Arthur Cohen
KAFKA'S PRAGUE
Caroline Commanville , Flaubert's niece, records in her
memoir the sacrifices which her uncle made for literature - his lone–
liness , his celibacy, his disdain for the attachments of wife or family,
and she concludes that he came ultimately to regret his departure
from
tela route commune.
" She cites in evidence Flaubert's agitated com–
ment upon their leaving the home of a married friend , who sat in
evident content, surrounded by her appealing children . As they
returned along the Seine to Flaubert's solitary quarters , Madame
Commanville reports, her uncle observed
"ils sont dans Ie
vra!~
" refer–
ring by this phrase to the example of domestic felicity which they had
just seen. And, as though persuading himself further of what he had
already announced, Flaubert repeated again, but this time with
increased gravity,
"ils sont dans Ie vrai."
Franz Kafka often cited this remark of Flaubert's as a paradigm
of his own situation. Kafka felt himself particularly identified with
the great Flaubert as well as with Heinrich von Kleist, whose own
autobiography resembled in so many ways his own misery of
misalli–
ance
with family, work, friends, and vocation. Both Flaubert and von
Kleist suffered in alienation from
"Ie vrai"-
the common, pedestrian
round of days , where routine is ostensibly salvaged from tedium by
the affection and intimacy of life
en jamille.
If
I construe Kafka's life as arid , I do so with full recognition of
the superlative achievement which was recognized least by himself.
Kafka also failed to find compensation in his personal life: the num–
ber of occasions on which he was able to claim pleasure in his days
were a half-dozen-perhaps, the exuberant night in which he
finished his story
TheJudgment,
the few days of happiness he spent at
Marienbad with Felice Bauer, the intermittent moments of content–
ment at the very end with Dora Dymant. The
Diaries
and the
Letters
confirm persistent psychogenic and physical distress - migraines,
shooting pains, insomnia, feelings of paralysis - and in the last years
consumptive attacks, internal bleeding, and anxiety of the deepest
order. All these alarums of psychic unease and physical illness
