Picture this: Verdant valleys, clear skies, silver mountains. A breathtakingly beautiful, but equally steep and rugged Alpine landscape. A narrow path snaking up the hills with blue bellflowers, purple lilies, yellow monkshoods and bubbling brooks greeting you at every bend. The temperature keeps rising. It is bloody hot. And there I am, among a group of old and dear friends, almost all of whom are proud hikers. They are really good at hiking, I really am not.
My friends love the heights whereas I am afraid of the heights. They are wearing sports clothes and high-grip shoes that look like they were designed somewhere in outer space with zero gravity, whereas I am clad, as usual, in dark trousers and heavy jacket suitable for a rainy season and espadrilles that were clearly not meant for this type of terrain. In my defence, I was not expecting the climb. Otherwise, I could have stayed in the hotel. But there was a misunderstanding in our lines of communication and we are where we are. So they are trooping ahead, fast and steady; I am lagging behind, huffing and puffing, increasingly out of breath. I realise, with a touch of trepidation, that there is still another hour to go before we have a pit stop.
I am upset at myself for not being sporty and athletic. Years and years of sitting at my desk, hunched over a book or notebook, day in day out, has given me a stiff neck and gimpy knees and creaky limbs, and I know it is no excuse, but it is the unspoken reality of a writer’s life that although there are always notable exceptions, on average, we tend not to be, shall we say, as fit as a fiddle.
So I am awkwardly clambering up an Alpine ridge and I am trying hard not to show my inner struggle. In order to calm down my nerves, I have to listen to something—an audio book or a podcast would be ideal, and that is when I click on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
It helps! It is such a brilliant read.
In a little while, I cup my hands around my mouth and shout with all my might towards the valley below:
‘Hermann Kafka! You nasty bastard!’
A biker (fast passing by) looks at me with a bewildered expression, but I am not going to apologise for my unruliness in this exquisite, orderly Swiss world. If anything, I want to make an addition. So I fill my chest with oxygen and yell, even louder:
‘Franz Kafka! You are beautiful! You are beloved!’
And then I instantly feel better, reenergised. With a new spring in my step, I catch up with the rest of the group.
Next time you find yourself struggling and failing at some task, try this formula but in this specific order.
First, to take off steam, think of Hermann Kafka.
Then, with a warmer and softer energy, remember Franz Kafka.
It really works.
Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 at a critical turning point in history, which would soon precipitate the demise and then the end of Austria-Hungary. His mother was a kind person, but extremely timid and most of the time, silent. His father was quite the opposite: loud, assertive, narcissistic and despotic. Above everything, Hermann Kafka believed in authority and discipline. A businessman with a steely determination to succeed, his world was materialistic, his motto, tyranny.
Throughout his childhood and early youth, Kafka struggled with feelings of guilt, loneliness, self-doubt and self-loathing. He was scared of disappointing his father who had become both verbally and physically abusive.
Hermann Kafka remained iron-fisted and oppressive towards all his children, but even more so vis-a-vis his son, Franz, whom he mocked and lambasted for not being “masculine” enough, “manly” enough. If and when his son made friends with other children, he ridiculed them too, giving the boys names such as “vermin”, “fleas”, “insects”.
Franz Kafka developed a severe fear of insects and mice.
His phobias and his dreams shaped his literature.
Many years later, now as an author, Kafka would try to explain his scars and hurts in a heartfelt letter, which must have taken him a long, long time to be able to write:
Dearest Father,
You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you.
As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking. And if I now try to give you an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete, because, even in writing, this fear and its consequences hamper me in relation to you and because the magnitude of the subject goes far beyond the scope of my memory and power of reasoning.
…
It is one of the most moving confessions one can ever make to a family member. However painful, Kafka poured his soul into a few sheets of paper, which he then gave to his mother so that she could share them with her husband.
But upon reading the letter, his mother returned it to her son, saying they better not upset his father. Franz Kafka would never find the courage to try again. He would never be able to give the letter to his father.
All his life Kafka suffered from migraines, anxiety, insomnia. But through his writing he transcended the barriers and limitations of the life he was born and thrust into. The literature he has left us behind is incomparable in its depth and complexity and universality. He is one of the most important voices in world literature and a remarkably sage witness to the predicaments of modern state and society.
‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,’ Kafka said.
His writing shatters the ice-cold layers of numbness and indifference and apathy that keep us apart. To Milena he wrote: “I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.” We, his readers, we who have not met him in life but feel like know his soul well enough through the magic of his words, can say the same for him:
“We miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”
We don’t need to climb the Alpine mountains to remember him with love and respect. Every day is a good day to salute the literary giant that was Franz Kafka.
I recently went back to Kafka and read his letters as well. He suffered so many physical problems in his life--too short a life--and much of it, I believe, was due to his emotional bruises. I do return to him periodically. When despair hits me, I cherish my reading which I have done continuously since I was four years old. I believe reading has saved me. And now, I am reading a wonderful novel: There Are Rivers in the Sky! Thank you.
Thank you for sharing the fragment of Kafka's letter and for reminding us of his profound legacy. Having been raised in Germany, I am quite familiar with his works, many of which were required reading in school. However, my comment is not about his literary influence.
Kafka’s letter to his father reminds me of the fragility of our words and the difficulty in fully expressing the depths of our inner world. Like Kafka, I’ve attempted to put into words the wounds and fears that have shaped me over the years—not through direct dialogue, but in quiet conversations at my parents’ graves.
Yet the words I find are merely fragments, pieces of a self I am only now beginning to rediscover and gently reconstruct. They are the remnants of a long-buried, exiled self that once had no chance to be heard or understood.
This process often feels incomplete and fragmented, but I believe that these very fragments—imperfect as they may be—are an essential part of my path to healing. Kafka’s letter shows me that what we cannot fully express still holds meaning. Our attempts to articulate our inner worlds, however fragmented, are part of a larger whole that we gradually bring to light.