First Sorrow

Short story by Franz Kafka, c.1921

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (October 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,160 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Erstes Leid]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Erstes Leid}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

"First Sorrow"
Short story by Franz Kafka
Original title	'Erstes Leid'
Translator	Lilian F. Turner (1937) Willa and Edwin Muir (1948)
Country	Germany
Language	German
Genre(s)	Short story
Publication
Published in	Genius
Publication type	periodical
Publication date	1922
Published in English	1937

"First Sorrow" (German: "Erstes Leid") is a short story by Franz Kafka. It was probably written between the fall of 1921 and the spring of 1922. It appeared in Kurt Wolff Verlag's art periodical Genius, III no. 2 (dated 1921, published in 1922)^[1] and in the Christmas 1923 supplement to the Prager Presse. The story was included in the collection A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler) published by Verlag Die Schmiede soon after Kafka's death.

Plot outline

The story concerns a trapeze artist who wants to remain on his trapeze at all times, and never return to the ground. He is faced with difficulties when the circus he works for must travel from place to place. The artist is said to be dedicated to perfecting his art. Nobody objects to this and they accommodate his every demand. When the artist does travel, he gets his own accommodation: for in-town shows, he is taken to performances in a race car to shorten his sufferings, or, if travelling by train, a compartment is reserved and he travels atop the luggage. Upon arrival, the artist takes his place, hanging aloft on the trapeze. Even during performances of the theatrical group, he remains in public view, perfectly still.

One day, as the group travels to another destination, the trapeze artist captures his manager's attention with a barely audible voice to ask a question. The manager is all attention and the artist tells the manager that in the future he would prefer to have a second trapeze. The manager agrees with the, but is not one that would have been otherwise refused. At this moment, the artist bursts into tears and says "Only the one bar in my hand--how can I go on living!" (448). The manager assures him that he will get his second trapeze and the artist returns to sleep atop the luggage. But the manager now worries about the future of the artist as he has, for the first time, begun to question the nature of the art that is his profession: "Once such ideas began to torment him, would they ever quite leave him alone? Would they not threaten his very existence? And indeed the manager believed he could see, during the apparently peaceful sleep which had succeeded the fit furrows of care engraving themselves upon the trapeze artist's smooth, childlike forehead".

English publication history

1937; as "First Grief", translated by Lilian F. Turner, "Life and Letters", Summer 1937, pp. 57–59.
1948; translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, in The Penal Colony, New York, Schocken Books, 320 p.

References

German Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Erstes Leid (1922)

^ Kafka, Franz. The Complete Stories. New York City: Schocken Books, 1995. 474.

Franz Kafka (works)

Novels

The Trial
The Castle
Amerika

Short stories

1902–1912	"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"
1914–1917	"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"
1917–1923	"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" "Homecoming" "First Sorrow" "The Departure" "Advocates" "The Married Couple" "Give It Up!" "On Parables"