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牛津大学出版百年旗舰产品，权威英文版本原汁原味呈现，资深编辑专为阅读进阶定制，文学评论名家妙趣横生解读。

内容简介

一天夜里，主人公K踏雪来到城堡附近的村子里投宿，因无城堡统治者伯爵的居留*，没有人肯收留，几经周折，才允许暂住。他千方百计想进入城，或者希望得到村民的认同，在村里合法地安顿下来，但他到处碰壁，不为村民所接受，他面对的是一个极其荒诞的现实，他始终只是个“局外人”。到了第六天他还是没能进入城堡。《城堡》是卡夫卡的最后一部长篇小说，其“卡夫卡式”的抽象化描写达到了登峰造极的地步，是20世纪西方现代派文学中极为重要的作品。

作者简介

弗朗茨·卡夫卡（1883—1924），奥地利最伟大的作家之一，被认为是现代派文学的鼻祖，表现主义文学的先驱，其作品大都用变形荒诞的形象和象征的手法，表现被充满敌意的社会环境所包围的孤立、绝望的个人，成为席卷欧洲的“现代人的困惑”的集中体现，并在欧洲掀起了一阵又一阵的“卡夫卡热”。主要作品有《城堡》、《变形记》、《饥饿艺术家》、《审判》、《乡村医生》等。

目　　录

Biographical PrefaceIntroduction Note on the TextNote on the TranslationSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Franz KafkaTHE CASTLEExplanatory Notes

