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A Hunger Artist and Other Stories

April 14, 2012 by Roy Johnson

short stories by a master of modernism

A Hunger Artist is a collection of short fictions by one of the most remarkable writers of the early twentieth century. Franz Kafka was a completely original writer. He’s classified as a novelist and writer of short stories, and yet most of his novels were not finished, and many of his short works don’t have normal characters or recognisable stories. Many of them are not continuous, logical narratives that we expect in work classified as fiction. Much of his writing is closer to being philosophic meditations or the exploration of bizarre images and metaphors. Yet such is the power of his symbol-making and his imagination that there is really nowhere else for him to be categorised.

A Hunger ArtistSome of his stories are as short as one-sentence aphorisms or the exploration of curious metaphors, striking images, and parables that present one idea in the guise of another. In one story a man is a bridge, stretched across a chasm, terrified of the responsibility he bears. In another a man spends his entire life at a gateway, pleading to be admitted to the Law. On the point of his death he asks the gatekeeper why nobody else has ever requested entry. The gatekeeper tells him “Nobody else could be granted entry for this entrance was meant only for you. I shall now go and close it.”

Kafka was a writer of great contradictions: the semi-mystical believer who doubted everything; the prudish sceptic of personal relationships who consorted with prostitutes; the neurasthenic who was devoted to sunbathing and swimming; the self-denying ascetic who was described by one of his friends as ‘the best-dressed man I have ever known’.

He wrote a great deal about animals, birds, insects, and rodents which nevertheless have human thought processes. In one of his most famous stories The Metamorphosis a young travelling salesman wakes up to find that he has changed into a giant insect. Another story features the effect on a small village when it is visited by a giant mole. In The New Advocate a horse is appointed as a lawyer, and A Report to an Academy is the transcript of a lecture in which the speaker describes his former life as an ape.

All the now-familiar elements of Kafka’s world are tried out in these stories, parables, and fragments – the inaccessible palace or castle, the closed gate, incomprehensible foreigners, the remote unknowable figure of Authority, and the unspecified menace from without. The essence of a Kafka story is often an inexplicable mystery, a paradox, or a vague un-named threat. He establishes a situation then immediately undermines it by introducing the opposite or a contradiction

It was a beautiful day and K. intended to go for a stroll. But he had scarcely taken two steps before he was already in the graveyard.

In fact K. finds that he is a witness to his own burial. A story such as The Burrow combines the animal motif with a study in paranoia when an unspecified rodent describes the building of a giant network of tunnels against some un-named exterior threat. But the construction is eventually so elaborate that maintaining it becomes a threat in itself.

This collection is made up of some of his earliest and his last published works – from the almost journalistic Aeroplanes at Brescia (1909) to Josephine, the Singer or The Mouse People (1924) completed the year of his death. It also contains some of his most famous and anthologised stories – Investigations of a Dog, The Burrow, Before the Law, and The Great Wall of China.

This volume makes an excellent starting point for anyone who has not tackled Kafka before. The translations in these new Oxford University Press editions are recently commissioned, and the texts come with an extensive critical apparatus of introductory essay, explanatory notes, biographical details, and lists of further reading.

A Hunger Artist Buy the book at Amazon UK

A Hunger Artist Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2012


Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist and Other Stories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, trans. Joyce Crick, 2012, pp.218, ISBN: 0199600929


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Filed Under: Franz Kafka Tagged With: A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka, Literary studies, Modernism, The Short Story

Franz Kafka a bibliography

June 30, 2010 by Roy Johnson

selected literary criticism and commentary

Franz Kafka a bibliography is a short selection of further reading related to Kafka, his major works, and some of the recent criticism.

Franz Kafka Jeremy Adler, Franz Kafka (Overlook Illustrated Lives), Gerald Duckworth, 2004.

Franz Kafka Mark Anderson. Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992

Franz Kafka Louis Begley, The Tremendous Words I have Inside my Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay, Atlas Illustrated editions, 2008.

Franz Kafka Harold Bloom, Franz Kafka (Bloom’s Major Novelists), Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Elizabeth Boa, Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, Da Capo Press, 1995.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Max Brod (ed), The Diaries of Franz Kafka, Schoken Books, 1988.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, Schocken Books, 1989.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Stanley Corngold, Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, Princeton University Press, 2006.

Franz Kafka a bibliography W.J. Dodd (ed), Kafka: The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, London: Longman, 1995.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Carolin Duttlinger, Kafka and Photography, Oxford: Oxford Universit Press, 2007.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Angel Flores (ed), The Kafka Debate, New York: Gordian Press, 1977.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka (Critical Lives), Reaktion Books, 2007.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient, London: Routledge, 1995.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Richard T. Gray (ed), A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia, Greenwood Press, 2005.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Ronald Gray, Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice Hall, 1962.

Franz Kafka a bibliography James Hawes, Excavating Kafka, Quercus Publishing, 2010

Franz Kafka a bibliography Ronald Hayman, A Biography of Kafka, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Exact Change, 1998.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Franz Kafka, The Trial (Complete Audiobooks), Naxos Audiobooks, 2007.

Franz Kafka a bibliography David Zane Mairowitz, Introducing Kafka, Icon Books, 2007.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Julian Preece (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Ronald Spiers, and Beatrice Sandberg, Franz Kafka, London: Macmillan, 1997.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Daryl Sharp, The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation in the Life of Franz Kafka, Inner City Books, 1982.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Walter H. Sokel, The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka, Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature, Clarendon Press, 1987.

Franz Kafka a bibliography James Rolleston (ed), A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, Camden House, 2006.

Franz Kafka a bibliography Michael Wood, Franz Kafka (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House, 1998.


KafkaThe Cambridge Companion to Kafka offers a comprehensive account of his life and work, providing a rounded contemporary appraisal of Central Europe’s most distinctive Modernist. Contributions cover all the key texts, and discuss Kafka’s writing in a variety of critical contexts such as feminism, deconstruction, psycho-analysis, Marxism, and Jewish studies. Other chapters discuss his impact on popular culture and film. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading, and will be of interest to students of Comparative Literature.


Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
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Filed Under: Franz Kafka Tagged With: Bibliography, Franz Kafka, Literary studies, Modernism, The novel

Franz Kafka biography

July 7, 2015 by Roy Johnson

life and times of a tortured literary modernist

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born in Prague, at a time when it was the centre of Jewish, German-speaking Bohemia, in the heart of Czechoslovakia and a part of the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg empire. His father ran a fancy goods shop, and bullied his children into improving their manners whilst remaining something of a peasant-like boor himself. The family moved restlessly from one flat to another in search of ever higher social status – but never out of the city. It was a habit that Kafka continued in his own adult life – though for different reasons.

Franz Kafka biography

Franz Kafka

Early years

Kafka was a timid, under confident child, and if you believe his own accounts from letters and diaries, the principal source of this meekness (and most of his neuroses) was the exaggerated awe in which he held his father. At school he did reasonably well, and in the specially strict gymnasium even better. He studied languages – Latin and Greek – as well as German literature and the elements of grammar. He took his Barmitzvah, though he regarded himself as an atheist, and at that time was fanatically opposed to Zionism and Judaism – though he became interested in both movements later in his life.

For someone so shy and retiring he surprisingly took an interest in the theatre and reading out loud in class. There were also annual theatricals at home to celebrate his mother’s birthday, for which he wrote the scripts. At university his options were limited – because the only professions open to Jews at that time were medicine and law. He opted for law, which had the distinct advantage of pleasing his father. He attended supplementary classes on philosophy and art history.

Around this time he made the first of what were to be many attempts to leave home and live independently. He also struck up what was to become a lifelong friendship with fellow student Max Brod, who was a year younger and eventually became Kafka’s literary executor. He started writing around this time, but kept the fact secret from everybody. He also had his first sexual experiences, which he described very characteristically as “vileness and filthiness”.

As his studies drew towards their conclusion he was struck down with one of the many periods of illness he suffered throughout the rest of his life, and he spent some time in a sanatorium. Nevertheless he passed the first of his examinations and started working in a lawyers’ office, drafting legal documents. He also passed the second part of his examinations and was awarded his doctorate.

Employment

In 1907 he started work for an Italian insurance company in the hope that he would be sent abroad, and he began a ‘relationship’ with Hedwig Weiler, a girl he had met whilst on holiday. It was the first of many which would be conducted almost entirely by correspondence. She lived in Vienna, and despite much discussion of meeting, the only time she visited Prague he made sure he was not available.

The following year his first published writing appeared in a magazine Hyperion alongside work by Rilke, Hoffmannsthal, and Heinrich Mann, His work in the office demanded long hours, and he felt he needed more time to himself – so he left after nine months and took up a job where he finished work at two o’clock in the afternoon.

He was still living at home with his parents, and he was finding a dubious antidote to his feelings of loneliness in the brothels of Prague. When his parents and grandfather became ill, he felt obliged to spend more time at home, helping in the family business. This put him under extra strain, and he eventually applied for time off from his new job in the Workers’ Insurance office. He spent the week swimming in Lake Garda and visited an aeronautical display which he recorded in The Aeroplanes at Bescia.

He felt uncomfortable in his own body, developed eating disorders, had his stomach pumped (“My feeling is that disgusting things will come out”) and became a vegetarian. Around this time he began keeping diaries, which were not so much a record of events in his life as sketchbooks, filled with fragmentary thoughts, images, and first drafts of stories that are composed of a mixture of narratives and reflections on states of being. He very often created fictions by writing about himself in the third person – “He would often awaken in a terrified condition …”.

Meanwhile his personal idiosyncrasies multiplied. He was compulsive about personal cleanliness and slept with his bedroom window wide open even in winter; he prided himself on always telling the truth, no matter how hurtful it was to his interlocutor; he was compulsively polite, but persistently late for work and meetings; and his self-loathing and sense of guilt continued unabated.

Friendship

He took a long summer holiday with Max Brod in Milan and Paris – a trip that incorporated visits to art galleries, the opera, and to brothels – Kafka all the time suffering from acute constipation, which he discussed freely with others. He also suffered from insomnia, which he discussed with himself, endlessly, in his diaries.

Round this time a group of itinerant Jewish actors visited Prague. Kafka enjoyed their performances so much he befriended the leader of the troupe, Jizchak Lowy, and the experience seems to have awakened his interest in Judaism.

At the age of twenty-eight he was still living at home, sleeping in the next room to his parents, separated only by a thin wall. He even found the sight of his parents’ pyjamas disturbing. There were endless arguments with his father, who thought his son was neurotic, an ineffectual time-waster, and feckless in not helping to run the family business, which now included an asbestos factory.

Letters to Felice

The year 1913 was significant for two reasons: Max Brod had introduced him to the publisher Rowahlt and to a young woman Felice Bauer. Kafka began putting together fragments of his writings for what was to become his first ever publication, Betrachtung (Meditations), and he began what was to become a love affair by correspondence with F.B. as he called her. He also sat down and wrote in one continuous burst of creation Das Urteil (The Judgement) one of his greatest stories and a masterful account of Oedipal conflict.

