On July 3, 1883, Franz. Kafka was born in Prague. His parents were so busy doing business that they couldn't take care of him, so he could only mingle with his wet nurse, the old nanny, the poisonous kitchen lady, and the sad female teacher, and his childhood was "fearful and lonely". Once he tried to spoil himself, in the middle of the night clamoring for water to drink, but in fact he was not thirsty, his father scolded him fiercely, and seeing that it did not work, he pulled him out of the bed and dragged him to the balcony, closed the door and let him stand for a long time. Since then, he has learned to "live alone" and learn to cope normally in life without parents.
On September 16, 1889, Kafka entered elementary school. The "energetic" cook sent him to school every day, and the cook told him to obey and go fast, and threatened to tell the teacher how naughty he was at home if he dared not do it. So Kafka walks into school every day with a strong fear that his imaginary bad behavior will be discovered, and returns home. In view of this, Kafka was "modest and quiet" in school, a "good student" and a "model student".
On September 19, 1893, Kafka entered secondary school. Originally, Kafka was supposed to be in the fifth grade, but due to his good academic performance, his father wanted his son Jackie Chan to jump off the grade and go directly to middle school. He read a large number of literary masterpieces during his secondary school years, including but not limited to Plato's "Apologetics", Ovid's "Metamorphosis", Goethe's "The Troubles of Young White", etc., and began to write at the age of 13.
But then he burned all these works, and no one knew what exactly he had written. But one thing is certain, it is at this time that he has made up his mind to become a writer in the future. Because in a lonely and boring life, "the pleasure of reading is the only enjoyment he never regrets."
In the summer of 1900, Kafka came into contact with Nietzsche's "What Zarathustra Says" and was immediately fascinated. He wrote with a clever brush: There is a living memorial, which gently touches everything worth remembering like an affectionate hand. If a flame rises from this ash, fiery and fierce, and you gaze inside, as if attracted by magic, then such a pure memorial can only be written on white and simple paper.
When he wrote this, Nietzsche had just died 10 days ago, and he had no idea of Nietzsche's death.
In July 1901, Kafka graduated from high school with 84 classmates in all grades, and only 24 completed the graduation examination. The graduation exams were "daunting", and some students shot themselves because they failed to pass the exam many times. Kafka's six homework grades are very good, "commendable (good)" and "satisfactory (passing)". In October, Kafka was admitted to the university to study chemistry. Originally, he wanted to study philosophy, but he was afraid that he would not be able to find a job after studying philosophy, so he had to abandon literature and reason.
Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, and walk all over the world without fear.
Just two weeks into school, he transferred to law. Because he found chemistry very difficult and "completely unsuitable for tasks in the laboratory." University life was tedious and jurisprudence was boring, and Kafka only struck at legal knowledge before the exam, and spent the rest of his time reading books such as philosophy and literature.
In 1906, Kafka graduated from university, with a difficult degree of a doctorate in law, and after graduation went to an internship in a local court. Working during the day, spending time playing billiards in a tavern at night, and "taking long walks and walking idly from the city center to the countryside" with friends. Recalling this "sympathetic time," he said, "people don't take hard-earned money, but they take the time they spend idle into the grave."
At the end of his internship, Kafka did not stay in the court, but joined a private insurance company. The insurance company had a high bar, so he enlisted the help of a friend's uncle and "paved the way for weeks." I first went in as a "temporary assistant" and waited until I had completed all the insurance law courses before I could handle new business independently. Kafka loved the job, saying that insurance "resembles the religion of primitive tribes, believing that disasters can be avoided through all kinds of manipulations."
Kafka was assigned to the life insurance department, where he was in charge of statistics. Working six days a week, department heads intimidate, scold and yell at each other in the office's daily interactions. Working hours are monotonous, competition between colleagues is fierce, the office atmosphere is very tense, and after work, Kafka quickly realizes that he will not be able to stand up for a long time in this state of life. To escape loneliness, he often went to bars, cafes and small theaters, and took advantage of holidays to travel around.
In February 1909, Kafka began to publish articles in magazines, and like all literary and artistic youths who were just beginning to write, the change of words into lead characters brought him "extremely intense sensual enjoyment". And he gradually realized that eight to 11 o'clock in the evening was the best time to create, because he needed "absolute silence". Since then, a single dog who has been clubbing and watching dramas has disappeared, replaced by a maverick hermit who has gradually disappeared from the circle of friends.
Kafka leaves work at two o'clock every day, and only on Thursdays does he have to work until six o'clock. Every day after work, he would lie on the couch or bed for a while, but he generally did not sleep well, in a half-asleep or shallow sleep state. After a little sleep, I go out for a walk, eat again in the evening, and start writing after eating.
When he went to bed in the afternoon, awake and asleep, fantasies and dreams inexplicably blended together, and when he woke up, "all the dreams gathered around me, but I tried my best to avoid thinking about them carefully." He once dreamed that he was placed in a big house to sleep, the house was full of taxis, cars, buses, etc., these vehicles were next to each other, up and down, interspersed with each other, the people in the car did not want to talk about anything else, blindly only talked about wage standards, correspondence, making friends, tips, counterfeit money and so on.
This dreamlike state made him very miserable and very tired. When he woke up, he recorded these dreams. Psychologist Freud said, "Daydreaming is the engine of literary writing." They cling to the fickle impressions of life, changing with every fluctuation of life situation."
