Origin of Kafka. Biography and amazing work of Franz Kafka Where Kafka lived

Franz Kafka is one of the brightest phenomena in world literature. Those readers who are familiar with his works have always noted some kind of hopelessness and doom in the texts, seasoned with fear. Indeed, during the years of his active work (the first decade of the 20th century), all of Europe was carried away by a new philosophical movement, which later took shape as existentialism, and this author did not stand aside. That is why all of his works can be interpreted as some attempts to understand one’s existence in this world and beyond. But let's go back to where it all started.

So Franz Kafka was a Jewish boy. He was born in July 1883, and, it is clear that at that time the persecution of this people had not yet reached its apogee, but there was already a certain disdainful attitude in society. The family was quite wealthy, the father ran his own shop and was mainly involved in wholesale trade in haberdashery. My mother also did not come from poor backgrounds. Kafka's maternal grandfather was a brewer, quite famous in his area and even rich. Although the family was purely Jewish, they preferred to speak Czech, and they lived in the former Prague ghetto, and at that time in the small district of Josefov. Now this place is already attributed to the Czech Republic, but during Kafka’s childhood it belonged to Austria-Hungary. That is why the mother of the future great writer preferred to speak exclusively in German.

In general, while still a child, Franz Kafka knew several languages ​​perfectly and could speak and write in them fluently. He gave preference, like Julia Kafka (mother) herself, to German, but he actively used both Czech and French, but he practically did not speak his native language. And only when he reached the age of twenty and came into close contact with Jewish culture, the writer became interested in Yiddish. But he never began to teach him specifically.

The family was very large. In addition to Franz, Hermann and Julia Kafka had five more children, a total of three boys and three girls. The eldest was just the future genius. However, his brothers did not live to be two years old, but his sisters remained. They lived quite amicably. And they weren’t allowed to quarrel over various little things. The family highly respected centuries-old traditions. Since “Kafka” is translated from Czech as “jackdaw,” the image of this bird was considered the family coat of arms. And Gustav himself had his own business, and the silhouette of a jackdaw was on the branded envelopes.

The boy received a good education. At first he studied at school, then moved to a gymnasium. But his training did not end there. In 1901, Kafka entered Charles University in Prague, from which he graduated with a Doctor of Laws degree. But this, in fact, was the end of my professional career. For this man, as for a true genius, the main work of his whole life was literary creativity, it healed the soul and was a joy. Therefore, Kafka did not move anywhere along the career ladder. After university, he accepted a low-level position in the insurance department, and left the same position in 1922, just two years before his death. A terrible disease plagued his body - tuberculosis. The writer struggled with it for several years, but to no avail, and in the summer of 1924, just a month before his birthday (41 years old), Franz Kafka died. The cause of such an early death is still considered not to be the disease itself, but exhaustion due to the fact that he could not swallow food due to severe pain in the larynx.

Character development and personal life

Franz Kafka as a person was very complex, complex and quite difficult to communicate with. His father was very despotic and tough, and the peculiarities of his upbringing influenced the boy in such a way that he only became more withdrawn into himself. Uncertainty also appeared, the same one that would appear more than once in his works. Already from childhood, Franz Kafka showed a need for constant writing, and it resulted in numerous diary entries. It is thanks to them that we know how insecure and fearful this person was.

The relationship with the father did not work out initially. Like any writer, Kafka was a vulnerable person, sensitive and constantly reflective. But the stern Gustav could not understand this. He, a true entrepreneur, demanded a lot from his only son, and such upbringing resulted in numerous complexes and Franz’s inability to build strong relationships with other people. In particular, work was hell for him, and in his diaries the writer more than once complained about how difficult it was for him to go to work and how fiercely he hated his superiors.

