Franz Kafka Letters From A Doll

Franz Kafka Letters From A Doll – In the early 1920s, Franz Kafka comforted a girl he met in the park by writing her many letters, pretending to be his missing doll.

At the beginning of 2021, readers asked us to look at the accuracy and origin of a widely circulated story on social media that described a heartwarming event in the late life of the writer Franz Kafka .

Franz Kafka Letters From A Doll

At the age of 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), never married and without children, was walking in a park in Berlin when he came across a girl crying because she had lost her favorite doll. He and Kafka searched for the doll that failed.

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The story tells how Kafka comforted the girl by bringing her books, supposedly written by the doll, describing her worldly interests. Later, the story goes, Kafka gave her a different doll, passing it off like the first one. Kafka dies, and years later the girl, now a woman, finds a book hidden inside the doll that Kafka gave her. It reads:

The story, in many versions, has a respected history since more than half a century and was first told by a source close to Kafka himself – his partner for the last year of his life, Dora Diamant. However, despite the enthusiastic efforts of some Kafka experts and researchers, the proofs – for example copies of the “white” books themselves – have not been found.

Kafka, the famous author of novels including “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial,” was born in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, in July 1883. He died in Austria in June 1924 at the age of 40. , he met 25-year-old Dora Diamant, from Poland, and the couple lived together in Berlin until March 1924 – which is when the incident is thought to have happened.

The vignette enjoyed waves of popularity on social media in recent years and saw a resurgence in February and March 2021, prompting questions from readers. One of the most interesting details came in October 2011, when the psychoanalyst and author May Benatar recalled the story in a column for HuffPost. That passage appears to be the earliest written source of the interpretation of Kafka’s final, poignant message: “Everything you love may be lost, but in the end, it will come back. love in no other way.”

Kafka And The Doll By Larissa Theule And Rebecca Green

Paul Auster included the story of the dolls in his 2005 novel “The Brooklyn Follies,” and it inspired the March 2021 cartoon “Kafka and the Doll” by Larissa Theule and Rebecca Green.

In 1982, Ronald Hayman mentioned the story of the dolls in his biography of Kafka, and in 1984, the journalist Anthony Rudolf published a version of the story, translated from French, in the literary supplement the Jewish Chronicle. Rudolf first explained the story by describing it as a “simple, complete and true Kafka story,” which Diamant first published to Marthe Robert, a French Kafka translator, in the early 1950s.

Robert/Rudolf’s story can be read in full below and here. In this version, there is no replacement doll, no reunion with the little girl, and no comfort found in a book a year later. Instead, after writing a letter every day “for at least three weeks,” Kafka finally ends the episode by informing the girl (in the person of doll), she will marry and start a new life with her husband: “You yourself will understand, we must stop seeing each other.”

However, according to the Irish-American Kafka scholar and translator Mark Harman, Diamant told a small story to Max Brod, the author’s friend and executor of his estate. That statement, according to Harman, included a conclusion in which Kafka, in order to comfort the little girl, gave her a replacement.

The Soul Of Toys

In 2001, while living and working in Berlin, Harman searched for evidence to confirm the doll story, but nothing turned up. He recounted his findings in a 2004 article in the New England Review, detailing possible explanations for the story and the current lack of conclusive evidence:

As I waited the whole time, nothing much came up. Why, despite many studies, of which I am only the most recent, no evidence of the doll story has been revealed? One of the obvious ideas is that Dora Diamant made the incident happen. However, it seems that he cannot make this meeting in the park. The information about the incident and the baby story itself seem true, and, although Dora had an exalted position, she was distinguished … she thought too highly of Kafka to join the disciples something like that. Besides, what motivation did he have? So what happened to the little girl and the book doll? As Kafka is wont to do, there are many possibilities. The girl may have died many years ago, or may have suffered in later events, or may have been Jewish and killed during the Holocaust. As for the books themselves, there is a remote possibility that they may appear. Kafka may not have given the girl to keep or keep copies. We know that Dora Diamant burned several manuscripts on Kafka’s orders, and it is possible that the doll books went up in flames. However, she did not destroy as many texts as she had previously stated… In the spring of 1933 the Gestapo raided an apartment in Berlin where she lived with the man she later married, Ludwig Lask, a German Communist leader, took away many of Kafka’s writings. , including, perhaps, doll books. Dora sought help from Brod, who contacted the Prague poet Camill Hoffmann, then the cultural attaché at the Czech embassy, ​​who tried to intervene but was told that the Gestapo had no hope of recovering any such manuscripts from the many confiscated items. Perhaps they are hiding somewhere in a former East German or Russian archive and other documents from Kafka’s stay in Berlin.

Whether the story of Kafka and the doll is true, edited, or completely fictional is unclear. However, it continues to bring comfort and encouragement to millions, decades later, in the face of grief and suffering. In her 2011 column, May Benatar described it as a “healing story,” adding that:

“For me there are two wise lessons in this story: Grief and sadness are common even for a small child. And the way to healing is to see how love comes back in a different way.”

The Dolls Letter Postman

The story of Kafka’s kindness and compassion can be, for the wider world, the same service that the book itself does for the little girl in the park – comfort through stories, no matter how wrong it is. Tom Glass, the narrator of Paul Auster’s novel “The Brooklyn Follies,” describes the profound effect of fake books on girls:

By then, of course, the girl no longer misses the doll. Kafka gave him something else than that, and by those three weeks, he was freed to write about his frustration. He has the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live in a story, to live in a mental world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes, the truth is no longer there. “Kafka and the doll” is a beautiful story, written by Jordi Sierra I Fabra, about a legendary meeting of the writer born in Prague Franz Kafka. The beautiful photo above is by Isabel Torner.

It is said that one year before his death, Franz Kafka was walking in Steglitz Park, in Berlin. This is his walk every day, but today there was a different change when he found a little girl crying heartbroken. She lost her doll.

To calm him down, Franz first helped find the doll. Finally realizing that they won’t find it, Franz tells the little girl that the doll is probably going on a trip but she shouldn’t worry, because she is a postman. and the doll will send him a letter. He planned to meet her the next day at the same place, to deliver the letter.

A Lovely Story With A Beautiful Message

With the same focus he used in all his writing, he created a letter from the doll and read it to her when they met the next day.

“Please don’t be sad for me, I’m going on a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”

This is the beginning of many books. When he met the little girl he read to her from these carefully composed books of the beloved doll’s imagination.

After the ceremony, Kafka gave her a doll. She obviously looks different from the original doll, but an attached letter explained:

Kafka And The Doll

Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a book stuck in a previously unknown space inside the beloved doll. In summary it said:

“Everything