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Notes
This essay was a contribution for the Symposium on Textual Criticism and Editing held in Charlottesville, Va., from 20th to 23rd April 1985. My sincere thanks are due to Anthony Stephens for the translation.
Franz Kafka, Amerika. Roman. New York/Frankfurt, 1953 (Gesammelte Werke, ed. Max Brod), p. 316f. All translations of Kafka's texts are by Anthony Stephens. For the kind permission to reproduce Kafka's manuscripts the author wishes to thank Mrs. Marianne Steiner, Sir Malcolm Pasley, the Fischer Verlag (Frankfurt am Main) and especially the Bodleian Library.
This state of affairs had practical consequences for the typography of the edition. It proved necessary to combine two types of editorial technique: for large segments of text: a linear reproduction, a syntagmatic type of editing, as it were; but in those places where Kafka had made many corrections, we had to apply the principle of reproducing the text by stages, thus pursuing a more paradigmatic method. One might term this 'stereometric' in the sense that it is meant to reveal the stratification of the various levels of the text and thus reproduces the process of composing the text. Wherever these two modes of writing which, in turn, call for two different modes of editing, intersect, two typical kinds of correction appear in Kafka's text: on the one hand the first letter of a word never written out ('Buchstabenansatz': (KA > G)eorg), and, on the other, letters and parts of words written over one another ('Überschreibung': (Brief > Blick)). In these two forms the interruption and the resumption of the flow of creativity are manifest. A model for the 'stereometric' representation of variants is offered for Hölderlin's poem Hälfte des Lebens in my essay (co-author Martin Ehrenzeller): "Rudolf Borchardt: Der unwürdige Liebhaber." In: Zeit der Moderne. Zur deutschen Literatur von der Jahrhundertwende bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Hans-Henrik Krummacher, Fritz Martini and Walter Müller-Seidel. Bernhard Zeller zum 65. Geburtstag. Stuttgart, 1984, pp. 89-118. I have also treated aspects of this problem in the following articles: "Werk oder Schrift? Vorüberlegungen zur Edition von Kafkas 'Bericht für eine Akademie'." In: Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik. Reihe A. Kongressberichte vol. 11. Edition und Interpretation. / Edition et Interprétation des Manuscrits littéraires, ed. Louis Hay and Winfried Woesler. Bern/Frankfurt/Las Vegas, 1981, pp. 154-173; and simultaneously in Acta Germanica 14 (1981), 1-21.—Wolf Kittler and Gerhard Neumann, "Kafkas 'Drucke zu Lebzeiten'—Editorische Technik und hermeneutische Entscheidung." In: Freiburger Universitätsblätter 21 (December 1982), Heft 78, pp. 45-84.—"Der verschleppte Prozess. Literarisches Schaffen zwischen Schreibstrom und Werkidol." Poetica 14 (1982), 92-112.—"Schrift und Druck. Erwägungen zur Edition von Kafkas Landarzt-Band." Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 101 (1982), 115-139 (Sonderheft: Probleme neugermanistischer Edition).—"L'écrit, l'oeuvre, l'imprimé: le texte inachevé de Franz Kafka." In: Le manuscrit inachevé. Écriture, création, communication. Louis Hay, Jacques Neefs, Pierre-Marc de Biasi, Jean-Yves Tadie, Gerhard Neumann, Jean Levaillant, Jean-Louis Lebrave. Textes et manuscrits. Collection publiée par Louis Hay. Paris, 1986, pp. 87-99 (Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique).
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