But things didn’t go well with women either. For a young man, the time from 1912 to 1917 can be described as first love. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful, like all the subsequent ones. The first bride, Felicia Bauer, is the same girl from Berlin with whom Kafka twice broke off his engagement. The reason was a complete mismatch of characters, but not only that. The young man was insecure in himself, and it was mainly because of this that the novel developed mainly in letters. Of course, distance was also a factor. But, one way or another, in his epistolary love adventure, Kafka created an ideal image of Felicia, very far from the real girl. Because of this, the relationship collapsed.

The second bride was Yulia Vokhrytsek, but with her everything was even more fleeting. Having barely concluded the engagement, Kafka himself broke it off. And literally a few years before his own death, the writer had some kind of romantic relationship with a woman named Melena Yesenskaya. But here the story is rather dark, because Melena was married and had a somewhat scandalous reputation. She was also the main translator of the works of Franz Kafka.

Kafka is a recognized literary genius not only of his time. Even now, through the prism of modern technology and the fast pace of life, his creations seem incredible and continue to amaze quite sophisticated readers. What is especially attractive about them is the uncertainty characteristic of this author, the fear of existing reality, the fear of taking even one step, and the famous absurdity. A little later, after the death of the writer, existentialism made a solemn procession around the world - one of the directions of philosophy that tries to understand the significance of human existence in this mortal world. Kafka saw only the emergence of this worldview, but his work is literally saturated with it. Probably, life itself pushed Kafka to just such creativity.

The incredible story that happened to the traveling salesman Gregor Samsa in 1997 has many similarities with the life of the author himself - a closed, insecure ascetic prone to eternal self-condemnation.

Absolutely “The Process”, which actually “created” his name for the culture of world postmodern theater and cinema of the second half of the 20th century.

It is noteworthy that during his lifetime this modest genius did not become famous in any way. Several stories were published, but they brought nothing but a small profit. Meanwhile, novels were gathering dust on the tables, the very ones that the whole world would talk about later and would not stop talking to this day. This includes the famous “Trial” and “Castle” - all of them saw the light of day only after the death of their creators. And they were published exclusively in German.

And this is how it happened. Just before his death, Kafka called his client, a person quite close to him, a friend, Max Brod. And he made a rather strange request to him: to burn all the literary heritage. Leave nothing, destroy to the last sheet. However, Brod did not listen, and instead of burning them, he published them. Surprisingly, most of the unfinished works were liked by the reader, and soon the name of their author became famous. However, some of the works never saw the light of day, because they were destroyed.

This is the tragic fate of Franz Kafka. He was buried in the Czech Republic, but in the New Jewish Cemetery, in the family grave of the Kafka family. The works published during his lifetime were only four collections of short prose: “Contemplation”, “The Village Doctor”, “Gospodar” and “Punishments”. In addition, Kafka managed to publish the first chapter of his most famous creation “America” - “The Missing Person”, as well as a small part of very short original works. They attracted virtually no attention from the public and brought nothing to the writer. Fame overtook him only after his death.

