Meditation

Kafka’s first publication, Meditation, gathered together eighteen short prose pieces originating between 1904 and 1912. Approximately half of these texts had been published before, scattered among newspapers and magazines. The volume of short stories, published in Leipzig by the Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, contains vignettes such as Children on a Country Road, The Window onto the Street and Longing to be a Red Indian. The publishers printed a run of eight hundred numbered copies. However, the book had so little success that it wasn’t until 1924, the year of Kafka’s death, that all the books were sold. 

Incredibly stylistically mature, with the lightness of masterly French prose, as rhythmic as the laments of lonely girls …

Otto Pick

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. They appear to rest evenly, as if it shouldn’t take much effort to push them away. But no, it can’t be done for they are held fast to the ground. But see, even that is only make-believe.

Franz Kafka, Meditation