Franz Kafka, whose works are known throughout the world, was a German-speaking author of Jewish origin. Oddly enough, the writer, who is now known throughout the world, was not popular during his lifetime and published only a few short stories. Kafka ordered his entire literary heritage to be burned, but his friend Max Brod disobeyed, and only thanks to this the world was able to find out who this mysterious writer was and get acquainted with his works.

The writer's childhood

Kafka Franz - famous of Jewish origin. He was born on July 3, 1883 in one of the ghettos of Prague, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The writer's father, Hermann Kafka, was a Czech-speaking Jew, worked as a salesman in a haberdashery store, and his mother, Julia Kafka, spoke more German, just like Franz, who, however, knew Czech well and French languages. In addition to him, the family had several more children. The future writer's two younger brothers died in childhood, but he had three more sisters. Little Franz went to school until 1893, and then moved to a gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1901, receiving a matriculation certificate.

Mature years

After graduating from the University of Prague, Kafka received a doctorate in law. After that, he worked in the insurance department as a simple official. In 1922, Kafka retired prematurely due to illness. However, during his service in public office, Kafka remained devoted to his main occupation - literature, to which he devoted a lot of time. Due to long-term tuberculosis, which began after a pulmonary hemorrhage, the writer died on June 3, 1924. Before his death, Kafka asked his friend to burn all unpublished manuscripts, but he did not listen to him and therefore many of the works of the talented author were published posthumously.

Kafka's inner world

It is always difficult to talk about a person's feelings, especially if he leads a secluded lifestyle. However, there is documented evidence about the life of the famous German writer of Jewish origin, concerning not only his biography, but also his views on life. What was Franz Kafka really like? “Letter to Father,” one of the writer’s works, is, for example, an excellent reflection of the author’s relationship with his father and a number of childhood memories.

Health

In many ways, the writer’s life was influenced by his health condition, with which he constantly had problems. It is debatable whether his problems were of a psychosomatic nature, but the fact that illnesses plagued the author is certain. and regular gymnastics - this is how Kafka tried to cope with his condition. Franz consumed a lot of unpasteurized cow's milk, which could cause chronic tuberculosis.

Personal life

It is believed that Kafka's failure on the love front is to a certain extent due to his relationship with his oppressive father, because of whom he never managed to become a family man. Nevertheless, women were present in the writer’s life. From 1912 to 1917 he was in a romantic relationship with Felicia Bauer, who lived in Berlin. During this period, they were engaged twice, but both times it did not lead to anything. Kafka and Felicia communicated mainly through correspondence, as a result of which a misconception about the girl arose in the writer’s imagination, which had little correspondence with reality. From the surviving correspondence it is clear that they were different people, which could not be found mutual language. After this, Kafka was in a relationship with Julia Vokhrytsek, but it was also soon terminated. In the early 20s, the writer began an affair with a journalist and translator of his novels, Milena Jesenskaya, who was also married. In 1923, Kafka, along with his muse Dora Dimant, went to Berlin for several months to retire from his family and devote himself entirely to literature.

Death

After visiting Berlin, Kafka returned to Prague again. Gradually, his tuberculosis progressed more and more, causing the writer new problems. This eventually led to Franz's death in a sanatorium near Vienna, probably due to exhaustion. Constant pain throat prevented him from eating, and at that time intravenous therapy was on initial stages development and could not compensate for nutrition artificially. The body of the great German author was transported to Prague, where he was buried in the New Jewish Cemetery.

Franz Kafka. Creation

The fate of this writer's works is very unusual. During Kafka's lifetime, his talent remained unrecognized, and only a few of his short stories appeared in print, which were not particularly successful. The author became popular after his death and only because he close friend- Max Brod - disobeyed his will and published novels that Kafka wanted to burn so that no one would ever read them.

Otherwise, the world would not have known who Kafka was. The novels that Brod published soon began to attract international attention. All of the author's published works, with the exception of some letters to Milena Jesenskaya, were written in German. Today they have already been translated into many languages ​​and are known all over the world.

Story "Metamorphosis"

Franz Kafka in this work fully reflected his views on human relationships in his characteristic depressive, depressing manner. Main character The story is about a man who wakes up one morning and realizes that he has turned into a disgusting giant insect. The circumstances of the transformation are typical for the author. Kafka does not indicate the reasons, does not talk about the events that happened before, the main character simply faces the fact that he is now an insect. Those around Gregor Samsa perceive his new appearance critically. His father locks him in his room, and his sister, who at first treats him quite warmly compared to others, periodically comes to feed him. Despite his external changes, Gregor remains the same person, his consciousness and his feelings do not change in any way.

Since he was the family's breadwinner and virtually all relatives depended on Gregor, who turned out to be incapacitated after his transformation, the family decided to take in boarders. The new residents of the house behave shamelessly, and the protagonist’s relatives are increasingly critical of him, because now he cannot support them. The sister begins to come less and less often, and gradually the family forgets about the insect that was once their relative. The story ends with the death of the main character, which in reality did not evoke almost any emotions among his family members. To further emphasize the indifference of the people around him, at the end of the work the author describes how Gregor Samsa's relatives are strolling carefree.

Analysis

The writer’s usual writing style was fully reflected in the story “Metamorphosis.” Franz Kafka plays the role of the narrator exclusively; he does not seek to reflect his attitude to the events described. In essence, the story is a dry description of events. Characteristic of the writer’s style is also the main character, who faces an unfair, sometimes absurd fate. a person faced with events with which he is unable to fight. Despite the fantastic nature of the plot, the story also contains quite realistic details that actually turn the work into a grotesque.

Novel "The Trial"

Like many other remarkable works of the author, this work was published after the death of the writer. This is a typical Kafka novel, which reflects not only elements of the absurd, but also fantasy and realism. Harmoniously intertwined, all this gives rise to a philosophical story, which became a reflection of the author’s creative quest.

