Franz Kafka[b] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-languageJewish Czech writer and novelist born inPrague, in theAustro-Hungarian Empire.[4] Widely regarded as a major figure of20th-century literature, his work fuses elements ofrealism and thefantastique,[5] and typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The termKafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings.[6] His best-known works include the novellaThe Metamorphosis (1915) and the novelsThe Trial (1924) andThe Castle (1926). His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, filmmakers, literary historians, religious scholars, and cultural theorists.
Kafka was born into a middle-class German- andYiddish-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of theKingdom of Bohemia, which belonged to theAustro-Hungarian Empire (later the capital ofCzechoslovakia and theCzech Republic).[7][8] He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time in various legal and insurance jobs.[9] His professional obligations led to internal conflict as he felt that his true vocation was writing. Only a minority of his works were published during his life; the story-collectionsContemplation (1912) andA Country Doctor (1919), and individual stories, such as his novellaThe Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines, but they received little attention. He wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died relatively unknown in 1924 oftuberculosis, aged 40.
Though Kafka is most famous for his novels and short stories, he is also celebrated for his brief fables and aphorisms.[10] Like his longer fiction, these sketches may be brutal in some aspects, but their dreadfulness is frequently funny.[10] A close acquaintance of Kafka's remarked that both his audience and the author himself sometimes laughed so much during readings that Kafka could not continue in his delivery, finding it necessary to collect himself before completing hisrecitation of the work.[11] His writings are sometimes seen as prophetic or premonitory of atotalitarian future.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]
Kafka at about ten with his sistersValli (left) andElli (center)
Kafka was born near theOld Town Square inPrague, then part of theAustro-Hungarian Empire. His family were German-speaking middle-classAshkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka,[19][20] ashochet orkosher butcher inOsek, a Czech village with a large Jewish population located nearStrakonice in southern Bohemia.[21] Hermann "came to Prague in the 1870s and opened a store selling haberdashery and ladies' accessories".[22] He employed up to 15 people and used the image of ajackdaw (kavka in Czech, pronounced and colloquially written askafka) as his business logo.[23] Kafka's mother, Julie, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a "cloth-maker inHumpolec in eastern Bohemia".[22]
Kafka's parents, from traditional Jewish society, spoke German replete with influences from their nativeYiddish; their children, raised in an acculturated environment, spokeStandard German.[24] The cleanliness and "almost platonic purity"[25] of Kafka's German may derive from the fact that he grew up speaking the language in a country whose native speech was not German.[25] His prose is not hindered by slang or warped by fads of contemporary usage that mark the style of his generational peers from the heart of the empire inVienna or, for that matter, at the center of theSecond Reich inBerlin.[25]
Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest.[26] Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele ("Elli"),Valerie ("Valli") andOttilie ("Ottla"). All three were murdered inthe Holocaust ofWorld War II. Valli was deported to theŁódź Ghetto inoccupied Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her; it is assumed she did not survive the war. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.[27]
Hermann is described by Kafka scholar and translatorStanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman"[28] and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on a grand scale, of course also with all the defects and weaknesses that go with these advantages and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper drive you".[29] On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely,[30] and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in hisBrief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character;[31] his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy.[32] The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing.[33]
The Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment.[34] Franz's room was often cold. In November 1913, the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Valli had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for the first time.[35]
From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the German boys' elementary school at theMasný trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with hisbar mitzvah celebration at the age of 13. Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays each year.[29][36][37]
After leaving elementary school in 1893, Kafka was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented stategymnasium,Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school at Old Town Square, located withinKinský Palace. German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and wrote in Czech.[38][39] He studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving good grades.[40] Kafka received compliments for his Czech, but never considered himself fluent in the language. He spoke German with a Czech accent.[1][39] He completed hisMatura exams in 1901.[41]
Kafka was admitted to theDeutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität of Prague in 1901. He was originally admitted for philosophy, and he had additionally signed up for chemistry.[42] Kafka began studying chemistry but switched to law after two weeks.[43] Although this field did not excite him, it offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father. In addition, law required a longer course of study, giving Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history.[44] He also joined a student club,Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten (Reading and Lecture Hall of the German students), which organised literary events, readings and other activities.[45] Among Kafka's friends were the journalistFelix Weltsch, who studied philosophy, the actorYitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodoxHasidic Warsaw family, and the writersLudwig Winder,Oskar Baum andFranz Werfel.[46]
At the end of his first year of studies, Kafka metMax Brod, a fellow law student who became a close friend for life.[45] Years later, Brod coined the termDer enge Prager Kreis ("The Close Prague Circle") to describe the group of writers, which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and Brod himself.[47][48] Brod soon noticed that, although Kafka was shy and seldom spoke, what he said was usually profound.[49] Kafka was an avid reader throughout his life;[50] together he and Brod readPlato'sProtagoras in the originalGreek, on Brod's initiative, andGustave Flaubert'sL'éducation sentimentale andLa Tentation de St. Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony) in French, at his own suggestion.[51] Kafka consideredFyodor Dostoevsky, Flaubert,Nikolai Gogol,Franz Grillparzer,[52] andHeinrich von Kleist to be his "trueblood brothers".[53] Besides these, he took an interest inCzech literature[38][39] and was also very fond of the works ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe.[54][55] Kafka was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906[c] and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.[6]
Former home of the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute
On 1 November 1907, Kafka was employed at theAssicurazioni Generali, an insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period indicates that he was unhappy with a work schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00[62][63]—that made it extremely difficult to concentrate on writing, which was assuming increasing importance to him. On 15 July 1908, he resigned. Two weeks later, he found employment more amenable to writing when he joined the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia (Úrazová pojišťovna dělnická pro Čechy v Praze). The job involved investigating and assessing compensation forpersonal injury to industrial workers; accidents such as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poorwork safety policies at the time. It was especially true of factories fitted with machinelathes,drills,planing machines androtary saws, which were rarely fitted with safety guards.[64]
His father often referred to his son's job as an insurance officer as aBrotberuf, literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills; Kafka often claimed to despise it. Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who thought their firms had been placed in too high a risk category, which cost them more in insurance premiums.[65] He would compile and compose theannual report on the insurance institute for the several years he worked there. The reports were well received by his superiors.[66] Kafka usually got off work at 2 p.m., so that he had time to spend on his literary work, to which he was committed.[67] Kafka's father also expected him to help out at and take over the familyfancy goods store.[68] In his later years, Kafka's illness often prevented him from working at the insurance bureau and at his writing.
