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Biography Resource Center

Franz Kafka

Birth: July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia

Death: June 3, 1924 in Kierling, Klosterneuberg, Austria
Nationality: Czech
Ethnicity: Jewish
Occupation: Writer
Source: Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 31. Gale Group, 2000.
Updated: 03/28/2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Essay
Career
Further Readings
Personal Information
Source Citation
Updates
Works

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
One of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, Franz Kafka penned novels and short stories that
portray the bewildered alienation of modern society. His characters frequently find themselves in threatening
situations for which there is no explanation and from which there is no escape. Writing in the Bookman, Edwin Muir
found that "the four main ideas which run through Kafka's work may be condensed into four axioms. The first two
are that, compared with the divine law, no matter how unjust it may sometimes appear to us, all human effort, even
the highest, is in the wrong; and that always whatever our minds or our feelings may tell us, the claim of the divine
law to unconditional reverence and obedience is absolute. The other two are complementary: that there is a right
way of life, and that its discovery depends on one's attitude to powers which are almost unknown."

In an article for the New Yorker, John Updike explained: "The century since Franz Kafka was born has been
marked by the idea of `modernism' a self-consciousness new among centuries, a consciousness of being new.
Sixty years after his death, Kafka epitomizes one aspect of this modern mind-set: a sensation of anxiety and
shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated; a sense of an infinite difficulty within
things, impeding every step; a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide
of social usage and religious belief, must record every touch as pain. In Kafka's peculiar and highly original case,

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this dreadful quality is mixed with immense tenderness, oddly good humor, and a certain severe and reassuring
formality. The combination makes him an artist; but rarely can an artist have struggled against greater inner
resistance and more sincere diffidence as to the worth of his art." Among Kafka's most-studied works are the
novels The Trial and The Castle and the short stories "The Metamorphosis," "The Hunger Artist," and "In the Penal
Colony."

Experiences Social Prejudice Early in Life

Kafka was born into a Jewish family in the city of Prague in 1883. Prague was a part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire at that time, and Jews were expected to live apart from gentiles in a ghetto area. Kafka's father operated a
drygoods store in the ghetto, assisted by his wife, Kafka's mother. The elder Kafka's domineering manner with his
son led to the boy's resentment. His mother tried to intervene but, as Richard H. Lawson noted in the Dictionary of
Literary Biography, "she proved unable to mediate the estrangement between her brusque, domineering husband
and her quiet, tyrannized, oversensitive son." In 1901 Kafka entered the Karl-Ferdinand University, an act in open
defiance of his father, who wished him to work in the family store. When he turned to the study of law, however,
Kafka met with his father's approval. During his college years he met his close friend and future literary executor
Max Brod.

Following his graduation from college in 1907, Kafka took a position at an insurance office in Prague. The next year
he moved to a government job handling workmen's compensation claims. At this time he also published his first
short fiction in a literary magazine. He soon began writing stories drawing on elements from his own life. Lawson
found that this early fiction possessed "narrative features ... typical of Kafka: a first-person narrator as a persona of
the author, an episodic structure, an ambivalent questor on an ambiguous mission, and pervasive irony." During his
lifetime Kafka was to publish short stories in various literary magazines. But his novels, including The Trial and The
Castle, were never completed. In fact, Kafka left orders with his friend Brod to destroy the unfinished manuscripts
upon his death. This was something Brod decided not to do following Kafka's death in 1924 from tuberculosis;
instead the literary executor published these novels posthumously, assembling the loosely organized manuscripts
as he thought best.

Kafka wrote The Trial during 1914 in the months following his breakup with his fiancee, Felice Bauer. The couple
had met in 1912 and became engaged, but before the engagement was officially announced Kafka had backed
out. He became romantically involved with one of Felice's friends, Grete. Despite having broken the engagement
himself, Kafka felt rejected by Felice and was soon imploring her to return to him. When she did so, and the two
again became engaged, Kafka vowed that his love for Grete would continue despite his engagement. The
unsettled emotional entanglements eventually led Felice, her sister, Grete, and Kafka's friend Ernst Weiss to
confront the writer in a hotel room to sort out the tangled situation. Kafka would later call the long session a kind of
"law court" in which he was put on trial for his confused behavior. With the engagement finally canceled for good,
Kafka began writing The Trial, a novel based in part on some of the events of his unhappy relationship with Felice.
The novel remained out of print until Brod decided to release it a year after Kafka's death. It was published in 1925.

The Trial begins with the mysterious arrest of Joseph K., a bank clerk celebrating his thirtieth birthday. K. has
apparently done nothing wrong, but two members of a mysterious Court arrive at his lodgings first thing one
morning and place him under arrest. Although arrested, K. is not taken to jail. He is allowed to go on with his life as
before, while his efforts to determine just what crime he is supposed to have committed lead nowhere. K.'s ordeal
over the course of a year is told in a series of brief, unrelated chapters. Those bureaucrats he meets cannot
explain the charge to him, the lawyer he hires to handle his case is equally in the dark, and the judges of the Court
remain inaccessible. When K. gains access to the Court's law books, he finds them to be filled with obscenities.
K.'s attempts to unravel the mystery of his dilemma are hindered by the contradictory information he receives from
those he consults and by the confusing nature of the legal system in which his life has become entangled. At times
the court itself seems only a figment of K.'s imagination; it holds its proceedings in such unlikely places as the
attics of disreputable buildings.

