Book Reviews - Review 333

In his will, Franz Kafka stipulated that all his unpublished manuscripts should be destroyed. It's a dizzying thought that should his executor, Max Brod, have followed his friend's instructions, one of the most influential writers of all time would barely have been a footnote in literary history. (Kafka saw only a handful of his short stories published.)

One can only speculate what Kafka would have made of his posthumous fame; and whether he would have been affronted by Brod's disobedience. On balance, one suspects that he would have been pleased at the former, and would have forgiven the latter. By his own account, writing represented the one, "tiniest success" of his "attempts at independence and escape". Tormented by indecision and self-doubt, he never had confidence in his own intentions; and for all his neuroses, he was not one to hold a grudge.

So thanks to Brod, we have not only the great unfinished novels on which Kafka's fame rests, but also fascinating nuggets of non-fiction like Brief an den Vater—a long letter from Kafka to his father, severing contact after the latter's disapproval of his proposed marriage to Julie Wohryzeck. The letter never reached its intended recipient (Brod claimed Kafka's mother refused to pass it on), but the severance took place and lasted the rest of Franz's short life.

Again: Kafka was not one to hold a grudge, and he could have had no greater justification for one than his relationship with the tyrannical, narcissistic Hermann Kafka. The letter is a detailed dissection of their relationship, as seen from Franz's side: the sensitive, physically delicate son desperate for approval from a domineering, psychologically manipulative father contemptuous of values beyond the unalloyed masculine.

Kafka insists that his father was not "responsible" for the chasm between them: as he would have it, they were, in their contrasting ways, victims of their respective characters. Nevertheless, Kafka's analysis of his father's failings is hard-hitting and pointed. What makes Brief and den Vater fascinating is its cool and penetrating analysis of the family's dynamics. It covers not just the relationship between Hermann and Franz, but also the contributions of the female side of the family - the gentle Frau Kafka, and Franz's three sisters. Of the feisty youngest daughter Ottla, to whom he was particularly close, Kafka writes:

Then there are his thoughts on the ambivalent role of his mother:

Such subtle and trenchant insights make up the very texture of Kafka's letter, so that for all its restraint, its analysis of his father's temperament is quietly devastating. When facing his father in person, Franz was diffident and submissive; yet he had a weapon in his intellect, expressed through the written word. If anything could have wounded Hermann, one feels, this communication could.

And yet one believes that Franz had no desire to wound his father, merely to set the record straight. Had he been able to hate Hermann, he could have moved on; but he could not overcome the craving for paternal approval. As he so subtly suggests, for the son to hate the father would have been to justify the latter's enmity, and to force the son to embrace his self-loathing irrevocably. What a predicament!

To read a personal letter that not only was never received by its addressee, but that its author expressly requested destroyed, feels somewhat prurient. And yet one cannot escape the sense that Kafka, the natural writer, was subconsciously addressing an invisible public at the same time as his father. Brief an den Vater is a very literary piece of writing: it is constructed with care and focus, and rich in insight, analogy and imagery. Over and above this, it is the single work that explains the "Schuldbewusstsein" (feeling of guilt) that is the overwhelming characteristic of Kafka's fiction. It's a fascinating and sad testament to that intractable, universal human problem: how to find love and resolution in the context of irreconcilable differences of perspective.