On Sunday, November 17, 1912, Kafka lay in bed for a long time, not wanting to get up. This bedtime is his "consciousness of the ability to write." Whatever you want, you can discover from your heart." He had a restless dream in which he turned into a giant beetle. He was now preparing a new novel, the Metamorphosis that would later make him famous.
Metamorphosis tells the story of a "unmarried, living with his parents" traveling salesman named Samsa who wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a giant brown beetle. He lost his ability to speak, and the words he tried to say "became the cry of a beetle", but he had a human mind, and could think of everything and observe everything with his human mind. His family began to sympathize with him, to pity him, to care for him, to take care of him, and as time went on, they began to hate him, "[he] deserves only to be swept out as garbage." In the end, he unfortunately died, and his family was relieved. The novel, which took Kafka seven days, called it "an extremely disgusting story."
In order to make his son live a good life, Kafka's father invested money in an asbestos factory and made him a shareholder who did not participate in the actual business, but he needed to draft some contracts and terms, and often went to the factory to deal with judicial issues with workers. This took up Kafka's afternoon time, and Kafka was very upset, and had a heated argument with his father, after which he "lay on the couch and thought about how to jump out of the window for an hour." He stood in front of the fourth-floor window for a long time, whether to jump down and meditate for a long time. Fortunately, his mother noticed something was wrong in time and stopped him. His mother asked his uncle to inspect the factory for him, and Kafka saved the afternoon free time.
Since Kafka is not a professional writer, his main job is the head of an important department of the insurance company (mainly accounting for claims), "the company can not operate normally without him", so his writing status shows a "highly concentrated" trend, only three or four months a year to write "burst period", other times in a state of inability to write.
Beginning in 1915, his work burden increased, and with the outbreak of World War I, insurance companies needed to settle claims for war victims and their families, and Kafka had to work two hours of overtime a day, from four to six o'clock in the afternoon. The cruelty of the war made him creepy.
In the late autumn of 1916, Kafka, in order to be able to concentrate on writing without any interference, rented an apartment with a "small street as quiet as a fairy tale", which was small, with only one room and a small kitchen. The residence on the third floor was "cold and windy", blowing him to the point of tuberculosis.
On July 12, 1917, Kafka and Phyllis, who had been in love for many years, became engaged at the age of 34. A month after the engagement, he suddenly coughed up blood several times, and once it lasted for ten minutes. The maid found blood on the quilt and carpet the next day and predicted to him mercilessly that you would not live long. Since then, Kafka has often dreamed of a sharp-toothed banshee pinching his chest with her claws.
He went to the doctor, and the doctor told him it was tuberculosis. When the results of the inspection came out, he informed the company leaders and his fiancée separately. Tuberculosis was an incurable disease at the time, and it was not until four years after Kafka's death, in 1928, that Fremin discovered the antibacterial effect of penicillin, and it was another 14 years, that is, in 1942, that Howard extracted the substance (penicillin) from penicillin, and tuberculosis was conquered by humans.
Kafka said in 1921 that tuberculosis would also be controlled and eliminated, and that any disease would be controlled and eliminated.
Kafka's sideburns were white overnight. He offered to retire, but the company's manager told him it was impossible for the company to let him retire "because his job was indispensable in the company." But he can apply for leave for convalescence. Kafka understood that in order for his fiancée to be happy, he had to break off his marriage with her because "there is a love called letting go." When Phyllis sat for more than 30 hours on the train to see him, he received her coldly and completely without feeling, and offered to break up. He took her to the train station, watched her get on the train, knew that he "would never see her again" in this life, and returned home crying.
Kafka came to his sister's farm, helped "feed the cattle, build fences, grow vegetable gardens", and left the hustle and bustle of the city, feeling that "there is no more comfortable and free country life than this". But with free time, he had no creative inspiration and did nothing all day, except to work on the farm, to read books, and to keep a diary.
At the end of his leave (in fact, it was only three months), Kafka returned to Prague and went to work as usual. In the spring of 1919, when Phyllis married a bank manager who was 14 years older, Kafka was relieved to hear that "another man had found her, (I) was relaxed and free."
At the beginning of 1920, Kafka was promoted to section chief because of his outstanding ability to work, supervising the daily work of more than 20 departments, aiming to improve work efficiency. On October 29, 1921, he finished his last day of work. In April 1922, he wrote a long novel "Castle" based on his two years of work experience as a section chief.
Kafka spent his last years in a nursing home, living on morphine analgesia. When the weather is nice, friends will push him to the balcony to bask in the sun. He can't talk, he can only write and communicate with people. At noon on June 3, 1924, Kafka passed away, still writing and holding a pencil in his hand.
He died on December 31, just after the age of 41.
In September 1920, he wrote to a friend that the people had simply been sent out as doves in the Bible, without finding any tender grass, and had slipped back into the darkness of Noah's Ark.
Kafka's influence is huge, Márquez, Yu Hua, Wang Xiaobo and so on are his iron fans. Yu Hua's debut work "Eighteen-year-old going out for a long trip" and Wang Xiaobo's debut work "Green Haired Water Monster" are all high imitations of "Metamorphosis". "Metamorphosis" is an "allegorical novel that dissects human nature and the nature of the world", friends who have not read it quickly buy a copy to go home and look at it, click the link below to buy it directly.
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