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The Trial Prompts Diverse Critical Commentary

Many critics of The Trial have seen it, at least in part, as a story about guilt. In Reference Guide to World Literature,
B. Ashbrook noted: "Josef K.'s actions betray a recognition on his part that the court does have a claim upon him....
Whatever his words may indicate, his behaviour is that of a man who feels guilty.... Josef K.'s sense of guilt cannot
be attributed to any one specific action; nor can it be characterized as universal human guilt. There are other
accused men in the story but, equally, there are many who do not stand accused by the court. Josef K.'s failing
may be found in his lack of humility and self-understanding, in his aggressive impatience and stubbornness."
Commenting on the work of his fellow novelist in an essay collected in his Gesammelte Werke Volume 12,
Hermann Hesse described the novel's ongoing, mysterious trial as being about "none other than the guilt of life
itself. The `accused' are the afflicted ones among the unsuspecting, harmless masses that have a dawning
awareness of the terrible truth of all life, an awareness that is gradually strangling their hearts."

The chapter titled "In the Cathedral" offers some support for the idea that The Trial is concerned with a kind of
universal guilt. In this chapter, K. visits a priest to seek his advice on what to do. The priest reveals that he is a
chaplain for the Court and can help explain its enigmatic workings. He relates to K. the parable "Before the Law," a
story about a man seeking the Law. When the man arrives at the door leading to the Law, the doorkeeper explains
that he cannot let the man in "at present," and so he sits and waits. Years go by and the man is still waiting to be let
into the Law. He tries bribing the doorkeeper, pleading with him, and questioning him about the Law's nature, all to
no avail. Finally, as the man is dying, he asks the doorkeeper why he has been the only one to ever come seeking
the Law. The doorkeeper explains: "No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was
meant for you alone. I am now going to shut it." Following the story, the priest discusses the parable's meaning with
K., who ends up as baffled as before about the Law he faces and the Court passing judgment upon him. Erich
Heller, in his study Franz Kafka, interpreted "Before the Law" as possessing a "terrible charm"; it shows "all the
characteristic features of Kafka's art at its most powerful," continued the critic; "-- possessing, that is, the kind of
power that is in the gentle wafting of the wind rather than in the thunderous storm, and is the more destructive for
it. Parodying Biblical simplicity, ... it expresses the most unholy complications of the intelligence and raises hellish
questions in the key of the innocently unquestionable. Its humor is at the same time tender and cruel, teasing the
mind with the semblance of light into losing itself in the utmost obscurity."

The parable "Before the Law" encapsulates The Trial's fundamental paradox as well. As K. continues in his efforts
to discover the nature of his legal problem with the Court, he comes to realize that the Court has violated its own
Law. The priest has told K. that "The Court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses
you when you go." But as Heinz Politzer explained in his Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox: "if it is the law of the
Law to receive those who come, dismiss those who desire to go, and otherwise remain unmoved and unmovable,
then the Court has broken this Law by the very act of arresting K." This fundamental paradox explains the
confusion of all the Court officials K. meets who attempt to reconcile the mistake made by the Court with the proper
role of the Law.

K.'s growing confusion, disorientation, and desperate attempts to make sense of his situation make The Trial a
powerful symbol of alienation. "The Trial," wrote Rene Dauvin in Franz Kafka Today, "is so mysterious, so vague,
that many interpretations are possible. As we stand on the threshold of Kafka's work, we feel uneasy, disoriented.
The very form and structure of the novel amaze us, for it escapes all classification and transports us into an
atmosphere of hallucination and strange disquiet." Many critics interpret K.'s alienation as that of modern man in a
society where traditional values have broken down or as that of every man in a fundamentally mysterious universe.
Hesse, for example, argued that The Trial was a religious text. Speaking of the brief, unconnected chapters
comprising the novel, he wrote: "This oppressive and fearful nightmare image persists until gradually the hidden
significance dawns on the reader. Only then do [Kafka's] wilful and fantastic evocations radiate their redemption,
only then do we understand that contrary to their appearance as carefully wrought miniatures their significance is
not artistic but religious. They are expressions of piety and elicitations of devotion, even reverence."

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Ultimately, K.'s confusion is never fully explained. On the eve of his thirty-first birthday, a year after his enigmatic
arrest took place, he is knifed to death by two representatives of the Court. He is never given an explanation of the
charges made against him, nor provided with knowledge as to the nature of the Court which has had him executed.
"Ultimately," Ashbrook concluded, "it is impossible to ascribe any one single meaning to The Trial. It presents a
double image: an innocent man destroyed by a despotic authority and a guilty man rightly condemned. We are not
forced to choose between these possibilities; they co-exist and interpenetrate each other. Kafka's novel constantly
challenges the reader to supply his own interpretation of its elusive substance." Similarly, Alvin J. Seltzer, writing in
Chaos in the Novel, the Novel in Chaos, found that "The Trial is surely one of the most unrelenting works of chaos
created in the first half of this century, and critics have done it the honor of interpreting it on many levels of
significance.... But while the book certainly invites interpretations of a social, political, and religious nature, Kafka
seems to have wanted it to evade any facile explanation.... It seems to have been his intention to create a world in
which things happen arbitrarily to people whose only fault is in being there at the time."

Brod recounted how Kafka read from the manuscript of The Trial to several of his friends. "When Kafka read aloud
himself," Brod later recalled in Franz Kafka: A Biography, "this humor became particularly clear. Thus, for example,
we friends of his laughed quite immoderately when he first let us hear the first chapter of The Trial.And he himself
laughed so much that there were moments when he couldn't read any further. Astonishing enough, when you think
of the fearful earnestness of this chapter. But that is how it was. Certainly it was not entirely good, comfortable
laughter.... I am only pointing out the fact that is otherwise so easily forgotten in studies of Kafka--the streak of joy
in the world and in life."

Same Name, Different Character

A character named K. also appears in Kafka's novel The Castle, published in 1926, although he is far different from
the character of the same name in The Trial. One evening while traveling in the country, K. stops at an inn. In the
middle of the night he is awakened and informed that he cannot stay at the inn without permission from the nearby
castle. K. claims that he is in fact a land surveyor working for the castle. His claim is at first denied by those in the
castle, but later confirmed. At this point K. realizes that those in the castle were "taking up the challenge with a
smile." As Ashbrook explained: "This opening establishes a fundamental ambiguity in the relationship between K.
and the castle. It is never clear whether K. has really been summoned by the castle or whether he invents the story
to try to justify his presence. In either case his purpose is to penetrate into the castle and to obtain absolute
confirmation of the position he claims for himself."

K. finds that the castle is run by Count Westwest and is a dilapidated building on the edge of town. "It houses a
vast hierarchy of officials who are constantly engaged in frenetic bureaucratic activity," Ashbrook wrote, "all to no
apparent purpose. They are obscene and immoral, regarding the women of the village as their rightful prey while
the village sees it as the highest honour for a woman to be the mistress of an official. The castle has absolute
dominion over the village. The villagers treat it with awe, devotion, and obedience. To them it is omnipotent and
infallible. It seems to assume the qualities which they project onto it."

K.'s efforts to contact those in the castle, and even to visit the building, are consistently blocked. Like his namesake
in The Trial, K. spends his time trying to gain access to a mysterious bureaucracy which holds unnatural power
over his society. But in The Castle, he tries unsuccessfully to push the bureaucracy into validating his place in
society. "Despite all of K.'s movement and activity," explained Frederick R. Karl in Journal of Modern Literature, "he
never leaves the periphery of the village, he never finds the path or road that leads to the castle or the castle
compound, and he never finds clues to the labyrinthine process in which he finds himself."

The castle sits on a hill near the town. "Its tower belongs to a private house and is of uncertain significance," critic
Charles Bernheimer maintained in The Kafka Debate: New Perspectives for Our Time. "It is pierced with windows
that glitter in an `insane' manner and is topped with battlements of `unsure, irregular, broken' design. Confused by
his perceptive faculties, K. finally resorts to a metaphor to describe the appearance of the Castle. But the image he

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chooses, of a deranged ... tenant breaking through the roof and lifting himself up to show himself to the world, is
clearly a reflection of his own deranged state of mind." "The castle is, of course, the central symbol of the novel,"
wrote Peter Mailloux in A Hesitation before Birth: The Life of Franz Kafka, "and it is presented much more fully than
its obvious counterpart, the court in The Trial. But it nonetheless seems just as vague, mysterious, and ultimately
ambiguous as the court is."

Ashbrook concluded: "The castle contains an unfathomable bureaucratic authority but, at the same time, the text
repeatedly insinuates that it is the seat of some transcendental principle. However, the nature of this principle is not
spelled out. It might equally well be argued that it is the principle of divine truth or the principle of evil and negation.
The ultimate mystery at the heart of the castle remains a mystery; neither K., nor the reader, can ever know the
unknowable."

Short Fiction Captures Public Interest

Among Kafka's most widely studied short stories are "The Metamorphosis," "A Hunger Artist," and "In the Penal
Colony," which were included in anthologies of his stories published between 1914 and 1919. As Dennis Vannatta
wrote in the Reference Guide to Short Fiction, "No writer has more memorably dramatized the alienation of the
individual in a fathomless world than Kafka in his short fiction. Kafka's short stories writhe with strain and struggle,
with seeking, searching, questing, asking. They almost never resolve themselves by answering, finding, arriving.
Inevitably the struggle ends in death ... , in the realization that the struggle is endless ... , or in the even more bitter
conclusion that the concept of `goal' or `end' is itself a deception.... In the hands of another writer the very intensity
of the struggle might imply a certain existential affirmation, but not so in Kafka, where the greater the struggle, the
more cruel the `punch line' at the end."

One of the most frequently studied stories in all of literature, "The Metamorphosis" concerns Gregor Samsa, an
ordinary man who wakes one morning to discover himself inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. Although
Gregor and his family try to deal with this horrific situation, things do not improve and Gregor is eventually killed
during an argument with his father. While the story is fantastic, Kafka relates the tale in a realistic manner. Only the
fact of Gregor's transformation is at all unusual; all of the other incidents in the story are ordinary and believable.
Beginning from its outlandish premise, "The Metamorphosis" develops logically to a rational conclusion.

Man-into-Bug Imagery Prompts Freudian Interpretation

"The Metamorphosis," wrote Susanne Klingenstein in the Reference Guide to Short Fiction, "centers on a son who
takes over the role of the father as caretaker of the family, finds himself transformed into an enormous insect, and
is left to die in his room by his visibly revived family. In much of the critical literature Gregor Samsa's transformation
into a giant bug is taken one of three ways: to signify his sense of guilt and desire for punishment for having
usurped the role of the father, to symbolize both a libidinous rebellion and the condemnation of such a rebellion, or
to represent a rebellious assertion of unconscious desires and energies that are identical with the primitive and
infantile demands of the id."

More important to the story than how Gregor has become an insect--no explanation is even offered as to how such
a thing occurred--is how others react to his unfortunate condition. The story is divided into three parts, with each
part dealing with Gregor the insect emerging from his room and being confronted by someone. In the first part, it is
his employer, who has come to Gregor's apartment because he is late for work. Gregor works as a salesperson for
a company to which his family owes a large debt. His employment is helping to pay off this debt. Although he
despises his work, Gregor has continued with the firm on his family's behalf. The first part of the story deals with
Gregor's efforts to come to terms with his transformation, to find a way to climb out of his bed, and finally to
summon the courage to open the door to his room so that his family and his boss will see him in this hideous state.
"The story's first part," noted Klingenstein, "is desperate slapstick.... When Gregor finally manages to open the door
of his room and reveals himself to his assembled family and his boss, their horrified reaction confirms that he is

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indeed a giant cockroach." Gregor's father drives him back into the room using a cane and a newspaper.

