Band I: Bibliographie der Primärliteratur 1908–1997 / Volume I: Bibliography of Primary Literature 1908–1997. Munich: Saur, 2000. 213 pp. ISBN 3-907820-64-9 (Vol. 1).

Band II: Bibliographie der Sekundärliteratur 1955–1980 / Volume II: Bibliography of Secondary Literature 1955–1997. Teil 1 / Part 1: 1955–1980. Teil 2: 1981–1997 mit Nachträgen zu Teil 1 / Part 2: 1981–1997 with Addenda to Part 1. 1 vol. in 2. Munich: Saur, 2000. 1,115 pp. ISBN 3-907820-65-7 (Band II / Teile 1 und 2).

As the above attempt to capture the bibliographical essentials should make clear, the latest Kafka bibliography is both a large and a complicated endeavour. Compiled by veteran Kafka bibliographers Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr and Julius Michael Herz, and published in November 2000, it weighs in at 1,431 pages altogether and at that time cost an impressive DM 498. The 262 pages of the first volume list Kafka’s writings and their international translations; the 1,169 pages of the second volume (in two parts) list the efforts of scholars and critics over the past four decades to come to grips with those writings. Volume 1 consists of a reprint of the compilers’ Franz Kafkas Werke: Eine Bibliographie der Primärliteratur (Bern: Francke, 1982) together with a listing of editions and translations that have appeared since that date; volume 2.1 reprints their Franz Kafka: Eine kommentierte Bibliographie der Sekundärliteratur (Bern: Francke, 1987), and volume 2.2 brings the 1987 listing of secondary literature up to 1997. Both the primary and secondary listings are approximately doubled in number in this second, enlarged and revised edition, now published by the Munich publisher K.G. Saur, who purchased the reprint rights from Francke.

Volume 1 begins with a roughly 40-page introductory section, consisting of introductions to the second and first editions respectively, first in German, then in English. The introductions offer both enlightenment and irritation. Enlightenment is to be found in the historical synopsis of Kafka reception in a wide variety of countries, cultures, and languages. We find, for example, that German, English, and French were the three most important Kafkasprachen until the end of the sixties, at which point Spanish and Italian took the lead in terms of editions published. The compilation lists 194 “vermischte Sammlungen” to date in German, 188 in Spanish, 100 in Italian, 87 in English, and 72 in French, among others. We also find that there are 78 different German editions of Der Prozeß, 61 English, 43 Spanish, 35 Italian, and 28 French, among others; and that there has been a vigorous and rapidly growing stream of Asian Kafka translations, especially in Korea, but also in Japan and, more recently, China.

After the extended introductory section, volume 1 lists Kafka’s writings under five rubrics: collected works; collected novels and similar works; individual editions of novels (with separate sections for Amerika, Der Prozeß, Das Schloß); collections (“Vermischte Sammlungen”) and selected prose works; and individual publications and other prose works. Each of the five sections lists the respective works first in their original German, then in their various translations, the latter arranged alphabetically (in German) by language. The compilers’ reprinted 1982 bibliography of Kafka’s writings lists his works to the early 1980s in this arrangement on pages 9–79, and new entries, extending the coverage to 1997, are listed in the same five-part arrangement on pages 81–193. The volume concludes with a double index of Kafka’s works, arranged first by German titles (with cross-references to their English translations) and then by the English titles (with corresponding cross-references to their German counterparts).

Volume 1 constitutes by far the most up-to-date and complete bibliography of Kafka’s writings in existence, and it is both instructive and pleasurable to browse through. The listing is replete with all sorts of titbits for different readers. Those in particular who are interested in the range of international translations of Kafka’s works will find much to interest and intrigue them: such as the revelation that a Portuguese translation of Das Schloß published as recently as 1985 is actually a translation of The Castle – translated, in other words, from English rather than from German, a practice that one would have thought had disappeared in European languages at least half a century earlier (1: 114). One discovers that a collection of the stories exists in Esperanto (1: 126), that another exists in a French comic-book version (1: 128), and that “Schakale und Araber” is the only Kafka text to date to have been translated into Chuvash, a language “die vor allem in der Autonomen Republik der Tschuwaschen an der mittleren Wolga gesprochen wird” (1: 146). One may even take a momentary pleasure in recognizing the identity of the writer referred to in Japanese as Furantsu Kafuka.

While the compilation is undoubtedly a major scholarly accomplishment, the not particularly user-friendly structure of the first volume can occasionally lead to interpretive difficulties, as, for example, when data appear to be contradictory – but may not necessarily be so. When the Muirs’ translation of The Trial is first listed (in the “old” entries) as “London: V. Gollancz, 1937" (1: 20), and then (in the “new” entries) as “New York: Random House, 1933” (1: 101), the implications seem clear enough: the compilers simply missed the 1933 edition in their first bibliography and are now able to correct the omission. Some cases are less obvious, however. One of the few significant misprints noted occurs in the case of Gerhard Neumann’s excellent edition ‘Das Urteil’: Text, Materialien, Kommentar (1981), which is first listed (in the “old” entries) without its editor and wrongly dated as 1980 (1: 73), then correctly listed (in the “new” entries) more than a hundred pages later (1: 185). There is more at stake here than just a simple error, for in this case the structure makes it unclear whether the second listing records a second edition or constitutes an unmarked correction of the first (which latter is in fact the case).

