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A review by savaging
Blue Octavo Notebooks by Franz Kafka
5.0
"Your will is free means: it was free when it wanted the desert, it is free since it can choose the path that leads to crossing the desert, it is free since it can choose the pace, but it is also unfree since you must go through the desert, unfree since every path in labyrinthine manner touches every foot of the desert’s surface."
Kafka at his most fragmented and immediate. The blue octavo notebooks were the equivalent of those salt-and-pepper student composition books, meant for scribblings and first drafts. What Kafka created there is a list of irreverent and troubling Zen koans. This book solidifies for me Kafka's position as one of the most complex and interesting spiritual theorists in the West. (though as for that word "theorist," as Kafka says here: "From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.")
Kafka at his most fragmented and immediate. The blue octavo notebooks were the equivalent of those salt-and-pepper student composition books, meant for scribblings and first drafts. What Kafka created there is a list of irreverent and troubling Zen koans. This book solidifies for me Kafka's position as one of the most complex and interesting spiritual theorists in the West. (though as for that word "theorist," as Kafka says here: "From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.")