Kafka and his metamorphosis
I became acquainted with Kafka's work in my early youth years, when ironically I worked as a fireman. Just like the fireman on the ship with which the novel America begins. I cleaned the soot from my nose with moistened and wound cloth handkerchiefs, it was good for health, and the wipes turned black, less tar remained for my body. Even at that time, for one of my namesake days, my cousin gave me Kafka's biography of Gerard-Georges Lomer, who started with his funeral, would not be a good start to such a book, but Kafka is an exception in everything.
Considered by the critics of one of the three top writers of the 20th century, along with James Joyce and Marcel Proust, he is the only one who does not finish any of his own novels. In contrast, a lot of his stories were published during his lifetime.
The greatest influence on me definitely turned out to be a "fasting star", where a man in a cage, as an attraction lasts for a long time, and in the end nobody believed him. This is like the truth that can be so obvious in life, and almost everyone does not accept it, because it can not imagine to experience it.
"Metamorphosis" tells of the young Gregor Zamza, who wakes up transformed as a cockroach. And his first thought was how to go to work if that was not absurd. As a young man, I once woke up with a big red bud on my nose and got off, let alone if I woke up like a cockroach. Right now (July 3rd), my neighborhood in Gorna Oryahovitsa is full of cockroaches, I have them in every apartment, even on my night as I prepare this article. But the main point in the narrative is perhaps that we do not accept how we change, and we just look for the old habit.
And in the "Penal Colony," who else has described a punishment machine as detailed as if it were at any moment to put it on her:
"The traveler thought," It is always risky to interfere decisively in foreign affairs. "He was neither a resident of the criminal colony nor a citizen of the country that ruled this colony. If he wanted to condemn or even thwart the execution, they could have said, "You are a foreigner, lie down!" There was nothing more to say than to add that he did not understand himself in this case because he was traveling only for cognitive purposes , but not to change foreign courtrooms. "
All our helplessness, which we experience every day as an observer, is gathered in a narrative. The same is repeated in his novel The Process.
Every library without Kafka's books is not only empty, but also partly useless to the analytical mind. It's like losing that little connection that we have to find in everything around us, and that crushes us.
Kafka is obsessed with his despicable father. He does not take up his job, and is no different than almost any of us. But he at least succeeds with his work to do something great, which is only available to the great talents.
According to Vladimir Nabokov, Gustave Flaubert exercised the strongest influence on Franz Kafka in terms of his literary style. Like the French writer, Kafka uses the language as a working tool. In his prose he uses verbal twists from the dictionary of administration, business circles, lawsuits, natural sciences.
Almost in all of his works, Kafka is developing the theme of personal defeat to the unconscious powers of the law and impenetrable life conventions. Her heroes in vain aim at social significance, and their cruelty is most often presented in a slightly ironic light. Kafka's texts are clear and at the same time encoded and hermetically sealed. Due to the subject language, the uncomplicated action and the bright imagery, they appear to be easily accessible, but become difficult to perceive when their immeasurable depth and existential anxiety of their messages are heard.
From 1908 to 1922 Kafka worked in an insurance company, but constantly, mostly at night, she wrote. Thus his first significant literary work was created, the "Verdict" (1913), followed by the novel "Transfiguration" (1915). The writer is close to the circle of Prague Expressionists, and his stories come out in various literary magazines.
Kafka's intimate life is also marked by painful insecurity, self-indulgence, and frustration. The conflicting relationship with his despotic father and the atmosphere of oppression, loneliness and misunderstanding in his home are proving to be important for his ties to women. In love Kafka tears between fear and longing. He fears the loneliness of bachelorhood, he longs for his family and home for lasting human proximity. And at the same time feels incapable of marriage, he shakes at the thought of a life together. Kafka makes a marriage proposal to any woman she has a relationship with.
Three times formally engages two of them for the same woman, but never gets married. It is only about the end of her days that she is bound to a woman about 20 years younger and lives with her on a family basis.
The beginning of his first dramatic love story, lasting 5 years, was put on August 13, 1912. Kafka then met at the home of his friend Max Brod with 20-year-old stenographer of Berlin, Felipe Bauer. She is a girl with a bony, empty face that openly carries her emptiness with a nearly broken nose, and blond hair and a powerful chin. "In spite of her incomprehension and total indifference to literature, she became sympathetic to her. In a few weeks, lively correspondence begins.With extreme patience, attention and interest, Felix treats his lover's long epistolary monologues. In his letters the shy young man is determined, courageous, and sincere.
After half year of correspondence, Kafka and Felice decided to meet in 1913 during the Passover in Berlin. Then he meets her family.
