Letters to Felice

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Todo lo que escribía era de calidad, poderoso e inigualable y si tenemos en cuenta que ponía su corazón en ello, todo adquiere un relieve aún más hermoso. Kafka ορισμένες φορές έχανε τον έλεγχο των συναισθημάτων του, στην προκειμένη περίπτωση είναι η επιτηδευμένη σοβαροφάνεια του εργασιακού του περιβάλλοντος αυτή που πυροδοτεί την έκρηξή του:

Kafka’s correspondence with Felice has all the earmarks of his fiction - the same nervous attention to minute particulars, the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power, the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation - combined, surprisingly enough, with moments of boyish ardour and delight."  -   Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesCould Kafka have gained a reasonable amount of weight without inheriting an insatiable appetite like his father? Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. Kafka is a very humble man, very self-deprecating but not in an especially irritating way. It's endearing to see a man who became an everlasting classic apologetically say things like "[My latest project] is rather illegible, and even if that weren't an obstacle -- up to now, after all, I certainly haven't spoiled you with beautiful writing . . . " Franz Kafka (right) with Max Brod's younger brother, Otto, at the Castel Toblino near Trento, 1909.

Soy tuyo a más no poder, esto puedo decirlo gracias a la visión de conjunto que, a estas alturas, poseo sobre mis treinta años de existencia." Kafka διαγιγνώσκεται με φυματίωση η σχέση τους τελειώνει - ευτυχώς για εκείνη, δυστυχώς για εκείνον. Νομίζω πως χάνοντάς την, χάνει τη μοναδική ευκαιρία σωτηρίας που είχε. Υπηρξε για εκείνον αναντικατάστατη.

An emaciated figure

Yet, Kafka couldn't help but feel disgusted by his father's voracious appetite at the dining table, where crumbs of bread would scatter. Lo que más me gusta de Kafka es las ganas que me hace venir de escribir. Pocos escritores lo consiguen. No se trata de que escriban bien. Nabokov y Dostoievski, otros de mis dos escritores favoritos, no me hacen venir ni el más débil deseo de escribir: todo lo contrario, me apabullan con su perfección y me convencen de que no vale la pena intentarlo. Pero no es que Kafka escriba mal. Por supuesto. Es por lo que cuenta y por la intensidad con la que lo hace. The more than five hundred letters Kafka wrote to Felice - through their breakup, a second engagement in 1917, and their final parting in the fall of that year, when Kafka began to feel the effects of tuberculosis that would eventually claim his life -  reveal the full measure of his inner turmoil as he tried, in vain, to balance his desire for human connection with what he felt were the solitary demands of his craft.

The discomfort of this wildly disorienting bidirectional pull is what 29-year-old Franz Kafka articulated in a beautiful and heartbreaking letter to Felice Bauer, a marketing rep for a dictation machine company whom the young author had met at the home of his friend and future biographer Max Brod in August of 1912. Young Franz and Felice immediately began a correspondence of escalating intensity, with Kafka frequently exasperated — as was Vladimir Nabokov at the start of his lifelong romance with Véra— over his beloved’s infrequent and insufficiently romantic response. Over the five-year course of their turbulent, mostly epistolary relationship, they were engaged twice, even though they met in person only a few times. During that period, Kafka produced his most significant work, including The Metamorphosis. Five hundred of his letters survive and were posthumously published in the intensely rewarding and revelatory Letters to Felice ( public library). Perhaps happiness, in Bauer's eyes, was marriage and parenthood. This starkly contrasted to Kafka, who sought to stoke the flames of his inner torment through writing. I still feel a very powerful connection to Kafka. I even brought his grave in Prague some flowers when I was in town.La relación epistolar será una necesidad, una dependencia emocional muy fuerte, un amor extraño y controvertido entre ambos, pero principalmente para Kafka que entrará en un torbellino de pasiones que le deparará su corazón, el cual lucha con su necesidad de establecerse definitivamente como escritor. Kafka με τη Felice Bauer με βοήθησε ιδιαίτερα στο να κατανοήσω τις ιδέες αλλά και τις εμμονές που βρίσκονται μέσα στο λογοτεχνικό του έργο. Και στην περίπτωση αυτή, όπως και στις άλλες συλλογές επιστολών του, οι απαντήσεις της Felice δεν σώζονται. Αν έπρεπε να απαντήσω στην ερώτηση για το κατά πόσο ο Kafka προσπάθησε να δημιουργήσει μια παρασιτική σχέση εις βάρος της νεαρής αρραβωνιαστικιάς του, νομίζω πως θα έπρεπε να πω πως, ναι, αυτό ισχύει. Το ήξερε πως για εκείνον το να την κόψει και να την ράψει στα δικά του μέτρα ήταν θέμα επιβίωσης και δεν έπαψε να βασανίζεται από ενοχές γι' αυτήν του ανάγκη. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-09-13 19:06:26 Associated-names Bauer, Felice, 1887-1960 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0006 Boxid IA40688106 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier