WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200 Imagine the man who basically invented our modern 00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:07.059 idea of bureaucratic misery. Right. You're probably 00:00:07.059 --> 00:00:12.759 picturing this depressed, starving artist locked 00:00:12.759 --> 00:00:15.140 in a freezing attic weeping over a typewriter 00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:17.620 in black and white. For sure. Just total misery. 00:00:17.679 --> 00:00:20.859 Yeah. But what if I told you the godfather of 00:00:20.859 --> 00:00:24.839 existential dread was actually a highly effective 00:00:24.839 --> 00:00:29.199 corporate middle manager and a vegetarian health 00:00:29.199 --> 00:00:33.679 nut? and a guy who laughed so hard at his own 00:00:33.679 --> 00:00:35.640 tragic stories that he literally couldn't even 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:37.759 finish reading them out loud. It completely shatters 00:00:37.759 --> 00:00:39.520 the myth, doesn't it? It really does. Because, 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:41.679 I mean, we use his name as an adjective constantly. 00:00:41.979 --> 00:00:43.820 If you're trapped in some automated customer 00:00:43.820 --> 00:00:46.500 service loop or, you know, you need Form 8B to 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:49.920 get Form 8B at the DMV. The worst. Right. You 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:51.640 throw up your hands and you call it Kafkaesque. 00:00:51.679 --> 00:00:53.939 Exactly. It's just our universal shorthand for 00:00:53.939 --> 00:00:56.299 the absolute nightmare of modern bureaucracy. 00:00:56.740 --> 00:00:59.869 It is. And welcome to today's Deep Dive. Because 00:00:59.869 --> 00:01:03.049 our mission today is to unpack this massive stack 00:01:03.049 --> 00:01:06.030 of biographical, historical, and literary source 00:01:06.030 --> 00:01:08.530 documents covering one of the 20th century's 00:01:08.530 --> 00:01:11.150 most famously misunderstood figures, Franz Kafka. 00:01:11.170 --> 00:01:15.180 Franz Kafka. Because the actual man was... far 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:17.540 more complex, contradictory, and honestly much 00:01:17.540 --> 00:01:20.219 more subversive than his gloomy reputation suggests. 00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:23.500 Let's unpack this. So to set our baseline here, 00:01:23.739 --> 00:01:27.379 Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, which 00:01:27.379 --> 00:01:29.780 at the time was this bustling hub of the Austro 00:01:29.780 --> 00:01:33.219 -Hungarian Empire, and he was a German -speaking 00:01:33.219 --> 00:01:35.959 Jewish Czech writer. Which is quite the mix. 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:38.640 It is. That intersection of identities alone 00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:40.599 is incredibly complex. I mean, he was essentially 00:01:40.599 --> 00:01:44.299 a minority within a minority. And in his writing, 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:48.340 he fused this gritty, mundane realism with the 00:01:48.340 --> 00:01:50.340 absolutely surreal. Like waking up as a bug. 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:52.939 Exactly. His stories typically feature these 00:01:52.939 --> 00:01:55.000 isolated protagonists who just, you know, wake 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.640 up facing bizarre predicaments. Yeah. And totally 00:01:57.640 --> 00:01:59.620 incomprehensible, so sub -bureaucratic powers 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:02.159 that just refuse to explain themselves. But the 00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:04.640 wild thing we discovered digging into this material 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:07.519 is that, you know, he didn't just invent that 00:02:07.519 --> 00:02:09.860 faceless bureaucracy out of thin air. No, he 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:12.580 didn't. He lived it. Like, he operated its machinery 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:16.280 every single day. The reality of his day job 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:18.580 completely rewrites how you read his novels. 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:21.120 It really does. Because Kafka actually trained 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:23.879 as a lawyer. Right. And after getting his doctor 00:02:23.879 --> 00:02:27.020 of law degree in 1906, he didn't just go into 00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:30.080 private practice. Like you'd expect. Right. He 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:32.560 eventually found employment at the Workers' Accident 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:34.780 Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. 