The relationship with Felice was curious. He seems to have settled immediately on becoming engaged to her as an escape route from the oppression of living with his family. The photographs prove that she was certainly not an attractive young woman, and yet he poured out thousands upon thousands of words in courting her. He wrote long letters that he didn’t bother sending; letters that were dispatched by express post cancelling the content of previous messages; and letters instructing her to stop writing to him. One of these letters was forty pages long.

The inner sequence of the letters follow the same pattern, over and over again. He would first propose a meeting with her at some time in the (somewhat distant) future. Then he would write excitedly about what they might do together when the day came around. This would be followed by detailed plans for the journey – including train times and alternatives in the event of any unforeseen problems. Then when the day actually arrived he would write torrents of apology for having to cancel the trip. The excuses for cancellation were usually trivial to an insulting degree, but they would be dressed up to seem vitally important. Finally he got round to proposing marriage – in a letter spelling out all the disadvantages and inconveniences she would be bound to suffer, including the insistence that his writing must always come first, leaving only one hour per day for contact between them.

First novel

Yet as though inspired by these developments he also started work on his first novel Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared, later renamed as Amerika by Max Brod) which like most of his other literary projects was left unfinished. At this period he was also to write what became his most famous story (really a novella) Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis).

In the autumn of 1913 Kafka went on an extended holiday to Venice and Lake Garda, from where he wrote to Felice that their relationship must end (whilst he was having a brief affair with a young girl he had just met). Felice sent her friend Greta Bloch to act as intermediary in the discussions. Kafka then began writing to Greta just as frequently as to Felice, and when an agreement was finally engineered, he suggested that Greta should come to live with them when he and Felice were married. This led, not surprisingly, to an affair with Greta, and shortly afterwards she bore a child (that died) and it is possible that Kafka was the father – but the evidence is rather ambiguous.

In preparation for the proposed marriage, Kafka was summoned to a ‘tribunal’ of Felice and her friends in Berlin where the details of their relationship were examined in what he described as a ‘law court’. where he was also expected to account for himself. The net result, again not surprisingly, was that the engagement was called off.

At the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war he finally moved out of his parents’ home, went to live in his sister’s empty flat, and began writing Der Prozess (The Trial). This change of location proved so successful that he decided to move into a flat of his own. On locating somewhere new the first thing he did was to stop his landlady’s clock in the hall because its ticking irritated him. He moved into another flat a few days later.

He and Felice finally managed to arrange a short holiday together in Marienbad, as a result of which their engagement was resurrected. There was a period of about two years during which he wrote almost nothing, but by 1917 he began again with a series of ‘stories’ based on surreal metaphors and the content of his dreams.

A turning point

Late in 1917 two events made a distinct change to Kafka’s life. First he had a terminal disagreement with Felice, and the engagement was called off again. Second, he developed tuberculosis and started coughing up blood. The result of these two events was that he immediately felt better and started sleeping better. The illness gave him a legitimate excuse not to be married, and it confirmed his neurotic belief that he was being punished.

Released from work on sick leave, he went to stay with his sister Ottla in the countryside, where he felt much better. He returned to Prague briefly to make the final decisive break with Felice, then after a few more months of rustication he was forced to return to work. But no sooner had he made a return to his normal life than he succumbed to the epidemic of Spanish flu which was sweeping through Europe in 1919. By the time he recovered from it, the entire Hapsburg empire had disintegrated and Czechoslovakia had declared itself a republic.

He went into yet another sanatorium where although his health did not improve he met Julie Wohryzek, a cheerful fellow patient. When their stay ended he returned with her to Prague, moved into a flat, and announced their engagement. Two days later he called everything off.

The following year he was contacted by Milena Jesensks, who wanted to translate some of his work into Czech. She was married to a rou^eacute; Ernst Pelack and was an occasional cocaine user. Writing from a sanatorium in Merano he began yet another passionate and intimate correspondence with a woman he had never met and only ever seen once – at a distance.

On leaving the sanatorium he spent four idyllic days with her in Vienna and then travelled back to Prague where the first thing he did was to tell Julie Wohryzek all about Milena. She demanded her rival’s address and threatened to write to her. At a second meeting with Milena she admitted she could not leave her husband – so there was no hope for the future, and Julie had meanwhile ended her relationship with him. So he wrote yet another long letter to Milena, bringing their correspondence to an end.

The Castle

He spent the next six months at yet another sanatorium at Mitliary, near Budapest, but it did very little to alleviate the effects of his worsening tuberculosis. He couldn’t sleep; his neuroses became worse; and all his attempts at self-analysis came to nothing because (since he rejected psycho-analysis) he felt his literary introspection was merely an escape into metaphor. These later desperate years were the period in which he began work on Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Prozess (The Trial).

But at least he managed to solve the problem of the office. In June 1922 he was granted ‘temporary retirement’ from the Institute – with a pension. He never went back. His first step was to live with his sister Ottla in the countryside. She even moved herself and her husband into a small room so that Kafka could have their larger bedroom.

At first all went well. He produced several chapters of Das Schloss. But then there were noisy children outside, a nearby sawmill, and then a psychological ‘collapse’ about accepting somebody’s invitation to a meeting. He eventually returned to Prague, from where he sent Max Brod his testamental request that apart from already published books, all his writing should be burned, unread. Fortunately (for his readers) Brod ignored this request.

On a rare visit to the sea at Rostock he met Dora Dymant who was working in the kitchens of a Jewish children’s camp. She was to be the last woman in his life. They moved to Berlin, which was in the grip of hyperinflation of the Deutschmark (1923). Here he had another incident of uninterrupted creation when he wrote the long story Der Bau (The Burrow) in a single sitting.

The beginning of the end

But the end was now very near. He developed tuberculosis of the larynx and was transferred to a hospital. Unable to speak, he communicated by writing brief notes on slips of paper – almost like one of his own short stories. Swallowing was so painful that he couldn’t eat, so he was effectively starving himself to death – just like the character in The Hunger Artist. In the end he was begging for morphine injections, but they were not powerful enough to quell the pain. He died in June 1924, forty-one years old.

There have been many biographies of Kafka, ranging from the short and charming Franz Kafka: An Illustrated Life to the three scholarly volumes by Reiner Stach. The strength of Ronald Hayman’s account is that as a translator he accesses most of his prime source materials in German. He also incorporates a great deal of comment on Kafka’s fiction into the biography, and this will help those needing guidance in the complex and often contradictory world of one of the most original twentieth century modernists.

The weakness is that Hayman uses Kafka’s own letters, diaries, and notebooks as his primary sources – whilst showing little scepticism regarding the validity of the claims Kafka makes about himself. Kafka was a complex and often neurotic personality. He was the vegetarian ascetic and self-denying writer who was also a sartorial dandy; a puritan who regularly visited brothels; a passionate lover who avoided intimacy; a would-be husband who was terrified of marriage; and a master of self-loathing whose genius was remarkably similar to that of his near-contemporary and fellow Hapsburg quasi-mystic Ludwig Wittgenstein.

© Roy Johnson 2015

Franz Kafka biography Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka biography Buy the book at Amazon US


Ronald Hyman, K: A Biography of Kafka, London: Orion, 2005, pp.349, ISBN: 1898801657


Other works by Franz Kafka

MetamorphosisMetamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side. Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Man who DisappearedAmerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
Franz Kafka The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon US


Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2015


More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories


Filed Under: Biography, Franz Kafka Tagged With: Cultural history, Franz Kafka, Literary studies

Franz Kafka criticism

April 21, 2015 by Roy Johnson

annotated bibliography of criticism and comment

Franz Kafka criticism is a bibliography of critical comment on Franz Kafka and his works, with details of each publication and a brief description of its contents. The details include active web links to Amazon where you can buy the books, often in a variety of formats – new, used, and as Kindle eBooks. The listings are arranged in alphabetical order of author.

The list includes new books and older publications which may now be considered rare. It also includes print-on-demand or Kindle versions of older texts which are much cheaper than the original. Others (including some new books) are often sold off at rock bottom prices. Whilst compiling these listings I bought a copy of Ronald Hayman’s study Kafka: A Biography for >one penny.

Franz Kafka criticism

Franz Kafka (Overlook Illustrated Lives) – Jeremy Adler, London: Gerald Duckworth, 2004. A richly illustrated biography and introduction, with charming period photos of Kafka and Prague.

Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Hapsburg Fin de Siecle – Mark M. Anderson, Oxford University Press, 1995. A rich and subtle study that sets new standards for historical and textual interpretation of Kafka.

The Tremendous World I have Inside my Head – Louis Begley, Atlas Illustrated editions, 2008. A biographical essay that opens a window on a tormented soul – Begley treads carefully between the facts of Kafka’s life, the events of his fiction, and psychoanalysis.

Franz Kafka: Modern Critical Essays – Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003. Useful to students doing serious research, particularly as a starting point in thinking about interpretations and finding critical sources.

Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions – Elizabeth Boa, Oxford University Press, 1996. This study relates Kafka’s alienating images of the male body and fascinated disgust of female sexuality to the culture of militaristic, racist, gender, and class ideologies.

Franz Kafka: A Biography – Max Brod, Da Capo Press, 1995. This was the first critical biography, written by his friend and literary executor.

The Diaries of Franz Kafka – Max Brod (ed), Schocken Books, 1988. These contain biographical details with early ideas and preliminary drafts for his stories and philosophic reflections.

Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice – Elias Canetti, Schocken Books, 1989. This is a biographical and critical essay which considers the parallels between Kafka’s doomed love affair and its reflections in his work.

Kafka – Pietro Citali, Martin Secker & Warburg, 1990. An exploration and recreation of the life of Kafka, not so much its daily events, but rather what went on in his mind.

Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka – Stanley Corngold, Princeton University Press, 2009. A masterful explication of Kafka’s writing on the experience of ecstasy and transcendence.

Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature – Gilles Deleuze, University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Controversial study of language, meaning, and close reading by leading French metaphysical philosopher

Kafka and Dostoyevsky: The Shaping of Influence – W.J. Dodd (ed), London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992. A critical study which evaluates the importance of Dostoyevsky’s life and imaginative fiction as a stimulus to Kafka’s own writing.

Kafka and Photography – Carolin Duttlinger, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. This study explores photography’s recurrence as a theme within Kafka’s texts and takes systematic account of his use of photographs as literary source material.

The Kafka Debate: New Perspectives for Our Time – Angel Flores (ed), New York: Gordian Press, 1977. A collection of individual studies of the key texts and themes.

Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt – Saul Friedlander, Yale University Press, 2013. Investigates some of the sources of Kafka’s personal anguish and its complex reflections in his imaginary world.

Franz Kafka (Critical Lives) – Sander Gilman, Reaktion Books, 2007. This is a short biography and critical overview of Franz Kafka, with an emphasis on the relationship between his life and works as read through his culture and his understanding of his own body.

Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient – Sander Gilman, London: Routledge, 1995. This is the first book about Kafka that uses the writer’s medical records to explore the relation of the body to cultural myths.

A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia – Richard T. Gray (ed), Greenwood Press, 2005. This encyclopedia includes more than 800 alphabetically arranged entries on his works, characters, family members and acquaintances, themes, and other topics. Most of the entries cite works for further reading.

Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays – Ronald Gray, New York: Prentice Hall, 1962. A collection of critical essays by a variety of Kafka specialists, designed for students and general readers.

Excavating Kafka – James Hawes, Quercus Publishing, 2010. Debunks a number of key facets of the Kafka-Myth, including the idea that Kafka was the archetypal genius neglected in his lifetime.

A Biography of Kafka – Ronald Hayman, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001. A scholarly but very readable biography by celebrated Kafka critic and translator.

Introducing Kafka – David Zane Mairowitz, Icon Books, 2007. A beginner’s guide to the life and work – with illustrations by comic artist Robert Crumb.

Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka – Ernst Pawel, Harvill Press, 1984. A highly regarded biography which is based on scholarship but written in an attractive and engaging style.

The Cambridge Companion to Kafka – Julian Preece (ed), Cambridge University Press, 2002. A compendium of critical essays covering all the key texts, which discuss Kafka’s writing in contexts such as feminism, deconstruction, psycho-analysis, Marxism, Jewish studies, popular culture, and film.

Kafka: A Very Short Introduction – Ritchie Robertson, Oxford University Press, 2004. Explores the main themes in his work and compares his thinking to that of other great writers like Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, Schopenhauer, Weber and Freud.

Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature – Ritchie Robertson, Oxford University Press, 1991. This is a general study of Kafka, which explores the literary and historical context of his writings, and links them with his emergent sense of Jewish identity.

A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka – James Rolleston (ed), Camden House, 2006. A collection of essays by Kafka specialists that represents a full range of methodological and thematic diversity.

The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka – Walter H. Sokel, Wayne State University Press, 2001. A collection of essays published in English for the first time place Kafka’s writings in a very large cultural context by fusing Freudian and Expressionist perspectives and incorporating more theoretical approaches – linguistic theory, Gnosticism, and aspects of Derrida.

Franz Kafka: Narration, Rhetoric, and Reading – Ronald Spiers, and Beatrice Sandberg, , Ohio State University Press, 2011. Presents essays by noted Kafka critics and by leading narratologists who explore Kafka’s original and innovative uses of narrative throughout his career.

Franz Kafka (Writers and Their Work) – Michael Wood, Northcote House Publishers, 1998. Close readings of individual works, and attention to Kafka’s Austro-Hungarian historical context.

© Roy Johnson 2015


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Franz Kafka greatest works

September 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

stories, novels, diaries

Beginners should start with the short stories of Franz Kafka before tackling his novels. Be prepared for writing which can be very philosophical, heavily symbolic, and full of strange images. In Franz Kafka’s greatest works there is often no plot or dramatic tension, but the prose style (even in translation) is truly original. Kafka’s work is also full of black humour; he often writes both about and from the point of view of animals; and some of his shorter pieces are in the form of parables, meditations, poetic fragments, and sketches.

Keep in mind that Kafka was one of many great writers who did not win the Nobel Prize for literature – along with Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, D.H.Lawrence, and James Joyce. His work was hardly known outside his native Chzeckoslovakia during his lifetime, and yet it had immediate and enormous impact once it was translated in the late 1920s. He is now regarded as one of the giants of twentieth-century literature.

Franz Kafka greatest works - MetamorphosisMetamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side. Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature. Metamorphosis is one of his most stunning and memorable works.
Franz Kafka greatest works Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Metamorphosis Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The TrialThe Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules and refuses to give explanations. He spends the entire novel striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism. Read the stories and The Trial as a start and a minimum.
Franz Kafka greatest works The Trial Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works The Trial Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The CastleThe Castle is Kafka’s last work – a long, rambling, and unfinished novel in which the castle itself operates as a huge metaphor for authority and bureaucracy. If The Trial is about a hopeless search for justice, The Castle is often said to be about the search for grace and forgiveness. The setting is a remote village covered almost permanently in snow and a community fraught with tensions and sexual predators. It lies like a magnificent ruin amongst the many other fragments in Kafka’s oeuvre. This is strictly for the advanced devotee. Tackle this one only when you have read the other shorter works.

Franz Kafka The Castle Buy the book at Amazon UK
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The Man who DisappearedAmerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This novel is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
Franz Kafka greatest works The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works The Man who Disappeared Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Complete Short StoriesThe Complete Short Stories is an amazing bargain, because this includes not only the stories, but also Kafka’s fragments, parables, and sketches. Many of these – although sometimes no more than jottings – contain the germs of ideas and images which Kafka worked up later into his major works. Kafka wrote on the boundaries between fiction and philosophy, and very often he blurrs the distinction between the two.
Franz Kafka greatest works The Complete Short Stories Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works The Complete Short Stories Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The DiariesThe Diaries Kafka wrote to himself almost as much as he did to other people, and he communicated some of his most subtle and revealing ideas in fragments and notes made in the margins of his tormented life. Here there are the wrestlings with guilt and personal inadequacy, plus the aspirations to a a higher spiritual life. They cover the period from 1910 to 1923 and reveal the inner world in which he lived. He also describes the father he worshipped but feared, and the woman he loved but could not bring himself to marry. It is sometimes difficult to see where his fiction ends and his biographical notes begin, but they form an interesting contrast if they are read in conjunction with the letters and the notebooks. They also need to be read with care, because they conceal almost as much as they reveal.
Franz Kafka greatest works The Diaries Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works The Diaries Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Letters to FeliceLetters to Felice Many of Kafka’s surviving letters were written to women with whom he was ‘in love’. The qualification of this term is necessary because they reveal a fascinating ambiguity in his attitude to the recipients. Thousands of words are spent analysing his feelings, arranging meetings then cancelling them, deciding to get married and making all the necessary arrangements for where and how to live – and then changing his mind, and writing endless further letters explaining his reasons. Other letters reveal his painstaking sympathy and scrupulous kindness to friends, his neurotic fastidiousness over what most people would regard as trivialities, and his amazing modesty in dealing with other figures of the literary world.
Franz Kafka greatest works Letters to Felice Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Letters to Felice Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Complete NovelsThe Complete Novels is a handy, good value compilation which includes Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle. One Amazon reviewer complains that the print is very small, but you can hardly complain when three major works are rolled into one volume of nearly eight hundred pages for less than the price of two cocktails. The translation used is that by Edwin and Willa Muir written in the 1930s.

