Swirling Kafka

Born in Prague’s Old Town, he spent his child­hood and youth hol­i­days in the coun­try­side. Franz Kaf­ka knew the charm­ing warm nights, the sense of free­dom and the activ­i­ties that go with sum­mer. In 1907 he writes to Max Brod from Třešť: “I am rid­ing around on the motor­bike a great deal, swim­ming a lot, lying nude in the grass by the pond for hours, hang­ing about the park until mid­night with a both­er­some­ly infat­u­at­ed girl, have already ted­ded hay in the mead­ow, have set up a mer­ry-go-around, helped trees after a storm, tak­en cows and goats to pas­ture and dri­ven them home in the evening, played a lot of bil­liards, tak­en long walks, drunk a lot of beer…”

It is hard to imag­ine the trou­bled, indrawn, melan­cholic Kaf­ka, as he was lat­er usu­al­ly described, amidst such a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty. The short sto­ry Chil­dren on a Coun­try Road is such a whirl­wind. Every­thing is in motion: the vehi­cles, the swing, the birds, the stars, the cur­tains, the chil­dren, the moon and the water. The soft move­ment of the for­est mak­ing a whis­per­ing sound in the wind and the bright light of the mov­ing train.

There is no walk­ing, only run­ning with a “mouth full of fire,” jump­ing and fast flight, a dull sound of stomp­ing, high in the air, there is lash­ing out, falling and even singing. The nar­ra­tor is with a group of friends, but he can break away and run alone. This is free­dom, this is inno­cence. The antithe­sis of the gloomi­ness and weari­ness that per­me­at­ed Kafka’s lat­er works.

Franz Kaf­ka is like a young boy in his own sto­ry who, jump­ing over a ditch, falls on his back at one point. He lies there, sink­ing deep­er and deep­er and… and he does not want it to stop. He no longer can or wants to get up, join the oth­ers, grab their hands, run with the wind and car­ry on. The world seen from the ditch seems pow­er­ful and mag­nif­i­cent to him, while he him­self is becom­ing small­er and weak­er. Being small, he admires greatness.

Being weak, he admires strength. Being sick, he admires health. Being hes­i­tant, he admires a spon­ta­neous ges­ture. In a diary entry dat­ing from 1911, he finds “the abrupt turn­ing of a hefty girl’s head” so strik­ing that it is wor­thy of being record­ed. And on the same day he writes: “The beau­ti­ful large but­ton, beau­ti­ful­ly set low on the sleeve of a girl’s dress. How sel­dom I suc­ceed in cre­at­ing some­thing beau­ti­ful, and this unno­ticed but­ton and its igno­rant seam­stress succeeded.”

Again and again, he also bowed to his lovers, whether it was in a rela­tion­ship with Felice Bauer or Mile­na Jesen­ská. He admired their strength, their spon­tane­ity, their loud­ness, their lust for life, their courage, which, in his own opin­ion, he him­self lacked. At the same time, how­ev­er, he reject­ed his lovers. For he, lying in the deep­est of ditch­es and look­ing up to all the beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful things above him, in fact does not want these qualities.

Even if such traits were to bow down to him and some­how (per­haps deceiv­ing them­selves) offer them­selves to him. This is not for the likes of me, Kaf­ka says. And nei­ther is this. Strict­ly speak­ing, there is noth­ing for me, all I can do is lie back and watch. Not to have. But not even to be, only to look. In oth­er words, to write.

The starv­ing artist, the main char­ac­ter of one of Kafka’s last sto­ries, does not eat. Not to be a record break­er, but because he does not like the taste of any­thing. The ani­mal in Der Bau (The Lair) no longer ven­tures into the out­side world because of fear. The acro­bat from the short sto­ry enti­tled The First Sor­row needs only two trapeze bars to be happy.

Where is the windswept, spir­it­ed, colour­ful, event­ful land­scape of the short sto­ry Chil­dren on a Coun­try Road? How come it dis­ap­peared? It shrank and it also sharp­ened. Through Kafka’s pow­er­ful writ­ing, its ener­gy has been con­cen­trat­ed into a sin­gle point where a very dif­fer­ent space opens up to the read­er: the infin­i­ty here and now.

