Kafka The last unpublished manuscripts
We all approach Kafka with the expectation of delving into a vague idea that we have in memory, of defining a little
the elusive profiles of an obsession
.
We can all recognize what Kafka is, but how do we fix it?
Next week, new material will arrive in Spanish bookstores to grab hold of: the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house will publish, at the same time as various labels from around the world,
The Drawings
, the complete collection of the graphic work of the writer of
El Castillo
.
"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." They only began to be known when his
Complete Works
began to be published
in 1982 and only partially. Most of the drawings we now edit were
inaccessible until 2019.
"
Max Brod [Kafka's friend and compiler of the work] and Ilse Esther Hoffe (Brod's secretary and his heiress) saved the drawings without publishing them. When she died in 2007, her daughters became the owners, but the National Library of Jerusalem claimed the collection because a clause in Brod's will provided that this was to be her
residence,
the place where the drawings were to be exhibited. The case reached the courts and did not have an outcome until a decade later.
Israeli justice ruled in favor of the National Library, which has shown Kafka's paintings since 2019
. "It is this set that, together with the drawings, some 40, which the Kafka family kept and which are deposited in Oxford and in the Marbach Archive of German Literature, which make this book", explains Tarrida.
What material are we talking about? "Kafka began to draw 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 Law
. During all that time, he attended courses in Literature and Art History "says Tarrida. Were your drawings something important in your life? Or were they doodling while listening to boring lessons? "He cared a lot about them. He has a letter to [his girlfriend] Felice Bauer in which he says something like:" A long time ago
I was a great cartoonist; drawing satisfied me more than anything else
. "However, Kafka did not systematize his work on paper. He drew on loose sheets that he did not care about. Only Max Brod, who was also a great draftsman,he took care to put them away.
Some more important data: "Kafka had a
specialist
art teacher
in Japan
who left a very deep mark on him," says his editor.
"He wanted to give a conference that was going to be called
Japan and us,
which was never held, but the influence is in his drawings: all those monochrome drawings, those black inks made with fine brushes ...".
Joan Tarrida.
We reached the end, we returned to the beginning: with a few exceptions (some landscape, a note from Goethe's house in Weimar), Kafka's drawings portrayed human figures,
lonely and often twisted people on the verge of dislodging
.
What would anyone expect from the writer?
"He was very interested in expressionism," explains Tarrida.
And Expressionism, like Kafka's legacy, is easier to recognize than to explain.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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