So the question remains - is there a purpose, or are we all simply automatons that walk and move and talk distinct from any context?
I don't think that this man understands really what it is to write. He understands that he must - that is good - but he does not understand that that is all. In the end one does not write for a dollar, or to see the faces of those that hear or read what you've done, one does it because that is all that one can do, and without this there is merely purposeless isolation. "Writing is a deeper sleep than death…. Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night" - Dear Kafka. To the true writer, this is the absolute.
"He apparently considered destroying his notebooks, calling his writings the result of a 'reward' from the devil for 'services rendered'".
"Not long after the diagnosis, Kafka temporarily ceased maintaining his diary. He slipped into a mild depression and broke his second engagement to Felice in December 1917." A mild depression? First, most of Kafka's innermost thoughts (not always manifested in action) we symptoms of more than a mild depression, and after his diagnosis of tuberculosis he slipped into the most melancholic hopelessless that I have ever had the pleasure to read.
The question - did Kafka really expect that his works would be burned? I would think both yes and no. At times I feel that he did loathe what he had written and in a fit desired it to be destroyed, at his weakest moments, you see - he did burn much of his younger works when he was my age. That he told his lovers to burn their letters, I think he knew that those promises would be kept. I think he knew, though, that Brod would never destroy his work, no matter how he pleaded, and that his half-hearted murmurings to the contrary were only made because he lacked confidence in himself but never, never really in his writing.
He did not read Kierkegaard until thirty-five? So much of his previous writing echoes Kierkegaard, perhaps not his fictional work but his personal diaries are distinctly exhistential in thought. I know he read Nietzche in college, but that is certainly not enough.
"Since Kafka was agnostic or even an atheist, it is best to assume his sense of sin and curse were metaphors." Now, was Kafka really serious in his lack of religious thought? I would venture to call him agnostic but not an atheist. His obsession with Judaism, no matter how he disliked the Jews or ultimately rejected its tenets, speaks that he could not entirely dismiss religion so easily. Maybe he did not believe in a knowable God, but I think that at times, at least, he fought with and suspected this notion.
"Kafka is at times disguised in his stories as Samsa, Bende, or K..." Kafka is always within his stories. He saw his work much of the time as not being seperate and distinct from himself.
I don't think that this man understands really what it is to write. He understands that he must - that is good - but he does not understand that that is all. In the end one does not write for a dollar, or to see the faces of those that hear or read what you've done, one does it because that is all that one can do, and without this there is merely purposeless isolation. "Writing is a deeper sleep than death…. Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night" - Dear Kafka. To the true writer, this is the absolute.
"He apparently considered destroying his notebooks, calling his writings the result of a 'reward' from the devil for 'services rendered'".
"Not long after the diagnosis, Kafka temporarily ceased maintaining his diary. He slipped into a mild depression and broke his second engagement to Felice in December 1917." A mild depression? First, most of Kafka's innermost thoughts (not always manifested in action) we symptoms of more than a mild depression, and after his diagnosis of tuberculosis he slipped into the most melancholic hopelessless that I have ever had the pleasure to read.
The question - did Kafka really expect that his works would be burned? I would think both yes and no. At times I feel that he did loathe what he had written and in a fit desired it to be destroyed, at his weakest moments, you see - he did burn much of his younger works when he was my age. That he told his lovers to burn their letters, I think he knew that those promises would be kept. I think he knew, though, that Brod would never destroy his work, no matter how he pleaded, and that his half-hearted murmurings to the contrary were only made because he lacked confidence in himself but never, never really in his writing.
He did not read Kierkegaard until thirty-five? So much of his previous writing echoes Kierkegaard, perhaps not his fictional work but his personal diaries are distinctly exhistential in thought. I know he read Nietzche in college, but that is certainly not enough.
"Since Kafka was agnostic or even an atheist, it is best to assume his sense of sin and curse were metaphors." Now, was Kafka really serious in his lack of religious thought? I would venture to call him agnostic but not an atheist. His obsession with Judaism, no matter how he disliked the Jews or ultimately rejected its tenets, speaks that he could not entirely dismiss religion so easily. Maybe he did not believe in a knowable God, but I think that at times, at least, he fought with and suspected this notion.
"Kafka is at times disguised in his stories as Samsa, Bende, or K..." Kafka is always within his stories. He saw his work much of the time as not being seperate and distinct from himself.
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