Sunday, August 16, 2009

MORE KAFKA

Be sure to check on The Free Dictionary the words you don’t know.

Franz Kafka was a young man with the hardest feelings towards his father; his health was normally in poor conditions – he ended up dying of tuberculosis, and by all means he was aloof, introvert and severely penalized by his miserable social skills. I mean, if your father doesn’t care about you, you’re usually in bad health, you’re down and left on your own, how on earth can you develop the literary skills that Kafka did? That’s a riddle, a mystery, I guess.

A professor called Moisés Sbardelloto, drew an interesting framework of Kafka gloomy relationship with his father. In his book “Letters to my Father” he unfolds his dilemmas and struggles against the one who never came closer to love and build up a paternal bound.

In one of his letters called “Resolutions”, Kafka shows off the kind of sarcastic and wry lack of enthusiasm to overcome his difficulties, a sort of sadness that held him in the mental and emotional fortress where the author was captive:

“Defy all my natural feelings, give A. an enthusiastic welcome if he comes, tolerate B. friendly in my room, swallow down everything that is said at C.’s place in long draughts (goles), despite the labor and pain it costs me.” Now that sounds a resolution of a victorious rider who sees no impossibility along his way to the top.

Then he goes on just to reveal next his cynical perspective:
“Yet even if I can manage all that, each false step will make the whole enterprise, easy or difficult, falter (+- vacilar); and I shall have to turn back to the point where I began.”

It seems that Kafka couldn’t find any real reason for truly standing up and fighting for better days. His literary prowess (proeza) proved to be undeniable masterpiece, but his inner strength was tiny. No judgment here, yet that very weakness might be the consequence of the misfortunes that I mentioned in the first paragraph.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

This philosophy is very complicated for my rational mind.

Michael said...

I need more time (maybe weeks)to digest this post. I swear that, as soon as I understand something, I post here.

Daniel de Aguirres said...

Actually, I never imagined you guys would find so many difficulties along the way...Try Moisés Sbardelloto review to grasp something in portuguese. Of course we'll be discussing the whole thing in class later.

Unknown said...

Daniel I think that everything is possible in life , including Kafka and his miserable history.I don't know many things about him. In all my life I saw a movie about his book named "The process"? Iremember, that was a little complicated to understand.

Daniel de Aguirres said...

Flávio
"The Process" in on my reading list, it's one of the books I still want to read by the end of the year. I may watch the movie too...
Thanks for your words.