The second part of the story deals with Gregor's family and their attempts to live with him in his current condition.
His sister brings him food and treats him as an invalid who needs special care. She decides that it is best that all
the furniture and other human decorations in the room be removed. But while she and the mother are removing the
items, Gregor reacts strongly to their taking down a particular print off his wall. Politzer wrote: "For the insect, the
print becomes the one of his possessions to which he is determined to adhere both physically and metaphorically.
He creeps up to the picture and covers it with his body when mother and sister threaten to remove it." Gregor's
defiance leads to a fight with his father, who chases him around the room and finally throws apples at his hapless
insect-like progeny. One of the apples cracks the shell of Gregor's back.

In the story's third and final part Gregor is again isolated in his room, suffering from the damage caused by the
thrown apple. His family "no longer see in Gregor a transformed family member," noted Klingenstein, "but primarily
an animal." Left alone, Gregor is forced to confront the transformation he has undergone, realizing that he is no
longer human. When he makes one final attempt to emerge from his room, drawn by the sound of his sister playing
the violin, his appearance scares the family's three new boarders. His sister, whom he had relied upon until then,
decides that Gregor must be gotten rid of. "As if to indulge and oblige his family one more time," Klingenstein
wrote, "Gregor dies during the following night and is thrown out into the garbage by the charwoman the next
morning. The remaining family members celebrate their liberation by taking a day off from their jobs and embarking
on a train ride into the countryside."

Lawson called "The Metamorphosis" "one of the most widely read and discussed works of world literature: a
shocking and yet comic tragedy of modern man's isolation, inadequacy, and existential guilt.... [The story] is
compact, artistically and formally structured." According to John Updike, writing in the New Yorker, "The
Metamorphosis" "alone would assure [Kafka] a place in world literature.... an indubitable masterpiece."

Growing Literary Reputation Enhanced after Death

"A Hunger Artist" was one of the works Kafka had instructed his friend Max Brod to burn upon the writer's death.
Instead, Brod arranged for the story's publication. The work of short fiction details the career of a hunger artist, a
man who makes a living in a sideshow by going on prolonged, even dangerous, fasts. At first, the public is
enthralled with the idea and the hunger artist prospers. He tours the major European cities. But after a time his
audience loses interest, and the hunger artist finds that he is so dedicated to his art that he does not mind. No
longer able to fill major halls, he instead joins a traveling carnival where he goes on fasting as a novelty act.
Because there is no longer an audience interested in what he is doing, the hunger artist is finally able to fast as
long as he wants, until he achieves a lonely and unremarked-upon death. "At the end," noted Lawson, "he dies
unnoticed in a pile of dirty straw. His dying reply to the question of why he pursued his unusual--but in nineteenth-
century Europe not unique-- profession is that he could not find the food he liked; if he had, he would have made
no fuss but would have eaten just like anyone else." The hunger artist fails to make known to either his audience or
the reader exactly what manner of food he would have accepted, an omission that Lawson noted "has given rise to
the critical suggestion that it is spiritual provender that he is talking about."

Kafka's character of the hunger artist has been interpreted by some critics as a symbol of the creative artist whose
efforts were once appreciated by society but are now scorned. As Grace Eckley explained in the Reference Guide
to Short Fiction, "The artist, then, lives an existence trapped in his own nature and between two worlds of pleasing
others and pleasing himself. If he were not an artist, no system could make him one; because he is an artist, no
system can prevent his being so." Politzer commented: "The art of this Artist is a negative performance. His fasting
represents a passive act, which is a paradox. Running counter to human nature, it may, at least in the minds of a
curious crowd, have proved attractive, so long as it was performed as a show of self-denial and a feast of sacrifice.
Our Artist, however, was cheating even when he thought that he was working honestly; he could not help starving
himself; he was forced into his fanatically pursued profession by the absence of the unknown nourishment
appropriate to him and his tastes. His art is produced by a deficiency, and the question whether he is at fault for not

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finding the right food or whether the world is to be blamed for not providing him with it, this question aims ultimately
at the meaning of the role that the artist performs in any kind of human context." Frederick R. Karl, in his Franz
Kafka: Representative Man, argued that the hunger artist represents even more than the artist, but that of a
spiritual man as well. Once the hunger artist left behind his glamorous days as a popular entertainer and joined the
carnival, he was able to devote his energies exclusively to fasting. At this stage "the hunger artist," Karl wrote, "is
becoming a shaman, a clairvoyant, a seer.... He has questioned the very foundation of the existence of the
ordinary. He opens up questions of existential experience, of the individual edging toward the abyss, of a creature
attempting to move ever closer ... toward that forbidden borderline between life and death where the ultimate
mysteries lie." Robert W. Stallman, writing in Accent, concluded: "`The Hunger Artist' is one of Kafka's perfections
and belongs with the greatest short stories of our time."

Creates Vivid Images of Violence, Captivity, and Death

Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony" was written in 1914, published in German in 1919, and translated into English
in 1948. It takes place in a prison camp on a remote island. The story opens with an officer of the camp showing a
visiting explorer a machine used to execute prisoners. The complicated apparatus is fixed with needles that pierce
the condemned man's flesh, writing into his skin the law he has been charged with breaking and killing the man in
the process. While preparing the machine for use, the officer complains to the explorer that the present
commandant of the camp shows no interest in this remarkable machine. The former commandant had built the
machine and enjoyed using it frequently, while the new commandant is more interested in women. The officer tries
to enlist the explorer's aid in persuading the new commandant of the machine's value. When it comes time to
execute the prisoner, the explorer finally speaks out against the proceedings. This moves the officer to realize that
his last chance of using the explorer to gain the commandant's favor is lost. He releases the prisoner and climbs
onto the execution machine himself, setting it to write the law "Be Just" into his body. The machine breaks down
while operating, however, and the needles move about crazily, tearing the officer apart. Following this the explorer,
seemingly unmoved by the events he has witnessed, leaves the island.

