Kafka, who was born 140 years ago, is the mouth of today s Internet

The year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Kafka's death. To this day, we still often speak of this great writer because we find that the older we get, the closer we get to his characters. Slowly, he changed from an emotionless name in a textbook to a writer that we would sympathize with, like, and take the initiative to commemorate, and before we knew it, he became another version of ourselves. Like a stand-up comedianBirds, birdsSaid: Kafka would reflect on his life on a very lonely night, feeling that he was not treated well by everyone, and then he would see a dead bug on the windowsill. "Metamorphosis" is a discussion written by him**: human existence is conditional, and human love is conditional. I feel like I'm like him, and I'd imagine it.

English poetOdenHe also commented on him: In terms of the relationship between writers and their time, the first contemporary person who can be compared with Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe is Kafka. Kafka is crucial to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.

Indeed, Kafka's situation 100 years ago is so similar to that of you and me today.

part.1

Another Kafka

Known as a homemaker, Kafka's words may have resonated with you and me:

For example... Some lie flat.

* |The Complete Works of Kafka

For example... Some frustration.

* |Metamorphosis

Another example... I have great sympathy for myself who has to work and study Xi.

* |Metamorphosis

Kafka, who was born 140 years ago, is alive todayInternet mouth: Rotten, social fear, there is nothing that can't defeat me. In the most famous work, "Metamorphosis", the protagonist dies tragically because he can't get up on time to go to work. Reading his words, it is as if I saw a young man who was always panicked, sprinkled on the paper, and finally shook his head, or crumpled the paper and threw it into the garbage heap, and fell on the bed to lament:Ah, I'm so tired. 」

Kafka sculpture in the centre of Prague (David Cerney |work).

The positive and negative rotation at the same time expresses his ** and never-ending self-doubt (picture source |network).

In addition to writing, Kafka was also an avid painter and visual artist, and once dreamed of becoming a painter.

In 1913, Kafka wrote a letter to his fiancée, Phyllis Bauer, mentioning his pride and love: Do you like my paintings?You may not know, but I was a great painter. These paintings were made many years ago, and they gave me an unparalleled sense of satisfaction at the time

A glimpse of Kafka's paintings |"Kafka's Kafka", CITIC Publishing, Spring Tide Nov+20241

His pen is full of fascinating characters, ranging from realistic to dreamy, grotesque, bizarre and carnivalesque, who illuminate the unknown side of the modernist writer.

My painting is not a painting, but a private symbolic ......I wanted to see and hold on to what I saw. It's my passion.

Of course, the painting is also indispensable to this heavy social phobia's aversion to work:

To give you a look at my work, I attach a drawing. These are four pillars, the middle two pillars are crossed by sticks to tie the hands of the offender, and the outer two pillars are inserted to tie the feet. When the man was bound in this way, the people slowly pulled the sticks out until he broke in two in the middle. The inventor leaned against the round stone pillar, crossed his hands and legs, and looked proud, as if all this had been invented by the ancients. In reality, however, he had only learned from a peeking at a meat butcher, who had used this method to prop up the hollowed-out body of a pig and hang it in front of the shop.

Letter from Kafka to Milena Jesenska, 29 October 1920.

One of the most prominent contemporary postmodernist thinkers,Judith ButlerCommenting on Kafka's paintings: There are always situations where there is no way to touch the ground, there are people who are incredibly floating in the air, people who miraculously climb sideways over walls, through ceilings without fear of falling, they lose their gravity, they are freed from the constraints of weight, and they become immensely powerful because they are freed from their bodies. 」

Kafka's Kafka: Franz Kafka's 163 Paintings Manuscript |Photo by Yaxin.

As early as January 1953, a German university student at the time wrote to Hesse about his deep uneasiness after reading KafkaHesseWrite back and say: Your reaction is exactly right. Kafka, decades before the popular existentialists, expressed a sense of fear and a deep unease about the question of human existence in all of his magnum opus. Let this function play out within you, and you don't have to explain the secrets of this pictorial world in a rational way. Behind the melancholy and even despair expressed in these images is the great beauty, which is founded on a belief in a meaning. Obviously, in both forms of writing and painting, Kafka has a consistent expression.

Hesse replied to the student Mr. Gino Le Scher.

So, are you also interested in the painter Kafka?

part.2

The wandering journey of the painting

During his lifetime, Kafka never took the initiative to publish his paintings, and even asked his friends to burn them all before his death.

In Kafka's 1921 will, these painted objects were listed as part of the relics, along with other written objects, and together they were delivered to lifelong friendsMax Broad

My last request, dearest Max, is this: Do not read all the things I have left behind (such as those found in my bookcase, wardrobe, desk, or any other place you find that you might put something), all diaries, manuscripts, letters, drawings, etc., of others and myself, and burn them all. In the same way, please make the same request in my name for all the things I have written or drawn in your hands or in the hands of others......

Your Franz Kafka.

Kafka (right) and Broad (left).

But Broad didn't follow his friend's wishes. He took very seriously the protection of what Kafka had discarded, just as he did his own work and the works of art he collected. He travelled with them, emigrated and escaped the war, and when the Second Middle East War broke out, he hid them in four safes at the Zurich Bank in Switzerland for more than half a ......century

At the same time, along with the drift, there is a series of copyright disputes.

As a result, despite attempts by publishers to publish these paintings from 1953 onwards, they all came to naught. It wasn't until 2019, when the dust settled on ownership, that the last unknown of Kafka's legacy was revealed, and the decades of displacement came to an end.

That year, about one hundred and fifty of Kafka's paintings were made public for the first time in the National Library of Israel. In addition to far more than the few previously known works, this is also the first time that his paintings have been presented to the world as an independent form, rather than a subsidiary form of a literary work.

In 2019, some 150 of Kafka's paintings were made available to the National Library of Israel for the first time, all of which are included in the new book Kafka's Kafka: Manuscripts of 163 Paintings by Franz Kafka in the 2024 opening year of Spring Tide NOV+.

We can't help but wonder if Kafka didn't burn them all himself, but made friends, and had other hopes in mind?

Now, 163 paintings and precious manuscripts scattered throughout Jerusalem, Vienna, Oxford, Marl**, etc., have finally been compiled into a book, and readers do not have to travel all over the world, just turn the pages and travel through the dream with K.