As a person, Kafka is too ordinary: in his short life, he has been an employee of an industrial injury insurance company in Prague, and he has never left that place. He has a relationship with his father, generating hatred and seeking love. He yearned for a simple and fulfilling love and family life all his life, but he regretted his second engagement, which hurt others, hurt himself and even hurt his health: he died of lung disease in a hospital near Vienna at the age of 4/kloc-0.
As a writer, Kafka is a special phenomenon: he was an unknown "amateur author" before his death. He wrote three unfinished novels and several short stories, but soon after his death, he became a master of modernist literature that shocked the world literary world. He became the exposer of "alienation" in the modern western capitalist world. Some critics said: "Kafka is the first person who can be compared with Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe in terms of the relationship between writers and their times."
Did life make him a writer (observer and enlightener)? Or was it just his obsession with writing that led him to live that life? People will naturally tend to the former, because that is the law that makes great writers. The latter is unthinkable. But for Kafka, it's true: he lives a life designed for writing. In order to write, he set many obstacles in his life: alienating his family and exaggerating the differences with his father; He longed for family life all his life, but he chickened out again and again before marriage. ...
As a student, Kafka was a studious, quiet and introverted student. His classmates and teachers all admire him, but he can't see it himself. He has recorded his dreams many times: he dreamed that teachers gathered for meetings because they found something unheard of ―― he, the most stupid and incompetent student, slipped into the senior grade ... This terrible dream was allegorical for Kafka: Kafka was in the fear of "attracting public attention" all his life. Indeed, since middle school, Kafka has closed the door of his mind to the public. His mind and the outside world are like a one-way glass. He peeks at the outside world from the heart, but firmly guards his inner world. This way of life runs through his life. But Kafka is by no means an eccentric and decadent person. He is polite, friendly and clear-minded. As he wrote in Preparing for Marriage in the Countryside, he released his "body" to deal with the outside world, while the other one kept searching and searching in his heart ... He kept exploring and fearing, and formed glittering words. This is a mystery: he was not squeezed out of the text because of the tempering of life. He broke his life to squeeze out words and put himself on the verge of fear-"I'm afraid of any slight change ... because doing so will attract God's attention to me."
The relationship between Kafka and his father is a psychological mystery. Father is a shrewd and treacherous businessman, with a bad temper and strict requirements for his children, which played a certain role in Kafka's timid and introverted personality. But Kafka undoubtedly exaggerated his father's compulsion to a symbolic height. In the novel Judgment, Kafka claims to have "liquidated" his relationship with his father. In the novel, the father controls everything of his son unreasonably, and finally decides that his son will throw himself into the river, but his son obeys the judgment without any resistance. The symbolism of this novel is very rich, but in Kafka's view, is it a conscious symbol? In fact, Kafka worships powerful people very much, but he stops at admiration and envy, because that quality is contrary to a writer. Kafka condemned himself as a writer all his life, but he "can't and doesn't want to be someone else". Perhaps this principle of his life can give us a glimpse of the reason why he hates and loves his father.
In a letter to his good friend Max Borot, Kafka wrote this passage:
One afternoon, I took a nap. When I woke up, I heard my mother talking to someone on the balcony downstairs. She asked the people downstairs, "What are you doing?" Downstairs, a woman stood among the flowers, and she replied, "I'm eating snacks here!" " "I really admire people for arranging their days so methodically and living so confidently.
An ordinary scene in ordinary life is so fascinating to him, and his yearning for normal daily life is touching. But he thinks such a life is impossible for him, because what he wants is a life designed for writing. In his place, even married life is impossible.
Kafka's life does not have a complete love story ―― a series of happiness, despair, self-curse and self-torture. 19 12 autumn, he met Felice, a girl who "exudes a pure feminine atmosphere", although not very beautiful. 19 13 years, he began to consider proposing to her. He once said, "The highest achievement a man can achieve is to get married, get married and have children." But at the same time, he fell into the fear of marriage. In his diary, he drafted seven comparison tables of gains and losses of "getting married-not getting married"; He wrote in his diary: "I will be lonely at all costs" and "I will break up with everyone at all costs." That's it. In the pursuit and escape of marriage, his first engagement failed in 19 14. He wrote to Phyllis' father and explained, "I lack all the talents and conditions necessary for family life." In fact, Kafka has fallen into an introspective life of self-confinement, and he can't live without writing. It was in the pain of failed engagement that he wrote a batch of short stories and began to write the novel The Trial. Pain and writing saved each other. 19 17, Kafka and Phyllis got engaged for the second time. A month after the engagement, Kafka drew blood, and the doctor told him that he had tuberculosis. This news once again gave Kafka an excuse to ruin the engagement. Phyllis bravely married a German businessman, while Kafka let himself die.
Kafka didn't publish many works before his death. In fact, only half of his works can be called "works". In addition to three novels (all unfinished) and several complete short stories, Kafka left a large number of diaries, letters, random thoughts, fables and aphorisms ... It can be seen that Kafka's creation is not literary writing in the traditional sense, but is constantly excavating himself. We looked at his portrait with reverence and deep sympathy. He is not only our mentor, but also our suffering brother!