Letters to Felice

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These letters give you a little more insight to the man behind the mad genius. Maybe even more so than his private journals, which tend to swerve between mundane recitings of his day and outright kooky insane quips. I was also fond of his relationship with his youngest and favorite sister (he had three), Ottilie (who, sadly, was later murdered in the Holocaust). He would be the sweetest brother. Could Kafka have gained a reasonable amount of weight without inheriting an insatiable appetite like his father? Oh, there is a sad, sad reason for not doing so. To make it short: My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked. On 13 August 1912, a summer evening in Prague, a young Franz Kafka was gathering up his manuscripts to take to the house of his friend, Max Brod. His excursion to the Brods’ home late in the evening was not unusual, but this was an unusual night, for two momentous reasons: Kafka was about to send off what would be one of his first works to be published, and that evening he would meet the woman who would dominate his romantic imagination for the next five years.

Kafka, along with Rilke (I love me a good turn-of-the-century German), was the first "serious" writer I fell in love with (though for the record you'll never see me denigrating a good YA, fantasy, or sci-fi). I came across A Hunger Artist when I was about 10 or 11, and I was captivated. He gets it I thought-- he puts into words what I feel but can't explain! Along with In the Penal Colony I still think Hunger Artist is the greatest short story ever written. Milena was an aspiring journalist at twenty-three when she reached out to Kafka, a thirty-seven-year-old writer who was primarily unknown, asking for permission to translate his short story, the Stoker. She would become the first translator of several of Kafka's short stories into Czech, including The Judgment, Metamorphosis, and Contemplation. Perhaps happiness, in Bauer's eyes, was marriage and parenthood. This starkly contrasted to Kafka, who sought to stoke the flames of his inner torment through writing. Comenzaría así una relación que terminará el día de Navidad de 1917, dos meses después de que Kafka escupe sangre y comienza a entender que su destino está sellado: la tuberculosis lo acechará e implacablemente lo matará el 3 de junio de 1924. Despite the relatively short distance between Prague and Berlin, Kafka and Bauer would meet only a handful of times, become engaged twice and never marry. But their correspondence of hundreds of letters – which finished when Kafka wrote the last letter in 1917 and only came to the world’s attention in 1955, when Bauer sold his letters to her – is one of the most poignant chronicles of the human urge to share ourselves, while foregoing the vulnerability that such intimacy creates. Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words Kafka, in a 1912 letter to Bauer

Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as " The Metamorphosis" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world. La editorial Nórdica ha publicado un volumen realmente maravilloso y muy completo, a partir de una investigación concienzuda y seria en una edición de más de ochocientas páginas. Kafka με τη Felice Bauer με βοήθησε ιδιαίτερα στο να κατανοήσω τις ιδέες αλλά και τις εμμονές που βρίσκονται μέσα στο λογοτεχνικό του έργο. Και στην περίπτωση αυτή, όπως και στις άλλες συλλογές επιστολών του, οι απαντήσεις της Felice δεν σώζονται. Αν έπρεπε να απαντήσω στην ερώτηση για το κατά πόσο ο Kafka προσπάθησε να δημιουργήσει μια παρασιτική σχέση εις βάρος της νεαρής αρραβωνιαστικιάς του, νομίζω πως θα έπρεπε να πω πως, ναι, αυτό ισχύει. Το ήξερε πως για εκείνον το να την κόψει και να την ράψει στα δικά του μέτρα ήταν θέμα επιβίωσης και δεν έπαψε να βασανίζεται από ενοχές γι' αυτήν του ανάγκη. Striving to conceal his overwhelming literary insights, he inquired about mundane details about the people in the photograph, keeping his interpretations at bay. Bulgarian novelist Elias Canetti wrote about the correspondence in Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice. Through a reading of the letters along with sections of The Trial Canetti examined Kafka's struggle between a comfortable middle-class life and individual isolation.

Felice, μην αμφιβάλλεις γι' αυτό. Είμαι περιβόητος για το γέλιο μου αν και παλιότερα ήμουν πολύ πιο τρελός από όσο είμαι τώρα. Μάλιστα με έπιασε κάποτε, κατά τη διάρκεια μιας συνάντησης με τον πρόεδρο της εταιρίας μας - πάνε δυο χρόνια από τότε, αλλά αυτήν την υπόθεση θα την θυμούνται όλοι στο γραφείο ακόμα κι όταν εγώ θα έχω φύγει - μια κρίση γέλιου και πώς! Πού να σου εξηγώ τη σημασία αυτού του άνδρα. Πίστεψέ με, πρόκειται περί σημαντικότατης προσωπικότητας. Ένας απλός υπάλληλος τον θεωρεί όχι ως κάτι γήινο αλλά ουράνιο. Και καθώς δεν είχαμε όλοι την ευκαιρία να συνομιλήσουμε με τον ίδιο τον Αυτοκράτορα, η επαφή μας με το πρόεδρο ήταν για τον μέσο υπάλληλο - κι αυτό συμβαίνει σε όλους τους μεγάλους οργανισμούς - εξίσου σημαντική όπως θα ήταν και μια συνάντηση με τον αληθινό Αυτοκράτορα [...] Whether out of self-protective rationalization or mere pragmatism — the onset of tuberculosis was, after all, what ended the relationship five years later — he plaintively points to a physiological reason, almost as an excuse for the psychological: This was predictable: a month before the visit, Kafka wrote that “ if one bolts the doors and windows against the world, one can from time to time create the semblance and almost the beginning of the reality of a beautiful life”. In these words, one could argue, lies a premonition of online romance. What Kafka did in lyrical prose, the rest of us bumble through on social media and dating apps today – enjoying a similar disconnect from reality.

