1883 – Prague – The beetle was born, the genius that was Franz Kafka. As he would peep at his parents Julie and Hermann Kafka, he would not know the pressures that would lay before him. And that ‘he’ would indeed be the resting place for his father’s displaced resentment.
“I can’t appreciate what he went through then; and that finally I must be unboundedly grateful to him just because I never went through the same.”
Franz Kafka
As Franz Kafka grew from a young child into a man – he wore the scares his father had sewn within his flesh – But not all of his relationships were oppressive, some were nurturing, beautiful. Max Brod was Franz Kafka’s best friend of whom we have a lot to thank for – endlessly in my mind I replay him lighting an imagined match above Kafka’s work, as Brod was instructed to do so once Kafka had past away in June, 1924. But Brod didn’t put fire to paper, he instead dedicated his whole life trying to restore and publish Kafka’s works. Thanks to Brod we have a greater insight into the mind of Kafka and his greatest stories.
So who was Kafka? I’m sure we all have a preconceived idea of the writer, but it’s Brod’s stories that highlight his empathetic nature, humour and a unique perspective of how to view the world; as ever changing as this might have been.
“There was no end to our joking and laughing – he liked a good, hearty laugh, and knew how to make his friends laugh too. More than that, if one were in a tight corner, one could unhesitatingly rely on his knowledge of the world, his tact, his advice, which hardly ever failed to be right.”
Max Brod
When one delves into the life of Kafka, it is true that the writer doubted his abilities and the popularity of his ideas, but he continued nonetheless. I feel Kafka wrote indeed for himself, but was never alive to see the rising popularity and global interest that began shortly after WW2. In Kafka’s lifetime he was able to publish Contemplation (1912) and other stories – Metamorphosis (1915) being his most talked about story. However, Contemplation was never really discussed or spoken about often, hence why I wanted to breathe life back into these beautiful anecdotes of human activity, exploring with the Cast a selection of these eighteen stories.
The Writer’s Mark 