00:02:35.460 --> 00:02:38.240 Which sounds incredibly boring. It sounds like 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:40.639 it, but this was not some quiet, abstract, paper 00:02:40.639 --> 00:02:43.860 -pushing job. No. No, he was actively investigating 00:02:43.860 --> 00:02:46.719 and assessing compensation for horrific personal 00:02:46.719 --> 00:02:49.680 injuries to industrial workers. I mean, we are 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:51.599 talking about the bleeding edge of the industrial 00:02:51.599 --> 00:02:54.219 revolution here. Exactly. He was visiting factories 00:02:54.219 --> 00:02:56.840 with these massive machine lathes, rotary drills, 00:02:57.199 --> 00:03:00.620 mechanical saws, and they had absolutely zero 00:03:00.620 --> 00:03:03.520 safety guards. None. So he was dealing with lost 00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:06.259 fingers, crushed limbs, and just mangled workers 00:03:06.259 --> 00:03:09.340 on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah. What's fascinating 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:11.849 here is that we really have to look at the mechanism 00:03:11.849 --> 00:03:15.169 of his daily life to understand his art. Imagine 00:03:15.169 --> 00:03:17.870 Kafka's daily routine, right? He witnesses or 00:03:17.870 --> 00:03:21.590 reads reports about visceral, bloody human suffering. 00:03:22.090 --> 00:03:25.569 And then his job is to sit in a sterile office 00:03:25.569 --> 00:03:28.930 and categorize that suffering. Into like actuarial 00:03:28.930 --> 00:03:31.409 tables? Yes, actuarial tables, risk categories, 00:03:31.729 --> 00:03:34.069 insurance premiums. He is literally quantifying 00:03:34.069 --> 00:03:38.810 human tragedy for a massive unfeeling institution. 00:03:38.909 --> 00:03:42.210 Wow. And this deep immersion in a rigid, oppressive 00:03:42.210 --> 00:03:46.009 legal bureaucracy directly fed those anonymous, 00:03:46.430 --> 00:03:49.830 incomprehensible forces in novels like The Trial 00:03:49.830 --> 00:03:51.530 and the Castle. Well, it makes perfect sense. 00:03:51.629 --> 00:03:54.189 I mean, in The Trial, the protagonist is arrested 00:03:54.189 --> 00:03:56.430 by a court that won't even tell him his crime. 00:03:56.469 --> 00:03:58.409 Right. And the officials are just these mid -level 00:03:58.409 --> 00:04:00.949 bureaucrats pushing paper. Yeah. Kafka knew exactly 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:03.110 how those guys spoke because he was one of them. 00:04:03.189 --> 00:04:05.840 He was. Though... You know, his father totally 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:08.719 dismissed it. Herman Kafka called it a brat beruf. 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:10.960 A bread job. Yeah, a bread job, meaning something 00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:12.699 you just do to pay the bills and buy your bread. 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:15.479 And Kafka himself complained about it constantly. 00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:18.439 He usually got off work around 2 p .m. and he 00:04:18.439 --> 00:04:20.639 structured his entire existence around having 00:04:20.639 --> 00:04:23.220 the late afternoon and night to write. He claimed 00:04:23.220 --> 00:04:25.620 the Insurance Institute was draining his soul. 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:28.319 Yeah, like it was destroying him. Yet, and this 00:04:28.319 --> 00:04:31.100 is so interesting, the historical record reveals 00:04:31.100 --> 00:04:34.660 this striking duality. Okay. despite his endless 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:37.360 diary entries complaining about the job, he was 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:40.160 actually incredibly successful at it. Wait, really? 00:04:40.279 --> 00:04:43.579 Yes. He was a deeply competent executive. He 00:04:43.579 --> 00:04:46.500 got rapidly promoted. No way. And the annual 00:04:46.500 --> 00:04:48.480 reports he wrote for the Insurance Institute, 00:04:49.100 --> 00:04:52.100 highly praised by his superiors for their clarity 00:04:52.100 --> 00:04:55.480 and analytical rigor. He even co -owned an asbestos 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:58.019 factory with his brother -in -law. He did. I 00:04:58.019 --> 00:05:01.420 mean, I look at this and I see Kafka as the ultimate 00:05:01.420 --> 00:05:04.300 burnt -out corporate middle manager trying to 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:06.180 run a side hustle. That's a great way to put 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:08.939 it. It is such a supreme irony. The guy who made 00:05:08.939 --> 00:05:11.060 us all terrified of the system was actually a 00:05:11.060 --> 00:05:13.360 highly effective, promoted corporate insurance 00:05:13.360 --> 00:05:15.779 investigator who wrote killer annual reports. 