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Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague where he
lived a life of near-obscurity. Belonging to a
middle-class family of German-Jewish extraction,
he grew up in the shadow of his authoritarian
father, in relation to whom Kafka not just
shaped his own self-worth but also the
protagonists of most of his novels – invariably
trapped in the claws of an abstract authority.
Following his early academic success, he went on
receive a law degree in 1906. A secure job
allowed him to make writing the essence of his
life. He worked as an insurance clerk until
tuberculosis compelled him to retire in 1922. He
spent a great deal of his time in health resorts
and sanatoriums till his death in 1924.
Practically unpublished and unknown during his
lifetime, Kafka wrote in German, using the same
imagery of nebulous existence in an indifferent
world that symbolises modern man's predicament.
A fraction of his shorter fiction published
during his lifetime included Meditation (1913),
a collection of short prose pieces; The Judgment
(1913), a long short story; and The
Metamorphosis (1915). While the last two deal
with the outsider, In the Penal Colony (1919) is
a parable of a torture machine and its operators
and victims. The Country Doctor (1919) was
another collection of short prose. He left
unfinished A Hunger Artist (1924), four stories
centring on the artist's inability either to
negate or come to terms with life in the human
community.
The helplessness of the flesh, even when the
spirit rebelled against a hostile environment,
was so strongly pervasive through his writings
that it came to be identified as a syndrome – an
existential dilemma loosely called "Kafkaesque"
for its impotent wrath.
Max Brod
Czech-born, German-language novelist and
essayist Max Brod is primarily known as one of
Kafka's closest friends and associates. Brod
later became the editor of his major works that
were published after Kafka's death. The diaries,
which he had instructed Brod to burn upon his
death, were organised and edited by Brod.
The Diaries of Franz Kafka
One of the most widely read authors of the last
century, Franz Kafka is also one of the most
elusive. His private journals – starting from
1910, to a year before his death – make an
earnest effort to peel the mask off the
enigmatic Kafka. Illuminated by a heightened
self-awareness, Kafka's diaries make for an
unsparing keyhole into a life that was lived
with as much intensity as it was guarded with
fierce introversion. The essence of Kafka is
revealed through notes on life in Prague,
accounts of his dreams, his relationship with a
domineering father, ambiguous feelings for his
fiancée he never married, his struggles and
triumphs as a writer. Revered as one of Kafka's
major literary works, the complete diaries of
Franz Kafka, the man and the artist, are
available in one volume. |
