"A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood"
About this Quote
Kafka turns an object lesson into a small existential trap: a staircase that has never been used is not “new” or “pristine,” it’s inert, unverified matter. The punch is the perspective shift - “regarded from its own point of view” - a sly bit of anthropomorphism that makes the nonhuman sound wounded, even resentful. It’s funny in that dry Kafka way: the stair has an interior life, but the interior life is boredom.
The intent isn’t to romanticize wear-and-tear; it’s to argue that function without contact is a kind of nonexistence. Footsteps don’t merely consume the stair, they confer identity. The hollowing-out, usually treated as damage, becomes evidence: time has passed, bodies have trusted this structure, the world has agreed it matters. Kafka smuggles in a bleak psychology here: usefulness is a social verdict, handed down by repetition. Without being entered, touched, risked, you remain “something made of wood” - technically real, existentially blank.
Context matters: Kafka wrote in a modernizing, bureaucratic empire where human beings often felt like replaceable parts in vast systems. His fiction returns obsessively to the anxiety of being evaluated, processed, deemed irrelevant. The staircase is a stand-in for the self under modernity: built with a purpose, desperate for proof it’s fulfilling it, terrified that silence means nullity. Even the word “boring” lands like a moral sentence. In Kafka’s world, the opposite of meaning isn’t tragedy; it’s unused potential quietly rotting on standby.
The intent isn’t to romanticize wear-and-tear; it’s to argue that function without contact is a kind of nonexistence. Footsteps don’t merely consume the stair, they confer identity. The hollowing-out, usually treated as damage, becomes evidence: time has passed, bodies have trusted this structure, the world has agreed it matters. Kafka smuggles in a bleak psychology here: usefulness is a social verdict, handed down by repetition. Without being entered, touched, risked, you remain “something made of wood” - technically real, existentially blank.
Context matters: Kafka wrote in a modernizing, bureaucratic empire where human beings often felt like replaceable parts in vast systems. His fiction returns obsessively to the anxiety of being evaluated, processed, deemed irrelevant. The staircase is a stand-in for the self under modernity: built with a purpose, desperate for proof it’s fulfilling it, terrified that silence means nullity. Even the word “boring” lands like a moral sentence. In Kafka’s world, the opposite of meaning isn’t tragedy; it’s unused potential quietly rotting on standby.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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