This blog post takes a deep dive into the literary world of Franz Kafka, exploring his works that grappled with life and art, alienation and existence.
Franz Kafka was reluctant to publish his works during his lifetime. He only reluctantly published some of his writings at the request of publishers. However, the published works barely sold, met with public misunderstanding. The works included here are those he published in book form during his lifetime: the short essay collection ‘Contemplation’ (1913), and representative short stories showcasing his artistic talent: ‘The Judgment’ (1913), ‘The Stoker’ (1913), ‘The Metamorphosis’ (1915), ‘In the Penal Colony’ (1919), and the short story collection ‘A Country Doctor’ (1919). The four late stories in ‘A Hunger Artist’ (1924), which exemplify his concise and transparent style, were prepared for publication but appeared only days after Franz Kafka’s death. Franz Kafka felt anxious about publishing his work and requested that all his unpublished manuscripts be burned before his death. However, his executor, Brod, disregarded this will and published the novels ‘The Trial’, ‘The Castle’, and ‘Amerika’ in 1925, 1926, and 1927, respectively, along with many unpublished short stories posthumously.
Franz Kafka’s fantastical, surreal, and enigmatic works can, in a way, strike us as profoundly realistic. In ‘The Judgment’, we see the protagonist despairing of his situation in his homeland and leaving for foreign lands; we see ourselves, struggling with marriage issues and facing a breakdown. In ‘The Stoker’, the protagonist, having suffered disgrace in his homeland, emigrates abroad in third-class steerage, only to discover that life there is far from easy. In ‘The Metamorphosis’, we feel the family’s piercing gaze toward the head of the household who has lost his job and economic ability. In such moments, we ultimately become a mere cockroach, yearning for death instead. Later, when Hitler called Jews ‘Ungeziefer’ and had Franz Kafka’s sisters executed in concentration camps, it gives one a chilling sense of Franz Kafka’s prophetic ability. ‘In the Penal Colony’ reveals the grim reality of dictatorship, where justice distorted in the name of power drives people to death. ‘A Country Doctor’ portrays the ‘lost artist’ agonizing between being an artist and a citizen, between self-salvation and a comfortable, healthy life.
Many themes appearing in Franz Kafka’s short stories also surface in his novels. The short story ‘Before the Law,’ later incorporated into ‘The Trial,’ depicts an inaccessible law and humanity’s persistent yearning for it. Joseph K., a capable, conscientious bank clerk and bachelor, is awakened by men who come to arrest him. The interrogation conducted in the magistrate’s court devolves into a disillusioning farce, and the reason for his arrest is never explained. In this situation, Josef K. dedicates himself to the effort of going to the inaccessible court himself to be acquitted of a crime he doesn’t even know. He appeals to mediators, but their advice and explanations only add to the new confusion.
And ‘The Stoker’ forms the first chapter of the work ‘Amerika’. The protagonist of ‘Amerika’, the young Karl Rossmann, is sent to America by his parents after being seduced by a maid and impregnating her. There, he struggles to find refuge among many characters similar to his father, but his naive and simple nature causes him to be exploited everywhere. According to the description in the final chapter, he eventually finds work in the dreamlike world of the ‘Oklahoma Nature Theater’. Franz Kafka once said that Rossmann would ultimately meet ruin.
The setting of Franz Kafka’s later work, ‘The Castle’, is a small village under the dominion of a castle. Time seems frozen in the winter landscape here, and almost every scene unfolds in darkness. K. arrives in the village claiming to be a surveyor appointed by the castle authorities, but the village officials reject his claim. The novel depicts K.’s struggle to gain recognition from the castle. Though the castle is inaccessible, K. challenges both the petty, arrogant officials and the villagers who accept their authority—not as a victim, but as an aggressor. Yet all his schemes ultimately fail. Like Josef K. in ‘The Trial’, he too shares love with a maid, but the barmaid Frida, realizing he is merely using her, leaves him.
