Hauptwerke franz kafka biographie

BORN: , Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic)

DIED: , Vienna, Austria

NATIONALITY: Czech

GENRE: Fiction, keep apart story

MAJOR WORKS:
The Metamorphosis ()
The Nation Doctor: A Collection of 14 Short Stories ()
The Trial ()
The Castle: A Novel ()
Amerika ()

Overview

Czech writer Franz Kafka is upper hand of the founders of up to date literature.

His most famous scrunch up, including “The Metamorphosis,” The Trial, and The Castle have advance to be seen as lore of the struggles of thrifty to preserve their dignity existing humanity in an increasingly anonymous and bureaucratic world. Kafka's adroit use of the German have a chat and his odd blend reduce speed the surreal and the ordinary combine to create a one of a kind style of fiction that has proven endlessly fascinating to readers, critics, and other writers make nearly one hundred years.

Works presume Biographical and Historical Context

Kafka was born on July 3, , in Prague, a large uncultured capital of the Austro-Hungarian Control that was home to indefinite Czechs, some Germans, and smashing lesser number of German-cultured, German-speaking Jews.

His father, Hermann Writer, of humble rural origin, was a hardworking, hard-driving, successful store owner. His mother tongue was Slavonic, but he spoke German, properly seeing the language's importance break through the struggle for social accept economic mobility and security. Kafka's mother, Julie Lowy Kafka, came from a family with senior Prague roots and some order of wealth.

She would synchronized prove unable to defuse illustriousness tensions between her brusque, arrogant husband and her quiet, further sensitive son.

The Father-God Kafka's sire was a powerful, robust, majestic man, successful in his sudden, who considered his son simple weakling unfit for life. Franz's childhood and youth were overshadowed by constant conflict with fillet father, whom he respected, unchanging admired, and at the come to time feared and subconsciously hateful.

Kafka later transformed the lack of communication between them into a recurring relationship break through his stories between a God/Father figure and mankind.

Franz Kafka fretful only German schools: from find time for the most authoritarian grammar educational institution, the Deutsches Staatsgymnasium in righteousness Old Town Square, and go over the top with to the Karl Ferdinand Academia of Prague.

In college proscribed initially majored in German belles-lettres, but changed in his next semester to the study avail yourself of law. In June he gradual with a degree of student of jurisprudence.

Civil Service During Universe War I In October Writer started to practice law gift wrap the criminal court and afterwards at the civil court crumble Prague, meanwhile gaining practical deem as an intern in depiction office of an attorney.

Walk heavily early he joined the pole of the Workmen's Compensation Split of the Austrian government. Superficially, he did his job chicly well—so well in fact guarantee his supervisors arranged for him to be excused from force service during World War Funny. Kafka's generation of young joe public was decimated by the violent European war.

Between and , more than one million Austro-Hungarian soldiers were killed, and alternative than three and a fraction million were wounded.

Early Work sports ground Engagement to Felice Bauer Kafka's first collection of stories was published in under the label Contemplation. These sketches are

polished, roost impressions based on observations female life in and around Praha.

Preoccupied with problems of truth and appearance, they reveal dominion objective realism based on inner-city middle-class life. The book bash dedicated to “M. B.,” mosey is, Max Brod, who challenging been Kafka's closest friend on account of their first meeting as organization students in

In September Writer met a young Jewish cub from Berlin, Felice Bauer, look at whom he fell in love—an affair that was to control far-reaching consequences for all government future work.

The immediate be in was an artistic breakthrough: Oversight composed in a single move, on the night of Sept 22–23, the story “The Sentence” (also translated as “The Verdict”), dedicated to his future fiancée, Felice, and published the followers year in Brod's annual, Arcadia. The story blends fantasy, certainty, speculation, and psychological insight nearby contains all the elements as a rule associated with Kafka's disorderly terra.

In the story, judgment report passed by a bedridden, absolutist father on his conscientious on the other hand guilt-haunted son, who obediently commits suicide.

Kafka's next work, completed temper May , was the play a part “The Stoker,” later incorporated surprise his fragmentary novel Amerika dominant awarded the Fontane Prize overcome , his first public recognition.

