Franz without tears

Kafka

by Nicholas Murray

Little, Brown, 22

IF THERE IS ONE quasi-literary term more abused than any other, it is "Kafkaesque". The man himself is seen as a quivering neurotic sitting up late in his Prague rooms, isolated, anxious, troubled by ghosts and premonitions, the epitome of the modern alienated author.

Nicholas Murray’s new biography is therefore most welcome, in the way it explores the complexities of the man, exposing not only the fearful child plagued by a crude, discouraging father, but the likeable friend, the curious intellectual, the passionate student given to sly humour and sharp argument.

"The essential characteristics of his face were the very open, sometimes even wide-open eyes, whether he was talking or listening," his final lover, Dora Diamant, says. "They were not staring in horror, as it has been said of him; it was rather more an expression of astonishment. His eyes were brown and shy. When he spoke they lit up ... not so much irony as mischievousness - as if he knew of something that other people didn’t know. Kafka was always cheerful."

It might be argued that this cheerfulness - a term not often associated with Kafka - is the impression of one, somewhat biased, observer. Murray, however, piles on the evidence, drawn from letters and memoirs written by Kafka’s schoolmates, colleagues, friends and family, for a far more complex person than the Kafka of popular imagining.

He was anxious, it is true - often with good cause - but he was also boastful, combative, warm-hearted, inquisitive and profoundly analytical of his own and others’ feelings and motives. Like many writers, he found society, especially that of his family, a burden at times: "seen in a detached way, I enjoy all people, but my enjoyment is not so great that, given the necessary physical requirements, I would not be incomparably happier living in a desert, in a forest, on an island, rather than here in my room between my parents’ bedroom and living room." Not an uncommon thought for a teenager, or for an artist.

Indeed, reading Murray’s admirable biography, it becomes apparent, again and again, that Kafka was not abnormally neurotic, or in any way joyless; rather, he was able to give expression in his work to states that had hitherto been considered too shameful, too private or too nebulous for language. In other words, he spoke, or wrote, his - and our - inner life out loud. One of the reasons he is so important is that, like Borges, he not only gave us words for a hitherto unclassified state of being, he created an entire world in which that state could unfold: a manifestation, as it were, in architecture and landscape and social conventions of what, till then, had been considered a wholly interior condition.

We must not forget, however, that Kafka’s world contains humour, beauty and moments of breathtaking joy and sensuality, as well as fear and anxiety. It is the world, after all, of our dreaming. We must also be sure, as this biography points out, not to confuse the man with the work - and, given that this is a biographical study, Murray concludes the main narrative with an account by one Sister Anna, who nursed him in his last hours:

" ‘About the writer Franz Kafka I can offer no opinion but as a man he is the only patient I cannot forget and whose death took place so simply and was so shattering, that all of us, standing at his bedside, streamed tears.’ She said that Dora had rushed back from the post office with a bunch of flowers and urged Kafka to smell them.

"Raising himself one last time, to the nurse’s amazement, he sniffed the flowers. ‘It was unbelievable: and even more unbelievable was the fact that he opened his left eye and seemed to come alive. He had such amazingly brilliant eyes and his smile was so full of expression and his hands and eyes communicated when he could no longer speak.’ "