Page 29 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

Museums in Eastern Europe

Franz Kafka was engaged four times in his life, but he ingly commits suicide at the behest of his aged father. In
never married. The main relationships of his romantic life "The Metamorphosis"the son wakes up to find himself
were with Felice, Julie, Milena, and Dora. Milena Jesenska transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect; he
(1896-1944) was one of the most remarkable Czech wom- slowly dies, not only because of his family’s shame and its
en of this century. Widely known for her romance with neglect of him but because of his own guilty despair.
Franz Kafka and as the addressee of his “Letters to Mile-
na”. She was a prominent journalist and translator. Many of the tales are even more unfathomable. In "the
Penal Colony"presents an officer who demonstrates his
Kafka‘s works devotion to duty by submitting himself to the appalling
(and clinically described) mutilations of his own instru-
1920 wrote Kafka the “Letters to Milena Jesenska"as a ment of torture." 8
kaleidoscope of desperation, self-abasement and
self-deprecation but, by writing it he became blissfull. “Amerika"(1912-1914), is the first novel written by Franz
The “Letters"are written in Czech, while all other works Kafka, but remained incomplete until Kafka’s death and
were written in German. was only published in 1927 after Kafka’s death by Max
Brod in German. Kafka originally named his work “The
The main topic of Kafka‘s writings is anxiety in all its Man Who Disappeared"(“Der Verschollene”), but after his
forms: Fear, horror, depression, resignation, pure terror death, Max Brod who assembled and published the man-
and impalpable fright. In the “Letters to Milena“, fear uscript changed the title into “Amerika”. In fact, Kafka
mixes with absurdity. In letters, wrote Kafka, you will never visited the Americas, he entered the continent
awake demons and these ghosts will devour what you just virtually, through a portal of secondary sources:
think before the letter reaches its recipient. These de- American travel books, attended lectures, collected
mons were for Kafka the demons of misunderstandings. printed materials, and talks with returning emigrants. 9
The novel is about the struggles of a young immigrant,
Kafka did not publish much in his lifetime, 1909 two parts Karl Rossmann, as he journeys through unknown territo-
of “Beschreibung eines Kampfes“, 1913 “Betrachtung“, ry in order to follow his American dream. Karl Rossman
1915 “Metamorphosis“, 1919 “In the Penal Colony“, and a manages to go from riches to rags ‒ from the Old World
collection with the main story “Ein Landarzt"1919. In the to the New. He starts off with a wealthy and powerful
year of his death, Kafka prepared the collection „Ein Hun- uncle who showers him with luxury, but by the end of
gerkünstler"for publishing but did not realize it. the narrative he lives in destitution, is searching for
work, and is mixing with criminals and a prostitute. It is
Since the 1930s, Kafka’s work was being read by intellec- worth noting that Karl is not exactly an innocent abroad.
tuals all over the world. Eventually Kafka became estab- He has been expelled from his family home following a
lished also in Britain and America. But facts about Kaf- sexual dalliance with an older servant woman which re-
ka’s life were not known until much later, even though sulted in a child. So although he is not yet an adult, Karl
he lived during the entirely transparent final three dec- is in fact a father.
ades of first years of the Czechoslovak Republic. This
was due not only to the fact that his life was inconspicu- “The Castle"was unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not
ous, but also because of the political events during the published during his liefetime. “The Castle"focuses on a
Nazi period. These years, about all, concerned his writ- character called K. Kafka tells a haunting tale of K.’s
ing: at the beginning of the 1930s, during a search of the relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable au-
Berlin flat of Dora Diamant (the companion of Kafka’s thority in order to gain access to the Castle. In many
last years), the Gestapo confiscated a number of manu- other ways the Castle is ambiguous. When K. first arrives
scripts, which must now be considered lost. in the village, the castle is invisible, hidden in darkness,
without even a glimmer of light showing, and K. gazes up
The first collected edition of Kafka’s works begun in Ger- at “what seemed to be a void”. Kafka presents the read-
many in 1933. It was obstructed and then prohibited. Far er with a series of frustrations; K. is trying again and
worse events followed the occupation of Czechoslovakia again to succeed, but is never moving beyond the Cas-
by the Nazis: Kafka’s three sisters were deported to a tle’s snowy environs. In “The Castle“, K. becomes seri-
concentration camp and murdered ‒ a fate shared by ously and deeply involved with the lives of the people in
many of his relatives and friends. the village. “The Castle"raises the question of meaning
within a social context, where it rightfully belongs. Full
Mauro Nervi wrote: “Many of Kafka’s fables contain an in- with beauty and sadness, “The Castle"has vividly pre-
scrutable, baffling mixture of the normal and the fantastic, sented material and social setting but could be closer
though occasionally the strangeness may be understood as interpretated as an emotional expression and not as crit-
the outcome of a literary or verbal device, as when the icism of bureacracy. William Burrows wrote about “The
delusions of a pathological state are given the status of Castle“: “This book will make you sad for the things
reality, or the metaphor of a common figure of speech is missing in your life. The reader is forced into confronta-
taken literally. Thus, in "The Judgment", a son unquestion- tion with basic human needs. We bear witness to K.’s

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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017