Thus, in works like ‘The Castle’ and ‘Before the Law’, scenes stand out where those who entered the castle first—those who secured firm positions within an organization or society—persecute and mock those trying to enter later. The more secure that position is—a “iron rice bowl” or guarded by a despicable gatekeeper—the more severe the obstruction becomes. ‘A Report to an Academy’ vividly portrays modern man, who, while searching for an exit, ultimately loses both the exit and freedom, yet remains unaware. Furthermore, the extreme devotion to a mission of ambiguous value reappears not only in ‘In the Penal Colony’ but also in ‘A Hunger Artist’.
This essay examines several significant short pieces. The 1913 collection ‘Contemplation’ contains eighteen short essays, some of which had already appeared in two magazines between 1908 and 1910. These essays depict motifs that would later appear in his major works—motifs such as friendships, the self reflected in a mirror, the second self, one’s true nature, ghosts, anxiety and loneliness, the difficulties of bachelorhood and the merchant’s life, one’s position within the family, helplessness, abandonment, unhappiness, and riding a horse—all rendered through Franz Kafka’s unique perspective on the surrounding world.
Completed in 1912 and published in 1913, ‘The Judgment’ was, according to Franz Kafka’s diary, written in one sitting over eight hours, from 10 p.m. on September 22nd to 6 a.m. on the 23rd. This was the second day after Franz Kafka had first courted Felice Bauer through their exchange of letters. Possessing the character of a ‘Novelle’, ‘The Judgment’ is known, along with ‘A Country Doctor’, as one of the rare works he was satisfied with. From this point on, Franz Kafka believed writing and ordinary civic life could not coexist and that one must be sacrificed. Among Franz Kafka’s works, the novella has been interpreted most diversely through various literary theories.
The protagonist, Georg Bendemann, a young merchant, has been exchanging letters with a friend residing in Russia for three years, but has not informed him of his engagement to Frida Brandenfelt, the daughter of a wealthy family. As the wedding approaches, he resolves to write and share the news. However, through a conversation with his father, he learns that his father has been in contact with this friend for a long time, and that the friend knows everything about him. His father, who had been lying in bed, suddenly sits up, furious, and scolds Georg for abandoning a friend far away. He declares that the engagement to Frida is a betrayal of both himself and Georg’s dead mother. Then, the father pronounces a sentence upon his son: to drown himself. Staggering, Georg leaves the house, runs to the river, and jumps into the water from the bridge.
This work was written by Franz Kafka during his first courtship with Felice Bauer. The fact that the protagonist’s fiancée, Frida Brandenfeld, shares the initials F. B. with Felice Bauer suggests a connection to her. The figure of a friend who, dissatisfied with future prospects, went to Russia several years prior, bears many similarities to the image of a writer aspiring to literature. Just as Franz Kafka himself lacked confidence in literature, this friend is depicted as having ‘fallen on hard times’, ‘fallen ill’, living a life ‘out of touch’ with society, and above all, living as a ‘bachelor’. The relationship between this friend and Georg, who successfully navigates bourgeois life, seems to reflect the writer’s own dilemma over marriage versus literature. That is, for him, marriage represents a bourgeois life offering warmth and comfort, while the path of literature is a lonely, impoverished bachelor’s existence.
It seems paradoxical that Georg’s father favors this distant friend over his son Georg, who is about to marry. This mirrors Franz Kafka’s own father, who failed to understand his son’s literary work and instead desired a stable, conventional marriage for him. Unlike his friend, who appears to have a divided self, Georg settles into a stable bourgeois life, abandoning his original literary aspirations. He blames himself for this and submits to his father’s will. The final phrase ‘unendlichen Verkehr’ contrasts with Georg’s death, which signifies his abandonment of marriage. Here, ‘Verkehr’ carries not only the meaning of ‘traffic’ but also that of ‘sexual intercourse’. Therefore, the drowning sentence can be read as a prohibition against sexual life. Viewed this way, the drowning sentence imposed on the protagonist can be interpreted as the pure self condemning his marriage to Felice. Through this sentence, the other self existing within Russia can be freed from the fear that marriage would infringe upon its artistic existence. Seen thus, ‘The Judgment’ can be considered the short story that most concisely encapsulates Franz Kafka’s artistic proposition.
