Kafka’s Earth Weight
Franz Kafka had a quiet but powerful personality. He carried a troubled soul but a friendly disposition. No acquaintance of his would have guessed at his internal struggle, he kept this inside and saved it for his writing which was mostly secret. He said that he wrote “as a form of prayer”. At the end of his life, he described the burning of his writing as “to free his soul from these ghosts”. Kafka referred to his own sadness and awkwardness as “Earth Weight”.
It is estimated that 90% of his writings were in fact burned at the end of his life. The remaining 10% he instructed to be burned after he died. In the famous letter to Brod Kafka said “My last request: Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.” Brod went against Kafka’s wishes and published Kafka’s work, subsequently, Kafka is now known as one of the most unique and important literary figures of the early 20th century.
My love for Kafka started after I read The Trial. It was unlike anything I had ever read and I fell in love with his style. I went on to read the majority of his work including his other two unfinished novels, the Castle and Amerika and I found myself wishing that he had finished his novels and I wondered what they would be like if he did. In attempts to understand more about him, I read Max Brod’s biography
Brod was Kafka’s closest friend as well as his publisher. Throughout the biography, we learn of their friendship, their conversations and of many interesting tidbits of Kafka’s life. For instance, unknown to me before, Kafka had a son of which he was never aware of in his lifetime. Being the time that it was, out of fear of public scrutiny the mother of the child fled town and gave birth in secrecy, never telling Kafka of his son. This son had then died at a young age before Kafka had died and it wasn’t until after his death that Brod obtained this information. Kafka always wanted children and his life may have been very different if he had known of this child.
Brod explained how he and Kafka shared much of their work with each other. He always knew that Kafka was a great writer and would encourage him to write. With hopes of sparking Kafka’s talent, he would suggest writing competitions between themselves. They would go to some event together and take notes and write about the event later in detail and they would discuss and vote on who described the event better.
We also see much of Kafka’s character in the biography. Kafka was a quiet person, especially in groups. Sometimes he wouldn’t speak for hours in a social situation. But when he did speak, everyone listened because it was always something meaningful. Brod says “He had an unusual aura of power about him” which he had never seen before. We are told of several factors for this type of personality. His childhood was “Incredibly lonely”. His father was a domineering figure in his life and Kafka felt that he never lived up to his father’s expectations of him, which is apparent in The Metamorphosis.
Later in his life, Kafka wrote a letter to his father to explore their troubled relationship. Perhaps not wanting to give the letter to his father directly, Kafka gave the letter to his mother to give to his father but after reading the letter his mother refused to let his father read it. In this letter, we see in painful detail the memories that Kafka had of his father and this explained why he was so scared of him. One story from the letter explains that one night, for almost no reason at all, he was locked outside on the balcony in the cold all night. Kafka mentions that this wasn’t life threatening or anything but this memory remained with him for the rest of his life. From then on he was scared to think that he could be thrown outside as the consequence for any tiny frustration that his father could have in him. In another section of the letter, he explains how he felt in relation to his father at the local swimming pool. Look at the words he used to describe himself in relation to his father.
“There was I, skinny, weakly, slight; you strong, tall, broad. Even inside the hut I felt a miserable specimen, and what’s more, not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things. But then when we stepped out of the bathing hut before the people, you holding me by my hand, a little skeleton, unsteady, barefoot on the boards, frightened of the water, incapable of copying your swimming strokes, which you, with the best of intentions, but actually to my profound humiliation, kept on demonstrating, then I was frantic with desperation and at such moments all my bad experiences in all areas, fitted magnificently together.”
These early years are at least in part where Kafka’s “Earth Weight” originated.
When researching Kafka, I wanted to explore these 3 questions:
Why was Franz Kafka so critical of his own work?
Why did he leave so much of his best work unfinished?
Why did he ask to have all of his work burned on his deathbed?
Before I get into these I’d like to mention my opinion here that The Castle and Amerika in a way both benefit from not being completed. The fact that they do not end adds to the feeling of the books that I believe Kafka is trying to encapsulate in his novels. The protagonists were never going to achieve what they wanted to at the end anyway. So the non-ending is actually a perfect ending to either one. Kafka mentioned that if he did complete The Castle, it probably would have ended with K dying from exhaustion. So either way, dying from exhaustion or simply never getting anywhere and it ends, the feeling there still makes sense, it still hits hard.
So back to the 3 questions, Kafka thought he was a failure, his work wasn’t appreciated until after his death so perhaps he would have pursued a career in writing if he knew in hindsight how influential he was going to be. Brod gave him a lot of encouragement but that wasn’t enough. But why did he think he was such a failure, what made Kafka give up on his writing when other writers who were also mostly unknown during their lifetime kept writing despite their unfavorable reviews? Melville was also unknown during his lifetime, but he still finished Moby Dick and several other books despite being a ‘failure’ as a writer in his lifetime. So why Couldn’t Kafka finish The Trial, The Castle, or Amerika? (The Trial does have an ending, but is not complete). I was trying to come up with an answer to these questions, I read my notes again, “earth weight” stuck out to me.
I believe Kafka’s “earth weight” can be simply translated into ‘depression’, and this depression, in a vague way is an answer to all 3 questions. From everything I have read about him, it makes complete sense. Depression can cause someone who has achieved a great deal in their life to still feel like a failure. Kafka’s depression put a roadblock in his way, causing him to be overly critical of his work and of himself. It can sometimes make people look like they are being dramatic when they are not trying to be, like wanting all your work burned, they are truly just hurting inside.
As with anyone with depression, Kafka appeared to be normal to most people, he was polite, he smiled, he did good work at his mundane job. He also had a great sense of humor which is apparent in his novels. I’ve read that occasionally while he was writing Kafka would laugh so hard during the night that he would wake the neighbors. While reading his work to his friends he had to stop from laughing fits. He used unique absurdist humor which I also find hilarious and catch myself laughing out loud while reading his novels.
In Kafka’s time they probably didn’t have a name for what we call depression now. These days depression is finally being looked at as a serious issue. The deaths of people like Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain have caused some major discussions about mental health in the media. Some people still view depression incorrectly, it doesn’t always look like it does in the anti-depressant ads. Brod said that if you never read Kafka’s dairy, you would have had no idea of his internal struggle. Many times only very few people closest to the individual can tell there is a problem. Even if you do not understand depression yourself, please try to have some compassion for someone who says they are dealing with it. If Kafka’s father had been a little more encouraging and had shown compassion on him he might have completed several novels in full awareness of his genius.
