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On Franz Kafka's “Letter to my father”

José Durval Cavalcanti de Albuquerque
Version of record first published: 22 Aug 2011.

To cite this article: José Durval Cavalcanti de Albuquerque (2011): On Franz Kafka's “Letter to my father”, International
Forum of Psychoanalysis, 20:4, 229-232

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 International Forum of Psychoanalysis. 2011; 20: 229
232

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

On Franz Kafka’s ‘‘Letter to my father’’1

JOSÉ DURVAL CAVALCANTI DE ALBUQUERQUE

Abstract
Based on the Freudian point of view as regards the psychic sources of the writer’s material, the author examines Kafka’s
‘‘Letter to my father’’ as an example of a text that did not aspire to literary pretensions when it was written. Such a text, in
spite of its heavy content, which expresses suffering, frustration, rage, and humiliation, still produces pleasure in its reading.
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The ideas of Derrida, Bakhtin, and Barthes are used as approaches to the structure of a text in order to understand the
reasons for which it can be considered artistic and, despite its heavy content, still evokes the pleasure of the reading.

Key words: Kafka, pleasure in reading, structure of the text

Creative writers themselves like to lessen the distance
between their kind and the common run of humanity;
they so often assure us that every man is a poet at heart
and that the last poet will not perish till the last man
does. (Freud, 19087/1908, p. 143)
Already at the beginning of our psychic life, we learn
that the severity of reality forces us to fight for a more
pleasant situation. The Freudian view maintains that
children’s play, an expression of the first signs of
imaginative activity, craves pleasure, but maturation
brings a gradual decrease of this activity. For the
child, play and reality are different, but a link is
maintained between them.
With the cessation of children’s play, these games
are lost, together with this way of achieving satisfac-
tion. The missing pleasure will somehow be redis-
covered in adult fantasy, the nursery of so-called
daydreams. However, differently from children’s
play, which is explicit, the fantasy that arises later
tends to be hidden. Fantasizing is an attempt to
correct some kind of dissatisfaction, or even the
realization of an unspoken wish. Playing also aims at
satisfaction, but it is clear and exposed. It is probably
for this reason that Freud claims we have easier
1
This essay was presented at the II Congresso Internacional de Psicopa-
tologia Fundamental (2nd Fundamental Psychopathology International
Congress), Belém do Pará, Brazil, September 2006.
access to the motivations of children’s play than to
those of adult fantasy. The passing from fantasy to
daydreaming implies a psychic work originating in a
present motivation, determining a strong present
wish. This refers back to a past memory, to a
moment in which this vow was made. A space is
then created for the future in which the wish will be
fulfilled (Freud, 1907/1908).
From the creator of psychoanalysis, we know that
the material used by the writer is the same as that
which composes our fantasies, dreams, and day-
dreams: it is that which is in the gear of the wish
demanding realization. As the dream is, according to
Freud, a wish fulfillment, so it is the same for a work
of art. The seriousness of a child’s game will include
the sense of creativity in the same way that the
applied writer’s fantastic world is pregnant with
emotion. The naming of sensitive objects in literary
forms, such as the theatrical play, the actor, etc.,
points to the preservation, determined by language,
between children’s play and poetic creation. In this
light, we can examine the similarities between a piece
of writing and a daydream.
Most certainly, a good novel, drama, tragedy, or
any other literary construction genre is far from being
a naive daydream, but in the daydream we find the
same quest for satisfaction that is present in the
literary work. That is, it originates from the same
source from which the writer’s fantasies have sprung.

Correspondence: Dr. José Durval Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, Psicanalista da Sociedade de Psicanálise Iracy Doyle, Rua Nascimento Silva 470, CEP 22421-
020, Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brazil. E-mail: jdurval@unisys.com.br

(Received 23 May 2011; accepted 5 June 2011)

