One hundred years ago, on June 3, 1924, one of the most famous authors of the 20th century died: the writer Franz Kafka. To commemorate the death of the Prague writer, we can read new translations of his work in paperbacks. A look back at a legacy left by this great name in literature… which never nearly reached us, in The Mug.
Franz Kafka breathed his last breath on June 3, 1924, at only 40 years old, in almost total indifference. His work had then scarcely been published. It is even one of the many ironies of literary history. Franz Kafka, who we almost all read at school, whether it was The Metamorphosis, The Trial, or The Castle, was almost unknown during his lifetime.
How did his writings percolate so posthumously?
A modern and prolific writer, but who published little during his lifetime
Born on July 3, 1883, in a Jewish family in Prague, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied Law. He then worked in the world of insurance, first that of commercial insurance and then that of insurance for accidents at work.
Kafka therefore knows the world of administration well. A world that is sometimes a little complicated and absurd, we have all experienced it.
But Franz, what he really likes is writing. In the morning, he works at the office in insurance. At noon, he goes to sleep. In the afternoon, he walks, eats or goes to see friends. And then in the evening, until late at night, he writes in German.
In 1915, at the age of 32, he published the short novel The Metamorphosis, the story of the young Gregor Samsa who wakes up in bed one morning transformed into a monstrous insect. A great story, completely crazy.
In 1919, at the age of 36, he published a short story, The Penal Colony, where an explorer discovers a penal colony installed on a tropical island in which people are tortured for hours with a special device. Here again, a brilliant text, of absolute modernity. For the rest, he writes a lot, but publishes little. And unfortunately, Kafka is in poor health.
Because as early as 1917, at the age of 34, he began to spit blood. We think of tuberculosis. To this must be added depressions, stress, terrible migraines and, as Kafka is wary of doctors, he prefers to treat himself thanks to nature. He becomes a vegetarian, he drinks a lot of unpasteurized milk. It doesn’t work. Kafka finally died in a sanatorium near Vienna on June 3, 1924.
Franz Kafka would have fallen into oblivion without the betrayal of his friend Max Brod
So, since he had hardly published anything in his lifetime, why is he so well known today, still 100 years after his death? It’s all because of Max Brod, a poet who is a friend of Kafka. Just before his death, Kafka asks Max to become his executor. Kafka asks him to burn and not read all the texts he leaves in his library, in his closet, in his secretary, at home, at the office. Notebooks, manuscripts, letters: Max must retrieve everything from Kafka and his friends. And so he has to burn everything.
However… Max does not keep his promise: he even does the opposite. He’ll read it all, find it all great, and publish it all over time after his friend’s death. It is certainly not respectful for his memory, but so much the better for the history of literature because it is thanks to the betrayal of Max Brod that we were able to read The Trial or The Castle, for example.
Franz Kafka’s friend did not stop at betraying his last wishes. He also slightly reworked the Austro-Hungarian author’s texts. Max sometimes added titles to chapters, he changed the spelling or transformed Kafka’s punctuation, he removed bits of text… And it was these texts, retouched by Max, that were translated into French in 1933 by Alexandre Vialatte. And it was these retouched texts, from the Kafka Brod version translated by Vialatte, that we all read in French until… 2018 !
A welcome paperback translation
German readers were able to read the real Kafka from 1982. At that point, researchers removed everything Max Brod had added or changed from his friend’s texts. But it was not until Kafka’s entry in La Pléiade, in 2018, that this original version of Kafka’s books was translated into French. Jean-Pierre Lefebvre stuck to it. But owning La Pléiade is a bit expensive.
Folio has therefore just published in paperback, this new French translation, much closer to Kafka’s original text.
To reread the unfinished novel The Castle in this new translation, it is different from the old version of Vialatte. The text is a little longer already, it goes a little further in the story of this surveyor who comes to work in the castle of a snowy village, but who is confronted with a terrifying administration, Kafkaesque, of course. And we finally find the original rhythm of the German language of Kafka. This new translation in his pocket comes as a beautiful gift to him for the 100th anniversary of his death. Even if it’s true, it’s not what he wanted. It is also a Kafkaesque situation. Like, betraying your friends, it’s not always a bad thing…
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