Franz Kafka – Children on a country road (1912)

I heard the wag­ons rum­bling past the gar­den fence, some­times I even saw them through gen­tly sway­ing gaps in the foliage. How the wood of their spokes and shafts creaked in the sum­mer heat! Labor­ers were com­ing from the fields and laugh­ing so that it was a scandal.

I was sit­ting on our lit­tle swing, just rest­ing among the trees in my par­ents’ garden.
On the oth­er side of the fence the traf­fic nev­er stopped. Children’s run­ning feet were past in a moment; har­vest wag­ons with men and women perched on and around the sheaves dark­ened the flower beds; toward evening I saw a gen­tle­man slow­ly prom­e­nad­ing with a walk­ing stick, and a cou­ple of girls who met him arm in arm stepped aside into the grass as they greet­ed him.

Then birds flew up as if in show­ers, I fol­lowed them with my eyes and saw how high they soared in one breath, till I felt not that they were ris­ing but that I was falling, and hold­ing fast to the ropes began to swing a lit­tle out of sheer weak­ness. Soon I was swing­ing more strong­ly as the air blew cold­er and instead of soar­ing birds trem­bling stars appeared.

I was giv­en my sup­per by can­dle­light. Often both my arms were on the wood­en board and I was already weary as I bit into my bread and but­ter. The coarse-mesh win­dow cur­tains bel­lied in the warm wind and many a time some pass­er-by out­side would stay them with his hands as if he want­ed to see me bet­ter and speak to me.

Usu­al­ly the can­dle soon went out and in the sooty can­dle smoke the assem­bled midges went on cir­cling for a while. If any­one asked me a ques­tion from the win­dow I would gaze at him as if at a dis­tant moun­tain or into vacan­cy, nor did he par­tic­u­lar­ly care whether he got an answer or not. But if one jumped over the win­dow sill and announced that the oth­ers were already wait­ing, then I did get to my feet with a sigh.

“What are you sigh­ing for? What’s wrong? Has some­thing dread­ful hap­pened that can nev­er be made good? Shan’t we ever recov­er from it? Is every­thing lost?”
Noth­ing was lost. We ran to the front of the house. “Thank God, here you are at last!” – “You’re always late!” – “Why just me?” – “Espe­cial­ly you, why don’t you stay at home if you don’t want to come?” – “No quar­ter!” – “No quar­ter? What kind of way is that to talk?”

We ran our heads full tilt into the evening. There was no day­time and no night­time. Now our waist­coat but­tons would be clack­ing togeth­er like teeth, again we would be keep­ing a steady dis­tance from each oth­er as we ran, breath­ing fire like wild beasts in the trop­ics. Like cuirassiers in old wars, stamp­ing and spring­ing high, we drove each oth­er down the short alley and with this impe­tus in our legs a far­ther stretch along the main road. Stray fig­ures went into the ditch, hard­ly had they van­ished down the dusky escarp­ment when they were stand­ing like new­com­ers on the field path above and look­ing down.

“Come on down!” – “Come on up first!” – “So’s you can push us down, no thanks, we’re not such fools.” – “You’re afraid, you mean. Come on up, you cow­ards!” – “Afraid? Of the likes of you? You’re going to push us down, are you? That’s a good one.” We made the attempt and were pushed head over heels into the grass of the road­side ditch, tum­bling of our own free will. Every­thing was equal­ly warm to us, we felt nei­ther warmth nor chill in the grass, only one got tired.

Turn­ing on one’s right side, with a hand under the ear, one could eas­i­ly have fall­en asleep there. But one want­ed to get up again with chin uplift­ed, only to roll into a deep­er ditch. Then with an arm thrust out cross­wise and legs thresh­ing to the side one thought to launch into the air again only to fall for cer­tain into a still deep­er ditch. And of this one nev­er want­ed to make an end.

How one might stretch one­self out, espe­cial­ly in the knees, prop­er­ly to sleep in the last ditch, was some­thing scarce­ly thought of, and one sim­ply lay on one’s back, like an invalid, inclined to weep a lit­tle. One blinked as now and then a young­ster with elbows pressed to his sides sprang over one’s head with dark-loom­ing soles, in a leap from the escarp­ment to the roadway.

