tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post5433245005182271870..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: PilgrimageKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-40320610425911016072013-06-25T14:37:14.056-04:002013-06-25T14:37:14.056-04:00Thanks very much Mark for this comment about your ...Thanks very much Mark for this comment about your pilgrimages. <br /><br />I too once made a pilgrimage to Kafka's grave in Prague. Looking back I have the same kind of slightly dream-like memory of it, and remember the overgrownness. You put it very well. <br /><br />And as to the way Prague has created a Kafka industry, I think that it had cannot properly have started up when I was there, which was indeed some time ago. But this industry has something of a medieval quality, like pilgrimages. Only now, instead of a saint a town needs a celebrity.<br /><br />Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-870364079244083432013-06-21T11:45:34.019-04:002013-06-21T11:45:34.019-04:00I once made two pilgrimages, in Prague, and then V...I once made two pilgrimages, in Prague, and then Vienna--- both when I was nineteen years old during the dark days of communism. In Prague, at the urging of a friend, we only just managed to find Kafka's grave. In my memory the cemetry was largely overgrown, and far above the writer's grave hanging in the air was a rusty metal sign in red letters. But now it seems more like a dream or something I only imagined. I haven't the time to catalogue Kafka's presence today as a commodity--and in any case, it is probably unnecessary because the briefest entry to any part of that city will leave you face to face with the Kafka industry-- but the diiference now seems to be that the man's name is shouted on every streeet corner as individuals try to earn their daily bread under the new rules of freedom. In Vienna, not knowing German, I somehow managed to find the house that Wittgenstein had planned, viewing it, seemingly as abandoned as Kafka's grave, from behind a chain link fence. I could only just see inside, and thought I saw suggestions of a sort of austere elegance--- but maybe I am making that up too. I believe that Wittgenstein's house is today a museum. In 2008-2009 when I lived in Vienna I think I heard that the Wittgenstein house is now a museum. I was living a busy life, but it was not that busyness which prevented me from returning. <br />Recently I began to read a Czech translation of "The Castle" and I was surprised to realize it was familiar. I must have read an English translation thirty or more years ago. And that world I found myself entering again now was Kafka's, and it stands there with its own meaning no matter how hard they try to make a commodity of a man.formerly a wage slavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16064562730082906589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-87571360564188232632013-06-18T10:23:15.946-04:002013-06-18T10:23:15.946-04:00Thank you very much Paula for this interesting ide...Thank you very much Paula for this interesting idea of reading an author. I rather agree that one wants to connect with an author in whom one is interested in a deep way. So the idea of the pilgrimage isn't so much geographical as mental. Perhaps making an actual journey should really be thought of as a symptom of fascination rather than anything that will necessarily bring closeness. I seem to remember that Erasmus puzzled about why people in his time travelled to visit relics of saints, and said something like: "Why don't they just read what this person wrote?" Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-43894206792900035542013-06-10T09:41:51.981-04:002013-06-10T09:41:51.981-04:00I love Chekhov's work. I recently read his sho...I love Chekhov's work. I recently read his short stories and one in particular "A Dead Body" really stayed with me. I featured it on my blog. The ending is quite mysterious. It left a haunting effect on me that I still debate in my mind. I think when we read an "author" rather than read just one piece of work, we connect to that author in a very deep way. So, for me, a pilgrimage isn't just going to an author's location in the world(which I'd love to), but reading and exploring the artist through all or most of the pieces of work.Paula Cappahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09208250038373423275noreply@blogger.com