I Am a Memory Come Alive: Autobiographical Writings

by Franz Kafka, Nahum N. Glatzer

Franz Kafka, Nahum N Glatzer

Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Biography Memoir

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up amid German, Czech, and Jewish cultural influences that shaped his sense of displacement and linguistic precision. His difficult relationship with his authoritarian father left a lasting mark, fostering feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy that became central themes in his fiction and personal writings.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Franz Kafka planned to write an autobiography but never did, although much of his published work reflects his life, in some cases quite closely. This book, exquisitely pieced together from letters and diaries by editor Nahum Glatzer, likely provides a truer and more revealing window into Kafka's head than a proper autobiography would have. He never knew these words would someday be published, and that alone makes this volume more of an intimate read. I did not get far in each sitting with this book, as I was constantly copying quotes down into my notebook. So many of his words hit me hard. Every once in a while I tune in deep to a certain writer and this happened to me with Kafka recently. I'd read several of his books before and he was always in the back of my mind as a writer I wanted to revisit. I knew that he kept diaries that had later been published, and I sensed through reading his fiction that I would like to read some of his more personal writing. I was not wrong. I am now sad that I've finished reading this book, as I found it to be a comfort in daily life. Every day I discovered new ways to relate to Kafka. He lived largely inside his own head, which can be both terrifying and exciting. He also always kept room for loneliness in his life, “rush[ing] toward being alone as rivers rush toward the sea.” Reading his words, often depressing though they are, offered a warm sad comfort similar to the one I feel while listening to certain songs. The idea of a not wholly unwelcome sadness may seem alien to some, but I know there are others that understand.

What I found fascinating was the disconnect between how Kafka portrayed himself in his diaries and letters, and how the few people whose other viewpoints are presented in the book saw him, in particular two of the women he was involved with, Milena Jesenská and Dora Diamant. Even more interesting was how differently from each other the two of them saw him. It made me think about how so many of us are maybe quietly dying inside, while outwardly holding it together with tight smiles and easy laughs. After all, telling the people in your life how you really feel inside is not such a simple task to accomplish, nor one that everyone feels comfortable undertaking, especially when the reaction of others is in question. Dealing in the superficial makes everyday life so much more bearable. Or does it.

Kafka believed that the tuberculosis that ultimately killed him came from his mind: he writes to Milena Jesenská that “the disease of the lung is nothing but an overflowing of my mental illness.” He thought that since he'd spent so long imagining his own death, that his physical disease was merely a manifestation of that obsession. While it's possible that Kafka was prone to hyperbole, even in his own diaries, I doubt that he exaggerated his existential turmoil much beyond satisfying his own writerly need to find the precise words to describe it, which is something that many people who suffer from such similar struggles aren't able to easily do (once again, the superficial wins out, e.g. answering 'fine' to 'how are you' versus answering 'the alarm trumpets of nothingness'). But what measurable effect Kafka's own inner darkness ultimately had on his physical health, though, is impossible to say.

I plan to one day read the full volumes of Kafka's diaries, and perhaps some of the volumes of his letters, but for now this was an extremely satisfying condensed amalgamation of the two. I will be thinking about this book for a long time, as well as rereading the quotes I wrote down in my notebook, one of which I would like to share now. While it is bleak, and it's unknown whether Kafka is speaking of himself here, the words resonated strongly with me, and I believe this diary entry to be a powerful and accurate snapshot of how Kafka saw himself near the end of his short life:

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—he has little success in this—but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor.

[Olivestarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you really want to understand Kafka you should read this book first. It is an extremely intimate look into his mind and soul. This book gives you a front row seat of the inner workings of his mind..

[julia 🪱 · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh kafka…this was such a delightful insight into the world and mind of kafka i feel slightly insane. everything he wrote even just diary entries or letters to his friends should be regarded as literature he is just incredible i get him he’s such a girl

[J Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

i did not finish this, as i just have limited time to read these days and sometimes when i put something down i become disengaged. All that aside, i found this book illuminating, particularly as i have not read much of Kafka's work, and it was interesting to see what went into their creation. What i really took away from this, and what i think others with creative leanings may find as well, was how absolutely driven to create this man was, to the point of insanity. Its all that he ever talked about. He lived entirely in his head. He was an absolutely neurotic, anxious, hypochondriac human being, which translated into his work being some of the most paranoid around.
How i related to this was the struggle of a 'normal' man, who has to work to survive and pay the bills, and having his soul bludgeoned down by senseless repetition, mediocrity, and bureacracy, and the soul of a sensitive man struggling to survive in this rat race. Its just really hard to find time to create, the way i would like, and i find it inspirational and reassuring to see others who have had the same struggles, and who manage to create anyway, surviving the insanity that ensues. Best quote, possibly ever (somewhat paraphrased): 'i find my job at the law office a sort of insane double life, in which the only escape is madness or death.'
The only down-side to this book, in my opinion, is his neuroses and living such a cerebral existence, leads to a lot of neurotic, hypochondriac belly-aching, that can be a bit tiresome at times. I get enough of that in my own day. Recommended, though.

[Stella Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit that I finish this one kinda carelessly because some parts also appear in the books that I read previously, "Blue Octavo Notebooks" and "Letters to Milena". But, if you want to know more about Kafka's personal life and his writing process, this is definitely the one to go.

To Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904:
"I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it? Because it will make us happy, you tell me? My God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy we could, if necessary, write ourselves. What we need are books that affect us like some really grievous misfortune, like the death of one whom we loved more than ourselves, as if we were banished to distant forests, away from everybody, like a suicide; a book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe".

To Felice, February 18-19:
"Observations on the weakness of language, and comparisons between the limitations of words and the infinity of feelings, are quite fallacious. The infinite feeling continues to be as infinite in words as it was in the heart. [...] After all, who knows within himself how things really are with him? This tempestuous or floundering or morasslike inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and thought it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold".