The Dark World of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka's dark world deals with existentialist themes such as alienation, anxiety, disorientation and the absurd. His work is so original that the term Kafkaesque was coined to describe the nightmarish and bizarre atmosphere of his work. Throughout his works we see the strange dream-like mixture of perplexity and embarrassment play out, and the notion of a grand organisation with its incomprehensible bureaucratic system that hovers invisibly over each helpless individual, taking complete control over one's life.

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
▶ The Trial – Franz Kafka
▶ The Castle – Franz Kafka
▶ The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka
▶ Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka
▶ The Diaries of Franz Kafka
▶ Aphorisms by Franz Kafka

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🎶 Music used

1. Cryptic Sorrow – Kevin MacLeod
2. Allegro – Emmit Fenn
3. Snowdrop – Kevin MacLeod
4. Peaceful Ambient Background Music – Heroes – CO.AG Music
5. Permafrost Ambient Classical – Scott Buckley
6. Midsommar – Scott Buckley
7. Charms - Train – Sergey Cheremisinov

Support the artists:

CO.AG Music

Emmit Fenn

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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📝 Sources

- The Trial by Franz Kafka. Translated with an introduction by Idris Parry
- The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
- The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka. Foreword by John Updike
- Grandes Documentales: La Praga de Franz Kafka
- Kafka’s Manuscripts and the Hidden Libraries of Jerusalem: A Conversation with Ben Balint
- Franz Kafka's "The Trial" (1987)
- Trials, Castles, Insects, and Other Horrors: Franz Kafka | Glimpses Into Existence Lecture 7
- Max Brod on Franz Kafka
- Franz Kafka's Parable "Before the Law": A Key Text to Understanding his World and Writings

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⌛ Timestamps

(0:00) Introduction
(1:10) The Life of Kafka
(9:20) The Metamorphosis (1915)
(13:59) The Trial (1925)
(23:07) The Castle (1926)
24:29) Conclusion

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Thanks for watching!

#kafka #kafkaesque

[Eternalised]

*"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”* — Franz Kafka


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[E_]

As a 29 year old man myself, who has been undergoing an overwhelming spiritual transformation, relate to Kafka. I work two jobs and have school and I yearn the few moments I am able to express myself. The paper and pen are my refuge and when much time passes without being able to free my thoughts it feels like a fire inside me has to be set free.

It feels really lonely, but your channel and videos have been subtle finger taps onto a dimming light bulb, every tap renews the light that was slowly fading. Thank you.

[nardoritardeau]

Gosh, its mind blowing that Kafka wrote so prolifically about endless beaurocratic nonsense. I've been dealing with some of that recently and i think its interesting that this was something people experienced 100 years ago. I love when history is reconfigured in my head as way more relatable than i thought.

[TheJojoaruba]

Kafka used a lot of dream work and put it on paper. It made sense from a psychoanalytic perspective. He is writing about the worst dreams we all have of powerlessness.

[TimBitten]

Although everyone has a unique path in life and unique views, the world would be far dimmer and darker without Kafka, Hesse, Camus, Arthur Conan Doyle, Confucius, and Mark Twain having all graced us with their eminent works. Each, in their own way, are to be admired and emulated as ideal forms of humanity.

[amazingfincher]

I love his work. The way his protagonists just accept their living conditions and try to work as if nothing is wrong, like in the castle as well

[camcam]

Damn, as someone who’s disabled, that first story hits VERY close to home. It brought tears to my eyes.

[psychosophy]

His works are metaphors for his own life (thus characters named K. from Kafka). We are rather reading a journal, a damn well written one, than mere novels. Therefore we might feel some sort intimate connection with the author, not just the characters. We begin to empathetically understand him and feel the urge to comfort him. And if we understand him, we might even begin to integrate his lenses through which he perceives the world. Thus, I think the nature of his genius transfers from originality to relatedness.

[ambermoon]

My psychiatrist told me that Kafka’s favorite author was Dostoyevsky. My eyes lit up with my psychiatrists’ eyes because Dostoyevsky is both of our favorites, too. After reading Brothers Karamasov, that is especially true, so far. I just finished Kafka’s The Trial and am learning more about him. I get Deja vu because he’s familiar like I already know him.

[paula]

I remember reading The Trial in school, it hit hard but weirdly most of the class wasn't amazed by it.. maybe the young age, maybe they just rather don't dive into the interpretation. Then I was able to go and see the theater play of it and I got lost. His work is so accurate in modern world it's scary. Kafka is one of the best writers, and the fact that every single thing that he wrote, can be understood so differently yet correctly by everyone is just amazing.

[jayabyss]

“12:42 I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

I felt that

[pvthfindxr]

i’ve always interpreted The Metamorphosis as an allegory for extreme depression or another kind of mental or unseen disability.

[EnclaveHater]

The strangest thing about this is that I had just gone to my library this morning to pick up a copy of the metamorphosis and later came home to find this very video awaiting me on the very first column of my recommended tab.

[roberteckhardt]

I invested years of my youth into studying this mans work, it really opened gates for new paths of introspection. I recommend reading Ein Landarzt - a countryside doctor. It's is the only literary output he did not reject later in his life. Also his 1st novel, Amerika', that follows a son, sent away over the atlantic by his family on his social descent into obscurity alongside the institutions and characters of the sometimes vast & sometimes hectic New World: The America European immigrants faced around the turn of the last century.
Reading Kafka shaped my personality in a way only the works of J.P. Sartre did.

[Cydreeze]

In "The Trial" I've always interpreted the door as: In the end there is no easy way, To go forward there is gonna be resistance. But if you don't face that and wait for "admittance" you've doomed yourself.

[jordanthornton]

ABSURD! ITS ALL ABSURD! 🤮Brilliant video, thank you! Takes me back to when I first encountered Kafka when I was going through an extended period of existential dread about six or seven years ago.

Started with both Metamorphoses & The Trial which were strangely disturbing and yet comforting reads - a very unique soul and literary experience. Marvellous man. Weird, but marvellous.

[Davlavi]

This channel deserves way more views. Keep up the great videos.

[mattybaked]

I would love if you did a video on Fernando Pessoa. When my philosophy professor was lecturing on existentialism and absurdism he mentioned The Book of Disquiet by Pessoa. Reading it really changed me, his writing is psychedelic and trance inducing. He is profoundly unique.

[parns]

One of my favorite Kafka stories was that little one told from the perspective of a builder/mason working on the great wall of China. I don't remember much about it, except the insane detail (accurate or not) on the logistics/administration of the wall's construction. The 'endless and impossible journey' that Wallace references seems to be the unacknowledged project of a lot of our technology/media/algorithms now a days, and it's so badass Kafka had a pulse on that over a century ago.

[GJP]

I love Kafka novels. My favorite author. I'm glad Max Brod didn't destroy his manuscripts