In late 1911, Elli's husband Karl Hermann and Kafka became partners in the firstasbestos factory in Prague, known as Prager Asbestwerke Hermann & Co., having useddowry money from Hermann Kafka. Kafka showed a positive attitude at first, dedicating much of his free time to the business, but he later resented the encroachment of this work on his writing time.[69] During that period, he also found interest and entertainment in the performances ofYiddish theatre. After seeing a Yiddish theatre troupe perform in October 1911, for the next six months Kafka "immersed himself in Yiddish language and in Yiddish literature".[70] This interest also served as a starting point for his growing exploration of Judaism.[71] It was at about this time that Kafka became a vegetarian.[72] Around 1915, Kafka received his draft notice for military service in World WarI, but his employers at the insurance institute arranged for a deferment because his work was considered essential government service. He later attempted to join the military but was prevented from doing so by medical problems associated withtuberculosis,[73] with which he was diagnosed in 1917.[74] In 1918, the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time, and he spent most of the rest of his life insanatoriums.[6]
Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire,[75] and filled with a fear of "sexual failure".[76] Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life,[77][78][79] and his collection of erotica and pornographic photographs demonstrates a connoisseur's range of interest in the genre.[80] In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka metFelice Bauer, a relative of Brod's, who worked in Berlin as a representative of adictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary:
Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. (I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely ...) Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.[81][82]
Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote the story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment") in only one night and in a productive period worked onDer Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared) andDie Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters over the next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice.[83] Kafka's extant letters to Bauer were published asBriefe an Felice (Letters to Felice); her letters did not survive.[81][84][85] After he had written to Bauer's father asking to marry her, Kafka wrote in his diary:
My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature.... I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else ... Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause ... A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me.[86]
According to the biographers Stach andJames Hawes, Kafka became engaged a third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated hotel chambermaid.[83][87] Kafka's father objected to Julie because of herZionist beliefs. Although Kafka and Julie rented a flat and set a wedding date, the marriage never took place. During this time, Kafka began a draft ofLetter to His Father. Before the date of the intended marriage, he took up with yet another woman.[88]
Stach and Brod state that during the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with a friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Bloch,[89] a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in 1921.[90][91] However, Kafka's biographerPeter-André Alt says that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father, as the pair were never intimate.[92][93] Stach notes contradictory evidence as to whether Kafka was the father.[94]
Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917 and moved for a few months to theBohemian village of Zürau (Siřem in Czech), where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later described this time as perhaps the best period of his life, probably because he had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and made notes in exercise books (Oktavhefte). From those notes, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on single pieces of paper (Zettel); these were later published asDie Zürauer Aphorismen oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg (The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).[95]
In 1920, Kafka began an intense relationship withMilena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and writer who was non-Jewish and who was married, but whose marriage, when she met Kafka, was a "sham".[96] His letters to her were later published asBriefe an Milena.[97] During a vacation in July 1923 toGraal-Müritz on theBaltic Sea, Kafka metDora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape the influence of his family to concentrate on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin (September 1923-March 1924) and lived with Diamant. She became his lover and reignited his interest in theTalmud.[98] He completed four stories, which were published shortly after his death under the title of one of them,Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist).[97]
Franz Kafka's sisters as children, from the leftValli, Elli,Ottla
Kafka's parents had six children; Franz was the eldest.[26] His two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy; his three sisters, Gabriele ("Elli") (22 September 1889 – fall of 1942),Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) andOttilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943), are believed to have been murdered inthe Holocaust of theSecond World War. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.[99]
Gabriele was Kafka's eldest sister. She was known as Elli or Ellie; her married name is variously rendered as Hermann or Hermannová. She attended a German girls' school in Prague's Řeznická Street and later a private girls' secondary school.[100] She married Karl Hermann (1883–1939), a salesman, in 1910. The couple had a son, Felix (1911–1940), and two daughters, Gertrude (Gerti) Kaufmann (1912–1972), and Hanna Seidner (1920–1941).[100][101] After her marriage to Hermann, she became closer to her brother, whose letters showed an active interest in the upbringing and education of her children. He accompanied her on a 1915 trip to Hungary to visit Hermann, who was stationed there, and spent a summer with her and her children inMüritz the year before he died.[100][102]
With the outbreak of theGreat Depression in 1929, the Hermann family business experienced financial difficulties and eventually went bankrupt.[100] Karl Hermann died 27 February 1939, and Elli was supported financially by her sisters.[100][102] On 21 October 1941, she was deported together with her daughter Hanna to theŁódź Ghetto, where she lived temporarily with her sister Valli and Valli's husband in the spring of 1942. She was probably killed in theKulmhof extermination camp in the fall of 1942.[100][103][104][102][105] Of Elli's three children, only her daughter Gerti survived the Second World War.[citation needed] A memorial plaque commemorates the three sisters at the family grave in theNew Jewish Cemetery in Prague.[102]
Kafka had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. However, those who met him found him to possess a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and a dry sense of humour; they also found him boyishly handsome, although of austere appearance.[106][107][108] Kafka was thought to be "very self-analytic".[109] Brod compared Kafka toHeinrich von Kleist, noting that both writers had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details.[110] Brod thought Kafka was one of the most entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing his humour with his friends but also helped them in difficult situations with good advice.[111] According to Brod, he was a passionate reciter, able to phrase his speech as though it were music.[112] Brod felt that two of Kafka's most distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" (absolute Wahrhaftigkeit) and "precise conscientiousness" (präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit).[113][114] He explored inconspicuous details in depth and with such precision and love that unforeseen things surfaced that seemed strange but absolutely true (nichts als wahr).[115]
Kafka's letters and unexpurgated diaries reveal homoerotic themes, including a scenario with novelistFranz Werfel and references to the work ofHans Blüher on male bonding.Saul Friedländer argues that this mental struggle may have informed the themes of alienation and psychological brutality in his writing.[116]
Although Kafka showed little interest in exercise as a child, he later developed a passion for games and physical activity[50] and was an accomplished rider, swimmer, and rower.[113] On weekends, he and his friends embarked on long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself.[117] His other interests includedalternative medicine, modern education systems such asMontessori,[113] and technological novelties such as airplanes and film.[118] Writing was vitally important to Kafka; he considered it a "form of prayer".[119] He washighly sensitive to noise and preferred absolute quiet when writing.[120] Kafka was also avegetarian and did not drink alcohol.[121]
Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that Kafka had symptomatology consistent withschizoid personality disorder.[122] His style, it is claimed, not only inDie Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) but in other writings, appears to show low- to medium-level schizoid traits, which Pérez-Álvarez claims to have influenced much of his work.[123] His anguish can be seen in this diary entry from 21 June 1913:[124]
Die ungeheure Welt, die ich im Kopfe habe. Aber wie mich befreien und sie befreien, ohne zu zerreißen. Und tausendmal lieber zerreißen, als in mir sie zurückhalten oder begraben. Dazu bin ich ja hier, das ist mir ganz klar.[125]
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.[126]
and in Zürau Aphorism number 50:
Der Mensch kann nicht leben ohne ein dauerndes Vertrauen zu etwas Unzerstörbarem in sich, wobei sowohl das Unzerstörbare als auch das Vertrauen ihm dauernd verborgen bleiben können.
Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently concealed from him.[127]
The Italian medical researchers Alessia Coralli and Antonio Perciaccante have posited in a 2016 article that Kafka may have hadborderline personality disorder with co-occurring psychophysiologicalinsomnia.[128]Joan Lachkar interpretedDie Verwandlung as "a vivid depiction of the borderline personality" and described the story as "model for Kafka's own abandonment fears, anxiety, depression, and parasitic dependency needs. Kafka illuminated the borderline's general confusion of normal and healthy desires, wishes, and needs with something ugly and disdainful".[129]
Though Kafka never married, he held marriage and children in high esteem. He had several girlfriends and lovers during his life.[130] He may have suffered from an eating disorder. Doctor Manfred M. Fichter of the Psychiatric Clinic,University of Munich, presented "evidence for the hypothesis that the writer Franz Kafka had suffered from an atypicalanorexia nervosa",[131] and that Kafka was not just lonely and depressed but also "occasionally suicidal".[107] In his 1995 bookFranz Kafka, the Jewish Patient,Sander Gilman investigated "why a Jew might have been considered 'hypochondriacal' or 'homosexual' and how Kafka incorporates aspects of these ways of understanding the Jewish male into his own self-image and writing".[132] Kafka considered suicide at least once, in late 1912.[133]
Before World War I,[134] Kafka attended several meetings of theKlub mladých, a Czech anarchist,anti-militarist, andanti-clerical organization.[135]Hugo Bergmann, who attended the same elementary and high schools as Kafka, fell out with Kafka during their last academic year (1900–1901) because "[Kafka's] socialism and myZionism were much too strident".[136][137] Bergmann said: "Franz became a socialist, I became a Zionist in 1898. The synthesis of Zionism and socialism did not yet exist."[137] Bergmann claims that Kafka wore ared carnation to school to show his support forsocialism.[137] In one diary entry, Kafka made reference to the influential anarchist philosopherPeter Kropotkin: "Don't forget Kropotkin!"[138]
During the communist era, the legacy of Kafka's work forEastern Bloc socialism was hotly debated. Opinions ranged from the notion that he satirised the bureaucratic bungling of a crumblingAustro-Hungarian Empire, to the belief that he embodied the rise of socialism.[139] A further key point wasMarx's theory of alienation. While the orthodox position was that Kafka's depictions of alienation were no longer relevant for a society that had supposedly eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held inLiblice, Czechoslovakia, on the eightieth anniversary of his birth, reassessed the importance of Kafka's portrayal of bureaucracy.[140] Whether Kafka was a political writer is still an issue of debate.[141]
Kafka in 1910Kafka's notebook with his studies of Hebrew
Kafka grew up in Prague as a German-speaking Jew.[142] He was deeply fascinated by theJews of Eastern Europe, who he thought possessed an intensity of spiritual life that was absent from Jews in the West. His diary contains many references toYiddish writers.[143] Yet he was at times alienated from Judaism and Jewish life. On 8 January 1914, he wrote in his diary:
Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam? Ich habe kaum etwas mit mir gemeinsam und sollte mich ganz still, zufrieden damit daß ich atmen kann, in einen Winkel stellen.[144]
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.[145][146]
As a teenager, Kafka declared himself anatheist.[147] Issues such as Judaism, theTalmud, theZohar, and theKabbalah remain a theme in his diaries.[148] He notes in his diary, shortly before embarking on his composition ofThe Castle, that in the demonic onslaught of visions assaulting him he perceives "the intimations of a secret doctrine, a new Kabbalah" whose development has been barred byZionism.[149]
In the final issue ofDie Sammlung,[150] a journal for exiles from theThird Reich in Western Europe,Klaus Mann writes, "[T]he collected works of Kafka, offered by theSchocken Verlag in Berlin, are the noblest and most significant publications that have come out of Germany. [Kafka contributes] the epoch's purest and most singular works of literature. . . . [T]his spiritual event has occurred within a splendid isolation, in a ghetto far from the German cultural ministry".
In 1935, as theNazi Race Laws were being promulgated and prepared for their introduction at that year'sNuremberg Rally, the wordghetto bore the same connotation it carried since the early 17th century: 'a part of the city where Jews were compelled to live'.[151] Mann's mention of the ghetto here is an allusion to Kafka's status as a Jewish writer, and a swipe at Hitler's antisemitic policies. Very likely as a result of this message, the German cultural ministry sent a cease-and-desist letter to Schocken, reminding the publisher that Kafka's name had been placed on the Third Reich'sindex librorum prohibitorum several weeks earlier.[152]
That same year, a Rabbi of the Bar Kochba Youth Movement in Prague,Martin Buber,[153] wrote tothe editor of Kafka'sWerke that these stories were "a great possession . . . that could show how one can live marginally with complete integrity and without loss of background".[154] First published in Buber'sDer Jude in 1917, Kafka's story "Jackals and Arabs" is an illustration of the tendency that Buber describes in this letter: Arabs are called Arabs, elsewhere Chinese may be directly referred to as people from China,[155] but in this case references to Jews arezoomorphic, as elsewhere,[156] and in other places Jewish characters are simply not named as such.[157]
Benjamin remarks that Kafka's world ispre-animistic (as opposed to thedualism of later religions)—implying a universal and primordial ur-phenomenology (prior to the distinction of the spiritual and the substantial in human perception) that emerges as a hallmark of Kafka's style.[158] But in the same essay, Benjamin includes a parable of an obviously Chasidic character to describe Kafka's work, and in his correspondence attached to this essay he refers to Kafka's stories as ahaggadic (referring to stories in theTalmud) uprising againsthalakha (referring to legal doctrine).[159][152]Arendt echoes and expands on Benjamin's larger sentiment (which at that time was still a novelty in Kafka criticism), repeating the injunction that it is a mistake to refer to Kafka as a particularly Jewish or religious figure. Arendt's article, which appeared in thePartisan Review in 1944, was a sequel to Benjamin's earlier piece in many respects.[160][161] Arendt was a close confidant of Benjamin's and worked as an editor-at-large in Paris forSchocken Books in the late 1930s, when it published the final volumes of Kafka's works.[152] Arendt was also employed by various Zionist associations devoted to facilitating the emigration of Jewish children to Palestine so that they could escape the Third Reich.[162] Arendt and Benjamin both emphasized that Kafka belongs to the whole world.[161]
Hawes suggests that, though Kafka was conscious of his ownJewishness, in his fiction he concealed that of his Jewish characters.[163][164][165] In the opinion of literary criticHarold Bloom, although Kafka was uneasy with his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer.[166] Lothar Kahn is likewise unequivocal: "The presence of Jewishness in Kafka'soeuvre is no longer subject to doubt".[167]Pavel Eisner, one of Kafka's first translators, interpretsDer Prozess (The Trial) as the embodiment of the "triple dimension of Jewish existence in Prague... his protagonist Josef K. is (symbolically) arrested by a German (Rabensteiner), a Czech (Kullich), and a Jew (Kaminer). He stands for the 'guiltless guilt' that imbues the Jew in the modern world, although there is no evidence that he himself is a Jew".[168]
In his essaySadness in Palestine?!,Dan Miron explores Kafka's connection to Zionism: "It seems that those who claim that there was such a connection and that Zionism played a central role in his life and literary work, and those who deny the connection altogether or dismiss its importance, are both wrong. The truth lies in some very elusive place between these two simplistic poles."[143] Kafka considered moving toPalestine with Felice Bauer, and later with Dora Diamant. He studiedHebrew while living in Berlin, hiring a friend of Brod's from Palestine, Pua Bat-Tovim, to tutor him[143] and attending Rabbi Julius Grünthal[169] and RabbiJulius Guttmann's classes in the BerlinHochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Study of Judaism),[170] where he also studied theTalmud.[171]
Livia Rothkirchen calls Kafka the "symbolic figure of his era".[168] His contemporaries included numerous Jewish, Czech, and German writers who were sensitive to Jewish, Czech, and German culture. According to Rothkirchen, "This situation lent their writings a broad cosmopolitan outlook and a quality of exaltation bordering on transcendental metaphysical contemplation. An illustrious example is Franz Kafka".[168]
Towards the end of his life Kafka sent a postcard to his friend Hugo Bergmann in Tel Aviv, announcing his intention to emigrate to Palestine. Bergmann refused to host Kafka because he had young children and was afraid that Kafka would infect them with tuberculosis.[172]
Franz Kafka's grave in Prague-Žižkov designed by Leopold Ehrmann
Kafka'slaryngealtuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from Berlin to Prague,[83] where members of his family, principally his sister Ottla, as well as Dora Diamant, took care of him. He went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium inKierling just outside Vienna for treatment on 10 April,[97] and died there on 3 June 1924. The cause of death seemed to be starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and sinceparenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him.[173][174] Kafka was editing "A Hunger Artist" on his deathbed, a story whose composition he had begun before his throat closed to the point that he could not take any nourishment.[175] His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried on 11 June 1924, in theNew Jewish Cemetery inPrague-Žižkov.[78] His obituary appeared in thePrager Presse and theBerliner Tageblatt.[176] Kafka was virtually unknown during his own lifetime, but he did not consider fame important. He rose to fame rapidly after his death,[119] particularly after World War II. The Kafka tombstone was designed by architectLeopold Ehrmann.[177]
All of Kafka's published works were written in German. What little was published during his lifetime attracted scant public attention.[178]
Kafka finished none of his full-length novels and burned around 90 percent of his work,[179][180] much of it during the period he lived in Berlin with Diamant, who helped him burn the drafts.[181] In his early years as a writer he was influenced by von Kleist, whose work he described in a letter to Bauer as frightening and whom he considered closer than his own family.[182]
The first mention of Kafka's work was in an article by Max Brod on 9 February 1907 in the Berlin weeklyDie Gegenwart, two years prior to his first publication. Brod would write about his friend again in 1921 in an essay entitled "Der Dichter Frank Kafka".[176]
Kafka's earliest published works were eight stories that appeared in 1908 in the first issue of the literary journalHyperion under the titleBetrachtung (Contemplation). He wrote the story "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" ("Description of a Struggle")[d] in 1904; in 1905 he showed it to Brod, who advised him to continue writing and convinced him to submit it toHyperion. Kafka published a fragment in 1908[183] and two sections in the spring of 1909, all in Munich.[184]
In a creative outburst on the night of 22 September 1912, Kafka wrote the story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment", literally: "The Verdict") and dedicated it to Felice Bauer. Brod noted the similarity in names of the main character and his fictional fiancée, Georg Bendemann and Frieda Brandenfeld, to Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer.[185] The story is often considered Kafka's breakthrough work. It deals with the troubled relationship of a son and his dominant father, facing a new situation after the son's engagement.[186][187] Kafka later described writing it as "a complete opening of body and soul",[188] a story that "evolved as a true birth, covered with filth and slime".[189] The story was first published in Leipzig in 1912 and dedicated "to Miss Felice Bauer", and in subsequent editions "for F."[97]
In 1912, Kafka wroteDie Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, orThe Transformation),[190] published in 1915 in Leipzig. The story begins with a travelling salesman waking to find himself transformed into anungeheures Ungeziefer, a monstrousvermin,Ungeziefer being a general term for unwanted and unclean pests, especially insects. Critics regard the work as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century.[191][192][193] The story "In der Strafkolonie" ("In the Penal Colony"), dealing with an elaboratetorture and execution device, was written in October 1914,[97] revised in 1918, and published in Leipzig during October 1919. The story "Ein Hungerkünstler" ("A Hunger Artist"), published in the periodicalDie neue Rundschau in 1924, describes a victimized protagonist who experiences a decline in the appreciation of his strange craft ofstarving himself for extended periods.[194] His last story, "Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse" ("Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"), also deals with the relationship between an artist and his audience.[195]
Kafka began his first novel in 1912;[196] its first chapter is the story "Der Heizer" ("The Stoker"). He called the work, which remained unfinished,Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared orThe Missing Person), but when Brod published it after Kafka's death he named itAmerika.[197] The inspiration for the novel was the time Kafka spent in the audience of Yiddish theatre the previous year, bringing him to a new awareness of his heritage, which led to the thought that an innate appreciation for one's heritage lives deep within each person.[198] More explicitly humorous and slightly more realistic than most of Kafka's works, the novel shares themotif of an oppressive and intangible system putting the protagonist repeatedly in bizarre situations.[199] It uses many details of experiences from his relatives who had emigrated to America[200] and is the only work for which Kafka considered an optimistic ending.[201]
In 1914 Kafka began the novelDer Process (The Trial),[184] the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. He did not complete the novel, although he finished the final chapter. According toNobel Prize-winning authorElias Canetti, Felice is central to the plot ofDer Process and Kafka said it was "her story".[202][203] Canetti titled his book on Kafka's letters to FeliceKafka's Other Trial, in recognition of the relationship between the letters and the novel.[203]Michiko Kakutani notes in a review forThe New York Times that Kafka's letters have the "earmarks of his fiction: the same nervous attention to minute particulars; the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power; the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation—combined, surprisingly enough, with moments of boyish ardour and delight."[203]
According to his diary, Kafka was already planning his novelDas Schloss (The Castle), by 11 June 1914; however, he did not begin writing it until 27 January 1922.[184] The protagonist is theLandvermesser (land surveyor) named K., who struggles for unknown reasons to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village. Kafka's intent was that the castle's authorities notify K. on his deathbed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was to be permitted to live and work there".[204] Dark and at times surreal, the novel is focused onalienation,bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unattainable goal. Hartmut M. Rastalsky noted in his thesis: "Like dreams, his texts combine precise 'realistic' detail with absurdity, careful observation and reasoning on the part of the protagonists with inexplicable obliviousness and carelessness."[205]
Kafka drew and sketched extensively. His interest in art grew from 1901 to 1906. He "practiced drawing, took drawing classes, attended art history lectures, and sought to establish a connection to Prague's artistic circles".[206] According to Max Brod, Kafka "was even more indifferent, or perhaps better, more hostile to his drawings than he was to his literary production".[206] As he did with his writings, Kafka asked in his testament for his drawings to be destroyed.[207] Brod preserved all of Kafka's drawings that Kafka gave him or that he could rescue from the wastebasket or otherwise, but "[a]nything that I didn't rescue was destroyed".[206] Until May 2021, only about 40 of his drawings were known.[208][209] In 2022,Yale University Press publishedFranz Kafka: The Drawings.[210] The book brought to light about 150 sketches by Kafka.[211]
