Reisetagebücher

by Franz Kafka

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

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 His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime.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

[Salvatore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anche Kafka aveva i suoi bisogni. Serve sapere che amava la granatina, per esempio? O che, come tanti giovini eterosessuali di inizio Novecento, conoscesse i buoni indirizzi parigini per soddisfare le proprie voglie e “koketten” (verbo tedesco preferito della vita)? Probabilmente no. Se però si esce fuori dalla grandezza di FK e di Brod, i cui diari sono pure qui raccolti, si rimane comunque in mano con documenti storici del massimo interesse. Tra i punti più a cuore a questi distinti viaggiatori è per esempio il Deutschtum e la sua propensione indiscriminata verso il progresso: tutto ciò che è a sud o a ovest, come la Parigi così amata da Kafka, rientra nella vaga nozione di “romanisch” e così è accostato a un amore per la tradizione e per l’eleganza, ammirato senza mai essere del tutto abbracciato. La memoria di Goethe aleggia già sacra sui due, come se questo Virgilio di altri tempi, come lui collocato anzitempo nel sarcofago del classico, fosse sottoposto a una memoria di turismo di massa alla pari di un qualsiasi bordello. Brod si chiede, per esempio: e il bagno di Goethe, dove era? Quel tipo di domande alla Bernhard che ci fanno sentire quasi viaggiatori di inizio Novecento come questi due, sia pure senza il loro acume e le loro possibilità.