Kafka's universe fits the 21st century like a glove

June 3 marks the centenary of the death of the author of

The Metamorphosis

.

The Kafka year begins, which is like saying the Reiner Stach year.

The shadow of this German writer in the Kafkaesque universe is so long that in 2024 it is projected onto the most hermetic and apocalyptic Kafka, the one of the aphorisms, with the publication of an annotated edition,

You are the task

(Cliff), and it also flies about the most accessible and integrated Kafka, a new one, that of the six-episode television fiction that will be broadcast in March by ARD and ORF, the public channels of Germany and Austria.

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Why are we Kafkaesque?

In the 1990s, Reiner Stach (Rochlitz, Saxony, 72 years old) was a desktop editor working for various German imprints of scientific literature and non-fiction.

He had earned his doctorate with a thesis dedicated to the erotic myth of Kafka, which was gathering dust on the shelves of the University of Frankfurt, and had put his academic career on hold.

He then decided to face a metamorphosis that would last 18 years.

He dedicated himself to writing the definitive biography of Franz Kafka and in 2014, after completing more than 2,300 pages spread over three volumes (in the research process for the last book alone he accumulated nearly 100,000 euros in advances from his publisher), He woke up transformed into an essential writer for 21st century Germanism.

“Many people continue to believe that Kafka was a man with a lot of imagination but lacking energy, without vitality,” says Stach from Santa Cruz de Tenerife regarding some myths of the Prague writer.

“The facts say otherwise.

He created all of his work in just 12 years.

In that short period of time he endured an office job, a world war and tuberculosis.

He was always late in making important decisions, he was not a spontaneous person, and that got on the nerves of his contemporaries, especially women.”

When winter arrives, Stach leaves Berlin and rents an apartment in the old town of the Tenerife capital.

Under the Canarian sun he found the best inspiration to write about Kafka, a custom that goes back a long way: his habitual residence in La Palma, including his library, was devoured by the lava of the volcano.

Cover of the book 'You are the task' (Acantilado).Acantilado

The aphoristic Kafka of

You Are the Task

also emerged from a moment of escape.

He collected these very brief pieces in more than a hundred numbered pieces of paper during an eight-month stay in the bohemian village of Zürau (today Siřem), 80 kilometers from Prague, where his sister Ottla had moved to take charge of a farm.

It was Kafka's home after a crucial episode that would change his life and the history of literature.

A month earlier, in August 1917, he had coughed up blood and been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

The writer accepted the news with a certain optimism, as if it offered him a vacation from his commitments in the city, although aware of his situation.

He planted vegetables, harvested potatoes, took care of the goats and lay in the sun to read and write.

His texts are minimal passages written on the deck chair (for example: “A cage went in search of a bird”), as revealed by the careless handwriting, riddled with crossouts, “but most of the annotations consist of reflections that abound in images.” surprising and metaphysical speculations,” Stach writes in the prologue.

And he adds: “Some aphorisms are located at the icy peaks of abstraction.”

Kafka deals with classic philosophical questions such as “evil,” “truth,” “faith,” and the “spiritual world.”

Stach places the creative and biographical context with the precision of a Japanese calligrapher and escorts each aphorism with a comment that reveals the Kafkaesque visual logic of a seemingly impenetrable work.

Max Brod, a close friend and literary executor of Kafka who first saved his three unfinished novels from the fire and then from the Nazis, confronted the “Kafka of aphorisms” with the “Kafka of novels and short stories.”

Stach, on the other hand, observes a unity, especially with the novel

The Castle

.

And he agrees with Milan Kundera in his scathing critique of Brod: “Over the years Brod painted an increasingly dogmatic picture of Kafka: Kafka as the great moralist, a teacher of humanity!

“This is nonsense.”

In the cover photo of the book, Kafka poses young and smiling at 34 years old with his secretary at the insurance company, who had decided to pay him a loving surprise visit in Zürau.

Although the chosen frame does not allow it to be appreciated, next to them was Ottla, the writer's little sister, his confidant and great support.

Kafka's three sisters, of Jewish origin, were murdered in the Nazi gas chambers.

Ottla in Auschwitz, when she was transported to accompany a group of children with whom she was confined in the Terezín ghetto, north of Prague.

Kafka in the cinema

Kafka's stay in Zürau will star in a new documentary on the Arte channel, where Stach also participates, which will be shown this year.

And on March 26, the television series directed by David Schalko will premiere, based on the three volumes of Stach's biography, which shines in the use of a narrative strategy typical of the novel, far from the academicism of the essay.

Will he be an imagined Kafka (like the Freud we saw on Netflix turned into a serial killer hunter) or closer to “his” Kafka?

“We have made an effort to paint a portrait that is as realistic as possible, with his strengths and weaknesses,” Stach responds.

His behavior, sometimes unexpected, is true to reality.

Viewers will meet the real Kafka.

You will understand that this man was complicated.”

The script for the series, which Stach hopes can be seen in Spain this year, is signed by writer Daniel Kehlmann.

“He is one of the most prominent writers in Germany, with experience in cinema.

We met often, I read the finished scenes and sometimes suggested improvements.

There were times when we developed a fictional dialogue together.

But most of the cinematographic ideas are Daniel's, some surprising.

The balance between tragedy and comedy is very successful.”

It can be said that the European 20th century, due to its attachment to totalitarianism, was faithful to Kafka's literature.

Unlike other “monuments” such as Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, Stach considers Kafka a “living classic”, with a work that fits like a glove in today's information society.

“Many of Kafka's characters are faced with a situation that they do not understand.

The reason is not a lack of information, on the contrary, they receive all the information they want.

However, this information is always useless for understanding the bigger picture.

Many readers say: this is exactly how I feel today.

We are overfed with information, but we receive no real explanation of what it all means.

The complexity of the world has reached a level that is frightening.”

The RAE registers the

Kafkaesque

term as “said of a situation: absurd, distressing.”

It is tempting to ask Stach for the definitive definition of the most successful and perverted eponym in contemporary literature.

“An absurd, threatening, but implicitly comical situation.”

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