Letters to Felice

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La relación epistolar será una necesidad, una dependencia emocional muy fuerte, un amor extraño y controvertido entre ambos, pero principalmente para Kafka que entrará en un torbellino de pasiones que le deparará su corazón, el cual lucha con su necesidad de establecerse definitivamente como escritor. in any case, what business have my hands to write letters if all they are made for and all they want is to hold you ! (Olivie Blake has a quote like this in "Alone w you in the ether", she thought I wouldn't notice, but I did girl!! Kafka fans, let me hear you) I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it: Kafka ha quedado hechizado de esta simple mujer con prácticamente pocos atributo. No importa: la atracción fue más y lo cautivó. Yet, Kafka couldn't help but feel disgusted by his father's voracious appetite at the dining table, where crumbs of bread would scatter.

Franz Kafka (right) with Max Brod's younger brother, Otto, at the Castel Toblino near Trento, 1909. El la ama, se siente completamente absorbido por la relación y está a sus pies, pero rehúye constantemente a la posibilidad de casarse y es lógico, ya que su único propósito es escribir: "Mi empleo me resulta insoportable porque contradice mi único anhelo y mi única vocación que es la literatura, dado que no soy nada más que literatura y no puedo ni quiero ser otra cosa". Two days later, on December 13, he again referred to his book, "I am so happy that my book, no matter how much I find fault with it, is now in your possession." Es el 13 de agosto 1912 y Franz Kafka asiste a una velada íntima en la casa de su amigo y albacea Max Brod. Book Genre: 20th Century, Autobiography, Biography, Classics, European Literature, German Literature, Literature, Memoir, Nonfiction, Reference, Romance

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Kafka με τη Felice Bauer με βοήθησε ιδιαίτερα στο να κατανοήσω τις ιδέες αλλά και τις εμμονές που βρίσκονται μέσα στο λογοτεχνικό του έργο. Και στην περίπτωση αυτή, όπως και στις άλλες συλλογές επιστολών του, οι απαντήσεις της Felice δεν σώζονται. Αν έπρεπε να απαντήσω στην ερώτηση για το κατά πόσο ο Kafka προσπάθησε να δημιουργήσει μια παρασιτική σχέση εις βάρος της νεαρής αρραβωνιαστικιάς του, νομίζω πως θα έπρεπε να πω πως, ναι, αυτό ισχύει. Το ήξερε πως για εκείνον το να την κόψει και να την ράψει στα δικά του μέτρα ήταν θέμα επιβίωσης και δεν έπαψε να βασανίζεται από ενοχές γι' αυτήν του ανάγκη. I actually think, counterintuitively, Kafka would make an excellent partner. He gives great credit to Felice's intelligence, wit, and education, and above all else sees her as an equal in every way (and bear in mind, these letters were written in the early 1910s, where that certainly wasn't a default). He's constantly concerned with her well-being and places her happiness above his at all times. Three decades have passed since Kafka's demise, and his standing in global literature continues to ascend. Did Bauer, toward the end of her life, wonder where her own letters to Kafka ended up?

In one of Kafka's letters to Milena, he vividly depicted himself as an emaciated man adrift on a boat, donning a swimsuit, and floating downstream. Observed from a bridge, his bony, motionless figure resembled that of the dead prior to the unveiling of coffins on Judgment Day.When Bauer sent Kafka a photograph of herself with her family, he immediately delved into decoding its meaning. He analysed every element – hand gestures, smiles, shadows, lighting, clothes, and gazes within and beyond the frame. Perhaps happiness, in Bauer's eyes, was marriage and parenthood. This starkly contrasted to Kafka, who sought to stoke the flames of his inner torment through writing. The discomfort of this wildly disorienting bidirectional pull is what 29-year-old Franz Kafka articulated in a beautiful and heartbreaking letter to Felice Bauer, a marketing rep for a dictation machine company whom the young author had met at the home of his friend and future biographer Max Brod in August of 1912. Young Franz and Felice immediately began a correspondence of escalating intensity, with Kafka frequently exasperated — as was Vladimir Nabokov at the start of his lifelong romance with Véra— over his beloved’s infrequent and insufficiently romantic response. Over the five-year course of their turbulent, mostly epistolary relationship, they were engaged twice, even though they met in person only a few times. During that period, Kafka produced his most significant work, including The Metamorphosis. Five hundred of his letters survive and were posthumously published in the intensely rewarding and revelatory Letters to Felice ( public library).

Meanwhile, Grete has been maintaining Gregor’s room and gradually moving furniture around or out of the room to allow him to more comfortably navigate the space. Her mother argues that she should not move everything out because Gregor will lose his sense of humanity, and Gregor realizes that it’s true that he has begun to feel less human. His mother’s voice helps him to recall his human memories, at least temporarily. Whether out of self-protective rationalization or mere pragmatism — the onset of tuberculosis was, after all, what ended the relationship five years later — he plaintively points to a physiological reason, almost as an excuse for the psychological: Por otro lado, la idea de convivir con una esposa lo aterra. Íntimamente ella lo sabe y seguramente se habrá dado cuenta que nunca iba a funcionar. Es claro, ella quiere vivir con él en Berlín mientras que él prefiere establecerse en Praga y vivir de la literatura. Es más, juntos averiguan distintos apartamentos y casas para alquilar pero nunca llegan a zanjar la cuestión. On 13 August 1912, a summer evening in Prague, a young Franz Kafka was gathering up his manuscripts to take to the house of his friend, Max Brod. His excursion to the Brods’ home late in the evening was not unusual, but this was an unusual night, for two momentous reasons: Kafka was about to send off what would be one of his first works to be published, and that evening he would meet the woman who would dominate his romantic imagination for the next five years. Bauer emerges as an unassuming woman from Berlin with aspirations of marriage and family. However, places his writing as a barrier between them – betraying her through his literary pursuits. As for Bauer, she couldn't fathom this peculiar form of treachery. Curious contradictions

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Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. Kafka, que siempre luchó contra sí mismo y contra las barreras y obstáculos que creó para complicarlo todo, tal vez como le sucede a los personajes de sus novelas -especialmente K. y Joseph K. de "El castillo" y "El proceso", hizo lo mismo para su relación personal que siempre fue débil, dependiente y conflictiva también con otras, tal es el caso de Juli Wohryzek y muy marcadamente con Mílena Jesenská con quien también mantuvo un intercambio epistolar intenso y complejo teniendo en cuenta que Mílena estaba casada. Tal vez, ambos fueron arrastrados bajo el influjo de esa famosa frase de Franz que dice "A partir de determinado punto no hay retorno. Ese es el punto que hay que alcanzar." Mañana me pondré a escribir de nuevo, con todas mis fuerzas, cuando no escribo siento como si una mano inflexible me arrojara de la vida a empujones." Felice, μην αμφιβάλλεις γι' αυτό. Είμαι περιβόητος για το γέλιο μου αν και παλιότερα ήμουν πολύ πιο τρελός από όσο είμαι τώρα. Μάλιστα με έπιασε κάποτε, κατά τη διάρκεια μιας συνάντησης με τον πρόεδρο της εταιρίας μας - πάνε δυο χρόνια από τότε, αλλά αυτήν την υπόθεση θα την θυμούνται όλοι στο γραφείο ακόμα κι όταν εγώ θα έχω φύγει - μια κρίση γέλιου και πώς! Πού να σου εξηγώ τη σημασία αυτού του άνδρα. Πίστεψέ με, πρόκειται περί σημαντικότατης προσωπικότητας. Ένας απλός υπάλληλος τον θεωρεί όχι ως κάτι γήινο αλλά ουράνιο. Και καθώς δεν είχαμε όλοι την ευκαιρία να συνομιλήσουμε με τον ίδιο τον Αυτοκράτορα, η επαφή μας με το πρόεδρο ήταν για τον μέσο υπάλληλο - κι αυτό συμβαίνει σε όλους τους μεγάλους οργανισμούς - εξίσου σημαντική όπως θα ήταν και μια συνάντηση με τον αληθινό Αυτοκράτορα [...]

News of Bauer's marriage reached Kafka through his correspondence with a second lover, Milena, whose letters to Kafka have also been lost to history. An emaciated figure Kafka ορισμένες φορές έχανε τον έλεγχο των συναισθημάτων του, στην προκειμένη περίπτωση είναι η επιτηδευμένη σοβαροφάνεια του εργασιακού του περιβάλλοντος αυτή που πυροδοτεί την έκρηξή του: On December 11, 1912, Kafka's debut book, Meditation, was published. He sent it to Bauer with a plea: "Please be kind to my poor book! Show the book to as few people as possible." Franz Kafka met Felice Bauer in August 1912, at the home of his friend Max Brod. Energetic, down-to-earth, and life-affirming, the twenty-five-year-old secretary was everything Kafka was not, and he was instantly smitten. Because he was living in Prague and she in Berlin, his courtship was largely an epistolary one--passionate, self-deprecating, and anxious letters sent almost daily, sometimes even two or three times a day. But soon after their engagement was announced in 1914, Kafka began to worry that marriage would interfere with his writing and his need for solitude. He was possessed by his need to purge his creative ideas and thoughts. He dedicated ten uninterrupted hours to completing his short story The Judgment during that period. Within two weeks, he set aside four chapters from his novel Amerika to pen his novella The Metamorphosis, while marking remarkable progress on another work, Diaries.Kafka met Bauer on 13 August 1912, during a visit to his friend Max Brod's residence. They did not meet again for nearly seven months, during which Kafka penned nearly half of his letters to her. Kafka resisted putting their epistolary relationship to the real-life test. After finally agreeing to meet Bauer, he sent a telegram in the morning saying he would not be coming, but went anyway – and remained sullen and withdrawn, later complaining that he had been hugely disappointed with the real Felice. Then, on December 23, he wrote to express his exasperation with a friend of Bauer's who seemingly failed to grasp the difficulty of writing, as evidenced by her curt response. It appeared that Bauer had tacitly shared her friend's sentiments on it.