Kafka's stories were initially published in literary periodicals. His first eight were printed in 1908 in the first issue of the bi-monthlyHyperion.[212]Franz Blei published two dialogues in 1909 which became part of "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" ("Description of a Struggle").[212] A fragment of the story "Die Aeroplane in Brescia" ("The Aeroplanes at Brescia"), written on a trip to Italy with Brod, appeared in the dailyBohemia on 28 September 1909.[212][213] On 27 March 1910, several stories that later became part of the bookBetrachtung were published in the Easter edition ofBohemia.[212][214] In Leipzig during 1913, Brod and publisherKurt Wolff included "Das Urteil. Eine Geschichte von Franz Kafka." ("The Judgment. A Story by Franz Kafka.") in their literary yearbook for the art poetryArkadia. In the same year, Wolff published "Der Heizer" ("The Stoker") in the Jüngste Tag series, where it enjoyed three printings.[215] The story "Vor dem Gesetz" ("Before the Law") was published in the 1915 New Year's edition of the independent Jewish weeklySelbstwehr; it was reprinted in 1919 as part of the story collectionEin Landarzt (A Country Doctor) and became part of the novelDer Process. Other stories were published in various publications, includingMartin Buber'sDer Jude, the paperPrager Tagblatt, and the periodicalsDie neue Rundschau,Genius, andPrager Presse.[212]
Kafka's first published book,Betrachtung (Contemplation, orMeditation), was a collection of 18stories written between 1904 and 1912. On a summer trip toWeimar, Brod initiated a meeting between Kafka and Kurt Wolff;[216] Wolff publishedBetrachtung in theRowohlt Verlag at the end of 1912 (with the year given as 1913).[217] Kafka dedicated it to Brod, "Für M.B.", and added in the personal copy given to his friend "So wie es hier schon gedruckt ist, für meinen liebsten Max—Franz K." ("As it is already printed here, for my dearest Max").[218]
Kafka's novellaDie Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) was first printed in the October 1915 issue ofDie Weißen Blätter, a monthly edition ofexpressionist literature, edited byRené Schickele.[217] Another story collection,Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), was published by Kurt Wolff in 1919,[217] dedicated to Kafka's father.[219] Kafka prepared a final collection of four stories for print,Ein Hungerkünstler(A Hunger Artist), which appeared in 1924 after his death, inVerlag Die Schmiede. On 20 April 1924, theBerliner Börsen-Courier published Kafka's essay onAdalbert Stifter.[220]
At the time of his death, Kafka's works were probably known only to a small circle of Czech and German writers.[221] Kafka left his work, both published and unpublished, to his friend andliterary executorMax Brod with explicit instructions that it should be destroyed on Kafka's death; Kafka wrote: "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."[222][223] Brod ignored this request and published the novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935. Brod defended his action by claiming that he had told Kafka, "I shall not carry out your wishes", and that "Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been absolutely determined that his instructions should stand".[224]
Brod took many of Kafka's papers, which remain unpublished, with him in suitcases to Palestine when he fled there in 1939.[225] Kafka's last lover,Dora Diamant (later, Dymant-Lask), also ignored his wishes, secretly keeping 20notebooks and 35letters. These were confiscated by theGestapo in 1933, but scholars continue to search for them.[226]
As Brod published the bulk of the writings in his possession,[227] Kafka's work began to attract wider attention and critical acclaim. Brod found it difficult to arrange Kafka's notebooks in chronological order. One problem was that Kafka often began writing in different parts of the book; sometimes in the middle, sometimes working backwards from the end.[228][229] Brod finished many of Kafka's incomplete works for publication. For example, Kafka leftDer Process with unnumbered and incomplete chapters andDas Schloss with incomplete sentences and ambiguous content;[229] Brod rearranged chapters, copy-edited the text, and changed the punctuation.Der Process appeared in 1925 inVerlag Die Schmiede. Kurt Wolff published two other novels,Das Schloss in 1926 andAmerika in 1927. In 1931, Brod edited a collection of prose and unpublished stories asThe Great Wall of China, including the titular short story"The Great Wall of China". The book appeared in theGustav Kiepenheuer Verlag. Brod's sets are usually called the "Definitive Editions".[230]
In 1961Malcolm Pasley acquired for theOxfordBodleian Library most of Kafka's original handwritten works.[231][232] The text forDer Process was later purchased through auction and is stored at the German Literary Archives inMarbach am Neckar, Germany.[232][233] Subsequently, Pasley headed a team (including Gerhard Neumann, Jost Schillemeit and Jürgen Born) which reconstructed the German novels;S. Fischer Verlag republished them.[234] Pasley was the editor forDas Schloss, published in 1982, andDer Process (The Trial), published in 1990. Jost Schillemeit was the editor ofDer Verschollene (Amerika) published in 1983. These are called the "Critical Editions" or the "Fischer Editions".[235]
In 2023, the first unexpurgated edition ofKafka's diaries was published in English,[236] "more than three decades after this complete text appeared in German. The sole previous English edition, with Brod's edits, was issued in the late 1940s".[237] The new edition revealed that Brod had expunged homoerotic references, and negative comments about Eastern European Jews.[238]
When Brod died in 1968, he left Kafka's unpublished papers, which are believed to number in the thousands, to his secretaryEsther Hoffe.[239] She released or sold some, but left most to her daughters, Eva and Ruth, who also refused to release the papers. A court battle began in 2008 between the sisters and theNational Library of Israel, which claimed these works became the property of the nation of Israel when Brod emigrated toBritish Palestine in 1939. Esther Hoffe sold the original manuscript ofDer Process for US$2 million in 1988 to the German Literary ArchiveMuseum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar.[240][241] A ruling by a Tel Aviv family court in 2010 held that the papers must be released and a few were, including a previously unknown story, but the legal battle continued.[242] The Hoffes claim the papers are their personal property, while the National Library of Israel argues they are "cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people".[242] The National Library also suggests that Brod bequeathed the papers to them in his will.[243] The Tel Aviv Family Court ruled in October 2012, six months after Ruth's death, that the papers were the property of the National Library. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the decision in December 2016.[244]
After his death,Rudolf Kayser wrote an article titled "Anmerkungen zu Franz Kafka" for theNeue Rundschau, and Manfred Sturmann wrote a biographical essay titled "Erinnerungen an Kafka" for theAllgemeine Zeitung.[176] In 1935, Brod wrote a biography. "Since this work was written in German, however, it was not available to the majority of English critics".[245]
From 1924 to 1927, Brod arranged for the publication of Kafka's three unfinished novels and otherwise promoted Kafka's works. During this period, many analytical essays were written about his work. In the late 1920s, 55 articles were written about Kafka's work, most of them reviews and references. Examples include Heinrich Jacob's "Kafka oder die Wahrhaftigkeit" forDer Feuerreiter in 1924 and Brod's "Infantilismus Kleist und Kafka" in 1927.[246]
At the same time, in Germany, in 1930 only four articles were written, and the following year saw eight articles. But in 1932, only one article was published, possibly because of the rise of theNational Socialist party, as there was a strong antisemitic bias at a time. InNazi Germany, between 1933 and 1937, only 11 articles about Kafka were published, mostly by Jews in periodical such asDer Morgen,Frankfurter Zeitung,Jüdische Rundschau, andHochland. From 1937 to 1939, no articles were written.[248]
Kafka's writings began to receive the highest possible critical acclaim when they were re-released amidst the imposition of theNuremberg Racial Hygiene Laws in 1935 as a complete set bySchocken, however distribution and broad awareness of these works was stymied by the totalitarian atmosphere of theNazi regime.[249] The final volumes of this set were released after Schocken was forced to relocate to Prague.[249] The works became more famous in German-speaking countries afterWorld War II, influencingGerman literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s. A critical edition of his complete works, including many elements that had been edited out byBrod in the earlier Schocken collection, was released byS. Fischer Verlag in the final decades of the 20th century.
