Until recently only a few of Kafka’s drawings were widely known. Then in 2019, after an extraordinary ten-year-long trial in Israel, hundreds of drawings by Kafka, along with letters and manuscripts, that had been in private ownership for years, were handed over to the National Library of Israel, a story Benjamin Balint comprehensively details in his fascinating account, Kafka’s Last Trial.
This superb book is the first to publish all of Kafka’s drawings, almost 250 of them, including all the newly discovered sketches. It represents, writes the editor, Andreas Kilcher, “the last great unknown trove of Kafka’s works.” It is a milestone in Kafka studies.
77658 HC Kafka abb 113r
A figure out of a sketch book
Kafka’s drawings cover his whole career, but many date from his university years when he was studying in Prague, in the early 1900s. It was during this time that he met his great friend, and later his literary executor, Max Brod, who saved these drawings. “I rescued them from the waste basket,” Brod wrote in 1948. “Indeed, I cut a number of them from the margins of the course notes from his legal studies.”
In his introduction Kilcher tells the complicated history of Kafka’s drawings, how they ended up with Brod, who took them to safety in Palestine when he fled from Prague in 1939, how he later placed them in four safe deposit boxes in a bank in Zurich, allowing just a few to be published during the 1950s and ‘60s, and then left his entire estate and papers to Ilse Esther Hoffe, who in his words was much “more” than just “my secretary”, and who “kept the drawings fully under wraps”.
The drawings themselves, presented chronologically, consist of three groups. First, those from Kafka’s university years. These are not connected to any texts. The second, much smaller group includes drawings created as part of Kafka’s letters, diaries and notebooks between 1909 and his death in 1924. The third group “consists of ornamental figures that have their origins in the writing process”.
77658 HC Kafka abb 079r
Portrait of Julie Kafka, Franz's mother
The book also features several superb essays. One of them, also by Kilcher, puts Kafka’s drawings in their biographical and historical context, showing that Kafka was far more interested in modern art than most of us had previously thought. Another, by the literary critic Judith Butler, explores how Kafka drew the human body, linking his drawings with the way he wrote about bodies in his fiction.
As for the drawings, they are a distinctive mix of figurative works. What is striking is how they depict human faces and figures with just a few strokes. “The expressions and postures are not static,” writes Kilcher, “but often dynamic, sometimes leaning as if in motion… Particularly typical subjects of these drawings include fencers, horseback riders, and dancers.” They are minimalist, just a few lines, he continues, “with an effect that is frequently fragmentary, tentative, unfinished.”
77658 HC Kafka abb 115r
Seated figure
But what is also striking is how similar they are to the central themes of Kafka’s writing. Many depict figures which are immobile, sitting at a desk or on a chair, sometimes trapped behind bars or railings. And this opposition between being immobile or trapped and trying to escape is at the heart of some of Kafka’s greatest work, such as Metamorphosis or In the Penal Colony.
The book doesn’t just introduce us to Kafka’s art, it also illuminates his writing.
Franz Kafka The Drawings gives us a clear history of the discovery of the drawings, places them in the context of Kafka’s early career and the world of modern art in early 20th century Prague, offers a fascinating interpretation of the drawings in relation to Kafka’s writing and reproduces all the available drawings, with an invaluable catalogue raisonné.
If you are interested in Kafka, this magnificent book is not to be missed.
