I knew his father was narcissistic but I didn't expect that so many things from the letter would resonate with me.
It's so sad to see how affected he (and his siblings) had been by his father's behavior, and all put into words so well that I wish I knew German and could read the original.
"The older I grew, the more I provided you with evidence of my worthlessness, gradually you really came, in certain respects, to be right about me", this is the most heartbreaking sentence I've ever read.
I wish he had more autobiographical pieces, other than his diary and letters.
by cluelessjpg
16 Comments
Kafka’s ability to articulate such raw emotions is haunting. It’s a shame there aren’t more autobiographical writings from him.
Thank you for sharing this! I started reading his diaries last year and they’ve been a delight to read in a very saddening way. I’ve never read such dark emotions expressed with so much clarity before.
Part of me wants to laugh, while another wants to cry for him when I read something like, “Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; only when I’ve become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.”
I think Kafka articulated many deep universal humane experiences that many of us have never dared to admit to ourselves because the feelings are so painful and forbidden. Such as the inadequacy to fullfil a parent’s (particularly father’s) expectations, which I too identify with even though my father is by no means a narcissist or a tyrant. Even deeper layer, I think, is how our parents fail our own expectations of them, such as the wish that they would see our point of view and that they would provide wisdom and support instead of judgement and narrow views.
There’s this one Kafka quote which I have returned to so many times throughout my life. I don’t have the exact version in English or German, but it goes something like this:
“And I wish to find out from you what is the true nature of things which around me falter like a blizzard, while for others even a tiny shotglass stands on the table as mighty as a memorial”.
I’ve seen the original letters . They’re in the museum .. in prague.
Yeah, Kafka’s letter hits different, feels too real. That line about worthlessness? Heartbreaking. Wish there was more from him like this. Hits close to home.
To this day Kafka’s letter to his father remains the most heart-breaking piece of literature I’ve read. Page after page of the saddest, most honest struggle for meaning and identity. The way he describes his emotional and psychological pain rings so real, so true, so genuine and, in addition, imports so much meaning to his fictional work I would call it essential reading if you’re at all interested in Kafka’s work. It’s incredibly powerful writing.
I frequently see requests for people looking for “the saddest book you’ve read,” or “a book that will destroy me emotionally,” etc. While not a book, this is always my answer, even more so because it’s not fiction, even *more* so because the letter was never sent.
I don’t know if it actually happened, but I love this story about Kafka.
When he was 40, the renown Bohemian novelist and short story writer FRANZ KAFKA (1883–1924), who never married and had no children, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin. He chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again.
The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll that said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I’m going to write to you about my adventures.”
Thus began a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life.
When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the beloved doll, which the girl found enchanting. Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. “This does not look at all my doll,” she said. Kafka handed her another letter that explained, “My trips, they have changed me.” The girl hugged the new doll and took it home with her. A year later, Kafka died.
Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”
The metamorphosis is, somehow, autobiographical. From “my family makes me feel like a bug” to “ I am a bug and my family treats me as such.’
I agree, and his letters to his Milena and Felice are heartbreaking too.
I personally think this writing is beautiful because not only does it resonates with the deep fears of our heart but it also feels empathetic. Its like someone is listening to us…
Thank you for this beautiful post.
For me, the saddest part of Kafka’s family story is what he didn’t even live to see: all three of his sisters died in the Holocaust.
read the quote and instantly purchased the book, arrives on Saturday, will have box of tissues next to me
I just started reading the biography of Franz Kafka written by his best friend and literary executor Max Brod. Brod draws from his own personal experience with the Kafka (“Czech by origin and–in its correct spelling… ‘Kavka'”) family as well as from Franz Kafka’s diary entries. Brod introduces Franz’s relationship to his father by saying:
> His admiration for his father in this respect was endless–it had a touch of the heroic in it; in fact, an impartial onlooker who was not under the spell of the family circle could not but feel that it contained, alongside right and proper elements, something of exaggeration too.
(Brod then supports this by quoting from the diary entry in the PDF you attached dated 26th December 1911)
Thank you so much for posting this OP. I have to stop reading to sleep, but I can seldom put it down. What a wonderful text. Thank you.
His letters to Felice Bauer, on the other hand, are often rather amusing from an outside perspective…