In 1937,The Trial was translated to English. There were 12 reviews in the United States, but the book was reviewed 20 times in other languages, including in France and Brazil. The reviews were mixed, withThe New York Times reviewer stating that "it is beyond me" and other reviewers stating that Kafka was "one of the most extraordinary writers of our time".[250]
In the following year,Amerika was translated to English and generally well received by four English and two American reviewers. In the same year,Das Schloss was translated into French and received five reviews.[245]
In 1939, Kafka's work was reviewed in many countries, including in the periodicalsThe Southern Review,The Kenyon Review andExpressionism in German Life. In 1940,The Southern Review published a religious interpretation ofThe Trial. In 1941, eleven reviews and articles were published, including "a doctor's dissertation at theUniversity of Zürich" by Herbert Tauber, entitled "Franz Kafka, eine Deutung seiner Werke". Other countries whose writers showed interest in Kafka's work were Peru, Cuba, and Brazil.[251]
In the first years ofWorld War II, interest in Kafka's work diminished in the United States, with only two articles published. In 1943, four articles were published, with one that "criticized Kafka as a symbol of the social decadence which was responsible for the failure of theWeimar Republic". But in the following year, interest in his work increased again, with six articles published. As World War II drew to a close, interest in Kafka grew once again, with 16 articles appearing in various countries' periodicals, includingFocus One,Quarterly Review of Literature, andLes Cahiers du Sud, as well as in the bookFreudism and the Literary Mind. Many intellectuals grew interested on Kafka's work, with articles byParker Tyler inAccent,Albert Camus inHope and Absurdity, andJean Wahl inKierkegaard and Kafka tying his work toexistentialism. In 1946, Kafka's work was popular, with 21 articles on it written that year.[250]
The British-American poetW. H. Auden called Kafka "theDante of the twentieth century";[252] the novelistVladimir Nabokov placed him among the greatest writers of the 20th century.[253]Gabriel García Márquez noted the reading of Kafka'sThe Metamorphosis showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way".[146][254] A prominent theme of Kafka's work, first established in the short story "The Judgment",[255] is father–son conflict: the guilt induced in the son is resolved through suffering and atonement.[31][255] Other prominent themes and archetypes include alienation, physical and psychological brutality, characters on a terrifying quest, and mystical transformation.[256]
Kafka's style has been compared to that of Kleist as early as 1916, in a review of "Die Verwandlung" and "Der Heizer" by Oscar Walzel inBerliner Beiträge.[257] The nature of Kafka's prose allows for varied interpretations and critics have placed his writing into a variety of literary schools.[141]Marxists, for example, have sharply disagreed over how to interpret Kafka's works.[135][141] Some accused him of distorting reality whereas others claimed he was critiquing capitalism.[141] The hopelessness and absurdity common to his works are seen as emblematic ofexistentialism.[258] Some of Kafka's books are influenced by theexpressionist movement, though the majority of his literary output was associated with the experimentalmodernist genre. Kafka also touches on the theme of human conflict with bureaucracy. William Burrows claims that such work is centred on the concepts of struggle, pain, solitude, and the need for relationships.[259] Others, such asThomas Mann, see Kafka's work as allegorical: a quest, metaphysical in nature, for God.[260][261]
According toGilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari, the themes of alienation and persecution, although present in Kafka's work, have been overemphasised by critics. They argue that Kafka's work is more deliberate and subversive—and more joyful—than it may first appear. They point out that focusing on the futility of Kafka's characters' struggles reveals Kafka's humour; he is not necessarily commenting on his own problems but rather is pointing out how people tend to invent problems. In his work, Kafka often creates malevolent, absurd worlds.[262][263] Kafka read drafts of his works to his friends, typically concentrating on his humorous prose. The writerMilan Kundera suggests that Kafka'ssurreal humour may have been an inversion of Dostoevsky's presentation of characters who are punished for a crime. In Kafka'sThe Trial, a character is punished even though he has committed no crime. Kundera believes that Kafka's inspirations for his characteristic situations came both from growing up in a patriarchal family and from living in a totalitarian state.[264]
Attempts have been made to identify the influence of Kafka's legal background and the role of law in his fiction.[265][266] Many interpretations identify the importance of the law in his work,[267] in which the legal system is often oppressive.[268] The law in Kafka's works, rather than representing any particular legal or political entity, is usually interpreted to represent a collection of anonymous, incomprehensible forces. These are hidden from the individual but control the lives of the people, who are innocent victims of systems beyond their control.[267] Critics who support thisabsurdist interpretation cite instances where Kafka describes himself in conflict with an absurd universe, such as the following entry from his diary:
Enclosed in my own four walls, I found myself as an immigrant imprisoned in a foreign country;... I saw my family as strange aliens whose foreign customs, rites, and very language defied comprehension;... though I did not want it, they forced me to participate in their bizarre rituals;... I could not resist.[269]
However, James Hawes argues many of Kafka's descriptions of the legal proceedings inThe Trial—metaphysical, absurd, bewildering and nightmarish as they might appear—are based on accurate and informed descriptions of German and Austrian criminal proceedings of the time, which wereinquisitorial rather thanadversarial.[270] Although he worked in insurance, as a trained lawyer Kafka was "keenly aware of the legal debates of his day".[266][271] In a 2009 publication that uses Kafka's office writings as its point of departure,[272] Pothik Ghosh states that with Kafka, law "has no meaning outside its fact of being a pure force of domination and determination".[273]
Kafka's work often refers to animals — "zoopoetics," inJacques Derrida's term. Joachim Seyppel has noted that his stories contain "references to animals, human-animal comparisons, allusions to animal life, fables, and animal motifs; there are important works in which the human person has been transformed into an animal, or vice versa".[274] In Kafka's work animals occupy leading roles, often as narrators and central characters.[275] Themes of his stories range fromanimal cruelty toentomophobia toanimal training. Animals are often shown as "others" that suffer from human "animalesque" actions, with Kafka's ideas thus converging withecocentrist andpostcolonialist thoughts.[276]
The first instance of Kafka being translated into English was in 1925, when William A. Drake published "A Report for an Academy" in theNew York Herald Tribune.[277] Eugene Jolas translated Kafka's "The Judgment" for the modernist journaltransition in 1928.[278] In 1930,Edwin andWilla Muir translated the first German edition ofDas Schloss. This was published asThe Castle bySecker & Warburg in England andAlfred A. Knopf in the United States.[279] In the 1930s,Alberto Spaini translatedThe Process to Italian and Alexandre Vialatte translated it to French.[245] A 1941 edition, including a homage by Thomas Mann, spurred a surge in Kafka's popularity in the United States during the late 1940s.[280] The Muirs translated all shorter works that Kafka had seen fit to print; they were published bySchocken Books in 1948 asThe Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces,[281] including additionallyThe First Long Train Journey, written by Kafka and Brod, Kafka's "A Novel about Youth", a review of Felix Sternheim'sDie Geschichte des jungen Oswald, his essay on Kleist's "Anecdotes", his review of the literary magazineHyperion, and an epilogue by Brod.
Later editions, notably those of 1954 (Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings), included text, translated byEithne Wilkins andErnst Kaiser,[282] that had been deleted by earlier publishers.[234] Known as "Definitive Editions", they include translations ofThe Trial, Definitive,The Castle, Definitive, and other writings. These translations are generally accepted to have a number of biases and are considered to be dated in interpretation.[283] Published in 1961 by Schocken Books,Parables and Paradoxes presented in a bilingual edition byNahum N. Glatzer selected writings,[284] drawn from notebooks, diaries, letters, short fictional works and the novelDer Process.
Kafka often made extensive use of a characteristic particular to German, which permits long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences sometimes deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop, finalizing the meaning and focus of the sentence. This is due to the construction ofsubordinate clauses in German, which require that the verb be at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are difficult to duplicate in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same (or an at least equivalent) effect as the original text.[287] German's more flexible word order andsyntactical differences provide for multiple ways in which the same German writing can be translated into English.[288] An example is the first sentence of Kafka'sThe Metamorphosis, which is crucial to the setting and understanding of the entire story:[289]
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
—original
Translation:
As Gregor Samsa one morning from restless dreams awoke, found he himself in his bed into a monstrous vermin transformed.
The sentence above also exemplifies an instance of another difficult problem facing translators: dealing with the author's intentional use of ambiguousidioms and words that have several meanings, which results in phrasing that is difficult to translate precisely.[291][292] English translators often render the wordUngeziefer as 'insect'; in Middle German, however,Ungeziefer literally means 'an animal unclean for sacrifice';[293] in today's German, it means 'vermin'. It is sometimes used colloquially to mean 'bug'—a very general term, unlike the scientific 'insect'. Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor, the protagonist of the story, as any specific thing but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation.[191][192] Another example of this can be found in the final sentence of "Das Urteil" ("The Judgement"), with Kafka's use of the German nounVerkehr. Literally,Verkehr means 'intercourse' and, as in English, can have either a sexual or a non-sexual meaning. The word is additionally used to mean 'transport' or 'traffic'; therefore the sentence can also be translated as: "At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge."[294] The double meaning ofVerkehr is given added weight by Kafka's confession to Brod that when he wrote that final line he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation".[189][295]
In 1999 a committee of 99 authors, scholars, and literary critics rankedDer Process andDas Schloss the second and ninthmost significant German-language novels of the 20th century.[307]Harold Bloom said "when he is most himself, Kafka gives us a continuous inventiveness and originality that rivalsDante and truly challengesProust andJoyce as that of the dominant Western author of our century".[308] Sandbank argues that despite Kafka's pervasiveness, his enigmatic style has yet to be emulated.[300] Neil Christian Pages, a professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature atBinghamton University who specialises in Kafka's works, says Kafka's influence transcends literature and literary scholarship; it impacts visual arts, music, and popular culture.[309] Harry Steinhauer, a professor of German and Jewish literature, says that Kafka "has made a more powerful impact on literate society than any other writer of the twentieth century".[6] Brod said that the 20th century will one day be known as the "century of Kafka".[6]
Michel-André Bossy writes that Kafka created a rigidly inflexible and sterile bureaucratic universe. Kafka wrote in an aloof manner full of legal and scientific terms. Yet his serious universe also had insightful humour, all highlighting the "irrationality at the roots of a supposedly rational world".[256] His characters are trapped, confused, full of guilt, frustrated, and lacking understanding of their surreal world. Much post-Kafka fiction, especially science fiction, follows the themes and precepts of Kafka's universe. This can be seen in the works of authors such asGeorge Orwell andRay Bradbury.[256]
The following are examples of works across a range of dramatic, literary, and musical genres that demonstrate the extent of Kafka's cultural influence:
by Nobel Prize winnerIsaac Bashevis Singer, about a Yiddish actor called Jacques Kohn who said he knew Franz Kafka; in this story, according to Jacques Kohn, Kafka believed in theGolem, a legendary creature fromJewish folklore
byAlan Bennett, in which the ghosts of Kafka, his father Hermann and Brod arrive at the home of an English insurance clerk (and Kafka aficionado) and his wife
starsJeremy Irons as theeponymous author; written byLem Dobbs and directed bySteven Soderbergh, the movie mixes his life and fiction providing a semi-biographical presentation of Kafka's life and works; Kafka investigates the disappearance of one of his colleagues, taking Kafka through many of the writer's own works, most notablyThe Castle andThe Trial
HAZE Netlabel released musical compilationSound Interpretations – Dedication To Franz Kafka. In this release musicians rethink the literary heritage of Kafka
byNicole Krauss; partly based on the conceit that Kafka staged his death and funeral in Austria; he moved to Palestine (later Israel), where he lived out his life under an assumed name, working as a gardener, dying in 1958
The term "Kafkaesque" is used to describe concepts and situations reminiscent of Kafka's work, particularlyDer Prozess (The Trial) andDie Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis).[341] Examples include instances in which bureaucracies overpower people, often in a surreal, nightmarish milieu that evokes feelings of senselessness, disorientation, and helplessness. Characters in a Kafkaesque setting often lack a clear course of action to escape alabyrinthine situation. Kafkaesque elements often appear inexistential works, but the term has transcended the literary realm to apply to real-life occurrences and situations that are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical.[6][312][342][343]
However, with common usage, the term has become so ubiquitous that Kafka scholars note it is often misused.[348] More accurately then, according to authorBen Marcus, paraphrased in "What it Means to be Kafkaesque" by Joe Fassler inThe Atlantic, "Kafka's quintessential qualities are affecting use of language, a setting that straddles fantasy and reality, and a sense of striving even in the face of bleakness—hopelessly and full of hope."[349]
TheFranz Kafka Museum in Prague is dedicated to Kafka and his work. A major component of the museum is an exhibit,The City of K. Franz Kafka and Prague, which was first shown in Barcelona in 1999, moved to theJewish Museum in New York City, and finally established in Prague inMalá Strana (Lesser Town), along theMoldau, in 2005. The museum aims with this exhibit to immerse the visitor into the world in which Kafka lived and about which he wrote.[352]
TheFranz Kafka Prize, established in 2001, is an annual literary award of theFranz Kafka Society and the City of Prague. It recognizes the merits of literature as "humanistic character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity, and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times".[353] The selection committee and recipients come from all over the world, but are limited to living authors who have had at least one work published in Czech.[353] The recipient receives $10,000, a diploma, and a bronze statuette at a presentation inPrague's Old Town Hall, on the Czech State Holiday in late October.[353]
^Records of the university list June as Kafka's graduation month, as do some secondary sources (Murray), while Brod lists July, possibly confusing the date with that of an exam three years earlier, on 18 July 1903.[56][57][58][59][60][61]
^Herz, Julius M. (1978)."Franz Kafka and Austria: National Background and Ethnic Identity".Modern Austrian Literature.11 (3/4):301–318.JSTOR24645937. Retrieved22 January 2025.Kafka, after all, was not just a Prague Jew living in Bohemia. He was also, for more than thirty-five years, an Austrian citizen caught in the middle of many cross-currents.... We might wonder whether or to what extent he considered himself an Austrian, for this question must have occurred to him more than once. For the Jews living in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy life was seriously affected by the highly heterogeneous population. Quotation on p. 301.
