An ad·den·dum to everything vermin.

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” ― Franz Kafka

I may be alone (except for a few souls whom I thank) in my excitement to promote my thoughts about Kafka's style of writing, and that is completely ok. To me, I see a bit of the man Kafka was in all of us writers.

Here is why:

Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague. He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married.

Kafka was a prolific writer, spending most of his free time writing, often late in the night. He burned an estimated 90 percent of his total work due to his persistent struggles with self-doubt. Much of the remaining 10 percent is lost or otherwise unpublished. Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime; the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories, such as his novella The Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines but received little attention.

In his will, Kafka instructed his close friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, but Brod ignored these instructions and had much of his work published. Kafka's writings became famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing German literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s. It has also influenced artists, composers, and philosophers.

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The fifteen-year-old in my household is an artist, she rips up her drawings and hides them even though I have given her folders and a host of artistic material to encourage her to save them. She deletes those on-line too.

All (maybe most is a better word) artistic and literary minds doubt their work. There are so many stories here on Vocal where we are all writing articles which we believe are total rot and chucking them away. Yet, when we are brave enough to set them free, they are the ones which people will gravitate towards, which then makes us wonder in awe what others see in the stories which are not our favorite choices for assumed greatness.

Fully half of my 'Top Stories' makes me stop and go...ummm! That is not the one I would have chosen, I would have picked this one or that one over there. Yet here we are, they resonated with others more than they did to the creator of the things.

The stories which we write, the content, the topic, the emotive factors, the similar pain and hurt which others commiserate and empathize with, the hope which they imagine in our shared experiences or differences serve to lift and encourage others. In the end it is a mutually beneficial state of being as we find joy in the joy of others.

Imagine the stories which Kafka denied us a peek into, the visual colors of the words envisioned through the stories of his eyes. Still, we are lucky that he had a good friend who saw his potential and saved his work to share with the world.

In a way, Vocal is that friend to all of us. Someone had a vision of how many of us lost souls were out there and just needed a friend to find a way to allow us to save our stories for posterity. I am extremely grateful for that friend, and in addition we learn and grow our craft and also have a plethora of choices beyond the platform where we can further evolve our work if we so choose. What a gift it is if we choose to see it that way.

(Sometimes we cuss and rant about stuff, but it's all a part of the package).

Kafka - The man

Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the oldest. Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; he had three sisters Gabriele, Valerie and Ottilie. All three were murdered in the Holocaust of World War II. Ottilie had been Kafka's favorite sister

Hermann, the father, is described by Kafka scholar and translator Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman".

Franz Kafka described his father as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on a grand scale, of course with all the defects and weaknesses that go with all these advantages and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper drive you".

Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character; his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy. The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on his writing.

Does our personal writing stem from our experiences through childhood and onwards. Did my strong need to start writing poetry from an early age stem from my abject feeling of loneliness from being a middle child of eight kids with not much attention from my parents. This was no fault on their part, they did their best. Or was it an innate desire due to my love of words. Could it have been a bit of both.

We can definitely see Kafka's suffering and loss and understand why he wrote his heart out, and also why he felt that he had to destroy some of the probably painful memories which he had written.

We all have many stories in draft that may never get published.

We may never know for sure, but despite his loss, sadness and early transition into the next life, Franz Kafka left us with an extraordinary gift.

May his long rest be forever peaceful!

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Franz Kafka left behind a treasure trove of thought-provoking quotes. Here are a few that resonate deeply:

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly".

"I am a cage, in search of a bird".

"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self".

"Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old".

"I cannot make you understand. I cannot even explain it to myself".

"I am free and that is why I am lost".

"The meaning of life is that it stops".

"A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die".

"All language is but a poor translation".

Kafka’s words continue to inspire and provoke contemplation.

Thank you for reading.