Criticism of "In the Penal Colony" often focuses on its religious themes. As Klingenstein noted in Reference Guide
to Short Fiction, "The novella can be read as an allegory of the transition from the stern, purifying notion of Justice
in Judaism to the softer, seemingly more charitable and humanitarian attitude in Christianity. Like Yahweh the old
commandant, who had always been remote and has now been superseded, was `soldier, judge, mechanic,
chemist and draughtsman,' whereas the new commandant is surrounded by women like Christ."

In contrast to this view, Douglas Angus in Criticism, who called "In the Penal Colony" "a remarkable story about a
diabolical machine," saw the execution machine as a symbol for the Godless, mechanistic nature of the universe
itself. He drew a parallel between the machine of the story with "those dangerous factory machines which so
mutilated the workers in Kafka's day and which his work with the Insurance Institute made him so conscious of.
These machines were a part of that very real and monstrous world in which Kafka found himself; they were a part
of, and a symbol of, that total mechanistic universe in which he lived. From this system too God had departed. If
you sought Him for explanation, pity or recompense, you were likely to end up in the red tape of The Workers'
Accidental Insurance Institute."

Writing in his Of War and War's Alarms: Fiction and Politics in the Modern World, Paul J. Dolan saw "In the Penal
Colony" as a story with personal and political dimensions. It is, he wrote, "Kafka's artistic statement of his sense of
self-torture and the fantasies of self-destruction with which he lived. The story is also a prophecy of the horrors of
German National Socialism in Europe from 1933 to 1945. The two visions, personal and public, psychological and
political, are, in fact, one. The two are united because Kafka attempted no prophecy. He wrote of his own
nightmare feelings so completely and so honestly that he wrote the history of the future when others made those
feelings of guilt and self-torture motives for public policy and the nightmare became everyday reality."

Remains a Subject of Literary Study and Debate

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In the years since his death in 1924, Kafka has served as the focus of study of numerous critics, who have
attempted to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable works he composed during his brief life through use of
psychoanalytic, theological, and political analysis. A reflection of the age in which he lived, a time and place
marked by immense social and political upheaval poised on the verge of a social and cultural evolution that often
was enacted through violent means, Kafka's body of work can be seen to reflect turn-of-the century Europe and
prefigure a bellicose nation poised on the brink of declaring war on the world.

Summing up the variety of criticism "In the Penal Colony" has generated, Arnold Weinstein wrote in Studies in
Twentieth-Century Literature: "Like all of Kafka's best stories, `In the Penal Colony' is maddeningly rife with multiple
and contradictory interpretations. Some have made it announce Auschwitz and Dachau; others have seen in it a
grim reminder of harsher Old Testament values, according to which our modern liberal world stands either
condemned or threatened; the brief tale has been read psychologically, psychoanalytically, anthropologically,
historically, paradoxically and parabolically. No matter how one reads it, however, the story's resolution, i.e., the
explorer's response to the penal colony, appears so ambivalent that it becomes effectively impossible to do the
very thing that is central here and happening everywhere in Kafka: pronounce judgment."

"If one were to judge the worth of an author solely according to the amount of critical commentary which his works
have generated," wrote A. P. Foulkes, summing up the German writer's body of work in Reference Guide to World
Literature, "then there is no doubt that Franz Kafka has already earned his place beside Shakespeare, Goethe,
and Cervantes. The primary attraction and challenge for the critic lie in the strange and enigmatic quality of the
fiction, its disturbing capacity to invite and yet resist interpretation, and at the same time the intuitive belief of many
readers that they are being addressed by a writer who has managed to capture in words the very essence of
20th-century experience and angst."

"Kafka is one of the founders of modern literature," wrote Lawson in his description of the author's overall
accomplishment. "His claim to greatness includes his service in completely collapsing the aesthetic distance that
had traditionally separated the writer from the reader.... Finally, in an age that celebrates the mass, Kafka redirects
the focus to the individual. His characters stand for themselves as individuals; in the case of the male
protagonists--and almost all of his protagonists are male--they stand for Kafka himself."

UPDATES
March 14, 2005: Kafka's Trial, an opera based on the writer's life, opened at the Royal Danish Opera in
Copenhagen. The work was composed by Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley. Source: New York Times,
<http://www.nytimes.com>, March 14, 2005.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born July 3, 1883, in Prague, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia); died of tuberculosis of the larynx, June 3, 1924,
in Kierling, Klosterneuburg, Austria; buried in Jewish cemetery in Prague-Straschnitz, Czechoslovakia; son of
Hermann (a merchant and manufacturer) and Julie (Loewy) Kafka; children: one son. Education:
Ferdinand-Karls University (Prague), earned doctorate in law, 1906; also attended technical institute in Prague.
Religion: Jewish.

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CAREER
Writer. Worked for attorney Richard Loewy drafting legal notices, Prague, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia),
1906; intern in law courts, Prague, 1906-07; staff member of insurance company Assicurazioni Generali,
Prague, 1907-08; Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, Prague, specialist in
accident prevention and workplace safety, 1908-22. Worked at Prague Asbestos Works Hermann & Co.
(manufacturers), Zizkov, Bohemia, 1911-17.