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.740 It's a profound irony. He was operating the very 00:05:18.740 --> 00:05:21.399 system he was critiquing. Yeah. But if we dig 00:05:21.399 --> 00:05:24.339 deeper into his psychology, that feeling of being 00:05:24.339 --> 00:05:28.939 trapped and made to feel small by a giant, unquestionable 00:05:28.939 --> 00:05:31.199 authority figure. Right. It didn't just start 00:05:31.199 --> 00:05:33.139 in the office. It was a dynamic he learned at 00:05:33.139 --> 00:05:35.439 the breakfast table. Oh, wow. It started with 00:05:35.439 --> 00:05:37.639 his father. Well, let's talk about Herman Kafka 00:05:37.639 --> 00:05:40.160 because if you want to understand why Kafka's 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:42.860 protagonists always feel guilty, even when they 00:05:42.860 --> 00:05:45.319 haven't done anything wrong, his dad is essentially 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:48.160 the blueprint. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Herman Kafka 00:05:48.160 --> 00:05:50.680 was a self -made man. He climbed his way up to 00:05:50.680 --> 00:05:53.660 become a relatively wealthy haberdashery shop 00:05:53.660 --> 00:05:56.699 owner. Right. Employing up to 15 people. Yeah. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:01.639 And biographers describe Herman as a huge, physically 00:06:01.639 --> 00:06:04.920 imposing, deeply selfish, and overbearing businessman. 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:07.819 Yeah, Franz described his father as having a 00:06:07.819 --> 00:06:10.920 booming voice, total worldly dominance, and just 00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:13.850 a terrifying, unpredictable temper. It's almost 00:06:13.850 --> 00:06:16.329 too perfectly symbolic that Herman's business 00:06:16.329 --> 00:06:19.009 logo was literally a Jackdaw. The bird. Yeah. 00:06:19.310 --> 00:06:21.850 And in Czech, the word for Jackdaw is Kafka. 00:06:22.069 --> 00:06:24.589 So he branded his business with the family name 00:06:24.589 --> 00:06:28.509 as this loud, aggressive, domineering bird. That's 00:06:28.509 --> 00:06:31.589 intense. It is. And the psychological toll this 00:06:31.589 --> 00:06:34.930 took on France. was staggering. Later in life, 00:06:35.029 --> 00:06:37.250 he wrote a document known as The Letter to His 00:06:37.250 --> 00:06:39.389 Father. Right. And this wasn't just, you know, 00:06:39.529 --> 00:06:42.110 a quick we need to talk note. It was over 100 00:06:42.110 --> 00:06:45.430 pages long. 100 pages. That's a book. It's a 00:06:45.430 --> 00:06:48.620 masterpiece of psychological suffering. In it, 00:06:48.879 --> 00:06:51.759 Kafka meticulously details how his father's authoritarian 00:06:51.759 --> 00:06:54.560 and demanding character completely eroded his 00:06:54.560 --> 00:06:57.040 self -worth. Ouch. He describes feeling like 00:06:57.040 --> 00:06:59.480 an insect next to his father's terrifying physical 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:02.779 presence. Ah, there it is. Yeah. And that dominating 00:07:02.779 --> 00:07:05.399 judgment also casts the mold for the unseen, 00:07:05.740 --> 00:07:08.480 merciless judges and unfathomable laws in all 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:10.540 of Kafka's fiction. Which transitions perfectly 00:07:10.540 --> 00:07:13.480 into his most famous work written in 1912, The 00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:16.279 Metamorphosis. Right. The story of Gregor Samsa, 00:07:16.279 --> 00:07:18.480 who wakes up to find he has transformed overnight 00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:20.980 into a giant insect. But here's where we need 00:07:20.980 --> 00:07:23.180 to clear up a massive misconception from the 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:25.920 source material. We all have this pop culture 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:29.060 image of a literal giant cockroach burned into 00:07:29.060 --> 00:07:31.500 our brains. We do. But when you look at the original 00:07:31.500 --> 00:07:34.360 German text, Kafka never actually wrote the word 00:07:34.360 --> 00:07:37.600 bug, did he? No, he didn't. And that is a brilliant 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:40.839 observation highlighting one of the great tragedies 00:07:40.839 --> 00:07:43.680 of reading Kafka in translation. OK. The opening 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:46.759 sentence of the Metamorphosis uses the German 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.699 word Ungesiefer. Ungesiefer. Right. And translators 00:07:50.699 --> 00:07:54.000 almost always render this as insect, bug, or 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.860 beetle. Sure. But historically, in Middle High 00:07:56.860 --> 00:08:00.600 German, Ungesiefer literally translates to an 00:08:00.600 --> 00:08:03.459 animal unclean for sacrifice. Unclean for sacrifice. 