It is not known exactly what principle the writer was guided by when creating “The Process,” however, the manuscript was not formed into a full-fledged work; it consisted of many disparate chapters. Later they were arranged according to the chronology of events, and in this form the world saw the work that Kafka created.

"The Trial" tells the story of a man named Josef K., who works as a simple clerk in a bank. One morning he was arrested by unknown people without specifying the reason. Long time He is being watched, but no one is taking action to detain him.

The most surprising thing here is that Josef K. has no idea what he is suspected of and what he is accused of, since he was not charged with anything. Throughout the entire work, he is forced to try to understand the reason for the arrest. However, he does not succeed even when the accused is sentenced to death and is immediately killed with a blow to the heart, “like a dog.” The main character, alone in his struggle, fails to achieve the truth.

"Lock"

This is another novel by the writer with many plot elements of the absurd, which Franz Kafka used very often. “The Castle” is a work that tells the story of the life of a certain K., who came to the Village to work as a land surveyor. Upon arrival, he learns that everything here is controlled by the Castle, and in order to begin work or at least get there, he must obtain permission.

K. tries with everything possible ways get permission, but he fails to do anything. As a result, it turns out that the Village does not need a surveyor, and K. is offered the position of watchman. The main character agrees because he has no choice. The novel ends with K.'s visit to the driver. According to the writer's plan, K. was supposed to stay here forever, and before his death he would have received a message that his residence in the Village was illegal, but now the Castle allows him to live and work here. But he told his friend that he was stopping work on the novel and did not intend to return to it.

Other works

In addition to the above works, the author has many less popular ones. For example, there are several collections of stories with which Franz Kafka began. “Letters to Milena” is one example of the writer’s epistolary lyrics. This is a collection that contains letters addressed to one of his lovers, Milena Esinska, who was initially simply a translator of his works into Czech. As a result, a correspondence romance began between the writer and Milena, which greatly influenced Kafka, but made him even more unhappy than he was before, after it turned out that their characters were incompatible.

This is not the only collection authored by Kafka. During his life, Franz published only his stories, which did not bring him such popularity as the novels recognized posthumously, but they are no less remarkable and valuable from a literary point of view. Therefore, they should also be mentioned. What else remarkable did Franz Kafka create? “Labyrinth” is a collection of short stories that includes a work of the same name and a number of others, the most famous of which is “One Dog’s Studies.”

Style

Absurdity and realism, reality and fantasy... It would seem that these are all incompatible concepts, but the author manages to organically connect elements of different styles and genres. A master of words, a genius who was not recognized during his lifetime, but after his death became popular all over the world - all this is Kafka. Franz became a kind of symbol of the era, the voice of humanity, preaching loneliness.

Conclusion

His heroes are similar: they face problems that cannot be solved and find themselves face to face with fate.

Tragedy and comedy take on the forms of grotesque in Kafka's fantastic stories. He does not seek to show a hero or an outstanding person; the writer talks about a person’s fear of something higher, of the outside world, which depends only on circumstances. Kafka's main characters are people who find themselves in difficult life circumstances that do not depend on them and can hardly be solved. All this gives rise to their uncertainty, loneliness and fear - everything that constantly surrounds people, driving them into a state of anxiety.

Life

Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, into a Jewish family living in the Josefov district, the former Jewish ghetto of Prague (Czech Republic, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). His father, Herman (Genykh) Kafka (-), came from the Czech-speaking Jewish community in Southern Bohemia, and was a wholesale merchant of haberdashery goods. The surname "Kafka" is of Czech origin (kavka literally means "daw"). On Hermann Kafka's signature envelopes, which Franz often used for letters, this bird with a quivering tail is depicted as an emblem. The writer's mother, Julia Kafka (née Etl Levi) (-), the daughter of a wealthy brewer, preferred German. Kafka himself wrote in German, although he also knew Czech perfectly. He also spoke French quite well, and among the four people whom the writer, “without pretending to compare with them in strength and intelligence,” felt “his blood brothers,” was French writer Gustave Flaubert. The other three are Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Heinrich von Kleist. Being a Jew, Kafka nevertheless had virtually no command of Yiddish and began to show interest in traditional culture Eastern European Jews only at the age of twenty under the influence of Jewish theater troupes touring in Prague; interest in learning Hebrew arose only towards the end of his life.

Kafka had two younger brothers and three younger sisters. Both brothers, before reaching the age of two, died before Kafka turned 6 years old. The sisters were named Ellie, Valli and Ottla (all three died during World War II in Nazi concentration camps in Poland). In the period from to Kafka visited primary school(Deutsche Knabenschule), and then a gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1901 by passing the matriculation exam. After graduating from Charles University in Prague, he received a doctorate in law (Kafka’s work supervisor on his dissertation was Professor Alfred Weber), and then entered the service as an official in the insurance department, where he worked in modest positions until his premature retirement due to illness in the city. Work for the writer was a secondary and burdensome occupation: in his diaries and letters he admits to hatred of his boss, colleagues and clients. In the foreground there was always literature, “justifying his entire existence.” After a pulmonary hemorrhage, long-term tuberculosis ensued, from which the writer died on June 3, 1924 in a sanatorium near Vienna.

