 | This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. |
The Hunter Gracchus
By:Farzad Jalalian
== Max Brod points out that the name Gracchus, by way of the Latin noun graculus, meaning jackdaw, is an approximate translation of Kafka's own family name which, in its original Czech form, also means jackdaw.
(the above from Brod's biography of Kafka, by way of Leslie Hill, Bataille, Klossowski, Blanchot.)
Excerpted from an online translation by Ian Johnston:
“Are you dead?”
“Yes,” said the hunter, “as you see. Many years ago—it must have been a great many years ago—I fell from a rock in the Black Forest—that’s in Germany—as I was tracking a chamois. Since then I’ve been dead.”
“But you’re also alive,” said the burgomaster.
“To a certain extent,” said the hunter, “to a certain extent I am also alive. My death ship lost its way—a wrong turn of the helm, a moment when the helmsman was not paying attention, a distraction from my wonderful homeland—I don’t know what it was. I only know that I remain on the earth and that since that time my ship has journeyed over earthly waters. So I—who only wanted to live in my own mountains—travel on after my death through all the countries of the earth.” ==