SOURCE: "The Silence of the Sirens," translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, in Parables in German and English, Schocken Books, 1947, pp. 75-77.

Regarded as a major figure in twentieth-century liter-ature, Kafka was an original, profoundly moral writer whose central concern was with the essential loneliness of modern man struggling to comprehend an incomprehensible world. His literary reputation rests largely upon the posthumous publication of Der Prozess (1925; The Trial, 1935), Das Schloss (1926; The Castle, 1930), and Amerika (1927; America, 1938), which relate surreal, nightmarish stories of alienation. In the following essay, originally written in German and for which the exact date of composition is unknown, Kafka examines Ulysses's escape from the Sirens.

Proof that inadequate, even childish measures, may serve to rescue one from peril.

To protect himself from the Sirens Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and had himself bound to the mast of his ship. Naturally any and every traveller before...