‘The Metamorphosis’ was written between late November and early December 1913 and published in 1915. This novella narrates the protagonist Gregor’s stream of consciousness in the form of an inner monologue, with no intervening narrator; Gregor’s thoughts are expressed directly and immediately. Alongside ‘The Judgment’ and ‘A Country Doctor’, this work, which deals with the Oedipus complex, is an expressionist novel that portrays the alienated human condition of individuals living in modern society who have lost the meaning of their own existence. It also addresses the problems of existence and is sometimes considered an existentialist novel. The novel alternates between everyday time and adventurous time. This work has been analyzed through diverse lenses—religious, psychological, sociological. Filmmaker David Cronenberg explores this Kafkaesque anxiety in works like ‘Videodrome’, while Steven Soderbergh, in his film ‘Kafka’, reveals the reality Franz Kafka faced as a power oppressing workers.
One morning, Gregor Samsa, a young traveling salesman, wakes from a restless dream to discover he has transformed into a monstrous insect. When he fails to show up for work after hours have passed, his family knocks on his door. His company’s manager arrives to investigate why Gregor hasn’t come in. The manager suspects Gregor’s strange behavior is connected to company issues and threatens to fire him. Gregor tries to plead his case through the locked door, but others cannot understand his squeaky voice. Shortly after, the manager, seeing Gregor struggle to open the door and emerge, flees in terror. His parents are deeply shocked. His father, making threatening gestures, forces the insect back into the room, during which Gregor is injured and bleeds.
The protagonist observes his family through the door crack. His repulsed sister, feeling terror, brings him food, but he finds no appetite for his former meals. Two weeks later, his mother, visiting his room, faints in horror at the insect’s form. Seeing this, his father, misunderstanding the situation, throws an apple that lodges in Gregor’s back, inflicting a severe wound. With Gregor no longer able to support them, the family devises their own survival strategies. The father secures a job at a bank, the sister and mother also work to help with the household expenses, and they even free up a room to take in boarders.
One evening, while his sister plays the violin for the boarders after dinner, the protagonist, entranced by the music, crawls into the parlor. When the boarders, horrified at the sight of the insect, threaten to leave, his sister convinces their parents that they can no longer regard the creature as her brother and must somehow get rid of ‘it’. Gregor drags himself back to his room to meet his end. After the old maid removes the insect’s corpse, the family, now relieved, sets off on a happy outing to celebrate the holiday.
Gregor Samsa’s fate recalls Laban’s dream in ‘Wedding Preparations in the Country,’ completed in 1907 before this work. Here, Laban wishes to send his body to the country while he remains in bed as a bug. However, in Laban’s case, the transformation occurs only within his own fantasy. Furthermore, while Laban desires to transform into an animal, Gregor Samsa does not. He wishes to awaken from this unpleasant dream and return to the world of his daily duties. Unlike Laban, he does not attempt to identify the ‘bug’ with his ‘self’. He too lives in conflict between the world of work and the world of the self, but he drifts between these two worlds without thoroughly recognizing his own self.
Upon waking and analyzing the causes of this unbelievable situation, he discovers numerous problems in his daily life. Gregor, a traveling salesman visiting people who don’t particularly welcome him, is constantly tired and haunted by vague anxiety day after day. Moreover, burdened with repaying his father’s business debts and supporting the family, he had planned to quit his job once the debts were paid off in five or six years. However, he hadn’t decided where he would go or what kind of life he would lead after leaving the company. While enduring his unwanted job, he secretly harbored a desire to return to his true self. This metamorphosis became the catalyst for Gregor to realize the long-suppressed wish.
When Gregor transformed into a giant beetle, his family was forced to adapt and join the struggle for survival. They came to see Gregor, who had been parasitically dependent on them, as a useless burden that had to go. Ironically, it was his sister—the family member he loved most, for whom he had even planned to pay for music school—who treated him most harshly and shunned him. His sister, who initially cared for him ‘as if he were a wife,’ ultimately turned her back on him cruelly once she realized he had become utterly useless. In this situation, Gregor concluded his life was meaningless and embraced death with a spirit of reconciliation. While factors like the food not suiting his taste and the wound from the apple thrown by his father flaring up certainly played a role, the impression is strongly that he voluntarily accepted death. After disposing of the dead beetle, the ending where his sister Grete, filled with hope for the future, takes the family on an outing to the countryside reflects the grotesque and inhuman nature of modern people.
