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 There was mentioning of the conservatory,
but only as a beautiful dream, which to
become true was unthinkable, and the
parents didn’t even like to hear those
innocent words.
Franz Kafka

K afka’s diaries cover the period from 1911 to 1923,

but he was seen scribbling in notebooks as early
as 1898. Visitors having coffee with his parents saw
the boy sit in a corner, chew on his pen and write.
Somebody asked: “What is he writing?” An uncle took
away the notebook from under the boy’s hand and
looked. “Oh nothing. The usual stuff” (Diaries 1/19/1911).
Franz was hurt; but his earliest manuscript – the
Description of a Struggle – never made it to the printers,
it is a pretty typical example for a gifted writer jerking
it off with nothing to say. Kafka would later
characterize such exercises as, “Childish games, I
deliberately cultivated a facial tic, or would walk across the
ditch with arms crossed behind my head. My writing began
the same way” (Diaries 1/24/1922), and that’s how it is for
every beginner. By 1915 this grimacing and strutting,
however, was taken serious enough to earn Kafka the
Theodor Fontane Award – 800 Reichsmark, a
considerable sum in its days. In the reviews even the
habitually irreverent Bertolt Brecht expressed his
respect. So it would be wrong to think Kafka didn’t
receive any recognition before his early death. He did,
just not from the one person that mattered most to
him.
At home there was little support for his artistic
ambitions. He had three sisters – Elli, Valli and the
youngest, Ottilie or “Ottla.” “My sisters were only partly
on my side. Elli when she was a child was such a clumsy,
tired, timid, bad-tempered, guilt-ridden, over-meek,
malicious, lazy, greedy, miserly child, I could hardly bring
myself to look at her, certainly not to speak to her, so much
did she remind me of myself. But all this changed when, at
an early age – this is the most important thing – she left
home, married, had children, and became cheerful, carefree,
brave, generous, unselfish, and hopeful” (Letter to the
Father). Ottla was Kafka’s favorite sister and his
staunchest supporter. Unlike her brother she knew
how to hold her own and took no nonsense from
anybody. “You simply can't talk to her at all, she flies
straight in your face," said the father, and it was she
who rented for Franz a studio at 22, Alchemist Lane in
Prague’s Castle District.
It was his first place for himself and Kafka could
write undisturbed well into the grey hours of morning.
Yet a key event for his way of life happened before he
even had moved there. Still lodging with the family in
No 3, Celetna Street, the window of his room happened
to open to a small lane “across from a dress shop, where a
shop girl always used to stand in the door. There I was in my
room, just a little past my twentieth birthday, incessantly
passing back and forth, busy cramming for the bar exam,
trying to memorize material that made no sense to me
whatsoever. It was summer, very hot at the time, altogether
unbearable. I kept stopping at the window, the disgusting
Roman law clenched between my teeth, and finally we
managed to communicate by sign language" (Letter to Max
Brod). It is fair to see this as the sordid beginning for
many more sordid one-night stands with barmaids,
waitresses, and shop girls. Kafka was certainly not a
saint.
All his women have left traces in his writing: “He
seduced a girl in a small place in the Iser mountains. After a
brief effort to persuade her, he threw the girl – his
landlord’s daughter who liked to walk with him in the
evening after work – down in the grass on the riverbank and
took her as she lay there unconscious with fright. Later he
had to carry water from the river in his cupped hands to
pour it over the girl’s face to restore her. The simple girl
who lay before him, now breathing regularly again, her eyes
still closed because of fear and embarrassment, could make
no difficulty for him; with the tip of his toe, he, the great,
strong person, could push the girl aside. She was weak and
plain, could what happened to her have any significance
that would last even until tomorrow? Would not anyone
who compared the two of them come to this conclusion?”
(Diraries 3/12/1012). An elaborate fantasy perhaps, but
Kafka has depicted his leading women as sluts and
easy prey a tad too often not to be noted. Take Frieda:
“A nondescript little blonde with sad features, thin
cheeks, and a surprising gaze, a gaze of exceptional
superiority. When this gaze descended on K., it seemed to
him to be the gaze that had already decided matters
concerning him, whose existence he himself still knew
nothing about, but of whose existence that gaze now
convinced him. K. kept watching Frieda from the side even
while she spoke with Olga” (The Castle, trans. Mark Haman).
Frieda is the girl behind the bar in the tap-room and
she is the mistress of Klamm, one of the stewards at
the castle.
Only hours later the new arrival and the girl will be
rolling on the floor under the counter. “Her small body
was burning in K’s hands; they rolled a few paces in an
unconscious state from which K. repeatedly but in vain tried
to rescue himself, bumped against Klamm’s door, and then
lay in the small puddles of beer and other rubbish which
littered the floor. And as though Frieda had been fortified by
K’s consent, she clenched her fist, knocked on the door, and
cried “I’m with the surveyor. I’m with the surveyor.” Yet
this was not what ‘K.’ had intended. “K. rose, knelt
beside Frieda, and looked about in the dull early morning
light. What had just happened? Where were his hopes?
What could be expected from Frieda, now that all was
betrayed” (The Castle). So it shouldn’t surprise that once
Frieda had looked through this conman, she was going
to jilt ‘K.’ for one of his assistants. By then, thanks to
‘K.’ she had lost her employment and reputation. But
‘K.’ is never running short of women.
There is Olga to fall back upon, Amalia, and Pepi.
“For a moment he had to cover his eyes, so lecherously was
he staring at her” (The Castle). In The Trial, we read of a
certain Fraulein, a Miss ‘Bürstner.' The name derives
from the verb "bürsten" – German for "brushing" –
which in German is a pretty common euphemism for
sexual intercourse. None of this is a coincidence. In
Kafka’s stories there is sex all over the place.
‘Joseph K.’ is starting an affair with his attorney's
maid on the very first consultation, right under her
employer's nose. Shabbily dressed judges have women
delivered to their chambers; in the painter’s studio,
the king-sized bed barely leaves space for anything
else, and you hear the painter's models giggle behind
the door. The Trial is the most guilt-stricken of Kafka’s
stories, even more so, than the Metamorphosis. From
scene to scene the shadows thicken. “Uneasy he looked
around; the light of the candle fell far short of the opposite
wall. And indeed something began to stir in the corner. His
uncle lifted the candle higher, and in the light, an older
gentleman could be seen sitting by a little table.” He “arose
laboriously, apparently displeased that he had been brought
to their attention. It seemed as if he wanted to wave off all
greetings and introductions with his hands, which he
flapped like little wings, as if he wished by no means to
disturb the others by his presence, imploring them to return
him once more to darkness, to forget his presence” (The Trial,
trans. Breon Mitchell). This apparition in chiaroscuro is
supposed to be the clerk of the court – but one
wonders. The hearings convene in the strangest
places, in attics and lofts, under the bare rafters of top
floors, in the sub-tenancies of unfinished housing
projects. The lower charges at these conventions are
beggarly and sly, and you never know whether your
friendly janitor is not one of “them.”
And what kind of court would allow a capital verdict
to be announced by proxy? In the mystifying twilight
of the Cathedral ‘Joseph K.’ is the only visitor, lured to
the church under the pretense of a business
appointment. A priest calls out for ‘Joseph K.’ and
passes the verdict from the pulpit. After his rather
stern pronouncement the priest steps down from the
pulpit and turns out to be the most amiable person.
The judge and the defendant discuss the parable
Before the Law, the story of someone who wants
nothing so badly as access to the law. The “entrance is
assigned only” to this petitioner but he is too
intimidated to pass the guard and in the end dies
waiting. One should not isolate this parable from its
surrounding; ‘Joseph K,’ the haughty know-it-all is
prevented by his own shortcomings to ever reach the
inner sanctuary. In his conversation with the friendly
priest, ‘Joseph K.,’ is lending a polite ear, but shows
only a superficial interest in the exegetic explanations.
After Kafka’s death, in the era of Stalin, McCarthy
and Jean Paul Sartre it became fashionable to read into
Kafka's novels an “existentialist” indictment against
oppression and persecution.
It seems to fit: ‘Joseph K,’ like the victims of the
Inquisition, is never told the charges, yet, in keeping
with his character, something quite reasonable seems
to be expected, a change of heart perhaps, or a sign for
redeeming humility. An indicator that the editing by
Kafka’s friend and self-appointed custodian of Kafka’s
legacy, Max Brod, has gone astray is the original order
of the chapters: the manuscript opens with the
protagonist visiting a club and socializing with senior
figures of the establishment: “It consisted almost
exclusively of judges, public prosecutors, and attorneys. ‘K.’
had been introduced into this company by the bank’s legal
representative. He was soon acknowledged as an expert in
business, and his views on such matters were accepted –
though not without a touch of irony – as the final word. ‘K.’
had a good advisor at his side in Hasterer, the public
prosecutor, who also drew closer to him as a friend” (The
Trial).

