KAFKA, Franz

Nationality: Austrian. Born: Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 3 July 1883. Education: Staatsgymnasium, Prague, 1893-1902; studied jurisprudence at Karl Ferdinand University, Prague, 1901-06; qualified in law, 1907; unpaid work in law courts, 1906-07. Family: Engaged to Felice Bauer twice but never married. Career: Worked for Assicurazioni Generali insurance company, 1907-08; Workers Accident Insurance Institute for tuberculosis, 1908-22; confined to a sanitorium, 1920-21; retired thereafter because of ill health. Died: 3 June 1924.

Publications

Collections

Gesammelte Werke, edited by Max Brod and others. 11 vols., 1950—.

Parables and Paradoxes: Parabeln und Paradoxe (bilingual edition). 1961.

Shorter Works, edited by Malcolm Pasley. 1973.

Stories 1904-1924. 1981.

Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer and others. 1983—.

The Transformation and Other Stories, edited by MalcolmPasley. 1992.

Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka. 1993.

The Collected Aphorisms. 1994.

Short Stories

Betrachtung. 1913.

Der Heizer: Ein Fragment. 1913.

Die Verwandlung. 1915; edited by Peter Hutchinson and MichaelMinden, 1985; as The Metamorphosis, 1937; edited by Stanley Corngold, 1972.

Das Urteil. 19l6.

In der Strafkolonie. 1919; as In the Penal Settlement: Tales and Short Prose Works. 1949.

Ein Landarzt. 1919.

Ein Hungerkünstler. 1924.

Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer. 1931; as The Great Wall of China, and Other Pieces, 1933.

Parables in German and English. 1947.

The Penal Colony, Stories and Short Pieces. 1948.

Wedding Preparations in the Country and Other Stories. 1953.

Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings. 1954.

Metamorphosis and Other Stories. 1961.

Sämtliche Erzählungen, edited by Paul Raabe. 1970.

Complete Stories, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer. 1971.

The Judgement; and, In the Penal Colony. 1995.

Novels

Der Prozess. 1925; as The Trial, 1937, revised edition, 1956; edited by Malcolm Pasley, 1990.

Das Schloss. 1926; as The Castle, 1930, revised edition, 1953.

Amerika. 1927; original version, as Der Verschollene, edited by Jost Schillemeit, 1983; as America, 1938.

The Complete Novels. 1983.

Other

Tagebücher 1910-23. 1951; edited by Hans Gerd Koch, MichaelMüller, and Malcolm Pasley, 1990; as Diaries, 1919-1923, edited by Max Brod, 1948; Diaries, 1914-1923, 1949.

Briefe an Milena, edited by Willy Haas. 1951; revised edition by Jürgen Born and Michael Müller, 1983; as Letters to Milena, 1953.

Briefe 1902-24, edited by Max Brod. 1958; as Letter to Friends, Family and Editors, 1977.

Briefe an Felice, edited by Erich Heller and Jürgen Born. 1967; asLetters to Felice, 1973.

Briefe an Ottla und die Familie, edited by Klaus Wagenbach and Hartmut Binder. 1975; as Letters to Ottla and the Family, 1982.

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Bibliography:

A Kafka Bibliography 1908-76 by Angel Flores, 1976.

Critical Studies:

