继续《重新评价卡夫卡》的翻译，是为十五，十四即《怎样不困惑于〈寻常的困惑〉》。
From what has been said so far it may become clear that the novel-writer Franz Kafka was no novelist in the classical, the 19th century, sense of the word. The basis for the classical novel was an acceptance of society as such, a submission to life as it happens, a conviction that greatness of destiny is beyond human virtues and human vice. It presupposed the decline of the citizen, who, during the days of the French Revolution, had attempted to govern the world with human laws. It pictured the growth of the bourgeois individual for whom life and the world had become a place of events and who desired more events and more happenings than the usually narrow and secure framework of his own life could offer him. Today these novelists who were always in competition (even if imitating reality) with reality itself, have been supplanted by the reporter. In our world real events, real destinies, have long surpassed the wildest imagination of novelists.
如上所述，或许可以清晰地看到：写小说的卡夫卡不是十九世纪经典意义上的小说家。经典小说的基础是顺应社会现状，顺应生活，相信命运的伟大力量是超越人类的美德和恶习的。它理所当然地认为那些在法国大革命的时候企图用人类法则统治世界的市民会衰败。它描绘了中产阶级个人的成长，对他们来说，生活和世界已经变成了一个充满故事的地方，他们想要更多的故事、发生更多的事情，比他自己通常狭窄而安全的生活框架所能提供的更多。如今，这些总是写实或者是超现实的小说家已经被记者所取代。在我们的世界里，真实的事件、真实的命运早已超越了小说家们最疯狂的想象。
The pendant to the quiet and security of the bourgeois world in which the individual expected from life his fair share of events and excitements, and never quite got enough of them, was that of great men,the geniuses and exceptions who in the eyes of this same world represented the wonderful and mysterious incarnation of something superhuman which could be called destiny (as in the case of Napoleon), or history (as in the case of Hegel), or God's will (as in the case of Kierkegaard, who believed God had chosen him to serve as an example), or necessity (as in the case of Nietzsche, who declared himself to be “a necessity”). The highest idea of man was the man with a mission, a call, which he had to fulfill. The greater the mission, the greater the man. All that man, seen as this incarnation of something superhuman, could achieve was amor fati (Nietzsche), love of destiny, conscious identification with what happened to him. Greatness was no longer sought in the work done but in the person himself; genius was no longer thought of as a gift bestowed by the gods upon men who themselves remained essentially the same. The whole person had become the incarnation of genius and as such was no longer regarded as a simple mortal. Kant, who was essentially the philosopher of the French Revolution, still defined genius as “the innate mental disposition through which Nature gives the rule to Art.” I do not agree with this definition; I think that genius is rather the disposition through which Mankind gives the rule to Art. But this is beside the point. For what strikes us in Kant's definition as well as in his further explanation is the utter absence of that empty greatness which during the entire 19th century had made of genius the forerunner of the superman, a kind of monster.
译注：1944年在Partisan Review发表本文时，“and never quite got enough of them, was that of great men,”写作“and never quite getting enough of them, were the great men,”；“God's will”写作“the call of God”；“him to serve as an example”写作“himself to be an example stated by God and therefore an ‘exception’”。
