|
.
|
"..the
books we need are the kind that act upon
us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the
death of someone we love more than ourselves,
that make us feel as though we were on the verge
of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all
human habitation — a book should serve as
the ax for the frozen sea within us"
Franz Kafka
|
.
Kafka's sisters Valli, Elli, Ottla, around 1898.
|
|
.
|
|
.
|
Kafka's
sisters.
Ottla born 1892, Elli born 1889 and
Valli born 1890. All three sisters were murdered
by the Nazis for being Jewish
at
Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz
|
|
.
|
|
.
Two Franz portrait photographs, taken
around 1899.
|
|
"Youth
is happy because it has the ability to
see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability
to see beauty never grows old."
"The
actors by their presence always convince
me to my horror that most of what I’ve written about
them until now is false."
|
|
.
|
|
,
.
|
Bar
mitzvah: June 13 1896 invitation from Hermann Kafka and wife,
sent to friends announcing his son's Bar mitzvah. An important
life cycle event for a young Jewish boy.
A boy is
Bar
Mitzvah when he reaches his thirteenth birthday, The
literal meaning of Bar Mitzvah is "commandment
age" or age of maturity. Historically Bar Mitzvah is
the ceremonial occasion that marks the time when a young
person is recognized as an adult in the Jewish community and
is responsible for performing Mitzvot (commandments). For
example before children are Bar Mitzvah, they do not need to
fast on
Yom
Kippur. However after bar mitzvah, they are required to
fulfill this mitzvah. At bar mitzvah they are also counted
in the minyan, a quorum of ten required to conduct a
service.
|
|
"If
I write not what I speak, I speak not what I think, I think not
what I ought to so my writing comes from
the deepest
darkness."
"...the
innocent and the guilty, both
executed without distinction in the
end.... "
|
.
.
|
Franz
Kafka at age Thirteen,
Bar mitzvah age.
|
|
Kafka's Last
Love:.,
The Metamorphosis, The Trial,
|
|
"I
need solitude for my writing;
not like a hermit - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."
"Ours
is a lost generation, it may be,
but it is more blameless
than those earlier generations".
|
.
|
Franz
at age 18. In school he was a very good student; nevertheless
he was always terrified of failing. "I remained convinced
that I would not pass my final examinations that year, and
if I did, I would not get on in the next class, and if by some
swindle I could avoid even that, then I would certainly
fail decisively in my graduation examination.
The truth was, however, that he didn't
even come close to flunking out.
|
|
.,
|
|
,
This
was probably Kafka's first writing table when he was
a
student. It was found among the family's possessions.
|
"The
clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demonic or in any case inhuman pace, the
outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen
but that the worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at
least clash in a fearful manner"
"A cage went in search of a bird" |
|
|
,
|
|
,
.
|
"I
was sitting once on the slope of the Hradschin. I was
mulling over what I wanted my life to be. My most important, or most enthralling, desire, it seemed,
was to achieve a view of life in which it would both retain its own normal, ponderous fall
and rise, but at the same time be perceived as a nothingness, a
dream, a hovering in the air"
Franz
Kafka about 30 years old.
|
|
"K.
felt a little forlorn as he advanced, a solitary figure between
the rows of empty seats, perhaps with the priest's eyes
following him; and the size of the Cathedral struck him as
bordering on the limit of what human beings could bear...when he
heard the priest lifting up his voice. A resonant, well-trained
voice. How it rolled through the expectant Cathedral! But it was
no congregation the priest was addressing, the words were
unambiguous and inescapable, he was calling out: 'Joseph
K.!'...'You are Joseph K...You are an accused man...You are held
to be guilty.'"
"Life's
splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all
its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible,
far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not
reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word,
by its right name, it will come.
|
.
.
|
As
1924 began, Franz's health got worse and worse. He was
forced to go to a couple of sanatoriums, and his weight
plummeted. In April he went to a sanitarium in Kierling,
Austria, near Vienna. He agreed to the publication of
"A Hunger Artist," with some other stories, and began
proofing the galleys. He asked Dora's rabbi father for
permission to marry her, even though he was almost totally
wasted away, and was turned down. But he seemed happy enough
with Dora at his bedside. He died on June 3, 1924. Dora
was inconsolable. "My love, my love, my good
one!" she went around crying .
The
funeral was held on June 10th at the Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
|
|
"I
can prove at any time that my education tried to
make
another person out of me than the one I became. It is
for the harm, therefore, that my
educators could have done
me in accordance with
their intentions that I reproach
them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and
since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the
world beyond."
"I
think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound
and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a
disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death
of someone we
loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests
far from everyone,
like a suicide.
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside
us."
|
.
.
|
|
|
"Who
is to confirm for me the truth
or probability of this, that
it is only because of my literary mission that
I am
uninterested in all other things and therefore
heartless."
"My doubts stand in a circle around
every word"
|
.
.
|
|
In
September 1909 Kafka, Max Brod, and Max brother Otto vacationed in Riva on Lake
Garda. Kafka (right) and Otto in a snapshot taken by Max
Brod.
|
"I
have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious
locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp.... And how
I would write! From what depths I would drag it up!
Without effort! For extreme concentration known no effort. The trouble is that I might not be able to keep it up for long, and at the first failure... would be bound to end in a grandiose fit of madness."
|
.
.
|
|
Kafka
in front of the Oppelt House,
the apartment building where
his
family lived. Prague, the Altstadter Ring (Old Town Square), around the time that Kafka was working on The Castle 1922
|
|
|
.Franz
in 1906, just after receiving his doctorate in law from Charles
University. He said he chose law so that it would not interfere
with his mental life. Nevertheless, he never actually practiced law;
instead he worked at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute from 1908 to 1922, being put on "temporary retirement" because
of his rapidly declining health..
|
|
| |
|
.
Passport photographs 1911-1912
taken at the time
Kafka began
working for the Workers Accident Insurance Company."
|
|
|
"Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold,
all is good. Once in another world, you must hold
your tongue."
|
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
.
|
|
..
|
"My
talent for portraying my dreamlike
inner life has thrust all other matters
into the background; my life has
dwindled dreadfully, nor will it
cease to dwindle."
."There
is a goal, but no way; what we call
a way is hesitation."
|
,
.
|
Kafka
with bowler hat.
|
|
|
|
b
|
|
|
|
|
"You
can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the
world, that is something you are free to do and it
accords with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering you could avoid".
"From
a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
That is the point that must be reached."
|
.
.
|
|
Drawings
by Kafka
According to Max Brod, Kafka was already drawing sketches as a
university student, doodling in the margins of his scripts
|
|
.
|
"I represent the negative elements."
My
peers, lately, have found companionship through means of
intoxication--it makes them sociable.
I, however, cannot force myself to
use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and
when the drugs and alcohol dissipate,
will be all that my peers have as well.
|
.
.
|
|
Sketch
by Friedrich Feigl of Kafka reading the "The Bucker
Rider" at a private gathering in Prague. This is the
single artistic representation of Kafka made during his
life.
|
|
.
.
|
|
The
first lines of the 1904 manuscript, Description
of a Struggle.
"And the people in their finery
Walk unsteadily over the gravel
Under the enormous sky Which,
from hills in the distance,
Arches over to distant hills".
|
| |
|
|
.
.
|
|
Class
photograph 1898,with school director Frank (left) and
head master Emil Gschwind (right). Kafka is second from left in
the top row. His friends: Paul Kisch (on his right), with whom
he later planned to pursue German studies: Oskar Pollak
(second row from top, second from left), his closest friend
until he entered the university: Rudolf Illowy (third
row from top, far left), with whom he discussed socialism:
Hugo Bergmann (third row from top, third left), a Zionist: Ewald Felix Pribram (third row from top, far
right), an atheist, also a very close friend
|
|
.. |
|
"All
human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue"
"The
life of society moves in a circle.
Only those burdened with a common
affliction understand each other"
|
 |
A
Isaac (Yichzak) Löwy (pronounced Levy), Kafka's Jewish
Yiddish actor friend, whom he met in 1911 when a Yiddish acting troupe
came to Prague, and he became very interested in the plays, going to see
them whenever there was a performance on. The Twobecame close friends and
Löwy would tell Kafka about his Eastern Jewish upbringing in Poland,
which Kafka found very interesting. |
|
... |
Anyone who
cannot come to terms
with his life while he is alive needs
one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other
hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins".
"The
experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of
itself in matter and as matter, in mind and
as mind, in emotion, as
emotion, etc."
|
.
. |
Kafka's
mother and Kafka's
Sister Valli in Franzensbad |
|
. |
|
.
