Photo: Maddie Kauffman

Thursday, Sept. 27, professor of English and German Dr. Mark Harman orchestrated a presentation in Elizabethtown College’s High Library McCormick classroom to discuss and analyze a letter that German-speaking Bohemian Jewish author Franz Kafka wrote to his father.

Harman has extensive experience with Kafka, having translated a number of his works into English. Harman is currently working on translating an anthology of some of Kafka’s major works, in addition to having already translated editions of both “Amerika: The Missing Person” and “The Castle.”

Utilizing this expertise, Harman was able to conduct a dialogue that connected the personal Kafka of the letter with the literary Kafka of his novels.

The chairs were set up in a roundtable formation, indicating that the event was meant to be treated as a forum. On multiple occasions, extra chairs had to be included in the circle as more students continued to arrive.

Harman expressed relief at the fact that the turn out was so high, as he had struggled in the past to get his students engaged with Kafka at his level of interest. While that may have been true in a classroom setting, in this open forum environment, Harman had students on the edge of their seats.

First-year Makenna Piper had never heard of Kafka beyond the term “kafkaesque,” which refers to when artwork/enviornments/etc. resemble the eerie, phantasmagorical quality of Kafka’s writing.

Harman’s presentation on Kafka invigorated Piper. “I feel like [Kafka] is going to be my next big obsession,” Piper said. This was in great part due to the depth of analysis Harman was able to bring to Kafka as a full, dynamic individual.

Piper herself made note of how, in reference to a photo of Kafka, “[Harman] said he saw a sense of estrangement. And I agree with that, there’s a sense of desolation, a melancholy. I am interested in who he [Kafka] is as a person.”

Junior Maggie Boccella was able to introduce a similar sense of connection to Kafka, commenting that “the idea of writing something and then burning it or throwing it away is timeless.”

This sentiment connects to the fact that it is unsure if Kafka ever intended for his father to read the letter, but he nonetheless wrote it.

Piper connected this to a notion of “plausible deniability,” which is thematically constant in Kafka’s life.

Kafka gave a letter for his father to his mother, and he told a friend who adored his work that he had permission to burn it upon his death. With both his own legacy and his relationship with his father, he put the important choices into someone else’s hands.

After the presentation, first-year Nicholas Mich reflected on the ambiguity of Kafka’s intended recipient, commenting that “sometimes pieces of writing can be used for self-therapy and do not necessarily need to be read to be understood.”

Kafka’s father was a businessman who expected his son to take over after him, which he ultimately would never do. Kafka expressed that his father’s torment turned him into “a glum, disobedient child— always intent on escape, mainly inside oneself.”

This phrasing paints Kafka’s pursuit of literature as a coping mechanism, which is substantiated by another quote regarding his father: “Sometimes I imagine the map of the world spread out and you stretched directly across it. And I feel as if I could consider living in only those regions that are not covered by you and not in your reach.”

Harman started the presentation with this quote, and later offered the analysis that writing was a “region” that Kafka’s father could not reach. However, even this is not fully true.

Whether intentionally or not, Kafka admited that his writing had become greatly influenced by the presence of his father. “My writing was all about you, all I did there was bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast,” he wrote.

Harman also remarked that the emotions of Kafka’s letters are not so different from his other works, as “fear and guilt are present in his fictional writings, too.”

What really sticks out about Kafka was a remark made by Harman toward the end of his presentation.

“Everything turns into literature in his hands, even when he’s trying to establish a relationship with his real father,” he said.