Franz Kafka and Czech literature periodized
Franz Kafka and Czech literature periodized

Summary/Abstract: This study approaches the subject of Franz Kafka and Czech literature through the prism of Kafka’s reception of Czech literature, drawing on the evidence of his egodocuments. The study aims to periodize Kafka’s reception of Czech literature. The proposal for its periodization relies on the language that mediates Kafka’s reception, on individual people, and on the framework and literary space in which such mediation took place. It also has an aesthetic dimension. The first period is characterized by Kafka’s exposure to classical literature in his Czech lessons at German grammar school. This period concludes with Kafka’s “Scheme for the Characterization of Small Literatures” (1911). The second period is characterized by Kafka’s response to early Czech modernist literature, which he read in his friends’ German translations. This period culminates in the anthology Jüngste tschechische Lyrik (Recent Czech Poetry, 1916) and fades by the end of the First World War. The third period is marked by Kafka’s reception of Czech avant-garde literature. Kafka had access to this literature thanks to the Czech journals in which Milena Jesenská published her translations, which also included Czech translations of his texts.

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