Taking Off with Kafka

A Dispatch from the Dawn of Flight

tl;dr: Wherein we find a young Kafka amidst the spectacle of an early airshow, witnessing the nascent wonder of flight while grappling with the earthly frustrations of stubborn coachmen and fashionably attired spectators.

Picture this: September 1909, a dusty field in Brescia, northern Italy, buzzing with the thrum of machinery and the hum of anticipation, the collective gasp of a crowd witnessing a spectacle that would redefine the limits of human endeavour. Men in flying machines!

Accompanied by his usual sidekicks, Max Brod and Max’s brother Otto, young Franz, taking a break from his soul-crushing insurance job in Prague, found himself swept up in this whirlwind of modernity, notebook in hand, capturing the nascent, exhilarating, and quite frankly terrifying dawn of aviation.

Kafka’s ‘The Aeroplanes at Brescia’ is more than a dry news report; neither is it anything like the surreal, enigmatic stuff he’d later be known for. No. In this piece, he’s a young reporter telling us what he sa…