Kafka Unlimited

Goethe probably holds back the development of the German language through the power of his works. Even if prose has grown distant from him in the meantime, it ultimately returns to him with ever-stronger longing, as is the case these days. It has even adopted old turns of phrase that can be found in Goethe but have nothing to do with him, in order to revel in the complete spectacle of its boundless dependence.

If Franz Kafka, whose arresting appearance we know so well from photographs, had looked like Ernest Hemingway or Homer Simpson or Boris Johnson—almost anybody other than Franz Kafka—the figure of a hopelessly complicated, alarmingly delicate, self-enclosed neurotic, whose quivering otherworldly sensitivity unfitted him to the trivialities of human intercourse, might not stand so firmly between us and him. The ears suggesting extraterrestrial ancestry, the “intense, creaturely gaze of startled composure—enormous fears, enormous control,” as Philip Roth puts it. Even Kafka’s baby picture reproduced on a wall of the Morgan Library and Museum’s exhibition “Franz Kafka” says, Uh-oh, here comes trouble. Those indelible images of a lone witness about to be engulfed in darkness function as graphic emblems of Kafka’s writing, and reinforce a wariness among potential readers. In any case, there seem to be a lot of people who approach (or avoid) Kafka’s fiction in anticipation of something somber, cryptic, too abstruse to enjoy. It’s unfortunate, because the fiction is mesmerizing, unendingly rewarding, and often wildly funny. 

are you and the dailykafka friends

However, these types of suspicions were an inherent part of fasting. No one could actually keep the hunger artist under observation all day and all night, no single observer could truly know if his fast was in fact perfect and unbroken; only the hunger artist himself could know, and thus he was the only truly satisfied spectator of his fast. He was, however, never satisfied for other reasons; he became emaciated —so emaciated that the public regretfully had to keep its distance because they could not bear the sight of him— perhaps not so much out of fasting, but out of dissatisfaction with himself. This was because he alone knew what no other initiate could know: how easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. He was not secretive about this, but nobody believed him. They thought he was being modest at best, but most took him for an attention-seeker or a swindler for whom fasting was easy because he knew how to make it easy and had the gall to half-admit it. He had to take all of this, he had grown used to it over the course of the years, but this dissatisfaction gnawed inside him constantly, and after his fasts —one had to give him credit for this— he never left the cage of his own free will.

Poor Dora, oh, we are all so poor, who in this world is poorer than us - she slept a little, but whispered nonstop in her sleep, one could only hear "my love, my love, my dearest"... I promised her that we would visit Franz again this afternoon if she would rest, and she did. "He is so lonely, completely alone, we have nothing to do but sit here, but we're leaving him there uncovered and all alone in the dark - oh my dearest, my dearest -" and so it went. What happened here is indescribable, and should never be described. Only those who know Dora can know what love is. So few understand love, and it only increases our pain and suffering. But you understand, don't you? You understand it! We still don't really know what has happened, particularly those of us who still have him by our side, but things will slowly become clearer and thus painfully dark. We're going back to visit Franz now - how stiff and unapproachable his face is, as pure and unrelenting as his soul. Unrelenting - the face of a king, from the oldest, most noble lineage. The gentleness of his human existence is gone, only his incomparable soul still shapes that precious, unmoving face, as lovely as an ancient marble bust.