Franz Kafka greatest works The Complete Novels Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works The Complete Novels Buy the book at Amazon US


Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Filed Under: Franz Kafka Tagged With: Amerika, Franz Kafka, German literature, Literary studies, Metamorphosis, Modernism, The Castle, The Trial

Franz Kafka life and works

September 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Franz Kafka life and workstimeline, writings, social context

1883. Franz Kafka born in Prague, which was then part of the Hapsburg empire. Father prosperous Jewish businessman. Family speaks German. K successful as a schoolboy, but prone to ill-health.

1899. First early writings – all destroyed.

1901. Attends German University in Prague. Studies chemistry for two weeks, then changes to law.

1902. First meeting with Max Brod, who was to become his fiend, biographer, and literary executor.

1904. Working on a novel – The Child and the City [subsequently lost]. Writes first version of ‘Description of a Struggle’.

1906. First love affair. Successful degree in Doctorate of Law. Begins one year of legal training.

1908. Begins work in Accident Insurance offices in Prague. First publication of short ‘stories’.

1910. Starts to keep a diary. Further publication of short pieces. Trips to Berlin and Paris.

1911. Further travels. First spell in sanatorium for ill health. Working on another novel (Amerika].

1912. Meets publishers Ernst Rowalt and Kurt Wolff, and Felice Bauer at the home of Max Brod. Second visit to sanatorium. Writes Metamorphosis. Also writes his story ‘The Judgement’ in one single overnight sitting.


Franz Kafka: An Illustrated LifeFranz Kafka: Illustrated Life is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. An excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.


1913. Makes first of several visits to Berlin to meet Felice Bauer, who becomes his fiancee (more than once). Kurt Wolff published The Stoker – which is the first chapter of Amerika. Travels to Vienna, Trieste, Venice and Lake Garda. First meeting with Grete Bloch in Prague.

1914. Moves into the first of many apartments to live alone. Takes leave of absence to work on The Trial. Writes ‘In the Penal Colony’. Official engagement to Felice is broken off.

1915. Resumes relationship and travels with Felice. Another visit to a sanatorium. Writes ‘Before the Law’. Metamorphosis published.

1917. Writes stories ‘The Great Wall of China’, ‘The Hunter Gracchus’, ‘A Report to an Academy’. Renews engagement to Felice and travels with her to Hungary – returning alone. Moves back into his parent’s apartment. Tuberculosis of the lungs diagnosed. Second engagement broken off.

1918. Continued illness. Works as a gardener at sanitarium. Returns to work, but contracts Spanish flu.


Franz Kafka: A Short IntroductionKafka: A Very Short Introduction introduces Kafka’s life and cultural background, then traces a number of themes in his best-known works. It’s in an interesting and attractive format – a small, pocket-sized book, stylishly designed, with illustrations, endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and an index. If you’ve not studied Kafka before, this will give you pointers on what to look for. It covers Kafka’s biography, then interpretations of his work – including one quite original approach concerning the relationship between his writing and his body.


1919. Meets Julie Wohryzek and becomes engaged to her – but wedding postponed. Takes lessons in Hebrew. Receives letters from Milena Jesenska-Polak, who is translating some of his work. Writes ‘Letter to his Father’.

1920. Persistent illness. Begins writing the He aphorisms. Correspondence with Milena, who he visits in Vienna. Breaks off engagement to Julie Wohryzek, but continues seeing her. Returns to work – and to live in his parent’s apartment.

1921. Attempts to break off relationship with Milena. Back into sanitarium. Milena visits him in Prague. He shows her his diaries.

1922. Starts work on The Castle. Pensioned off by his employers. Writes ‘Investigations of a Dog’. Further illness.

1923. Further Hebrew studies. Spends lots of time in bed. Breaks off relationship with Milena. Goes to live with Dora Dymant in Berlin. Writes ‘The Burrow’.

1924. Fuel crisis in Berlin. K’s health deteriorates. Moves back to Prague. Writes ‘Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk’. Dora takes K to sanatorium in Austria. K instructs Max Brod to burn all his writings. Brod agrees, but disobeys instruction. K dies 3 June – buried in Jewish cemetery in Prague.


Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Franz Kafka web links

December 8, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Franz Kafka web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Franz Kafka - portrait

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.


The Cambridge Companion to Kafka
This collection of essays offers a comprehensive account of Kafka’s life and work, providing a rounded contemporary appraisal of Central Europe’s most distinctive Modernist. Contributions cover all the key texts, and discuss Kafka’s writing in a variety of critical contexts such as feminism, deconstruction, psycho-analysis, Marxism, and Jewish studies. Other chapters discuss his impact on popular culture and film. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading, and will be of interest to students of Comparative Literature.

