Kafka's Biography: The Critical Years: Showca's crippled life and writing dreams

Dr. Franz Kafka, a Prague Jew, a civil servant of the Insurance Bureau and a writer, lived forty years and eleven months, retired at the age of thirty-nine, and finally died of laryngeal tuberculosis in a sanatorium near Vienna.

As a writer, Franz Kafka left behind "The Castle", "The Lawsuit", "The Judgment", "The Furnace", "The Metamorphosis", "In the Exile Land", "A Report to a Certain Academy of Sciences", "The First Pain", "The Little Woman", "The Hungry Artist" and "The Female Singer Josephine or the Rat nation". Together with the French writer Marcel Proust and the Irish writer James Joyce, he is known as a pioneer and master of Western modernist literature.

2022 marks the centenary of the birth of Kafka's "Castle", and Guangxi Normal University's Shanghai Beibeit "Literary Monument Series" is about to launch the acclaimed "Kafka Biography" trilogy (the first "Kafka Biography: Key Years"). The author, Stacher, absorbs many of the latest Kafka research results that have not yet been released, and presents Kafka's inner and outer worlds with a vivid narrative that is quite graphic, including a large number of close-up shots focusing on daily life, which makes people immersed in the scene.

The most informative biography of Kafka

Kafka's writing is exaggerated, cruel, obscure, and not humorous enough. His world was uninhabitable. But his words seeped into the skin, making people think deeply and making people never shake off again. Kafka's "dream logic" embodied in his novels is perfectly consistent with the nightmare of modern society: the deprivation of individual lives seems to be happening quietly behind all of us. Everyone seems to be free, but no matter how you choose, you will always be just a "case", and the corresponding rules, measures and systems have existed for a long time and have been prepared, even if some of your completely spontaneous actions and happy impulses cannot escape the cage of the world that is completely managed and planned.

Reading such a text, two unavoidable questions arise in front of the reader: One is, "What do these mean?" The other is, "How did you come up with all this?" "If the reader follows the previous call, he will fall into the dense forest of interpretation of the work; if he follows the latter, he will step into a phalanx of anagrams of biographies, and it will not take much effort to solve it." In this set of "Kafka's Biography", the author Stach will take you into Kafka's life and solve the mystery of his creation. This is by far the most informative and voluminous set of Kafka biographies. It has been translated into English, Spanish and other languages, and has won awards such as the Leipzig Book Fair Award and the Hemito von Dodler Prize.

A crippled life

If we measure Kafka's life by using the popular set of happiness parameters that are now in vogue, Kafka is crippled in every aspect of life: health, sex, family life, pastime, adventure, independence, and career success. It is true that Kafka did not live on the fringes of society, he had his own social life, and he was promoted to deputy director of the department and could receive a pension; but he did not like his profession, and the limited sense of security was bought for a long and hard study, which can also be said to have been exchanged for a lifetime.

Today's young people have taken for granted the right to make decisions, and the wide freedom of choice is out of reach for Kafka of that era. He was still living with his parents when he was thirty and had only moved out for a few months (in the same city); his circle of friends was small and very stable, with little change. He witnessed the First World War, where his possessions were swallowed up by disease and hyperinflation. This "world", he did not see much, and the point he saw was also a quick glimpse, because the travel time was limited by strict vacation regulations. Pastimes to compensate for the lack of travel are also pitifully scarce: swimming, boating, doing exercises, recuperation, outings, tending to gardens, getting a half-drunk in a Prague tavern. What is most shocking, however, is how much hopeless effort Kafka has made in his life to satisfy the needs of sex and lust, and Franz Kafka was engaged three times in his life, but never married and had no heirs. And this effort is a huge gap with the happiness that is not much gained, and even the slightest happiness is always exhausting, and it has never arrived freely and freely.

Key years: the core of Kafka's survival

With all these limitations and absences in life, Kafka invested a great deal of time and energy in literature. Writing behavior is the core of survival in his eyes, writing makes him calm inside, emotionally stable, and successful writing makes him feel happy and confident.