Kafka

Kafka

(Kafka) Franz (1883-1924) Austrian writer, who with unprecedented power described man’s loss in himself and in a world incomprehensible to him, the metaphysical feeling of guilt and longing for unattainable divine grace. During his lifetime, almost unknown to anyone, he bequeathed to burn all his manuscripts without reading. After World War II, K. became one of the most famous and influential writers. To this day, his work is one of the “hot spots” of world literature. At first they tried to connect his work with expressionism (the deformation of reality, a cry of pain instead of harmony), then, in the 40s, with surrealism (fantasy, alogism and absurdism), and even later and finally he was accepted into its fold by existentialism (the loss of man in a world incomprehensible to him, fear, guilt and melancholy as primary experiences). External biographical circumstances, it would seem, did not contribute to the birth of such a bizarre and unique artist. K. was born into a wealthy Jewish family, his father was the owner of a large haberdashery store, and the future writer never knew need. Little Franz looked at his father, who achieved everything on his own, with fear and at the same time with reverence. The famous “Letter to Father” (a completely real, not a work of fiction), although the length of a small book, was written in 1919, when father and son lived together, and begins with the words: “Dear father! The other day you asked me why I’m so afraid of you...” Shortly before this, Franz presented him with two of his just published collections - “In the Penal Colony” and “The Rural Enemy”, which his father did not even bother to leaf through, he was so convinced in the worthlessness of all his son’s literary experiences. K. received a law education at the German University of Prague (again the influence of his father, who wanted a solid profession for his son), although he secretly dreamed of studying German philology in Munich. The obituary of 1924, written by his relatives, speaks of him only as a doctor of law and not a word about his literary activities. After university, K. worked for fifteen whole years (1908-1922) at the Industrial Injuries Insurance Society and only two years before his death, due to an exacerbation of tuberculosis, he retired early. He died a bachelor, although during his life he was engaged first to Felicia Bauer, then to Yulia Voryzhek (and with each twice and broke off the engagement each time). The first serious attack of tuberculosis (blood gushed from the throat) occurred in September 1917. , and in December K., citing illness, broke off his engagement to Felicia Bauer for the second time). Obviously, K.'s tuberculosis was of a psychosomatic nature, like M. Proust's asthma. K. was convinced that a measured family life would not allow him to devote himself to literary work as completely as before (work at an insurance company ended at two in the afternoon, leaving the entire afternoon free). Two more women should be named who played a big role in the writer’s life: this young (and married) translator of his books from German into Czech, Milena Jesenskaya, who, perhaps, like no one else, understood Kafka’s soul (a whole volume of his letters was addressed to her) and 20 -year-old Dora Dimant, with whom K. spent the last and, perhaps, happiest year of his life. Milena Jesenskaya left a vivid psychological portrait of K. the person in a letter to M. Brod: “For him, life is something completely different than for all other people, and above all, such things as money, the stock exchange, a typewriter - for him this is completely mystical things (they are essentially like that, just not for us, others). For him, all these are bizarre mysteries... For him, any office, including the one where he works, is something as mysterious, worthy of surprise, as for a little boy - a moving steam locomotive... This whole world remains mysterious for him. Mystical secret. Something that is not yet possible and which can only be admired because it functions.” Here the origins of K.’s “magical realism” are given, but its deep religious seriousness is not noticed at all. Perhaps the epigraph to K.’s work can be put with the words from his diary: “Sometimes it seems to me that I understand the fall of man better than anyone on earth.” Every person is guilty by the fact that he was born and came into this world. K. felt this with a thousandfold force - perhaps because of a feeling of guilt before his father, or because he spoke German while living in a Slavic city, or because he could not even formally fulfill all the rules of Judaism, as his father did. In the diary we read: “What do I have in common with the Jews? I have little in common even with myself.” At the same time, in everyday life he was an easy-going and cheerful person, loved by his colleagues and appreciated by his superiors. One of his friends writes: “You could never say hello to him first; he was always at least a second ahead of you.” During his lifetime, K. managed to publish only six small brochures. In the first of them, a collection of miniatures “Contemplation” (1913), he is still searching for his path and style. But already in the story “The Verdict”, written in one night, we see the mature K. Not every reader understands why the main character of the story commits suicide, blindly obeying his father’s orders. The decisive factor here is the hundredfold aggravated feeling of guilt towards the parent, which is difficult for the modern reader to understand. The famous story “Metamorphosis” is just the realization of self-esteem: the hero K. is unworthy of a human appearance, for him the appearance of a disgusting insect is more commensurate. Finally, the story “In the Penal Colony”, puzzling in its cruelty, in which liberal and Marxist criticism immediately saw a prediction of fascism, is in fact only a comparison of the Old and New Testaments and an attempt to see the peculiar correctness of the Old Testament (it is no coincidence that the old commandant fearlessly throws himself into the deadly machine ). In general, K. should be compared not with the Prague group of German expressionists (G. Meyrink, M. Brod, etc.), but with such thinkers as Pascal and Kierkegaard. Particularly important for K. was Kierkegaard's thought about the incommensurability of human and divine ideas about justice, sin and retribution. It is characteristic that all three of K.’s novels remained unfinished, and he asked to destroy them. This means that for him it was some kind of complex form of psychotherapy, which he considered necessary for himself and useless for others. In the novel “The Trial” (created in 1914-1915, published in 1925), the dreamlike atmosphere cannot prevent the reader from guessing that we are talking about a trial against oneself (court hearings in the attics, that is, in the upper floors of consciousness, the hero of the novel himself regularly comes to them, although no one invites him. When the hero is taken to execution, he meets a policeman, but instead of asking for help, he pulls his companions away from the law enforcement officer). In the last and most mature novel, “The Castle” (created in 1922, published in 1926), we encounter a downright Kierkegaardian parable about the unattainability and incomprehensibility of the creator and his grace. The hero of the novel must receive permission to settle only before his death - and then not in the Castle, but only in the village adjacent to it. But hundreds of villagers received this right without any difficulty. He who seeks will not find, and whoever does not seek will be found, K wants to say. The reader is shocked by the contrast between the crystal clear, simple language of the novel and the fantastic nature of the events depicted in it.