In Max Brod’s editing the chapters were reshuffled

for greater dramatic effect, and ‘Joseph K.’s’ arrest is
placed at the beginning. Who knows, in the original
order the protagonist’s suspicion at his arrest, that
this could be a practical joke may hint at a different
direction the story was supposed to take, before Kafka
changed his mind and had his lead character been
knifed to death (after a last look at Fräulein Bürstner
walking in the distance).
The book is has the inertia and dreamlike quality of
a proper nightmare, neither resembling the Brazilian
death squads nor the institutional terror of a
totalitarian state. And it is some sort of justice after
all. The Trial’s protagonist is not untypical for a senior
manager on the climb. ‘Joseph K.’ works at the head
office of a bank. He has competitors in the hierarchy,
the vice president quite literally is pitching camp on
his desk. He is a sharp dresser, who moves with ease in
the company of chief administrators and CEOs, but in
his dealings with people depending on him, ‘Joseph K.’
behaves like a real asshole.  Gradually then, the trial
begins to sap his strength. There was a time when he
commanded the time of his clients; now, at the mere
sight of him, they pull up the brief case under their
arm a little tighter. He is bound to lose the trial, and
he is guilty in the full sense of the word.
Like all of his novels, Kafka has left The Trial
unfinished. This is even more so the case with The
Castle. When I read this book for the first time, I
noticed the indifference of the staff in the castle. From
the outset it is a struggle just to get their attention.
The protagonist’s shenanigans leave everybody
unimpressed, except for the subservient women.
Again Max Brod’s editing seems to suggest a kind of
Pilgrim’s Progress, yet W.H. Auden in The Dyer’s Hand
asserts the opposite, that the castle, far from being a
place of redemption, appears to be the nesting place
for a horde of “Gnostic demons” (Auden). Apparently
none of the critics cares to observe that ‘K.’ the
“surveyor,” is a conman, a trickster, who tries to
wheedle his way into a community that has no use for
him. “Surveyor, I see now that you will have to give up
many fantasies before you can become a decent janitor” (The
Castle), says the beadle of the local parish. So when the
people in the castle unexpectedly honor this charade
and even provide ‘K.’ with two assistants, they actually
give him a chance. But ‘K.’ is far from seeing this as an
opportunity. He is too self-centered – a typical trait of
protagonists in Kafka’s stories. Instead, as mentioned,
he is going to start the affair with Frieda, and after
being jilted another affair, all of which examples for
Kafka’s very characteristic brew of illicit sex and dingy
circumstances. Throughout the novel the
protagonist’s self-esteem is riding high to the point of
preposterous conceit; he rather identifies with the
castle’s staff than with the lowly people who actually
help him survive, yet he has no qualms of exploiting
them.
In all of Kafka’s books there is an element of
allegory. It was 1924 and Kafka already on his
deathbed, when he corrected the galley proofs for a
new collection of stories: A Hunger Artist. The title
story summarizes Kafka’s view on the artist’s social
insignificance: “During these last decades the interest in
professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay
very well to stage such great performances under one’s own
management, but today that is quite impossible. We live in a
different world now” (The Hunger Artist, trans. Muir).
Writing is a weird form of living, let alone of making
a living. In the end the truth of the matter is rather
simple: “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said
the hunger artist. “We do admire it,” said the overseer,
affably.” “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger
artist.” “Well then we don’t admire it,” said the overseer,
“but why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because I have to fast, I
can’t help it,” said the hunger artist. “What a fellow you
are,” said the overseer, “and why can’t you help it?
Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and
speaking with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the
overseer’s ear, so that no syllable might be lost, “because I
couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I
should have made no fuss and stuffed myself, like you or
anyone else” (The Hunger Artist).
The abandoned manuscript of the “Castle” was
Kafka’s most extensive exploration on the theme of
the artist as a social parasite. A whole lifetime Kafka
had written libel against his father’s disregard and in
the end he admitted defeat.
He has put in a letter what he didn’t dare say to his
father’s face: “The aversion you naturally and
immediately took to my writing was, for once, welcome to
me. My vanity, my ambition did suffer under your soon
proverbial way of hailing the arrival of my books: "Put it on
my bedside table!" My writing was all about you; it was an
intentionally long and drawn-out leave-taking from you.
But how little all this amounted to! In the place where I lived
I was spurned, condemned, fought to a standstill; and to
escape to some other place was an enormous exertion,
something that was, with small exceptions, unattainable for
me.” (Letter to the Father, trans. Kaiser and Wilkins). So what
was the way out for Kafka, the only “way out; right or
left, in any direction” (A Report to an Academy, trans. Muir)?
