Franz Kafka: Koszmar rozumu

by Ernst Pawel, Irena Stąpor (Translator)

Życie Franza Kafki obrosło wieloma mitami. Wpłynęła na to nie tylko jego sugestywna twórczość, ale także przekłamania, mające swoje źródła w najbliższym przyjacielu Kafki, Maxie Brodzie.

Ernstowi Pawlowi udało się sportretować Kafkę jako człowieka, którego losy były bardziej poruszające niż powstałe wokół nich mistyfikacje. Tworzy obraz kogoś, kto sprawnie obracał się w świecie, niezwykle cenionego pracownika, którego kompetencje i zaangażowanie nagradzano awansami i podwyżkami. A także bardzo świadomego pisarza. Autor wychodzi poza legendę Kafki – bezbronnego, znerwicowanego urzędnika. Nie pomija jego twórczości, ale skupia się na życiu, korzystając z wielu źródeł, nie tylko dzienników i listów.

Pawel niczego nie osądza, rzetelnie omawia wiele trudnych spraw: stosunek Kafki do judaizmu, jego relacje z rodzicami, zwłaszcza z ojcem, burzliwy związek z Felicją Bauer czy romans z Mileną Jesenską. Oto kronika życia pisarza, a jednocześnie portret środowiska i epoki.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism, Biography Memoir, Literature, Germany

504 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1984

Reviews

[Lynne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this excellent book years ago and was just browsing through it after I had seen that Kall had marked it "as to read" and had made reference to Ernst Pawel's obituary.

I have so many books, especially biographies, that I have only read once. It takes something from another individual, in this case Kall, to cause me to re-visit a book.

I found Kafka to be such a complex idividual, especially in his relationships with women. His engagement (actually two) with Felice Bauer was stormy and then his affair with Milena Jesenka.

But this is also a social document showing "The Prague of affluent Germanized Jewry, the intellectual ferment of Central Europe before the First World War, and brilliant, doomed Austria-Hungary itself and its collapse are woven into Pawel's account."

Pawel has researched Kafka's life in minute detail and portrays an individual who does indeed deserve to continue holding such an important place in the literary world today.

As for Kafka's works, I must confess I had problems reading "The Trial" and "The Castle" but on the other hand thoroughly enjoyed "The Metamorphosis".

I always enjoy looking at the photographs in biographies and this is no exception. Kafka looked a trifle impish with his pointed ears and he reminded me of Doctor Spock in Star Trek! An insight of life is also shown in Prague with the Town Hall in the old Prague ghetto before the slum clearance. Golden Lane (the alchemists' street) sounds very exciting. The Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute where Kafka worked from 1908 to 1922. What a gloomy building.

I do believe that I may reread this book...

[Kalliope]

Found this article.. for later...

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/19/obi...

[Aberjhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

FOR THE LOVE OF A GENIUS NAMED KAFKA

Few twentieth century authors have had as widespread an impact on modern literature as Franz Kafka. Even fewer biographers have managed to serve their subject so well as Ernst Pawel does the eternally enigmatic Kafka in THE NIGHTMARE OF REASON: A LIFE OF FRANZ KAFKA.

If ever the term "tortured genius" was applicable to one of the giants of literary history, it was without question to the Prague-born Jewish author Franz Kafka. Born July 3, 1883, to this day Kafka is celebrated worldwide for the seemingly bizarre, amorphous, surrealistic, and yet pin-point precise writing that characterizes such classics as his novels “The Trial” and “The Castle,” and his story “Metamorphosis.” What most readers don't realize, and what Ernst Pawel makes so stunningly clear in “The Nightmare of Reason,” is that Kafka's phenomenal work represents a true-to-life rendering of the emotional trauma, religious persecution, political oppression, and physical anguish he suffered throughout his life.

In the course of weaving together the historical and spiritual threads that bound the different elements of Kafka's existence, Pawel sheds much-needed light on one of the most famous father-son relationships in literary culture. In his wisdom, Pawel illustrates how both Franz and his father Hermann Kafka were largely products of their political and social times--an era that saw the unapologetic murderous oppression of Jews in Europe, ongoing debates over Zionism, and eruptions of war around the globe.

The grace with which Kafka navigated chronic illnesses, held down a demanding job as an insurance claims administrator, pursued serious literary ambitions, and compassionately addressed the needs of others, made him appear more than human in the eyes of some. That his biological clock seemed to stop around the age of 20 did little to persuade them differently.

In his biography of the author, Pawel allows readers to feel the full weight of pain in Kafka's life so we come to understand what it means for a dedicated writer of his caliber to struggle past the agony of accumulated wounds and transform unrelenting affliction--if not into ecstasy capable of saving the life of the writer, then at least into art capable of inspiring humanity to address the danger of its absurd and deadly vanities. As much as he was beset by demons or sorrow, Kafka was also blessed by the company of such angels as his courageous younger sister Ottla, his legendary off-and-on-again fiancé Felice Bauer, the famed political journalist Milena Jesenska, and the passionately devoted Dora Diamant. Just as he empowered each with his knowledge and influence, so did each in turn serve as sources of strength and refuge in his many hours of profound need. In his account of their place in Kafka's life, there's never a need for Pawel to exaggerate because the humbling facts speak so persuasively for themselves. Had it not been for his friend Max Brod, few people outside European literary circles would likely have ever heard of Kafka.

As amazing as “The Nightmare of Reason” is for its full-dimensional treatment of Kafka, it is equally so for Pawel's examination of the roots of modern anti-Semitism. The insights gleaned from his account of the irrational fears and exaggerated accusations that eventually gave rise to the Holocaust are not without their use in 2007. Consequently, reading the book is not only an excellent way to explore the creative depths and historical substance that produced Kafka's art. It is also a powerful way to reexamine those tendencies which lead humanity to blindly destroy that which it does not easily understand, and to reclaim the ability to transform fear into knowledge, then knowledge into the power to heal, and healing into a greater capacity for love.

by Aberjhani
author of The River of Winged Dreams
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually dislike biographies that are interspersed with letters from the subject of the biography, but this is Kafka. I usually don't particularly enjoy a lot of psychological analysis, but this is Kafka we're talking about. This book grabbed me at page one and everything else I was reading took a back seat, except short stories by Kafka that I read along with this book.
I loved Pawel's use of vocabulary. Phenomenal writing. Vivid, inspired, and very entertaining.
Ernst Pawel did an extraordinary job of bringing Kafka back to life (wait, he's not dead!)
But...
I was waiting with bated breath for the big build up to Kafka's writing of the Metamorfosis. And it did build up. I skipped all household chores, the phone came off the hook, bedroom door closed. Cat on lap. Wait for it. Here it comes. Then..two paragraphs, and the chapter ends. What?!!! ! I was very disappointed. Is that all you have to say?! He blew off The Metamorphosis like it was just another short Kafka story (it was downright autobiographical!). I actually had to jump over to Reiner Stach's "Kafka the Decisive Years" (book two of three) to read more about Gregor Samsa, transformed into the hideous bug from hell. Stach dedicated a whole chapter to The Metamorphosis.
There was a lot of space dedicated to Kafka's love life. I know it was important, but other things of equal importance were not given enough space. Not enough was said about his stories. I wanted more.
The last chapter covering Kafka's death was about as depressing as anything I've read, but I'm not complaining about that. It was a brilliant ending, although rather abrupt.
This deserves a solid 4 stars. Would've been 5 stars if more analysis was given to the Metamorfosis and The Hunger Artist (again... he just mentioned a really important story in passing (uncanny how much Kafka's death was so similar to the insane story he wrote about starvation. Like a self-fulfilled prophecy).
After finishing Kafka, I'd be willing to read just about anything by Ernst Pawel. Really great writer.

[William Stobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's interesting to learn about Franz Kafka in all these ways. His friends really liked him and thought he was funny, but when he was alone, he was paralyzed by insecurity and indecision. He tried to have girlfriends, and he sort of did, but he couldn't escape from the idea of his father. I feel bad for Franz Kafka, and grateful that he was able to complete his great works.

[Alan Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this during my Kafka obsession in my twenties - want to go to Prague on a Kafka pilgrimage one day. He never willingly left the city- ' the little mother has claws' he said of Prague

[Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enlightening and somewhat disturbing biography of Franz Kafka. Well researched and terribly sad. It's hard to tell where the genius begins and the tortured soul ends.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

While nowhere near as entrancing as the voluminous biography by Stach, Pawel's work on Kafka, that obscure and ever ambiguous one, that "one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life" (97), strives to follow the man who was always already disappearing. This is of course no easy task, for though, as Pawel notes, writing was Kafka's mode of defying death in life, it also works to erase him through the very writing. The written words themselves may defy death in life, but the act of writing calls death near, elicits the effacement, shattering the writer who, while perhaps seeking some eternal life through the word, in the end only seeks death, silence, in being consumed by the nocturnal differences that lie in death, beyond the bounds of the human, of the day.

Kafka learned early on in his life how literature could allow him to "disappear" or to "die in life" (53). As his life went on, he lived it less and less, disappearing all the more, until he was able to claim that he himself was literature, and nothing else. He wrote the works that lacerated him, in order so too to lacerate us through reading. For as he claims, "a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us" (158). Eventually his writing overtook him, and he was lashed about by its paradoxes; how it made living impossible, all the while being aware of the impossibility of not living as he engaged in the disengagement of the written act.

Kafka lost his life so that his works could outlive him - they fed upon his life and his face. He became exiled as he ventured out upon the open sea of literature, knowing all the while the unfathomable depths that lay beneath him, as well as the inevitability of his own shipwreck. And yet he knew that this had to be - he had to write. For he was nothing else but this, even though it erased all that he was - its life being his death, and his death its life. As Pawel puts it at the conclusion of his work, "he gave shape to the anguish of being human" (448); the exigency of the impossibilities that impose themselves upon us, breaking in and rupturing our world and our lives; the endless divigations, the labyrinthian twists and turns of questions that lead to no end, no answer, no satisfaction. Everything falls apart, drawing us into this black hole in order to partake in the festival of dissolution. Meaning is shattered on the edge of the knife which rips across our throats, leaving us nothing more than this endless, unanswered death, like a dog (beaten, bruised, yet always coming back for a little bit more, only to die alone in some fetid gutter of existence).

*
The major concern I had with Pawel's book was his repeated evocations of a vapid psychoanalytic reading, as well as his repeated references to the Holocaust. The work shows its age, as well as the obsessions or concerns of its writer, even when they stray from the life which he is attempting to inscribe.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know enough about Franz Kafka to be able to tell whether this biography is as good as I think it is. But I found it excellent: lucidly well written, thoughtful, shiningly humane. Pawel sympathizes deeply with his subject, and he's perfectly honest about how hard it is to get an objective look at Kafka, trying to correct for his own self-hatred and despair on the one side and the programmatic hagiography of, for instance, Max Brod on the other. It does not hurt my opinion of this book that Pawel is fiercely feminist; although he does not erect any false front of detachment or objectivity, one of the very few times that something that is very clearly his slips through is this passage (in his capsule biography of Dora Diamant) near the end:

Nostalgia has sanctified the "world of our fathers" and restored it as a plastic shrine. Whoever bothers to remember the world of our mothers, the world of unremitting toil and struggle, of pain and suffering, of childbed agonies and early death, while the lords of creation argued the fine points of Mishna and Gemara on hallowed premises barred to the tainted daughters of Eve?
(Pawel 437)

And he dedicates his book to Ottla (Ottilie) Kafka (Franz Kafka's youngest and best beloved sister) and Milena Jesenská (Czech translator--among many other things--and Kafka's close friend/lover), both of whom died in the Holocaust because they refused the privilege of escape.* So, yes, I both like and admire Pawel as a biographer and a scholar and a human being, and I think he does an excellent job of showing the odd paradox of Kafka. Kafka's life did not have to be as hard and as sad as it was, and while Pawel demonstrates that, he also demonstrates that, given who and what Kafka was, yes, it did.

---
*Ottla divorced her Gentile husband in order to share her people's fate and died in Auschwitz, and Milena, who was a Gentile, wrote polemics and satires against the Nazis, ran underground rescue operations, wore the yellow star in solidarity--and died in Ravensbrück.

[Danne · Rating 5 out of 5]

It captures the "feel" of Kafka and his times quite well, and i did gain new insghts into the world of Kafka, a recommended reading for all Kafkaists, beginners as well as seasoned ones

[KsiazkiNaszaPasja Maa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bardzo pobieżnie znam twórczość Franza Kafki. Dzięki biografii, chcę się zagłębić w jego mroczną literaturę. To jest bardzo dobra książka, pełna, szczegółowa, mnóstwo odniesień do wspomnień przyjaciół, listów, innych biografii, a także literatury autora. Jeśli ktoś pasjonuje się literaturą tworzoną przez tego autora lub po prostu lubi ten gatunek literatury, to jest to obowiązkowa pozycja.

Jego życie to przede wszystkim odcień czerni i szarości, mało blasku, radości, ciągła walka. Najpierw z ojcem o względy matki, potem pojawiły się inne demony. Jeden z nich to niejednoznaczna seksualność. Kolejne to strach przed porażką, najpierw w szkole, potem, gdy pisał, bał się kobiet. Idealna kobieta to ta, z którą można pisać listy lub dyskutować na ważne tematy. Demonów było wiele.
Nawet wstydził się wyglądu, choć dla kobiet był atrakcyjny. Bardzo wysoki i szczupły, i te czarne hipnotyzujące oczy. Czuję wewnętrzny żal, że żył tak krótko, mógł stworzyć tyle wyjątkowych dzieł. Wyprzedził swoje pokolenie, jak kiedyś Norwid. A gdyby nie jego przyjaciel: Max Brod, który uratował jego spuściznę przed zniszczeniem, moglibyśmy nigdy nie poznać jego geniuszu. Brod (najbliższy przyjaciel) także napisał jego pierwszą biografię. Zrobił autora Procesu sławnym na cały świat, siebie usuwając w cień. A miał się czym pochwalić, ponieważ był bardzo płodnym pisarzem, muzykiem i miał wiele talentów. Niestety była to sława pośmiertna.

Ernst Pawel bardzo postarał się przy pisaniu biografii. Myślę, że przekazał czytelnikom wiele smaczków nie znanych do tej pory czytelnikom. Czasem mam wrażenie, że aż za szczegółowo (trochę męczył mnie opis pierwszych 12 lat edukacji). Tłumaczenie i szata graficzna od tego wydawnictwa jak zwykle perfekcyjne, Okładka hipnotyzująca, on na nas patrzy tymi swoimi węglowymi oczami i prześwietla nas na wskroś.

[365_ksiazek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ty pytasz mnie czy warto?
Bardzo warto.
Trzy kwestie.
Po pierwsze, Ty na pewno znasz już tego autora.
Po drugie, jego książki to już klasyka.
A po trzecie, tam się sporo dzieje i czyta się jak dobrą powieść.
A najważniejsze, że znamy go z zupełnie innej strony. Jako mruka, samotnika, pogrążonego w depresji. Tymczasem „Franz Kafka: koszmar rozumu”, to rzecz o szarmanckim, inteligentnym i przystojnym chłopaku, któremu przyszło żyć w czasach transformacji i dziejowej zawieruchy, która przetaczała się przez Europę.
Sprawdź koniecznie kim tak naprawdę był autor ponadczasowego „Procesu”.
Bardzo polecam.

Prócz biografii dostajemy jeszcze tło historyczne i szeroki kontekst. Wtedy wiele się działo. Europa zmagała się z wieloma kryzysami, które odciskały swoje piętno na biografiach. Wszystkie te wydarzenia miały wpływ na życie i twórczość Kafki. Cała ta książka pokazuje portret Franza w innym świetle. Dodatkowo książka zawiera fragmenty tekstów źródłowych.
współpraca reklamowa

[Karl Hillstrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew! This was pretty heavy. The author gives significant amounts of context in many places. (For example, he describes a great deal of the various schooling options in late nineteenth century Prague before going on to detail Kafka's schooling.) This is excellent for those who want to know the most possible, and it probably should earn the author credit for thoroughness, but sometimes it was a little more than I would have preferred. There's more than a little "editorializing" of sorts by the author, along the way. Again, a little more than I would have liked, but that's only a minor complaint. I don't know what other (perhaps more recent) Kafka biographies you might be able to choose from. But if you want a thorough account of Franz Kafka's life, and the times in which he lived, this biography will deliver.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A model biography.

[Sara Sypolt · Rating 4 out of 5]

deeply moving. heavy read. definitely worth it.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Kafka! Ah, humanity!

[David Spanagel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It must be sheer lunacy to try to compose a scholarly biography of a notoriously inscrutable writer, like Franz Kafka. I give deep thanks to my dear colleague, the WPI German professor emeritus David Dollenmayer, for gifting this work to me as a part of his dispersal of that personal library he had acquired before retirement from active teaching.

As a professional historian, I especially appreciate how brilliantly Pawel's work shines whenever he must situate a subject's life story within the frame of impossibly grand world events. Three successive paragraphs sentences depict Chapter Twenty-one's setting = the final days of July 1914:
"Except for a handful of prophets and madmen, no one really believed that war was about to break out, or if it did, that it would last more than a few weeks. ..."
"Forty-three years of peace and progress had, by common consensus, made war between the advanced industrial nations of the West unthinkable, hence impossible. ..."
"Common consensus, however, is the product not of thought but of wishful thinking. ..." (315)
Who has ever written a more succinct series of statements about contemporaneous expectations and lack of preparation for what was to come at the moment when World War I began?

Chapter Twenty-three ends, similarly, with a brief but thoroughly informative discussion of how Kafka's initial six months of gradual recovery from tuberculosis in 1918 encountered the dreadful consequences of that year's worldwide Spanish flu outbreak:
"... The butchery on the battlefield was about to end, but the dying had merely begun. Unlike bombs and bullets, the influenza pandemic of 1918, the Black Death of our time, made no distinctions among allies , enemies, or neutrals, between soldiers or civilians, though it displayed an anomalous preference for the young, the strong, the healthy, leaving most of its older victims enfeebled, but alive. A matter of immunity, or of the devil bent on finishing what man had left undone. In its sweep around the globe, the Spanish flu eventually killed an estimated 20 million people, though the exact count will never be known.
In retrospect, it seems quite likely that Kafka, too, was one of its victims. ..." (372)
Beautiful, powerful descriptive language carries this book through both the life of its subject and the times which stimulated such extraordinary suffering and creativity.

The closing sentences of the biography lay out a paradoxical summary and benediction: "[Kafka's] work is subversive, not because he found the truth, but because, being human and therefore having failed to find it, he refused to settle for half-truths and compromise solutions. In visions wrested from his innermost self, and in language of crystalline purity, he gave shape to the anguish of being human." (448) Much the same can be said of Pawel's account.

[Leon Perlman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads rating 84

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Far too much speculative psychoanalysis unfortunately. It intruded upon any chances of useful insight of Kafka by the author, or even an adequate account of Kafka's life.