Franz Kafka German writer, Austrian official, Jewish sufferer and citizen of Czechoslovakia Date of Birth: 03.07.1883 Country: Austria

Franz Kafka: A Biography

Franz Kafka, a German writer, Austrian bureaucrat, Jewish sufferer, and citizen of Czechoslovakia, finally achieved what he had been striving for his whole life on June 3, 1924. He died. Shortly before his death, Kafka uttered words that could only come from his mouth: "Doctor, give me death, otherwise you are a murderer." This was a joke that intellectuals in the Soviet era used to make, paraphrasing the beginning of a famous song about aviators. Kafka entered our lives as a writer who created a profound image of a bureaucratic machine governing society. Klaus, the son of Thomas Mann, tried on Kafka's suit for Nazi Germany. For a while, we believed that this "attire" was particularly suitable for countries of victorious socialism. However, as this system transformed into a market economy, it became clear that the Kafkaesque world is all-encompassing and traces the connections that largely define the parameters of the entire 20th century. The image of this world encompasses the story of the construction of the Great Wall of China and the memories of a Russian man about the road to Kalda, both constructed by Kafka using materials from two Eastern despotisms. But above all, it is the novel "The Castle," which Kafka wrote but abandoned a couple of years before his death. The novel grew up not from the Soviet reality, but from the bureaucratic world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included the Czech lands until 1918. "The Castle" is dry, drawn-out, and difficult to digest, just like the bureaucratic relationships themselves. Kafka's earlier novel, "The Trial," is constructed differently - dynamic, disturbing, alive. "The Trial" is about a man in a new world, while "The Castle" is about the world itself, where man is just a speck of dust. Kafka saw the unexpected character of the relationships between people, the mechanism of their motivation. He saw it with his own unique vision because even from his own bureaucratic experience, it was impossible to draw such deep conclusions. The world simply hadn't provided enough material for it by that time. Just as "The Trial" was being written, Walter Rathenau began building the military-industrial complex with its new system of relationships in Germany. Just as "The Castle" was being written, Rathenau was killed. A new world was just being built, but Kafka had already seen it. Rathenau belonged to a rare breed of pragmatists, while the "progressive thinkers" who were discussing class or racial struggle at the time hardly found a place for bureaucracy in their intellectual constructions. Kafka, on the other hand, showed it as a form of the entire life of society, permeating with new relationships the entire vertical of power and obedience, from the castle to the village. The reasons behind Kafka's discovery can be explained by the fact that he was a genius. Nobody usually disputes this. But it seems that this explanation is not enough. It would be more accurate to say that Kafka performed a feat. In the true sense of the word, without any exaggeration. It was a reverse meditation, an ascent not to eternal bliss, but to eternal torment. Physically experiencing the horror of the world, he understood it. "I just want to write furiously at night - that's what I want. And die from it or go mad..." (from a letter to Felice). He spent years bringing himself to a state where the world that is visible to an ordinary person closed to him, and something completely different opened up. He killed himself, but before his death, he saw something that, perhaps, justified the sacrifice. "I am a completely grotesque bird. I am Kavka, a jackdaw (in Czech - D.T.)... my wings have withered. And now there is neither height nor distance for me. Confused, I jump among people... I am gray, like ashes. A jackdaw passionately desiring to hide among stones." This is how Kafka described himself in a conversation with a young writer. However, it was more of a joke. Not because he actually saw the world in bright colors. On the contrary, everything was much worse. He did not feel like a bird, but rather like a trembling insect, frightened rodent, or even an unclean pig, which is considered impure for any Jew. From his early diary: "Sometimes I heard myself from the outside, as if a kitten is purring." From his later letters: "I, a forest beast, lay somewhere in a filthy den." And here is a completely different image. Having once made a gruesome sketch on a page in his diary, Kafka immediately wrote: "Continue, pigs, with your dance. What do I care about it?" And below: "But this is truer than everything I wrote in the past year." His narratives were sometimes conducted from the perspective of animals. If there is a lot of external, rationality in "Investigations of a Dog" (although how can one not compare it with the diary entry: "I could have taken refuge in a dog's kennel, only coming out when they brought food"), then in the story of the mouse singer Josephine, the real and the fictional world begin to intersect in an incredible way. As Kafka, dying from tuberculosis laryngitis, lost his