Far from the popular image tormented and even a little sinister what is there Franz Kafkasome cards that he wrote between 1914 and 1920 that are now published in Spanish, many of them unpublishedthey discover how a seducer, an endearing man full of humor. And they also reveal a little known and documented fact such as his insistent willingness to be recruited as a soldier in First World Warsomething that was avoided by his bosses because they needed him as an exemplary employee, explains Ignacio Echevarría in charge of editing Franz Kafka. Cards. 1914-1920 (Gutenberg Galaxy), second of the three volumes that make up this epistolary productionof which nearly two thousand are preserved.
Between the more than five hundred letterscollected in this volume, which covers the years 1914-1920, nearly one hundred and a half are unpublished in Spanish and collect the decisive yearsof maturation of the author.
Czech writer of Jewish origin, Franz Kafka (Prague, 1883 – Kierling, Austria, 1924) He developed his literary career in German and published only some of his texts.. Before he died, at age 40, he ordered his close friend and literary advisor Max Brod to will burn all his manuscripts, but this one it did not and he traveled with them to Palestine in 1939, edited part of it and contributed to the publication of their masterpieces.
The First War
The period covered by this volume coincides with the outbreak of the First World Warwhich is a background that lasts almost 4 years in the course of these letters and also with the diagnosis of the disease of the tuberculosistwo events that are very aggressive for him.
The ordering criterion of the letters has obviated the tendency to group the letters by correspondents (to Felice Bauer, to Milena Jesenská, to Max Brod, to the family…) and has been made a strictly chronological sequence to check the different ‘tones’ – sometimes very varied – that Kafka uses with each recipient, and observe the different facets of your personality regarding each one, says Echevarría.
And they are the letters to his entire network of friendsto his friends from his youth, to his sister and his mother, to other writers of the time, to his bosses at work, the official letters to the Czech bureaucracy…
«The first thing that surprises you is humor, he was a smiling man. An attractive man, tall, handsome, elegantwho had a lot of personal charm, shy, full of humor, self-parodying,” says this expert.
The epistolary begins with the last stage of his relationship with Felice and ends with the beginning and his relationship with Milena, explains Echevarría: «But Kafka was a seductive man» and there are letters to other women in which he also displays his personal charm.
Another surprising fact from these letters, a question much debated and very little clarified by biographers, Echevarría adds, is that when the First World War is declared, he wants to participate and does everything possible to be recruited as a soldierbeing a man with a rather left-wing and pacifist political orientation.
And another highly debated topic in Kafka’s life also appears in them, such as his approach to Judaismwhich was proportional to his distancing from Zionism, he explains.
There are many letters that have not been preserved, but whose existence is known for others; and not only are all the letters written by Kafka collected, but also all the letters that are preserved, very few, of those written to him.