Franz Kafka Museum in Prague

Kafka in cinema

• "It's a Wonderful Life of Franz Kafka" ("Franz Kafka's 'It's a Wonderful Life'", UK, ) Blend "Transformations" Franz Kafka with "This wonderful life» Frank Capra. Academy Award" (). Director: Peter Capaldi Starring Kafka: Richard E. Grant
• "The Singer Josephine and the Mouse People"(Ukraine-Germany, ) Director: S. Masloboishchikov
• "Kafka" ("Kafka", USA, ) A semi-biographical film about Kafka, whose plot takes him through many of his own works. Director: Steven Soderbergh. As Kafka: Jeremy Irons
• "Lock " / Das Schloss(Austria, 1997) Director: Michael Haneke / Michael Haneke /, in the role of K. Ulrich Mühe
• "Lock"(Germany, ) Director: Rudolf Noelte, in the role of K. Maximilian Schell
• "Lock"(Georgia, 1990) Director: Dato Janelidze, as K. Karl-Heinz Becker
• "Lock "(Russia-Germany-France, ) Director: A. Balabanov, in the role of K. Nikolai Stotsky
• "The Transformation of Mr. Franz Kafka" Director: Carlos Atanes, 1993.
• "Process " ("The Trial", Germany-Italy-France, ) Director Orson Welles considered it his most successful film. As Josef K. - Anthony Perkins
• "Process " ("The Trial", Great Britain, ) Director: David Hugh Jones, in the role of Joseph K. - Kyle MacLachlan, in the role of the priest - Anthony Hopkins, in the role of the artist Tittoreli - Alfred Molina. Worked on the script for the film Nobel laureate Harold Pinter.
• "Class Relations"(Germany, 1983) Directors: Jean-Marie Straub and Daniel Huillet. Based on the novel "America (Missing)"
• "America"(Czech Republic, 1994) Director: Vladimir Michalek
• "The Country Doctor by Franz Kafka" (カ田舎医者 (jap. Kafuka inaka isya ?) ("Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor"), Japan, , animated) Director: Yamamura Koji

The idea of ​​the story "The Metamorphosis" has been used in films many times:

• "Metamorphosis"(Valeria Fokina, , in leading role- Evgeniy Mironov)
• "The Transformation of Mr. Sams" ("The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa" Carolyn Leaf, 1977)

Bibliography

Kafka himself published four collections - "Contemplation", "Country Doctor", "Kara" And "Hunger", and "Fireman"- first chapter of the novel "America" ("Missing") and several other short essays. However, his main creations are novels "America" (1911-1916), "Process"(1914-1918) and "Lock"(1921-1922) - remained unfinished to varying degrees and saw the light of day after the death of the author and contrary to his last will: Kafka explicitly bequeathed the destruction of everything he had written to his friend Max Brod.

Novels and short prose

• "Description of one struggle"(“Beschreibung eines Kampfes”, -);
• "Wedding Preparations in the Village"(“Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande”, -);
• "Conversation with a Prayer"(“Gespräch mit dem Beter”);
• "Conversation with a Drunk Man"(“Gespräch mit dem Betrunkenen”);
• "Airplanes in Brescia"(“Die Aeroplane in Brescia”), feuilleton;
• "Women's Prayer Book"(“Ein Damenbrevier”);
• "First long trip along railway» (“Die erste lange Eisenbahnfahrt”);
• Co-authored with Max Brod: "Richard and Samuel: a short journey through Central Europe"(“Richard und Samuel – Eine kleine Reise durch mitteleuropäische Gegenden”);
• "Big Noise"(“Großer Lärm”);
• "Before the Law"(“Vor dem Gesetz,”), a parable later included in the novel “The Trial” (chapter 9, “In the Cathedral”);
• “Erinnerungen an die Kaldabahn” (, fragment from a diary);
• "School teacher" ("Giant Mole") (“Der Dorfschullehrer or Der Riesenmaulwurf”, -);
• "Blumfeld, the old bachelor"(“Blumfeld, ein älterer Junggeselle”);
• "Crypt Keeper"("Der Gruftwächter" -), the only play written by Kafka;
• "Hunter Gracchus"(“Der Jäger Gracchus”);
• "How the Chinese Wall was Built"(“Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer”);
• "Murder"(“Der Mord”), the story was subsequently revised and included in the collection “The Country Doctor” under the title “Fratricide”;
• "Riding on a Bucket"(“Der Kübelreiter”);
• "In our synagogue"(“In unserer Synagoge”);
• "Fireman"(“Der Heizer”), subsequently the first chapter of the novel “America” (“The Missing”);
• "In the attic"(“Auf dem Dachboden”);
• "One Dog's Research"(“Forschungen eines Hundes”);
• "Nora"(“Der Bau”, -);
• "He. Records of 1920"(“Er. Aufzeichnungen aus dem Jahre 1920”), fragments;
• “To the series “He””(“Zu der Reihe “Er””);

Collection “Punishment” (“Strafen”, )

• "Sentence"(“Das Urteil”, September 22-23);
• "Metamorphosis"(“Die Verwandlung”, November-December);
• "In the penal colony"("In der Strafkolonie", October).

Collection “Contemplation” (“Betrachtung”, )

• "Children on the Road"(“Kinder auf der Landstrasse”), detailed draft notes for the short story “Description of a Struggle”;
• "The Rogue Exposed"(“Entlarvung eines Bauernfängers”);
• "Sudden Walk"(“Der plötzliche Spaziergang,”), version of a diary entry dated January 5, 1912;
• "Solutions"(“Entschlüsse”), version of a diary entry dated February 5, 1912;
• "Walk to the Mountains"(“Der Ausflug ins Gebirge”);
• "Sorrow of a Bachelor"(“Das Unglück des Junggesellen”);
• "Merchant"(“Der Kaufmann”);
• "Looking Absently Out the Window"(“Zerstreutes Hinausschaun”);
• "Way home"(“Der Nachhauseweg”);
• "Running By"(“Die Vorüberlaufenden”);
• "Passenger"(“Der Fahrgast”);
• "Dresses"(“Kleider”), sketch for the short story “Description of a Struggle”;
• "Refusal"(“Die Abweisung”);
• "For riders to think about"(“Zum Nachdenken für Herrenreiter”);
• "Window to the Street"(“Das Gassenfenster”);
• "The desire to become an Indian"(“Wunsch, Indianer zu werden”);
• "Trees"(“Die Bäume”); sketch for the short story “Description of a Struggle”;
• "Yearning"("Unglücklichsein",).

