Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Marbach Literary Archive in Germany have prevented a collection of letters and postcards written by Kafka from being auctioned off and will soon be put on public display, switching between the two prestigious institutions like a child shuttling back and forth between divorced parents. I attended a meeting of Prague’s Kafka Society tonight and will write more on this soon.
Notice that one of the two postcards is written in Czech. In it Kafka writes how the 20th century is bound to become increasingly nightmarish and bureaucratic, though at the moment he doesn’t want to weigh himself down with such dark thoughts as he is hitting the ski slopes with real vigor (my loose translation).
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