Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of Austrian/Czech novelist and Bohemian writer Franz Kafka, who is best known for his surreal and existential fiction that explores themes of alienation, absurdity, and the nightmarish aspects of modern bureaucracy. His most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. Although Kafka published only a few pieces during his lifetime and requested that his unpublished work be destroyed, a friend ignored this wish and posthumously published many of Kafka’s manuscripts — ensuring his lasting literary legacy. Today, Kafka is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Franz Kafka was born in 1883, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a middle-class Jewish family. He was the eldest of six children. His father was a self-made businessman who rose from humble beginnings to run a successful wholesale shop selling fine goods, including haberdashery and accessories. He was known for his authoritarian personality and strong work ethic. Kafka’s mother came from a more cultured and well-educated background, helping to manage the family business while also raising their six children. Though she was intelligent and capable, her influence was often overshadowed by her husband’s dominant presence in the household.

In these early years, Kafka lived in a predominantly Czech-speaking city, but his family spoke German at home, placing him between two cultures. The deaths of his two younger brothers in infancy during this period left a lasting emotional imprint on him. These formative experiences — marked by cultural tension, early loss, and a complex relationship with his father— would shape the emotional landscape of Kafka’s later writings.

As a child, Kafka was sensitive, introspective, and intellectually curious. He was often anxious and shy, with a strong imagination and a deep inner life. He felt overshadowed by his authoritarian father, which contributed to a sense of insecurity and emotional distance within the family. Though he excelled academically and loved reading, he often struggled with feelings of inadequacy and isolation, traits that would echo throughout his later writings.

Kafka began attending elementary school in 1889, at the age of six, and he entered the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, a rigorous German-language secondary school in Prague, in 1893, around the age of ten. During this time, he distinguished himself as a bright and diligent student, developing a strong foundation in classical education, including Latin and German literature. He also began to show early signs of his literary interests and growing inner tension, particularly related to his father’s dominance and the pressures of academic life. These years marked the beginning of Kafka’s lifelong struggle to balance societal expectations with his deepening inner world.

Kafka continued his studies at the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, graduating with honors in 1901. During these years, he deepened his interest in literature and philosophy, read widely, and began writing privately. Later that year, he enrolled at the German University in Prague, initially studying chemistry but quickly switching to law — a more practical field that satisfied his father’s expectations. He also formed lifelong friendships during this period, including with writer Max Brod, who would later play a crucial role in preserving and publishing Kafka’s work after his death.

Kafka completed his law degree at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. After a mandatory year of unpaid legal practice, he began working at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in 1908 — a job that offered financial stability but left him feeling stifled and drained. During this time, he began writing more seriously and publishing short prose pieces, including Meditation in 1908. He also maintained close friendships with writers like Brod, who encouraged his literary ambitions. These years marked the emergence of Kafka’s dual life: dutiful bureaucrat by day, existential writer by night.

During the early 1910s, Kafka became increasingly dedicated to his writing, keeping a detailed diary that offered deep insight into his inner world. He wrote many of his most iconic works during this period, including both The Metamorphosis and The Judgment, both of which reflect his complex relationship with his father and his feelings of alienation. In 1912, he also began a tumultuous romantic relationship with Felice Bauer, leading to two engagements and eventual separation. Despite his growing literary success, Kafka struggled with physical and emotional health issues, including the onset of tuberculosis in 1915. These years were a creative high point but also marked by personal turmoil and illness.

Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis is about a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect, leading to his alienation from his family and society as he grapples with his new, dehumanized existence. Kafka’s work, especially The Metamorphosis, often reads like a lucid nightmare or dream, blending mundane details with bizarre, inexplicable events that defy logic, much like the altered perceptions found in dreams or psychedelic states. His stories frequently evoke a sense of disorientation, symbolic transformation, and existential unease, echoing the inner landscapes explored in visionary consciousness.

In works like The Trial and The Castle, Kafka creates labyrinthine, irrational worlds that mirror the paradoxes and emotional intensity of deep dream states or psychedelic journeys, where meaning is elusive, identity is fluid, and invisible forces seem to govern one’s fate. His writing taps into the archetypal and the unconscious, offering a haunting glimpse into the liminal space between reality and the surreal. These dreamlike narratives also hint at a deeper metaphysical struggle, reflecting Kafka’s inner search for meaning and the spiritual anxieties that permeated his life.

Kafka’s spiritual perspective was complex and often conflicted. Though he was born into a Jewish family and maintained an intellectual interest in Judaism, especially in mysticism and Hasidic tradition, he struggled with religious belief and felt estranged from organized religion. His writings reflect a deep yearning for meaning, transcendence, and redemption, often portraying an elusive higher power or unreachable truth. Kafka’s spiritual outlook was marked by existential anxiety, guilt, and a sense of humanity’s alienation from the divine, yet also by a persistent, almost mystical hope for grace or understanding beyond the visible world.

After Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis, his health steadily declined, forcing him to take frequent leaves from work and he eventually retired in 1922. Despite his illness, he continued to write, producing some of his most powerful late works, including A Hunger Artist and The Burrow. Kafka also had significant relationships during this time, including Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and translator, and later with Dora Diamant, who was with him during his final days. Kafka spent much of this period in sanatoriums and rural retreats, seeking relief from his condition while continuing to reflect deeply on themes of suffering, isolation, and the absurd.

One of the most touching anecdotes from Kafka’s life occurred in 1923 when he encountered a little girl crying in a Berlin park because she had lost her doll. Kafka gently comforted her by inventing a story: the doll hadn’t disappeared, he said — it had gone on a journey. Over the following days, he returned to the park and read the girl the letters that he had written from the doll’s point of view, describing its adventures. This continued for weeks until Kafka had the doll “write” a final farewell, explaining it had settled down and was happy. The story reflects Kafka’s compassion and imaginative brilliance.

In the final year of his life, Kafka was gravely ill with advanced tuberculosis, which had spread to his throat and made it increasingly difficult for him to eat or speak. He spent his last months in a sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna, cared for by his companion Dora Diamant. During this time, he continued to write when possible and edited his final collection, A Hunger Artist. Kafka died in 1924, at the age of 40, leaving behind a body of work that would profoundly influence modern literature after his death.

Kafka’s legacy lies in his profound influence on modern literature, particularly through his exploration of alienation, absurdity, and the oppressive nature of bureaucracy. Though little known during his lifetime, his posthumously published works, thanks to his friend Max Brod, became foundational to existential and modernist writing. The term “Kafkaesque” has entered the cultural lexicon to describe nightmarishly complex and illogical situations, reflecting the enduring relevance of his vision. Today, Kafka is celebrated as one of the most original and visionary writers of the 20th century, whose work continues to resonate across literature, philosophy, and political thought.

Here are some of Franz Kafka’s most memorable quotes:

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

All language is but a poor translation.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Paths are made by walking.

by David Jay Brown