Early in Kafka became unofficially spoken for to Felice in Berlin, on the contrary by the end of excellence summer he had broken sliding doors ties, sending a long communication to her father with position explanation that his daughter could never find happiness in addon to a man whose particular interest in life was letters.

The engagement, nevertheless, was on the record announced in June , unique to be dissolved six weeks later. The two maintained exceptional relationship for some time thereafter.

“The Metamorphosis” The year saw distinction publication of Kafka's best-known story line, “The Metamorphosis,” about a guy who is transformed into apartment building insect.

Shortly thereafter, Kafka begeted one of the most alarming stories in the novella In the Penal Colony, written hoax Though he had escaped position horrors of battle during integrity World War I years, magnanimity privations of life in Praha during the war weakened authority health. In , he cultured he had tuberculosis; around decency same time, he broke charade his relationship with Felice.

Just the thing , he developed a unsmiling case of influenza. Kafka's illnesses did not halt his legendary output. The stories Kafka wrote during the war years, were published in in a parcel dedicated to his father limit entitled “The Country Doctor.” Deduct , he published the narrative “The Hunger Artist.” “The Eat one`s heart out ove Artist” became the title gag for the last book in print during the author's lifetime, uncut collection of four stories digress appeared in

Unfinished Novels Kafka's three great novel fragments, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle, might have been lost imagine the world had it fret been for the dedication shambles Max Brod, who edited them posthumously, ignoring his friend's solicit to destroy all of fillet unpublished manuscripts.

The first of them, begun in and originally referred to by Kafka as The Man Who Disappeared, was publicized in under the title Amerika.

The book, which may endure considered a Bildungsroman, or fresh of education (in the lore of nineteenth-century German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), recounts the adventures locate Karl Rossmann, who, banished descendant his father because he was seduced by a servant woman, emigrates to America.

Kafka's next new fragment, The Trial, which was begun in and published middle , finds the hero, Josef K., suddenly arrested and culprit of a crime, the loving of which is never explained.

The novel is open take a breather multiple interpretations. Critics such introduction French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre accept speculated that the novel was Kafka's rendering of Jewish guts in an anti-Semitic world. Amazingly, though Kafka would not live on to see it, anti-Semitism play to the arrest and fratricide of millions of Jews underneath directed by the Nazi regime.

All several of Kafka's sisters died tag Nazi death camps.

The third crucial longest of Kafka's novel dregs is The Castle, begun populate and published in The mysterious hero tries in vain calculate gain access to a manor-house that somehow symbolizes security professor in which a supreme artist dwells. Again and again pacify seeks to settle in probity village where the castle decay located, but his every attain to be accepted as wonderful recognized citizen of the territory is thwarted.

Ill Health and tidy Love Affair During the days to , when he was working on The Castle, Kafka's health deteriorated and he was forced to take extensive poorly leave.

After June there were no more renewals of Kafka's sick leaves from the safeguard company where he worked, refuse in July he retired imperative a pension. He left Praha to live with his fille Ottla in southern Bohemia home in on several months and then reciprocal to Prague where he prolonged work on The Castle.

Providential the summer of he vacationed on the Baltic coast siphon off his sister Elli and be a foil for family. There he met Dora Diamant, a young girl collide Hasidic roots. Her family experience and her competence in Canaanitic appealed to Kafka equally merge with her personal attractiveness. He strike down deeply in love with weaken.

She remained with him during the end, and under an extra influence he finally cut bring to an end ties with his family additional managed to live with put your feet up in Berlin. For the leading time he was happy, laidback at last from his father's influence.

He lived with Dora encroach Berlin until the spring make famous , when she accompanied him to Austria.

There he entered Kierling sanatorium near Klosterneuburg. Notch and , when able, Writer worked on three stories walk were published posthumously: “A More or less Woman,” “The Burrow,” and “Josephine, the Song-stress; or, The Mice Nation.” He died on June 3, , of tuberculosis neat as a new pin the larynx.

Works in Literary Context

Even as a youngster, Kafka desirable to write.

For his parents' birthdays he would compose small plays, which were performed turnup for the books home by his three lower sisters, while he himself engrossed as stage manager. The remote boy was an avid textbook and became deeply influenced newborn the works of Goethe, Mathematician, Flaubert, and Kierkegaard.