Collection “The Country Doctor” (“Ein Landarzt”, )

• "New Lawyer"(“Der Neue Advokat”);
• "Country Doctor"(“Ein Landarzt”);
• "On the gallery"(“Auf der Galerie”);
• "Old Record"(“Ein altes Blatt”);
• "Jackals and Arabs"(“Schakale und Araber”);
• "Visit to the Mine"(“Ein Besuch im Bergwerk”);
• "Neighboring Village"(“Das nächste Dorf”);
• "Imperial Message"(“Eine kaiserliche Botschaft,”), the story later became part of the short story “How the Chinese Wall was Built”;
• "The care of the head of the family"(“Die Sorge des Hasvaters”);
• "Eleven Sons"(“Elf Söhne”);
• "Fratricide"(“Ein Brudermord”);
• "Dream"(“Ein Traum”), a parallel with the novel “The Trial”;
• "Report for the Academy"("Ein Bericht für eine Akademie",).

Collection “The Hunger Man” (“Ein Hungerkünstler”, )

• "First Woe"(“Ersters Leid”);
• "Small woman"(“Eine kleine Frau”);
• "Hunger"(“Ein Hungerkünstler”);
• "The Singer Josephine, or the Mouse People"(“Josephine, die Sängerin, oder Das Volk der Mäuse”, -);

Short prose

• "Bridge"(“Die Brücke”, -)
• "Knock on the Gate"(“Der Schlag ans Hoftor”);
• "Neighbour"(“Der Nachbar”);
• "Hybrid"(“Eine Kreuzung”);
• "Appeal"(“Der Aufruf”);
• "New lamps"(“Neue Lampen”);
• "Railway Passengers"(“Im Tunnel”);
• "An Ordinary Story"(“Eine alltägliche Verwirrung”);
• "The Truth About Sancho Panza"(“Die Wahrheit über Sancho Pansa”);
• "Silence of the Sirens"(“Das Schweigen der Sirenen”);
• “Commonwealth of Scoundrels” (“Eine Gemeinschaft von Schurken”);
• "Prometheus"("Prometheus", );
• "Homecoming"(“Heimkehr”);
• "City coat of arms"(“Das Stadtwappen”);
• "Poseidon"("Poseidon", );
• "Commonwealth"(“Gemeinschaft”);
• “At Night” (“Nachts”);
• "Rejected Petition"(“Die Abweisung”);
• "On the issue of laws"(“Zur Frage der Gesetze”);
• “Recruitment” (“Die Truppenaushebung”);
• "Exam"(“Die Prüfung”);
• “Kite” (“Der Geier”);
• “The Helmsman” (“Der Steuermann”);
• "Top"(“Der Kreisel”);
• "Fable"(“Kleine Fabel”);
• "Departure"(“Der Aufbruch”);
• "Defenders"(“Fürsprecher”);
• "The Married Couple"(“Das Ehepaar”);
• “Comment (don’t get your hopes up!)”(“Kommentar - Gibs auf!”, );
• "About Parables"("Von den Gleichnissen",).

Novels

• "Process "(“Der Prozeß”, -), including the parable “Before the Law”;
• "America" ​​("Missing")(“Amerika” (“Der Verschollene”), -), including the story “The Stoker” as the first chapter.

Letters

• Letters to Felice Bauer (Briefe an Felice, 1912-1916);
• Letters to Greta Bloch (1913-1914);
• Letters to Milena Jesenskaya (Briefe an Milena);
• Letters to Max Brod (Briefe an Max Brod);
• Letter to Father (November 1919);
• Letters to Ottla and other family members (Briefe an Ottla und die Familie);
• Letters to parents from 1922 to 1924. (Briefe an die Eltern aus den Jahren 1922-1924);
• Other letters (including to Robert Klopstock, Oscar Pollack, etc.);

Diaries (Tagebücher)

• 1910. July - December;
• 1911. January - December;
• 1911-1912. Travel diaries written during a trip to Switzerland, France and Germany;
• 1912. January - September;
• 1913. February - December;
• 1914. January - December;
• 1915. January - May, September - December;
• 1916. April - October;
• 1917. July - October;
• 1919. June - December;
• 1920. January;
• 1921. October - December;
• 1922. January - December;
• 1923. June.

Notebooks in octavo

8 workbooks by Franz Kafka ( - gg.), containing rough sketches, stories and versions of stories, reflections and observations.

Aphorisms

• "Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope and the True Path"(“Betrachtungen über Sünde, Leid, Hoffnung und den wahren Weg”, ).

The list contains more than a hundred sayings by Kafka, selected by him based on materials from the 3rd and 4th notebooks in octavo.

About Kafka

• Theodor Adorno "Notes on Kafka";
• Georges Bataille "Kafka" ;
• Valery Belonozhko “Gloomy notes about the novel “The Trial””, "Three Sagas of Franz Kafka's Unfinished Novels";
• Walter Benjamin "Franz Kafka";
• Maurice Blanchot "From Kafka to Kafka"(two articles from the collection: Reading Kafka and Kafka and Literature);
• Max Brod "Franz Kafka. Biography";
• Max Brod “Afterwords and notes to the novel “Castle””;
• Max Brod "Franz Kafka. Prisoner of the Absolute";
• Max Brod "Kafka's Personality";
• Albert Camus "Hope and absurdity in the works of Franz Kafka";
• Max Fry "Fasting for Kafka";
• Yuri Mann "Meeting in the Labyrinth (Franz Kafka and Nikolai Gogol)";
• David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb "Kafka for Beginners";
• Vladimir Nabokov "The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka";
• Cynthia Ozick "The Impossibility of Being Kafka";
• Anatoly Ryasov "The Man with Too Much Shadow";
• Nathalie Sarraute "From Dostoevsky to Kafka".

Notes

Links

• Franz Kafka "Castle" ImWerden Library
• The Kafka Project (In English)
• http://www.who2.com/franzkafka.html (In English)
• http://www.pitt.edu/~kafka/intro.html (In English)
• http://www.dividingline.com/private/Philosophy/Philosophers/Kafka/kafka.shtml (In English)

Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) is a famous German writer, a classic of twentieth-century literature. During his lifetime he was not deservedly appreciated. Almost everything famous works The writer was published after his premature death.