The Kafka Problem, 1946, and The Kafka Debate, 1976, both edited by Angel Flores; Kafka: A Biography by Max Brod, 1947; Kafka's Castle, 1956, and Kafka, 1973, both by Ronald Gray, and Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Gray, 1962; Kafka: Parable and Paradox by Heinz Politzer, 1962; The Reluctant Pessimist: A Study of Kafka by A. P. Foulkes, 1967; Kafka by Anthony Thorlby, 1972; Moment of Torment: An Interpretation of Kafka's Short Stories by Ruth Tiefenbrun, 1973; The Commentator's Despair: The Interpretation of Kafka's "Metamorphosis," 1973, and Kafka: The Necessity of Form, 1988, both Stanley Corngold; Kafka's Other Trial by Elias Canetti, 1974; Kafka: A Collection of Criticism edited by Leo Hamalian, 1974; Kafka: Literature as Corrective Punishment by Franz Kuna, 1974, and On Kafka edited by Kuna, 1976; Kafka in Context by John Hibberd, 1975; Kafka's "Trial": The Case Against Josef K. by Eric Marson, 1975; Kafka by Meno Spann, 1976; The World of Kafka by J. P. Stern, 1980, and Kafka Symposium: Paths and Labyrinths edited by Stern and J.J. White, 1985; The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation in the Life of Kafka by Daryl Sharp, 1980; K: A Biography of Kafka by Ronald Hayman, 1981; Kafka: Geometrician of Metaphor by Henry Sussman, 1981; Kafka's Narrators: A Study of His Stories and Sketches by Roy Pascal, 1982; Kafka of Prague by Jiri Grusa, 1983; The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Kafka by Ernst Pawel, 1984; Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature by Ritchie Robertson, 1985; Kafka's "Landarzt" Collection: Rhetoric and Interpretation by Gregory B. Triffitt, 1985; Kafka, 1986, Kafka's The Trial, 1987, Kafka's The Castle, 1988, and Kafka's The Metamorphosis, 1988, all edited by Harold Bloom; Sympathy for the Abyss: A Study in the Novel of German Modernism: Kafka, Broch, Musil and Thomas Mann by Stephen D. Dowden, 1986; The Loves of Kafka by Nahum N. Glatzer, 1986; Kafka's Use of Law in Fiction: A New Interpretation of In der Strafkolonie, Der Prozess and Das Schloss by Lida Kirchberger, 1986; Outside Humanity: A Study of Kafka's Fiction by Ramón G. Mendoza, 1986; As Lonely as Kafka by Marthe Robert, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1986; Kafka (1883-1983): His Craft and Thought edited by Roman Struc and J. C. Yardley, 1986; Kafka's Contextuality edited by Alan Udoff, 1986; The Dove and the Mole: Kafka's Journey into Darkness and Creativity edited by Ronald Gottesman and Moshe Lazar, 1987; Kafka's Prussian Advocate: A Study of the Influence of Heinrich von Kleist on Kafka by John M. Grandin, 1987; Constructive Destruction: Kafka's Aphorisims by Richard T. Gray, 1987; The Jewish Mystic in Kafka by Jean Jofen, 1987; Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary Readings edited by Alan Udoff, 1987; On the Threshold of the New Kabbalah: Kafka's Later Tales by Walter A. Strauss, 1988; Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics and the fin de siècle edited by Mark Anderson, 1989; A Hesitation Before Birth: The Life of Kafka by Peter Mailloux, 1989; Kafka's Rhetoric: The Passion of Reading by Clayton Koelb, 1989; After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka's Fiction by Shimon Sandbank, 1989; Kafka by Pietro Citati, 1990; Critical Essays on Kafka by Ruth V. Gross, 1990; Kafka and Language: In the Stream of Thoughts and Life by Gabriele von Natamer Cooper, 1991; Someone Like K: Kafka's Novels by Herbert Kraft, translated by R. J. Kavanagh, 1991; Kafka's Relatives: Their Lives and His Writing by Anthony Northey, 1991; A Life Study of Kafka by Ronald Gestwicki, 1992; Kafka's Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg fin de siècle by Mark M. Anderson, 1992; Kafka: Representative Man by Frederick Karl, 1993; Franz Kafka and Prague by Harald Salfellner, 1996; Kafka: Gender, Class and Race in the Letters and Fictions by Elizabeth Boa, 1996; Kafka by David Zane Mairowitz, 1996; Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis by Stanley Taikeff, 1996; Franz Kafka by Ronald Speirs, 1997; Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse by Rolf J. Goebel, 1997.

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W. H. Auden observed that Franz Kafka bears the same relationship to our age that Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to theirs: that is, he defines and exemplifies the modern spirit. Indeed, the modern age is too often "Kafkaesque": a nightmarish world of ethical, religious, and philosophic uncertainty. No writer has more memorably dramatized the alienation of the individual in a fathomless world than Kafka in his short fiction.

Kafka's short stories writhe with strain and struggle, with seeking, searching, questing, asking. They almost never resolve themselves by answering, finding, arriving. Inevitably the struggle ends in death ("The Metamorphosis," "Before the Law"), in the realization that the struggle is endless ("The Hunter Gracchus"), or in the even more bitter conclusion that the concept of "goal" or "end" is itself a deception ("The Departure"). In the hands of another writer the very intensity of the struggle might imply a certain existential affirmation, but not so in Kafka, where the greater the struggle, the more cruel the "punch line" at the end.