WORKS

Writings

Short Fiction
1913: Der Heizer: Ein Fragment (title means "The Stoker: A Fragment"; also see below), Kurt Wolff
(Leipzig), limited edition, illustrated by Elisabeth Siefer, Mary S. Rosenberg, 1985.

1913: Betrachtung (title means "Meditations"; includes stories later translated as "Children on a Country
Road," "Unmasking a Confidence Trickster," "Excursion into the Mountains," and "The Street Window";
also see below), Rowohlt.

1915: Die Verwandlung (also see below), Kurt Wolff, new edition edited by Majorie L. Hoover, Norton
(New York City), 1960, translated by A. L. Lloyd as The Metamorphosis, Parton, 1937, Vanguard Press,
1946, expanded as Metamorphosis and Other Stories, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir, Penguin,
1961.

1916: Das Urteil: Eine Geschichte (title means "The Judgement: A Story"; also see below), Kurt Wolff.

1919: In der Strafkolonie, Kurt Wolff, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir and C. Greenberg as The
Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces, Schocken (New York City), 1948.

1919: Ein Landarzt: Kleine Erzaehlungen (also see below), Kurt Wolff, translated by Vera Leslie as The
Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Stories, Counter-Point, 1945.

1924: Ein Hungerkunstler: Vier Geschichten (includes stories later translated as "A Hunger Artist," "A
Little Woman," "First Sorrow," and "Josephine the Singer; or, the Mouse Folk"; also see below), Die
Schmiede (Berlin).

1931: Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, Ungedruckte Erzaehlungen und Prosa aus dem Nachlass
(short stories; also see below), translated by Willa and Edwin Muir asThe Great Wall of China and Other
Pieces, Secker & Warburg, 1933, published asThe Great Wall of China: Stories and
Reflections,Schocken, 1970.

1947: Parables in German and English, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir, Schocken.

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1952: Selected Short Stories, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir, Modern Library.

1958: Description of a Struggle (also see below), Schocken.

1958: Parables and Paradoxes: Parabeln und Paradoxe(bilingual edition), Willa and Edwin Muir,
Schocken.

1959: Erzaehlungen und Skizzen, edited by Klaus Wagenbach, Moderner Buch-Club (Darmstadt).

1961: Die Erzaehlungen, edited by Klaus Wagenbach, S. Fischer (Frankfurt), edited by Charles W.
Hoffman, Norton, 1970.

1963: Er: Prosa, edited by Martin Walser, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt).

1963: Short Stories, edited by J. M. S. Pasley, Oxford University Press.

1966: Der Heizer; In der Strafkolonie; Der Bau, edited by J. M. S. Pasley, Cambridge University Press.

1970: Saemtliche Erzaehlungen, edited by Paul Raabe, S. Fischer.

1971: The Complete Stories,translation by Willa and Edwin Muir, Tania Stern and James Stern, and Ernst
Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, postscript by Nahum N. Glatzer, Schocken, special centennial edition, edited
by Glatzer, foreword by John Updike, illustrated by Adele Grodstein, 1983.

1973: Shorter Works,edited with translation by Malcolm Pasley, Secker & Warburg (London).

1983: The Bridge, illustrated by Henri Galeron, Schocken.

1988: The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony, and Other Stories, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir,
Schocken.

1989: The Sons (contains "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgement," and "The Stoker"), Schocken.

1995: Give It Up!: And Other Short Stories, NBM Comics.

Stories also published in English translation independently and in additional collections and anthologies.

Novels
1925: Der Prozess, edited by Brod, Die Schmiede, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir published as The
Trial, Gollancz (London), 1935, Knopf (New York City), 1937, revised edition with additional chapters
translated by E. M. Butler, Secker & Warburg, 1956, definitive edition, with illustrations by George Salter,
Knopf, 1957, with drawings by Kafka, Schocken, 1968.

1926: Das Schloss, edited by Brod, Kurt Wolff, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir published as The
Castle, Knopf, 1930, new edition with introduction by Thomas Mann, Knopf, 1941, definitive edition with
additional material translated by Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser and introduction by Mann, Secker & Warburg,
1953, Knopf, 1954, revised edition, Schocken, 1974.

1927: Amerika, edited by Brod, Kurt Wolff, translation by Willa and Edwin Muir with preface by Mann,
afterword by Brod, and illustrations by Emlen Etting, Routledge (London), 1938, New Directions (New
York City), 1946, with foreword by John Updike, Schocken, 1983.

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Novels also collected in single-volume editions.

Nonfiction
1948: The Diaries of Franz Kafka, edited by Brod, Volume 1: 1910-1913, translated by Joseph Kresh,
Schocken, Volume 2: 1914-1923, translated by Martin Greenberg and Hannah Arendt, Schocken, 1949,
published as one volume, 1989.

1953: Brief an den Vater, S. Fischer, bilingual edition with translation by Ernst Kaiser and Wilkins
published as Letter to His Father/Brief an den Vater, Schocken, 1966.

1974: I Am a Memory Come Alive: Autobiographical Writings, edited by Glatzer, Schocken.

Collected Works
1935-1936: Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Brod and Heinz Politzer, Volumes 1-4, Schocken (Berlin),
Volumes 5-6, Mercy (Prague), 1935-36, portions translated by Kaiser and Wilkins as In the Penal
Settlement: Tales and Short Prose Works, Secker & Warburg, 1973, other portions translated by Willa
and Edwin Muir and Tania and James Stern as Description of a Struggle; and The Great Wall of China,
Secker & Warburg, 1960.

1950-1974: Gesammelte Werke, 11 volumes, edited by Brod, S. Fischer, 1950-74, Volume 4: Briefe an
Milena translated by Tania and James Stern as Letters to Milena, Farrar, Straus, 1953, Volume 7:
Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande und andere Prosa aus dem Nachlass translated by Kaiser and
Wilkins as Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings, Schocken, 1954, and as Wedding Preparations in
the Country, and Other Posthumous Papers, Secker & Warburg, 1954, Volume 9: Briefe 1902-1904
translated, with additional material, by Richard Winston and Clara Winston as Letters to Friends, Family,
and Editors, Schocken, 1977, Volume 10: Briefe an Felice und andere Korrespondenz aus der
Verlobungszeit translated by James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth as Letters to Felice,Schocken, 1973,
Volume 11: Briefe an Ottla und die Familie translated by Richard and Clara Winston as Letters to Ottla
and the Family, Schocken, 1982.

1983: The Basic Kafka (omnibus volume), edited by Heller, Pocket Books.

Fiction and nonfiction also published together in other collections.

Other
1938: (Contributor) Harry Steinhauer and Helen Jessiman, editors, Modern German Stories (contains "A
Hunger Artist"), Oxford University Press.

Contributor to periodicals, including Arkadia, Bohemia, and Hyperion.

FURTHER READINGS

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Adaptations
The Trial was adapted by writer-director Orson Welles as a film of the same title in 1963, and by writer
Harold Pinter and director David Jones in 1993; Amerika was adapted by writer-directors Jean-Marie
Straub and Daniele Huillet for a film released in the United States as Class Relations in 1984; works
adapted for the stage include The Metamorphosis and "The Hunger Artist."

Works Cited
Angus, Douglas, "The Existentialist and the Diabolical Machine," in Criticism, spring, 1964, pp. 134-143.

Ashbrook, B., "Franz Kafka," in Reference Guide to World Literature, St. James Press, 2nd edition 1994.

Bernheimer, Charles, "Symbolic Bond and Textual Play: Structure of `The Castle,'" in The Kafka Debate:
New Perspectives for Our Time, edited by Angel Flores, Gordian Press, 1977, pp. 367- 384.

Brod, Max, Franz Kafka: A Biography, Schocken, 1947.

Dauvin, Rene, "`The Trial': Its Meaning," in Franz Kafka Today, edited by Angel Flores and Homer
Swander, University of Wisconsin Press, 1958, pp. 145-160.

Dolan, Paul J., "Kafka: The Political Machine," in his Of War and War's Alarms: Fiction and Politics in the
Modern World, Free Press, 1976, pp. 125-144.

Eckley, Grace, "Franz Kafka," in Reference Guide to Short Fiction, St. James Press, 1993, p. 867.

Foulkes, A. P., "Franz Kafka," in Reference Guide to World Literature, St. James Press, 2nd edition. 1994

Heller, Erich, Franz Kafka, edited by Frank Kermode, Viking 1974.

Hesse, Hermann, "Eine Literatur in Rezensionen und Aufsaetzen," in Gesammelte Werke, Volume 12,
Suhrkamp 1970.

Karl, Frederick R., "Space, Time, and Enclosure in `The Trial' and `The Castle,'" in Journal of Modern
Literature, September 1977, pp. 424-436.

Karl, Frederick R., Franz Kafka: Representative Man, Ticknor & Fields, 1991.

Klingenstein, Susanne, entries in Reference Guide to Short Fiction, St. James Press, 1993, pp. 873-874,
929-930.

Lawson, Richard H., "Franz Kafka," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 81: Austrian Fiction
Writers, 1875-191,3 Gale Research, 1989, pp. 133-168.

Mailloux, Peter, A Hesitation before Birth: The Life of Franz Kafka, University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Muir, Edwin, "A Note on Franz Kafka," in Bookman, November, 1930, pp. 235-241.

Politzer, Heinz, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox, Cornell University Press, 1966.

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Seltzer, Alvin J., Chaos in the Novel, the Novel in Chaos, Schocken, 1974.

Stallman, Robert W., "Kafka's Cage," in Accent, winter, 1948, pp. 117-125.

Updike, John, "Reflections: Kafka's Short Stories," in New Yorker, May 9, 1983, pp. 121-126, 129-133.

Vannatta, Dennis, "Franz Kafka," in Reference Guide to Short Fiction, St. James Press, 1993, pp.
286-287.

Weinstein, Arnold, "Kafka's Writing Machine: Metamorphosis in the Penal Colony," in Studies in
Twentieth-Century Literature, fall, 1982, pp. 21-33.

For More Information See

Books
Anders, Gunther, Franz Kafka, translation by A. Steer and A. K. Thorlby, Bowes & Bowes, 1960.

Bauer, Johann, Kafka and Prague, Praeger, 1971.

Boa, Elizabeth, Kafka: Gender, Class, and Race in the Letters and Fictions, Oxford University Press,
1996.

Buber-Neumann, Margarete, Mistress to Kafka, Secker & Warburg, 1966.

Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, translation by Justin O'Brien, Knopf, 1955.

Canetti, Elias, Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice, translation by Christopher Middleton, Schocken,
1982.

Carrouges, Michel, Kafka versus Kafka, translation by Emmet Parker, University of Alabama Press, 1968.

Dodd, W. J., Kafka: "The Metamorphosis", "The Trial", and "The Castle", Longman, 1996.

Dowden, Stephen D., Kafka's Castle and the Critical Imagination, Camden House, 1995.

Eisner, Pavel, Franz Kafka and Prague, Arts, Inc., 1950.

Emrich, Wilhelm, Franz Kafka, Ungar, 1968.

Flores, Angel, editor, The Kafka Problem, New Directions, 1946.

Frynta, Emanuel, Kafka and Prague, Batchworth Press, 1960.

Gilman, Sander L., Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, Routledge, 1995.