Childhood

The future writer was born in Prague. He was the first of six children in a fairly wealthy Jewish family. Two of his brothers died in early childhood, leaving only his sisters. Kafka the elder was a successful merchant. He made a good fortune selling haberdashery. Mother came from wealthy brewers. Thus, despite the lack of titles and belonging to high society, the family was never in need.

As soon as Franz was six years old, he began attending primary school. In those years, no one doubted the need for education. The boy's parents are an example own life understood its importance very well.

Franz studied well. He was modest and well-mannered child, invariably neatly dressed and courteous, so adults always treated him favorably. At the same time, his lively mind, knowledge, and sense of humor attracted peers to the boy.

Of all the subjects, Franz was initially most fascinated by literature. To be able to discuss what he read and share his thoughts, he initiated the organization of literary meetings. They were popular. Inspired by this, Kafka decided to go further and create his own theater group. Most of all, his friends were surprised by this. They knew very well how shy their friend was and not entirely confident in himself. Therefore, his desire to play on stage raised eyebrows. However, Franz could always count on support.

Study, work

In 1901, Kafka graduated from high school and received a matriculation certificate. He had to decide on his future activities. After doubting for some time, the young man chose law and went to understand its complexities at Charles University. This is not to say that it was only his decision. More like a compromise with his father, who was going to involve him in trading.

Relationship with an oppressive father young man turned out badly. In the end, Franz left his home and lived for many years in rented apartments and rooms, living from penny to penny. After graduating from university, Kafka was forced to take a job as an official in the insurance department. It was a nice place, but not for him.

The young man was not cut out for such work. In his dreams, he saw himself as a writer, and devoted all his free time to the study of literature and his own creativity. In the latter, he saw exclusively an outlet for himself, not for a moment recognizing the artistic value of his works. He was so embarrassed by them that he even bequeathed to his friend to destroy all his literary experiments in the event of his death.

Kafka was a very sick person. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In addition, the writer was tormented by frequent migraines and insomnia. Most experts agree that these problems had psychological roots, going back to childhood, family and relationships with the father. Be that as it may, Kafka spent most of his life in endless depression. This is very clearly visible in his work.

Relationships with women

Kafka never married. However, there were women in his life. For a long time, the writer had a relationship with Felicia Bauer. She clearly wanted to marry him, because the girl was not embarrassed by the broken engagement and the fact that he soon proposed to her again. However, the wedding did not end this time either. Kafka changed his mind again.

These events can also be explained by the fact that the young people communicated mainly by correspondence. Based on the letters, Kafka created in his imagination the image of a girl who in reality turned out to be completely different.

The writer's greatest love was Milena Jesenskaya. For the 20s of the last century, she was an incredibly free and self-sufficient person. A translator and journalist, Milena saw a talented writer in her lover. She was one of the few with whom he shared his creativity. It seemed that their romance could develop into something more. However, Milena was married.

At the very end of his life, Kafka began an affair with nineteen-year-old Dora Diamant.

Creation

During his lifetime, Kafka published only a small number of stories. He would not have done this either if it were not for his close friend Max Brod, who always tried to support the writer and believed in his talent. It was to him that Kafka bequeathed to destroy all written works. However, Brod did not do this. On the contrary, he sent all the manuscripts to the printing house.

Soon Kafka's name became famous. Readers and critics highly appreciated everything that was saved from the fire. Unfortunately, Dora Diamant still managed to destroy some of the books that she received.

Death

In his diaries, Kafka often talks about fatigue from constant illness. He directly expresses his confidence that he will not live more than forty years. And he turned out to be right. In 1924 he died.

This is how intellectuals joked in the Soviet era, paraphrasing the beginning of a famous song about aviators. Kafka came into our lives as a writer who created a stunningly profound image of the bureaucratic machine that controls society.

Thomas Mann's son, Klaus, tried on Kafkaesque clothes for Hitler's Germany. For some time we believed that this “ammunition” was especially good for the countries of victorious socialism. But as this system transforms into a market one, it becomes clear that Kafka's world is comprehensive, that it traces connections that largely determine the parameters of the entire twentieth century.

The image of this world is also the history of construction Chinese wall, and the memoirs of a certain Russian about the road to Kalda, built by Kafka on the materials of two eastern despotisms. But first of all, this is the novel “The Castle,” which Kafka wrote but abandoned a couple of years before his death. The novel grew, naturally, not from Soviet reality, but from the bureaucratic world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which until 1918 included the Czech lands.

“The Castle” is dry, drawn-out, difficult to digest, just as bureaucratic relations themselves are dry, drawn-out and difficult to digest. The earlier novel "The Trial" was constructed differently - dynamic, alarming, lively. “The Process” is a person in a new world, “The Castle” is the world itself, in which a person is just a grain of sand.

Kafka saw a completely unexpected nature of connections between people at the beginning of the century, a completely unexpected mechanism for motivating their activities. Moreover, he saw it with his special vision, since even from the bureaucratic experience that he personally had, it was impossible to draw such deep conclusions: the world simply had not yet provided enough material for this.

Just as The Trial was being written, Walter Rathenau began to build a military-industrial complex in Germany with its new system of connections. Just as The Castle was being written, Rathenau was killed. The new world was just being built, but Kafka had already seen it.

Rathenau was one of a rare breed of pragmatists, while the “advanced thinkers” who then talked about the struggle of classes or races found almost no place for bureaucracy in their intellectual constructions. Kafka showed it as the form of the entire life of society, permeated the entire vertical of power and subordination with new relationships: from the castle to the village.

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The reasons for the discovery made by Kafka can be explained by the fact that he was a genius. Usually no one argues with this. But, I think, such an explanation is still not enough.

It would be more accurate to say that Kafka accomplished a feat. In the literal sense of the word, without any exaggeration. It was a meditation in reverse, an ascent not to eternal bliss, but to eternal torment. Having physically felt the horror of the world, he was able to understand it.

“Just write furiously at night - that’s what I want. And die from it or go crazy...” (from a letter to Felitsa).

Over the years, he brought himself to a state in which the world visible to an ordinary person was closed to him, and something completely different was revealed. He killed himself, but before his death he saw something that may have justified the sacrifice.

Pig dance

"I am a completely awkward bird. I am Kavka, a jackdaw (in Czech - D.T.) ... my wings have died. And now for me there is neither height nor distance. Confused, I jump among people ... I am gray , like ashes. A jackdaw passionately wanting to hide among the stones." This is how Kafka characterized himself in a conversation with a young writer.

However, it was more of a joke. But not because in reality he saw the world in bright colors. On the contrary, everything was much worse. Kafka did not feel like a bird, even with dead wings. More likely, slimy insects, a rodent shaking with fear, or even a pig, unclean for any Jew.

Here is from an early diary - soft, almost tender: “At times I heard myself from the side, as if a kitten was whining.” Here is one from later letters - nervous, desperate: “I, a forest animal, was lying somewhere in a dirty den.”

And here is a completely different image. Having once made a creepy page-sized sketch in his diary, Kafka immediately wrote: “Continue your dance, you pigs. Why should I care?” And below: “But this is truer than anything I have written in the last year.”

His stories were simply told at times from the point of view of animals. And if in “The Study of One Dog” there is a lot of external, rational (although how can one not compare it with the diary entry: “I could hide in a dog’s kennel, coming out only when food is brought”), then in the story about the mouse singer Josephine the world the real and the fictional begin to intersect in incredible ways. The dying Kafka loses his voice under the influence of tuberculous laryngitis and begins to squeak like a mouse.

But it becomes truly scary when, in his most famous story, “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka depicts a hero very similar to the author, who turned one “beautiful” morning into a disgusting insect.

Knowing that the writer did not compose his best images, but simply took them from the world into which only his vision penetrated, it is not difficult to imagine the feelings of Kafka describing his own hard-shelled back, his own brown, convex belly divided by arched scales, his its own numerous, pathetically thin paws, on the pads of which there was some kind of sticky substance.

The hero of "The Metamorphosis" dies, hunted down by his loved ones. The ending is spectacular, but too shocking, too reminiscent of a showdown with one’s own family. In the story "Nora", written towards the end of his life, everything is simpler and more natural.

His hero - either a man or an animal - buries himself in the ground all his life, moving away from the world around him, which is so terrible and cruel. To hide, to disappear, to pull a layer of soil over himself like a protective spacesuit - this has been the goal of his life since birth. But there is no salvation in the hole either. He hears the roar of a certain monster breaking through the thickness of the earth towards him, he feels his own skin thinning, making him pitiful and defenseless.

"Nora" is horror without end, horror generated solely by one's own worldview, and not by external circumstances. Only death can save him: “Doctor, give me death, otherwise...”

Franz Kafka and Joseph K.

For many years, Kafka purposefully left the world of people. The animal world born of his pen is only an external, most simplified idea of ​​what he felt. Where he actually lived at the time when he was struggling with insomnia in his Prague apartment or sitting his pants down in the office, no one will probably be able to understand.

To some extent, Kafka's personal world emerges from the diaries he began keeping at the age of 27. This world is a continuous nightmare. The author of the diaries is in a completely hostile environment and, to his credit, responds to the world in kind.

All troubles began with bad upbringing. Father and mother, relatives, teachers, the cook who took little Franz to school, dozens of other people, close and not close, distorted the child’s personality, ruined a good part of him. As an adult, Kafka was unhappy.

He was unhappy because of his hateful job. After graduating from the University of Prague, becoming a lawyer, Kafka was forced to become an insurance official in order to earn a living. The service distracted from creativity, taking away the best hours of the day - those hours in which masterpieces could be born.

He was unhappy due to his fragile health. With a height of 1.82, he weighed 55 kg. The body did not take food well, the stomach constantly hurt. Insomnia gradually worsened, weakening the already weak nervous system.

A wonderful verbal portrait of Kafka was given by an acquaintance who saw from the bridge over the Vltava how Franz, exhausted from rowing, lay at the bottom of the boat: “As before the last judgment“The graves have already been opened, but the dead have not yet risen.”

He was unhappy in his personal life. He fell in love several times, but was never able to connect with any of his chosen ones. Having lived his whole life as a bachelor, Kafka had dreams with a terrible public woman, whose body was covered with large wax-red circles with fading edges and red splashes scattered between them, sticking to the fingers of the man caressing her.

He hated and feared even his own body. “How alien, for example, are the muscles of my arm,” Kafka wrote in his diary. Since childhood, he had been stooping and his entire long, awkward body was hunched over because of his uncomfortable clothes. He was afraid of food because of his unhealthy stomach, and when it calmed down, this crazy eater was ready to rush to the other extreme, imagining how he was pushing long rib cartilages into his mouth without biting off, and then pulling them out from below, breaking through the stomach and intestines.

He was lonely and cut off from society, because he could not talk about anything other than literature (“I have no inclination towards literature, I’m just made up of literature”), and this topic was deeply indifferent to both his family and his colleagues.

Finally, to the whole complex of reasons that alienated Kafka from the world, we must add anti-Semitism, which made the life of a Jewish family dangerous and unpredictable.

It is not surprising that the theme of suicide constantly appears in Kafka’s diary: “to run to the window and through the broken frames and glass, weakened from the exertion of strength, step over the window parapet.” True, it didn’t come to this, but with the prediction of his own death - “I won’t live to see 40 years old” - Kafka was almost right.

So, a truly terrible face emerges from the pages of the diary. But was it really Kafka? I would venture to suggest that we have, rather, a portrait inner world a certain Joseph K. - the literary double of the writer, who appears either in “The Trial” or in “The Castle”.

