My Life Notes: My Love Affair with Kafka

Author: Hongying
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Franz Kafka is considered the pioneer of modernist literature and a forerunner of expressionist literature. His works are characterized by complex and obscure themes, fragmented plots, disjointed thought processes, and significant symbolic language. The author of this book follows in the footsteps of the renowned 20th-century writer Franz Kafka, narrating his life story of traveling abroad with romantic prose. It seems that Kafka never encountered women in his life, or rather, no woman had the courage to love him. My courage now is a century late; Kafka is now just a symbol. How this symbol affects others, I don’t know, but it has always been an important mark for me. Passing by the bar he often visited, I saw his melancholic face, as if lost in thought staring out the window. I brought a red rose. In the sunlight, my shadow covered the steps around me—some high, some low, some slanted—I walked step by step to this spot. He saw me and grew uneasy. I, too, felt uneasy. To enter or leave, my feet hesitated in place. "The red rose in your hand is proof of how you breathe," he said. True, a century has passed, and the rose still blooms. Is this passage not a miracle? So I wrote letter after letter, hoping it wouldn’t be too much, but that you would have the patience to read these hieroglyphics.