FEW WORKS AS BRIEF AND COMPACT as “Das Urteil” (The Judgment) loom so large in the landscape of literary history. This short story of deceptive simplicity but replete with unresolved questions represented a breakthrough for Kafka and became a magnet for critical readers, who were drawn to its simultaneous sparseness and intensity. Kafka himself reports how he wrote out the full text in one exhausting sitting in the night of 22–23 September 1912, marking a definitive separation between his early literary attempts and his mature accomplishments: “Die Verwandlung” (The Metamorphosis) followed in November and December, even as he made extensive progress on the novel fragment that Max Brod would later dub Amerika (Binder 123–25). There can be no doubt that the completion of “Das Urteil” brought Kafka’s creative productivity to a new level, ushering in the series of works that has become central to modernist world literature. We know that Kafka wished to have Brod destroy much of his writing; “Das Urteil” was not on the list. On the contrary, it is one of the few texts that Kafka continued to regard with satisfaction (Stern 114). Indeed it occupies a special place as a key to Kafka’s major achievement and to a much broader definition of literary sensibility in the twentieth century (Sokel 34). “Das Urteil” represents a breakthrough, redefining the literary tradition of the canon; and it is a redefinition that unfolds precisely through the logic of the text.

Why this sudden outburst of creativity and why did it take the form of “Das Urteil”? There is of course a biographical context, and much criticism has dwelled on it, endeavoring to explain the troublesome narrative with reference to data from Kafka’s life. His meeting with Felice Bauer, who would become his fiancée, took place in August 1912. It is to her that he dedicated the story, she figures clearly as the model for Georg’s fiancée, Frieda Brandenfeld (whose initials she shares), and in his correspondence with Felice, he refers to “Das Urteil” as her story.