The moon was already some way up in the sky, in its light a mail coach drove past. A small wind began to blow every­where, even in the ditch one could feel it, and near­by the for­est began to rus­tle. Then one was no longer so anx­ious to be alone.

“Where are you?” – “Come here!” – “All togeth­er!” – “What are you hid­ing for, drop your non­sense!” – “Don’t you know the mail’s gone past already?” – “Not already?” – “Of course; it went past while you were sleep­ing.” – “I wasn’t sleep­ing. What an idea!” – “Oh shut up, you’re still half asleep.” – “But I wasn’t.” – “Come on!”

We ran bunched more close­ly togeth­er, many of us linked hands, one’s head could not be held high enough, for now the way was down­hill. Some­one whooped an Indi­an war cry, our legs gal­loped us as nev­er before, the wind lift­ed our hips as we sprang. Noth­ing could have checked us; we were in such full stride that even in over­tak­ing oth­ers we could fold our arms and look qui­et­ly around us.

At the bridge over the brook we came to a stop; those who had over­run it came back. The water below lapped against stones and roots as if it were not already late evening. There was no rea­son why one of us should not jump onto the para­pet of the bridge.

From behind clumps of trees in the dis­tance a rail­way train came past, all the car­riages were lit up, the win­dow panes were cer­tain­ly let down. One of us began to sing a pop­u­lar catch, but we all felt like singing. We sang much faster than the train was going, we waved our arms because our voic­es were not enough, our voic­es rushed togeth­er in an avalanche of sound that did us good. When one joins in song with oth­ers it is like being drawn on by a fish hook.

So we sang, the for­est behind us, for the ears of the dis­tant trav­el­ers. The grownups were still awake in the vil­lage, the moth­ers were mak­ing down the beds for the night.

Our time was up. I kissed the one next to me, reached hands to the three near­est, and began to run home, none called me back. At the first cross­roads where they could no longer see me I turned off and ran by the field paths into the for­est again. I was mak­ing for that city in the south of which it was said in our vil­lage: “There you’ll find queer folk! Just think, they nev­er sleep!”

“And why not?”
“Because they nev­er get tired.”
“And why not?”
“Because they’re fools.”
“Don’t fools get tired?”
“How could fools get tired!”

Franz Kaf­ka (1883–1924) was a Ger­man-speak­ing nov­el­ist from Prague. Dur­ing his life­time, only a small num­ber of his works, many of which remained unfin­ished, were pub­lished; his best-known sto­ries include The Judg­ment, The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Before the Law, In the Dis­ci­pli­nary Camp and A Hunger Artist. After Kafka’s untime­ly death, his friend Max Brod, as an execu­tor of the writer’s will, pre­pared the rest of his works for pub­li­ca­tion (espe­cial­ly the nov­els The Tri­al and The Cas­tle), but also his diaries and let­ters. Kaf­ka is con­sid­ered a mod­ernist writer but the poet­ic qual­i­ties of his writ­ing are time­less and tran­scend all bound­aries, even geo­graph­i­cal ones. That is the rea­son why, as long as a hun­dred years after his death, he is still read and very much loved all over the world.

Mag­dalé­na Plat­zová (1972) is a Czech writer who has been liv­ing in France for a num­ber of years. Grow­ing up in Prague, she stud­ied in the Unit­ed States and in Eng­land, receiv­ing a Master’s degree in phi­los­o­phy from Charles Uni­ver­si­ty in Prague. She worked as an edi­tor and jour­nal­ist at Literární noviny and Respekt, and con­tin­ues to con­tribute to Czech peri­od­i­cals and oth­er Czech media to this day. In 2009–2012 she lived in New York where she taught a course on Franz Kaf­ka at New York Uni­ver­si­ty. Her most recent book, the nov­el Živ­ot po Kafkovi (Life after Kaf­ka), focus­es on the life of Kafka’s fiancée, Felice Bauer, and the world after the Sec­ond World War.