Franz Kafka
Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as "
The Metamorphosis
" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including
The Trial
(1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and "
In the Penal Colony
" (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925),
The Castle
(1926) and
Amerika
(1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
“Books are a narcotic.”
“Paths are made by walking”
“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
“Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs.”
“I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.”
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
“It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.”
“Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.”
“Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.”
“Atata timp cat nu incetezi s urci, treptele nu se vOr termina; sub pasii tai care urca, ele se vOr inmulti la nesfarsit”
“Writer speaks a stench.”
“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
“So eager are our people to obliterate the present.”
“Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.”
“L'éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin.”