Works: Gesammelte Werke. Bd 1-8. Munchen, 1951-1958; since 1982, a complete critical edition has been published, where two volumes are devoted to each novel - with all the options (the publication continues);

Op. in 3 volumes, M.-Kharkov, 1994.

Lit.: Zatonsky D. Franz Kafka and the problems of modernism, M., 1972;

Emrich W. Franz Kafka. Bonn, 1958;

Brod M. Franz Kafka. Eine Biography. Frankfurt/Main, 1963;

Binder H. Kafka: Hamdbuch. Bd 1-2. Stuttgart, 1979-80.

S. Dzhimbinov

Lexicon of nonclassics. Artistic and aesthetic culture of the 20th century.. V.V.Bychkov. 2003.

See what "Kafka" is in other dictionaries:

Kafka, Franz Franz Kafka Franz Kafka Photograph of the writer, 1906 Date of birth: July 3, 1883 ... Wikipedia

Franz (Franz Kafka, 1883 1926) a prominent representative of the Prague group of German writers (Max Brod, Gustav Meyrink, etc.). K. wrote 3 volumes. novels and short stories; The most significant of them, some of them unfinished, were published only after his death (under... ... Literary encyclopedia

- (Kafka) Franz (born July 3, 1883, Prague - died June 3, 1924, Kirling, near Vienna) - Austrian. writer, philosopher. He gained fame after fragments of his novels “The Trial” (1915) and “The Castle” (1922) were published, in which he poetically ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

- (Kafka) Franz (1883 1924) Austrian writer. Author of the novels “The Trial”, “Castle”, “America”, as well as a number of short stories. His few works, combining elements of expressionism and surrealism, had a significant influence on... ... The latest philosophical dictionary

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka Photograph of the writer, 1906 Date of birth: July 3, 1883 Place of birth: Prague, Austria-Hungary Date of death: June 3, 1924 Place of death ... Wikipedia

- (Kafka) Franz (3.7.1883, Prague, 3.6.1924, Kirling, near Vienna), Austrian writer. Born into a Jewish bourgeois family. He studied at the Faculty of Law at the University of Prague in 1901 06. In 1908 22 he served in an insurance company. Beginning with … Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Johann Christoph Kaffka (German: Johann Christoph Kaffka; 1754, Regensburg January 29, 1815, Riga) German violinist, composer, writer, publisher. Beginning in 1775, the young musician traveled around Europe, working in the opera houses of Prague (1775), ... ... Wikipedia

KAFKA- (Kafka) Gustav (1883 1953) Austrian philosopher and psychologist. He worked on a wide range of psychological issues: animal behavior, psychology of expressive reactions, language, communication, art, professional development, life... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology and Pedagogy

FRANZ KAFKA

You know you've become a great writer when people start making epithets from your last name. Would we be able to use the word “Kafkaesque” today if it weren’t for Kafka? True, the brilliant son of a haberdasher from Prague himself most likely had no idea about this. He died never knowing how accurately his terrifying novels and stories captured the spirit of the era, society and the familiar feeling of alienation and despair.

Kafka's oppressive father did a lot to cultivate this feeling in his son; from childhood he humiliated him, called him a weakling and repeatedly hinted that he was not worthy of inheriting his business - supplying fashionable canes. Meanwhile, little Franz tried everything to appease his father. He did well in school, followed the traditions of Judaism and received a law degree, but from a very early age his only outlets were reading and writing stories - activities that Herman Kafka considered insignificant and unworthy.

Kafka's lawyer career did not work out, and he decided to try his hand at insurance. He handled claims for an insurance company that dealt with industrial accidents, but the workload was too heavy and the working conditions were depressing. Most of the working time was spent drawing cut off, flattened and mutilated fingers to confirm that one or another unit had failed. This is what Kafka wrote to his friend and fellow writer Max Brod: “You just can’t imagine how busy I am... People fall from scaffolding and fall into working mechanisms, as if they were all drunk; all the floorings are broken, all the fences are collapsing, all the stairs are slippery; everything that should rise falls, and everything that should fall drags someone into the air. And all these girls from the china factories who are always falling down the stairs, carrying a bunch of porcelain in their hands... All this is making my head spin.”

Personal life also did not bring Kafka any consolation and did not save him from the surrounding nightmare. He regularly visited one Prague brothel, then another, and enjoyed one-time sex with barmaids, waitresses and saleswomen - if, of course, this can be called pleasure. Kafka despised sex and suffered from the so-called “Madonna-harlot complex.” In every woman he met, he saw either a saint or a prostitute and did not want to have anything in common with them, except for purely carnal pleasures. The idea of ​​a “normal” family life disgusted him. “Coitus is a punishment for the joy of being together,” he wrote in his diary.

Despite these troubles and self-doubt, Kafka still managed to have several long-term romances (although it still remains a mystery whether the relationship with at least one of these ladies went beyond platonic). In 1912, while visiting Max Brod in Berlin, Kafka met Felicia Bauer. He won her over with long letters in which he confessed his physical imperfections - this always has a disarming effect on women. Felicia inspired Kafka to write such great works as Penal Colony and Metamorphosis, and she may have been partly to blame for his cheating on her with her best friend Greta Bloch, who many years later announced that that Kafka was the father of her child. (Scientists are still arguing about this fact.) The affair with Felicia ended in July 1914 with an ugly scene at the insurance company where Kafka worked: Felicia came there and read aloud fragments of his love correspondence with Greta.

Kafka then began a correspondence affair with Milena Jesenská-Pollack, the wife of his friend Ernst Pollack. (One can only wonder what kind of success Kafka would have had with women had he lived in the age of the Internet.) This relationship was broken off at Kafka's insistence in 1923. Later he made Milena the prototype of one of the characters in the novel “The Castle”.

Finally, in 1923, already dying of tuberculosis, Kafka met teacher Dora Dimant, who worked at a summer camp for Jewish children. She was half his age and came from a family of devout Polish Jews. Dora brightened up the last year of Kafka's life, looked after him, they studied the Talmud together and planned to emigrate to Palestine, where they dreamed of opening a restaurant, so that Dora would be a cook there, and Kafka would be a head waiter. He even wrote a request to the kibbutz to see if there was an accountant position for him there. All these plans collapsed with Kafka's death in 1924.

