Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Volume 1
17 Jun 2025Humanities
This post is originally a Korean translation of Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks. Given that there already exists an English translation of the work, I won’t go through the hassle of translating into English again. However, I present the following passage, which I particularly admire.
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.
Jeder Mensch trägt ein Zimmer in sich. Diese Tatsache kann man sogar durch das Gehör nachprüfen. Wenn einer schnell geht und man hinhorcht, etwa in der Nacht, wenn alles ringsherum still ist,
so hört man zum Beispiel das Scheppern eines nicht genug befestigten Wandspiegels.