Where's Kafka?

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
THE KAFKA MUSEUM ~ WITH CROW & GINGERBREAD

I am certainly not the first American tourist to wander around Prague searching for signs of Kafka, and many have done a much better job of it than I. Some manifestations of the great "K" were not so hard to find:

Mirrored Head of Franz Kafka

Kafka Riding an Empty Suit

Reader in an Armchair

Others were more elusive. Despite the omnipresence of Kafka in Prague, a couple of times I felt like K., standing before the closed door of the law. Like the Man Before the Law, I was right in front of my goal, yet unable to pass through the barrier -- in this case, the barrier of my own tourist - blindness. As K. can attest, the object of your quest might be right before your eyes yet still impossible to perceive.

For example, in search of Kafka's birthplace,
I carefully photographed this corner . . .

. . . before successfully locating, merely
one block away, this wall - mounted plaque,
that marks the location of Kafka's birth.
I had been standing directly beneath it,
but had neglected to look up!

Similarly, after tracing Kafka's route to school
across the Old Town Square, from the ornately decorated
House at the Minute ~ Dům U Minuty

. . . to the Masna Street Elementary School,
I stood right in front of the green front door,
looking across to the other side of the street.
But the aspect did not seem right, not as I had expected. . . .
Oh! because the school building was directly behind me!

Then there was that moment, wandering around the Municipal House (Obecní Dům), past the American Bar and the concert hall, when I peered into some kind of staging area filled with flat tables and standing metal bars. "Interesting art installation," I said to Gerry, thinking "how avant - garde," until he offered a moment of clarification: "That's the coat check!"

“The right perception of any matter
and a misunderstanding of the same matter
do not wholly exclude each other.”
Franz Kafka ~ The Trial
(271, Muir / Butler translation; 258 online edition)

Previous Fortnightly Post
Finding Kafka In Prague

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, December 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Visions of Kafka
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Kafka Museum &
Pernikovy Panacek Gingerbread Shop

Finding Kafka in Prague

KAFKA'S PRAGUE
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"Kafka has become the ubiquitous icon [of Prague]. His melancholy portrait is inescapable, adorning T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, shopping bags, puppets and above all, graffiti. . . .

"Franz Kafka’s world was the world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, long before the horrors his writing seemed to anticipate had occurred. But in his personal habits, he would have fitted well into the style of the next turn of the century and the modern-day Prague that holds him in iconic esteem."

Marilyn Bender

Kafka Museum

******************
The setting of Kafka's novel, The Castle, could be a symbolic labyrinth of the mind; some remote haunted fortification known to Kafka or imagined; the actual and omnipresent Prague Castle (Pražský hrad); or, less precisely but more accurately, it could be the entire Castle District (Hradčany), which -- if you make your way up the hill -- you will find to be remarkably similar to the "village" described by Kafka in the early pages of the novel:

" . . . up on the hill everything soared light and free into the air, or at least so it appeared from below.

"On the whole this distant prospect of the Castle satisfied K.'s expectations. It was neither an old stronghold nor a new mansion but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two stories; if K. had not known that it was a castle he might have taken it for a little town. There was only one tower as far as he could see . . . Swarms of crows were circling round it. . . .

"With his eyes fixed on the Castle, K. went on farther, thinking of nothing else at all. But on approaching it, he was disappointed in the Castle; it was after all only a wretched - looking town, a huddle of village houses, whose sole merit, if any, lay in being built of stone; but the plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away. K. had a fleeting recollection of his native town. It was hardly inferior to this so-called Castle, and if it was merely a question of enjoying the view, it was a pity to have come so far; K. would have done better to revisit his native town, which he had not seen for such a long time." (pp 11 - 12)

from The Castle
by Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)
[previous posts on this blog]

**************

In the Old Town (Staré Město) as well as the Castle District, I was lost so often it was ludicrous! Admittedly, I am not the most spatially oriented person, but even with the best sense of direction in the world, wandering around Prague is truly like being inside the pages of The Castle, searching for the elusive Klamm, back and forth, around and through endless mysterious passageways. Yet, one way or another, we always arrived at our desired, designated destination. One foot in front of the other. As Kafka writes in the Eight / Blue Octavo Notebooks, "The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler."

Of the many maps we tried, this was my favorite.
Kafka Square is at the intersection of Kaprova & Maiselova
(at back of of the "Astronomical Clock" arrow):

Next Fortnightly Post ~ More Searching For Kafka!
Thursday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts ~ Still Small Snow
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading ~ Books That Affect Us Like a Disaster
www.kittislist.blogspot.com