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:06.100 Wow. That completely changes the feeling of the 00:08:06.100 --> 00:08:08.579 story. It is so much heavier than just bug. Exactly. 00:08:08.829 --> 00:08:11.290 In modern German, it evolved to mean general 00:08:11.290 --> 00:08:15.110 vermin or unwanted pests. But Kafka explicitly 00:08:15.110 --> 00:08:17.470 instructed his publisher that he had absolutely 00:08:17.470 --> 00:08:19.870 no intention of labeling Gregor as a specific 00:08:19.870 --> 00:08:22.689 biological insect. Really? Yeah. In fact, he 00:08:22.689 --> 00:08:24.589 strictly forbade them from illustrating the creature 00:08:24.589 --> 00:08:26.810 on the book cover. Oh, wow. He didn't want the 00:08:26.810 --> 00:08:30.149 reader thinking about biology. He wanted to convey 00:08:30.149 --> 00:08:33.570 Gregor's absolute emotional disgust at his own 00:08:33.570 --> 00:08:36.210 transformation. Right. It's a feeling of being 00:08:36.210 --> 00:08:39.799 repulsive. unworthy and unclean in the eyes of 00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:42.240 his family. It's pure psychological repulsion. 00:08:42.779 --> 00:08:45.039 And, you know, to understand how Kafka delivers 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:47.100 that feeling, you have to look at the mechanics 00:08:47.100 --> 00:08:49.620 of the German language itself. Yes, absolutely. 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:52.100 Because German syntax actually plays a huge role 00:08:52.100 --> 00:08:55.000 in how he builds this suffocating suspense. It 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.580 really does. The mechanics of German allow for 00:08:57.580 --> 00:09:01.139 incredibly long, sprawling sentences where the 00:09:01.139 --> 00:09:03.600 core verb is pushed all the way to the very end. 00:09:03.690 --> 00:09:05.750 Right, so to put that in plain English for you 00:09:05.750 --> 00:09:08.509 listening, imagine reading a whole page describing 00:09:08.509 --> 00:09:11.870 a man walking down a dark hallway, opening a 00:09:11.870 --> 00:09:14.750 creaking door, seeing a shadowy figure approach 00:09:14.750 --> 00:09:16.830 him in the moonlight, and you do not find out 00:09:16.830 --> 00:09:19.210 until the very last word of the paragraph whether 00:09:19.210 --> 00:09:23.730 the verb is smiled or stabbed. Yes. That is exactly 00:09:23.730 --> 00:09:26.909 how Kafka builds dread. You are trapped in the 00:09:26.909 --> 00:09:28.769 architecture of his sentence, just waiting for 00:09:28.769 --> 00:09:30.929 the final word to drop and finalize the reality. 00:09:30.950 --> 00:09:33.419 It's brilliant. It's a perfect analogy. And it 00:09:33.419 --> 00:09:35.899 is incredibly difficult for English translators 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.980 to replicate that sudden structural impact. I 00:09:38.980 --> 00:09:41.980 can imagine. Another fascinating example of this 00:09:41.980 --> 00:09:45.100 linguistic punch is the final line of his breakthrough 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:48.759 story, The Judgment. Right. It's a story entirely 00:09:48.759 --> 00:09:52.120 about a severe, destructive father -son conflict. 00:09:52.700 --> 00:09:56.149 And the final line uses the German noun Verker. 00:09:56.389 --> 00:09:59.429 Which is a loaded word because literally it means 00:09:59.429 --> 00:10:02.070 traffic or transport. Right. So the surface translation 00:10:02.070 --> 00:10:04.269 of the final sentence is something like, at that 00:10:04.269 --> 00:10:06.549 moment an unending stream of traffic crossed 00:10:06.549 --> 00:10:09.990 over the bridge. But Verker has a very specific... 