Franz Kafka’s Bizarre Creations Have Hit The Streets in Today’s Bleak World

 

In 1920, Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenska began a love affair through letters. Franz Kafka is a well-known figure in the world of literature, but who was Milena? Milena was a twenty-three year old aspiring writer and translator who lived in Vienna in a marriage that was slowly falling apart. She recognized Franz Kafka’s writing genius before others did. Despite the distance, despite the turbulent sea with insurmountable waves between Kafka in Prague and Milena in Vienna, the two developed an intense and intimate relationship. They stripped the masks of their bourgeois identities and bared their souls. The correspondence started when Milena wrote to Kafka and asked for a permission to translate his short story “The Stoker” from German to Czech. Such a simple request and formal demand very soon turned into a series of passionate and profound letters that Milena and Franz exchanged from March to December 1920. Kafka often wrote daily, often several times a day; such was his devotion. This is what he tells her: “and write me every day anyway, it can even be very brief, briefer than today’s letters, just 2 lines, just one, just one word, but if I had to go without them I would suffer terribly.” The letters are interesting from a linguistic point of view as well; Kafka wrote his letters in German while Milena wrote most of hers in her mother tongue, Czech. I found it really interesting to know that Franz Kafka was fluent in Czech language.

Although Kafka confided to Milena about his anxieties, fears, loneliness, it wasn’t all honey and roses; Kafka’s letters revealed the extent of his anguish caused by Milena, the sleepless nights, and the futile situation of their love. Milena haunted his thoughts, but he wasn’t the only one to suffer. In the introduction to letters Williy Haas describes Milena as a caring friend inexhaustible in her kindness and a desire to help. Kafka later writes to her calling her a ‘savior’. Passionate, vivacious and courageous, Milena suffered greatly nonetheless because of him, as Kafka said himself: “Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but if you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.” She must have known that herself, and yet she chose to sink because ‘lust for life’ was part of her personality, and pain and rapture go hand in hand. Haas also reminds us that Dostoyevsky was her favourite writer and that we also mustn’t forget the propensity towards pain which is so typical for Slavic women. Slavic soul is a deep and dark place, one you better not wander into out of mere curiosity. It is almost hard to imagine how two such strong, profound, dark souls could even live a simple life together. Their relationship was of a hot-cold character; intense at one moment because their minds were alike, then alienating the other because of the distance. When one side was attached, the other cooled down, and vice versa. When she yearned to see him in Vienna, he was reluctant; when he wanted her to divorce her husband and come live with him, she wasn’t keen to do so.

They were very different in age and personalities but they fit perfectly as two hands when clasped together. No other woman entranced Kafka so much, and despite the abrupt sad end of their passionate correspondence I still think Milena was just what he needed. Here are two quotes which discuss their age difference: “It took some time before I finally understood why your last letter was so cheerful; I constantly forget the fact that you’re so young, maybe not even 25, maybe just 23. I am 37, almost 38, almost older by a whole short generation, almost white-haired from all the old nights and headaches.” He also tells her: “You see, the peaceful letters are the ones that make me happy. Understand, Milena, my age, the fact that I am used up, and, above all, my fear, and understand your youth, your vivacity, your courage.”

They met only two times in real life; on the first occasion they spent four days together in Vienna in June 1920, and the second time, in August 1920, they only met briefly in Gmünd on the Austrian-Czech border. It was Kafka who broke off the relationship because the situation seemed too pointless; they lived far away and Milena wasn’t willing to abandon her husband. They exchanged a few more letters throughout 1922 and 1923, but they were more reserved in nature and fewer in number. He tells her: “Go on caring for me.” In 1924, Kafka died. Milena died twenty years later, ill and alone in a concentration camp. Nevertheless, Franz Kafka’s empyrean and illimitable letters to Milena have crossed all boundaries of time and have translucently come out of the ashes and debris of death and devastation.