Goodman, Paul, Kafka's Prayer, Vanguard, 1947.

Gray, Richard T., Approaches to Teaching Kafka's Short Fiction, Modern Language Association of
America, 1995.

Gray, Ronald, Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1962.

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Gray, Ronald, Franz Kafka, Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Greenberg, Martin, The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature, Basic Books, 1968.

Greozinger, Karl-Erich, Kafka and Kabbalah, Contimuum, 1994.

Hall, Calvin S., and Richard E. Lind, Dreams, Life, and Literature: A Study of Franz Kafka, University of
North Carolina Press, 1970.

Hayman, Ronald, Kafka, Oxford University Press, 1982.

Heidsieck, Arnold, The Intellectual Contexts of Kafka's Fiction, Philosophy, Law, Religion, Camden
House, 1994.

Heller, Erich, Franz Kafka, edited by Frank Kermode, Viking, 1974.

Heller, Erich, The Disinherited Mind, Harcourt, 1975.

Herman, David, Universal Grammar and Narrative Form, Duke University Press, 1995.

Howe, Irving, Modern Literary Criticism: An Anthology, Beacon Press, 1958.

Hsia, Adrian, editor, Kafka and China, P. Lang (New York City), 1996.

Hughes, Kenneth, Franz Kafka: An Anthology of Marxist Criticism, New England University Press, 1981.

Janouch, Gustav, Conversations with Kafka, translation by Goronwy Rees, New Directions, 1971.

Kazin, Alfred, The Inmost Leaf: A Selection of Essays, Harcourt, 1955.

Kempf, Franz R., Everyone's Darling: Kafka and the Critics of His Short Fiction, Camden House, 1994.

Krauss, Karoline, Kafka's K. versus the Castle: The Self and the Other, P. Lang, 1996.

Kuna, Franz, editor, On Kafka: Semi-Centenary Perspectives, Harper, 1976.

Nabokov, Vladimir, Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, Harcourt, 1980.

Nagel, Bert, Franz Kafka, Schmidt, 1974.

Pascal, Roy, Kafka's Narrators: A Study of His Stories and Sketches, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Pawel, Ernst, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Farrar, Straus, 1984.

Politzer, Heinz, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox, Cornell University Press, 1966.

Robert, Marthe, Kafka, Gallimard, 1968.

Robert, Marthe, The Old and the New: From Kafka to Don Quixote, University of California Press, 1977.

Robert, Marthe, As Lonely as Franz Kafka, Harcourt, 1982.

Rolleston, James, Kafka's Negative Theater, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974.

Short Story Criticism, Gale, Volume 5, 1990, Volume 29, 1998.

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Sokel, Walter H., Franz Kafka, Columbia University Press, 1966.

Spann, Meno, Franz Kafka, Twayne, 1976.

Spilka, Mark, Dickens and Kafka: A Mutual Interpretation, Indiana University Press, 1963.

Stern, J. P., The World of Franz Kafka, Holt, 1980.

Stringfellow, Frank, The Meaning of Irony: A Psychoanalytic Investigation, State University of New York
Press, 1994.

Suchoff, David Bruce, Critical Theory and the Novel: Mass Society and Cultural Criticism in Dickens,
Melville, and Kafka, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

Sussman, Henry, Franz Kafka: Geometrician of Metaphor, Coda Press, 1979.

Tauber, Herbert, Franz Kafka: An Interpretation of His Works, Kennikat, 1968.

Thorlby, Anthony, Kafka: A Study, Heinemann, 1972.

Tiefenbrun, Ruth, Moment of Torment: An Interpretation of Franz Kafka's Short Stories, Southern Illinois
University Press, 1973.

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 2, 1979, Volume 6, 1982, Volume 13, 1984, Volume
29, 1988, Volume 47, 1993, Volume 53, 1994.

Unself, Joachim, and Paul F. Dvorak, Franz Kafka, A Writer's Life, Ariadne Press, 1994.

Urzidil, Johannes, There Goes Kafka, Wayne State University, 1968.

Wagenback, Klaus, Kafka's Prague, Overlook Press, 1996.

West, Rebecca, The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme, Yale University
Press, 1957.

Ziolkowski, Theodore, Dimensions of the Novel: German Texts and European Contexts, Princeton
University Press, 1969.

Periodicals
Approach, Fall, 1963.

Bookman, November, 1930.

Commonweal, September 4, 1964.

Comparative Literature, fall, 1959.

Criterion, April, 1938.

German Life and Letters, January, 1953.

Jewish Heritage, summer, 1964.

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Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January, 1954.

Journal of Modern Literature, September, 1977.

Kenyon Review, winter, 1939.

Literary Review, summer, 1983.

Literature and Psychology, Volume 27, number 4, 1977.

Modern Fiction Studies, summer, 1958.

Modern Language Notes, October, 1970.

Mosaic, spring, 1972.

Nation, December 7, 1946.

New Republic, October 27, 1937.

New Yorker, May 9, 1983.

New York Times, April 12, 1989; April 16, 1989; August 9, 1989.

Publishers Weekly, June 5, 1995, p. 53.

Quarterly Review of Literature, Volume 2, number 3, 1945; Volume 20, numbers 1-2, 1976.

Reconstructionist, April 3, 1959.

Studies in Short Fiction, summer, 1965; spring, 1973.

Symposium, fall, 1961.

Thought, summer, 1951.

Tri-Quarterly, spring, 1966.

Washington Post, January 15, 1989.

SOURCE CITATION
"Franz Kafka." Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 31. Gale Group, 2000.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. http://0-
galenet.galegroup.com.charlotte.delco.lib.pa.us/servlet/BioRC

Document Number: K1603000559

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© Copyright 2009 Gale Cengage Learning.

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