Imagine this scenario: It’s the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a period just before the Great War would alter everything. A young man with promising prospects is about to meet his fiancée’s father for the very first time. The expectations of the era would have him present his qualifications and his family’s background to make the match acceptable. However, when faced with both imagined and real scrutiny—triggering guilt and shame about his motives—he boldly writes to his future father-in-law: “All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”
This is a reflection found in Franz Kafka’s diaries, translated by Ross Benjamin. Franz Kafka, born in 1884 and living until 1924, was nearly 30 and engaged to Felice Bauer when he made this sweeping statement. It was the first of three engagements: twice to Felice, and once briefly to Julie Wohryzek. His decision to communicate via a letter was fitting, given his largely correspondence-based relationship with Felice over their four years together.
Notably, Kafka did not inform Herr Bauer that he was a lawyer employed by a workers’ insurance firm with a deep passion for fiction writing, nor did he say he had a secure and decently paying job but spent his nights writing stories at his parents’ home in Prague. He omitted any flattery regarding his primary interest in literature or his affection for Bauer’s daughter. All these versions would have held truth, though none would carry the same profound truth as his actual declaration, which was as much an address to himself as to his addressee, that he was, in his own words, “nothing but literature.”
The letter to Herr Bauer never reached him; Felice intercepted it. What Kafka shared in this letter was a dedication to something beyond a shared life with Felice, beyond what today might be called a lifestyle. As proven by his diaries, Kafka’s life was literature, a nonsocial existence that could not be experienced as “lived” with another person.
He often suffered pain, fatigue, or distress due to frail health. He was vexed by familial duties and the noise and prying of his family. He was torn by the need to work for an income that drained his creative energy. All these were hurdles to his writing ambition. Yet, Kafka, despite his workload and eventual chronic illness, was far from a recluse. He had many friends, admirers, colleagues, and romantic interests. His perspective was slightly askew from bourgeois conventions, yet it resonated with the European modernity of that time, which was expressing disillusionment with society. His existence was wholly devoted to the uncanny yet crucial nature of writing, as he saw it.
For Kafka, writing was a peculiar way of engaging with the world. It was an overpowering force, demanding his submission, entwined with and estranged from his personal life. It was far more than self-expression—more than a quest for a legacy, unlike what his friend and fellow writer Max Brod wanted for him. Felice and her father recognized Kafka’s paradoxical relationship with life. In his diaries, Kafka notes that during the “tribunal” when his engagement to Felice was first broken, “Her father grasps it correctly from all sides.”
In 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which would ultimately claim his life shortly before his 41st birthday. He published only a modest 300 or so pages of work during his lifetime, with well-known stories like “The Judgement” (1913), “The Stoker” (1913), “The Metamorphosis” (1915), and “In the Penal Colony” (1919). Max Brod, who became Kafka’s literary executor, managed the publication of his unfinished novels “The Trial” (1925), “The Castle” (1926), and “The Man Who Disappeared” (1927), also referred to as “Amerika.” Brod also kept Kafka’s diaries and some paper collections, despite Kafka’s instructions to destroy them. This refusal has drawn much speculation.
The diaries of Franz Kafka offer invaluable insights into his relatively small but profound literary output. Ross Benjamin’s new translation provides access to the German critical edition published in 1990, which corrected omissions, amendments, and inaccuracies in Brod’s originally released version in the late 1940s. It’s refreshing to read Kafka’s work without Brod’s influence. But why was Brod so involved?
Kafka wasn’t a well-known figure during the mere 15 years he was publishing, starting with “The Aeroplanes at Brescia” published in 1909. For a long time, Kafka was aware of the limited attention his writing received outside a small circle of believers, with Brod at its center. This fact was embarrassingly highlighted when Czech writer Carl Sternheim, who shared a publisher with Kafka, redirected his prize money to Kafka, assuming him poor. Kafka found this gesture presumptive, as Sternheim was unfamiliar with his work, and reluctantly accepted the money, further using it for war bonds. This was Kafka’s sole literary accolade in his lifetime.
His publisher, Kurt Wolff, was enthusiastic about Kafka’s work. But war disrupted Wolff’s publishing ambitions just as Kafka’s work began gaining traction. Wolff left the business to Georg Heinrich Meyer, more skilled in the business than in cultivating authorial relationships. Hence, laying the foundation of Kafka’s posthumous recognition as a literary genius fell to Brod. This mission entwined Brod’s literary standing with Kafka’s legacy through works such as his fictionalized friendship account “The Kingdom of Love” (1928) and his Kafka biography in 1937. The former portrayed Kafka through a character named Richard, while Brod was depicted as Christof.
Brod’s extensive, sometimes mythologized portrayal of Kafka extended beyond merely ensuring the publication of his works. For example, in the posthumous edition of Kafka’s short stories, Brod included an appendix to guide readers on interpretation, insisting he alone could unlock their meanings. Ross Benjamin notes that while Brod’s role in establishing Kafka’s international stature was invaluable, it also made Kafka’s reception deeply tied to Brod’s interests, possibly skewing perceptions of Kafka’s work.
Benjamin’s new translation of Kafka’s diaries shows them clearly for the first time as a crucible for his art, leaning on years of scholarship. We see the craft of writing as Kafka honed it in his thirteen diaries between 1909-1923. Previously altered grammar and syntax are restored, as are intimate insights like homoeroticism and visits to brothels, or critical remarks about others, including Brod.
Most importantly, this version brings us close to Kafka’s writing process, preserving mistakes and unfinished ideas. For instance, drafting “Description of a Struggle,” he writes, “You I said and gave him a little push with my knee,” eventually refining this idea over time to: “You,” he said, “I haven’t forgotten about you.”
In his diaries, Kafka often reflects less about himself and more about writing’s role in his identity movement across different texts. The lack of personal tone makes them resemble more a laboratory for creation than autobiographical documentation.
Kafka believed in a broader cultural expression influenced by the assimilation of languages, akin to the efforts of his Jewish peers. Later scholars like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would leverage such thoughts, exploring “minor literature”—a concept highlighting how smaller cultures find unique voices within dominant languages.
Blanchot explains that laws invite transgression, and this new diary edition, with Ross Benjamin’s translation, breaks boundaries meant for Kafka’s eyes alone. It represents a blend of craft and soul, breathing life into pages previously filtered by voices like Brod’s, now open for readers to engage afresh with Kafka the writer.