Kafka in Letters: Critical Thought in the Creative Process
Kafka in Letters: Critical Thought in the Creative Process
Juliana Amir
Competing with ceaseless stimuli offered by technology, teachers often find it can be a challenge to engage students and remove the temptation of distractions. Surprise, in its simplest state, has the capacity to lift us from the mundane, and even out of the moment, seizing our complete focus. Some days of instruction feel dependent on strategy, while others offer us a chance to revel in bright discussion. Within an entry-level writing class largely used for strengthening techniques on research and persuasion, I create moments to disrupt the expected study and analysis of logical fallacies, news, or the synthesis of information.
On one such occasion, I introduce students to a story of emotion. It is allegedly true, but remains as unverified lore. Franz Kafka can neither confirm, nor correct, any of the details. Whether or not this story is historically accurate, it resonates with a truth that we uncover in some form throughout our lifetime.
Guy Davenport presents one version of this story in his short story “Belinda’s World Tour” (New Directions, 1993):
On a stone pathway, in a beautiful park in Prague, a little girl had lost her doll—her friend. She searched around, teary and inconsolable. A kind man named Franz Kafka saw her. He stopped. When he learned of her troubles, he told her he too would search for her lost friend, and they would meet at that very spot the next day. He searched and searched, but never found her doll.
Instead, he traveled to his home, where he’d spend the better part of his evening crafting a credible letter for the next day. When the moment came, he waited on the park bench for the little girl and after she appeared, he told her, “Your doll has taken off on a magnificent journey. Here, she has left me her letter to give to you.”
On the page, he’d penned of her travels, of her great excursion by hot air balloon to a rainy city where folk thrived off tea and muffins. These letters continued to come from around the world, one every three weeks, and were always signed by her beloved doll.
Dr. May Benetar’s version adds these details:
Kafka knew he could not keep this up forever, for he was ill.
The last time he met with her, he gifted her a special doll. The doll had a different appearance from the one she lost years prior, but it carried a note: “My travels have changed me.”
Other sources offer variations of the story. It is included in Reiner Stach’s biography of Kafa, but in that version Dora Diamont, Kafka’s last love, is present. In Stach’s version, Kafka spun the white lie on the spot, telling the girl her lost doll was not at all gone, but on an adventure. He knew this because he received her letter, which was at home, and he would deliver it to her the next day. Stach said the doll’s reason was a desire for change, whereas Davenport wrote that the doll was enamored by a boy. Alternate endings, such as Davenport’s, say the doll was married, thus e