To read Franz Kafka’s last short story “Josephine, the Songstress or The Mouse Folk” is to recognize the reflection better the dirtier the glass. The subject of the story is an artist and the creatures in whose midst she makes her art. Her name is Josephine. She is a singer. Or is she? Josephine’s folk or tribe doesn’t sing, they whistle. What she calls singing sounds like whistling to them. Josephine’s singing or whistling is “at the most, a bit sweeter or somehow softer” than normal whistling. So how to explain the effect it has? The way her fellows go quiet when she sings? Their rush to anticipate her moods, to allay her disappointments?
Unlimited access to our
