Exhibitions centered on writers are sometimes an uneasy stability of biography and interpretation, picture and textual content, however Franz Kafka, who continues to fascinate and confound readers properly into the twenty first century, presents an particularly complicated case. A present devoted to the creator on the Morgan Library & Museum is worth it for any fan. On the similar time, it sheds mild on the bounds of this exhibition mannequin. Themed groupings of archival supplies (e.g., images, manuscripts, and letters and postcards from Kafka to family and friends) from Oxford College’s Bodleian Library carry viewers via his quick life and key works — notably, his most well-known story, “The Metamorphosis” (1915), and his ultimate, incomplete novel, The Fortress (1922, revealed 1926).
Works by a couple of different artists and writers are on view, together with some marked-up manuscript pages from Philip Roth, however the Kafka materials is the draw. The curators spotlight connections between his life and writing, however prioritize biography over interpretation, so guests can come to their very own conclusions. It’s a aid to keep away from the hackneyed interpretations of Kafka that multiply with every new version. But, for an creator so singular that his literature spawned its personal adjective, one thing about all of the archival info feels irritating … virtually bureaucratic.
Then once more, what could possibly be extra Kafkaesque than circling the present, making an attempt to enter his world however by no means fairly managing, simply as Ok, the protagonist in The Fortress, by no means reaches his vacation spot? The concept of mounting a Kafka exhibition appears itself like a Sisyphean job. There’ll all the time be a barrier to getting in or out as a result of, like Ok, we’re counting on the knowledge we’re given to attempt to attain a mythologized aim that’s all the time out of attain.
Set up view of Franz Kafka on the Morgan Library & Museum (images by Janny Chiu)
However we’re given sufficient particulars to contextualize a few of his writing and cobble collectively a partial picture of Kafka. In a telling quote from 1902, for instance, he describes his house of Prague as “a little mother” with “claws.” The remark speaks to the environment of entrapment and claustrophobia that weighs down so lots of his situations. He additionally had a great humorousness, evidenced within the cheeky postcards he despatched to his sister and brother-in-law. These are reminders of the humor laced all through his tales.
One theme that recurs via the present’s archival supplies is his well being. Kafka died in 1924 of tuberculosis, simply shy of his forty first birthday. A heightened bodily consciousness from poor well being and self-consciousness is mirrored clearly in “The Metamorphosis,” wherein the protagonist inexplicably transforms into a big insect. However it may be seen in different writings as properly — most violently in “In the Penal Colony” (written in 1914, by the way, the yr that World Conflict I broke out), which facilities a torturous execution machine, but additionally within the distinction between human and nonhuman embodiment in “A Hunger Artist” (1922), wherein a fasting human is juxtaposed with a feasting panther, to call simply two examples.
The primary web page of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” (Die Verwandlung) (photograph Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
“A Report for an Academy” (1917), cited within the part on “The Metamorphosis,” continues the animal theme. The exhibition didactics clarify that the story of Pink Peter, a captured ape who adopts human behaviors, “tell[s] us as much about human brutality as it does about nonhuman ways of life.” But it might equally be about denaturalizing human habits, or exposing the slippage between human and nonhuman animals. The protagonist states at one level: “My ape nature fled out of me, head over heels and away, so that my first teacher was almost himself turned into an ape by it, had soon to give up teaching and was taken away to a mental hospital.”
In Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), a examine of the creator value studying, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write, “The line of escape is part of the machine.” For anybody who’s related with these tales and novels, the assertion ought to ring true. Additionally they ask: “How can we enter into Kafka’s work?” What they’re actually asking, although, is “how can we find a line of escape?” from the stifling constructions of labor, household, social relations, or obligations that lure and work us like rats or canines, as folks usually say — however not as rats or canines. One factor Deleuze and Guattari absolutely admired in Kafka was his realization in artwork of their theoretical idea of “becoming-other” — the liberatory technique of shedding the metaphor and absorbing the qualities of one thing apart from oneself.
“Like a dog” are additionally Josef Ok’s final phrases as he’s stabbed on the finish of The Trial (1914–15), bringing his bureaucratic nightmare to its solely potential finish. Perhaps the road of escape, for Kafka, was to let go and easily develop into the canine.
Factum Basis for Digital Know-how in Preservation, “Model of Kafka’s Castle, Sant Pere de Ribes, Catalonia, Spain” (2024), 3-D-printed resin (photograph Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
Unknown photographer, “Franz and Ottla Kafka, Zürau, 1917” (© The Bodleian Library, College of Oxford)
Postcard to Ottla Kafka, Schelesen (Želízy), December 1918. Collectively owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (© The Bodleian Library, College of Oxford)
Unknown photographer, “Franz Kafka” (c. 1906) (© The Bodleian Library, College of Oxford)
Franz Kafka continues on the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan) via April 13. The exhibition was curated by Carolin Duttlinger, Katrin Kohl, and Barry Murnane together with Meindert Peters and Karolina Watroba. It was supported by Ritchie Robertson and Malgorzata Czepiel.