Indeed, many of Kafka's stories, especially those later collected under the title Parables and Paradoxes, have a sort of cosmic joke structure. Perhaps the most famous example is "Before the Law," which was also incorporated as a section of Kafka's great novel Der Prozess (The Trial). The law of the title can be interpreted as meaning literally the law of the land, or more generally the bureaucracy that forms so much of the unwieldy apparatus of modern life, or the fundamental governing principles of life (the answers to all the hard questions, in other words), or, perhaps, God. At the beginning of the brief parable a man appears before the open door of the law but is denied entry by the gatekeeper. It is possible he will be permitted entry later, says the gatekeeper, but perhaps not. The man is tempted to push on past (shouldn't everyone be granted free access to the law? he wonders), but decides against it. Instead, he sits on a stool provided by the gatekeeper for days, months, years. His life passes in growing exasperation and bitterness. Near death, he finally asks the question that's been troubling him for years: if everyone wants to be admitted to the law, why has no one else appeared at this particular door? Then comes the cosmic punch line: because, "roars" the gatekeeper, the door was made for that man alone. The parable ends with the gatekeeper preparing to close the door.

"Before the Law" dramatizes a typical Kafkan conflict. A man comes near to something he greatly desires but is forestalled for no very clear reasons. Indeed, the lack of any justification or explanation for the bitter thing that his life has become is at least as painful as the fact that he fails to achieve his goal. It may also occur to the reader that the man must assume a good deal of the blame for his life due to his indecisiveness (why not charge through the door?) and his obsessiveness (why not simply leave?). Hence, the end is both cruelly ironic and appropriate. The man has appeared before the law, sentence has been passed, and judgment has been carried out—only the man did not realize it was happening to him all along.

One level of despair beyond the forestalled seeker is another archetypal figure in Kafka's short fiction: the man who is beyond goals, beyond hope. One of the purest examples is a brief fiction called "The Departure." In a very few sentences Kafka dramatizes the plight of a man alienated in a world of non-understanding. His servant does not understand his simple order to saddle his horse. Only the narrator hears the sound of a distant trumpet. After the man saddles his own horse the servant asks where he is going. He replies:

"I don't know … just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it's the only way I can reach my goal."

"So you know your goal?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, "I just told you. Out of here—that's my goal." (translated by Jania and James Stern)

Kafka's famous death wish is obvious in "The Departure." Indeed, although specific facts from his life rarely intrude on his fiction, Kafka was the most autobiographical of writers. "The Burrow" is a good example of a work in which we sense the writer beset by his private demons. The protagonist of the tale is a mole-like animal who constructs his labyrinthine burrow as a haven against the horrors lying in wait, supposedly, outside. Inevitably, the burrow becomes less a haven than a trap. The mole is afraid of life "outside" yet is wretchedly miserable and alone in the world of his own making. Beyond the obvious religious and philosophical parallels, it is tempting to see the mole as Kafka and the burrow as his art, which was both his relief from the pressures of living and an obsession that prevented him from living the "normal" life that he so desired. Indeed, the agony that writing too often was for Kafka (as witnessed in his diaries) is dramatized in the mole's method of "composition":

So I had to run with my forehead, thousands and thousands of times, for whole days and nights, against the ground, and I was glad when the blood came, for that was proof that the walls were beginning to harden; and in that way, as everybody must admit, I richly paid for my Castle Keep. (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

Kafka richly paid for everything. It is an appropriate irony for this crown prince of alienation that his agonizing investment would pay little dividend until after his death. It is difficult today to overestimate Kafka's influence on the way we see the world and the way writers see the potential of fiction, especially short fiction. By World War II a sort of quotidian realism had come to dominate the world of short fiction to the exclusion of virtually all other modes. It was Kafka and those influenced by him, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Donald Bartheleme, who broke the stale molds and demonstrated what vivid, profound, fanciful, and provocative realms were available to writers and readers of short fiction.

—Dennis Vannatta

See the essays on "A Hunger Artist," "In the Penal Colony," "The Judgment," and "The Metamorphosis."