A Country Doctor

At the beginning of 1917, living in a tiny house at 22 Golden Lane, Kafka wrote the expressive and lyrical short story A Country Doctor, which was published in 1919 in a collection of the same name. The publisher Kurt Wolff Verlag brought out the volume in “one hundred and ninety-two particularly handsomely presented large octavo pages” and beat the advertising drum for the book. The name “Kafka” was still known only to a readership which, although devoted, remained rather small, so successful sales still did not materialize: “evidence against the public”, as a competent reviewer aptly remarked at the time. 

The more horses you harness, the quicker it will be – that is to say, not pulling the block out of its foundation, which is impossible, rather you will tear the reins, resulting in a weightless, joyful ride.

Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor

The Next Village

My grandfather used to say: “Life is astonishingly short. It is now so condensed in my memory that i I can hardly fathom, for example, how a young man can decide to ride to the next village without fearing – quite apart from unfortunate accidents – that the span of the usual, happy life may be far too short for such a ride.”