The discomfort of this wildly disorienting bidirectional pull is what 29-year-old Franz Kafka articulated in a beautiful and heartbreaking letter to Felice Bauer, a marketing rep for a dictation machine company whom the young author had met at the home of his friend and future biographer Max Brod in August of 1912. Young Franz and Felice immediately began a correspondence of escalating intensity, with Kafka frequently exasperated — as was Vladimir Nabokov at the start of his lifelong romance with Véra— over his beloved’s infrequent and insufficiently romantic response. Over the five-year course of their turbulent, mostly epistolary relationship, they were engaged twice, even though they met in person only a few times. During that period, Kafka produced his most significant work, including The Metamorphosis. Five hundred of his letters survive and were posthumously published in the intensely rewarding and revelatory Letters to Felice ( public library). The letters offer an insight into Kafka’s genius and are reflective of his works, often filled with paranoia, nervousness, and feelings of isolation. There is a lot of emotion there as well – passion, a need to be loved, jealousy. Here’s an example, “I am jealous of all the people in your letter, those named and those unnamed, men and girls, business people and writers…” Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.

Meanwhile, Grete has been maintaining Gregor’s room and gradually moving furniture around or out of the room to allow him to more comfortably navigate the space. Her mother argues that she should not move everything out because Gregor will lose his sense of humanity, and Gregor realizes that it’s true that he has begun to feel less human. His mother’s voice helps him to recall his human memories, at least temporarily. Kafka, que siempre luchó contra sí mismo y contra las barreras y obstáculos que creó para complicarlo todo, tal vez como le sucede a los personajes de sus novelas -especialmente K. y Joseph K. de "El castillo" y "El proceso", hizo lo mismo para su relación personal que siempre fue débil, dependiente y conflictiva también con otras, tal es el caso de Juli Wohryzek y muy marcadamente con Mílena Jesenská con quien también mantuvo un intercambio epistolar intenso y complejo teniendo en cuenta que Mílena estaba casada. Kafka αναφέρεται αδιάκοπα και φαίνεται πως αισθανόταν πως υπήρχαν δυνάμεις που του υπαγόρευαν τα όσα έγραφε. Δεν ξέρω αν όλα αυτά τα εννοούσε συμβολικά ή αν πίστευε πως υπάρχουν ως ανεξάρτητες οντότητες, κάτι παρόμοιο με τους μεσαιωνικούς δαίμονες. Άλλωστε η ιδέα που έχει για τον εσωτερικό Πύργο της Βαβέλ του υποδεικνύει πως το ίδιο γεγονός μπορεί να ερμηνευθεί με διαφορετικούς τρόπους, μπορεί να υπάρχει σε διαφορετικά επίπεδα και να παίρνει την ανάλογη μορφή. Sin darse cuenta al principio no nota que hay una dama sentada allí. Viene de Berlín y se llama Felice Bauer. Se produce así el primer encuentro entre Franz y una mujer que lo llevará hasta los rincones más recónditos del amor.Tal vez, ambos fueron arrastrados bajo el influjo de esa famosa frase de Franz que dice "A partir de determinado punto no hay retorno. Ese es el punto que hay que alcanzar." Kafka is a very humble man, very self-deprecating but not in an especially irritating way. It's endearing to see a man who became an everlasting classic apologetically say things like "[My latest project] is rather illegible, and even if that weren't an obstacle -- up to now, after all, I certainly haven't spoiled you with beautiful writing . . . " in any case, what business have my hands to write letters if all they are made for and all they want is to hold you ! (Olivie Blake has a quote like this in "Alone w you in the ether", she thought I wouldn't notice, but I did girl!! Kafka fans, let me hear you) Naturalmente, a ambos compromisos les corresponderá una ruptura, el 12 de julio de 1914 en el "juicio del hotel Askanischer Hof", como Kafka lo definiera oportunamente y el otro en esa Navidad indicada anteriormente.

Franz Kafka (right) with Max Brod's younger brother, Otto, at the Castel Toblino near Trento, 1909. lodgers rents a room in the apartment, and though it is the Samsa household, the family retreats to the kitchen for meals and allows the men the run of the house. When Grete plays violin one evening, and Gregor is drawn to the music, the lodgers spot him for the first time. They refuse to pay any rent and threaten to press charges against Mr. Samsa. Kafka ορισμένες φορές έχανε τον έλεγχο των συναισθημάτων του, στην προκειμένη περίπτωση είναι η επιτηδευμένη σοβαροφάνεια του εργασιακού του περιβάλλοντος αυτή που πυροδοτεί την έκρηξή του: Kafka διαγιγνώσκεται με φυματίωση η σχέση τους τελειώνει - ευτυχώς για εκείνη, δυστυχώς για εκείνον. Νομίζω πως χάνοντάς την, χάνει τη μοναδική ευκαιρία σωτηρίας που είχε. Υπηρξε για εκείνον αναντικατάστατη. Grete Bloch - με την οποία παρεμπιπτόντως ο Kafka διέπραξε επιστολική απιστία απέναντι στη Felice, κάτι το οποίο οδήγησε στα γεγονότα του Askanischer Hof hotel, εκεί όπου οι δύο γυναίκες τον συνάντησαν και του κατέβασαν καντήλια και επτάφωτες λυχνίες - 8 Ιουνίου 1914) αναφέρει:

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In it, he said, "In the likelihood that you no longer have even the remotest recollection of me, I am introducing myself once more: my name is Franz Kafka, and I am the person who greeted you for the first time that evening at Director Brod's in Prague, the one who subsequently handed you across the table, one by one, photographs of a Thalia trip." Erratic letters Why try to change people, Felice? It is not right. One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance."