THE THREE FRAGMENTS OF KAFKA'S

"THE HUNTER GRACCHUS"

by ERWIN R. STEINBERG

In his edition of The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka, Nahum Glatzer

includes under the rubric of "The Longer Stories" two about the Hunter
Gracchus: "The Hunter Gracchus" ( 226-230), and "The Hunter Gracchus:
A Fragment" ( 231-234).1 The title of the Modem Library Selected Stories
of Franz Kafka, which includes "The Hunter Gracchus," indicates that the
editor of that volume also considered it "a story." Philip Rahv, who wrote
the introduction to the Modern Library edition, seems in his last paragraph
to agree that "The Hunter Gracchus" is a story: he mentions it specifically
in the second sentence of a paragraph beginning "The stories in this volume
.. ." 2; but perhaps one invited to write an introduction hesitates to quarrel
over whether "a piece," as Herbert Tauber cautiously refers to "The Hunter
Gracchus," is "a story" or nots Frederick Hoffman, however, who had no
need for such concern, refers to it as one of Kafka's shorter stories." 4
By any reasonable definition, "The Hunter Gracchus" is not a short
story. It is at best an aborted story. It has no climax. It doesn't end, but
simply stops. It isn't even an epiphany: it provides no illumination, no
"sudden spiritual manifestation." 5 And yet it is accorded a certain deference.
The occasional critic who mentions it refers to it respectfully. Hoffman,
for example, says that the idea of "death jas] the closest approximation to
infinity available to the ordinary mortal . . . is more than adequately
presented in . . . 'The Hunter Gracchus.' " 6 Charles Neider calls it a "su-
perb" tale.? And more recently, Donald Gray gave it critical approval by

1. Franz Kafka, The Complete Short Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York:
Schocken, 1971). Page numbers to this edition will appear in parentheses in the
text of
the paper. Further references to these pieces will refer to the first as "The
Hunter
Gracchus" and the second as "A Fragment."
2. Philip Rahv, "Introduction," Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka, tr. by
Willa
and Edwin Muir (New York: Modern Library, 1952), p. xxii.
3. Herbert Tauber, Franz Kafka (London: Secker and Warburg, 1948), p. 72.
4. Frederick J. Hoffman, Freudianism and the Literary Mind (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1945), p. 208.
5. James Joyce, Stephen Hero (New York: New Directions, 1944), p. 211.
6. Hoffman, p. 208.
7. Charles Neider, Franz Kafka: His Mind and Art (London: Routledge and Began
Paul, 1949), p. 84.
307