前　　言

KAFKA’s last novel centres on a simple and compelling cluster of images. A rural castle, the property of an absent nobleman, is run by an administrative staff who dominate the village beneath the castle. The protagonist, K., coming from outside and ignorant of the village and the castle, has painfully to learn their ways and to discover that, despite all his efforts, he cannot gain access to the castle. So far, this may seem to match the associations of gloom and oppression suggested by the term ‘Kafkaesque’. Kafka, however, has much more to offer than the ‘Kafkaesque’, and if one can put aside such presuppositions, The Castle provides many surprising discoveries.The reader of The Castle is likely already to know The Trial, and may think that Kafka has simply replaced one opaque, hierarchical authority, the court, with another, the castle. In their texture, however, the two novels differ considerably. In contrast to the anonymous city of The Trial, The Castle has a vividly presented material and social setting. We are in a remote village, in the depth of winter. The snowbound village is repeatedly evoked: ‘more and more little houses, their window-panes covered by frost-flowers’, ‘a narrow alley where the snow lay even deeper. Pulling his feet out of it as they kept sinking in again was hard work’ (p. 13). We feel how exhausting it is to have constantly to struggle through the deep snow. Moreover, the village is a community, with friendships and hatreds that go back through the generations. We learn about the village’s two inns, the humble Bridge Inn and the more pretentious Castle Inn, and about how the latter’s landlord and landlady acquired it; we meet the families of the tanner Lasemann and the cobbler Brunswick, and hear about their standing in the village; and we are told at great length about the family of Barnabas, the castle messenger, and how the family are in bad odour because of their refractory attitude towards the castle. And whenever a new figure is introduced, he or she is neatly characterized, so that even those who appear briefly — the carter Gerstacker, the village schoolmaster, the schoolmistress Gisa and her languishing suitor Schwarzer — are vivid presences.This community is also the setting for a love story. Unlike the callous and self-centred protagonist of The Trial, the main character here is at least briefly capable of love, and the rapid development and decline of his love-affair with Frieda has moments of poignancy notfound earlier in Kafka’s work. These features offset the extensive conversations about the puzzling ways of the castle authorities, which correspond to Kafka’s profound concern with ambiguity, but which sometimes make one feel that the novel could have benefited from the work of an editor. Kafka did not complete the novel; like his others, The Trial and The Man Who Disappeared, it was published after his death by his friend Max Brod.If we seek access to the novel through Kafka’s biography, we shall be disappointed. The snow-covered environment is that of the ski resort of Spindlermuhle in the Tatra Mountains, where Kafka stayed in January 1922, while the rural community no doubt reflects his experiences in Zurau, where he stayed on his sister’s farm in the winter of 1917 – 18. The emotional drama goes back, in complex and untraceable ways, to his relationships with the Czech journalist Milena Polak, nee Jesenska, and with Julie Wohryzek, his second fiancee. But the isolated setting of the novel, and its quasi-fantastic social system, enable Kafka above all to explore and dramatize some long-standing intellectual preoccupations.One of these was the idea of a community. Kafka’s personal writings constantly express his sense of solitude, his isolation from his family, his need to find a substitute in writing, and his wish to found a community by marrying and starting a family. But, while attracted to the community as an ideal, he was also sharply aware of the frictions arising from living with even one other person. When he and Felice Bauer stayed together in a hotel in the summer of 1916, Kafka recorded in his diary how laborious it was to live together, adding: ‘only deep down perhaps a narrow trickle worthy to be called love’ (5 July 1916). Integration into a community such as the fictional village would be many degrees harder. Hence K. the outsider is treated with condescension, contempt, and outright dislike by the villagers, and allowed only a marginal place in their community as janitor in the village school. His situation has been compared to that of Jews seeking a place in European society. But to interpret the novel accordingly would be too narrow.The novel is also concerned with authority of various kinds. The castle is said to belong to Count Westwest, whom we never see. In his absence the castle is run by a huge staff of bureaucrats, arranged in a hierarchy, who manage the affairs of the village. There is muchsatire on bureaucratic confusion and inefficiency. But it is also clear that the bureaucrats arrogate to themselves the respect formerly paid to the vanished aristocracy. Kafka was writing just after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires. His novel asks in part what will take the place of traditional authority.Alongside political power, the castle and its staff receive religious devotion from the villagers. The many religious overtones in the text have sometimes been interpreted as meaning that the castle has an enigmatic religious significance: thus Max Brod called it the abode of divine grace. Erich Heller memorably challenged this interpretation by pointing to the misbehaviour of the castle