The Metamorphosis from Franz Kafka is his most famous work. I am pretty sure not only in Germany, but around the globe, kids in high schools are forced to read it and also answer tests about it. I´m not going to talk about the plot, the characters or the insights of the book, but to unveil some lesser-known facts that make it even more amazing.
Franz Kafka´s Father Had Gregor Samsa´s Job In Real Life
Many historians and biographers have spoken about the role that the father character plays in the novella, but few mentioned that his dad was actually a business traveler for many years during Franz Kafka´s childhood. Does this turn Gregor Samsa into Franz´s real father? It would open a whole distinct approach to what the actual father character means in the story.
Vladimir Nabokov Was Obsessed With Kafka´s Metamorphosis
The author of best-seller book Lolita was completely obsessed with Franz Kafka and specially his The Metamorphosis to a point in which he gave a famous lecture in which he called Kafka “The greatest German writer of our time”. Although that was the case, Nabokov´s version of Kafka´s book was very edited and included the correction of several lines.
The Metamorphosis Was Written In Only Three Weeks!
If you are a writer, this is not only unsettling, but also disheartening because it is such a masterpiece! Well, not only it was written in three weeks, but also in the midst of working full time at an insurance company, writing three letters a day to Felice Bauer and working on a different novel that remained unfinished and published only post-mortem under the name of Amerika. Unlike The Castle, The Metamorphosis was one of the few works that Kafka finished and published in his lifetime.
The Metamorphosis was one of the few works that Kafka finished and published in his lifetime.
Three Weeks To Write It, Three Years For Publishing
Although the process of writing the book took only three weeks, the publishing of the book took from 1912 to 1915. There were several complications in Kafka´s life and also in the world since World War I broke in the midst of the publishing process. He read fragments to his friends in November 1912 and the book finally came out in December 1915. There was a remake by Kafka; the manuscript presented to the publishing company wasn´t the same as the one he finished.
The First Edition Had No Insects
The correspondence between Kafka and his editor reveal that he forbids any drawing of Gregor as a big insect of any kind, trying to explode writer´s imagination to its fullest extent. He was successful with the first edition but all the ones that followed portrayed some kind of incarnation of the “Big Bug” that Gregor turned into.
Kafka Garden is my humble homage to the man I think is the greatest writer that has ever lived. We can discuss about style and ideas, but no other writer has ever made me feel what he did. I am a German citizen and I am lucky that I can read his work in the language it was created.
