Marriage to a man like himself whose sole interest in life was literature. ![]() Kafka's next work, completed in May 1913, was the story Der Heizer (The Stoker), later incorporated in his fragmentary novel Amerika and awarded in 1915 the Fontane Prize, his first public recognition.Įarly in 1913 Kafka became unofficially engaged to Felice in Berlin, but by the end of the summer he had broken all his ties, sending a long letter to her father with the explanation that his daughter could never find happiness in In this story Kafka successfully blends the disparate aspects of his writing-fantasy, realism, speculation, and psychological insight-into a new unity. The judgment is passed by a bedridden, authoritarian father on his conscientious but guilt-haunted son, who obediently commits suicide. The story contains all the elements normally associated with Kafka's world, the most disorderly universe ever presented by a major artist. The immediate result was an artistic breakthrough: he composed in a single sitting, on the night of September 22/23, the story Das Urteil (The Verdict), dedicated to his future fiancée, Felice, and published the following year in Brod's annual, Arcadia. In September 1912 Kafka met a young Jewish girl from Berlin, Felice Bauer, with whom he fell in love-an affair which was to have far-reaching consequences for all his future work. B.," that is, Max Brod, who had been his closest friend since their first meeting as university students in 1902. Preoccupied with problems of reality and appearance, they reveal his objective realism based on urban middle-class life. These sketches are polished, light impressions based on observation of life in and around Prague. Kafka's first collection of stories was published in 1913 under the title Betrachtung (Contemplation). In 1909 these two pieces were published by Franz Blei in his journal, Hyperion. Here he came to know the suffering of the underprivileged workmen and wrote his first published work, "Conversation with a Beggar" and "Conversation with a Drunkard," two sections from Die Beschreibung eines Kampfes (Description of a Struggle). In early 1908 he joined the staff of the Workmen's Compensation Division of the Austrian government, in a semigovernmental post which he held until his retirement for reasons of ill health in July 1922. In October 1906 Kafka started to practice at the criminal court and later at the civil court in Prague, while serving as an interne in the office of an attorney in order to gain some practical experience. The lonely boy was an avid reader and became deeply influenced by the works of Goethe, Pascal, Flaubert, and Kierkegaard. For his parents' birthdays he would compose little plays, which were performed at home by his three younger sisters, while he himself acted as stage manager. Even as a youngster, Kafka must have wanted to write. In June 1906 he graduated with a degree of doctor of jurisprudence. He started out in German literature but changed in his second semester to the study of law. Kafka attended only German schools: from 1893 to 1901 the most severe grammar school, the Deutsches Staatsgymnasium in the Old Town Square, and from 1901 to 1906 the Karl Ferdinand University of Prague. Kafka later transformed this total lack of communication into the relationship between God-Father and man in his literary production. His childhood and youth were overshadowed by this conflict with his father, whom he respected, even admired, and at the same time feared and subconsciously hated. Although he acquired early in life a thorough knowledge of Czech and a deep understanding of its literature, the gap remained, and this alienation was reflected in his writing, most notably in the protagonists of his stories, who were for the most part outcasts constantly asking, "Where do I belong?" or "Where does man belong?"Īn even greater source of frustration for Kafka was his domineering father, a powerful, robust, imposing man, successful in his business, who considered his son a weakling and unfit for life. ![]() When he failed to be accepted by either group, he sank into bitterness, distrust, insecurity, and hatred. He grew up as a member of a minority (the Jewish community) within a minority (the German-speaking population) at a time when there was little or no communication between these two groups or with the predominantly Czech-speaking citizens of Prague. Franz Kafka was born July 3, 1883, the eldest of six children of a middle-class merchant who had come from southern Bohemia to the beautiful old city of Prague, its capital, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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