Dostoyevsky and Kafka

I recently re-read Notes from the Underground and stumbled across what must have been the direct inspiration for Kafka’s Metamorphosis at the very beginning of the second chapter:

I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect.  I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect.  But I was not equal even to that.

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