voice, he began to squeak like a mouse himself. But it becomes truly terrifying when in his most famous story, "The Metamorphosis," Kafka portrays a character who is very similar to himself, who turns into a repulsive insect one "beautiful" morning. Knowing that Kafka did not invent his best characters but simply took them from the world that only his vision could penetrate, it is not difficult to imagine Kafka's feelings when describing his own hard-shell back, his own brown, convex, dappled abdomen divided by arch-shaped scales, and his own numerous pitifully thin legs with some sticky substance on their pads. The character in "The Metamorphosis" dies, tormented by his own family. The ending is impressive but excessively sensational, excessively involved in a showdown with his own family. In the story "The Burrow," written towards the end of his life, everything is simpler and more natural. His character, whether a human or a little beast, buries himself in the ground all his life, distancing himself from the frightening and cruel surrounding world. To hide, to disappear, to cover himself with a layer of soil like a protective spacesuit - that was the goal of his life from birth. But even in the burrow, there is no salvation. He hears the roar of a monster breaking through the thick layer of earth towards him, he feels his own skin thinning, making him pitiful and defenseless. "The Burrow" is endless horror, horror born solely from his own perception of the world and not from external circumstances. Only death can save him from it: "Doctor, give me death, otherwise..." For many years, Kafka purposefully distanced himself from the world of people. The animal world, born from his pen, is merely an external, most simplified representation of what he felt. Where he actually resided when he struggled with insomnia in his Prague apartment or wore out his pants in the office, perhaps no one will ever understand. To some extent, Kafka's personal world emerges from his diaries, which he began keeping at the age of 27. This world is a continuous nightmare. The author of the diaries is in constant hostile surroundings and, to his credit, responds to the world in the same way. All the troubles began with a poor upbringing. His father and mother, relatives, teachers, the cook who used to take young Franz to school, dozens of other people, close and not so close, distorted the child's personality and spoiled his good nature. As an adult, Kafka was unhappy. He was unhappy because of his mundane job. After graduating from the University of Prague, becoming a lawyer, Kafka had to become an insurance bureaucrat to earn a living. The job distracted him from his writing, taking away the best daytime hours - the hours when masterpieces could be born. He was unhappy because of his fragile health. Despite being 1.82 meters tall, he weighed only 55 kg. His body poorly digested food, and his stomach was constantly in pain. Insomnia gradually intensified, shaking his already weak nervous system. One of Kafka's acquaintances once gave a vivid verbal portrait of him, seeing him lying at the bottom of a boat, weakened from rowing: "Like before a terrible trial - the coffins have already opened, but the dead have not yet risen." He was unhappy in his personal life. He fell in love several times but never managed to unite with any of his chosen ones. He lived as a bachelor his whole life and dreamed of a terrible public woman in his dreams, whose body was covered with large ink-red circles with fading edges and scattered red splashes, sticking to the fingers of the man caressing her. He hated and feared even his own body. "How strange I find, for example, the muscles of my hand," Kafka wrote in his diary. Since childhood, he hunched and twisted his long, awkward body because of uncomfortable clothing. He was afraid of food because of his unhealthy stomach, and when it was calm, this crazy eater was ready to plunge into the other extreme, imagining how he pushes long rib cartilages into his mouth without biting them, and then pulls them out from below, breaking his stomach and intestines. He was alone and detached from society because he could talk about nothing but literature ("I have no inclinations for literature, I am simply composed of literature"), and this topic was deeply indifferent to both his family and colleagues. Finally, in addition to all the complex reasons that alienated Kafka from the world, there was anti-Semitism, making the life of his Jewish family dangerous and unpredictable. It is not surprising that the theme of suicide constantly appears in Kafka's diary: "to run to the window and, weakened by the tension of his strength, step through the broken frames and glass, jumping over the window ledge". Kafka lived as best he could, and it was not in his power to make a choice. To be precise, he did not have the ability to make a choice. If we are to believe a peculiar entry in his diary, "Why don't the Chukchi people leave their terrible land?... They cannot; everything that is possible is happening; only what is happening is possible". Kafka lived as he could, and his diaries seem to depict a truly terrifying figure. But was this really Kafka? I dare to suggest that we have a portrait