On June 16, the writer wants Felice's hand to fall into his own trap. Kafka offers her and the marriage does not hope for a positive answer. But she agrees immediately and without hesitation, and that scares the young writer. At this point, he decides he is hasty, succumb to emotions without thinking well, and moves backwards. She begins to send letters every day to her that she asks her not to hurry, insists on reconsidering whether she wants to connect her life "with a weak, sick, extremely uneducated, silent, sad, in a word, completely hopeless man." That same year Kafka sent her a letter from Venice saying "We have to divide."
Their relationships cool for a while. Not long after, Kafka himself suddenly offered his hand and heart again. "I can not live with her, but I can not live with her," says with his friend Max Brod.
Confused, Felice sent in the first days of October her friend Grete Bloch to Kafka to tell her about his life. Bauer's act proves to be short-sighted. Graceful, clever and frivolous Grete meets the writer, and soon he starts courting her. She does not remain indifferent. They spend some wonderful days together. When Grete returns to Berlin, Kafka begins to secretly write to her. Often they discuss in their letters Felice, for which writer's bride naturally does not suspect anything. The correspondence with Grete Bloch lasts about a year. Kafka argues that their relationship is platonic, but in years Grete announces that he has a son from him.
In 1914 Kafka went to Berlin. Felice and Franz are officially engaged. And while the parents of the young are preparing for a wedding, the bridegroom is again covered with doubts. He is looking for a comfortable moment to give up his marriage. His help comes with Grete, with whom he continues to write, hoping that their relationship will continue after the wedding with Felice. But Grete decides to tell his girlfriend about his secret epistolary novel with the future bridegroom. She shows the letters in which Kafka speaks not particularly affectionate about her choice. Felice is upset and spoils the engagement. So she saves her unbelieving exorbitant from painful explanations.
Still, they continue to write. Three years pass and Kafka again offers Felice Bauer to get married. Again he agrees. In a month, the writer suddenly gets a hemorrhage and doctors discover tuberculosis. For Kafka, this is a sign up - his marriage to Felice will not work. This time he gives up their engagement. That ends their love story, which does not bring them the long-awaited happiness, but from which Felice Bauer still manages to win - she sells her letters from Kafka
After the end of World War I Kafka moved to Shelezen. There he falls in love with the cheerful Julia Vohrizek. She was against marriage. But for Kafka, the only possible prospect of a man-woman relationship is the creation of a family, with many children. Although he himself feared marriage, he persuaded her to become a woman. Once Julia agrees, they release a newspaper announcement about their upcoming marriage and start looking for a home. But there is nothing out of this marriage project either. His father does not approve of him because he thinks he is unwise. And again a sign that Kafka takes as a sign of fate. Two days before the happy event, it turns out they can not rent the dwelling they liked. And Kafka used this as a motive to break the wedding.
Julia cuts off and in 1920, in the life of Kafka, the Prague writer, journalist and translator Milena Jessenka
She is 16 years younger than him, married and lives in Vienna. Kafka began a correspondence with her when she translated several narratives into Czech. He is attracted to her intelligence and passion.
Milena is quite different from the women she's been in love with until then. At 23, she has a rich life experience behind her. Takes drugs that sometimes steals from his father - a doctor. She spends some time in a psychiatric clinic. She marries a Jew against the will of her parents. He hurts lightly and often has no money. In the time of deprivation, she lives at the freight train station and seriously damages her health. Her voice attributed a homosexual relationship to her classmate, which continued during her Kafka adventure.
But Milena does not want to lead the life Kafka offers her. It ends their love affair, but not their friendship. They continue to meet from time to time and write by the end of 1923. For Kafka Milena is not only the man who knows him very well, but also the man who understands it very well. Milena Jesenska died in 1944 in the Ravensbrucke concentration camp.
In early 1923, Kafka was in a severe physical and emotional state. He experiences a nervous breakdown that he did not have before. Kafka leaves for the Baltic Sea resort of Muritz and meets the 20-year-old Polish Jewish Dora Diamant. They fall in love with one another. In September 1923, they went to Berlin in the hope that the writer would separate himself from his family and concentrate on writing. Finally, Kafka achieves her dream of pursuing a lifetime - to be far from Prague, to deal only with writing and to live under one roof with her beloved wife. And this happens just when every hope is unthinkable, as his health is getting worse. After six months of peace and happiness, three months of agony occur. His condition is getting worse and he goes to a sanatorium near Vienna.
Under 41, Kafka dies in the hands of her beloved. It destroys all of its manuscripts, since it was his last will. And although they were not married, after her death she called herself Dora Kafka.
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
- Mahatma Gandhi