Literature / Writer's Datebook: July 3
Brief biography of Austrian author Franz Kafka, novelist and short story writer, famous for his short story "The Metamorphosis" and the novel The Trial.
His often portrayal of the world is one of a schizophrenic society in which a lost or bewildered individual has strayed.
Early Years
Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, (now in the Czech Republic, then part of Austria). The son of German-Jewish parents, he was a shy and hypersensitive man who lived with his parents for most of his short life. He studied law at the German University in Prague although his passion was writing. His break came when he got a job writing reports on industrial accidents and health hazards. The only time he had for creative writing was in the evenings.
Although very much attached to his father, he eventually moved to Berlin with Dora Dymant in 1923, before he succumb to lung cancer the following year.
Kafka: The Writer and his Theme
Some of Kafka's early stories were published when he was 26 years old. In the summer of 1912 he wrote the two short stories, "The Judgement" and "The Metamorphosis," that established his importance as a writer. The "Metamorphosis" became Kafka's most famous story. It is about a man who wakes to find that he has been transformed overnight into a giant insect.
Both stories feature a theme common to all his work: a lonely victim who suffers persecution for a crime he does not understand. This theme is carried further in Kafka's most famous novel, The Trial, in which the hero, Joseph K., is unaware of the offence for which he is persecuted and finally executed. This ideas has been described as an allegory for the bewilderment felt by many people living in the modern world.
Later Years
Kafka refused to allow any of his three novels to be published during is lifetime and left instructions to his friend Max Brod that all his manuscripts should be burned after his death. Fortunately for literature, Brod decided to publish the manuscripts posthumously, and translated by Edwin and Willa Muir. A number of his other writings have also been published posthumously. He died at the age of 40, on June 3, 1923.
Works by Franz Kafka
"The Boilerman", 1913
"Meditations", 1913 ("Betrachtungen")
"The Judgement", 1913
The Metamorphosis", 1915 ("Die Verwandlung" or "The Transformation")
"In the Penal Colony", 1919
The Country Doctor, 1919
Published After Kafka Died:
The Trial, 1925 ("Der Prozess")
The Castle, 1926 ("Das Schloss")
America, 1927 ("Amerika")
Image Credit:
Franz Kafka. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain
Resources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
(c) July 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
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