Completely Kafka

FRANZ KAFKA
was born in Prague in 1883, and died in 1924 in Kierling, Austria. He worked for insurance firms, wrote in German, and would rather have seen the majority of his work destroyed.
Today, his works are considered classics of world literature.

NICOLAS MAHLER
was born in Vienna in 1969, and leads a double life as a cartoonist and literary editor.
His cartoons appear in numerous newspapers and magazines, and the majority of his illustrated adaptations of classic literature (including Thomas Bernhard, Robert Musil, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Elfriede Jelinek) have been published by Verlag Suhrkamp, Berlin.
 

With such a body nothing can be achieved
                  
I will have to get used to its perpetual failure.

---

FEAR
From a young age, Franz Kafka suffers from countless anxieties, including a terrible fear of mirrors. He explains why in his diary: Because, from my perspective, they revealed unescapable ugliness, which, moreover, could not be a totally accurate reflection of reality, as if I had I really looked like that, I would have caused more of a stir.

(Diary, 22 November 1911)
 

There are possibilities for me, certainly, but under what stone do they lie?

---

ERDENSCHWERE
Senselessness of youth. Fear of youth, fear of senselessness, of the senseless rise of inhuman life, this is how Kafka grows up. He suffers from Erdenschwere – from the heaviness of earthly existence. But every so often there is a flash of hope.
 

A QUESTION OF CLOTHING
Of course, I was conscious of being particularly poorly dressed, a condition I could hardly ignore, and I had an eye for when others were dressed well, but for years, I simply could not bring myself to understand the cause of my miserable appearance in my clothes.

(Diary, 31 December 1911)
 

EVERYTHING MAKES ME THINK
Kafka is never untroubled. No matter where he finds himself, there is reason to ruminate everywhere.
I stand on the end platform of the tram, and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family.

(The Passenger, 1913)
 

IN THE DREGS OF MISERY
From his mid-twenties, Kafka – now a qualified lawyer – works for insurance firms. Here he spends his time on accident prevention regulations for wood planing machines, among other things. I have a passing knowledge only of what lies above the surface; underneath I suspect only terrible things.

(Letter to Felice Bauer, 3 December 1912)
 

IN THE HEADQUARTER OF NOISE
After finishing work at the office, he switches desks, and at home in his room he throws himself into his own work. But trapped between his parents’ bedroom and the parlour, he gets no peace. I want to write, and there’s a constant trembling in my forehead.
I sit in my room, in the headquarter of noise of the entire apartment.

(Diary, 5 November 1911)
 

Out, out, out
Somewhere, there is a worm, which makes even the complete story hollow.

SOMEWHERE, THERE IS A WORM
I hate everything that does not relate to literature, holding conversations (even relating to literature) bores me, visiting people bores me, and the joys and sorrows of my relatives bore me to my core.

(Diary, 21 July 1913)

But Kafka is unsatisfied with his work too. Much remains unpublished within his lifetime.

I now sentence you to death by drowning
The Judgement

Karl, oh my Karl!
The Stoker

Honour your superior
In the Penal Colony

Try explaining hunger art to someone.
He who does not feel it cannot be made to comprehend it.
A Hunger Artist

---

OF ALL I HAVE WRITTEN
Of all I have written, the only books that can stand are: Judgement, Stoker, Metamorphosis, Penal Colony, a Country Doctor, and the short story: Hunger Artist.

(Testamentary Decree, 29 November 1922)

Everything else is published posthumously, against his will and on the initiative of his friend, the writer Max Brod.

Not that, please not that!

---

THE METAMORPHOSIS
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from disquieted dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Kafka, who is himself fond of drawing, has serious concerns about the cover design for the published edition of is novella The Metamorphosis. He rightly fears that the illustrator might want to draw the beetle. The insect itself cannot be drawn. It cannot even be shown from a distance, Kafka writes to his publisher, Kurt Wolff.
 

How can I be under arrest?
We don’t answer questions like that.

---

THE TRIAL
Kafka’s novels all remain fragments, including perhaps his most famous book, The Trial.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., because one morning, although he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested.

The Trial

K will also never find out what he has been accused of. The novels The Castle and The Lost Man (America) also remain incomplete.
 

I can laugh too, Felice, do not doubt it.
In fact, I am known as a great laugher.

---

THE GREAT LAUGHER
Like much of Kafka’s writing, works such as The Trial or The Metamorphosis are considered difficult and dark.

Kafka himself, however, found his work so humorous that, when he tried to read the first chapter of The Trial for Max Brod, he laughed so much
“that for a little while he could not read on”, as Brod describes.
 

NO MEETING
It would be nice to meet, but we shouldn’t … You are a girl, after all, and you want a man, not a weak worm on the ground.

(Letter to Felice Bauer, 5 December 1915)

His engagement to Felice lasts five years, until it is finally dissolved by Kafka’s tuberculosis.
 

Perhaps one chokes more easily with less.

---

SUCH A SMALL SIZE
At 40 years old, Kafka dies of tuberculosis.
It takes so long for one to be compressed down to such a small size, and to be stuffed through this last, narrow hole. By the end, he can no longer eat or speak. He communicates only via handwritten notes, which he passes to the person he is speaking to. In one of his last notes, he writes the title of his final story. The story has a new title: Josefine, the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.
 

This early rising drives one completely mad. A person must have their sleep.

I’M JUST GETTING OUT OF BED JUST HAVE PATIENCE FOR A SHORT MOMENT.
COME HERE YOU OLD DUNG BEETLE!

---

DRAWING KAFKA?
Would Kafka have agreed with this depiction of Gregor morphed into a beetle?

 

The Grand Kinematograf Orient
Today: The white slave

---

IMMEASURABLE ENTERTAINMENT
Despite everything, Kafka had a strong need for pleasure and enjoyed going to the cinema. He meticulously captured his film experiences in his diary: I’ve been at the cinema. Crying. “Lolotte”. The good priest. The small bicycle. The parents’ atonement. Immeasurable entertainment. Firstly a sad film “The misfortune in happiness” afterwards a funny one “Alone at last”. His conclusion: I am given the enjoyment of human relationships, not their lives.
 

Soon forget the ghost that I am, and live joyfully and peacefully, as before.
Letter to Felice, 9 November 1912

Everything that I write seems so harsh; I cannot make it go away because I don’t mean it harshly, but I am so scratched and shaken to the core that I can’t exactly be held responsible.
Letter to Felice, presumably March 1916

All of the misfortune in my life comes from letters, or the possibility of letter writing.
Letter to Milena, March 1922
 

Without forefathers, without marriage, without children, with a savage desire for forefathers, marriage, and children. Everything reaches out to me: forefathers, marriage and children, but too far away for me.
Diary, 21 January 1922

I crawl away from people, not because I live quietly, but because I want to die quietly.
Diary, 28 July 1914

Not yet born and already compelled to be, to walk the alleys and to talk to people.
Diary, 15 March 1922