Kafka, Prague, and the Enduring Power of Place
A Literary Pilgrimage
tl;dr: Wherein yours truly traipses through the cobbled streets of Prague, following in the footsteps (and tram tracks) of one Franz Kafka. Expect encounters with giant metal heads, unsettling sculptures, and haunting echoes of bureaucracy, all seasoned with a dash of existential gloom (courtesy of Herr Doktor Kafka, not our humble author, thank goodness).
Right then, brace yourselves, dear readers—last week, I was off to Prague, hot on the trail of Franz Kafka, and that’s where I’m taking you now.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Kafka and Prague—cliché, right? Tourist with a dog-eared copy of The Metamorphosis? And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The two are about as inseparable as tea and scones or pub and beer in the stereotypical image of what Londoners look like... So, let me dispense with the preconceived notions and approach this journey with fresh eyes. No need for bureaucratic labyrinths or existential angst on this trip—we’re leaving that to Kafka, or rather to the self-proclaimed kafkaologists.
Summer morning. Crisp light bathing the Charles Bridge, and tourists jostled for the perfect selfie with a gargoyle. There I was too, armed with my phone like everyone else, retracing and restacking Kafka’s steps through the streets of the Old Town. My journey to this enchanting city was, in part, a whimsical escape but also a deliberate pilgrimage to follow in the author’s footsteps.
The city of labyrinthine streets and Gothic spires—Prague is the beating heart of Europe, yet forever on the fringes, landlocked, Mitteleuropa, ‘Eastern European’. At the turn of the 20th century, unlike today, at that fin-de-siècle point and on that verge where the Austro-Hungarian Empire used to merge with the Slavic hinterlands, Prague was a multicultural and multilingual brew: Czech, German, and Jewish cultures, each vying for dominance. Kafka, a German-speaking Jew, found himself caught between these worlds, never entirely belonging to any of them, constantly feeling like an outsider. Yet, Kafka is unthinkable without Prague. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, he was born and raised in that town, rarely venturing far from its confines. The city, with its labyrinthine streets, gothic and baroque architecture, and rich cultural heritage, served as both muse and prison for Kafka throughout his life, almost till the end. It seeps into his work, not in postcard-perfect panoramas, but in a more insidious way. It’s in the ever-present feeling of being an outsider, even amidst the familiar streets.
So, here I am, retracing Kafka’s steps, standing in front of his childhood home—the House at the Minute, situated on Old Town Square. As mentioned earlier, this is where young Franz spent his formative years, subjected to the cook’s relentless taunts. Next to it was his high school, a safe space for German-speaking students in a predominantly Czech environment, overlooking the square and his father’s shop.
Later on, Kafka’s daily life was marked by the routine of his walks: Kinsky Palace, Charles University, Generali headquarters, Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, local cafés and pubs, his parents’ flat. It’s all here, squeezed into a few hundred meters—a testament to the power of place: Kafka’s life, captured within this cluster of landmarks, no more than a ten-minute walk apart. In this small circle, Kafka shuffled from one apartment to the next, always within a stone’s throw of the square. Within that confined space, Kafka’s entire world unfolds while the Astronomical Clock chimes away the hours of his life.
In a prior post, I referenced pavlatches. Now, watch for them. These balustrades jutting out over inner patios—caught between inside and out, private and public, the thin line between comfort and exposure—pure Kafka, wouldn’t you say?
Kafka’s relationship with Prague was a complicated one. On the one hand, Kafka found inspiration in Prague’s rich history and gothic atmosphere: the narrow, winding streets of the Old Town, the imposing presence of Prague Castle, the atmosphere of the Jewish Quarter—all of them seeped into his stories and novels. Yet, on the other hand, Kafka found Prague stifling. He felt suffocated by its provincial attitudes and its constraining social hierarchies. He cherished dreams of escaping the city, of starting a new life in Berlin, Madrid, or even America. This never happened, or a bit too late.
Despite his ambivalence, Kafka was deeply rooted in Prague. His daily walks through the city’s streets, his interactions with fellow writers and intellectuals all fused together, shaping his peculiar worldview and literary output. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka morphs the constricted Samsa apartment to resemble a quintessential petit-bourgeois Praguean household, with its suffocating conventions and its inability to accommodate the strange and the new.
Surprisingly, Kafka never explicitly mentions his native city in his works, instead obliquely alluding to it. Prague remains nameless yet omnipresent in both The Trial and The Castle, as if Kafka harboured some resentment, refusing to grant the ‘Golden City’ due credit. Hence, he vented his frustration by disordering its landmarks in his tales, particularly ‘Description of a Struggle.’ This symbolic toppling of structures exposes not so much the fragility of Prague’s Gothic spires or Baroque domes but rather the precariousness of its manufactured societal fabric, rife with class conflict and skirmishing.
Prague is more than just a backdrop for Kafka’s life. No, it’s a character, an omnipresent figure seeping into the fabric of his words with a blend of awe and suffocation. As I gazed out from the Petřín Tower on the Belvedere, taking in the panorama of Prague on a glorious summer day—all that history, that sea of red-tiled roofs stretching towards the horizon—I understood this was the magnificent and claustrophobic circle of Kafka’s life, a symbol of that inescapable atmosphere that permeates Kafka’s work, the corridors of the ‘Hotel Occidental’ in Amerika, the nightmarish courtrooms of The Trial, the impenetrable castle of… The Castle.
Today, the same Prague, after having ignored or rejected him under Nazi and Soviet regimes, celebrates Kafka as one of its most famous sons. The city is dotted with monuments and museums dedicated to his life and work, and his image has become a ubiquitous presence on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs.
Like any self-respecting Kafka aficionado, I had to pop into the Kafka Museum. Now, museums dedicated to authors can be hit-or-miss affairs. The Kafka Museum, I’m happy to say, is well worth a visit. Squirrelled away in a quiet corner of Malá Strana, it’s a full-on immersion into Kafka’s tumultuous inner landscape with its atmospheric settings, minimalist symphonic arrangements (courtesy of Philip Glass), and facsimiles of Kafka’s manuscripts. The stairs, dimly lit corridors, walls plastered with snippets of Kafka’s writing, and the labyrinthine layout seeks to mirror the same disorienting vibe—the very mixture of brilliance, madness, and cryptic unease—that Kafka wove into his tales.
In the New Town sits David Černý’s Statue of Franz Kafka – that giant, rotating head, composed of layers of stainless steel, perpetually in motion, mirror-and-disappearer of Kafka’s face, dancing like water in the afternoon sun, constantly changing, never settling on a fixed image, multifaceted and elusive. Other Černý sculptures—the bar-code-faced babies, the two effigies taking the piss out of Czech statehood, Dr Freud precariously dangling from a rooftop perch—a menagerie of modern grotesqueries, offer a reminder that the tongue-in-cheek—shameless, irreverent—is pervasive in this city.
Even that charming tourist trap, the Golden Lane, with its quaint historical kitsch, has been ‘Kafka-fied’: tiny, toy-like houses hanging off Prague Castle’s battlements, once occupied by alchemists and goldsmiths, now possessed by the shade and merch of Kafka. And within one of these miniature dwellings, teetering over a precipice, decades before being swarmed by selfie-stick-wielding tourists, Kafka sought refuge, a place to escape the pressures of family and his office job. This hovel was where he crafted the tales that would eventually be proscribed in his homeland, yet seem to well from Prague’s very foundations.
As I strolled back to my hotel, Charles Bridge bathed in the dying light, I realised that, by immersing myself in the physical and cultural landscape that shaped the author’s life and imagination, I had come to see Kafka not as a remote, enigmatic figure, but as a deeply human presence, whose struggles continue to resonate with readers around the world. I carried with me not only a newfound appreciation for Kafka and his work but also a renewed sense of the enduring importance of storytelling in our lives.
So, gentle reader, if you ever find yourself wandering the streets of Prague, keep an eye out for those pavlatches, those giant rotating heads—all these shadows Kafka left lurking in the corners.
Just my two cents. Cheers. Toodle-oo. Thanks for reading. Now, you deserve a juicy McKafka!
One last thing: I’ll shortly be visiting the Oxford exhibition ‘Kafka: Making of an Icon’ and will report on Notes. Stay tuned!
Great read! I visited Prague a few years back, but it was winter, bitterly cold and snowing. It felt very fitting, it feels conspicuous to imagine Kafka in the sun!