‘In the Penal Colony’ was completed between October 4 and 18, 1914, and first published by Kurt Wolff Verlag in 1919. When introduced at a Munich reading in November 1916, the audience and press reacted negatively, labeling Franz Kafka a ‘moral degenerate.’ Written under the influence of World War I, this work also evokes scenes of medieval torture. It may reflect not only external political events but also Franz Kafka’s personal sadomasochistic tendencies. For him, the act of writing was both a painful compulsion and a source of deep satisfaction.
When a renowned researcher visits the penal colony, the officer stationed there insists on demonstrating the execution of a prisoner using the execution machine he handles with pride and skill. As both judge and executioner, he seeks to showcase the machine’s superior and flawless performance through this process. The prisoner had been convicted of insubordination and insulting a superior officer. The officer insisted that no investigation or interrogation was necessary for any crime, and thus the soldier brought in as the prisoner was not even given a chance to defend himself. The execution machine was a mechanical device designed to brand the prisoner’s body with the charges he had violated using needles and to wipe away the blood flowing from his body. After twelve hours, the prisoner would die and be thrown into a pit. This execution system was a favorite of the former commander, but it has become controversial since his death and the arrival of the new commander. The officer asks the researcher to evaluate the system favorably, but when the researcher refuses, the officer himself lies down inside the machine to convince him. However, the machine malfunctions. Instead of torturing the officer, it kills him.
The theme of this short story is to show how the justice proclaimed by an inhuman, totalitarian power structure is extremely distorted. It reads as power clinging to irrational traditions of the past or blindly relying on pseudo-religious, fanatical means to justify its totalitarian claims. As if mocking the judicial system of a state governed by law, all authority—legislative, judicial, and executive—is concentrated in the hands of a single officer in charge of the machine. Furthermore, the defendant’s guilt is predetermined from the outset, and the officer’s verdict is deemed infallible. In such a world, where execution bears no relation to the crime itself, the machine can be seen as symbolizing human destiny. Humans are unaware of their sentence before execution and cannot defend themselves.
The officer, who fanatically worships the dead former commander, is a figure subjugated to limitless power and filled with a distorted ideology of justice. He is so zealous in his duty that he willingly lies down on the execution machine to be sacrificed. However, the machine tasked with executing the verdict malfunctions unexpectedly. The officer, a faithful guardian and believer in the legal system, is sacrificed by the very system he believed to be perfect. Yet, he never realizes until the end that his belief was delusion and illusion. The officer demonstrates a reversed relationship with the law compared to Josef K. in ‘The Trial’. That is, while K. dies as a result of his ignorance of the law, the officer is sacrificed as one who believes in and defends the law. In this respect, he contrasts more sharply with the countryman in ‘Before the Law’. For while the countryman waits his entire life to see the inside of the law and dies, the officer lives his entire life upholding the law and living by it, and dies.
If we accept Brod’s interpretation of this story as a literary record of self-execution, the officer’s death can be seen as analogous to Franz Kafka executing himself, having become enslaved to and obsessed with the external world. The officer, who follows the system he obeys only to be destroyed by it, suggests the desperate end of a self oriented toward the external world. In contrast, the role of the researcher appears as a variant of the self oriented toward art. If we make the assumption that the artist appears in the guise of a scientist, we can sense his indecisiveness in his attitude—opposing the inhumanity and flawed legal system of the exile site yet refusing to attempt to correct them—reflecting his strong restraint against the self that seeks to turn toward the external society, even while recognizing that society, like the exile site, is riddled with injustice and contradiction.
The researcher serving as the narrative’s point of reference is convinced the trial process is unjust and the execution inhumane, yet abandons the researcher’s fundamental duty to uncover the truth precisely because he is not a resident of the penal colony. He harbors no will to reform the cruel and inhumane system of the exile colony. Moreover, even when the machine operator soldier and the released prisoner beg him to take them along, he leaves them behind in the colony and hastens away alone. The officer and the researcher stand in stark contrast in their attitudes toward their beliefs. Though his belief is flawed, the officer possesses strong drive and an unshakable stance, while the researcher, knowing his own thoughts are correct, lacks the courage to pursue them, remaining a bystander to the end. He not only lacks the resolve to confront the cruel system but also abandons his duty as a writer to improve the world. In this sense, both men possess elements that enable totalitarianism, ultimately failing to prevent the birth of Hitler’s Third Reich in Germany.