As for F. Kafka, who lived in Prague, he was born into a decent and well-to-do Jewish family. Kafka's biographers cannot find any traces of a particularly difficult childhood, no traces of deprivation or repression from parents. In any case, for an era in which the child, in fact, was not yet recognized as a person (for more details, see the article about M. Montessori - “Delo”, October 14, 2002), Franz’s childhood can be considered prosperous.

By the way, he did not have any congenital dangerous diseases. Sometimes he even played sports. Kafka had his first sexual experience at the age of 20 - not too late in those days. The saleswoman from the ready-made dress store was quite pretty, and “the whining flesh found peace.” And in the future, the timid but charming young man was not an outcast in female society.

But he was simply lucky with his friends. A small literary circle formed in Prague, where young people could find grateful listeners in each other. Among them was Max Brod, a man who admired Kafka, considered him a genius, constantly stimulated his creativity and helped him get published. Any writer can only dream of such a friend.

Kafka's part-time work was dust-free and took a minimum of time and effort. The intelligent boss doted on him and paid him sick leave for many months even when Kafka himself was ready to retire early.

To all this we can add that it is difficult to talk seriously about anti-Semitism in Prague against the backdrop of what was happening in Russia, Romania, Vienna under Mayor Lueger, and even in France during the Dreyfus affair. Jews had difficulties finding work, but connections and money easily made it possible to overcome them.

So, this is a completely different world. And the most interesting thing is that in his notes, one way or another, Kafka recognizes both the natural kindness of his father (by the way, already as an adult, Franz voluntarily lived in his parents’ family), and the friendliness of his boss, and the value of his relationship with Max. But this is all in passing. Suffering, on the contrary, sticks out.

Tombstone for yourself

So was the diary - the most intimate document for any person - lying? To some extent, Kafka himself, in his writings of recent years, gives reason to think that in his youth he exaggerated his colors. And yet I would venture to suggest: there were two Kafkas, both true.

One is a real Prague resident (this image is reflected in the first biography of Kafka, written by Brod). The other is an equally real inhabitant of the world of monsters generated by his consciousness and reflected by his work (even Brod saw this world only after reading the diaries, which happened after the publication of the biography). These two worlds fought among themselves, and the decisive circumstance that determined life, creativity and early death Kafka, was that he gave full rein to the world of monsters, which gradually swallowed its owner entirely.

Critics and ideologists have repeatedly tried to retroactively attribute Kafka to an active life position. In Brod, the unfortunate sufferer, who has absorbed from the centuries-old culture of his people, perhaps, only a feeling of enduring pain, appears as a humanist, a lover of life and a deeply religious Jew. Another author interprets a random episode from Kafka’s life as a passion for anarchism. Finally, in the USSR, in order to publish a writer alien to socialism, critics emphasized his sympathy for the working people, whom he insured against injury and disability.

All these estimates seem far-fetched. Unless one can speculate about Judaism, especially since it is impossible to ignore Brod’s opinion.

Kafka did not like decadents and, unlike Nietzsche, did not consider God dead. And yet his view of God was no less paradoxical, no less pessimistic: "We are just one of his bad moods. He was having a bad day." Where does the Jewish idea of ​​God's chosenness fit in?

Kafka lived in a Jewish environment, was interested in the culture and history of Jews, and the problem of emigration to Palestine. And yet his soul, so poorly contained in his body, was eager not to reach the heights of Zion, but to the world of German, Scandinavian and Russian intellectualism. His real surroundings were not the neighboring Jews and not Brod, who was shocked by the discovery of Kafka’s diaries, which revealed a corner of his soul that remained closed to his contemporaries. The real environment was the literature of thought and suffering - Goethe, T. Mann, Hesse, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Strindberg, Hamsun.

For a long time, Kafka was convinced (most likely rightly) that he could write only by driving himself into a corner and killing everything human in himself. And therefore he really drove and killed, erecting instead of a living person, as he himself put it, " tombstone yourself."

He read Freud, but did not appreciate him. As T. Adorno aptly noted, “instead of healing neuroses, he seeks in them themselves a healing power - the power of knowledge.”

However, how fair is it to say that Kafka made a conscious decision to leave? There is an amazing entry in the diary, at first glance about nothing: “Why don’t the Chukchi leave their terrible land?.. They can’t; everything that is possible happens; only what happens is possible.”

Kafka lived as best he could, and it was not in his power to make a choice. To be precise, he was trying to escape from a world of horror. But the wall separating him from the human world turned out to be insurmountable.

Sleeping beauty cannot be a prince

Kafka tried to pull himself out of the swamp by his hair, as Baron Munchausen once did. The first attempt was made on the threshold of his thirtieth birthday, when the internal crisis recorded in the diary was already in full swing.

While visiting Brod, he found a guest from Berlin, Felitza Bauer, a 25-year-old Jewish woman with a bony, blank face, as Kafka himself wrote in his diary a week later. Not a bad characteristic for a future lover?

However, a month later he begins a long, long affair with her in letters. The beginning of this novel is marked by a burst of creativity. In one night he writes the story “The Verdict”, giving it his all, until his heart hurts, and imbued with a feeling of satisfaction with what has been achieved, so rare for him.

Then the creative energy is completely transferred to the epistolary genre. Sometimes Kafka writes Felice several letters a day. But at the same time he makes no attempt to see each other, although the distance from Prague to Berlin is generally ridiculous. He doesn’t even take advantage of her visit to his sister in Dresden (which is very close).

Finally, more than six months after the beginning of the novel in letters, Kafka deigns to pay a voluntary-compulsory and very short visit to his “beloved.” After another three months, the “young lover,” having not really looked at the empty, bony face of his passion, proposes to her.

In the stream of words that was previously unleashed on Felitsa, Kafka’s self-deprecating characteristics attract attention, clearly demonstrating to the girl the monsters that grew in his soul. It would seem that everything was done in order to get a refusal. But, paradoxically, Felitsa agrees, apparently considering that she is already at that age when she doesn’t have to be particularly picky. For Kafka this is a complete disaster.

