User:Pajz/spinning top draft

"The Top" or "The Spinning Top" (German: "Der Kreisel") is a short, parable-like text by Franz Kafka written in 1920. It tells the story of a tireless philosopher who believes that by understanding any, ever so small, object (in his case: a spinning top), one can gain an understanding of the world. Originally untitled, Max Brod called the text "Der Kreisel" when he first published it in 1936, after Kafka's death, in the collection Description of a Struggle (German: Beschreibung eines Kampfes). As other editors, authors and translators have not all followed Brod's title suggestion, the text is also occasionally referred to under different names, such as "The Philosopher and the [Spinning] Top" or "The Philosopher".

Biographical background
Shortly after completing the brief stories for A Country Doctor in July 1917, Kafka suffered at least one pulmonary haemorrhage and was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. He took a three-month vacation from his job as an insurance officer to convalesce at his sister's ... in the rural village of Zürau. In December 1917, he ended his (second) engagement to Felice Bauer.

Kafka's surviving manuscripts consist primarily of notebooks in several formats and loose-leaf bundles.

The manuscript of "The Top" consists of a single leaf of graph paper measuring approximately 22.8 × 29 cm, with light-blue rectangles of size 0.4 × 0.9 cm. The text, written in Kafka's own hand, is in black ink and comprises roughly the top half of the recto. The bottom third of the recto and the entire verso of the leaf are filled with Kafka's pencilled solutions to exercises from a Hebrew study book. It is unknown exactly when these were added to the leaf, though it is conjectured in the KKA that they may date from autumn 1922.

While Kafka's diaristic writing often sheds light on the genesis of his literary production, it proves rather unfruitful with respect to the "1920 bundle". Like his literary writing in the later stages of his life, Kafka's diary writing was marked by repeated interruptions. No diary entries from the period between March of 1920 and mid-October of 1921 are known and it is believed that Kafka did in fact not produce any during that time.

Since 1961, the "1920 bundle" is held, like most of Franz Kafka papers are, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. <!--

Translations
In the 1950s, Zbyněk Sekal created translations of several (as yet untranslated) texts by Kafka, which he then distributed in the Czech "post-war surrealist" community. As part of this effort, he also translated the "The Top" some time between 1953 and 1955. While this translation was originally unpublished, the magazine Kulturní tvorba in 1963 printed a translation by M. Čech und G. Janouch Kafka's 80th birthday.

Siehe wohl auch [Medek, Mikuláš (1995): Texty [Texte].Medek 1995: 158, 187, 390 Anlässlich von Kafkas 80. Geburtstag druckte die Zeitschrift Kulturní tvorba 1963 eine Übersetzung von M. Čech und G. Janouch.

Das Inventar der originalen Niederschriften von Kafkas literarischem Werk verteilt sich insbesondere auf zwei Arten von Schriftträgern:

Kafka wählte für seine Niederschriften unterschiedliche Schriftträger.

Die Datierung von Kafkas Spätwerk Spätwerk Kafkas

Das „Konvolut 1920″ besteht aus 51 losen Blättern und ist von Brod in drei Teilkonvolute („A“, „B“ und „C“) aufgeteilt worden.

In Brods Werkausgabe folgte die Anordnung der Blätter allerdings nicht der Entstehungschronologie, sondern ist das Ergebnis einer –

Plot summary
A philosopher believes that he could understand everything in the world if he were to understand a single element in it. To this purpose he tries to catch a child's top as it spins, hoping that it would continue spinning in his hand, but it always stops the moment he grabs it.

Interpretation
The top could be seen as a symbol of the spinning earth - the populated world which the philosopher tries to understand. The irony implied herein is that by focusing on the top itself the philosopher ignores the other forces that set it in motion - the children and the string.

Some critics have noted a correspondence between the structure and theme of the story - the spiraling movement of the top is echoed by the spiraling structure of the story, as the sentences are at first of uniform length, then get gradually longer until the last line which is meandering and prolonged, like the top's last staggering spin and final collapse.

Comic adaptation
A comics adaptation of the story, illustrated by Peter Kuper, is included in Give It Up!. -->

Translations

 * English
 * [pp. 205–206; translation reprinted in The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka, ed. by Nahum N. Glatzer, 1971]
 * [p. 123]