Franz Kafka's Diaries

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Franz Kafka's Diaries, written in German language between 1910-1923, include casual observations, details of daily life, reflections on philosophical ideas, accounts of dreams, and ideas for stories. Kafka’s diaries offer a detailed view of the writer's thoughts and feelings, as well as some of his most famous and quotable statements.

Kafka began keeping the diaries at the age of 27, as an attempt to provoke his stalled creativity, and kept writing in them until 1923, a year before his death. These diaries were in the background all through the composition of Kafka's major works and many of them are discussed and analyzed in detail.

The diaries offer an image of a profoundly depressed man, isolated from friends and family, involved in a series of failed relationships, and constantly sick. While this is certainly part of Kafka's character it is typical for a private journal, not meant for publication, to express more of the writer's anxieties and worries. The humor and light-heartedness sometimes expressed in Kafka's fiction, as well as the generally positive image arising from recollections by friends and acquaintances, are missing from the diaries.

References

Kafka, Franz. Diaries 1910-1923. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. ISBN 0-8052-0906-9

External links

Translated excerpts from 1910 - 1914
The Modern Word Review of Kafka's Diaries
The Kafka Project, started in 1998 with the purpose of publishing online all Kafka texts in German

Works by Franz Kafka

Novels

Der Process (The Trial)
Das Schloss (The Castle)
Amerika

Short stories

1902–12	"Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart" "Description of a Struggle" "Wedding Preparations in the Country" "Das Urteil" ("The Judgement") "The Stoker" "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis")

1914–17	"In the Penal Colony" "The Village Schoolmaster" ("The Giant Mole") "Before the Law" "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor" "The Warden of the Tomb" "A Country Doctor" "The Hunter Gracchus" "The Great Wall of China" "A Message from the Emperor" "A Report to an Academy" "A Dream" "Up in the Gallery" "A Fratricide" "The Next Village" "A Visit to a Mine" "Jackals and Arabs" "The Bridge" "The Bucket Rider" "The New Advocate" "An Old Manuscript" "The Knock at the Manor Gate" "Eleven Sons" "My Neighbor" "A Crossbreed" "The Cares of a Family Man"

1917–23	"The Refusal" "A Hunger Artist" "Investigations of a Dog" "A Little Woman" "The Burrow" "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" "A Common Confusion" "The Truth about Sancho Panza" "The Silence of the Sirens" "Prometheus" "The City Coat of Arms" "Poseidon" "Fellowship" "At Night" "The Problem of Our Laws" "The Conscription of Troops" "The Test" "The Vulture" "The Helmsman" "The Top" "A Little Fable" "Home-Coming" "First Sorrow" "The Departure" "Advocates" "The Married Couple" "Give It Up!" "On Parables"

Short story
collections

Betrachtung (Contemplation) (1912)
Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) (1919)
Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist) (1924)
Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (The Great Wall of China) (1931)
The Complete Stories
The Sons
The Penal Colony
Parables and Paradoxes
Dearest Father
Description of a Struggle

Diaries and
notebooks

Letters

Professional
writings

The Office Writings

Bibliography

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