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Franz Kafka: an illustrated life

May 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

charming study with period illustrations and photos

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Kafka’s tragically short life and the formative influences on his work. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Kafka’s own story is fairly well known. As he himself points out, he was born, went to school and university, then lived and worked within the radius of a few miles all his life. He had a passionate desire for independence, but lived most of the time even as an adult with his parents or his sister.

Franz Kafka: an illustrated lifeHe had a love-hate relationship with his father which dominated his life, and he took very little interest in the publication of his work, even though he was regarded by others as the most important writer of his generation. Many other seminal figures in the modernist movement leave their traces in passing through Kafka’s life – the writer Karl Kraus, philosopher Rudolph Steiner, artist-writer Alfred Kubin, and even Albert Einstein. Prague in the early years of the last century was at the heart of European developments in art, literature, and music.

He had a lifelong friendship with the writer Max Brod, who was instructed to destroy all Kafka’s writing on his death. He reneged on his promise to do so, published Kafka’s work, and made him famous throughout the world.

Adler’s portrait humanises Kafka, making him seem less neurotic than other accounts – even including Kafka’s own version of himself in his diaries and notebooks. He emphasises Kafka’s skills as a lawyer, his professional experience in commerce and industry, and his active travelling as a risk assessor. He even points to Kafka’s fascination with clothes – described by a friend as ‘the best dressed man I ever met’.

Kafka captured like no other writer before him the angst and isolation of the individual confronted by the arbitrary and unjust forces of society. And yet in his personal life (despite the anguish he wrote about so eloquently) he enjoyed modern novelties such as the cinema, aeroplanes, and motor-cycles; he went swimming and followed the vogue for nudism; he had his fair share of sexual affairs, and he supplemented those with visits to brothels.

Adler traces Kafka’s tortured relationships with Greta Bloch, Milena Jesensksa, and Dora Dymant through to the tragic year of 1924 when the devaluation of the German Mark, the cold winter, and coal rationing left its mark on everyone and contributed to his death. Kafka even recorded the coal rationing in a small piece called ‘The Bucket Rider’. In typical Kafka-esque contradiction, he died just as he found his first taste of real happiness.

I was also glad to see that Adler records in an endnote the fact that so many of Kafka’s intimates, including his three sisters, were murdered in the Holocaust. It puts things into modernist perspective.

Adler offers en passant light readings of the major works in the light of Kafka’s life without plunging into the rather over-simplified biographical interpretation which affects so much Kafka criticism. But it is the photographs and illustrations which make this book such a pleasing experience. The images of old Prague streets which inspired so much of Kafka’s work are surrounded by sketches from his notebooks, book jacket designs from the first editions of his work, and photographs which you rarely see elsewhere – except this excellent compilation on YouTube.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Jeremy Adler, Franz Kafka, Woodstock NY: Overlook Press, 2001, pp.164, ISBN 0715632957


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Kafka: An Introduction

July 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

brief guide to a great twentieth-century writer

Kafka was a writer of such stunning originality that usually no more than a single sentence is required to identify his work. He conjured up arresting images and unforgettable scenes, and wrote stories unlike any that had gone before.

Those, and I am one of them, who find even a small ordinary sized mole disgusting, would probably have died of disgust if they had seen the great mole that a few years back was observed in the neighbourhood of one of our villages, which achieved a certain transitory celebrity on account of the incident.

Kafka: A Very Short IntroductionThis introductory guide to the writer and his work comes from a new series by Oxford University Press. They are written by specialists, aimed at the common reader, and offer an introduction to the main cultural and philosophical ideas which have shaped the western world. Ritchie Robertson takes a fairly even-handed approach to Kafka: appreciative, not uncritical, and certainly avoiding the hagiographic excesses of many commentators who would elevate him to saint-like status.

Instead, he takes a quick look at Kafka’s tortured life, and reasonably argues that much of his writing is a metaphorical or a symbolic rendering of it. There are some suggestions on how we might read Kafka, but his choice is to look at three or four key texts in detail, whilst bringing in support for his arguments from Kafka’s many fragments of writing, his aphorisms, and his voluminous correspondence.

Kafka anticipated much of the radical alienation, the existential Angst and sense of terror which became obvious in European political life after his death. This comes through clearly, but Robertson also takes interestingly novel approaches which look at aspects of Kafka’s work which are often ignored.

One of these is a particularly incisive chapter on The Body in Kafka’s writing. He argues persuasively that physical attributes, denial of the body through fasting, and even gestures feature as symbolic forces in his work.

Another fruitful theme he explores is Kafka’s fascination with institutions and figures of power, towards which he had an often ambiguous relation. These include the family, the legal system (in which he worked) the bureaucratic organisation, the court, the church, the castle, the judge, and the father – to whom he wrote the famous letter which was not sent.

The writing is clear, polished, and non-patronising. Like most good critical commentary, it makes you feel like going back to the original texts to read them again.

Finally he turns to a religious reading – the traditional manner in which this most enigmatic of writers has been interpreted. He deals with Kafka’s ambiguous position within a Jeudeo-Christian tradition, then passes on to his spiritual sense of self which became particularly marked in his later work.

This is a very interesting and attractive format – a small, pocket-sized book, stylishly designed, with illustrations, endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and an index.

© Roy Johnson 2004

Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.136, ISBN 0192804553


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Metamorphosis

February 2, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, study resources

Metamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side.

Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works, only after his death, came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka


Metamorphosis – plot summary

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself transformed from a human being into a giant insect. Rather than lament his transformation, Gregor worries about how he will get to his job as a traveling salesman; Gregor is the sole financial provider for his parents and sister, Grete, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work.

MetamorphosisWhen Gregor’s supervisor arrives at the house and demands Gregor come out of his room, Gregor manages to roll out of bed and unlock his door. His appearance horrifies his family and supervisor; his supervisor flees while his family chases him back into his room.

Grete attempts to care for her brother by providing him with milk and the stale, rotten food he now prefers. Gregor also develops the fears of an insect, being effectively shooed away by hissing voices and stamping feet. However, Gregor remains a devoted and loving son, and takes to hiding beneath a sofa whenever someone enters his room in order to shield them from his horrifying appearance. When alone, he amuses himself by looking out of his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling.

No longer able to rely on Gregor’s income, the other family members take on jobs and Grete’s caretaking deteriorates. One day, when Gregor emerges from his room, his father chases him around the dining room table and pelts him with apples. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection. Due to his infection and his hunger, he is soon barely able to move at all.

MetamorphosisLater, his parents take in lodgers and use Gregor’s room as a dumping area for unwanted objects. Gregor becomes dirty, covered in dust and old bits of rotten food. One day, Gregor hears Grete playing her violin to entertain the lodgers. Gregor is attracted to the music, and slowly walks into the dining room despite himself, entertaining a fantasy of getting his beloved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. The lodgers see him and give notice, refusing to pay the rent they owe, even threatening to sue the family for harboring him while they stayed there. Grete determines that the monstrous vermin is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. She suggests that they must get rid of it. Gregor retreats to his room and collapses, finally succumbing to his wound, and dying alone.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feels an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. The family discovers that they aren’t doing financially badly at all, especially since, following Gregor’s demise, they can take a smaller flat. The brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly completed.


Study resources

Red button Metamorphosis – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Red button Metamorphosis – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Red button Metamorphosis – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

Red button Metamorphosis – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

Red button Metamorphosis – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon US

Red button Metamorphosis – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Red button Metamorphosis – Max Notes – Amazon UK

Red button Metamorphosis – eBook format at Project Gutenburg

Red button Metamorphosis – audioBook version at LibriVox

Red button Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka – 1989 Peter Medak film

Henry James The Cambridge Companion to Kafka – Amazon UK


Franz Kafka: An Illustrated LifeFranz Kafka: Illustrated Life This is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle in old Prague – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. This is an excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US


Principal characters
Gregor Samsa travelling salesman who supports his family
Mr Samsa his lazy father, who owes money to Gregor’s boss
Grete Samsa Gregor’s younger sister, who tends him at first
Mrs Samsa Gregor’s mother, who cannot bear to look at him
The chief clerk Gregor’s boss, to whom Mr Samsa owes money
Tenants three tenants who provide an income for the family

Vladimir Nabokov – Lecture on Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka


Vladimir Nabokov’s copy of Metamorphosis

Kafka - Nabokov


Photomontage

Kafka, family photos, and old Prague


Kafka - manuscript page

a page of Kafka’s manuscript


Further reading

Red button Jeremy Adler, Franz Kafka (Overlook Illustrated Lives), Gerald Duckworth, 2004.

Red button Mark Anderson. Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992

Red button Louis Begley, The Tremendous Words I have Inside my Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay, Atlas Illustrated editions, 2008.

Red button Harold Bloom, Franz Kafka: Modern Critical Essays, New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Red button Harold Bloom, Franz Kafka (Bloom’s Major Novelists), Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

Red button Elizabeth Boa, Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Red button Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, Da Capo Press, 1995.

Red button Max Brod (ed), The Diaries of Franz Kafka, Schoken Books, 1988.

Red button Elias Canetti, Kafka’s Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, Schocken Books, 1989.

Red button Stanley Corngold, Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, Princeton University Press, 2006.

Red button W.J. Dodd (ed), Kafka: The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, London: Longman, 1995.

Red button Carolin Duttlinger, Kafka and Photography, Oxford: Oxford Universit Press, 2007.

Red button Angel Flores (ed), The Kafka Debate, New York: Gordian Press, 1977.

Red button Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka (Critical Lives), Reaktion Books, 2007.

Red button Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient, London: Routledge, 1995.

Red button Ronald Gray, Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice Hall, 1962.

Red button Ronald Hayman, A Biography of Kafka, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001.

Red button Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Exact Change, 1998.

Red button Franz Kafka, The Trial (Complete Audiobooks), Naxos Audiobooks, 2007.

Red button David Zane Mairowitz, Introducing Kafka, Icon Books, 2007.

Red button Julian Preece (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Red button Ronald Spiers, and Beatrice Sandberg, Franz Kafka, London: Macmillan, 1997.

Red button Walter H. Sokel, The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka, Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Red button Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Red button Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature, Clarendon Press, 1987.

Red button James Rolleston (ed), A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka, Camden House, 2006.

Red button Michael Wood, Franz Kafka (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House, 1998.

 


Mont Blanc pen - Kafka edition

Mont Blanc – special Franz Kafka edition


Other works by Franz Kafka

The TrialThe Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules, striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism. Read the stories and The Trial as a start and a minimum.
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Man who DisappearedAmerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Franz Kafka greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US


Franz Kafka – web links

Kafka Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka web links Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Franz Kafka video Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Franz Kafka web links Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Franz Kafka web links Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

Franz Kafka web links The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Franz Kafka Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Kafka photos Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Red button Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

Red button The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Red button Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
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Filed Under: Franz Kafka, The Novella Tagged With: Franz Kafka, German literature, Literary studies, Metamorphosis, Modernism, study guide

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