The Metamorphosis is Franz Kafka’s fictional masterpiece. Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up one morning to find out that he has been transformed into a gigantic insect. From his bed, he looks around his room, adjusting physically and mentally to his new body and wondering whether it is a nightmare. But when he tries to turn over onto his right side and can’t, he figures out that it is reality, that indeed he is a vermin with a hard shell for a back, wriggling legs and feelers. He intends to return to sleep, but he remembers that he has to get up for work and is already delayed. He worries about his job. He hates his job and he dislikes his boss. Five years earlier, Gregor’s father’s business had failed and Gregor has been supporting his parents and his sister since then. He has also been paying back his parents’ personal debts to his boss, and he hopes one day to quit his job, clear up all dues and get his sister admitted in a music school.

While his parents are trying to find out why Gregor hasn’t come out of his room, the chief clerk arrives to inquire about Gregor’s delay. When Gregor still doesn’t emerge from his room, his parents get worried and send Grete and Anna to get a doctor and a locksmith. The chief clerk threatens Gregor with the loss of his job if he doesn’t come out and report for work. Gregor responds by saying that he hasn’t been feeling well, but promises to report for work anyway.

When Gregor finally unlocks the door to his room and shows his face, the chief clerk, who is the first to see him, reacts with shock and panic and retreats to the stairway. Mrs. Samsa collapses to the floor at the sight of her son and Mr. Samsa is shattered with woe and he started crying. The chief clerk meanwhile is about to escape. Gregor tries to speak to him in order to give him some explanation for what has happened to him, but the clerk runs away from the house. Gregor’s father picks up the chief clerk’s walking stick, which he left behind, and a rolled newspaper and drives Gregor back into his room. While moving away from his father’s sight, Gregor gets severely hurt while crawling back through his room’s doors. Terrified and bleeding, Gregor lies motionless on the floor of his room. Gregor’s disfigured appearance causes horror and disgust to everyone in the house, even to his parents. His parents hardly come to his room as they are too afraid to look at his distorted shape.

Unable to take food, Gregor gets weaker day by day. His eyesight blurs and because of his injuries he almost cannot move. His family is now working: Mr. Samsa as a bank messenger, Mrs. Samsa as a seamstress and Grete as a salesgirl. As Gregor’s condition continues to deteriorate, Grete loses willingness to look after her brother. Finally, Gregor comes to realize that the only way to save his family from the disgrace of his weird transmutation is his death and next morning he is found dead. The new housemaid finds Gregor’s corpse. Gregor’s dead body is removed and dumped away from the house. His parents seem to have forgotten everything about him and look forward to the future placing hope on Grete who, despite the pathos caused by Gregor’s death, has grown up into a pretty and prospective bride.

This book illustrates the dehumanizing effects of capitalism on ordinary people who are represented by Gregor Samsa. Lack of compassion from society while someone is in trouble is another remarkable point of this story. Exasperating jobs like working as salesmen are capitalistic tools for the bourgeois industrialists to torment their workers for making profits and maximizing prices. The horrendous transformation of Gregor Samsa from a human being into an insect is the reflection of the subhuman life working people in many places have to undergo with endless sufferings. 

On the other hand, continuous hardship and deprivations make people insensitive as found in Gregor Samsa’s family members who gradually forgot about him. People who are doing tough jobs without conspicuous remunerations all the time go through immense hazards and distress. At one point the insurmountable amount of stress, monetary insolvency and the augmentation of mechanized lifestyle take away people’s humanitarian features and virtually turn them into social nonentities. This is another significant message from Franz Kafka’s masterpiece.

We have been living in a world where emotional feelings, kindness, mercy and sympathy are fast diminishing among people. Franz Kafka was a far-sighted author. He could visualize the disastrous outcome of so-called modern professions in the unkind, merciless and materialistic world order where humanity is always undermined. Only price and profits are the most important things, not human life. We come across this reflection in a devastatingly allegorical way in the life of Gregor Samsa.

 
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is
a contributor to different English
newspapers and magazines.