The Trial

The Trial (German Der Prozess) is a surreal novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Joseph K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons that one never discovers, is arrested and subjected to the rigours of the judicial process for an unspecified crime.

Relations between The Trial and Crime and Punishment

In 1983, going trough a hard time in his life, Guillermo Sánchez Trujillo, professor of UNAULA ("Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana" of Medellín, Colombia), decided to retake the project he had in his youth to find out "where did Kafka got his stories". He dedicated twenty years of his live to the investigations, and finally in 2002 he published the final results in Crimen y castigo de Franz Kafka, anatomía de El processo ("Crime and Punishment by Franz Kafka, anatomy of The Trial"), edited by UNAULA.

Related Topics:
1983 - Medellín - Colombia - 2002

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In the investigation, Sánchez discovered that Kafka had used Crime and Punishment and other works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, as palimpsest to write his works, including The Trial. By comparing word-to-word Crime and Punishment and The Trial, Sanchez discovered that Kafka used the first three chapters of the second part of Crime and Punishment (in the order 3, 2, 1), to write and organize The Trial. With this, Sánchez also discovered the order of the chapters of the novel, which has been a mystery due to the cryptic way in which Kafka stored the chapters. Kafka bequeathed his works to his friend Max Brod. After Kafka died, Brod started to organize and edit Kafka's works to publish them, but with The Trial Brod couldn't decipher Kafka's system, so he organized the chapters in an intuitive and arbitrary way.

Related Topics:
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Palimpsest - Max Brod

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The new order found in the study reestablishes the logic of the plot and fits on it the chapters that were relegated to the appendix by Brod and the editors. But the study also finds that the work A Dream, published as an independent short story, was a essential chapter of the novel.

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The investigation also confirmed the autobiographic contents that Kafka put in the novel, and the identity of the real persons and the historical events that inspired some of the characters and events of the novel.

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A critic edition of the novel with the new order was published in 2005 by UNAULA, containing an introduction detailing the most important points of the investigation and its results and also, side notes explaining the creative process of the author and the use of the palimpsest of Dostoievski's works.

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The following is the new order of the chapters:

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• The Arrest
• Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
• Fräulein Bürstner's Friend
• First Interrogation
• In the Empty Interrogation Chamber - The Student - The Offices
• The Whipper
• To Elsa's house
• Prosecutor
• K.'s Uncle - Leni
• Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter
• In The Cathedral
• The Commercial Traveller - Dismissal of the Advocate
• Argument with the subdirector
• The house
• A Dream
• Trip to the mother's house
• The End

More info see: {{es icon}} http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=184,198,0,0,1,0

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