Two weeks later, the moment of truth arrives. With the pedantry of an official, Kafka writes out seven points of analysis in his diary: the pros and cons of marriage. Now everything is clear. He passionately wants to escape from his loneliness, but at the same time he is aware that he cannot entrust the monsters carefully cherished in his soul to anyone. Just a piece of paper. After all, the melting down of monsters into fiction is, in fact, the meaning of his life.

He used the girl, flattering himself with the illusion of being able to enter the human world, but at the same time not wanting it. He tormented her, but at the same time he suffered himself. He was creating a novel that was doomed to failure. If there is a sadder story in the world than the story of Romeo and Juliet, then this is undoubtedly the romance of Franz and Felitsa.

Again from the diary: “A prince can marry sleeping beauty and worse, but sleeping beauty cannot be a prince.” Kafka cannot stay awake because then he will not have his nightmares.

But there is no turning back now. He is flying into the abyss and must certainly grab onto someone, without, however, taking on any obligations. As soon as the correspondence with Felitsa fades away, a new stage of epistolary creativity begins. Kafka's verbal stream now falls on the friend of the failed bride, Greta Bloch, who later claimed that she had a son from Kafka.

But Kafka is not an adventurer, easily able to switch his attention to a new object. He suffers deeply and... gets engaged to Felitsa. However, the hopelessness of developing these relations is obvious. Soon the engagement is broken off. And three years later they suddenly find themselves engaged again. One may recall Marx: “History repeats itself twice, once as a tragedy, once as a farce.”

Housing problem

However, a month after the second engagement took place, the farce again turns into a tragedy. Kafka suffers a pulmonary hemorrhage. Doctors might call it psychosomatic. Kafka drove himself into a corner, and stress degenerated into a quite physically tangible illness.

Tuberculosis became an excuse for breaking off the second engagement. Now Felitsa is gone forever. The seriously ill Kafka, four years before his death, made another attempt to connect his fate with a woman, Julia Vokhrytsek, but as soon as the future spouses learned that they could not count on the apartment they had eyed, they immediately backed down.

However, this was not the end. Kafka’s last years were illuminated by “a living fire such as I had never seen before” (from a letter to Brod). This fire's name was Milena Jesenská. Czech, 23 years old, married, mentally unstable, cocaine addict, spendthrift... Journalist and writer, translator of Kafka into Czech, man of frantic energy, future communist, future resistance fighter, future victim of Ravensbrück...

Perhaps someday the name Milena will stand on a par with the names of Laura, Beatrice, Dulcinea. In her love with Franz, reality mixed with myth, but literature needs such myths. The slowly dying Kafka finally had a source from which he could draw energy.

It was impossible to connect with Milena (she was satisfied with her existing husband), and it was not necessary. She lived in Vienna, he lived in Prague. Correspondence gave the illusion of life. But illusions cannot last forever. When Milena directed her “living fire” to warm other objects, Kafka had no choice but to die. But before his death, he also built the “Castle”.

He died in the arms of a young girl, Dora Dimant, a Polish Jew, to whom he also managed to propose his hand and heart. Franz was already acting like a child, Dora was either a child or a mother caring for her sick son. But nothing could be changed.

And Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. Then everything was just beginning, everything was possible. There were still 41 years left before death.

Franz Kafka's Jewish roots 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 ban on the writer. How did the master of word formation Franz Kafka live and work?

Kafka: 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 wholesale trader. 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 German, which his mother taught him, Kafka knew Czech and French.

In 1901, Franz graduated from high school and 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.

Subsequently, Kafka worked all his life in the same 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 of his boss, colleagues and all his activities in general.

During his working life, Kafka significantly improved working conditions in factories throughout the Czech Republic. He was highly valued and respected at work. In 1917, doctors discovered Kafka had 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 poorly and ascetically. I wandered around 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 healthy image life. In his youth, he played sports and tried to adhere to a vegetarian diet, but could not recover from his ailments.

Kafka often engaged in self-flagellation. I was dissatisfied with myself and the world around me. I wrote a lot about this in my diaries. While still at school, Franz helped organize performances and promoted a literary circle. He impressed those around him as a neat young man with an excellent sense of humor.

Since school days, Franz was friends with Max Brod. This friendship continued until the writer’s hasty death. Personal life Kafka didn't work out. Some researchers believe that this state of affairs had roots 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 Julia Vochrytsek. But here too family life didn't work out. Afterwards, 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 or breathe normally and 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 in the New Cemetery for Jews in Olshany.

The writer's works and his creativity

• "Contemplation";
• "Fireman";
• "Country Doctor"
• "Hunger";
• "Kara."

The collections and novels were selected by Franz for publication himself. Before his death, Kafka expressed a desire for his loved ones to destroy the remaining manuscripts and diaries. Some of his works actually went into the fire, but many remained and were published after the death of the author.

The novels “America”, “Castle” and “The Trial” were never completed by the author, but the existing chapters were still published. Eight of the author’s workbooks have also survived. They contain sketches and sketches of works he never wrote.

What did Kafka, who lived a difficult life, write about? Fear of the world and the judgment of the Higher Powers permeates all the author’s works. His father wanted his son to become the heir to his business, and the boy did not live up to 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.

Novels written in the style of realism convey everyday life without unnecessary embellishment. The author's style may seem dry and clerical, but the plot twists in the stories and novels are quite non-trivial.

There is a lot that is unsaid in his works. The writer reserves the right for the reader to independently interpret some situations in the works. In general, Kafka's works are filled with tragedy and a depressing atmosphere. The author wrote some of his works together with his friend Max Brod.

For example, “The First Long Journey by Rail” or “Richard and Samuel” is a short prose of two friends who 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 greatest approval from critics around the world. Readers also loved him. Who knows how many beautiful works were burned in the fire on the orders of the author himself. But what has reached the public is considered a magnificent addition to the postmodern style in art and literature.