The reception of Franz Kafka’s work is normally seen from the perspective
of human condition, the labyrinth, the bureaucracy that imposes itself over
the individual and so on. There is no doubt about the importance of this
perspective for the study of Kafka’s work. Nevertheless, the objective of
the present paper is to point out another aspect in Kafka’s work, which is
the relation to the visual medium Kaiserpanorama in his fictional writings.
The starting points of this discussion are the books “Kafka goes to the
movies†by Hanns Zischler published in 1996 and “Kafka und der Film:
über kinematographisches Erzählen†by Peter-André Alt published in 2009.
Thus, based on these publications this study intends to analyse the
importance, that this optical medium may have had over Franz Kafka and in
which ways it is possible to identify this new perception in his literary
work, specially in the tale “An imperial messageâ€. The main topic is
constructed around the profundity of the 3D-image as seen through a
Kaiserpanorama, and its statical plasticity.
