Au bagne [La Colonie pénitentiaire]
One of 20 copies on Hollande [BFK Rives], this copy lettered P. This offprint from Les Cahiers du Sud was issued only in a hors commerce printing of 150 copies.
Written in early October 1914, the text was read publicly on 10 November 1916 at the “Soirées de la littérature moderne” held at the Galerie Goltz in Munich, on which occasion Kafka noted that he had “read [his] sordid story amid total indifference.” Published in Leipzig in 1919, it was poorly received by critics, with the notable exception of Kurt Tucholsky, who judged that “no German short story so consciously suppresses all sympathy while remaining so thoroughly steeped in its author’s blood.”
This French translation, published in Les Cahiers du Sud, is the first, preceding those by Jean Starobinski (Egloff, 1945) and Alexandre Vialatte (Gallimard, Le Monde Entier, 1948), both issued under the title La Colonie pénitentiaire [In der Strafkolonie], the title by which the work is now known.
This copy comes from the library of José Corti (sale, Marseille, 2022, no. 65).
Rare.