I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else”: Kafka’s famously draconian assertion is from a draft of a letter written to Felice’s father, the mailed version of which Felice intercepted and did not pass on. The formulation is memorable, but it is not true. Kafka was, in addition to literature, a person with a history, a family, and a body. Once, he had even been a baby.

a b c d Kakutani, Michiko (2 April 1988). "Books of the Times; Kafka's Kafkaesque Love Letters". The New York Times . Retrieved 8 August 2012. L'altro processo" (1969) di Elias Canetti si muove tra le lettere che Franz Kafka e Felice Bauer si scrissero tra il 1912 e il 1917, durante il periodo in cui si frequentarono. È un capolavoro. In 120 pagine Canetti dice un mondo di cose pressanti, il vero titolo sarebbe potuto essere: Saggio parziale sulle relazioni umane.

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These words of Canetti's had the same effect on me as Kafka's letters had on him. There is something incredibly valuable in seeing authors in their roles as readers as well, as die-hard fans of other people's thoughts, words, dramas. The - occasionally - difficult relationship between author, reader, work and criticism is turned into a beautiful love affair, a mutual, fruitful and necessary interdependence. Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature. His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony" (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it: Gregor has significantly weakened by the final chapter of the novella. His family sinks deeper into despair; his father wears his uniform constantly, ready to go to work at any given moment, while his mother has to sew clothes, and his sister works as a sales clerk. The family begins to sell off their valuables to supplement their meager incomes. They even want to move to a smaller, cheaper apartment, but they cannot think about relocating Gregor. Sin darse cuenta al principio no nota que hay una dama sentada allí. Viene de Berlín y se llama Felice Bauer. Se produce así el primer encuentro entre Franz y una mujer que lo llevará hasta los rincones más recónditos del amor. Not that all of Kafka’s grievances were so trivial. He certainly had reason to rail against the monotony of his deadening office routine, and it is hard not to sympathize when he laments that his life “resembles the punishment in which the pupil has to write down the same sentence, senseless at least in its repetition, ten times, a hundred times or even more depending on his offense”—except in his case “it’s a punishment under the condition ‘as many times as you can stand it.’ ” There are periods when his depression darkens around him so densely that it blots out even the possibility of light: “Some deny the misery by pointing to the sun, he denies the sun by pointing to the misery.” The only thing that the dusk could not reach was his writing, or so he was convinced. “When it had become clear in my organism that writing was the most productive direction of my being,” he confesses, “everything thronged there and left empty all the abilities that were directed toward the pleasures of sex, eating, drinking, philosophical reflection music first and foremost. I wasted away in all these directions.” And yet even here, in this wail of anguish, he regards his writing as something writhing in his “organism,” in his viscera, not something anemic and apart. Louis Begley: Die ungeheure Welt, die ich im Kopfe habe. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-421-04362-7, p.125

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Kafka με τη Felice Bauer με βοήθησε ιδιαίτερα στο να κατανοήσω τις ιδέες αλλά και τις εμμονές που βρίσκονται μέσα στο λογοτεχνικό του έργο. Και στην περίπτωση αυτή, όπως και στις άλλες συλλογές επιστολών του, οι απαντήσεις της Felice δεν σώζονται. Αν έπρεπε να απαντήσω στην ερώτηση για το κατά πόσο ο Kafka προσπάθησε να δημιουργήσει μια παρασιτική σχέση εις βάρος της νεαρής αρραβωνιαστικιάς του, νομίζω πως θα έπρεπε να πω πως, ναι, αυτό ισχύει. Το ήξερε πως για εκείνον το να την κόψει και να την ράψει στα δικά του μέτρα ήταν θέμα επιβίωσης και δεν έπαψε να βασανίζεται από ενοχές γι' αυτήν του ανάγκη. I actually think, counterintuitively, Kafka would make an excellent partner. He gives great credit to Felice's intelligence, wit, and education, and above all else sees her as an equal in every way (and bear in mind, these letters were written in the early 1910s, where that certainly wasn't a default). He's constantly concerned with her well-being and places her happiness above his at all times.