One of the best experiences of the trip. I empathize with author Kafka (From one of the exhibitions):The Civil Servant
The are common existential conflicts in the lives of all men which feed the background of ill ease that marks our culture. The traditional discrepancy between vocation and profession is one of them. For Franz Kafka, this conflict was catastrophic. When he chose literature as the only possible terrain for his liberation, he was still a lawyer in the service of Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy. The problem lay in the anguish that this double life caused him, the erosion that it meant for his organism. The tremendous tension that it involved.
Kafka revealed himself to be a singular example of the "double agent." On the one hand at the service of the imperial bureaucracy, one of a brand of lawyers, in the world of bureaucrats, he himself was a candidate for the annual lawyer's convention he imagined in one of his short stories. And at the same time, on His Majesty's secret service: literature. An activity which drained him of all his forces and drove him to become a representative witness of last century.
1 comment:
My favorite work read at UT in 79 was Metamorphosis. The conflict between capitalism and humanity highlights the conswequences of becoming a demensional person. In the end no one cared unless you had capital.
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