Franz Kafka

The Castle

Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren't meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that terms, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.

Anyone whom he no longer summons he forgets entirely. I didn't want to speak of this in front of Frieda. But it isn't that he simply forgets, it's more than that. If you forget someone, you can of course get to know that person again. With Klamm that is not possible. Anyone whom he no longer summons, he forgets, not only for the past but literally for all time.

When K. looked at the Castle, it was at times as if he were watching someone who sat there calmly, gazing into space, not lost in thought and therefore cut off from everything, but free and untroubled; as if he were alone, unobserved; and yet it could not have escaped him that someone was observing him, but this didn't disturb his composure and indeed--one could not tell whether through cause or effect--the observer's gaze could not remain fixed there, and slid off. Today this impression was further reinforced by the early darkness, the longer he looked, the less he could make out, and the deeper everything sank into the twilight.

Klamm was remote, the landlady had once compared Klamm to an eagle and to K. that had seemed ridiculous, but no longer, he considered Klamm's remoteness, his impregnable abode, his muteness, broken perhaps only by shouts the likes of which K. had never heard before, his piercing downturned gaze, which could never be proved, never be refuted, and his, from K's position below, indestructible circles, which he was describing up there in accordance with incomprehensible laws, visible only for seconds--all this Klamm and the eagle had in common.

K. stepped out on the wild blustery steps and gazed into the darkness. Nasty, nasty weather. Somehow in connection with this he thought of how the landlady had endeavored to make him amenable to the deposition, and how he had held his ground. It was not a candid effort though, for she had at the same time furtively dragged him away from the deposition, and ultimately one couldn't tell whether one had held one's ground or given way. And intriguer by nature, operating like the wind, seemingly to now end, upon remote alien instructions that one never got to see.