For Kafka it is the escape into fantasies. America or
The Missing is the purest example.
There are moments of Dickensian intensity: “A cop
who was just doing his rounds in the street, took in the
shirt-sleeved man into his lowered gaze, and stopped.
Robinson, also spotting the cop was foolish enough to call
out to him from the other window, ‘it’s nothing, nothing at
all,’ as though it were possible to shoo away a policeman like
a fly.” Kafka considered the first chapter “a sheer
imitation of Dickens” (Diaries 10/8/1917). He later published
it separately under the title The Stoker. Eventually the
young Karl Rossmann will arrive in the “Theatre of
Oklahoma,” a fantasy that would have put a smile on
the face of Sigmund Freud. “‘Karl,’ called one of the
angels. Karl looked up, and was so pleasantly surprised he
started to laugh. It was Fanny. ‘Fanny,’ he cried and waved
up to her. ‘Come here!’ called Fanny, and she parted her
robes, revealing her pedestal and a narrow flight of steps
leading up. ‘Am I allowed to go up?’ asked Karl. Only now
did Karl begin to grasp the size of America” (America, trans.
Michael Hofmann).

Much, if not all of his printed work had begun as an

entry in his diaries and for Kafka “automatic writing,”
as if in a state of trance was indeed the only way to go
about it. My personal favorite is A Country Doctor: “I
was in great perplexity; I had to start on an urgent journey;
a seriously ill patient was waiting for me in a village ten
miles off; a thick blizzard of snow filled all the wide spaces
between him and me; I had a gig, a light gig with big wheels,
exactly right for our country roads; muffled in furs, my bag
of instruments in my hand, I was in the courtyard all ready
for the journey; but there was no horse to be had, no horse”
(The Country Doctor, trans. Muir). In the grey hours he
would climb out of this “beautifully strong dream of
composing” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Letters) with great
difficulty: “This story, ‘The Verdict,’ I wrote in one sitting
during the night of the 22/23rd, from ten o’clock at night to
six o’clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs
out from under the desk, they had got so stiff from sitting.
The anxious strain and joy; how the story developed before
me, as if I were walking on water. Several times in this night
I carried my own weight on my back. How everything can be
expressed, how for everything, the strangest fancies, there
waits a great fire to perish and rise again. It turned blue
outside the window. Two men walked across the bridge”
(Diaries, 9/23/1912). For all his life Kafka hoped to write
something “large and whole, well shaped from beginning
to end; and it would be possible, calm and with open eyes to
hear it read as the blood relation of a healthy story” (Diaries,
10/20/1911), yet one doesn’t write “Peace and War” in one
sitting. There is of course nothing wrong with
automatic writing, if you have it in you, but to
preserve coherence and continuity requires a special
mind-set. Kafka never managed to work it out for
himself.
From his letters some six hundred have reached us
from his contorted correspondence with his fiancé
Felice Bauer (1887 – 1960). The two engaged and
separated twice, Kafka asking Felice the second time
to signal her agreement to the breakup by sending a
postcard left empty. Then he announced his
engagement to Julie Whoryzek (1891 – 1939), the
daughter of a synagogue janitor and shoemaker. I
suspect the father was well aware of the ways of his
son. He said he would have to sell the store and
emigrate to escape this shame for the family name.
“She probably put on a fancy blouse, something these
Prague Jewesses are good at, and right away, of course, you
decided to marry her. And that as fast as possible, in a week,
tomorrow, today. I can’t understand you: after all, you're a
grown man, you live in the city, and you don't know what to
do but marry the first girl who comes along. Isn't there
anything else you can do? If you're frightened, I'll go with
you” (Letter to the Father).
It was the last straw in a long history of downers
between the two. Then Kafka met the love of his life,
Milena Jesenska (1896 – 1944), and this started something
the father couldn’t reach.
For the first time we hear him sing; Kafka always
had a typical voice, but according to Max Brod’s
testimony he must have modeled himself on the
wrong example, it was not given to him to become
another Flaubert. Albeit too late for his work, Milena
on the other hand, made him sing:
“Milena: what a rich, heavy name, almost too full to be
lifted and in the beginning I didn’t like it much, it seemed to
me a Greek or Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by
Czech, cheated of its accent, and yet in color and form it is
marvelously a woman, a woman you take into your arms
and away from the world, away from the fire, and she
presses herself willingly and trusting into your arms; only
the strong accent on the ‘i’ is bad, doesn’t the name keep
leaping away from you? Or is it perhaps only the leap into
luck you make yourself under your burden?”