Similarly, a Korean translation of Das Schloß and Amerika by Jung-Jin Kim is listed as appearing in 1962 (1: 88), a translation of Amerika by the same translator in 1961 (1: 96), a translation of Das Schloß by the same translator in 1961 (1: 113), and finally a translation of both novels by the same translator in 1960. The publisher (Dongachulpansa) is the same in all four cases (though spelled in four different ways, possibly reflecting different bibliographical sources). The difficulty here is in determining how many of these dates are correct (including possibly all of them), a problem that could relatively easily have been avoided by a simple system of cross-references, but is insoluble without it – or without significant archival work.

Volume 2.1 opens with a 33-page repetition in German and English of the introduction to the second edition of the entire work (no doubt intended for those readers who purchase only volume 2, but nonetheless a somewhat odd editorial decision), followed by the German and English versions of the introduction to the first edition of the secondary bibliography. The annotated bibliography of critical and scholarly writings on Kafka appearing between 1955 and 1980 is organized in five sections: bibliographies and similar publications; collections of articles (Sammelbände); dissertations; articles and kleinere Beiträge; and books. Volume 2.2, listing critical and scholarly writings on Kafka appearing between 1980 and 1997, together with addenda to the earlier listing, is organized in the same five sections, though the section on Sammelbände now also includes listings of periodicals, newsletters, special issues of journals, and (again somewhat oddly) Franz Kafka societies. This in turn is followed by 38 pages of addenda to the earlier listing, once again organized under the same five rubrics. The section on book publications, in all three listings, includes descriptive commentaries in German ranging from a few words to two pages, together with an indication of any translations that may have appeared and a listing of reviews of the item. The work concludes with eighty pages of collected translations into English of these commentaries, followed by a subject index and an index of Kafka’s writings.

“Like Shakespeare, Dante, and Molière, Kafka is now the common property of the civilized world and this bibliography tries to convey that,” write the compilers (1: xlvi). Their ambition is amply justified by the results. As in the case of the first volume, the second, meticulously listing a good 15,000 dissertations, articles, and books in a wide variety of languages, richly repays hours and days of browsing. Maria Luise Caputo-Mayr and Julius Michael Herz have spent many years of their lives in completing this Herculean task, and they are owed a very large debt of gratitude.

This is not to say, however, that the product of their labours is without its weaknesses. The additive rather than integrative structure of both volumes – according to which the entries from the earlier, reprinted bibliographies are simply followed by new entries arranged along the same lines – is no doubt the result of financial considerations and therefore presumably not to be laid at the compilers’ door. It is unfortunately also an undeniable weakness, however, for the lack of any attempt to integrate old and new entries (unnumbered in both cases) makes both volumes, but especially the second, very cumbersome to consult. This awkwardness is greatly compounded by the lack of indexes of translators and critics. If a third edition should eventually be forthcoming, it would be highly desirable to have all relevant entries in each of the two bibliographies grouped together in a single listing under the appropriate heading, with each entry numbered, and appropriately indexed by entry-number rather than page.

Listing critical writings in three separate categories – dissertations, articles, books – admittedly has a venerable history in German bibliographical circles, but its advantages are far less obvious than its disadvantages, particularly when each of the relevant categories appears no fewer than three times, as in volume 2. Once again, if a third edition should eventually be forthcoming, it would be highly desirable to combine all three categories either in a single alphabetical listing or in a single chronological listing with entries arranged alphabetically within individual years. A related weakness of the current arrangement is a frustratingly cumbersome system of cross-references in the case of items that appeared in collections.

Both volumes are in general commendably free of mistakes and misprints – no small accomplishment considering that research and translations are reported in more than forty languages, including such relatively exotic languages as Albanian, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Turkish, and Malayalam. One of the particularly helpful features is that critical and scholarly books on Kafka in several lesser-known as well as in more familiar languages are not only listed but (in general) helpfully annotated in both German and English. A major characteristic of the bibliography, indeed, is the compilers’ laudable attempt to make it accessible to Kafka enthusiasts who do not speak or read German. The potential positive effects of this will be obvious; the main negative effect is that it considerably increases the already considerable complexity of the volumes as far as the user is concerned. Not surprisingly, the reader who speaks only English will have to use quite a bit of ingenuity in many cases to track down the particular piece of information sought. It must also be said that the quality of the English is rather uneven.

It would be astonishing if a scholarly work of this size and scope did not have its weaknesses, and this one is not an exception. It would be ungenerous in the extreme, however, to allow such weaknesses, even though significant, to distract us from a proper recognition of the enormous achievement represented by this huge and comprehensive bibliography. It will undoubtedly prove to be an indispensable tool for any serious Kafka scholar for many years to come. Its almost 1,500 pages contain a positive treasure-trove of multilingual information on Kafka, his translators, and his critics, even if the richness of the compilation may reveal itself more readily to those with the time to browse than to those who wish to locate a particular piece of information quickly.

PATRICK O'NEILL Queen’s University