The Jewish roots of Franz Kafka did not prevent him from mastering the German language perfectly and even writing his works in it. During his lifetime, the writer published little, but after his death, Kafka's relatives published his works, despite the direct prohibition of the writer. How did Franz Kafka, the master of word formation, live and work?
Kafka: a biography
The author was born in the summer: July 3, 1883 in Prague. His family lived in a former ghetto for Jews. Father Herman had his own small business and was a wholesaler. And mother Julia was the heiress of a wealthy brewer and spoke German very well.
Kafka's two brothers and three sisters made up his entire family. The brothers died at an early age, and the sisters died in later years in concentration camps. In addition to the German language taught by his mother, Kafka knew Czech and French.
In 1901, Franz graduated from the gymnasium, then received a matriculation certificate. Five years later, he received a diploma from Charles University. So he became a doctor of law. Weber himself supervised the writing of his dissertation.
In the future, Kafka worked all his life in one insurance department. He retired early due to health problems. Kafka did not like to work in his specialty. He kept diaries where he described his hatred for his boss, colleagues and all his activities in general.
During the period of his ability to work, Kafka significantly improved working conditions in factories throughout the Czech Republic. At work, he was highly valued and respected. In 1917, doctors diagnosed Kafka with tuberculosis. After the diagnosis, he was not allowed to retire for another 5 years, as he was a valuable employee.
The writer had a difficult character. He broke up with his parents early. He lived in poverty and asceticism. He wandered a lot in removable closets. He suffered not only from tuberculosis, but also from migraines, and also suffered from insomnia and impotence. Kafka himself led a healthy lifestyle. In his youth, he went in for sports, tried to stick to a vegetarian diet, but could not recover from his ailments.
Kafka often engaged in self-flagellation. He was dissatisfied with himself and the world around him. I wrote a lot about it in my diaries. Even at school, Franz helped organize performances and promoted the literary circle. On those around him he gave the impression of a neat young man with a great sense of humor.
Franz has been friends with Max Brod since school days. This friendship continued until the writer's sudden death. Kafka's personal life did not develop. Some researchers believe that this state of affairs was rooted in his relationship with his despot father.
Franz was engaged to Felicia Bauer twice. But he never married the girl. After all, her image, which the writer came up with, did not correspond to the character of a living person.
Then Kafka had an affair with Yulia Vokhrytsek. But here, too, family life did not work out. After Franz met with married journalist Elena Yesenskaya. During that period, she helped him edit his works.
After 1923, Kafka's health deteriorated greatly. Tuberculosis of the larynx developed rapidly. The writer could not eat and breathe normally, he was exhausted. In 1924, his relatives took him to a sanatorium. But this measure did not help. So on June 3, Franz Kafka passed away. He was buried at the New Cemetery for Jews in Olshany.
The works of the writer and his work
- "Contemplation";
- "Fireman";
- "Rural doctor";
- "Hunger";
- "Kara".
Collections and novels were selected by Franz for publication in his own hand. Before his death, Kafka expressed a desire that his loved ones destroy the rest of the manuscripts and diaries. Some of his works really went to the fire, but many remained and were published after the death of the author.
The novels "America", "The Castle" and "The Trial" were never completed by the author, but the existing chapters were published anyway. Eight workbooks of the author have also been preserved. They contain sketches and sketches of works that he never wrote.
What did Kafka, who lived a difficult life, write about? Fear of the world and the judgment of the Higher Powers pervades all the works of the author. His father wanted his son to become the heir to his business, and the boy did not meet the expectations of the head of the family, so he was subject to his father's tyranny. This left a serious imprint on Franz's worldview.
Written in the style of realism, the novels convey everyday life without unnecessary embellishments. The author's style may seem dry and clerical, but the plot twists in the stories and novels are quite non-trivial.
There is much left unsaid in his work. The writer leaves the reader the right to independently interpret some situations in the works. In general, Kafka's works are filled with tragedy and oppressive atmosphere. The author wrote some of his works together with his friend Max Brod.
For example, "The first long trip by rail" or "Richard and Samuel" is a small prose of two friends who have supported each other all their lives.
Franz Kafka did not receive much recognition as a writer during his lifetime. But his works, published after his death, were appreciated. The novel The Trial received the highest critical acclaim from around the world. He also fell in love with readers. Who knows how many beautiful works burned in the fire on the orders of the author himself. But what has reached the public is considered a great addition to the postmodern style in art and literature.
Kafka
Kafka
(Kafka) Franz (1883-1924) An Austrian writer who described with unprecedented force the loss of a person in himself and in an incomprehensible world for him, a metaphysical sense of guilt and longing for unattainable divine grace. During his lifetime, almost unknown to anyone, he bequeathed to burn, without reading, all his manuscripts. After World War II, K. becomes one of the most famous and influential writers. To this day, his work is one of the "hot spots" of world literature. At first, they tried to connect his work with expressionism (deformation of reality, a cry of pain instead of harmony), then, in the 40s, with surrealism (fantasy, alogism and absurdism), even later and finally he was accepted into its bosom by existentialism (the loss of a person in world incomprehensible to him, fear, guilt and longing as primary experiences). External biographical circumstances, it would seem, did not contribute to the birth of such a bizarre and unique artist. K. was born into a wealthy Jewish family, his father was the owner of a large haberdashery store, and the future writer never knew the need. Little Franz looked at his father, who achieved everything himself, with fear and at the same time with reverence. The famous “Letter to a Father” (quite real, not a work of art), although the volume of a small book, was written in 1919, when father and son lived together, and begins with the words: “Dear father! The other day you asked me why I’m so afraid of you ... ”Shortly before that, Franz brought him two of his newly published collections -“ In a Penal Colony ”and“ Rural Enemy ”, which his father did not even bother to leaf through, he was so convinced in the worthlessness of all the literary experiments of his son. K. received a law degree at the German University of Prague (again, the influence of his father, who wanted a solid profession for his son), although he secretly dreamed of studying German philology in Munich. The obituary of 1924, compiled by relatives, speaks of him only as a doctor of jurisprudence and not a word about his literary pursuits. After university, for fifteen years (1908-1922), K. worked at the Occupational Injury Insurance Society, and only two years before his death, due to an exacerbation of tuberculosis, he retired early. He died a bachelor, although during his life he was engaged first to Felicia Bauer, then to Yulia Voryzhek (moreover, with each twice and each time he canceled the engagement). The first serious attack of tuberculosis (blood gushed out of the throat) occurred in September 1917. , and in December, K., citing illness, canceled the engagement with Felicia Bauer for the second time). Obviously, K.'s tuberculosis was of a psychosomatic nature, like M. Proust's asthma. K. was convinced that a measured family life would not allow him to devote himself to literary work with such fullness as before (work in the insurance company ended at two o'clock in the afternoon, leaving the entire afternoon free). Two more women should be named who played a big role in the life of the writer: this young (and married) translator of his books from German into Czech, Milena Yesenskaya, who perhaps understood Kafka’s soul like no one else (an entire volume of his letters was addressed to her) and 20 -year-old Dora Dimant, with whom K. spent the last and, perhaps, the happiest year of his life. A vivid psychological portrait of K. - a man was left by Milena Yesenskaya in a letter to M. Brod: “For him, life is something completely different than for all other people, and above all, such things as money, a stock exchange, a typewriter - for him it is completely mystical things (in essence, they are, just not for us, others). For him, all these are bizarre riddles ... For him, any office, including the one where he works, is something so mysterious, worthy of surprise, like a moving steam locomotive for a little boy ... This whole world remains mysterious for him. Mystical secret. Something that is not yet possible and that you can only admire because it works. Here the origins of K.'s "magical realism" are also given, but his deep religious seriousness is not noticed at all. Perhaps the epigraph to the work of K. can put the words from his diary: "Sometimes it seems to me that I understand the fall of man better than anyone on earth." Each person is guilty already by the fact that he was born and came into this world. K. felt this with a thousandfold strength - perhaps because of a sense of guilt towards his father, or because he spoke German while living in a Slavic city, or because he could not even formally fulfill all the requirements of Judaism, as his father did. In the diary we read: “What do I have in common with the Jews? I have little in common even with myself.” At the same time, in everyday life, he was an easy and cheerful person who was loved by his colleagues and appreciated by his superiors. One of the friends writes: “You could never say hello to him first, he was always ahead of you by at least a second.” During his lifetime, K. managed to release only six small brochures. In the first of them - a collection of miniatures "Contemplation" (1913), he is still looking for his own way and style. But already in the story “The Sentence” written in one night, we see a mature K. Not every reader understands why he commits suicide, blindly obeying the order of his father, the main character of the story. Here, the decisive factor is a hundredfold heightened sense of guilt towards the parent, which is difficult for a modern reader to understand. The famous story "Transformation" is just the realization of self-esteem: the hero K. is not worthy of a human appearance, for him the appearance of a disgusting insect is more proportionate. Finally, the story “In the Penal Colony”, puzzling with its cruelty, in which liberal and Marxist criticism immediately saw the foreknowledge of fascism, is in fact only a comparison of the Old and New Testaments and an attempt to see the peculiar correctness of the Old Testament (it is no coincidence that the old commandant fearlessly rushes into the killing machine ). In general, K. should not be compared with the Prague group of German expressionists (G. Meyrink, M. Brod, etc.), but with such thinkers as Pascal and Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's thought about the incommensurability of human and divine ideas about justice, sin and retribution was especially important for K.. Characteristically, all three novels K. remained unfinished, and he asked them to be destroyed. So, for him it was some kind of complex form of psychotherapy, which he considered necessary for himself and useless for others. In the novel Trial (created in 1914-1915, published in 1925), the dreamlike atmosphere cannot prevent the reader from guessing that it is a trial against himself (court sessions in the attics, that is, in the upper floors of consciousness, the hero of the novel himself regularly comes to them, although no one invites him.When the hero is taken to the execution, he meets a policeman, but instead of asking for help, he pulls his companions away from the law enforcement officer). In the last and most mature novel, The Castle (written in 1922, published in 1926), we already encounter a downright Kierkegorean parable about the unattainability and incomprehensibility of the creator and his grace. The hero of the novel, just before his death, must receive permission to settle - and then not in the Castle, but only in the village adjacent to it. But hundreds of villagers without any difficulty received this right. Whoever seeks will not find, and whoever does not seek will be found - K. wants to say. The reader is shocked by the contrast between the crystal clear, simple language of the novel and the fantastic nature of the events depicted in it.
Cit.: Gesammelte Werke. Bd 1-8. Munchen, 1951-1958; since 1982, a complete critical edition has been published, where two volumes are devoted to each novel - with all the options (publication continues);
Op. in 3 volumes, M.-Kharkov, 1994.
Lit .: Zatonsky D. Franz Kafka and the problems of modernism, M., 1972;
Emrich W. Franz Kafka. Bonn, 1958;
Brod M. Franz Kafka. Eine Biography. Frankfurt/Main, 1963;
Binder H. Kafka: Hamdbuch. Bd 1-2. Stuttgart, 1979-80.
S. Jimbinov
Lexicon of non-classics. Artistic and aesthetic culture of the XX century.. V.V. Bychkov. 2003 .
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In this brief biography of Franz Kafka. which you will find below, we have tried to collect the main milestones in the life and work of this writer.
General information and the essence of Kafka's work
Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Austrian modernist writer. Author of works: "Transformation" (1915), "Sentence" (1913), "Country Doctor" (1919), "Artist of Hunger" (1924), "Trial" (ed. 1925), "Castle" (ed. 1926) . The artistic world of Kafka and his biography are inextricably linked. The main goal of his works was the problem of loneliness, alienation of a person, which no one needs in this world. The author was convinced of this by the example of his own life. "I have no interest in literature," wrote Kafka, "literature is myself."
Having recreated himself on the pages of works of art, Kafka found the "sore point of mankind", foresaw future catastrophes caused by totalitarian regimes. The biography of Franz Kafka is remarkable in that his work contains signs of different styles and trends: romanticism, realism, naturalism, surrealism, avant-garde. Life conflicts are defining in the work of Kafka.
Childhood, family and friends
The biography of Franz Kafka is interesting and filled with creative success. The future writer was born in Austrian Prague in the family of a haberdasher. Parents did not understand their son, and relations with the sisters did not work out. “I am more of a stranger in my family than the most alien,” writes Kafka in The Diaries. His relationship with his father was especially difficult, as the writer would later write about in Letter to Father (1919). Authoritarianism, strong will, the moral pressure of his father suppressed Kafka from early childhood. Kafka studied at school, gymnasium, and then at the University of Prague. Years of study did not change his pessimistic outlook on life. There was always a “glass wall” between him and his peers, as his classmate Emil Utitz wrote about. Max Brod, a university friend from 1902, became his only friend for life. It was Kafka who, before his death, would appoint him the executor of his will and instruct him to burn all his works. Max Brod will not fulfill his friend's order and will make his name known to the whole world.
The marriage problem also became insurmountable for Kafka. Women have always favored Franz, and he dreamed of starting a family. There were brides, there was even an engagement, but Kafka did not dare to marry.
Another problem for the writer was his job, which he hated. After university, having received a doctorate in law, Kafka served 13 years in insurance companies, carefully fulfilling his duties. He loves literature, but does not consider himself a writer. He writes for himself and calls this activity "the struggle for self-preservation."
Evaluation of creativity in the biography of Franz Kafka
The heroes of Kafka's works are just as defenseless, lonely, smart and at the same time helpless, which is why they are doomed to death. So, in the short story "The Sentence" tells about the problems of a young businessman with his own father. The artistic world of Kafka is complex, tragic, symbolic. The heroes of his works cannot find a way out of life situations in a nightmarish, absurd, cruel world. Kafka's style can be called ascetic - without unnecessary artistic means and emotional excitement. The French philologist G. Barth characterized this style as “zero degree of writing”.
The language of the compositions, according to N. Brod, is simple, cold, dark, "but deep inside the flame does not stop burning." A kind of symbol of Kafka's own life and work can serve as his story "Reincarnation", in which the leading thought is the powerlessness of the "little man" before life, about its doom to loneliness and death.
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Kafka was born on July 3, 1883 in the Czech Republic. The first education in the biography of Franz Kafka was obtained in elementary school (from 1889 to 1893). The next step in education was the gymnasium, which Franz graduated from in 1901. Then he entered the Charles University in Prague, after which he became a doctor of law.
Having started working in the insurance department, Kafka worked all his career in small bureaucratic positions. Despite his passion for literature, most of Kafka's writings were published after his death, and he disliked his official work. Kafka fell in love several times. But things never went beyond novels, the writer was not married.
Most of Kafka's works are written in German. His prose reflects the writer's fear of the outside world, anxiety and uncertainty. So in the “Letter to the Father” they found an expression of the relationship between Franz and his father, which had to be broken early.
Kafka was a sickly man, but he tried to resist all his ailments. In 1917, Kafka's biography suffered a serious illness (pulmonary hemorrhage), as a result of which the writer began to develop tuberculosis. It was for this reason that Franz Kafka died in June 1924 while undergoing treatment.
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