Did you know that Franz Kafka ordered his best friend to burn all his unpublished works? In this video documentary in Spanish I tell you the biography of Kafka and the reason for that decision. #kafka #biography #books
Franz Kafka had a short life and, in some respects, quite gray: he died at the age of forty of tuberculosis, without even being able to imagine that his works, many of them published posthumously, would achieve the well-deserved prestige that they enjoy today. The few works that he published in life, including 'La metamorfosis', went almost unnoticed; something very sad for someone who had decided to devote his life to literature and whose self-esteem, crushed from childhood by a very authoritarian parent, was terribly low. In a letter he wrote to the father of one of his girlfriends, Felice Bauer, Kafka said this about himself: “My whole being is focused on literature, and up to the age of 30 I have kept that path strictly; If I ever abandon it, I'll stop living From this derives all that I am and how much I am and am not. I'm taciturn, unsociable, moody, selfish, hypochondriac, and really sick. How is your daughter to live with a man like that, who has left all distractions in order to conserve the right energy to dedicate himself exclusively to literature?
Franz Kafka was born in Prague on July 3, 1883. His family was Jewish and his father, Hermann Kafka, owned a textile business with more than a dozen employees. They named him Franz in honor of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, and he was the eldest of six siblings, although his two male brothers died as babies, something that apparently made him feel guilty, because he had been jealous of them and wanted them to disappear. His three sisters, who survived him, perished during World War II, victims of the Nazis.
After obtaining his doctorate in law, Kafka worked in the courts and in various law firms for a couple of years, until he joined an insurance company in 1908 at the age of 25. He was a punctual and very efficient worker, but he lacked professional ambition, he was not interested in promotion. Because this job was terribly boring, but at least it had the advantage that it only occupied the morning, so that he could spend every afternoon and evening doing what he really liked: writing.
From 1912 he began to dedicate himself more seriously to his hobby, and wrote works such as 'La metamorfosis', which he completed in 1915. The first book they published was 'Meditations', in 1913, a collection of small prose fragments, taken from his personal diary, which showed his great spiritual restlessness with a very innovative style. Like his later books, it was only read by a few friends and a few readers.
The Kafka quotes that I read in the video, as well as other epistles addressed to family, friends, lovers and editors, can be found in the book 'Letters (1900-1914)', published, for the first time in Spanish, by the Galaxia publishing house Gutenberg: www.galaxiagute...
Thank you for visiting my channel. I am Raquel de la Morena, a writer of historical romances ('The heart of the banshee' and 'Who the hell are you?', Winner of the V Titania Prize) and juveniles (such as the mirror-novel 'The Curse of Trefoil House') . I am also a journalist: I work in the popular science magazine 'Muy Interesante'. In this channel I will tell you stories aimed especially at curious minds. Legends, mysteries, historical and literary curiosities ... If you want to hear and see them, you are welcome!
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Screenplay: Pedro Estrada and Raquel de la Morena
Image, sound and video editing: Pedro Estrada
Music: 'Milicent', by Max Suria