July 3rd, 1883. Prague, Czech Republic.
Franz Kafka was born. Arguably, one of the greatest and most impactful
writers of the 20th century and a person that managed to affect the souls of millions of
people without even knowing it. Kafka was an Ashkenazi Jew raised in a traditional
German-Jewish household. His father was authoritarian and demanding
and his mother was quiet and shy. The family owned a fashion retail business
that was doing quite well. His upper middle class religious and strict
upbringing clearly affected his character. He was a highly intelligent person that was
questioning dominant narratives of his time and often found himself alienated.
After finishing high-school he was admitted to the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität
of Prague in 1901. After graduation, in 1907, he started working
for different insurance companies but he found the work quite tedious (actually claimed to
despise it), but he considered it Brotberuf, literally "bread job" in German, meaning something
that could help him make ends meet. Writing was his true passion and he viewed
every other form of work as a distraction. Despite all the inner and outer struggles
he had to face, he managed to complete several works, mainly novels and short stories.
What little was published during his lifetime attracted negligible public attention.
Probably that was the main reason he burned almost 90% of his writings.
Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917 and this tortured him until his death.
In 1923, he moved to Berlin to concentrate on his writing, but came back to Prague in 1924
due to the severity of his illness. He died June 3rd 1924.
Most of his novels were published post mortem by his close friend Max Brod, despite the
fact that Kafka instructed him in his will to destroy them. Kafka wrote to Brod: "Dearest
Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts,
letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."
Although Kafka wasn’t a philosopher, his works were deeply philosophical.
I mean how couldn't they be? Kafka was an avid reader and also deeply engaged
in political matters. His Jewish background, his studies, and his
work, merged with his socialist and anarchist inclinations, served as the bedrock for the
molding of a personality that would develop a surrealist and anti-systemic view on reality.
“The tremendous world I have inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without
being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in
me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me,” Kafka wrote
in his diary.
Kafka was destined to change our perception and understanding of novels and storytelling.
His work echoes ideas so visceral and so central to all of us that it’s impossible not to
resonate with them. So much so that we have a word that alludes
to a Kafka’s style. That word is Kafkaesque. The Miriam Webster dictionary defines something
as Kafkaesque when it has a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.
I like Kafka because I often find myself trapped in situations that can clearly be defined
as Kafkaesque. I am sure you have found yourself too.
There is a small Kafka inside us all. So, let’s dive a bit deeper into the Kafkaesque
and understand Kafka’s world a bit better.
The trial takes place in a surreal and somewhat dystopian setting.
Joseph K., the chief cashier of a bank, is
arrested in his flat on the morning of his 30th birthday.
The people who arrest him are two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime.
The narrative of the story is quite frustrating
and perplexing because we follow the life of Joseph K. in his attempt to find out the
reason for his trial, without much success. He visits some weird courthouse where he doesn’t
get any clear answers and, instead, forms weird relationships with the people working there.
Some of the relationships are aggressive,
some are flirtatious, some are human. It feels like a dream most of the time.
Back in his flat, which is part of a bigger house with more tenants, owned by Frau Grubach,
Joseph K. tries to form a more intimate relationship with one of the tenants, Fräulein Bürstner,
who doesn’t really reciprocate his advances. The story continues with more surreal encounters.
The agents that arrested him getting whipped inside a storage room by a flogger for asking
K. for bribes. His uncle visiting him and trying to introduce him to a lawyer that can
help him with his imaginary case. A sexual encounter he has with Leni,
a nurse that accompanies his uncle. Eventually, Joseph ends up in a cathedral
where a priest tells him a fable that is meant to explain his situation.
At the end of the story Joseph is executed on the eve of his 31st birthday by two men.
The story is simply enthralling and emblematic of Kafka’s writing.
His way of critiquing abstract power and hierarchy systems that keep us shackled within limited
modes of being is unparalleled. Moreover, he manages to express his sexual
and interpersonal frustrations in a very illuminating way. All characters play roles – roles we
encounter constantly in our daily lives. There is no way for one not to resonate with
Joseph K. We all constantly feel that we are getting
judged or trialed just because we exist. The trial was clearly influenced by Dostoevsky's
“Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov,” and Kafka even went so far as
to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. I would go as far as to call both of them
blood relatives of mine.
