The Burrow (short story)

For other uses, see Burrow (disambiguation).

"The Burrow"
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	"Der Bau"
Language	German
Genre(s)	Short story
Published in	Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer
Media type	book (hardcover)
Publication date	1931
Published in English	1933 (1933) London, Martin Secker 1946 (1946) New York, Schocken Books

"The Burrow" (German: "Der Bau") is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka in which a mole-like being burrows through an elaborate system of tunnels it has built over the course of its life. The story was published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931). The first English translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections (New York City: Schocken Books, 1946).^[1]

Allegedly, Kafka had written an ending to the story detailing a struggle with the encroaching beast, but this completed version was among other works destroyed by lover Dora Diamant following Kafka's death.

Themes

Kafka's hyper-rational creature functions as a phenomenological parody of human reason.^[2] The only direct reference to the creature being physiologically a mole is the line "my forehead -- that unique instrument," in reference to its capacity to burrow tunnels.

Quotes

"Lying in my heap of Earth I can naturally dream of all sorts of things, even of an understanding with the beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen, and at the moment when we see each other, more, at that instant we merely guess at each other's presence, we shall both blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of us a second before or after the other, both of us filled with a new and different hunger, even if we should already be gorged to bursting."

"But all remained unchanged."^[3]—Muir Translation

References in other media

A parody of the story appears as part of the short story "The Notebooks of Bob K." by Jonathan Lethem, which is collected in Kafka Americana. In the story Batman's Batcave is presented as a version of the burrow.
Ian McEwan quotes "The Burrow" in one of two epigraphs to his novel The Innocent.

Sources

German Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Der Bau (Kafka)

↑ The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections. Franz Kafka - 1946 - Schocken Books
↑ Rituals of Dying, Burrows of Anxiety in Freud, Proust, and Kafka: Prolegomena to a Critical Immunology. J Türk - The Germanic Review, 2007 - Heldref Publications
↑ Selected short stories. F Kafka, W Muir… - 1952

Works by Franz Kafka

Novels

Short stories

1902–12	"Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart" "Description of a Struggle" "Wedding Preparations in the Country" "The Judgment" "The Stoker" The Metamorphosis "The Aeroplanes at Brescia"

1914–17	"In the Penal Colony" "The Village Schoolmaster" "Before the Law" "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor" "A Country Doctor" "The Hunter Gracchus" "The Great Wall of China" "A Message from the Emperor" "A Report to an Academy" "A Dream" "Up in the Gallery" "A Fratricide" "The Next Village" "A Visit to a Mine" "Jackals and Arabs" "The Bridge" "The Bucket Rider" "The New Advocate" "An Old Manuscript" "The Knock at the Manor Gate" "Eleven Sons" "My Neighbor" "A Crossbreed" "The Cares of a Family Man"

1917–23	"The Refusal" "A Hunger Artist" "Investigations of a Dog" "A Little Woman" "The Burrow" "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" "A Common Confusion" "The Truth about Sancho Panza" "The Silence of the Sirens" "Prometheus" "The City Coat of Arms" "Poseidon" "Fellowship" "At Night" "The Problem of Our Laws" "The Conscription of Troops" "The Test" "The Vulture" "The Helmsman" "The Top" "A Little Fable" "Home-Coming" "First Sorrow" "The Departure" "Advocates" "The Married Couple" "Give It Up!" "On Parables"

Short story
collections

Diaries and
notebooks

Letters
and essays

Plays

The Warden of the Tomb

Category

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