The Diaries of Franz Kafka
Yikes, this sure was a really long read. I spent around 16 hours finishing this one, and it wasn’t an easy book to go through. Kafka’s sentences here diverge. Each sentence is something else, and there were a whole lot of German words, phrases, and cultural tidbits which I found extremely hard to pronounce mentally. Thank God I don’t have to learn German. Sounds like a really difficult language.
I loved the intimate portrayal we get of Kafka’s daily life. There’s his rantings of his love of Yiddish theatre, his vegetarianism which I didn’t suspect him of at all, his brothel descriptions, certain erotic details, his extreme and maybe obsessive desire of writing, his daily struggles against his insurance officer bread job, his period of suffering from tuberculosis, opinions on his father and mother and his sisters, opinions of his friends, excerpts of travel logs, and his relationship with Max Brod (his lifelong friend, and literary editor who published this piece). And God, Kafka is a really good observer. He writes down minute details about anything and everything. He makes his sentences create paintings in words. You can literally feel the warm of one of his character’s breath. He has literal surgical literary precision.
Do be warned however that the book was about 2000 ebook pages, and took a fair deal of concentration to go through. It’s a read that takes much effort. In some parts I was visibly bored. In others my heart poured out to him. Oh, I also loved the introspection of his Jewish life and his opinions on Jewish culture, although he is a reported atheist 1. Does give him a neutral point of view, doesn’t it? A certainly smart and sympathetic fellow.
It was a bit scary to see the passage of time as the words passed by. I wish I could’ve understood the German and French words and phrases that he wrote down in his diary. He was fluent in both, and also knew Czech as well, and maybe Yiddish. I don’t know, I’m not really a reporter or historian. I consider myself more of a book critic. Anyways, good book with great vocabulary (translation alert! the manuscript’s in German), and exquisite imagery. It was a good companion to have by my side, although I did feel distant in some of the paragraphs. I don’t know much about Jewish life and culture, so I had to think about somethings, especially that story about the Beal Sham. Did they consider him a prophet? I don’t know. I’ll have to research more on Judaism to find out.
This was a timeless read, and if someone does have the proper attention span required, I’d recommend this to them. I’d learnt a lot from this single book, and it brought much joy although I had to work for those bursts of joy. Also it’s nice to see some similarities with myself and this literary giant. Maybe people from the past aren’t so irrelevant as we’d thought before. Modern society sure treats them like. Ah, I also didn’t know Kafka was a swimmer. Must’ve taken care of his health fervently, judging from his vegetarianism. Hmm.
name & author: The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Franz Kafka)
rating: ★★★★
line: An intimate and real portrait of a human with thoughts and desires just like ours that makes Kafka such a relevant author in our oppressing times
finished: on february 21st
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka ↩