Los graduados de Kafka [Kafka’s graduates]

The bright blue front cover displays a paper collage of a boat carrying three screaming figures - one holds a fork-shaped oar - and a male figure holding an umbrella with a lightning bolt adhered to its front. The screaming figures mimic Edvard Munch’s Expressionist painting The Scream. “Metamorphosis” is inscribed on the side of the boat. A flap folds out to reveal a vermin-like creature and Pérez’s initials, J.A.H.P.

Estevez christens the boat Metamorphosis, after author Franz Kafka's most famous novella. Its main character, Gregor, wakes up transformed into large vermin-like creature and his family forces him into seclusion. Gregor's disgust at his transformation separates himself and his environment: he is contaminated and exiled from society. Estévez creates a relationship between his image and Pérez’s text. Pérez’s collection of stories, Kafka’s Graduates, creates a tapestry where the sea becomes a protagonist and a barrier for his characters. This is resonant to those who have lived through the Cuban exile movements and feel that the sea has choked and swallowed the Cuban spirit.

Kafka’s work is a natural selection for Vigía. Ruth Behar remarks that Cuba is “fraught by Kafkaesque regulations and emotional burdens.”1 "Kafkaesque" is used to describe situations that are incomprehensibly complex and often a sense of impending danger. This phenomenon is often associated with an intentional distortion of reality by powerful but anonymous bureaucrats. Estévez employs Munch’s popular imagery as a visual companion to Kafka’s literary prose. Central to Kafka and Munch’s works are themes of catastrophe and fear, which express disconnect between humanity and society. Estévez utilizes these themes to express a sense of distrust and disconnect between the Cuban government and society, and an overarching fear of the collapse of Cuban societal structure.

by Lauren Bartshe

• 1 Behar, Ruth. After the Bridges. The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2008.6.

The bright blue front cover displays a paper collage of a boat carrying three screaming figures - one holds a fork-shaped oar - and a male figure holding an umbrella with a lightning bolt adhered to its front, and bears the title Los Graduados de Kafka. The screaming figures mimic the protagonist in The Scream, a painting by Edvard Munch. “Metamorphosis” is inscribed on the side of the boat. A flap folds out to reveal a vermin-like creature and the author’s initials, J.A.H.P. The inside front cover flap bears the author’s biography. The first page (leaf two) displays the author’s name, Jorge Angel Hernández Pérez, and the same male figure riding the boat alone, holding the fork-shaped oar. The title page (leaf three) shows one screaming figure sitting on a raft-like object, and lists the designer, Rolando Estévez, and again the author’s initials, J.A.H.P.

The boat is named after author Franz Kafka's1 most famous novella, The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung). The main character, Gregor, wakes up one morning transformed into large insect-like creature and his family forces him into seclusion. Gregor's disgust at his transformation denotes a sense of separation between himself and his environment: he is contaminated and must therefore be secluded. In multiple stories Pérez creates a tapestry where the sea becomes the protagonist and a barrier for other characters. Cuban literary critic Manso Geovannys notes that this is a cruel reality for those who have lived through the Cuban exile movements, and who feel that the sea has choked and swallowed the Cuban spirit.2

Kafka’s work is a natural selection for Vigía. Ruth Behar remarks that Cuba is “fraught by Kafkaesque regulations and emotional burdens.”3 The term "Kafkaesque" is widely used to describe concepts, situations, and ideas that are reminiscent of Kafka's works, particularly The Metamorphosis. The term describes situations that are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical, or conveys a surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In Kafka’s works it is most often associated with an intentional distortion of reality by powerful but anonymous bureaucrats.

Estévez utilizes expressionist iconography to suggest a sense of distrust and disconnect between the Cuban government and society, and an overarching fear of the collapse of Cuban societal structure. Both Kafka and Munch utilize components of expressionist tradition. Central to both artists’ works are themes of catastrophe, violence, and fear to express disconnect between humanity and society. Estévez's references to Kafka and Munch are particularly appropriate because the characters of Pérez's 15 stories confront conflicting, tainted realities. Such is the case in stories like Predicciones, where characters are haunted by the delusion that reality is finite, or in Las bromas de Kundera, where reality is contaminated by the obstruction of the "other."4

The bright blue back cover has collaged paper elements of an umbrella and lamp [the Vigía logo] with yarn across it on top of a raft similar to the title page, and reads “Ediciones Vigía, Colección Trébol.” The inside back cover flap folds out to reveal an attached folded banner bearing a drawing of three screaming figures stabbing each other with forks, and signed by the designer, Estévez. The last page (leaf seventy) is a multi-fold out panel displaying two screaming figures, two palm trees, and a lamp [the Vigía logo] and gives publication information including the editor’s name, Laura Ruiz Montes, the date May 2008, and a list of materials used; the reverse side provides the exemplar number 052. The bulk of the book consists of pages of photocopied text on white paper, bordered with a water-like swirl containing two screaming figures and each page number inside a boat.

Estévez incorporates a motif of a fork throughout his design scheme: as a paddle on the cover; as a weapon in the back banner; and as a bookmark. The juxtaposition of the fork’s use, as a tool of navigation and a tool of destruction, suggests an allegory for Cuba’s conflicting reality: what navigates Cuba’s society is ultimately causing its destruction. By providing the reader with a fork, Estévez implicates the reader into both the written narrative and his art, and invites the reader to decide their own use for the tool.  

by Lauren Bartshe

• 1 Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) was born to middle class German-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Czech Republic). He was known to attend meetings of a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist and anti-clerical organization, and considered himself a socialist
• 2 Manso, Geovannys. "Asedios de (y hacia) Kafka." La Jiribilla: Revista de Cultura Cuba. (2009). http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/2010/n481_07/ellibro.html.
• 3 Behar, Ruth. After the Bridges. The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2008.6.
• 4 Geovannys Manso