Best 4 quotes of Reiner Stach on MyQuotes

I had also underestimated what an abundance of information can be extracted from contemporary newspapers, even information that bore directly on Kafka's life. In this way it was possible to complete the volume about the early years; and, in my view, nothing substantial is missing from it.

Kafka often describes himself as a bloodless figure: a human being who doesn't really participate in the life of his fellow human beings, someone who doesn't actually live in the true sense of the word, but who consists rather of words and literature. In my view, that is, however, only half true. In a roundabout way through literature, which presupposes empathy and exact observation, he immerses himself again in the life of society; in a certain sense he comes back to it.

Kafka was a complex character in a complex historical era. In order to understand him, you have to do more than cite facts. It is necessary to connect the facts in a meaningful way. His relationship to Judaism, to his father, to women, to literature - all of this is interconnected; and there are decisive moments in his life, in which such interactions suddenly become visible and can be experienced in an almost sensuous manner. It is these moments above all that I try to narrate dramatically.

Kafka was certainly one of the great literary talents of the twentieth century, but he did not find his way to his own style until the age of nearly 30, so rather late. The disciplined immersion in unconscious psychical material is something he also learned only after long years of practice. When he succeeded in doing it for the first time - in the story The Judgement - it put him in a euphoric mood. He wanted to experience this again and again; the act of creation made him happy and proud.