Written in 1917, ‘A Country Doctor’ was published in 1919 as part of the short story collection ‘A Country Doctor’. The character in ‘A Country Doctor’ bears resemblance to Kafka’s uncle Siegfried Löwy, who actually worked as a country doctor in Trisch. In 1917, when this work was written, Franz Kafka had grown close to Felice again, becoming engaged to her for the second time in July. In August, he coughed up blood for the first time due to tuberculosis. By December, the engagement was broken off once more.
Hearing the bell ring in the dead of night, the elderly country doctor rushes to attend to a critically ill patient. His own horse has died, so he needs a new horse to pull the carriage. The maid tries to borrow a horse from the villagers, but no one will lend one on this snowstorm-filled night. Suddenly, two sturdy horses emerge from the pigsty. A strange coachman harnesses them to the carriage, and it begins to move. The doctor hesitates to leave, reluctant to entrust the maid Rosa to the beastly coachman, but the carriage has already arrived at the patient’s house.
At first glance, the patient seems perfectly healthy and begs to be left to die. But when the horses peer through the window into the room, they see again: the boy has a large, incurable, rose-colored wound on his waist. Even at the patient’s house, he cannot stop worrying about Rosa. At some point, the doctor becomes the patient himself, lying beside the boy. As the boy’s parents and sister watch this process, the strange song of the school choir drifts in. The boy accuses the doctor of incompetence, and as the situation around him grows threatening, the doctor hurriedly climbs into the carriage, not even properly dressing himself. But unlike when the horses arrived, the carriage moves slowly, the choir’s singing trailing behind. Realizing he has been deceived, the doctor cannot return home and wanders endlessly through the snowy midnight field.
For the country doctor, two realms exist in contrast. One is his home, where he lives as a bachelor with his maid Rosa; the other is the patient’s house, separated by a distant path through a snowstorm. Here, the urgent bell ringing for him in the dead of night can be seen as a call from Franz Kafka’s true self. For the doctor’s true duty is to treat patients, and Franz Kafka considered literary creation his fundamental calling. Isolated in a village where he could borrow words from no one, the doctor had lived unaware of the preciousness of his maid, Rosa. However, the appearance of the beastly coachman changes his thoughts about Rosa. Though he believes going to the patient is urgent, he is tempted to abandon his departure because of the shameless coachman who embraces the maid before him and presses his face against hers.
This mirrors the writer’s consciousness, who, while thinking it impossible to combine a woman or a comfortable bourgeois life with his artistic life, cannot easily abandon his engagement. Just as he cannot easily abandon the idea of uniting with his fiancée despite believing it impossible, the doctor cannot cease worrying about Rosa. Like Franz Kafka, who found it difficult to abandon his bourgeois and sensual life to live as a writer, the doctor becomes obsessed with Rosa and ends up wandering forever in the liminal space between the two realms. Though Rosa locks all doors to evade the coachman and hides indoors, the moment the doctor heads toward the patient’s house, the sound of the door shattering under the coachman’s assault reaches his ears. Even as he seeks his essential self, the vision of a comfortable, erotic married life keeps flickering before his eyes.
The horses carrying him to the patient’s house are otherworldly beings. The death of the doctor’s horse can be seen as the death of his literary inspiration, yet a strange artistic inspiration suddenly arises from somewhere, allowing him to meet his original self. Therefore, the patient can be seen as the same person as the doctor. If the doctor, who lived with the maid, represents the social shell, the patient embodies the true self. This is vividly depicted through the patient’s whispering voice, which can be seen as an inner monologue after he lies beside the patient. That is, even after returning to his true self, he continues to define himself as the doctor who was robbed and constantly worries about Rosa, which is of no help to the patient, who is the pure self. The patient and Rosa symbolize mutually opposing realms. If the doctor’s relationship with Rosa is hindered by his mission as a writer, the patient, as the pure self, is hindered by the doctor’s obsession with Rosa. This is because the patient’s wound being Rosa reflects the awareness that the erotic life represented by Rosa obstructs the writerly existence.
Meanwhile, just as Franz Kafka fell ill and ultimately abandoned his engagement, the doctor must ultimately part with Rosa due to the patient’s illness. Torn between the writer’s life and civic existence, Franz Kafka remains tormented, his thoughts perpetually unsettled. His concern for Rosa signifies a return to yearning for civic life within the artistic realm. The doctor and patient, representatives of these two realms, conflict thus until both grow so weary they wish to die. Moreover, the doctor’s statement that healing the patient’s wound is impossible also implies his own failure to be utterly true to his writerly self. The country doctor lacks the confidence to become a writer of conviction and the courage to sustain a happy married life. Caught between these two realms, his vacillation leaves him belonging nowhere, doomed to drift eternally through the cosmic space of midwinter.
Completed around 1917 and published in 1919 in ‘A Country Doctor’, ‘A Report to an Academy’ is known to have been influenced by Hoffmann’s ‘The Dialogue of the Dogs’ and Wilhelm Hauff’s ‘The Young Englishman’.
The humanized monkey Red Peter is asked by the members of the academy to submit a report on his previous life as a monkey and his humanization. Filled with self-admiration, he displays immense pride in his hard-won status. Unlike other works, Franz Kafka and the protagonist do not seem to be one and the same here. First, Red Peter the monkey has not yet acquired proper education; he recounts his experiences from a position of having risen to prominence too quickly and become overly adapted to the human world, making his account difficult to trust. In short, he is caught up in self-deception. When recalling his past, he overestimates the freedom he had in his animal state, though in reality, he can only remember up to the point of being captured by hunters and loaded onto a ship.
Currently, Peter performs on stage, but this too cannot be considered a truly free state. It is a state of being painfully trapped within us, then inevitably forced out through an ‘exit’. The ship that captured and transported him presented him with his first ever ‘no-exit’ situation. Unable to live without an ‘exit’, he abandoned his identity as a monkey. Thus, this ‘exit’ is not a path to self-realization but rather a forced adaptation. He is not a monkey, yet he is not a true human either. This is most clearly revealed in his dual life, distinct by day and night. For while he performs on the show stage by day, he sleeps with chimpanzees by night, maintaining his animal nature. Human customs like spitting, shaking hands, or drinking brandy do not signify his membership in the human world; they merely reveal that he is superficially humanized.
Completed in the spring of 1922, ‘A Hunger Artist’ was published in the October 1922 issue of ‘Neue Rundschau’. It was later published as a book along with three other short stories on June 11, 1924, eight days after Franz Kafka’s death. This is the story of a clown who demonstrates his extraordinary fasting abilities to an audience. The performance manager permits him to fast only for forty days, but he continues beyond that, ultimately dying alone after being shunned by the public. His arrogance in attempting to fast longer than Jesus did in the wilderness for forty days could be seen as containing an element of blasphemy.
The audience’s interest in the fasting clown grows daily, with spectators flocking even at night. After 40 days, the performance manager persuades the fasting clown to eat a little food again. They hold a small celebration with the audience to mark the successful completion of the fast. However, years later, the situation changes drastically. As the audience’s interest in the fasting clown gradually wanes, he barely performs anymore. Eventually, he finds work at a circus, where he is assigned a cage next to the animal pens. Soon after, the manager completely forgot about the clown’s existence. With no one left to record his days of fasting, he continued until he was utterly exhausted. On the brink of death, he confessed the reason for his obsessive fasting: he had never found food that truly satisfied his palate. After his death, a young, healthy leopard was placed in his empty cage.
The fasting clown appears as a symbol of the ascetic artist. To the audience, fasting seems a hard-won ability, but to the artist, it is a desire and impulse aligned with his very essence. For the fasting clown, fasting—the easiest thing in the world—possesses a self-healing quality. To others, it is strict abstinence, but to him, it is a natural act and an affirmation of his artistic life. Just as Franz Kafka always felt doubt about his literary creation and insisted on an inner-world literature that failed to communicate with external society, the clown’s fasting exhibits the same characteristic.
Initially, large crowds gather, making it seem as if the artist’s inner world communicates with society, but this is merely the fleeting whim of a public always seeking only entertainment. As their interest gradually wanes, he is forced to move later to a large circus troupe. There, too, when the audience shows interest only in the animals, he ultimately dies amid the public’s indifference. However, it cannot be said that he ever truly communicated with society from the start. Not only the audience, but even himself, acting as the circus manager, cannot understand the reason for his self-imposed fast, which he claims to do willingly.
No one but the fasting clown himself could understand the act he chose to find satisfaction. The protagonist fasts because he cannot find food that suits his taste. Not finding food essential to life is tantamount to not finding a way to sustain life. Turning to the writer’s own circumstances, this resembles Franz Kafka’s self-awareness that his literary life was incompatible with living in the external world. The young leopard entering the clown’s cage at the end presents a stark contrast to the fasting clown.
Yet, it remains impossible to definitively judge which is correct: a normal, vibrant life or the artistically oriented existence of the fasting clown. This is because the general audience is, on the other hand, crudely depicted as a heartless group pursuing only self-satisfaction. Franz Kafka does not make a clear decision between art and civic life. However, like Gregor in ‘The Metamorphosis’ who has lost the function of language, the Hunger Artist, existing as the sole audience for his own art within a space completely cut off from external communication, reveals the fated image of an alienated individual. The existence of an individual disconnected from society is implied as a situation with no exit.
Franz Kafka’s final work, ‘Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk’, was completed in March 1924 and published that June in the collection ‘A Hunger Artist’. After writing this work, Franz Kafka’s illness progressively worsened, rendering him unable to write. The motif of this work originates from a folk tale of the Bohemian region in the Czech Republic, where a race of mice is enchanted by song. In Franz Kafka’s literature, music is generally understood as a symbol of free flight and a yearning for the nourishment of the soul.
This work tells the story of Josephine, a mouse who works as a singer, and the mouse race. Truthfully, her squeaking sounds were no different from the mindless squeaking of ordinary rats, yet Josephine’s singing possessed a peculiar power that dominated the rat tribe. No one could resist being enchanted by her song. This enchantment was all the more remarkable because the rat tribe did not originally love music. Hearing her voice, the rat tribe came to recognize and affirm themselves, feeling a sense of belonging.
It is also nostalgia for a bygone childhood, a longing memory of happier times past. Josephine’s wish is for her art to be publicly acknowledged, to receive higher praise than any figure before her, and to maintain a lasting, timeless fame. Her pride contains vanity and an artist’s arrogance, yet the rats, as representatives of their kind, love her and tolerate her self-importance. Yet Josephine demands exemption from work under the pretext of possessing singing skills, but the rat tribe refuses. Then, rumors spread that Josephine, who had enjoyed the rat tribe’s adoration, had vanished one day, and she ultimately disappears. Thus, she becomes a fragment of an anecdote that will endure in the history of the rat tribe, that is, the Jewish people.
Like ‘A Hunger Artist’, this work explores the relationship between the individual artist and the audience. In this sense, it also reflects Franz Kafka’s own contemplation of the artistic merit of his own work. At first glance, the seemingly absurd and unpleasant singer appears to have no connection to Franz Kafka, yet a distinct link emerges. For instance, the singer’s desire to be exempt from other troublesome tasks in order to devote herself entirely to art was also a major issue in Franz Kafka’s own life. However, this story unfolds not from the singer’s perspective, but from that of the rat species, the audience. Unlike the rats struggling to survive, the singer appears as a prima donna far removed from reality.
On the other hand, Josephine serves a crucial function for the rat tribe. Amidst the silence, her high-pitched squeaking, faint and piercing, embodies the pitiful existence of the rat tribe amidst the whirlwind of a hostile world. Josephine’s song, regardless of her own intent, protects the species and brings them solace—something desperately needed by the endangered rat species, the Jews. Franz Kafka may not have expected his art to significantly influence readers, but in this sense, artistic creation plays an immensely positive role. In this work, Franz Kafka ironically observes his own life as an artist, distinct from that of ordinary people. Kafka believed he would be forgotten by the public after his death, like Josephine. However, given the enduring global interest in Franz Kafka even 80 years after his death, his prediction proved mistaken.
