Franz Kafka: The Next Village

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The Wire-drawing Mill: Albrecht Dürer, c. 1489 (Staatliche Museum, Berlin)

My grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -- not to mention accidents -- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

The Return of the Herd (November): Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

Franz Kafka: The Next Village (Das nächste Dorf), 1919, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir in The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, 1948