The joyful side of Franz Kafka

It's the birthday of the writer Franz Kafka, (books by this author) born in Prague (1883). A writer associated with doom and gloom, the word "Kafkaesque" has come to mean absurd, dreamlike, and even sinister. In a letter to his fiancée, Kafka wrote: "The life that awaits you is not that of the happy couples you see strolling along before you in Westerland, no lighthearted chatter arm in arm, but a monastic life at the side of a man who is peevish, miserable, silent, discontented, and sickly." He had sexual anxiety, and felt inferior to his father. And it is easy to summarize his life as tragic: He only published a few short stories during his life and never finished any novels (besides his novella Metamorphosis); he had a few love affairs, but was never married; and then he died at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.

But there are some cheerful elements to Kafka's life story. For one, he was a competent and dedicated employee of an insurance agency, the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute. He started there in 1908 and worked there steadily for 14 years, compensating injured workers. He had a good salary, worked six-hour work days, from 8:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. and worked his way up over the years. He kept records, wrote letters and articles, dealt with statistics, assessed his own business and others, processed claims, and represented the organization as a lawyer. Kafka himself tended to dismiss his work when he talked or wrote about it. But he showed up every day, and he wrote up the official annual reports, and was apparently proud of them because he sent copies to his family and friends. His friend the writer Max Brod wrote a biography of Kafka, and he wrote: "I spoke to one of the head officials who once worked with Kafka. Franz Kafka, so the gentleman told me, was popular with everyone; he hadn't a single enemy."

Kafka also had a great, even obsessive, respect for health and physicality. There is much made of Kafka's time in coffee houses, but no evidence that he ever drank coffee himself, and he did not drink alcohol at all. He slept with his window open all the year round, always in fresh air, did calisthenics every evening at exactly 7:30 p.m., and he liked all sorts of exercise. He wrote in his diary in 1910: "I row, ride, swim, lie in the sun. Therefore my calves are good, my thighs not bad, my belly will pass muster, but my chest is very shabby."

And Kafka's last love affair, with a 25-year-old woman named Dora Diamant, seems to have been a happy one. They met at a Baltic resort, where she was working in the kitchen. He entertained her by performing shadow puppets on the wall, and he read aloud to her. They played together and teased each other. He wanted to marry her, but her father refused, on the grounds that Kafka was not an Orthodox Jew. They were only together for a year before he died of tuberculosis. Dora said later, "Everything was done with laughter," and, "Kafka was always cheerful. He liked to play; he was a born playmate, always ready for some fun.

This was in ,my inbox again from the Writer's Almanac today. I am posting it on my blog as I am so very touched to hear of the life of the real man ,Franz Kafka. My impression of him through his writings was one of a bleak.melancholic, reclusive man that shyed away from the vibrancy that life has to offer. To my delight, i am told, he did calisthenics, a form of yoga so to speak daily,that he was cheerful,playful,ready for fun,slept with his window open all the time,that he was well liked and even loved and knew of the joys of love, that he lived a well lived life,,,,.