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 saw at this event that pulled in tens of thousands of people. Part travelogue, part social commentary. A touch of what we’d now call ‘gonzo journalism’—remember, this is the same guy who, just a couple of years earlier, had vowed he’d never stoop so low as to write for a newspaper. Ah, well... never say never.
The trip to Brescia wasn’t solely about Kafka marvelling at cutting-edge technology. According to Max Brod’s biography, it was a strategic move to jolt him out of a creative rut:
At the time Kafka’s literary work was lying fallow; for months he had not produced anything, and he often complained to me that his talent was obviously seeping away, that it had completely and utterly gone from him. Indeed he sometimes lived for months in a kind of lethargy, in utter despair; in my diary I find note after note on his sadness.1
Ever the encouraging friend and tireless champion of Kafka’s talent, Brod saw the airshow as the perfect opportunity to reignite Kafka’s creative spark. He even framed the trip as a playful competition, suggesting, ‘I was going to write an article, too, and we should decide who had succeeded in making the best remarks. Playful, not to say childish aims of this nature seldom failed in their effect on Kafka.’2
The trip itself, as Brod tells us, was far from glamorous: squalid lodgings, questionable amenities, ‘we thought Sparafucile [the assassin in Verdi’s Rigoletto] was bound to join us at any moment,’3 and even an unfortunate run-in with bedbugs. At any rate, Brod’s scheme paid off: ‘The article “The Aeroplanes at Brescia” Franz wrote with joy, finished it, and then had it published, very much cut, at the end of September 1909, in Bohemia.’4 But the real success, in Brod’s eyes, was not the article itself but how it served ‘as an incitement to bring Franz’s pleasure in creation into flow again.’5
Kafka’s article conjures a vision of glorious chaos: a cacophony of people converging with cutting-edge marvels. Picture ‘monstrous beggars’ rubbing shoulders with impeccably dressed ladies, frantic organisers pushing through clusters of spellbound onlookers, and all eyes fixated skyward on those flimsy contraptions made of wood and canvas (actually glorified mopeds with wings) promising to defy gravity.
The airshow showcased a cast of pioneering aviators, among them Louis Blériot, who had just flown solo across the English Channel—akin to a kind of Neil Armstrong / Tom Cruise of his era. Alongside him were Glenn Curtiss, the American inventor and future patriarch of the U.S. aircraft industry, and Henri Rougier, the French sportsman who would later win the first Monte Carlo Rally. Kafka dutifully lists these ‘celebrity pilots’, but his keen eye for detail and wry sense of humour shine through in his descriptions.
Take, for instance, his portrayal of Curtiss:
Curtiss sits all alone in front of the adjacent hangar. Through a small gap in the curtains you can see his plane, bigger than we’ve been led to believe. As we walk past, Curtiss lifts the New York Herald in front of him and reads a line; we walk past again after half an hour, he is already holding the middle of the page, after another half an hour he is finished with the page and begins a new one. Apparently he doesn’t want to fly today.
This glimpse into Curtiss’s seeming indifference demonstrates Kafka’s ability to find humour and humanity amidst the frenzy of the occasion. Curtiss would end up winning the ‘Grand Prize’ with a 50 km flight in 49 min, at the breakneck average speed of 61 km/h or 38 miles/h, almost as fast as the pilot’s reading pace!
Likewise, his depiction of Blériot—the main event:
Blériot, the one we think about all the time? Where is Blériot? [...] Indeed, close by on the field there is a little yellowish aeroplane that is prepared for flying. Now we can see Blériot’s hangar, beside that of his student Leblanc, built onto the field itself. We immediately spot Blériot, leaning against one of the two wings, and observe the head firm on his neck, his mechanics, how they work on the motor.
Kafka portrays the famed aviator as ‘merciless, like a student that the whole class is prompting: no, he can’t do it, he always gets stuck again, he always freezes at the same spot and fails.’
Meanwhile, Kafka never lost sight of the absurdity that lurked beneath the wings during the airshow. Case in point: the farcical episode, sandwiched between descriptions of aerial daring, where he and the Brod brothers are hoodwinked by a devious taximan who exorbitantly overcharges them for a short ride:
A coachman demands 3 liras. We offer two. The coachman turns down the ride and, purely out of friendship, describes the almost terrifying distance to our destination. We become ashamed of our first offer. Okay, 3 liras. We get aboard, three turns of the wagon down short alleyways and we are where we wanted to be. Otto, much more energetic than both myself and our other companion [Max], explains that he isn’t going to pay 3 liras for a ride that took less than a minute: one lira would be more than enough. Here is one lira. It is already dark, the alleyway is empty, the coachman is strong.
The ensuing dispute over the driver’s inflated fees and missing tariff, recounted with a mix of self-deprecation and wry amusement, does more than provide comic relief; it underscores the universal anxieties of travel and sets the stage for his future exploration of the arbitrary and at times sinister exercise of power. It’s a gentle reminder that, no matter how high we soar, the banalities of terrestrial life are never far behind. He notes: ‘Regrettably, our behaviour was not in the right; you cannot act like that in Italy. Somewhere else it may be acceptable but not here… you can’t become an Italian in a weeklong trip.’
Kafka, however, does not restrict his observations to the aerial feats and the vexatious cabby. He casts his gaze across the assembled crowd, akin to how Proust would a little later, noting not only the spectacle of flight but the very fabric of a society in flux. He notes the ‘sparkling ladies from Paris’, the ‘dresses, loose on the upper body’ and the ‘old lady whose face has the colour of dark yellow grapes’—a snapshot of humanity brought together by a shared interest in the spectacle above. We even glimpse notable figures like Giacomo Puccini and Gabriele D’Annunzio, ‘small and weak, seemingly dancing shyly’, reminding us that this nascent marvel transcended social classes and artistic inclinations. Kafka, ever perceptive, captures these subtle social interactions, the unspoken hierarchies, the pretensions and play-acting against a backdrop of technological advancement.
Yet, despite the burgeoning cynicism and biting wit, Kafka’s prose maintains a sense of awe. When Blériot finally takes flight, Kafka’s words ascend with him, echoing the gasps of the crowd, capturing the frailty of these early aircraft and the audacity of humans challenging the laws of nature:
The low sun illuminates the floating wings through the canopy of the stands. Everybody looks up at him with devotion; there is no room in any heart for anybody else. He flies a small circle and shows himself almost directly above us. And everybody cranes their necks to see how the monoplane balances, is steadied by Blériot then climbs some more.
Here, Kafka captures the sense of admiration that the sight of a plane soaring through the sky elicited during the early days of aviation (compare this, if you will, with the aeroplane passage in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, currently under
’s scrutiny). As Reiner Stach notes in his biography, ‘Brescia offered one of the last opportunities to see flying up close, as an integrated experience.’6 Kafka’s narrative immortalises this moment when the lines separating pilots and spectators, machines and humans, were more fluid than they would later become (aeroplanes were small and hardly flew higher than a hundred meters). This passage also suggests that Kafka saw aviation as a metaphor for the human desire to transcend the limitations of earthly existence: ‘For Kafka, human flight represented a step into freedom, much like swimming.’7‘The Aeroplanes at Brescia’ remains a testament to Kafka’s journalistic skills and a turning point in his evolution as a writer. The realistic, nearly cinematic quality of Kafka’s writing, his sharp eye for detail, his wry humour—traits already evident in ‘Wedding Preparations in the Country’—would characterise his future work.
This article also provides a view of a crucial historical juncture, when the world stood on the brink of a new age of technological marvels and dangers. The Brescia airshow took place just five years before the outbreak of World War I, a conflict in which aeroplanes would play a crucial role. Thus, the airshow can be interpreted as a precursor to the technological and social transformations defining the 20th century. Kafka’s narrative affords us a peek into this brave new world, with all its exhilarating possibilities and unsettling implications, a premonition of darker days to come, before the shadows fully envelop his prose and the world.
So, readers, as you delve deeper into Kafka’s works, keep this Brescia dispatch in mind. It hints that Kafka’s later, darker tales were already germinating within him even as he gazed upward, captivated by those fragile machines that promised to carry humankind into a new and uncertain era.
Quotes and translations from ‘Die Aeroplane in Brescia’ by Franz Kafka, translated by Claudia Raba.
Brod, Franz Kafka, A Biography, Da Capo, p. 104.
Loc. cit.
Ibid., p. 103.
Ibid., p. 104.
Ibid., p. 105.
Stach, The Early Years, loc. 7463.
Ibid., loc. 7505.
Thanks for sharing this illuminating and unknown bit of Kafka. Always so interesting to get to know the person behind the genius, and you're presenting it extremely engagingly.
This kind of writing is only found in good books; you've raised the bar for this platform. Thank you for sharing this.