Happy Birthday Franz Blow up the balloons, ligh…
Happy Birthday Franz
Blow up the balloons, light the candles (118 of them) and sing �Happy Birthday� for Franz Kafka, born in Prague today in 1883. He died in Austria 41 years later.
I have yet to find the definitive Kafka website, but The Kafka Project impresses with its pictures of each manuscript page of The Trial, while The Clattering Mill (no, I don�t understand why it�s called this either) contains excellent analyses of his work, particularly “The Judgement”.
It�s about time we had a reliable translation of Kafka�s collected works. Yet while his extraordinary Letters to Felice don�t need re-translating, readers should be made aware that the front cover of the Minerva edition of the work (not available from Amazon) has a picture of Kafka’s pretty sister Ottla and NOT Felice, who has the horse-like attractions of Princess Anne. This was a wonderfully prescient move by the publisher, as there was definite undertone of incest in Kafka�s attraction to much younger women.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
