We all approach Kafka with the expectation of delving into a vague idea that we have in memory, to define a little the abasible profiles of an obsession.
We can all recognize what Kafka is but, how do I fix it?
Next week, it will arrive at the Spanish New Material Libraries to hold on: the Galaxia Gutenberg publisher will publish, at the same time as several seals from around the world, the drawings, the complete collection of the graphic work of the castle writer.
“The drawings have a long history,” explains Joan Tarrida, editor of Galaxia Gutenberg.
“They are the last great unknown piece in the creation of Franz Kafka.” He only began to hear from them when he began to publish the complete works of him in 1982 and only partially.
Most of the drawings that we now edit were inaccessible until 2019 “.
Max Brod [the friend and compiler of the work of Kafka] and Ilse Esther Hoffe (Brod’s secretary and his heiress) kept the drawings without publishing them.
When she died, in 2007, the daughters of him became his owners, but the National Library of Jerusalem claimed the collection because a clause in Brod’s testament expected that it should be his residence, the place where they should be exposed.
drawings.
The case came to the courts and did not have a decade until a decade later.
Israeli justice failed in favor of the National Library that since 2019 shows the paintings of Kafka.
“It is that set that, together with the drawings, about 40, which retained the Kafka family and that they are deposited in toxic and in the German literature archive of Marbach, those who make this book,” he explains hearing.
What material are we talking about?
“Kafka began drawing before writing, most of these drawings come from the period 1901-1907, when he studied at the German University of Prague, first chemistry and then right. During all that time, he attended courses of literature and history of art
“He says Tarrida.
Was it the drawings of him something important in him?
Or were they doodles that he did while he listened to boring lessons?
“He cared a lot. He has a letter to [his girlfriend of him] Felice Bauer in which he says something like:” Time ago I was a great cartoonist;
Draw I was more satisfied more than anything else. “However, Kafka did not systematize his work on paper. Draw on loose leaves that did not take care of. Only Max Brod, who was also a great cartoonist, was worried about keeping them.
Some important data More: “Kafka had a specialist art teacher in Japan who left him a very deep footprint,” says his editor.
“He wanted to give a conference that was going to be called Japan and we were never celebrated, but the influence is in the drawings of him: all those blacksmiths, those black inks made with fine brushes …”.
We arrived at the end, we return to the beginning: With a few exceptions (some scenery, a note of Goethe’s house in Weimar), the drawings of Kafka portrayed human figures, solitary people and, often, twisted, about to discourse.
What would anyone expect from the writer?
“He was very interested in expressionism,” he explains hearing.
And expressionism, like Kafka’s legacy, is easier to recognize than to explain.