No one was surprised that Kafka never lived to old age. Among his friends he was known as a complete hypochondriac. Throughout his life, Kafka complained of migraines, insomnia, constipation, shortness of breath, rheumatism, boils, spots on the skin, hair loss, deteriorating vision, a slightly deformed toe, increased sensitivity to noise, chronic fatigue, scabies and a host of other ailments, real and imagined. . He tried to combat these diseases by doing exercises every day and following naturopathy, which meant taking natural laxatives and a strict vegetarian diet.

As it turns out, Kafka did have cause for concern. In 1917, he contracted tuberculosis, possibly due to drinking unboiled milk. The last seven years of his life turned into a constant search for quack medicines and fresh air, which was so necessary for his lungs eaten away by the disease. Before his death, he left a note on his desk in which he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works except “The Verdict,” “The Merchant,” “Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony” and “The Country Doctor.” Brod refused to fulfill his last wish and, on the contrary, prepared “The Trial,” “The Castle” and “America” for publication, thereby strengthening his friend’s place (and his own too) in the world history of literature.

Mister SAFETY

Did Kafka really invent the helmet? At least economics professor Peter Drucker, author of the book Contribution to the Future Society, published in 2002, argues that this was exactly the case and that Kafka, while working for an insurance company that dealt with industrial accidents, introduced the first in the world a helmet. It is unclear whether he himself invented the protective headgear or simply insisted on its use. One thing is certain: for his services, Kafka was awarded a gold medal from the American Safety Society, and his innovation reduced the number of work-related injuries, and now, if we imagine the image of a construction worker, he probably has a helmet on his head.

FRANZ KAFKA VISITED A HEALTH NUDIST RESORT SEVERAL TIMES, BUT ALWAYS REFUSED TO UNDO COMPLETELY. OTHER VACATIONERS CALLED HIM “THE MAN IN BATHING PANTS.”

JENS AND FRANZ

Kafka, ashamed of his bony figure and weak muscles, suffered, as they say now, from a complex of negative self-perception. He often wrote in his diaries that he hated his appearance, and the same theme constantly crops up in his works. Long before bodybuilding became fashionable, promising to turn any weakling into an athlete, Kafka was already doing strengthening gymnastics in front of an open window under the guidance of the Danish sports instructor Jens Peter Müller, an exercise guru whose advice on health alternated with racist speeches about the superiority of the Northern body .

Müller was clearly not the best mentor for the neurotic Czech Jew.

THIS MATTER NEEDS TO BE CHEWED

Due to low self-esteem, Kafka was constantly addicted to all sorts of dubious diets. One day he became hooked on Fletcherism, the untenable teaching of a health-eating eccentric from Victorian England known as the “Great Chewer.” Fletcher insisted that before swallowing food, you need to make exactly forty-six chewing movements. “Nature punishes those who chew food poorly!” - he inspired, and Kafka took his words to heart. As the diaries testify, the writer’s father was so enraged by this constant chewing that he preferred to shield himself with a newspaper during lunch.

MEAT = MURDER

Kafka was a strict vegetarian, firstly because he believed it was good for health, and secondly, for ethical reasons. (At the same time, he was the grandson of a kosher butcher - another reason for the father to consider his offspring a complete and utter failure.) One day, while admiring a fish swimming in an aquarium, Kafka exclaimed: “Now I can look at you calmly, I don’t eat like that anymore, How are you!" He was also one of the first supporters of the raw food diet and advocated the abolition of animal testing.

THE NAKED TRUTH

For a man who so often described cluttered and dark spaces, Kafka loved fresh air. He enjoyed taking long walks through the streets of Prague in the company of his friend Max Brod. He also joined the then fashionable nudist movement and, together with other lovers of showing off in their best clothes, went to a health resort called the “Fountain of Youth.” However, Kafka himself is unlikely to have ever exposed himself in public. He was painfully embarrassed by nudity, both that of others and his own. Other vacationers nicknamed him "the man in the swim shorts." He was unpleasantly surprised when visitors to the resort walked naked past his room or met him in the desabilities on the way to a neighboring grove.