bureaucrats: ‘The castle in Kafka’s novel is, as it were, the heavily fortified garrison of a company of Gnostic demons, successfully holding an advanced position against the manoeuvres of an impatient soul.’But this may be both extravagant and misguided. The castle is enigmatic: we cannot tell what power it contains — if any. The image may have been suggested by a passage in Schopenhauer’s great philosophical work The World as Will and Idea, where Schopenhauer argues that scrutiny of the world can never tell us about the true, inner nature of things: ‘we can never arrive at the real nature of things from without. However much we investigate, we can never reach anything but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the fa?ades.’Perhaps the castle contains no secret. It may be more appropriate to see it not as a real spiritual authority, whether benign or malign, but rather as ‘the emblem for the modern, secular, post-religious era’, and as the projection of people’s desire for a spiritual authority.As in The Trial, where we are invited to wonder why Josef K. submits to the authority of the court, so here Kafka is examining the psychological mechanisms that lead people to believe in a spiritual authority and submit to its demands — demands which are based in their owndesires and hopes, and thus ultimately in their own power. Kafka summed up the problem of authority in a little parable written on 2 December 1917:They were given the choice of being kings or royal messengers. Like children, they all wanted to be messengers. Therefore there are only messengers; they rush through the world, and as there are no kings, they shout their meaningless messages to one another. They would gladly put an end to their wretched condition, but they dare not because of their oath of loyalty.This closed circle — servitude to an authority that one has oneself created and could in theory destroy — is the condition of the villagers in The Castle. K. challenges that authority; he is a land surveyor, whose work consists in rational calculation, and thus a representative of the disenchanted, post-religious modern world. But he is also susceptible to its appeal.Within Kafka’s work, the castle and its hierarchy seem to be an expansion of the legend of the doorkeeper which the chaplain told to Josef K. in The Trial. There, a countryman comes to the gate of the Law, as K. comes to the village, and is told by the doorkeeper that he cannot enter yet; the man spends his whole life waiting submissively for permission to enter, only to be told, as he dies, that the entrance was intended specially for him. The doorkeeper resembles the castle official of whom K. sees a portrait soon after his arrival: both have big beards and prominent hooked noses. Both are members of a hierarchy: we hear later in The Castle of a warden with several deputy wardens, besides officials and secretaries, while the doorkeeper evokes a series of further doorkeepers and says: ‘The sight of just the third is too much even for me.’ A similar phrase occurs in The Castle, when the landlady of the Bridge Inn asks K., ‘how did you bear the sight of Klamm?’ (p. 47). The doorkeeper professes to be ‘powerful’, and the word is used in a similar undefined way by the landlord, who describes officials, but not K., as ‘powerful’ (p. 10). K. imagines Klamm’s door being guarded by a ‘doorkeeper’ (p. 108).The castle is defined by its contrast with a traditional religious building: not with a synagogue, as one might expect given Kafka’s increasing consciousness of his Jewish identity, but with a church. As K. looks up at the castle on his first morning in the village, he compares it with the church in his home town: In his mind, he compared the church tower of his childhood home with the tower up above. The former, tapering into a spire and coming down to a broad, red-tiled roof, was certainly an earthly building — what else can we build on this earth? — but it had been erected for a higher purpose than these huddled, low-built houses and made a clearer statement than the dull, workaday world of this place did. (p. 11)This passage may be cautiously agnostic, but it concedes that the church spire at least points to some goal beyond ordinary life and has a clarity that stands out from everyday existence. The castle lacks any such clarity. It looks neither like a feudal fortress nor like a modern mansion, but like a collection of two-storey houses. If you had not known it was a castle, you would have taken it for a small town. That implies that prior belief, perhaps the eye of faith, is needed to see it as a castle at all. In many other ways the castle is ambiguous. When K. first arrives in the village, the castle is invisible, hidden in darkness, without even a glimmer of light showing, and K. gazes up at ‘what seemed to be a void’ (p. 5). The next day he finds it impossible to get to the castle on foot, because the village street that seems to lead there curves away from it, and the carter Gerstacker flatly refuses to drive him to the castle. When K. expects the messenger Barnabas to lead him to the castle, Barnabas, having misunderstood K., in fact goes to his own house. Barnabas himself is not sure that the offices in which he is made to hang about are really in the castle, or that the official from whom he receives orders is really his employer Klamm.Klamm too is bewildering. His name — one of the few names in the story that one can interpret with some confidence— suggests the Czech word klam, ‘illusion’. K. does in fact see Klamm when Frieda encourages him to look through a peephole into the inn room where Klamm is sitting at a table with his beer.

