Was Franz Kafka Tubercular? (original) (raw)
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Prague medical report, 2005
On June 3, 2004, 80 years have passed since the death of one of the greatest and the most important world writers of 20th century, the Prague German writer Franz Kafka. On November 5, 2004 we reminded that remarkable anniversary, which was also the 3rd anniversary of revelation of the monument of Franz Kafka in Tatranské Matliare, the High Tatras. Franz Kafka suffered from lung tuberculosis from 1917 until his death 1924. He was treated on lung tuberculosis in the sanatorium "Villa Tatra" from December 20, 1920 until August 27, 1921 in Tatranské Matliare, the High Tatras. Lung tuberculosis was a very dangerous disease in that time and the treatment by dietotherapy, climatotherapy and symptomatic therapy without antituberculotic drugs was less effective in many patients. In the paper the disease of Franz Kafka was described according to available literature.
MATERIALI DI ESTETICA. TERZA SERIE N. 4.2 2017, 2017
This is the first translation of Brod’s text which was originally published on the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” on 22.10.1965. This edition, compared with the one in “The Prague Circle” (1966), also presents a new translation of Kafka’s only known aesthetical fragment of 1906 upon the experience of beauty and novelty, two elements which play a salient role in the whole of his narrative. Brod’s suggestions as well as Kafka’s counterarguments encompass the process of knowledge thus developing peculiar points of view upon subjectivity and creative processes. German-Jewish Cultural Studies and Philosophy; German Literature; Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism; Intermediality and Intertextuality are here to be reckoned with KEY-WORDS Franz Kafka – Max Brod – Aesthetical Pleasure – Beauty – Novelty - Narratives – “psicologico” instead of “physiologisch” – Representational Processes - Body as Involved in Writing Strategies Aesthetics – Fiction – Creative Processes – Beauty – Novelty – Arguments vs Counterarguments; Intermediality; Intertextuality; Max Brod – Franz Kafka
2017
In recent years, 'writing' has become a keyword in Kafka research. Deconstructivist critics argue that Kafka's primary aim was not the creation of completed works; rather, writing, the continuous transformation of life into Schrift (meaning text or scripture), was for him an aim in itself-and, at the same time, the real and only subject of his texts. 1 Such claims should not remain uncontested. Though writing for Kafka was obviously better than not being able to write, it was definitely no substitute for the production, and indeed the publication, of finished works. Such debates aside, it is clear that Kafka developed a very original and unorthodox way of writing, which in turn had important consequences for the shape of his novels and shorter prose works. This chapter discusses the main features of Kafka's personal version of écriture automatique ('automatic writing'-writing which bypasses conscious control); his techniques for opening a story, continuing the writing flow and closing it; the purpose of his self-corrections; and the consequences that this mode of literary production had for Kafka's novels. Writing in Perfection: 'The Judgement' Kafka was notoriously critical of his own work, but there is one text that even to him appeared faultless: 'Das Urteil' ('The Judgement', 1912). Strangely enough, his main reason for approving of the narration was the way in which it had been written: This story 'The Judgement' I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. .. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing in water. Several times during this night I carried my own weight on my back. How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. .. At two I looked at the clock for the last time. As the maid walked through the anteroom for the first time I wrote the last sentence. .. The conviction verified
2017
Franz Kafka a Prague born writer belonged to a middle-class Jewish family that was financially secure. He grew up during the period when Prague was a provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka's father sought acceptance for his family from the German speaking elite of the city and thus admitted Franz to German rather than Czech schools. Nevertheless, the dichotomous relations between the Czech and the German communities were the earliest encounters of Franz with the feelings of alienation. Sin ce Franz was the eldest child and the only surviving son of his parents, he was expected to follow a rigorous schedule in life and rise to success, most of all in material terms. His paths always diverged from the decrees, desires and wishes of his father. It was against the wishes of his father that Franz studied law at German University and earned his doctorate in the subject in 1906, but he could never chart a linear vocational path. He disliked the prospect of a legal career and joined an insurance organization in Prague and worked there from 1908 to 1922. It was at this stage of his life that he suffered from tuberculosis, which debilitated him to the extent that he had to retire from the insurance job in 1922, and spent most the remaining years of hi s life in various sanatoriums, while writing fictional stories and novellas until his death in Kierling, Austria on June 3 rd in 1924. It was in his last will and testament that Kafka requested his friend Max Brod, whom he had selected as his literary facilitator to destroy the manuscripts of his writings, but his request was ignored by Brod, and instead he organized posthumous publication of several of his writings. It is surprising to note that publications of his lifetime were relatively numerous. Betwe en 1907 and 1924, approximately seventy texts appeared in print, excluding obituaries, reviews and non-literary material. They range from newspaper items and stories of varying length in journals to self-contained collections of prose passages and chapters from his novels. The earliest Kafka writing, Description of a Struggle was written in
Lust for life: coping with tuberculosis in late nineteenth-century Europe
Medical History 64 (2020) 4: 516-532
The paper uses the correspondence of three Finns – Elias Erkko, Henrik Erkko and Hilda Asp – to analyse the conceptual and practical means with which late nineteenth-century-educated Europeans coped with ill health in general and tuberculosis in particular. While the need to gain control over (the threat of) disease may well be universal, the specific coping methods are historical and context-specific. They are both conceptual and practical, both individual and collective. The paper focuses on the 1880s and 1890s, a period when tuberculosis provided an especially lucrative subsector of the booming European medical marketplace. Sanatorium treatment was still only one among many treatment options, and the theory of the bacterial causation of tuberculosis was far from being universally accepted. The paper charts the options available for people suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and analyses the eclectic, sometimes idiosyncractic, ways that they combined elements from different conc...