“The greatest literary figures of Central Europe in the twentieth century (Kafka, Musil, Broch, Gombrowicz, but Freud as well) rebelled (they were very much alone in that rebellion) against the legacy of the preceding century, which in their part of Europe bowed under the particularly heavy weight of Romanticism. They felt that in its vulgar […]
1954 XI. Tuesday With Ernesto Sabato (an Argentine writer) in the bar Helvetico. Besides writing, Sabato teaches philosophy privately and initiates me into his method. He says Hay que golpear (one must strike). One must tear them away from the reality to which they have become accustomed and cause them to see everything anew. Their […]
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 […]
The publication of the novel Embers brought the name of Sándor Márai back into the international spotlight somewhat. Since then a number of translations into English have followed – most recently Portraits of a Marriage, which a review on Hungarian Literature Online says is actually a grouping of two Márai novels. Although known as a […]
From 1908 to 1922 Franz Kafka worked at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. Considering his work was virtually unknown in his homeland after his death, then banned successively by German occupiers and the communist regime, Kafka’s traces in his former city were not very well guarded. Today though, […]
Masters of the Borderland exhibit ties two 20th Century literary giants to Central Europe’s Jewish past and its role in their work. Writers are faced with an array of choices – of subject, style, even what name to publish under – but we tend not to think of their language as a matter of choice. […]
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