A recepção da obra de Franz Kafka no Brasil

Abstract

This essay aims at making a survey of Kafka’s reception in Brazil. After justifying the importance of this study, I show how intermittently Kafka’s work was translated into Brazilian Portuguese in the very beginning of his reception, that is to say, 1956. The first text published in Brazil was Die Verwandlung, which was written in German in 1915. However this text was not translated from the German, but from the English. Other texts were translated from the French. Translations from the German only appeared in 1983, among them the one with the “short stories” Kleine Fabel, Der Geier, Gibs auf! and Vor dem Gesetz. It is interesting to notice that essays and other articles in newspapers on Kafka and his work preceded the translations. For example, the first essay on the author was written by Otto Maria Carpeaux in August 1941 in the newspaper Correio da Manhã. Nowadays Kafka’s work is object of considerable research in Brazil.