^Gray, Jefferson M.,review inThe Federal Lawyer, October 2009, ofFranz Kafka: The Office Writings. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009.
^abFoster-Wallace, David (1998)."Laughing with Kafka"(PDF).Harper's Magazine. Vol. 297, no. 1778. pp. 23–27.
^Benjamin, Walter (1938). "Some Reflections on Kafka".Illuminations. New York: Schocken (published 1968). pp. 141–145.Kafka's work is an ellipse with foci that are far apart and are determined, on the one hand, by mystical experience (in particular, the experience of tradition) and, on the other, by the experience of the modern big-city dweller. In speaking of the experience of the big-city dweller, I have a variety of things in mind. On the one hand, I think of the modern citizen who knows that he is at the mercy of a vast machinery of officialdom whose functioning is directed by authorities that remain nebulous to the executive organs, let alone to the people they deal with.
^Adorno, Theodor W. (1983). "Notes on Kafka".Prisms. Internet Archive. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.ISBN978-0-262-51025-7.
^Rosenbaum, Ron (1998). "Ch. 17: George Steiner: Singling out the Jewish 'Invention of Conscience'".Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (1st ed.). New York: Random House.ISBN9780679431510.
^Kafka, Franz (1992). "Introduction by George Steiner".The Trial. New York, NY: Knopf.ISBN978-0-679-40994-6.
^Benjamin wrote the tenth anniversary text, Arendt the twentieth. Arendt is responding to and updating many of the issues raised by Benjamin without attribution (Benjamin's article had been deformed by abbreviation in the Judischer Rundschau and Benjamin himself was a complete obscurity at the time with many of his important writings unpublished and unknown to readers of thePartisan Review. Over the following 25 years, Arendt,Gershom Scholem, andTheodor W. Adorno would take steps that in the 1960s brought Benjamin acknowledgement as an important thinker by writers such asSusan Sontag,John Berger, andMarshall McLuhan. He became recognized as an authority on Kafka after the English-language publication of hisIlluminations in 1968, with its essays on Kafka: "On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death" and "Some Reflections on Kafka".
^Franz Kafka: The Drawings, edited by Andreas Kilcher, in collaboration with Pavel Schmidt ; with essays by Judith Butler and Andreas Kilcher; translations from the German by Kurt Beals.Review
^abKafka, Franz (2012). "Translator's Introduction by Breon Mitchell".The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text. The Schocken Kafka Library. Breon Mitchell. Westminster: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.ISBN978-0-8052-0999-0.
^Aldiss, Brian W. (1991).Better Morphosis, inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1991. Subsequently reprinted in the Aldiss collectionsBodily Functions andA Tupolev Too Far and Other Stories.
Rothkirchen, Livia (2005).The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.ISBN978-0-8032-3952-4.
Sokel, Walter H. (2001).The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.ISBN978-0-8143-2608-4.
Spector, Scott (2000).Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Siècle. Berkeley: University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-23692-9.
Pérez-Álvarez, Marino (2003)."The Schizoid Personality of Our Time"(PDF).International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy.3 (2). Almería, Spain.Archived(PDF) from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved9 February 2020.
Rhine, Marjorie E. (Winter 1989). "Untangling Kafka's Knotty Texts: The Translator's Prerogative?".Monatshefte.81 (4). Madison, Wisconsin:447–458.JSTOR30166262.
Strelka, Joseph P. (Winter 1984). "Kafkaesque Elements in Kafka's Novels and in Contemporary Narrative Prose".Comparative Literature Studies.21 (4). Pennsylvania State College:434–444.JSTOR40246504.
Apel, Friedman (28 August 2012). "Der Weg in die Ewigkeit führt abwärts / Roland Reuß kramt in Kafkas Zürauer Zetteln".Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German).
Seubert, Harald."Bauer, Felice" (in German). Kulturportal-west-ost.eu.Archived from the original on 15 July 2014. Retrieved2 August 2012.Knochiges leeres Gesicht, das seine Leere offen trug. Freier Hals. Überworfene Bluse ... Fast zerbrochene Nase. Blondes, etwas steifes, reizloses Haar, starkes Kinn.
B.S. (4 April 1930)."Allegory".The Guardian (review ofThe Castle translated Willa and Edwin Muir). London.Archived from the original on 4 July 2019. Retrieved22 August 2012.
"Franz Kafka" (in Czech). The Research Library of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. 2011.Archived from the original on 19 September 2017. Retrieved3 October 2012.
Anderson, Mark, ed. (1989).Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Siècle. New York:Schocken Books.
Baruffi, Alessandro (2016).The Tales of Franz Kafka: English Translation with Original Text in German. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: LiteraryJoint Press.ISBN978-1-329-82109-5.
Coots, Steve (2002).Franz Kafka (Beginner's Guide). London: Hodder & Stoughton.ISBN978-0-340-84648-3.
Corngold, Stanley; Wagner, Benno (2011).Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.ISBN978-0-8101-2769-2.
Major, Michael (2011).Kafka — For Our Time: Journeys of Discovery. San Diego, California: Harcourt Publishing.ISBN978-0-9567982-1-3.
Suchoff, David (2012).Kafka's Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN978-0-8122-4371-0.
Thiher, Allen (1990).Franz Kafka: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction. Vol. 12. Boston: Twayne Publishers.ISBN0805783237.
Thiher, Allen (2018).Understanding Franz Kafka. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.ISBN9781611178289.
Robertson, Ritchie (2004).Kafka: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press; illustrated edition titledKafka: A Brief Insight (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2010).
Robertson, Ritchie, ed. (2024).Kafka: Making of an Icon. Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library Publishing.
Wagenbach, Klaus (1984).Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life. New York: Pantheon Books.
Watroba, Karoina (2024).Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka. New York: Pegasus Books.
Books on Kafka and Prague
Eisner, Pavel (1950).Franz Kafka and Prague. New York: Golden Griffin Books.
Frynta, Emanuel (1960).Kafka and Prague. London: Batchworth Press Limited.
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