FRANZ KAFKA: Diary's Partial Truth

FRANZ KAFKA

Diary's Partial Truth

This prose-poem tries to place the diaries of Franz Kafka(1883 to 1924) in a personal perspective. Kafka was one of the most influential fiction writers of the early 20th century; a novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of 20th century literature. The acknowledgement and fame he achieved came only after his death. His diaries were written between 1910 and 1923.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 18 July 2010.

My diaries, Franz, began in 1984 with

their casual observations, their details

of daily life, philosophical reflections,

ideas, accounts of dreams, thoughts of

stories and prose-poems, but they will

not become the famous, quotable things

which your 14 years of efforts to provoke

your stalled creativity have become in the

century after your death. One would think,

Franz, that you were always depressed, sick,

isolated and friendless, but a diary only tells

some of life's story, eh? I've got a diary that

goes back more than 25 years and it tells little

of my story, unless I include under the rubric

of diary what I have outlined above. You were

a man living at a crucial time in history, Franz,

at the start of a new, a Formative Age, a stage(1)

in history that was little known as the tempests

were just beginning in that century of light and

millions upon millions fell into a despair even

without your philosophical aptitude for endless

suffering, your various forms of mental illness.(2)

(1) From a Baha'i perspective of history

(2) According to the Italian journal Acta Otorhinolaryngol Italica, 2005 October, Vol. 25, No. 5, pp. 328 to 332, Kafka suffered form depression, delusions and had clear signs of self-destructive mania. He had a need to torment and humiliate himself, as well as a sense of immense guilt, personal emptiness and helplessness.

Ron Price

18 July 2010