The following story is told about the Czech writer Franz Kafka. Around 1922, Kafka was walking in a Berlin park when he saw a little girl crying sadly. This happened at a time when little girls had not yet been taught that if an unknown man speaks to you in a park, you must not answer. When Kafka asked the reason for the girl’s sorrow, she told him she had lost her beloved doll. The girl and Kafka searched for the doll, but did not find it. Kafka suggested that they meet again in the park the next day and continue the search.
The next day, too, the doll was not found, but after a long search Kafka gave the girl a letter the doll had written. In it, the doll asked the girl not to cry, because she had merely gone off on a journey to see the world. The doll also promised to write to the girl and tell her about her travels. Thus began a friendship that continued until Kafka’s death in 1924. At their meetings, Kafka read the girl the doll’s letters, in which the doll described her adventures and her encounters with people.
Eventually Kafka brought the girl a doll that had returned to Berlin. The girl said it did not resemble her doll at all. Kafka then handed her one more letter, in which the doll wrote that the journey had changed her greatly. The girl understood that it was, after all, her beloved doll, welcomed it back from its travels, and took it home.
Many years later, when the girl had grown up, she found a note inside the doll, signed by Kafka. It read: “Everything you love you will probably lose, but in the end love returns in some other form.”
I do not know whether the story is true, but one comes across it from time to time. Since Kafka was an extraordinarily prolific letter writer, using a letter would have been a natural way for him to comfort the girl.
Kafka’s narrative voice is very much his own, and the “Kafkaesque” atmosphere of his books may feel oppressive to some readers, as in The Castle or The Trial. He is certainly not among the easiest writers to like, but for those who acquire a taste for his texts, they have a unique fascination. Kafka’s vision of faceless bureaucracy, in particular, remains unsurpassed and clairvoyant in its bleakness.
