Ever heard the term ‘Kafkaesque’?
How many writers make such an impact that their name becomes an adjective describing works reminiscent of their own style? These days, whenever a story takes a surreal or horrific turn that highlights the unconquerable complexity of a faceless system, it’s called “Kafkaesque.” That was the impact Franz Kafka left on the world.
Early Years
Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic, writer Franz Kafka grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. After studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and wrote in the evenings. In 1923, he moved to Berlin to focus on writing, but died of tuberculosis shortly after. His friend Max Brod published most of his work posthumously, such as Amerika and The Castle.
Tragedy shaped the Kafka home. Franz’s two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy by the time Kafka was 6, leaving the boy the only son in a family that included three daughters.
Kafka had a difficult relationship with both of his parents. His mother, Julie, was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual depth to understand her son’s dreams to become a writer. Kafka’s father, Hermann, had a forceful personality that often overwhelmed the Kafka home. He was a success in business, making his living retailing men’s and women’s clothes.
Kafka’s father had a profound impact on both Kafka’s life and writing. He was a tyrant of sorts, with a wicked temper and little appreciation for his son’s creative side. Much of Kafka’s personal struggles, in romance and other relationships, came, he believed, in part from his complicated relationship with his father.
Personal Life
In 1906 Kafka completed his law degree; he found work with the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. At work Kafka was a popular employee, easy to socialize with and seen as somebody with a good sense of humor. But his personal life still raged with complications. His inhibitions and insecurities plagued his relationships. Twice he was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Felice Bauer, before the two finally went their separate ways in 1917.
Later, Kafka later fell in love with Dora Dymant (Diamant), who shared his Jewish roots and a preference for socialism. Amidst Kafka’s increasingly dire health, the two fell in love and lived together in Berlin. Their relationship largely centered on Kafka’s illnesses. For many years, even before he contracted tuberculosis, Kafka had not been well. Constantly strained and stressed, he suffered from migraines, boils, depression, anxiety and insomnia.
Kafka and Dora eventually returned to Prague. In an attempt to overcome his tuberculosis, Kafka traveled to Vienna for treatment at a sanatorium.
Literary Works
While Kafka strove to earn a living, he also poured himself into his writing work. An old friend named Max Brod would prove crucial in supporting Kafka’s literary work both during his life and long after it.
Kafka’s celebrity as a writer only came after his death. During his lifetime, he published just a sliver of his overall work.
In his literature, Kafka’s characters were often coming up against an overbearing power of some kind, one that could easily break the will of men and destroy their sense of self-worth. In 1924, an ill but still working Kafka finished A Hunger Artist, which features four stories that demonstrate the concise and lucid style that marked his writing at the end of his life.
But Kafka, still living with the demons that plagued with him self-doubt, was reluctant to unleash his work on the world. He requested that Brod, who doubled as his literary executor, destroy any unpublished manuscripts.
Fortunately, Brod did not adhere to his friend’s wishes and in 1925 published The Trial, a dark, paranoid tale that proved to be the author’s most successful novel. The Trial is a harrowing novel about a man persecuted by an omniscient authority for a crime whose nature is never revealed. His works earned him a reputation as one of the most original writers of the 20th century.
The Metamorphosis is a similarly disturbing book in which the narrator awakens to learn he’s turned into a giant bug. Kafka’s stories probe the darker and less traveled areas of the human condition.
Death and Legacy
Incredibly, at the time of his death Kafka’s name was known only to small group of readers. It was only after he died and Max Brod went against the demands of his friend that Kafka and his work gained fame.
He was only 40 when he died Kierling, Austria, on June 3, 1924; he starved to death when tuberculosis made eating too painful. He was buried beside his parents in Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske.
Fact Source: Biography.com and Wikipedia
Image Source: Goodreads
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