz Kafka, ‘Investigations of a Dog’.



As odd as it may seem, Franz Kafka not only wrote about dogs, but he also wrote about a creature living in an elaborate burrow being pursued by an encroaching "beast" unseen.

Both short stories, Investigations of a Dog and The Burrow are commonly found in anthologies of Kafka's short stories.

"Lying in my heap of Earth I can naturally dream of all sorts of things, even of an understanding with the beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen, and at the moment when we see each other, more, at that at the instant we merely guess at each other's presence, we shall both blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of us a second before or after the other, both of us filled with a new and different hunger, even if we should already be gorged to bursting."
- Franz Kafka, ‘The Burrow’.

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