LETTERS TO FELICE

by Franz Kafka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1973

Kafka, in August 1912, was almost thirty when he met Felice Bauer, a 25 year-old executive secretary from Berlin who was visiting his native Prague. This letter-box love affair (""the distance to Berlin is by no means so hard to bear as the height separating him from you"") endured two broken engagements before terminating in December 1917. This collection consists largely of letters Franz sent to Felice -- her half has apparently disappeared -- for the most part up through 1914 (when the first engagement was broken off) and during that year to Greta. Bloch, a common acquaintance whom Kafka used as a confidante. Although these were the years that Kafka wrote the draft of Amerika, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and began The Trial he is more concerned with Felice's inadequacies as a correspondent, and his own fear of family ties (""I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room in a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp""). ""I seek solitude,"" Kafka wrote ""not so much to live quietly but to die quietly."" He deceived himself and others (""only when Kafka dwells in his writing does he dwell in his truth"" the editors remark in the introduction); outwardly he was a businessman, dutiful son, lover and would-be husband. Although the sketchy correspondence of the later years does not permit us to know why the couple -- after Kafka was diagnosed as tubercular -- began and ended their last engagement, there are valuable insights into Kafka as artist and tormented man who -- by his own admission -- knew ""but three possibilities -- to burst forth, collapse or pine away.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Shocken Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION