Confronted as he was with power on all sides, [Kafka's] obduracy sometimes offered him a reprieve. But if it was insufficient, or if it failed him, he trained himself to disappear; here the most helpful aspect of his physical thinness is revealed, though often, as we know, he despised it. By means of physical dimunition, he withdrew power from himself, and thus had less part in it; this asceticism, too, was directed against power …

Most astounding of all is another method he practices, with a sovereign skill matched only by the Chinese: transformation into something small. Since he abominated violence, but did not credit himself with the strength to combat it, he enlarged the distance between the stronger entity and himself by becoming smaller and smaller in relation to it.

Through this shrinkage he gained two advantages: he evaded the threat by becoming too diminutive for it, and he freed himself from all exceptionable means of violence; the small animals into which he liked to transform himself were harmless ones.

Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial