Understanding Franz Kafka , livre ebook

Understanding Franz Kafka
Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature
James Hardin, Series Editor
UNDERSTANDING
Franz Kafka
Allen Thiher

The University of South Carolina Press
2018 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-828-9 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-829-6 (ebook)
Front cover photograph: Wikimedia Commons
For Irma
Contents
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chronology
1. Franz Kafka: A Biographical Sketch
2. Kafka s First Experiments in Writing Fiction
3. Amerika or Der Verschollene ( The Man Who Disappeared or The Missing Person )
4. The Judgment and The Metamorphosis
5. The Trial and In the Penal Colony
6. A Country Doctor and Other Stories
7. The Castle
8. A Hunger Artist and the Last Stories
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Series Editor s Preface
Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature has been planned as a series of guides for undergraduate and graduate students and nonacademic readers. Like the volumes in its companion series, Understanding Contemporary American Literature , these books provide introductions to the lives and writings of prominent modern authors and explicate their most important works.
Modern literature makes special demands, and this is particularly true of foreign literature, in which the reader must contend not only with unfamiliar, often arcane artistic conventions and philosophical concepts but also with the handicap of reading the literature in translation. It is a truism that the nuances of one language can be rendered in another only imperfectly (and this problem is especially acute in fiction), but the fact that the works of European and Latin American writers are situated in a historical and cultural setting quite different from our own can be as great a hindrance to the understanding of these works as the linguistic barrier. For this reason the UMELL series emphasizes the sociological and historical background of the writers treated. The philosophical and cultural traditions peculiar to a given culture may be particularly important for an understanding of certain authors, and these are taken up in the introductory chapter and also in the discussion of those works to which this information is relevant. Beyond this, the books treat the specifically literary aspects of the author under discussion and attempt to explain the complexities of contemporary literature lucidly. The books are conceived as introductions to the authors covered, not as comprehensive analyses. They do not provide detailed summaries of plot because they are meant to be used in conjunction with the books they treat, not as a substitute for study of the original works. The purpose of the books is to provide information and judicious literary assessment of the major works in the most compact, readable form. It is our hope that the UMELL series will help increase knowledge and understanding of European and Latin American cultures and will serve to make the literature of those cultures more accessible.
J. H.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Gordon Weaver, who asked some years ago if I was interested in doing a volume on Kafka s short stories for the Twayne Series in Short Fiction, of which he was editor. Then thanks go to the editor of the present volume, the ever-active James Hardin, for the opportunity to return to Kafka. This volume also owes much to conversations with scholars from various fields through the years, beginning with Germanists like Stanley Corngold and Avital Ronell and extending to colleagues at many places. Through the years students at Middlebury College, the University of Missouri, Universit t des Saarlandes, and Sofia University in Bulgaria have also had their word to say about my ideas about Kafka. More recent help came from the staff of the University Library at Cambridge University, who helped me with material in their German collection. Thanks are also due to the staff of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri who have helped with this project and to the Research Council at the University of Missouri, which provided some financial help. And special thanks to my indefatigable critic and companion, Irma Dimitrova.
Chronology
1883
Franz Kafka is born in Prague, capital of the province of Bohemia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father is Hermann Kafka, wholesale tradesman, and his mother is Julie (n e L wy).
1885
Birth of brother Georg (died in 1887).
1887
Birth of brother Heinrich (died 1888).
1889
Begins elementary school. Birth of sister Gabriele (Elli).
1890
Birth of sister Valerie (Valli).
1892
Birth of sister Ottilie (Ottla). All three sisters were murdered in the Nazi camps.
1893
Begins secondary school at the German Gymnasium in Prague. Friendship with Oskar Pollak.
1899
Friendship with Hugo Berman.
1900
Has begun to read Nietzsche, Spinoza, Darwin. Begins writing.
1901
Begins university studies, briefly chemistry, then law, with some courses on German literature.
1902
Vacation with Uncle Siegfried L wy, a country doctor. Meets Max Brod, lifelong friend and future editor of Kafka s posthumous works. Friendship with Felix Weltsch and Oskar Baum.
1904
Working on Description of a Struggle. Reading Grillparzer, Goethe, Eckermann.
1905
Vacation in Zuckmantel, where he has an affair with an unidentified older woman.
1906
Works briefly in a law office, completes his law degree, and, in October, begins a required one-year internship without pay in the law courts.
1907
Working on Wedding Preparations in the Country. Takes a position with an Italian insurance company.
1908
Takes a position with the semigovernmental Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. Works here until retirement in 1922. Publishes prose texts in the journal Hyperion .
1909
With Max and Otto Brod in Italy at Riva on Lake Garda and Brescia. Publishes The Airplanes of Brescia in a newspaper. Publishes two texts taken from Description of a Struggle.
1910
Begins the diaries. Sees Yiddish theater in Prague. In Paris with Brod in October, goes to Berlin in December.
1911
Friendship with Yiddish actor Yitzak (Isak) L wy. Reading Hassidic tales. Probably begins writing Der Verschollene (translated in various ways, referred to here as Amerika , Brod s title).
1912
Gives a talk on the Yiddish language. In summer goes to Weimar with Brod, where they honor Goethe and Kafka flirts with a young girl. Then vacations in a sanatorium. Meets his future fianc e, Felice Bauer, on 13 August and shortly afterward starts to write to her in Berlin. Writes The Judgment during the night of 22-23 September. Writes The Stoker, the first chapter of Amerika . Late in year writes The Metamorphosis. Meditation published in December (with 1913 on cover page)
1913
Visits Felice Bauer in Berlin. Publishes The Stoker and The Judgment. In September in Vienna, Venice, and Riva, where he meets a Swiss girl. Meeting with Grete Bloch, Felice Bauer s friend, to discuss his difficulties with his proposed marriage to Felice.
1914
Official engagement to Felice Bauer in June; it is broken off in July. Working on The Trial . Outbreak of World War I, in which Kafka does not serve because of an exemption obtained by the insurance institute. Writes In the Penal Colony in October and another chapter for Amerika .
1915
Meets with Felice Bauer in Bodenbach. Moves for the first time into an apartment on his own. Publication of The Metamorphosis. Probably begins The Village Schoolmaster at end of the year.
1916
Meets with Felice Bauer in Marienbad. Public reading in Munich of In the Penal Colony. Probably begins to write short stories collected in A Country Doctor .
1917
Continuing to write short stories. Second engagement to Felice Bauer. Diagnosis of tuberculosis in September. Takes leave of absence and, hoping for recovery in the country, goes to be with his sister Ottla in Z rau. Writes most of Z rau aphorisms. Engagement broken off in December.
1918
In Z rau through spring. Reading Kierkegaard. Meets next fianc e, Julie Wohryzek, in Schelesen.
1919
Publication of In the Penal Colony and A Country Doctor . Engagement in spring to Julie Wohryzek. Writes Letter to His Father.
1920
Begins correspondence with Czech journalist and translator Milena Jesenska. Brief love affair with Milena. End of engagement to Julie at the end of the year. Writes many unpublished texts (found in so-called Konvolut of 1920). Begins friendship with medical student and fellow patient Robert Klopstock in a sanatorium in the Tatra Mountains.
1921
Probably begins writing texts collected in A Hunger Artist . In a sanatorium until September.
1922
Writes The Castle . Writing texts published in A Hunger Artist . Goes to live with his sister Ottla in Plana. Writes the posthumously published Investigations of a Dog.
1923
Vacationing in northern Germany with sister Elli, where he meets Dora Diamant (Dymant) in a vacation colony. In September moves to Berlin to live with her in Berlin-Steglitz. Writing The Burrow. Leaves hostile landlady to move to Berlin-Zehlendorf.
1924
Returns to Prague very ill, with tuberculosis of the larynx. Writes last