Kafka's Biography: The Critical Years focuses on the critical years from 1910 to 1915 that defined Kafka's life. This was the most well-documented period of Kafka's life, and undoubtedly the most important stage of his life. During this time, Kafka made important decisions one after another, thus defining and limiting his life for the next decade. The once unrestrained and susceptible young Kafka transformed into a dedicated civil servant and grew into a master of "Kafka-style humor". He experienced painful events that shaped his self-image and were remembered throughout his life as typical events, especially the dissolution of marriages that occurred in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of war. Between 1912 and 1914, Kafka went through two highly productive creative stages, "explosive" writing of breakthroughs such as "Judgment", "Metamorphosis", "Missing Person", "Litigation" and so on, paving the way for the art that he would always follow to the end.

This biography is a collection of eighteen years of research by Stach, who consulted a large number of first-hand accounts of Max Brod's notes and diaries. Like a panoramic film, it presents the imprint of Every element and experience of Jewish identity, Prague social environment, asceticism, war, and love with Phyllis on Kafka. These six years constitute the center of Kafka's survival. Perhaps in this biography, we can find the key to solving the mystery of Kafka's creation at this stage.

【Wonderful paragraphs】

Chapter One: The Kafka Family

The Kafkas' day began at six o'clock in the morning: cleaning the kitchen ash, preparing breakfast, heating the living room, preparing hot water for washing—a series of annoying and noisy tasks that were naturally the maid's business. But Kafka's youngest sister, Otilli, nicknamed Otra, also got up at about this hour. For several years, she undertook the task of hurriedly eating breakfast every day, taking a bunch of keys, and rushing to Zeltner Street, nearly a kilometer away, near the old town, to open the door of the "Hermann Kafka Women's Fashion Shop". At seven o'clock, the clerks were already waiting at the door.

As soon as Otra went out, her brother was almost out of bed. His small, unheated bedroom was unfortunately connected to his parents' bedroom and living room, and when the breakfast plate clanged on one side of the wall, his mother's whispers would be heard on the other side, and the father yawned recklessly and rolled over heavily on the rattling double bed. A door facing the hallway was studded with opaque decorative glass, and his room would light up as soon as the light was turned on outside.

Kafka's family was very cramped: his father's loud voice could be heard everywhere in the house. If there is a visitor, the whole family will come forward to receive it. If you are not willing to play a secret number with the guests, you must agree with your family in advance before you can meet the guests alone. From Kafka's written description, we can't tell any family member who was uncomfortable with the lack of privacy in the family environment – except Kafka himself. On Sunday mornings, Kafka felt a slight nausea whenever he caught a glimpse of a messy futon on his parents' double bed a few steps away (of course, he wouldn't have written about it directly).

He couldn't complain, though, because he was the only one in the family who had his own room, and his three younger sisters— Ellie, Wally, and Otra— had been crammed into a "girls' room" for years. The eldest sister, Ellie, married in the fall of 1910 and left home to live in another house, but Kafka had to live under the same roof as five others (including a maid). The early morning family atmosphere made him feel uncomfortable, and he wanted to get rid of this living environment more and more.

Chapter Nine: Girls, Ladies, Women

Sleep is also a gesture that arouses a protective desire and maternal care, and such care does not favor the image of Phyllis who travels calmly. Kafka was surprised when her weaknesses were exposed, but instead of correcting her ideal image, he became obsessed with the second image. In this image, all her weaknesses are condensed into one image: a sleeping girl.

...... If I knew that you were awake, and because of me, I wouldn't be able to write with peace of mind. But if I knew that you had fallen asleep, I would have the courage to write it, because it seemed to me as if you had completely surrendered yourself to me. How helpless you are in your sleep, how much you need to be looked after, as if I were writing for you and your well-being.

With such an idea, how can writing still be paused? Sleep, sleep, you work a lot more during the day than I do. In any case, you have to go to bed quickly, and tomorrow please do not sit in bed and write to me, and perhaps not tonight, if my wish is strong enough. And before you go to sleep, you can throw your aspirin pills out the window.

Two imaginations, two female figures, one protector and the other protected. The two contradict each other, and as long as Kafka's desire for intimacy includes two Phyllis figures, the contradiction cannot be eliminated. He feels the pressure of contradictions, and when to turn to which image depends on the feverish ups and downs of the love curve. He could easily escape: from one apparition to another, perhaps for the reason that prevented him from fulfilling the intimacy that had been repeatedly emphasized.

Once the mighty Phyllis and the weak Phyllis met. She sent him a childhood photo, presumably taken when she was ten years old, and Kafka was almost moved to tears. "Shoulders so narrow! She is really weak and can't help the wind! He immediately realized that the girl was the woman who "had not yet explained why she was afraid in the hotel room." Phyllis then sent him another photograph——— out of a subtle, somewhat contradictory sense of jealousy, who knows. This time she sent a picture of a calm and determined adult woman. Kafka was suddenly unsure:

The newly sent photos made me feel a little strange. I felt closer to the little girl, I could say anything to her, and I had respect for the lady in the picture. I think that even if she is indeed Phyllis, she is also an adult Phyllis, like a lady who needs to be taken seriously. The little girl was funny, she wasn't sad, but she had a very serious look, her cheeks were full (maybe it was just the night light), and her face was a little pale. If I had to choose between the two, though I would never run directly to the little girl without thinking, I would not say so, but I would also walk toward the little girl, although it would be very slow, and as I walked, I would look around for the lady and not let her leave my sight. In the best case, the little girl would take me to the lady and introduce me to her.

Kafka had two photographs in his hand, the girl and the lady, both watching him. His gaze wandered from one to the other, and he tried to coincide the two figures. But he couldn't do it, and one day he would have to choose between the two.

Chapter THIRTY-TWO: Self-Judgment: Litigation and In exile

Kafka's "The Lawsuit" is a behemoth. Nothing in it is "normal" or simple, and whether you study its birth history, its original manuscript, analyze its form, subject matter, content, or focus on explaining the work itself, the results of the inquiry are the same. No matter where you look, it's a dark blob.

Brod felt this first, because Kafka would often read him a few pages. Eventually, Brod took the manuscript home, not wanting Kafka to destroy it. He is convinced that "Litigation" is an important work, enough to make his friends become supernovae and shine in the literary world. But what he finally got in his hand was a loose one hundred and sixty-one loose pages, most of which were written on both sides and ripped from several books. Kafka classifies the pile of manuscripts hastily, adding a cover page to each "bundle" (which can be understood as a chapter) with a temporary title written on it. But there are a few "bundles" in which only one page remains, while others suspect that they contain more than one chapter. Kafka never revealed or numbered any of these chapters during his lifetime. So it was like a hodgepodge in front of Brod, with chapters that had already been completed, chapters that were about to be written, half written, and chapters that had just been written at the beginning. And if he wanted to make a book, Brod had to sort the chapters himself. Of course, he still has a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to ask the author directly. It's just that he is very cautious about this and does not open his mouth easily. Brod was happy to keep the treasure in his own drawer for protection. He did it in a consistent way

Pressure was put on Kafka, for example, by speaking publicly that Kafka had "completed" a long story, and at one point even threatening that he would "sew the lawsuit" into a garment alone. If Kafka had suspected that what Brod was saying might not be a joke, he would have come to Brod to get back the manuscript of The Lawsuit.

Brod was an avid literary critic, but not a philologist known for his studies of texts, and he did not have the skills to do so, nor did he have the apprehension that such experts should have. He crossed out the entire passage that Kafka had written in shorthand, and transcribed it neatly on the same page. He felt that there was nothing wrong with doing so, and he tried to make the complete work read by readers who had fallen for Kafka's literary genius, and did everything in his power to cover up the fragmented form of the work. He added punctuation to the novel, unified the names of people, and even adjusted the order of sentences to make the unfinished chapter appear complete. Paragraphs that were too fragmentary, he simply removed them, or, as appeared in later editions, classified them as "appendices", and the rest were sorted out by personal feeling. Like the Book of Revelation, this text, which has been appraised by generations of text connoisseurs, was finally born in such a secular way.