Franz Kafka: A Biography (Second Edition, Enlarged)

There are two reasons why I picked this book up again. The first was Eyjafjallajokull – the postal delivery of “Kafka’s Castle, Ronald Gray” was delayed because of it and I didn’t want to burst the Kafka-bubble of my recent reading before it arrived. The second was that, while I was scanning the Kafka options on my bookshelf, I realised I couldn’t remember a thing about this book. Perhaps one of the reasons for this blank is that, being called ‘a biography’, Brod’s book defies expect

There are two reasons why I picked this book up again. The first was Eyjafjallajokull – the postal delivery of “Kafka’s Castle, Ronald Gray” was delayed because of it and I didn’t want to burst the Kafka-bubble of my recent reading before it arrived. The second was that, while I was scanning the Kafka options on my bookshelf, I realised I couldn’t remember a thing about this book. Perhaps one of the reasons for this blank is that, being called ‘a biography’, Brod’s book defies expectations and offers instead an extended encomium to his friend - at its best. At its lower moments, ‘biography’ becomes a scaffolding for Brod’s own musings, tangents and, more embarrassingly, self promotion.

Brod’s ostensible aim with this biography is to debunk ‘the Kafkaesque’ and the misjudgements this distorting simplification of both Kafka’s writing and person propagates - “Kafkaesque” according to Brod being a preoccupation with all that is negative, pessimistic and sceptical in Kafka’s writing. The problem with Brod (beside the fact that I think Kafka’s writing is almost exclusively negative, pessimistic and sceptical – and that this constitutes its strength) is that he sets about doing this by creating the now familiar mythology of Kafka the saint, the champion of the ‘Indestructible’, shrouding his subject in a religiosity more his own than Kafka’s. But of course, anyone who has any interest in Kafka will have long since encountered the de-mythologizing of Brod’s biases, both in relation to his editing of (or meddling with) Kafka’s texts, and in realtion to his pronouncements in both this biography and his prefaces to Kafka’s works. Reviewing Begley’s “The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head” (a book on my to-read list), Zadie Smith makes some very sly observations regarding Brod’s too intense veneration of his friend. Read her review here:

But it is his conspicuous awe of and devotion to Kafka which at least partially mitigates, or at least explains, Brod’s peccability. I think it is also worth remembering that in many cases it was the versions of Kafka’s works edited and presented by Brod which brought Kafka to recognition and posthumous fame, and not solely Kaka’s efforts; if we’re now rediscovering a less inflated and more human figure than Brod presents us with in this biography, it should be born in mind that we were lured to these belated findings by the same temptations which Brod succumbs to here. What’s more, if you are willing to plough through Brod’s (or his translator’s?) dense and prolix meanderings, there are apposite insights to be sieved from this book. This, for example, regarding Kafka’s writing style (one only wishing Brod had attempted to follow suit!);

“His language is as clear as crystal, and on the surface one can, as it were, detect no other aim than that of properly and clearly suiting the subject. And yet underlying the serene mirror of this well of pure language are dreams and visions of unfathomable depth. One peers into it and is enchanted by its beauty and individuality. But one cannot say, least of all at the first glance can one say, wherein lies the peculiar quality of this simple sentence construction which is after all nothing except right, healthy and simple.”

“Out of the prosaic facts of his own situation the writer’s imagination constructed a vast, twilight edifice, gloriously transcendent.”

“And the terrible wound of doubt that Kafka’s ever-fresh wit, and Kafka’s ever freshly creating, bizarre fancy, deal our moral system, cannot be healed by phrases, by sanctimoniously lifting up one’s eyes, and patching things up with evil, not by belletristic anointing, but only by tremendous, mounting feeling for the positive that dares bid defiance to all this undisguised negation.”