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To say that such-and-such a circumstance is 'Kafkaesque' is to admit to the denigration of an imagination that has burned a hole in what we take to be modernism - even in what we take to be the ordinary fabric and intent of language. Nothing is like 'The Hunger Artist.' Nothing is like 'The Metamorphosis.'
Cynthia Ozick
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights the profound impact of Kafka's work on modern thought and language.

Cynthia Ozick's quote underscores the unique and disturbing qualities of Franz Kafka's narratives, emphasizing how his imaginative style has altered our perception of modernism and everyday language. By referring to events or situations as 'Kafkaesque,' one acknowledges the influence of Kafka's themes of alienation and absurdity, suggesting that no other works can compare to the depth and strangeness found in creations like 'The Hunger Artist' and 'The Metamorphosis.'

Themes

KafkaesqueModernismImaginationLanguageLiterature

In practice

Example use cases

In a literary analysis discussion about the themes of alienation, one might reference this quote to highlight Kafka's influence.

More from Cynthia Ozick

I don't agree with the sentiment 'write what you know.'... I think one should write what one doesn't know. The world is bigger and wider and more complex than our small subjective selves. One should prod, goad the imagination.
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I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.
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Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.
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An article can be timely, topical, engaged in the issues and personalities of the moment; it is likely to be stale within the month. In five years, it may have acquired the quaint aura of a rotary phone. An article is usually Siamese-twinned to its date of birth.
Cynthia OzickRead
A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that?
Cynthia OzickRead
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
Cynthia OzickRead

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