Franz Kafka's Letters to Friends, Family and Editors

The Brighter Side of Franz Kafka

Reading the diaries of Franz Kafka and the letters he wrote to Felice Bauer (the woman to whom he was emotionally attached for the longest period) it is not difficult to arrive at the conclusion that Kafka was a tortured genius whose compulsion for writing and physical ailments robbed him of all pleasure in life. This unhappy portrait that Kafka paints of himself, the tormented artist who lives only for his work, accords naturally with his great literary works - The Trial, The Castle and Metamorphosis - which are all marked by a deeply unsettling sense of inner conflict and alienation. And yet this is only half of the truth. Whilst it is true that he did suffer for much of life from depression, low self-esteem and crippling physical afflictions, there was also a much brighter side to Kafka's nature. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the vast compendium of letters that he wrote to his closest friends and family throughout his life.

The majority of these letters were written by Kafka to the man who became his closest friend and, after his death in 1924, his literary executor - Max Brod. It was Brod who accumulated a large number of letters that Kafka wrote to other friends, members of his family, and his editors, for publication in a collected volume in 1958. The collection runs from 1900 up until the author's untimely death in 1924 and covers 400 pages. A compulsive letter writer, Kafka was arguably more devoted to keeping up his correspondence with his multiple acquaintances than with pursuing a serious literary career, but now that most of his letters have been published we see that these letters represent a crucial part of his literary output, providing us with the most complete self-portrait that an artist has ever attempted.

In stark contrast with his letters to his lovers Felice Bauer and Milena Jesenská, which are wild emotional surges riven with bitterness and self-loathing, Kafka's letters to his friends are restrained, amiable and inexpressibly charming. Kafka may have felt awkward socialising with others (he often felt that conversation was a waste of time), but in his letters he is the most pleasant and engaging of correspondents. To fellow poets and authors, he is constantly encouraging and offers whatever help he can to advance their careers. To his most intimate friends, he shows a genuine interest in their troubled private lives, willingly participates in philosophical and literary discussions and comments on his own unhappy circumstances with wit and resignation.

These letters span the last two decades of Kafka's life and take us on a journey that is both revelatory and intensely poignant. A substantial proportion (just over a half) of the letters were written in the years following the diagnosis that the writer had tuberculosis, confirming what Kafka had always suspected since late adolescence. What is most striking about these later letters is how at ease Kafka appears to be with his illness and encroaching death. Instead of depressing him further, the realisation that he has TB, at the time a pretty sure death sentence, seems to liberate Kafka from his earlier anxieties and recriminations, making him a better, kinder man.

There is hardly a trace of the relentless self-pity and petulance that we find in his letters to Felice Bauer. Instead, what we see is a man who has grown to take life for what it is and, rather than constantly looking inwards to mourn his sorrows, he is now more inclined to look outwards and comfort others. Whilst we may lament the fact that medical science in the 1920s was not sufficiently advanced to have cured Kafka of his TB, or at the least made his last few weeks more tolerable, there is perhaps something fitting about the way the writer's life and art were suddenly cut short. How else could Kafka have escaped from the terrible prison he had constructed for himself? It was a prison made to protect him from those forces that caused him nothing but pain - emotional attachments he wasn't equipped to deal with, routine paid work that he loathed, parents he constantly resented, and, above all, constant worries over his health. It was not a physical prison, of course, but a purely abstract one - a crushing Kafkaesque maze with impenetable walls fabricated from neurotic self-hatred and a demonic drive to achieve literary success.

Given how contradictory an individual Kafka was, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that he is at his most likeable and humane when the Grim Reaper comes within spitting distance. Physically drained, financially ruined, his literary ambitions all but quashed, Kafka could be forgiven for wallowing in self-pity, but he rarely does. When he writes to his friends, he may comment on his deteriorating physical condition, but he never dwells on it.

Kafka prefers not to think about his health and personal failures; he has a much better use for his dwindling energies: sympathising with others and engaging in the most intense intellectual exchanges with minds of power equal to his own. With Brod, Kafka enjoys nothing more than expatiating on the philosophy of Kierkegaard and the nuances of Hebrew grammar.

This is the face of Franz Kafka that those who admire his work long to see - not the tortured artist labouring over his desk in the dead of night, but a cheerful soul accepting the life he has been granted with resignation and good humour. No longer weighed down by the never-ending trial of existence, no longer trapped in the Escher-like geometry of a village sitting in the mocking shadow of an unattainable castle, Kafka lived long enough to experience the joy of freedom - and that is as much as any of us can hope for in this world.

Selected highlights

November 1903
Already at the age of twenty, Kafka shows both his commitment to a literary career and the torment this causes him in a letter to school friend Oskar Pollack: "No writing's been done for some time... God doesn't want me to write, but I must... There's more anguish in it than you can imagine."

May 1907
Kafka is not yet 24 when he becomes aware of the illness that will torment him until the end of his days. In a moment of depression, he writes to Max Brod a sentence that that foreshadows his unhappy destiny: "My future is not rosy and I will surely die like a dog."

February 1910
In a one-line letter, Kafka makes clear his dependence on the close contact he enjoys with his most devoted friend, Max Brod: "You've forgotten me completely. You don't write." Subsequently, he reports his fatigue, insomnia, headaches - symptoms of his encroaching tuberculosis. "I am nothing but a mass of spikes going through me."