00:10:09.950 --> 00:10:12.509 Double meaning. It does. Just like in English, 00:10:12.769 --> 00:10:15.769 verk here also means intercourse. Wow. And Kafka 00:10:15.769 --> 00:10:18.490 actually confessed to his best friend that when 00:10:18.490 --> 00:10:21.610 he wrote that final line punctuating this brutal 00:10:21.610 --> 00:10:24.570 conflict with his father, he was explicitly thinking 00:10:24.570 --> 00:10:28.009 of a violent ejaculation. Which is wild. It completely 00:10:28.009 --> 00:10:30.309 shifts the tone. It really does. He uses that 00:10:30.309 --> 00:10:33.029 word to represent a sudden, uncontrollable release 00:10:33.029 --> 00:10:35.950 of pent up psychological tension. It's the ultimate 00:10:35.950 --> 00:10:38.250 destructive release of energy against the father 00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:41.169 figure. Yeah. But this deep seated obsession 00:10:41.169 --> 00:10:44.610 with feeling repulsive or unclean didn't just 00:10:44.610 --> 00:10:47.149 stay on the page. Yeah. It bled into his real 00:10:47.149 --> 00:10:50.549 life and dictated how he viewed his own physical 00:10:50.549 --> 00:10:53.289 body. It did. But it manifested in ways that 00:10:53.289 --> 00:10:55.669 will probably surprise you because there's this 00:10:55.659 --> 00:10:59.799 pervasive stereotype of Kafka as a frail, joyless 00:10:59.799 --> 00:11:02.620 hermit who hid in the shadows. Right. The guy 00:11:02.620 --> 00:11:05.519 who never saw the sun. Exactly. But the biographical 00:11:05.519 --> 00:11:08.279 reality shatters that completely. He was highly 00:11:08.279 --> 00:11:10.840 attuned to his physical vessel, and he was actually 00:11:10.840 --> 00:11:13.779 a vibrant, deeply active man. Hang on. I need 00:11:13.779 --> 00:11:16.139 to stop you there. OK. We are talking about the 00:11:16.139 --> 00:11:19.179 patron saint of existential dread. Yes. The guy 00:11:19.179 --> 00:11:22.340 whose name literally means bureaucratic nightmare. 00:11:22.730 --> 00:11:24.870 And you're telling me he was out living a vibrant 00:11:24.870 --> 00:11:27.429 life. I am. It is completely factual. The people 00:11:27.429 --> 00:11:29.610 who actually met him didn't see a grotesque insect. 00:11:29.690 --> 00:11:31.809 They thought he was boyishly handsome. No way. 00:11:31.950 --> 00:11:34.389 Yeah. They noted his cool demeanor and his surprisingly 00:11:34.389 --> 00:11:36.789 dry sense of humor. Because he was so anxious 00:11:36.789 --> 00:11:38.610 about his physical health, he became a strict 00:11:38.610 --> 00:11:41.269 vegetarian. Really? Which was incredibly rare 00:11:41.269 --> 00:11:44.549 for Prague in the early 1900s. I bet. He didn't 00:11:44.549 --> 00:11:47.350 drink alcohol. He loved... physical games, rowing 00:11:47.350 --> 00:11:50.570 on the river, swimming. And he would organize 00:11:50.570 --> 00:11:53.230 long, vigorous hikes for his friends on the weekends. 00:11:53.389 --> 00:11:56.450 He was a hiking enthusiast. He was. Here's where 00:11:56.450 --> 00:11:58.889 it gets really interesting, because his personal 00:11:58.889 --> 00:12:01.190 life was just as contradictory. Oh, absolutely. 00:12:01.429 --> 00:12:04.149 His friend Max Broad later claimed Kafka was 00:12:04.149 --> 00:12:06.830 paralyzed by a fear of sexual failure. But when 00:12:06.830 --> 00:12:09.450 you look at the letters and diaries, he was very 00:12:09.450 --> 00:12:12.610 active. Yes. He visited brothels throughout his 00:12:12.610 --> 00:12:15.840 adult life. He collected erotica and he He had 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:18.659 intense, profound romantic relationships with 00:12:18.659 --> 00:12:21.360 several women. He was even engaged to a woman 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:24.379 named Felice Bauer twice. He was a man trying 00:12:24.379 --> 00:12:27.200 to live fully in a world he found absurd. Right. 00:12:27.559 --> 00:12:29.820 And this brings us to perhaps the most misunderstood 00:12:29.820 --> 00:12:33.139 aspect of Kafka's personality, his humor. Yes. 00:12:33.299 --> 00:12:35.539 When we read him today, we often read him as 00:12:35.539 --> 00:12:38.600 a prophet of 20th century totalitarianism, focusing 00:12:38.600 --> 00:12:41.259 on the relentless grind of misery. But that is 00:12:41.259 --> 00:12:43.200 missing the joke. This is my absolute favorite 00:12:43.200 --> 00:12:45.860 detail from the sources. It's so good. When Kafka 00:12:45.860 --> 00:12:48.360 read his stories outlier to his inner circle 00:12:48.360 --> 00:12:50.259 of friend stories, like the first chapter of 00:12:50.259 --> 00:12:53.159 the trial, where a man is inexplicably arrested 00:12:53.159 --> 00:12:56.379 in his own bedroom and his life is ruined, his 00:12:56.379 --> 00:12:58.679 friends didn't sit there in stunned, depressed 00:12:58.679 --> 00:13:01.500 silence. They laughed immoderately. They thought 00:13:01.500 --> 00:13:03.539 it was hilarious. They were cracking up. And 00:13:03.539 --> 00:13:05.879 Kafka himself would laugh so hard he couldn't 00:13:05.879 --> 00:13:08.500 even finish reading the page. If we connect this 00:13:08.500 --> 00:13:11.039 to the bigger picture, to understand why, we 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:14.750 have to reorient how we view his work. OK. Several 00:13:14.750 --> 00:13:17.450 brilliant literary critics have pointed out that 00:13:17.450 --> 00:13:21.269 we overemphasize the bleak alienation. His work 00:13:21.269 --> 00:13:24.070 is actually profoundly joyful and subversive. 00:13:24.250 --> 00:13:27.090 Interesting. He isn't wallowing in misery. He 00:13:27.090 --> 00:13:29.990 is meticulously diagramming the absurd, self 00:13:29.990 --> 00:13:32.870 -invented traps of human society. The humor lies 00:13:32.870 --> 00:13:35.330 in the futility. Exactly. It's like watching 00:13:35.330 --> 00:13:38.009 someone try to assemble flat pack furniture with 00:13:38.009 --> 00:13:40.629 a thousand pieces using instructions written 00:13:40.629 --> 00:13:43.590 in an alien language while blindfolded. For the 00:13:43.590 --> 00:13:47.429 person doing it, it is absolute agony. But if 00:13:47.429 --> 00:13:49.769 you zoom out and watch them from across the room, 00:13:49.909 --> 00:13:53.750 it is a hilarious slapstick comedy of errors. 00:13:54.509 --> 00:13:57.330 Kafka is zooming out. Precisely. And he was also 00:13:57.330 --> 00:13:59.250 zooming out on the political and cultural movements 00:13:59.250 --> 00:14:01.730 around him. Right. It's fascinating to look at 00:14:01.730 --> 00:14:05.049 his political evolution objectively. And just 00:14:05.049 --> 00:14:07.429 to be clear for the listeners, we're just impartially 00:14:07.429 --> 00:14:09.370 reporting the historical record from our sources 00:14:09.370 --> 00:14:12.190 here, not taking any sides. Of course. But the 00:14:12.190 --> 00:14:15.110 historical records paint a picture of a guy actively 00:14:15.110 --> 00:14:18.379 experimenting with all the major ideologies swirling 00:14:18.379 --> 00:14:20.759 around Eastern Europe at the time. He was trying 00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:23.139 on different worldviews. Right. As a young man, 00:14:23.259 --> 00:14:25.899 a former classmate recalled Kafka walking into 00:14:25.899 --> 00:14:28.840 school wearing a red carnation on his lapel to 00:14:28.840 --> 00:14:31.240 show his support for socialism. Yeah. He was 00:14:31.240 --> 00:14:33.659 attending meetings of a Czech anarchist, anti 00:14:33.659 --> 00:14:36.899 -militarist organization. But then, concurrently... 00:14:36.909 --> 00:14:39.629 He had this deep, evolving relationship with 00:14:39.629 --> 00:14:42.210 Judaism and Zionism. He had declared himself 00:14:42.210 --> 00:14:44.929 an atheist as a teenager, and often felt totally 00:14:44.929 --> 00:14:47.230 alienated from assimilated Western Jewish life. 00:14:47.289 --> 00:14:49.889 But as he grew older, he became utterly fascinated 00:14:49.889 --> 00:14:52.649 by Eastern European Jewish culture, the traveling 00:14:52.649 --> 00:14:56.049 theater troupes, and the Yiddish language. Later 00:14:56.049 --> 00:14:58.429 in life, he immersed himself in studying the 00:14:58.429 --> 00:15:01.120 Talmud, learned Hebrew, and even took classes 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:03.779 at the college for the study of Judaism in Berlin, 00:15:04.419 --> 00:15:06.799 making concrete plans to immigrate to Palestine. 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:10.919 So you have a German -speaking, Czech -born Jewish 00:15:10.919 --> 00:15:13.879 insurance executive and health nut who flirts 00:15:13.879 --> 00:15:17.759 with anarchism, studies Hebrew, and laughs hysterically 00:15:17.759 --> 00:15:20.600 while writing surrealist masterpieces. It's wild. 00:15:20.639 --> 00:15:23.080 It is an incredible portrait of a human being. 00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:26.100 It really is. But tragically, despite his vegetarianism, 00:15:26.279 --> 00:15:28.740 his rowing, and his health kicks, his physical 00:15:28.740 --> 00:15:31.240 body ultimately betrayed him. Yeah. And this 00:15:31.240 --> 00:15:33.960 leads us to the final agonizing chapter of his 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:36.399 life and a dying wish that sparked one of the 00:15:36.269 --> 00:15:39.629 greatest literary betrayals in history. In 1917, 00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:42.590 Kafka coughed up blood. He was diagnosed with 00:15:42.590 --> 00:15:45.190 tuberculosis. Oh, man. And there was no cure 00:15:45.190 --> 00:15:47.970 at the time. It was the death sentence. By 1924, 00:15:48.169 --> 00:15:50.590 the disease had spread to his larynx and worsened 00:15:50.590 --> 00:15:52.990 dramatically. His throat closed up, making the 00:15:52.990 --> 00:15:56.210 simple act of swallowing food excruciatingly 00:15:56.210 --> 00:15:58.769 painful. Yeah. Tragically, because intravenous 00:15:58.769 --> 00:16:01.230 feeding had not yet been developed, he slowly 00:16:01.230 --> 00:16:03.509 starved to death in a sanatorium outside Vienna. 00:16:03.990 --> 00:16:07.090 And the heartbreaking, almost painfully poetic 00:16:07.090 --> 00:16:10.509 detail here is that on his deathbed, as he was 00:16:10.509 --> 00:16:12.850 literally starving, he was editing the proofs 00:16:12.850 --> 00:16:15.490 for a story called A Hunger Artist. It's a story 00:16:15.490 --> 00:16:18.090 about a man who sits in a cage, and his only 00:16:18.090 --> 00:16:20.429 art, his only performance for the public, is 00:16:20.429 --> 00:16:22.610 fasting. You cannot make that up. You really 00:16:22.610 --> 00:16:26.309 can't. He died on June 3, 1924, at the age of 00:16:26.309 --> 00:16:29.049 40. So young. And at the time of his death, he 00:16:29.049 --> 00:16:31.870 was virtually unknown to the wider world. He 00:16:31.870 --> 00:16:33.559 had published very little during his life. of 00:16:33.559 --> 00:16:36.360 time, just a few slim story collections that 00:16:36.360 --> 00:16:38.840 received scant public attention. And he had been 00:16:38.840 --> 00:16:40.740 ruthless with his own legacy. Oh, absolutely. 00:16:40.820 --> 00:16:43.539 He actually burned an estimated 90 % of his own 00:16:43.539 --> 00:16:46.159 work during his life. He threw thousands of pages 00:16:46.159 --> 00:16:49.080 into the fire. Yeah. Which brings us to the ultimate 00:16:49.080 --> 00:16:51.860 betrayal. Kafka's lifelong best friend was a 00:16:51.860 --> 00:16:55.080 man named Max Broad. Before Kafka died, he left 00:16:55.080 --> 00:16:58.779 two notes for Broad with a final explicit legally 00:16:58.779 --> 00:17:01.590 binding request. He told his best friend that 00:17:01.590 --> 00:17:04.369 everything he left behind, all his diaries, all 00:17:04.369 --> 00:17:07.210 his manuscripts, letters and sketches, was to 00:17:07.210 --> 00:17:10.430 be burned unread. Which presents us with perhaps 00:17:10.430 --> 00:17:13.170 the defining ethical dilemma of 20th century 00:17:13.170 --> 00:17:16.049 literature. This raises an important question, 00:17:16.490 --> 00:17:19.529 because Max Broad completely ignored Kafka's 00:17:19.529 --> 00:17:21.970 dying wish. He did. He refused to strike the 00:17:21.970 --> 00:17:25.470 match. Instead, he took these fragmented, unfinished 00:17:25.470 --> 00:17:27.990 manuscripts and he published them to massive 00:17:27.990 --> 00:17:30.529 international acclaim. I want to really emphasize 00:17:30.529 --> 00:17:32.569 what Broad did here because it wasn't just a 00:17:32.569 --> 00:17:34.849 matter of ignoring a request. Right. It's like 00:17:34.849 --> 00:17:37.089 a friend logging into your computer after you 00:17:37.089 --> 00:17:39.750 die, finding your deleted browser history, pulling 00:17:39.750 --> 00:17:42.509 out your most private, messy, unpolished notes, 00:17:42.769 --> 00:17:45.289 and publishing them for the entire world to judge. 00:17:45.410 --> 00:17:48.130 Exactly. It is an unthinkable betrayal of personal 00:17:48.130 --> 00:17:50.410 trust. But it goes even deeper. Broad didn't 00:17:50.410 --> 00:17:52.890 just hit print on a hidden folder. He constructed 00:17:52.890 --> 00:17:55.029 the Kafka we know today. That is the crucial 00:17:55.029 --> 00:17:57.410 mechanism of this legacy. Novels like The Trial 00:17:57.410 --> 00:17:59.829 and the Castle were not finished books. No, they 00:17:59.829 --> 00:18:03.589 were bundles of unnumbered notebooks. Max Broad 00:18:03.589 --> 00:18:06.869 literally had to guess the order of the chapters. 00:18:07.869 --> 00:18:09.910 He rearranged scenes, he changed punctuation, 00:18:10.269 --> 00:18:13.230 he decided where the story should end. He essentially 00:18:13.230 --> 00:18:15.950 co -authored the pacing of the existential dread 00:18:15.950 --> 00:18:19.789 we now call Kafkaesque. That is wild. If Broad 00:18:19.789 --> 00:18:22.349 had listened to his best friend, the term Kafka 00:18:22.349 --> 00:18:24.910 S wouldn't exist. We would have lost one of the 00:18:24.910 --> 00:18:27.349 greatest literary voices of the modern era. Yes, 00:18:27.349 --> 00:18:29.589 we would have. And Broad defended himself by 00:18:29.589 --> 00:18:31.650 saying he had warned Kafka while he was still 00:18:31.650 --> 00:18:34.009 alive that he would never burn the papers and 00:18:34.009 --> 00:18:35.829 that if Kafka really wanted them destroyed, he 00:18:35.829 --> 00:18:37.930 should have appointed someone else. Broad recognized 00:18:37.930 --> 00:18:41.329 the genius and he chose the art over the artist's 00:18:41.329 --> 00:18:43.930 autonomy. Right. But Broad's decision had ramifications 00:18:43.930 --> 00:18:47.059 that outlived both of them. When Broad fled the 00:18:47.059 --> 00:18:50.380 Nazis and moved to Palestine in 1939, he took 00:18:50.380 --> 00:18:52.680 suitcases stuffed full of Kafka's unpublished 00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:54.900 papers with him. And that cache of papers sparked 00:18:54.900 --> 00:18:57.640 an absolute legal nightmare. It did. When Broad 00:18:57.640 --> 00:19:00.700 died in 1968, he left the papers to his secretary, 00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:04.240 Esther Hoff. She reportedly kept them in a dilapidated 00:19:04.240 --> 00:19:06.680 apartment surrounded by dozens of cats. Which 00:19:06.680 --> 00:19:09.779 is just bizarre. Totally. And when she died, 00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:13.039 she left them to her daughters. And this triggered 00:19:13.039 --> 00:19:16.279 a massive multinational legal battle spanning 00:19:16.279 --> 00:19:20.900 from 2008 to 2016. Yeah, it was a bitter, highly 00:19:20.900 --> 00:19:24.059 publicized dispute between the Hafez, the National 00:19:24.059 --> 00:19:27.440 Library of Israel, and the German Literary Archive 00:19:27.440 --> 00:19:31.240 in Marbach. Wow. Israel argued the papers were 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:33.960 fundamental cultural assets belonging to the 00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:37.119 Jewish people. The daughters claimed them as 00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:39.559 private, inherited property that they could sell. 00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:42.130 OK. And the German archive. which had already 00:19:42.130 --> 00:19:44.029 purchased the original manuscript of the trial 00:19:44.029 --> 00:19:47.390 for $2 million, wanted the rest. Ultimately, 00:19:47.809 --> 00:19:49.490 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the papers 00:19:49.490 --> 00:19:52.309 belonged to the National Library. It was a decade 00:19:52.309 --> 00:19:55.289 long, labyrinthine, prescratic legal battle over 00:19:55.289 --> 00:19:57.609 the final fragments of a man who spent his life 00:19:57.609 --> 00:20:00.150 writing about labyrinthine bureaucratic legal 00:20:00.150 --> 00:20:02.730 battles. The irony is just staggering. It really 00:20:02.730 --> 00:20:04.509 is. So bringing this all back to you, why should 00:20:04.509 --> 00:20:06.589 you care about a long dead Czech writer who never 00:20:06.589 --> 00:20:08.349 finished his best novels and wanted them all 00:20:08.349 --> 00:20:11.170 burned anyway? Because whenever you are trapped 00:20:11.170 --> 00:20:14.569 by a faceless automated system, or you're fighting 00:20:14.569 --> 00:20:17.069 an incomprehensible corporate policy at work, 00:20:17.130 --> 00:20:20.130 or you're just battling your own creeping imposter 00:20:20.130 --> 00:20:22.839 syndrome, You are living in Kafka's world. We 00:20:22.839 --> 00:20:25.220 all are. We are. So what does this all mean? 00:20:25.720 --> 00:20:28.059 Knowing the actual man teaches us something vital. 00:20:28.299 --> 00:20:30.900 Kafka wasn't a miserable victim. He teaches us 00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:33.779 that we can find dark, absurd humor in the struggle. 00:20:33.980 --> 00:20:36.680 We don't have to suffer in silence. We can laugh 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:38.740 at the absurdity of the machine. Absolutely. 00:20:39.019 --> 00:20:42.029 He captured the modern condition perfectly. precisely 00:20:42.029 --> 00:20:44.650 because he lived it fully, as an artist, a lawyer, 00:20:45.009 --> 00:20:47.470 a health enthusiast, and a remarkably observant 00:20:47.470 --> 00:20:50.150 human being. And his legacy leaves us with a 00:20:50.150 --> 00:20:53.500 profound philosophical dilemma to chew on. When 00:20:53.500 --> 00:20:55.200 you look at those pages sitting in the National 00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:58.099 Library today, if an artist explicitly demands 00:20:58.099 --> 00:21:00.680 their unpolished private work be destroyed and 00:21:00.680 --> 00:21:02.720 a friend saves it because they recognize its 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:05.599 undeniable genius, to whom does the art truly 00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:07.460 belong? Does it belong to the creator who wished 00:21:07.460 --> 00:21:10.000 it into ashes or does it belong to humanity who 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:12.119 needed those exact words to understand the modern 00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:15.160 world? It is the ultimate bureaucratic loophole. 00:21:15.700 --> 00:21:17.940 The very paperwork he ordered to be destroyed 00:21:17.940 --> 00:21:20.859 became the permanent immortal record of his soul. 00:21:21.220 --> 00:21:22.740 Think about that the next time you're stuck on 00:21:22.740 --> 00:21:24.640 hold. Until next time, thanks for joining us 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:25.380 on the Deep Dive.