Kafka's Crucible: School, Language, and the Birth of a Writer
Last time, I talked about Kafka’s childhood and his complicated relationship with his father. So now, let’s continue our exploration of Kafka’s formative years. We’re still in a period preceding any surviving manuscript or fragment—except for the possibility of hidden treasures within the 1,000 untranslated pages of Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente (aka Lost Writings). If anyone out there has access to these volumes, do correct me if I’m wrong… So, once more, we must turn to Reiner Stach’s invaluable biography to sketch a portrait of young Kafka as a teenager in his cultural milieu while he attended the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium in Prague (that is: his high/secondary school).
An essential point before we do: after losing his two infant brothers and being a solitary child until the age of six, Kafka became the eldest sibling and “the boss” as it were of his three younger sisters, Elli, Valli, and Ottla. Though he didn’t share a particularly close relationship with the first two, he grew profoundly attached to Ottla, the youngest. This affection is well-documented in a whole volume of correspondence between them (but more on that in due course; please subscribe and keep reading).
At school, Kafka encountered a world vastly different from today’s educational systems. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, students were taught by rote, focusing on Greek and Latin grammar, often without true comprehension, much less emotional engagement with Homer, Plato or Virgil. The curriculum also included German literature, particularly the works of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and German Romanticism. I say without emotional engagement, but let’s admit it: there must have been a sort of intellectual infusion going on because these texts left a lasting mark on Kafka, with Greek mythological characters reappearing in his later narratives (“The Silence of the Sirens”, “Poseidon”, “Prometheus”…). However, discipline at school was extremely strict, and boys were only supposed to follow commands without question—a dynamic that would significantly shape Kafka’s creative vision. As Reiner Stach points out:
Kafka was easily humiliated, yet he was surely not the only pupil to have been deeply disheartened by the paradoxical message that they would need to study hard in order to understand something that would elude their understanding no matter how they tried.1
This “paradoxical message” shaped Kafka’s worldview and seeped into his prose: Joseph K. and K., the protagonists of The Trial and The Castle, navigate similarly repressive, incomprehensible environments.
In my last post, I also mentioned Kafka’s multilingual background, which undoubtedly influenced his writing. Kafka grew up in a bilingual environment where German and Czech were spoken interchangeably (just like today’s Barcelona, where Spanish and Catalan are equally used). In addition to these languages, Kafka had some knowledge of Yiddish, owing to his Jewish heritage, and learned a bit of French after school. It’s pretty likely that this linguistic melange seeped into Kafka’s writing, potentially impacting his literary style and content. We’ll see how and how much when we get there.
Another potential influence at the time was Kafka’s German teacher, Professor Deml, who, inspired by Lessing’s advice, urged his students to write clearly and legibly (comparable advice to what you would find in the incredibly influential and slightly overrated English textbook by William Strunk, The Elements of Style):
“Write as you speak, then you will write well.” Deml explained, “Those who know what they want to say will find the right words and have no need for special rules and theoretical artifices, which serve only to restrict their ideas and constrain their reflexive powers of creativity.”2
This certainly influenced young Kafka’s appreciation for unadorned language. Also, reading texts aloud was one of the few rewarding exercises at school, and Kafka found lifelong pleasure in this skill, which contrasted with his usual defensive demeanour. This, too, is an invaluable practice that Kafka picked up at school and that any writer should use.
By 12 or 13, young Kafka was already set on becoming a writer, even though his family and teachers tried to dissuade him. His early writing endeavours remain a mystery, though, as Kafka himself got rid of his “childish things” before they could attract any (negative) attention. But one thing is certain: he was reading a lot!
Reading served as Kafka’s escape from his oppressive home and school environment—I can easily relate! He didn’t only immerse himself in novels and stories (often dismissed by adults as trash literature) but also in travelogues and expedition reports. As Reiner Stach observes, “Kafka must have been the only one [among German-language authors] to indulge wholeheartedly in Indian, Eskimo, and animal adventures even as an adult.”3
Yet, Kafka’s parents grew anxious about his nocturnal reading habits, which they lovingly attempted to quell by turning off his gas and light, signalling the end of his solitary pursuits. In short, reading and writing were considered frivolous hobbies in the Kafka family. Franz would later recall a telling episode:
I sat at the round table in the familiar room and could not forget that I was young and called to great things out of this present serenity. An uncle who liked to make fun of people finally took the page that I was holding only weakly, took a quick look at it, handed it back to me without even laughing, and only said to the others who were following him with their eyes, “the usual stuff ”.4
This incident feels utterly humiliating, potentially contributing to Kafka’s subsequent aversion to publishing or holding on to his own writing.
Stach also provides a detailed account of the Hilsner Affair, a highly sensationalised ‘“ritual murder” trial that occurred when Kafka was a teenager, revealing the pervasive anti-Semitic sentiments in Bohemian society at the time (not limited to Bohemia, obviously: vide the Affaire Dreyfus in France at the turn of the century). This event profoundly affected Kafka, and many years later, he would refer back to it when addressing instances of anti-Jewish discrimination. It may also have impacted his initial tale, “Description of a Struggle”,—but more on that soon.
As Stach notes, “The hatred of Jews was there, and it was ultimately directed not at a particular characteristic, but at the Jews as the personification of the Other, the foreign element, the ones who do not belong.”5 Kafka grappled with this outsider status throughout his life, never fully identifying with any one community—Jewish, German-speaking, or Czech.
In essence, Kafka’s formative years were marked by tensions—between home and school, German and Czech, Jew and Gentile, the desire for friendship and the assertion of his singularity. I believe it’s essential to keep all this in mind as we delve into his work since these experiences, which often revolved around themes of power, isolation, and the transformative power of literature, undoubtedly informed his writing.
Next time, we’ll finally find Kafka’s first extant letter, dated 1900, addressed to a mysterious girl named Selma Kohn. This will be a good time for a brief discussion on Kafka’s emerging sexual desires.
So, what do you find most intriguing about Kafka’s youth so far? Feel free to leave your comments below.
The Early Years, loc. 2518.
Ibid., loc. 2757.
Ibid., loc. 2690.
Diary, Jan. 19, 1911.
The Early Years, loc. 3254.