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媒体评论

在15岁第一次读到卡夫卡的《城堡》时，便被文字中透露出的冷淡与荒唐所震撼，对于刚刚开始写作生涯的我来说，卡夫卡成为了某种象征，影响着我后来的写作风格。这种初识卡夫卡时带来的震撼至今仍未散去。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 ——村上春树

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ArrivalIT was late evening when K. arrived. The village lay deep in snow. There was nothing to be seen of Castle Mount, for mist and darkness surrounded it, and not the faintest glimmer of light showed where the great castle lay. K. stood on the wooden bridge leading from the road to the village for a long time, looking up at what seemed to be a void.Then he went in search of somewhere to stay the night. People were still awake at the inn. The landlord had no room available, but although greatly surprised and confused by the arrival of a guest so late at night, he was willing to let K. sleep on a straw mattress in the saloon bar. K. agreed to that. Several of the local rustics were still sitting over their beer, but he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He fetched the straw mattress down from the attic himself, and lay down near the stove. It was warm, the locals were silent, his weary eyes gave them a cursory inspection, and then he fell asleep.But soon afterwards he was woken again. A young man in town clothes, with a face like an actor’s—narrowed eyes, strongly marked eyebrows—was standing beside him with the landlord. The rustics were still there too, and some of them had turned their chairs round so that they could see and hear better. The young man apologized very civilly for having woken K., introduced himself as the son of the castle warden, and added: ‘This village belongs to the castle, so anyonewho stays or spends the night here is, so to speak, staying or spending the night at the castle. And no one’s allowed to do that without a permit from the count. However, you don’t have any such permit, or at least you haven’t shown one.’K. had half sat up, had smoothed down his hair, and was now looking up at the two men‘What village have I come to, then?’ he asked.‘Is there a castle in these parts?’‘There most certainly is,’ said the young man slowly, as some of those present shook their heads at K.’s ignorance. ‘Count Westwest’s* castle.’ ‘And I need this permit to spend the night here?’ asked K., as if to convince himself that he had not, by any chance, dreamed the earlier information.‘Yes, you need a permit,’ was the reply, and there was downright derision at K.’s expense in the young man’s voice as, with arm outstretched, he asked the landlord and the guests: ‘Or am I wrong? Doesn’t he need a permit?’‘Well, I’ll have to go and get a permit, then,’ said K., yawning, andthrowing off his blanket as if to rise to his feet.‘Oh yes? Who from?’ asked the young man.‘Why, from the count,’ said K. ‘I suppose there’s nothing else for it.’‘What, go and get a permit from the count himself at midnight?’cried the young man, retreating a step.‘Is that impossible?’ asked K., unruffled. ‘If so, why did you wakeme up?’At this the young man was positively beside himself. ‘The manners of a vagrant!’ he cried. ‘I demand respect for the count’s authority! I woke you up to tell you that you must leave the count’s land immediately.’‘That’s enough of this farce,’ said K. in a noticeably quiet voice. He lay down and pulled the blanket over him. ‘Young man, you’re going rather too far, and I’ll have something to say about your conduct tomorrow. The landlord and these gentlemen are my witnesses, if I need any. As for the rest of it, let me tell you that I’m the land surveyor,* and the count sent for me. My assistants will be coming tomorrow by carriage with our surveying instruments. I didn’t wantto deprive myself of a good walk here through the snow, but unfortunately I did lose my way several times, and that’s why I arrived so late. I myself was well aware, even before you delivered your lecture, that it was too late to present myself at the castle. That’s why I contented myself with sleeping the night here, and you have been—to put it mildly—uncivil enough to disturb my slumbers. And that’s all the explanation I’m making. Goodnight, gentlemen.’ And K. turnedto the stove.‘Land surveyor?’ he heard someone ask hesitantly behind his back, and then everyone fell silent. But the young man soon pulled himself together and told the landlord, in a tone just muted enough to sound as if he were showing consideration for the sleeping K., but loud enough for him to hear what was said: ‘I’ll telephone and ask.’ Oh, so there was a telephone in this village inn, was there? They were very well equipped here. As a detail that surprised K., but on the whole he had expected this. It turned out that the telephone was installed almost right above his head, but drowsy as he was, he had failed to notice it. If the young man really had to make a telephone call, then with the best will in the world he could not fail to disturb K.’s sleep. The only point at issue was whether K. would let him use the telephone, and he decided that he would. In which case, however, there was no point in making out that he was asleep, so he turned over on his back again. He saw the locals clustering nervously together and conferring; well, the arrival of a land surveyor was no small matter. The kitchen door had opened and there, filling the whole doorway, stood the monumental figure of the landlady. The landlord approachedon tiptoe to let her know what was going on. And now the telephone conversation began. The warden was asleep, but a deputy warden, or one of several such deputies, a certain Mr Fritz, was on the line. The young man, who identified himself as Schwarzer, told Mr Fritz how he had found K., a man of very ragged appearance in his thirties, sleeping peacefully on a straw mattress, with a tiny rucksack as a pillow and a gnarled walking-stick within reach. He had naturally felt suspicious, said the young man, and as the landlord had clearly neglected to do his duty it had been up to him to investigate the matter. K., he added, had acted very churlishly on being woken, questioned, and threatened in due form with expulsion from the county, although, as it finally turned out, perhaps with some reason, for he claimed to be a land surveyor and said his lordship the count had sent for him. Of course it was at least their formal duty to check this claim, so he,Schwarzer, would like Fritz to enquire in Central Office, find out whether any such surveyor was really expected, and telephone back with the answer at once.Then all was quiet. Fritz went to make his enquiries, and here at the inn they waited for the answer, K. staying where he was, not even turning round, not appearing at all curious, but looking straight ahead of him. The way Schwarzer told his tale, with a mingling of malice and caution, gave him an idea of what might be called the diplomatic training of which even such insignificant figures in the castle as Schwarzer had a command. There was no lack of industry there either;Central Office was working even at night, and clearly it answered questions quickly, for Fritz soon rang back. His report, however, seemed to be a very short one, for Schwarzer immediately slammed the receiver down in anger. ‘I said as much!’ he cried. ‘There’s no record of any land surveyor; this is a common, lying vagabond and probably worse.’ For a moment K. thought all of them—Schwarzer, the local rustics, the landlord and landlady—were going to fall on him, and to avoid at least the first onslaught he crawled under the blanket entirely. Then—he slowly put his head out—the telephone rang again and, so it seemed to K., with particular force. Although it was unlikely that this call too could be about K., they all stopped short, and Schwarzer went back to the phone. He listened to an explanation of some length, and then said quietly, ‘A mistake, then? This is very awkward for me. You say the office manager himself telephoned? Strange, strange. But how am I to explain it to the land surveyor now?’*K. pricked up his ears. So the castle had described him as ‘the land surveyor’. In one way this was unfortunate, since it showed that they knew all they needed to know about him at the castle, they had weighed up the balance of power, and were cheerfully accepting his challenge. In another way, however, it was fortunate, for it confirmed his opinion that he was being underestimated, and would have more freedom than he had dared to hope from the outset. And if they thought they could keep him in a constant state of terror by recognizing his qualifications as a land surveyor in this intellectually supercilious way, as it certainly was, then they were wrong. He felt a slight frisson, yes, but that was all.K. waved away Schwarzer, who was timidly approaching; he declined to move into the landlord’s room, as he was now urged to do, merely accepting a nightcap from the landlord and the use of a washbasin, with soap and a towel, from the landlady, and he didn’t even have to ask for the saloon to be cleared, since all present were hurrying out with their faces averted, perhaps to keep him from identifying them in the morning. The light was put out, and he was left alone at last. He slept soundly through until morning, scarcely disturbed once or twice by rats scurrying past.

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