of the inner world of a certain Josef K., a literary double of the writer, who appears in "The Trial" and "The Castle". As for the real Franz Kafka living in Prague, he was born into a decent and reasonably well-off Jewish family. There are no traces of particularly difficult childhood, no signs of deprivation or repression from parents that biographers can discover. In any case, for an era in which a child was not yet recognized as a person (see the article about Maria Montessori in "Delo," October 14, 2002), Franz's childhood can be considered prosperous. By the way, he did not have any dangerous congenital diseases. Sometimes he even played sports. He had his first sexual experience at the age of 20 - not too late for those times. The saleswoman from a ready-made clothing store was quite attractive, and "the howling flesh found peace." Moreover, in the future, the shy but charming young man was not an outcast in female society. He was lucky with friends. In Prague, a small literary circle formed, where young people could find grateful listeners in each other. Among them was Max Brod, a man who admired Kafka, considered him a genius, constantly stimulated him in his creative work, and helped him to be published. Any writer can only dream of such a friend. Kafka's half-time job was not dusty, took a minimum of time and effort. His intelligent boss did not bother him, and for many months even paid him sick leave, even when Kafka himself was ready to retire early. To all this, it can be added that it is difficult to speak seriously about anti-Semitism in Prague against the background of what was happening in Russia, Romania, Vienna under Mayor Lueger, and even in France during the Dreyfus affair. Jews had difficulties finding employment, but connections and money easily allowed them to overcome them. So, a completely different world is evident. And the most interesting thing is that Kafka himself, in his diaries, somehow acknowledges his father's inherent kindness (by the way, Franz voluntarily lived in his parents' family as an adult), the friendliness of his boss, and the value of his relationship with Max. But these are just fleeting moments. On the other hand, suffering is emphasized. So did the diary - the most intimate document for any person - lie? To some extent, Kafka himself gives reason to think that in his later entries, he realizes that he exaggerated in his youth. Yet, I dare to suggest that there were two Kafkas, both true. One is the real Prague resident (this image is reflected in Brod's first biography of Kafka). The other is an equally real inhabitant of the world of monsters, born from his consciousness and reflected in his work (even Brod saw this world only after reading Kafka's diaries, which happened after the publication of the biography). These two worlds fought each other, and the decisive factor that determined Kafka's life, work, and early death was that he gave free rein to the world of monsters that gradually swallowed its master. Critics and ideologists have repeatedly tried to retrospectively attribute an active life position to Kafka. In Brod's interpretation, the unhappy sufferer who absorbed the culture of his people for centuries can be seen as a humanist, a lover of life, and a deeply believing Jew. Another author interprets a random episode from Kafka's life as an interest in anarchism. Finally, in the Soviet Union, to publish a writer alien to socialism, critics emphasized his sympathy for the working class, which he sought to protect from injuries and disability. All these assessments seem strained. Only the question of Judaism can be discussed, especially since it is impossible to ignore Brod's opinion. Kafka lived in a Jewish environment, was interested in the culture and history of Jews, and the problem of emigration to Palestine. However, his soul, which held on so poorly in his body, longed not for the top of Zion but for the world of German, Scandinavian, and Russian intellectualism. His true environment was not the neighboring Jews or Brod, who was shocked by the discovery of Kafka's diaries, revealing a corner of the soul that remained closed to contemporaries. His true environment was the literature of thought and suffering - Goethe, Thomas Mann, Hesse, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Strindberg, and Hamsun. For a long time, Kafka was convinced (most likely correctly) that he could only write by cornering himself and killing everything human in himself. And so he really cornered and killed, building instead of a living person, as he put it, "a tombstone monument to himself." He read Freud but did not appreciate him. To quote Theodor Adorno's apt observation, "instead of healing neuroses, he seeks in them themselves the healing power of knowledge." However, to what extent is it fair to say that Kafka made a conscious decision to leave? In the diary, there is a remarkable entry that at first seems to be about nothing: "Why don't the Chukchi people leave their terrible land?... They cannot; everything that is possible is happening; only what is happening is possible." Kafka lived as best he could, and it was not in his power to make a choice. If we are to be precise, he did not have the ability to make a choice.