.
|
.
.
|
|
Franz
Kafka lived in this building, called the House at the
Minute, near Old Town Square, from 1889 to 1896.
|
Franz Kafka lived at one time in a house
behind the
Church of Our Lady of Tyn.
|
|
|
|
|
|
...
|
|
.
.
|
On the left, House at the Stone Madonna, also
called the Storch house, has painting of St. Wenceslas on horseback.
On the right, House of the Stone Ram is where
Albert Einstein played his violin for Franz Kafka when
he was a professor at Prague German University
1911 - 1912
|
| |
|
|
..,
.,
|
|
|
Plaque marks spot where Franz Kafka was born
on
July 3, 1883 above the Batalion Schnapps bar at the
corner of
Maiselova and Kaprova streets. The original
building has long since been torn down.
|
Window in the Old Jewish
Town Hall.
|
| |
|
.
|
"If
one has the strength to look at things unceasingly, so to speak without blinking, one sees a great deal; but if one falters only once
and shuts one's eyes, everything slips away into darkness"
|
.
|
|
The
Jewish cemetery in the far left
background, the grave of Kafka's
grandfather Jakob.
|
|
|
.
|
|
.
"Writing is a
deeper sleep than death.
Just as one
wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be
dragged from my desk at night.
|
.
.Kafka's
grave in the Jewish Straschnitz Cemetery
in Prague. Kafka's parents were buried in the same plot,
the Father in 1931,
the Mother in
1934.
|
|
.
|
|
|
|
-Kafka's Death notice in Czech and
German-
In deepest sorrow we announce that our son, Doctor of Law Franz
Kafka died on June 3 1924, in the Kierlin Sanatorium
near Vienna. The burial will take place on Wednesday afternoon, June 11, at 3:45,
at the Jewish Cemetery in Straschnitz.
Prague, June 10, 1924. Hermann and Julia Kafka, in the name of the bereaved family. We request that
there be no
visits of condolence.
.
|
|
Kafka
and Jewish mysticism Kabbala
|
Kafka
and Judaism
|
|
Franz
Kafka Biography
|
The
Metamorphosis the full story
|
|
Kafka
and Milená Jesenská
|
The
Holocaust photographs Galleries
|
|
Franz Kafka
- Wax Museum
|
Franz
Kafka's Letter to his Father
|
|
.
|
"..the
books we need are the kind that act upon
us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the
death of someone we love more than ourselves,
that make us feel as though we were on the verge
of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all
human habitation — a book should serve as
the ax for the frozen sea within us"
Franz Kafka
|
.
Kafka's sisters Valli, Elli, Ottla, around 1898.
|
|
.
|
|
.
|
Kafka's
sisters.
Ottla born 1892, Elli born 1889 and
Valli born 1890. All three sisters were murdered
by the Nazis for being Jewish
at
Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz
|
|
.
|
|
.
Two Franz portrait photographs, taken
around 1899.
|
|
"Youth
is happy because it has the ability to
see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability
to see beauty never grows old."
"The
actors by their presence always convince
me to my horror that most of what I’ve written about
them until now is false."
|
|
.
|
|
,
.
|
Bar
mitzvah: June 13 1896 invitation from Hermann Kafka and wife,
sent to friends announcing his son's Bar mitzvah. An important
life cycle event for a young Jewish boy.
A boy is
Bar
Mitzvah when he reaches his thirteenth birthday, The
literal meaning of Bar Mitzvah is "commandment
age" or age of maturity. Historically Bar Mitzvah is
the ceremonial occasion that marks the time when a young
person is recognized as an adult in the Jewish community and
is responsible for performing Mitzvot (commandments). For
example before children are Bar Mitzvah, they do not need to
fast on
Yom
Kippur. However after bar mitzvah, they are required to
fulfill this mitzvah. At bar mitzvah they are also counted
in the minyan, a quorum of ten required to conduct a
service.
|
|
"If
I write not what I speak, I speak not what I think, I think not
what I ought to so my writing comes from
the deepest
darkness."
"...the
innocent and the guilty, both
executed without distinction in the
end.... "
|
.
.
|
Franz
Kafka at age Thirteen,
Bar mitzvah age.
|
|
Kafka's Last
Love:.,
The Metamorphosis, The Trial,
|
|
"I
need solitude for my writing;
not like a hermit - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."
"Ours
is a lost generation, it may be,
but it is more blameless
than those earlier generations".
|
.
|
Franz
at age 18. In school he was a very good student; nevertheless
he was always terrified of failing. "I remained convinced
that I would not pass my final examinations that year, and
if I did, I would not get on in the next class, and if by some
swindle I could avoid even that, then I would certainly
fail decisively in my graduation examination.
The truth was, however, that he didn't
even come close to flunking out.
|
|
.,
|
|
,
This
was probably Kafka's first writing table when he was
a
student. It was found among the family's possessions.
|
"The
clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demonic or in any case inhuman pace, the
outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen
but that the worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at
least clash in a fearful manner"
"A cage went in search of a bird" |
|
|
,
|
|
,
.
|
"I
was sitting once on the slope of the Hradschin. I was
mulling over what I wanted my life to be. My most important, or most enthralling, desire, it seemed,
was to achieve a view of life in which it would both retain its own normal, ponderous fall
and rise, but at the same time be perceived as a nothingness, a
dream, a hovering in the air"
Franz
Kafka about 30 years old.
|
|
"K.
felt a little forlorn as he advanced, a solitary figure between
the rows of empty seats, perhaps with the priest's eyes
following him; and the size of the Cathedral struck him as
bordering on the limit of what human beings could bear...when he
heard the priest lifting up his voice. A resonant, well-trained
voice. How it rolled through the expectant Cathedral! But it was
no congregation the priest was addressing, the words were
unambiguous and inescapable, he was calling out: 'Joseph
K.!'...'You are Joseph K...You are an accused man...You are held
to be guilty.'"
"Life's
splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all
its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible,
far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not
reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word,
by its right name, it will come.
|
.
.
|
As
1924 began, Franz's health got worse and worse. He was
forced to go to a couple of sanatoriums, and his weight
plummeted. In April he went to a sanitarium in Kierling,
Austria, near Vienna. He agreed to the publication of
"A Hunger Artist," with some other stories, and began
proofing the galleys. He asked Dora's rabbi father for
permission to marry her, even though he was almost totally
wasted away, and was turned down. But he seemed happy enough
with Dora at his bedside. He died on June 3, 1924. Dora
was inconsolable. "My love, my love, my good
one!" she went around crying .
The
funeral was held on June 10th at the Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
|
|
"I
can prove at any time that my education tried to
make
another person out of me than the one I became. It is
for the harm, therefore, that my
educators could have done
me in accordance with
their intentions that I reproach
them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and
since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the
world beyond."
"I
think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound
and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a
disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death
of someone we
loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests
far from everyone,
like a suicide.
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside
us."
|
.
.
|
|
|
"Who
is to confirm for me the truth
or probability of this, that
it is only because of my literary mission that
I am
uninterested in all other things and therefore
heartless."
"My doubts stand in a circle around
every word"
|
.
.
|
|
In
September 1909 Kafka, Max Brod, and Max brother Otto vacationed in Riva on Lake
Garda. Kafka (right) and Otto in a snapshot taken by Max
Brod.
|
"I
have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious
locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp.... And how
I would write! From what depths I would drag it up!
Without effort! For extreme concentration known no effort. The trouble is that I might not be able to keep it up for long, and at the first failure... would be bound to end in a grandiose fit of madness."
|
.
.
|
|
Kafka
in front of the Oppelt House,
the apartment building where
his
family lived. Prague, the Altstadter Ring (Old Town Square), around the time that Kafka was working on The Castle 1922
|
|
|
.Franz
in 1906, just after receiving his doctorate in law from Charles
University. He said he chose law so that it would not interfere
with his mental life. Nevertheless, he never actually practiced law;
instead he worked at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute from 1908 to 1922, being put on "temporary retirement" because
of his rapidly declining health..
|
|
| |
|
.
Passport photographs 1911-1912
taken at the time
Kafka began
working for the Workers Accident Insurance Company."
|
|
|
"Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold,
all is good. Once in another world, you must hold
your tongue."
|
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
.
|
|
..
|
"My
talent for portraying my dreamlike
inner life has thrust all other matters
into the background; my life has
dwindled dreadfully, nor will it
cease to dwindle."
."There
is a goal, but no way; what we call
a way is hesitation."
|
,
.
|
Kafka
with bowler hat.
|
|
|
|
b
|
|
|
|
|
"You
can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the
world, that is something you are free to do and it
accords with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering you could avoid".
"From
a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
That is the point that must be reached."
|
.
.
|
|
Drawings
by Kafka
According to Max Brod, Kafka was already drawing sketches as a
university student, doodling in the margins of his scripts
|
|
.
|
"I represent the negative elements."
My
peers, lately, have found companionship through means of
intoxication--it makes them sociable.
I, however, cannot force myself to
use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and
when the drugs and alcohol dissipate,
will be all that my peers have as well.
|
.
.
|
|
Sketch
by Friedrich Feigl of Kafka reading the "The Bucker
Rider" at a private gathering in Prague. This is the
single artistic representation of Kafka made during his
life.
|
|
.
.
|
|
The
first lines of the 1904 manuscript, Description
of a Struggle.
"And the people in their finery
Walk unsteadily over the gravel
Under the enormous sky Which,
from hills in the distance,
Arches over to distant hills".
|
| |
|
|
.
.
|
|
Class
photograph 1898,with school director Frank (left) and
head master Emil Gschwind (right). Kafka is second from left in
the top row. His friends: Paul Kisch (on his right), with whom
he later planned to pursue German studies: Oskar Pollak
(second row from top, second from left), his closest friend
until he entered the university: Rudolf Illowy (third
row from top, far left), with whom he discussed socialism:
Hugo Bergmann (third row from top, third left), a Zionist: Ewald Felix Pribram (third row from top, far
right), an atheist, also a very close friend
|
|
.. |
|
"All
human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue"
"The
life of society moves in a circle.
Only those burdened with a common
affliction understand each other"
|
|
A
Isaac (Yichzak) Löwy (pronounced Levy), Kafka's Jewish
Yiddish actor friend, whom he met in 1911 when a Yiddish acting troupe
came to Prague, and he became very interested in the plays, going to see
them whenever there was a performance on. The Twobecame close friends and
Löwy would tell Kafka about his Eastern Jewish upbringing in Poland,
which Kafka found very interesting. |
|
... |
Anyone who
cannot come to terms
with his life while he is alive needs
one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other
hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins".
"The
experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of
itself in matter and as matter, in mind and
as mind, in emotion, as
emotion, etc."
|
.
. |
Kafka's
mother and Kafka's
Sister Valli in Franzensbad |
|
. |
|
.
.
|
.
.
|
|
Franz
Kafka lived in this building, called the House at the
Minute, near Old Town Square, from 1889 to 1896.
|
Franz Kafka lived at one time in a house
behind the
Church of Our Lady of Tyn.
|
|
|
|
|
|
...
|
|
.
.
|
On the left, House at the Stone Madonna, also
called the Storch house, has painting of St. Wenceslas on horseback.
On the right, House of the Stone Ram is where
Albert Einstein played his violin for Franz Kafka when
he was a professor at Prague German University
1911 - 1912
|
| |
|
|
..,
.,
|
|
|
Plaque marks spot where Franz Kafka was born
on
July 3, 1883 above the Batalion Schnapps bar at the
corner of
Maiselova and Kaprova streets. The original
building has long since been torn down.
|
Window in the Old Jewish
Town Hall.
|
| |
|
.
|
"If
one has the strength to look at things unceasingly, so to speak without blinking, one sees a great deal; but if one falters only once
and shuts one's eyes, everything slips away into darkness"
|
.
|
|
The
Jewish cemetery in the far left
background, the grave of Kafka's
grandfather Jakob.
|
|
|
.
|
|
.
"Writing is a
deeper sleep than death.
Just as one
wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be
dragged from my desk at night.
|
.
.Kafka's
grave in the Jewish Straschnitz Cemetery
in Prague. Kafka's parents were buried in the same plot,
the Father in 1931,
the Mother in
1934.
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-Kafka's Death notice in Czech and
German-
In deepest sorrow we announce that our son, Doctor of Law Franz
Kafka died on June 3 1924, in the Kierlin Sanatorium
near Vienna. The burial will take place on Wednesday afternoon, June 11, at 3:45,
at the Jewish Cemetery in Straschnitz.
Prague, June 10, 1924. Hermann and Julia Kafka, in the name of the bereaved family. We request that
there be no
visits of condolence.
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Franz Kafka Photos writing
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