Loneliness and legacy – the life of Franz Kafka

By Shade Bannigan Davies

What do you picture when you hear the word ‘author’?

Maybe an older, brooding figure nursing a glass of liquor, or a young twenty-something, typing away in a café, dreaming of future greatness. Perhaps you imagine a shy silent type that saves all their words for the page.

Franz Kafka doesn’t slot neatly into any of these categories. He fits some; he was quiet and kept largely to himself. However, the soft-spoken, teetotaller vegetarian stands in stark contrast to the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds of the writing world.

His main goal in life wasn’t exactly fame or accolades – it was something far simpler. He merely wished to be understood. Kafka came from a line of respectable, middle class business owners. His grandfather owned a kosher butcher in a small southern Czech village, and his father opened a successful goods store in Prague. As the eldest of his siblings, and the only son to survive to maturity, heavy expectations were placed onto young Franz. His father was a strict, authoritarian figure who pushed him towards a traditional path of success.

He did his best to appease his father: he excelled in school, studied law at university, and worked in the insurance trade for most of his life. However, his real passion was always his writing. His law degree gave him time to write on the side, and he found a job with lax hours allowing him even more time in the evening to work on his craft.

He wasn’t the kind of author who was interested in fame or legacy, but instead in what readers could give him – the opportunity to be understood

It is hard to describe Kafka’s stories; their indescribability is probably one of their most defining qualities. His writing is defined by themes of absurd powerlessness, alienation and persecution. The worlds he creates operate with their own rules. With Kafka, sometimes men wake up as bugs, or get prosecuted for unknown crimes. The characters in his writing seem just as confused about their surroundings as the reader is. His figures are helpless, overwhelmed, and guilty. While his works are often bleak or heavy, there is always an undercurrent of humour.

His stories are permeated with a desperate need for connection of some kind; a dream to understand others or be understood

He was undeniably influenced by his own feelings of estrangement and isolation. His tense relationship with his father left him a stranger within his own family. Antisemitism in Prague made him feel like a foreigner in his own home country, yet his struggle to identify with Jewishness made him an outsider in his own community. His stories are permeated with a desperate need for connection of some kind; a dream to understand others or be understood. His characters rarely succeed.

During his life, his works received little acclaim. He was mostly known within small circles of German and Czech writers. His writing ambition was especially supported by his lifelong best friend, Max Brod, whom Kafka met while they were both studying at the University of Prague. It was to Max Brod that Kafka entrusted his final wish – upon his death, to burn and destroy all his writings and drawings.

Brod betrayed his friend’s request. He kept as many of Kafka’s stories, letters, and drawings as he could and began publishing them posthumously. My personal favourite of Kafka’s stories, A Hunger Artist, was only published after his death. He worked on A Hunger Artist in the last days before his death, as the tuberculosis that he had contracted back at university worsened until he could no longer eat. It tells the tale of a performance artist who fasts as his performance. The performer feels misunderstood by his audience; his artistry is disrespected. He doesn’t wish for recognition – he wishes to surpass his previous record and create a performance better than any he has previously done. He succeeds, but no one notices or sees. He dies soon after and is replaced by a panther, which every passerby stops to look at and admire the animal’s strength and virility.

In his final moments, the performance artist admits a fiercely guarded truth. He didn’t choose his career out of passion, or self-discipline. He simply didn’t like the taste of food.

It’s hard not to read the story as a commentary on Kafka’s own artistic process. As Kafka lay dying, he wrote of the final moments of this strange artist. Like him, he didn’t create art for fame. He didn’t even necessarily write out of an artistic instinct. He writes because he simply must. Because what else is there for him to do?

Kafka does not suffer the same fate as his fictional artist. He is not forgotten or swept aside. He suffered for his creation, but he is not forgotten postmortem. His artistry is recognised and celebrated. Countless later readers have related to the themes of isolation and powerlessness he wrote about. Kafka has become one of the most influential authors of the 21st century, inspiring everything from books, sculptures, video games, radio plays, operas and beyond.

He wasn’t the kind of author who was interested in fame or legacy, but instead in what readers could give him – the opportunity to be understood. In death, he gained his truest dream.

Image Credits: Franz Kafka (via Wikimedia Commons)