Franz Kafka wanted his works burned, but they were kept by his literary executor, Max Brod, who ignored his instructions. Brod’s secretary took over the papers after Brod’s death. Now the issue is whether the papers have survived the secretary’s cat
Kafka would probably have appreciated the situation. His desire to destroy the works might have been typical of his characters, but the result is also typical of his storylines. Even the insufferable Kaminer in
The Trial would have recognized the symptoms of a purely Kafkaesque plot.
The BBC explains the manuscripts’ difficult existence:
They were originally packed into two suitcases and smuggled out of Prague in 1939 just ahead of the German advance on the city.
They've been kept in Tel Aviv these past 40 years by Brod's secretary, Esther Hoffe, who refused all requests to examine them.
The authorities here have warned that the damp in her flat and the hoards of dogs and cats she kept may have damaged or even destroyed the papers.
The BBC article, apparently breathless, and evidently unaware the Germans entered Prague in 1938, stops with the observation that Kafka scholars are now in a state of anxiety like one of his novels.
These papers have survived Kafka himself, and World War Two... And the main concern is that dogs and cats have been in the vicinity of them for 40 years?
People have been able to define the problem, and just sat there watching it?
Hoffe's flat is described as "damp".
The dampness of Tel Aviv is similar to the dampness of the Sinai. Is Hoffe living in a furnished swamp, or what?
Hoffe has refused to allow them to be examined.
So why is she holding on to them? Waiting for a bidder? Waiting for insulation? Short of nesting material for her cats? Have the dogs and cats not read them yet?
Even Kafka would have been thrown by the logic of the situation.
Kafka was one of the greatest ever writers in the first person. His characters are tormented, oppressed by their environment and themselves, in ways that even the most difficult of introverted writers would rarely dare to explore.
Some things are called “Kafkaesque”, but he’s not a formula writer. Each character has a unique situation, similar only in the hideous doubt they experience.
Now his manuscripts seem to have taken on a role like that of his characters, as if he’d written a play for them.
If it were a book, I think he’d have called it
The Words, to go with
The Trial, The Burrow and
The Castle.
Email
Print
Share
Opinion: Kafka's lost works - Among the cats in his executor's secretary’s place in Tel Aviv