October 1912
Kafka is at his lowest ebb, faced with the prospect of having to work in his brother-in-law's factory as well as continuing his day-job as an insurance official. This catastrophe would force him to give up his writing, the one activity that sustains him. In his most desperate letter to Brod, Kafka states that he had considered killing himself by leaping out of his bedroom window. He then says he changed his mind since "staying alive interrupts my writing less than death." Brod was so perturbed by this letter that he sent it on to to his friend's mother.

September 1913
Whilst residing in a sanatorium, Kafka stresses his need for solitude in a letter to Brod: "How I need solitude, and how soiled I feel by conversation." He then goes on to lament his inability to make a clean break with Felice Bauer - "I cannot live with her and I cannot live without her" - and shows his ambivalence towards sex: "When I want to disgust myself, I have only to imagine placing my arm around a woman's waist."

July 1916
Whilst he and Felice are enjoying an extended holiday in Marienbad after their reconciliation, a cheerful Kafka writes to Brod in an ecstasy of contentment and outlines his plans for the future. He intends to marry after the war, give up his present job and find an apartment in Berlin to earn his living as a writer. Tragically, none of this will come to pass.

July-August 1916
In correspondence with his publisher Kurt Wolff, Kafka insists that The Judgement must be published separately and not in a collection with In the Penal Colony and Metamorphosis. The reason for this, he argues, is that The Judgement is his favourite work and needs "open space around it".

September 1917
Whilst living on his sister Ottla's farm in Zurau, on extended leave after being diagnosed with tuberculosis following his lung haemorrhage, Kafka appears quietly philosophical about his illness. Humorously he writes: "'Things can't go on this way', said the brain, and after five years the lungs said they were ready to help." To a friend Oskar Baum he writes: "At present I am feeling quite content, and starting my new life with a measure of confidence."

November 1917
To another close friend Felix Weltsch, Kafka recounts being constantly harassed by a plague of mice whilst staying at his sister's farm: "My health is quite good, assuming that mouse phobia does not carry me off before tuberculosis." In this and subsequent letters, Kafka appears increasingly preoccupied with the nuisance of the mice and becomes obsessed with their extermination. The cat he acquires to chase them away proves to be of limited use, its value undermined by the mess it makes all over his bed and clothes. In the end, the rodent-hating writer is driven to give up on the feline defence and places an order for an industrial-strength mousetrap.

March 1918
Kafka writes to Brod on his decision to dedicate his book of short stories A Country Doctor to his father. "Not that I could appease my father; the roots of our antagonism are too deep."

November 1919
To the sister of Julie Wohryzek, the woman he became engaged to in the summer of 1919, Kafka reasserts his reluctance to settle down and start a family. It is apparent that he desperately wants to marry, but there is some inner force at work that prevents him from doing so.

From late 1919, Kafka begins a long correspondence with Minze Eisner, a Jewish girl he met whilst convalescing at a pension in Schelsen in November 1919. These letters show the most tender and generous side of Kafka's nature; he is genuinely concerned with Minze's education and subsequent career. Moreover, he is manifestly cheered by the letters he receives from Minze, and writes affectionate replies, as if she were a substitute daughter.

Autumn 1921
Back in Prague, Kafka writes a series of letters to his eldest sister Elli. These include a lengthy argument in favour of Jonathan Swift's proposal that children should not be brought up by their parents owing to the psychological damage caused by the parents' selfishness. Children, he argues, should never be grateful for their existence, and they should be shielded from parental love which is, according to Kafka, "mindless and animal." From the intellectual force and passion with which he writes, there can be no doubt that this is a matter that Kafka has thought about deeply, and his assertions show the extent to which he still resents his parents' failure to bring him up without hurting him.

From 1921, Kafka begins an intense correspondence with Hungarian writer Robert Klopstock that would continue right up until his death in 1924. The two met at Matlar sanatorium in 1921 and developed an immediate and close friendship through their shared ill health.

July 1922
Kafka is now pensioned off and working on his last novel, The Castle. In his letters to Max Brod he again shows his devotion to writing, working late at night, almost as if taking part in a Satanic pact: "This descent to the dark powers, this unshackling of spirits bound by nature." He cannot bear to be away from his desk. "The existence of the writer is truly dependent upon his desk, and if he wants to keep madness at bay, he must never go far from his desk." In another letter, Kafka shows his extreme sensitivity to noise. Even the sound of children playing outside his window drives him to distraction: "A hellish noise, a scourge of humanity."

By the autumn of 1922, Kafka's health worries (lassitude, fever, fainting fits) are now compounded by money worries and the fact that both of his parents are also having to receive costly medical treatment for their ailments. Increasingly, Kafka seeks solace in writing to his friends. His letters become longer and more intellectually involved, mostly concerned with his literary interests and growing fascination with the Hebrew language.

April 1924
At Wiener Wald sanatorium, in a letter to Brod, Kafka appears visibly distressed over the cost of his board and treatment. His only hope is that his writing will provide some financial support. By this time, his tuberculosis has taken its toll and the end is within sight. To Klopstock he writes: "It seems my larynx is so swollen that I cannot eat." He is then sent to Vienna for treatment on his throat that will ultimately prove unsuccessful.

The collection of letters concludes with a number of 'conversation slips', brief notes that Kafka wrote to those around him after being instructed by his doctors that he must not speak whilst treatment on his throat was continuing. These were mostly directed to his friends Dora Dymant and Robert Klopstock who stayed with him in his last few weeks of decline.

As Brod comments: "The slips show that Kafka's intellectual powers, profound kindness and imagination remained unclouded to the end." After a doctor's visit, Kafka writes: "So the help goes away without helping." He died on 3rd June 1924 and was buried in Prague at the Jewish cemetery eight days later.