Franz Kafka's personal writings and their philosophical impact on his

literature

Sense and Sensibility: Topics in Intellectual History of Central and Eastern Europe

Winter Semester 2015-2016

Department of History, CEU

Emanuel - Marius Grec

There are two ways to miss the point of Kafka's works.

One is to interpret them naturally, the other is the
supernatural interpretation. Both the psychoanalytic and
the theological interpretations equally miss the essential
points.
Walter Benjamin1

I. Introduction

The nature of Franz Kafka's works have been a mystery for even the most careful eyes

in the field of literary interpretation. As Walter Benjamin points out, any exclusive

appropriation of the Austrian author's literary philosophy is not satisfactory when it comes to

understanding the point of Kafka's works. What Benjamin actually emphasizes is not that the

understanding of the author's literary passion is a quixotic scholarly adventure, but that one

must place Franz Kafka within the his own elusive world in order to fully grasp the

philosophical eccentricities that characterized his work.

This paper has the intention of analysing aspects of Kafka's literary philosophy by

stressing the importance of his personal experiences. More specifically, the main idea behind

it is to asses in which way the main themes of Kafka's works 2 have been impacted by personal
1 Walter Benjamin, "Franz Kafka" in Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books,
1969), 127.
2 I will focus on The Trial, The Castle, and Stoker, not as in-depth focus standards, but rather as works that

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experiences and any deep emotional bondings. In order to properly frame questions that I will

be dealing with, I intend to use primarily material such as his personal writings in order to

reconstruct the main processes of Kafka's inner world. His relationship with Felice Bauer and

later with Milena Jesenska shred a passionate light on the life of probably the most important

and misunderstood writer of Central Europe. Focusing mostly on the latter relationship, I will

try to analytically extol information regarding enquiries like: What was the impact of Kafka's

writings on the evolution (or involution) of his writings? What themes does he focus on in his

personal correspondence? How do personal events (including the romances in discussion)

affect Kafka's ability and view of the philosophical outbursts of his inner world? Was there a

dominance of ideas in Kafka's philosophy that is esoteric in nature and grounded into a sense

of idealistic expectations? While these questions orientate the research, they provide a broad

basis for this particular scholarly analysis.

This paper is not intended on being a scholastic review of Kafka's life or work, neither

it claims an appropriation of universal truthfulness in regard to his literary philosophy. Rather,

it is a short research in the main processes that shaped the relationship between his personal

experiences and the main body of his work.

II. Kakfa's literature and main philosophical interpretations

While my identification of Franz Kafka takes the call of naming him as 'Austrian', the

Prague-born writer is mostly identified with the Czech literary world, albeit mostly with the

German language. Thus, an assessment of Kafka's work is mainly interesting in the Central

European context of Bohemian literature. His works, however, do not reflect necessarily an

external output of his upbringing, in the sense that a proper classification of his writings can

be done exclusively by relying on the historical-geographic context of his lifetime. Rather,

stand as critically important for a proper assessment of Kafka's work.

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Kafka's body of work can be traced to the ideological and philosophical roots that nurture his

inner person. The social aspects of Kafka's literature deal with sexes, classes, neurosis, and

mysticism, and hence cannot be analysed by focusing exclusively on the historical context of

when and how his writing took place.3 The one-faced conclusion might be that dealing with

Franz Kafka at his analysis of seemingly universal ideas and concepts is a better way of

understanding his proclivities.

Relying on a framework by Walter Benjamin in contrast to other assimilations of

Kafka's work, there is a sense of interpretation of the Czech-born writer that brings into

discussion the nature of his social work. Mostly, it is more reliable to interpret Kafka as an

experience-driven author. The way in which he connects with the readers supersedes the

literary interpretation of his work.4 In this sense, the "the enigma of Kafka", as Benjamin calls

it, is based on his own projection of the universal in relation to his particularities, "the world

of offices and registries, of musty, shabby, dark rooms". 5 These elements project in his writing

the own interpretation of the world. This aspect is critical as an assessment of his personal

correspondence might shed light on elements that can be interpreted as central to Kafka's

literature.

Another careful interpretation of Kafka's works can lead towards the path of

identifying him with his own self, rather than to elements of the universal. Consequently,

Kafka's sense of himself as a special case within special cases "made him into an exemplary

figure, a standard for comparison".6 The assessment that Kafka is the creator of his own

precursors makes his individuality even more important in the analysis of his works.

Seemingly contrasting with the previous view presented here, Mark Spilka tries to show that
3 Reda Bensmaia, "The Kafka Effect", Foreword in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor
Literature (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), ix-x.
4 Ibid, x.
5 Benjamin, 112.
6 Charles Bernheimer, Flaubert and Kafka: Studies in Psychopoetic Structure (New Haven and London, Yale
University Press, 1982), ix.

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Kafka's vision of the world derives from the experience of "a home society conflict resulting

in sensibilities arrested at childhood levels of feeling". 7 By applying this analysis, Spilka

brings Kafka's literary consumption down to the societal responses of his life, or how Charles

Bernheimer puts it, "Kafka's style is related to a vision of the world that distorts reality in

response to private obsessions, dreams, guilt feelings, and so on". 8 The comparison with

Dickens is not casual, as it is made to implicate a contextualization of his world that does not

transcend the personal into the universal.

In a similar fashion but with a different scholarly approach to Kafka's leitmotifs,

Sander Gilman appropriates Kafka to his own uniqueness inside the literary world. By

claiming that his texts serve as generating in a self-conscious manner a "transhistorical"

nature (my emphasis), the author positions Kafka into the world of trend setters for which the

term "Kafkaesque" is much more than just a literary paradigm.9 Furthermore, Gilman

associates Kafka with the stereotype of the Jew at the turn of the century. 10 While this

interpretation seems one-sided, it deals with the historical in a different fashion than other

critics might do it, but in the same time it conveys in Kafka a sense of self-conscious

reciprocity to his own nature that is absent in any other social literary output. In this sense,

Gilman's analysis is important, but fails to realise the potential of analysing Kafka's literature

outside of its own designated framework.

While all of these approaches (and others) are important, they do not fully grasp the

role that Kafka's empiricism had in the esoteric expressions of his literature. For this reason, I

will try to look next at the personal implications of the writers life by introducing primary

sources which will shortly give an idea into the most important tenets of his work.

7 Mark Spilka, Dickens and Kafka: A Mutual Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963).
8 Bernheimer, ix-x.
9 Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 1-3.
10 Ibid, 3-5.

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 III. Franz Kafka's personal writings and struggles with his own demons

The importance of Franz Kafka's correspondence has come to surface in the last fifty

years as something that triggered different responses. Yet, in an analysis of his personality

they seem more important than many of his works, exactly because they unconsciously reveal

details that the former couldn't. This brings me to two of the most important realizations about

the importance of his letters: First, they were written without the intention of being read by a

larger audience, and thus they entail a form of self-assessment in the part of the author that we

cannot find in his biographies or other works that had the idea of being put up for sale.

Second, they show the evolution of not only Kafka's character, but that of the people

surrounding him and who had an impact of his life. It is an example of his genius and to no

wonder that many social and political aspects can be understood about the ones at the other

side of the correspondence (Milena Jesenska and Felice Bauer).

While Letters to Felice are grounded into a social network that was better understood,

his letters to Milena are especially revealing when it comes to his own personal ambiguities.

Moreover, Jesenska's letters to Max Brod about Franz Kafka give an added note to the ideas

of evolution in regard to the writer's personal nature. They are revealing inasmuch as they

shed an outward light on their relationship and on elements of Kafka's personality and inner

struggles.

III.1. Letters to Felice

Franz Kafka has personally asked the executor of his will to destroy his last writings.

This an an intuitive show from the writer that has him a rather private individual that did not

intend for his work to be analysed out of the literary world that he has already revealed during

his lifetime.11 While this and other gestures might be an example of Kafka's personality, his

letters give an insight into his soul. The first one of these deal with the correspondence

11 Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 8-9.

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between the writer and his fiancée, Felice Bauer. They were engaged for some time, until

Kafka decided to end the relationship. At a short, the letters seem as occupying a rather

unfashionable tale in a life of an ordinary man. Yet, when looked closer, they show the

struggles of a personality that deals mostly with the demons of his inner self and also with

those of the outer world.12 In this thick volume of letters, which stand as a very consistent

primary source, Kafka is very expressive about his inner struggles, but also relies heavily an

artistic expressions of self-guilt, remorse, interpretative philosophy, and experiences of the

future. In one of the most representative ones, he says to Felice how "I wrote already these

letters into my mind, dearest".13 In the same letter, Kafka speaks about deceit, and the

disillusion that he has with people that although love him, will never understand his self-

repository mechanisms.14

Although the letters are a source of material that is too long and consistent to be

completely studied in the short pages of a paper, they did reveal three main aspects (there are

probably many more) which I will compare and (sometimes) contrast with the other primary

source, Letters to Milena. The first aspect is that their tone is reminiscent of a close, personal

but unfulfilled relationship.15 Throughout his letters, Kafka's style of writing approaches a

terminology that is fairly personal, but when combined with its content it excludes itself as a

form of unexplained suffering from the part of the writer.

Second, the themes approached in the letters are similar in approach to those which I

will present in Letters to Milena or in the ones that were written to Max Brod. Their are

mostly regarding the role of the writer in the world, the self-sufficiency of one's ethos, and the

responses of society to the writer's inner struggles. Most importantly, they reflect the same

12 The most revealing letters about these aspects are the ones from 1913, see Ibid, 750-85.
13 Ibid, 754.
14 Ibid, 755-6.
15 These interpretations are my own and I do not regard them as the ultimate repositories of truth.

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motifs as found in his books like The Trial or The Castle: exclusion, anxiety, misunderstood

personalities, alienation, guilt, and absurdity.

The third aspect that I found revealing in this set of letters is to overarching desire for

self-expression. Constantly, Kafka resorts to expressing his feeling towards Felice because he

feels compelled not to express them to others. This is mostly obvious towards the end of the

letters.16 This element can be found also in his correspondence with Milena, and it sheds light

on the personality of Kafka upon I which also insist later. How these letters have affected the

Austrian-Czech writer I will try to disseminate in the next few pages.

III.2. Letters to Milena

One of the most important and interesting aspects of Kakfa's life is his romantic

relationship with Milena Jesenska. This is also exemplified by the confidence he had in the

her, trusting her with some of his most dearest diaries at the end of his life. While this paper is

not intended on being a descriptive framework of their relationship, it will touch upon the

most important aspects of their bond. Regarding the relationship of the two, Mark Anderson

analysis Kafka's literary style and life based on his personal choices, more simply, his clothes.

In this sense, his reading of the letters to Milena Jesenska brought him to the conclusion that

Kafka was an avid observer of women's fashion.17 His book is a remarkable example of how

extrapolation from a specific author can expand to an analysis of aesthetic trends in a

historical given context.

This particular interest, however, is not as straightforward as it may seem. The

question that arises is: Was Kafka an avid observer of women's clothes and thus he was

attracted (alongside other characteristics) to Milena? Or was his attraction towards the young

lady writer the reason for his admiration of woman's clothes? In his Letters, the answer is

16 See Ibid, 1210-1450.

17 Mark Anderson, Kafka's Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siecle (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992), 1-2.

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ambiguous, but I think non-specific. While it is true that Kakfa lived and wrote according to

principles dictated by his universal consciousness, as it can be seen from the letters, the

relationship with Milena changed principles within him that did not affect only his personal

life and choices, but also his literary work.18 As an example of this, like others before me in

research of Kakfa's correspondence, the letters come at some point to reveal more about the

writer himself than the person he is writing to. 19 I combine this with a point I made earlier,

that Kafka is also fairly descriptive and analytical about the person he is writing too. Still, his

own personality is clearly exemplified in these letters as token of self-assessment that

transcends any possible biography of the great writer.

The letters to Milena are also explanatory of one critical aspect that I have mentioned

before: Kafka's unique personality. In her letters to Max Brod, Milena reveals how much

Kafka's personality affects his health, how his view of the world is putting on stress not only

on their relationship, but also on his general condition. 20 Furthermore, despite her impact on

their relationship, the letters show that Kafka grew increasingly worried about the effect he

might be having on the life, health, and habits of his lover, but also the effect she has on him. 21

Moreover, Milena shares the same ideas of danger when, in her correspondence with Brod,

she is alarmed by the fact that she could have something to do with Kafka's decline in

health.22 The most clear example of this trend is after Kafka's decision to end their

relationship, when Melina attributes herself a certain guilt. This is to show the level of

emotion and change the she could have had in Kakfa's life.23

18 See Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena (New York: Schocken Books, 1990). The most revealing parts dealing
with the aforementioned elements can be found in pages 130-210.
19 See the remarkable book on Milena Jesenska's life by Mary Hockaday, Kafka, Love and Courage
(Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1995).
20 These elements are clearly revealed in the biography of Milena's life by her friend, Margarete Buber-
Neumann, Milena: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), 56-74.
21 See Letters to Milena, 125-165.
22 For more details see Hockaday, 46-79, and Buber-Neumann, 65-71.
23 Hockaday, 70-9.

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 One final aspect that is revelatory not only from the letters, but also from secondary

literature, is the relation between living the relationship in letters and living it in the real

world. Milena and Franz Kafka have met only twice. Once for four days in Vienna, and once

for a day in Gmund. These meetings are revelatory when it comes to understanding the

relation of Kafka to the outer world. Together with the letters, it seems that the writer was

feeling more as himself in writing than in live meetings. 24 Furthermore, his personal angst

comes to surface every time they meet, as revealed by the letters. 25 In her correspondence with

Brod that is presented in her biographies, Milena describes how Kafka changed during their

time in Vienna, how his health improved, and how his worried seem to disappear.26 Another

important description on her part, that is linked to this, is the assessment that the one day

encounter in Gmund was not a very successful one, as it revealed the dark parts of Kafka's

personality, who was not capable of abandoning his angst and personal perception of the outer

world.27 This element is also present towards the end of their letters were Franz Kafka admits

that the elements that compose his personality are fundamentally changeable, but that at a

perceptive level he is not able to transform them.28

Their relationship is ended by Kafka, who seems incapable of loving because of his

inner convictions and self-dependent struggles. This romantic affair with Milena proves that

Kafka was prone to social change, especially in deep emotional circumstances, as many as he

had (not necessarily romantic in nature). While this relationship changed him, it did not affect

his writings directly in a quantitative way since he died after a short period. However, the

importance of it resides not so much in the post-priory elements of his writings, but in how

Kafka's personality was revealed in his deep and complex personal exchanges with Milena.29
24 Letters to Milena, 120-5.
25 Ibid, 145-65.
26 See Hockaday, 61-75, and Buber Neumann, 57-70.
27 Ibid,
28 Letters to Milena, 230-45.
29 For the most revealing parts of self-change and personal consciousness, see Ibid, 120-180.

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 IV. Short conclusion

Without the desire of an unwanted repetition, I want to reiterate the main aspects of

Kafka's relation between his work and personal ideas. The main process behind this paper was

the intention to examine Kafka's main philosophical tendencies and the personal events that

may have affected his writings. In this sense, I proposed a framework of analysis which deals

with examining assessments of his work, in a theoretical manner, while also providing an

empirical analysis based on researched done in analysing the personal letters of the Austrian

writer.

The conclusion are in the same time revealing as they are ambiguous. On the one

hand, it is clear that the Kafka was prone to social impact, although his personal ideas relied

in the universal and transcendent, in 'the world of ideas'. On the other hand, Kafka's

personalty has been proven to prone to change and transformation to properly asses in a short

paper.

Out of the main primarily material gathered, the most revealing aspects of his

personality are the Letters to Milena. While other aspects of his life have been impacted upon

by his experiences, it is his relationship with the young girl that stresses the most important

parts of him to transform and develop. Still, future scholarly work should concentrate on the

premise that Milena's relationship with Kafka did not transform his necessarily his writing

(because of his untimely death), but rather it revealed that he was prone to true emotions and

that all the subjects that he discussed in his personal correspondence are indicators of a fluent

personality that thought in the universal, and was nonetheless influenced by the social.

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 Bibliography

Primary sources

Kafka, Franz. Letters to Felice. New York: Schocken Books, 1973.

Kafka Franz. Letters to Milena. New York: Schocken Books, 1990.

Secondary literature (used in the text itself and footnotes)

Anderson, Mark. Kafka's Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de

Siecle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Arendt, Hannah. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Bernheimer, Charles. Flaubert and Kafka: Studies in Psychopoetic Structure. New

Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1982.

Buber-Neumann, Margarete. Milena: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship (New

York: Schocken Books, 1988.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis

and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

Gilman, Sander. Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient. New York and London: Routledge,

1995.

Hockaday, Mary. Kafka, Love and Courage. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook

Press, 1995.

Spilka, Mark. Dickens and Kafka: A Mutual Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1963.

Historical background sources (not used in the text itself and footnotes)

Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Vintage

Books, 1985.

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 Hamalian, Leo. Franz Kafka: A Collection of Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill,

1974.

Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. New York: Schocken Books, 1961.

Sandbank, Shimon. "After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka's Fiction". Penn State

University Press, 29 (4) 1992.

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