ISSN 0803-706X print/ISSN 1651-2324 online # 2011 The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2011.595427
 230 J. D. Cavalcanti de Albuquerque
Kafka’s ‘‘Letter to my father’’ (Kafka, 2004) was
chosen because it refers to a text that originally did not
have literary aspirations. Instead, it was written with
the intention of clarifying some issues between him
and his father. Those who have commented on this
piece of writing have observed that the careful and
large handwriting in which it is written, and the few
corrections in it, point to an actual intention of sending
it to his father. It is a manuscript dated 1919, of
around 100 pages, from a time when the literary career
of the author, who had never had any great success,
had come to a halt. Impressively, his most renowned
works, which became very famous after his death
The
Metamorphosis and The Trial
had already been
published. One of the major themes in Kafka’s work,
the authority of the father, is addressed by him in this
document, which he wrote at 36 years of age.
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According to Walter Benjamin and Elias Canetti
(Bakes, 2004), specialists in Kafka’s work, it is
undoubtedly an autobiographical text.
The Czech writer begins the ‘‘Letter’’ with an
impressive statement of how much he is possessed by
a fear of his father, to the extent of having a
referential awe that ‘‘goes far beyond the scope of
my memory and power of reasoning’’ (p. 3). His
declared motivation for writing such letter is an
attempt to get closer to this fearful and amazing
creature. Kafka’s arguments come from a place
beyond his memory or comprehension capacity. It
is where he thinks and is not.2 The thread of desire
sews the text, which glides in front of the reader’s
eyes, into a patchwork made up of past, present, and
future. Kafka’s words move on the paper, giving
color to a mixture of frustration and nostalgia. His
words are an allusion to a feeling of inferiority and to
an impacting barrier imposed by his father, which,
according to this manuscript, almost aborts the
movement of the main character toward what he
would become. In the letter, Kafka appears some-
times as a passive sufferer and at other times as a
spectator, or even betrays the fact of living in a
torturing amalgam with his father.
What comes to our attention is how prescient
Kafka’s observations on psychoanalytic discourse are
when he refers to the authority of father figure. This
was still at a time when psychoanalysis was dawning.
His narrative presupposes the existence of a sym-
bolic Father, who sustains the replacement of the
thing for the word, and at the same time the presence
of a real father, who refuses to leave the role of
Father-God, an omnipotent father, similar to the
2
An expression of Lacan to refer to the unconscious: ‘‘where I think I do
not exist,’’ which lies in clear contrast to the Cartesian cogito
‘‘I think,
therefore I am.’’
father of the primal horde. Kafka speaks vehemently
of a desperate quest for a path that provides him with
the necessary conditions, which he needs as a
minimum, to be qualified to live without his father.
He describes intense feelings of fragility, inferiority,
incestuous fantasies, parricidal hostility, guilt, and
the presence of a constant terror. In his epistolary
journey, in the moment in which he writes, the
author considers himself ‘‘a weakly, timid, hesitant,
restless person,’’ who hopes to achieve, through this
letter, ‘‘something . . . which so closely approximates
the truth that it might reassure us both a little and
make our living and our dying easier’’ (p. 4).
We may consider that Kafka was not driven by
literary intentions in his ‘‘Letter.’’ He wanted to be
heard by his father. He hands the letter to his
mother, who ‘‘returns it with kind words’’ (p. 4).
He then keeps the letter, and in the manuscript
comments says that it is a ‘‘lawyer’s letter,’’ as if he
were defending himself in a courtroom, presenting a
voluminous list of errors made by his father in his
education (Kafka, 2004), yet it is known that this
manuscript achieved a high aesthetic value as a
literary document (Bakes, 2004).
However, this value is not apparent on a super-
ficial reading. As an example, let us evoke Derrida,
who, in the opening of his book Plato’s Pharmacy
(1997, p. 17), observes that a text can only be
accepted as such if it hides at first sight ‘‘the law of
its composition and the rule of its game.’’ That is,
both this law and this rule are not rigorously
perceptible from a simple presentation. In order to
understand a text, it is necessary to go beyond its
surface. The reader must ‘‘put his hands on it’’
without retreating from the possibility, sometimes
inevitable, of adding a thread to its texture. ‘‘Add-
ing’’ here means nothing but what is ordinarily
called ‘‘reading,’’ the contribution of the reader. It is
the attempt to see where the pleasure of reading is
produced that motivates this essay.
Our premise is that the author’s words weave a
cloth with autobiographic threads. An autobiogra-
phy can be a collection of information about oneself
of a practical or historic-scientific nature. We could
agree with Bakhtin (2003) and say that we cannot
find any artistic-biographic purpose in the text.
Although the ‘‘Letter’’ has a definite audience and
an explicit goal, it is without a shadow of doubt a
literary work.
In the letter, from his memories of the past, Kafka
at numerous times deals with an other whose idealized
nuances remind him of himself. As he narrates his life
through telling how the others appear to him, he
produces an intertwinement with the formal structure
of what he narrates. He puts himself in the role played
by an actor and, even though he is not the hero of his

life, he takes part in it (Bakhtin, 2003). When the
narrator takes on the ways of perceiving the values of
others, he ends up putting on the mask of the
character. In these biographic writings, the narrator
begins to understand the history of his life through the
emotive tone that colors the words of his loved ones,
as they reveal his origin, his childhood, his family, and
his social life.
What gives the narrative artistic value is the
triumph of the word as it transforms itself to express
the world and the way the author relates to this
world. Still using Bakhtin’s words, we allow our-
selves to say that ‘‘the artistic style does not work
with words, but with elements in the world, with
world and life values’’ (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 180).
About this, Benjamin says that all Kafka’s books
are ‘‘narratives pregnant of a moral to which they
never give birth’’ (Kafka, 2004, p. 11).
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The act of reading
As we go on to the reading of the text, we ask
ourselves why the grievous complaint and the painful
feelings of a profound intimacy do not cause repug-
nance, indifference, or an unbearable uneasiness in
the reader. We add these probable obstacles to a
reading, those of the narrator, who is intimidated or
embarrassed by such exposure of his intimacy. We do
not feel repelled, because, as Freud (1907/1908)
states, what can cause repulsion is the barrier
between the writer’s and the reader’s selves. The
inventor of psychoanalysis points out that the joy in
the act of reading can eliminate tension. Such
tensions are caused by anxiety that is connected to
the reader’s fantasies which are similar to the writer’s
ones. Thus, the meeting between the narrator and
the reader becomes more possible as the distance
between them decreases. This movement is caused
by the creative action of the writer influencing the
poetic intimacy of the reader. With this drawing
closer, a space is created between both, leading to a
cohabitation of languages and thus establishing the
conditions for experiencing the text.
And how does this separation between writer and
reader decrease, allowing the excellence of a text to
be put to the test? Maybe through the pleasure
created by a peculiar sense of humor, such as that of
Kafka, who writes for his father and wishes to be
read by him. It is interesting to remember here that,
for the writer, this father is nothing but a direction of
his associations guiding the pen that glides upon the
paper (Dumayet, 2002; Jamek, 2002).
The decrease in separation can also occur by giving
the fabric of the text a soft texture that can mitigate
On Franz Kafka’s ‘‘Letter to my father’’ 231
the selfish nature of the writer’s daydreams in the eye
of the reader. Thus, the former in a certain way
seduces the latter in the presentation of his fantasies,
rewarding him with an esthetic (or formal) pleasure.
Therefore, we find a sense of humor and seduction
among the maneuvers or artifices of the word used to
narrow the gap between writer and reader.
Barthes (1999) claims that, when it comes to the
pleasure of the text, no ‘‘thesis’’ is possible, only an
inspection that, just like the pleasure, ends quickly.
He also states that ‘‘the pleasure of the text is
irreducible to its grammatical functioning, as the
pleasure of the body is irreducible to its physiological
necessity’’ (1999, p. 25). The author also argues that
literature tries to achieve the unachievable reality,
making it seem that it is accomplished in a sensible
manner (Barthes, 2004). Still according to Barthes,
we can state that pleasure takes the place of a loss,
expressed in the vertigo that takes over the subject at
the heart of fruition. It is in the enunciation, not in
the sequence of words enunciated, that the lack of
jouissance of possession emerges. The pleasure of the
text is in the fugacity of this moment pregnant with
good judgment, of a wish of the impossible, an
obstinacy of the text that takes over the narrator

reader pairing (Barthes, 2004).
The ‘‘prize of fore-pleasure,’’ as Freud (1907/
1908) called it, is obtained by the artistic and
esthetic value with which the author bribes us, but
the major enjoyment comes from a liberation of
tension and an implicit permission to enjoy our
daydreams without guilt and shame. That is what
leads us to turn the page in order to find again the
satisfaction that is vanishing.
The reader is seduced by Kafka’s humor through
anxiety. As the reader identifies with Kafka’s strug-
gles, there is an increase in tension
but the tension
decreases in the act of reading. We must add here that
this effect would not be obtained from reading an
ordinary letter, constituted by a list of complaints and
demands, but only from a literary work, in which the
satisfaction is the very effect of poetic art in action.
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Pai. Porto Alegre: L&PM.
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Barthes, R. (1999). O prazer do texto [The pleasure of text]. São
Paulo: Ed. Perspectiva.
Barthes, R. (2004). Aula [Lecture]. São Paulo: Ed. Cultrix.
Dermayet, P. (2002). Porquoi il faut lire Kafka [Why one should
read Kafka]. Magazinne littéraire, 409
416.
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