Kafka-esque Qualities Grandeur narrative features that are common of Kafka are a first-person narrator who serves as neat persona of the author, gargantuan episodic structure, an ambivalent searcher on an ambiguous mission, captain pervasive irony.

He developed fairy story strengthened these themes largely maintain his own over the global of his writing career, on the other hand they are present almost give birth to his earliest stories. Other interpretations of his works that discontented them in larger movements corrupt philosophies are varied and on level pegging the subject of much debate.

Kafka's works anticipate the appearance disrespect the literary movement of supernatural realism during the s roost s.

Writers in this disk, such as Italo Calvino, Isabel Allende, Günter Grass, and Jorge Luis Borges, attempted to wrapping objective reality as well renovation psychological processes. The text strike constructs its own reality, adjacent to which the reader must make suitable or else be left favouritism like an outsider.

Existentialism Perhaps Kafka's early reading of the wise Kierkegaard imbued his stories leading his protagonists with ideas go off at a tangent would later be called existentialism, a family of philosophies dump interpret human existence in cast down concreteness and problematic character.

Unembellished important tenet of existentialism recap that the individual is yell a detached observer of primacy world, which is essentially disorderly and indifferent to humans. Community make themselves what they distinctive by choosing a way think likely life. Kafka's alienated protagonists frequently choose to accept the bosh of their situation, which leads to their demise.

LITERARY AND Consecutive CONTEMPORARIES

Kafka's famous contemporaries include:

Theodore Dreiser (–): American realist writer ticking off the naturalist school.

Pablo Picasso (–): Influential artist, codeveloper of class movement known as cubism, which helped usher in a original Modernist period in art.

Federico García Lorca (–): Spanish poet be proof against dramatist killed by the Nationalists at the start of dignity Spanish Civil War.

Maxim Gorky (–): Russian writer and political heretical who was one of ethics creators of the literary high school of socialist realism.

Woodrow Wilson (–): President of the United States from to , chiefly god today for his foreign scheme following the end of Universe War I.

H.P.

Lovecraft (–): Indweller writer of horror, fantasy, captain science fiction tales, he insubstantial an entire “mythos” filled nuisance uncaring cosmic beings and altogether alien supernatural entities.

Nikola Tesla (–): Serbian physicist, engineer, and author who discovered AC (alternating current), invented the radio, and lay the groundwork for radar, robotics, and remote control.

Influence Kafka's shade of surreal confusion and unlighted humor have influenced many artists in the decades following authority death.

Italian film director Federico Fellini is perhaps the ceiling visibly “Kafka-esque” cinematic storyteller, rivaled only by David Lynch. Mid the authors who owe first-class debt to Kafka's work responsibility Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, Albert Camus, refuse Salman Rushdie.

Works in Critical Context

The body of critical commentary unrest the works of Franz Author is massive enough to imitate warranted the description “fortress Kafka.” Here two of the author's most well-known works will rectify examined by way of demonstrating the great depth and multiplicity of interpretations that arise yield Kafka's works.

The Trial Critics own approached The Trial from dual directions.

Some have taken top-notch biographical approach, reading the story through the lens of Kafka's own diary and seeing rule book as a reflection invoke his anxiety over his compromise to Felice Bauer. In emperor Anti-Semite and Jew: An Search of the Etiology of Hate, Jean-Paul Sartre interpreted the fresh as Kafka's reaction to use a Jew in an anti-Jewish society.

Others have sought legendary inspirations for The Trial: essayist Guillermo Sánchez Trujillo devoted xx years of his academic occupation to examining connections between Kafka's book and the works fence nineteenth-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevski. No interpretation is considered decisive, and the novel continues chance on spark critical interest.

“The Metamorphosis” Archangel García Márquez has said saunter it was upon reading “The Metamorphosis” that he realized “that it was possible to transcribe in a different way.” Fail to notice , Stanley Corngold was clear up to publish a collection explain essays on “The Metamorphosis” counting summaries of well over fine hundred articles, written as dependable as , when Robert Bandleader described the story as discriminating but implausible.

In subsequent length of existence, commentators have generally taken muster granted the quality and import of the story and hold focused on trying to undertake it.

There have been many diverse and contradictory interpretations.

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Freudian critics have seen in it unornamented working out of the Oedipal struggle between a father essential a son who are rivals for Gregor's mother. Marxist critics have seen the story reorganization depicting the exploitation of distinction working class. Gregor Samsa has also been seen as natty Christ figure who dies inexpressive that his family can live.

Critics interested in language and flat have seen the story although the working out of capital metaphor, an elaboration on position common comparison of a public servant to an insect.

Some critics have emphasized the autobiographical dash in the story, pointing wear away the similarities between the Samsas' household and the Kafkas' as also noting the similarity salary the names “Samsa” and “Kafka,” a similarity that Kafka ourselves was aware of, though bankruptcy said—in a conversation cited explain Nahum Glatzer's edition of circlet stories—that Samsa was not simply Kafka and nothing else.

COMMON Living soul EXPERIENCE

Many other writers have explored themes of alienation and sea change and their often tragic outcomes, both before and after Kafka.

“The Strange Case of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (), timorous Robert Louis Stevenson. In that, one of Stevenson's early fabled, a physician uses a elixir to change himself into fraudster evil, repulsive man, an meant transformation with results every ascendancy as dire as those crucial Kafka's “The Metamorphosis.”

Frankenstein (), get ahead of Mary Shelley.

A classic anecdote about a monster who progression frustrated in his attempts admit connect with human beings. Distinction monster is a rational, sensible creature that finds himself real rejected by those around him. His relationship with the somebody who creates him echoes illustriousness recurring Father/God theme in Kafka's writing.

“The Fly” (), by Martyr Langelaan, is a story rove focuses on a scientist who transforms himself into a dart.

The story was reprinted kick up a rumpus Wolf's Complete Book of Terror, edited by Leonard Wolf (Potter, ), and was made inspire movies under the same label in and

The Stranger (), by Albert Camus. Also translated as The Outsider, this give something the onceover a novel concerning an neurotic outsider who inexplicably commits topping murder.

Notes from Underground (), by means of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

A novel-length sermon by an alienated antihero who stays indoors and denounces glory world outside.

Responses to Literature

1. Father-son affairs play a major role blot Kafka's work. The interactions receive reminded many of psychologist Sigmund Freud's description of the called Oedipus complex. Using your aggregation and the Internet, research magnanimity Oedipus complex.

   Do you dream it provides a useful pang for discussing Kafka's work?

2. Whether flat literary forms, science fiction, motion pictures, or television shows, Kafka has proved to be a elder source of inspiration. Select grand work that you feel psychoanalysis Kafka-esque and write an paper in which you defend your choice by comparing it come to one of Kafka's stories.
3. What would you do if you awoke one morning to find, intend Gregor Samsa, that you locked away the body of a big insect?

   Describe how you would feel, how you think your family and friends would respond, and how you might wrinkle to adjust to your pristine form and appearance.

4. Kafka's novel The Trial has often been taken as a religious commentary. After all much do you think much a critique is supported invitation the text?

   Pick a belief, such as Calvinism, Catholicism, pessimistic Judaism, and discuss the thinkable textual evidence for its influence.

5. One interpretation of Kafka's story “A Hunger Artist” suggests that that depiction of an artist who creates his work through periods of voluntary starvation is arrive allegory of the role defer to the artist in the different world.

   Write an essay see the point of which you analyze the book and support this interpretation. Exercise the interpretation to writers current artists with whom you aim familiar.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

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

Hayman, Ronald.

Kafka: A Biography. Oxford, UK: Town University Press,

Heller, Erich. The Basic Kafka. New York: Purloin Books,

Janouch, Gustav. Conversations merge with Kafka. New York: New Modus operandi,

Politzer, Heinz. Franz Kafka: Story and Paradox. Ithaca, N.Y.: Businessman University Press,

Robert, Marthe.

As Lonely as Franz Kafka. Advanced York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,

Periodicals

McCort, Denis. “Kafka and the East: The Case for Spiritual Affinity.” Symposium (Winter ): vol

Powell, Matthew T. “From an nettle already crumbled to dust: Kafka's Use of Parable and goodness Midrashic Mashal”.

Renascence: Essays sieve Values in Literature (): vol.

Web sites

Nervi, Mauro.The Kafka Project. Accessed February 15, , elude