Kafka had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. It is obvious that “Metamorphosis” is
related to this suspicion. The book is a story about a salesman, Gregor
Samsa, who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed in a huge ungeheures Ungeziefer,
which is roughly translated from german as monstrous vermin. Ungeziefer is a general
term for unwanted and unclean animals. Let’s call it a cockroach.
Initially he thinks that the transformation is temporary, so he just accepts his predicament
and lies on his bed, unable to move. While lying there, he broods over his job
as a traveling salesman and the transient and superficial nature of his relationships.
After a few hours, his manager, indignant about Gregor’s absence, shows up in his
room, trying to find out what happened. His family is also there and they are all
shocked with the image they have to face. The story goes on with the explanation of
how the different characters adapt to the new reality.
His family relied on Gregor financially and his transformation deprived his family of
their financial stability. His father and mother are quite cruel with him.
They are unable to accept the transformation and they can’t exhibit parental caring and empathy.
His sister tries to take care of him, but
eventually grows tired of this and tells her parents they must get rid of "it."
Gregor feels quite helpless and mistreated. In several incidents throughout the book Gregor
injures himself and this worsens his condition. Eventually he understands that he is no longer
wanted and dies of starvation. The story is quite sad and depressing, but
it is considered a masterpiece of 20th century literature.
It’s a harsh critique to his family and every family and social group that denounces
weakness and everything different from them. Although the personal is invariably imbued
in the story, the universal can be extrapolated from the personal.
We all feel weak, fragile, and insecure sometimes. We all feel sometimes like a burden to others.
We all feel that others don’t care about us.
We all feel alienated and detached from reality. Kafka just reminds us that in the most dark and surreal way.
Apart from his novels, Kafka wrote many short
stories that reveal the breadth of his literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth
of his thought. In one of his most famous stories titled
"A hunger artist,” he tells the story of a professional, fasting artist.
Yes, you heard right. This artist’s show, so to speak, is starving himself to death.
His show in the beginning was interesting, but, as time went on, interest in his form
of entertainment waned. The final sentences of the story are quite poignant. A supervisor
who confronts the artist, asks him when his is going to stop. To which the artist replies:
“Forgive me everything.” The supervisor nods and agrees to forgive him. The artist
insists to his self-flagellating approach and says: “I always wanted you to admire
my fasting.” The supervisor says that both he and the spectators did admire his fasting.
The artist however continues on the same pattern. “But you shouldn’t admire it, […] because
I couldn’t find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not
have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you
and everyone else.” I consider this a deeply troubling story with
many hidden messages and so many interpretations. Why did the artist do that?
Was it because he wanted to prove himself? Was it because he couldn't find the right
artform to devote himself to? It’s not that simple.
The artist’s last words reveal a lot about Kafka’s views on art and especially the
way that he allowed his art to consume him. When he says “If I had found that, believe
me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content,
like you and everyone else,” he clearly suggests that he didn’t choose his art,
but his art chose him. If he could just eat any other food, he wouldn’t become a writer.
For Kafka, writing was the only “food” that he could eat. During his lifetime, he
didn’t get any praise for his writing, but he kept writing. Or at least he couldn’t
accept the little praise he got from his close friends or some of the few people who admired
his work. The struggle between the desire for praise,
but also the rejection of praise, as something frivolous, troubled him till his last day.
The sense of awe Kafka’s stories evoke is almost intoxicating.
The essence of his work is that we come into this world and inexplicable things happen
to us - things that neither we nor our environment can justify or explain.
Yet we accept this absurdity and, most of us, support it without the need to question it.
But even if we question it, it eventually
consumes us till our last day. Kafka is in my head almost on a daily basis.
I constantly feel that I have to fight abstract power and hierarchy systems that keep me shackled
within limited modes of being. Ideas like alienation, the mundanity of everyday
life, the superficial nature of our relationships, dominate my stream of thoughts so often that
I just don’t fight them anymore. I know that if I keep fighting them, they
will keep pushing me towards the abyss. I accept them, I observe them, I allow them
to inspire my work. I become one with the Kafkaesque and I find pleasure in it.
Just like Kafka did.