Read Collected Stories Online

Authors: Franz Kafka

Collected Stories (8 page)

DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
1883
Birth in Prague (3 July) of Franz Kafka, son of a prosperous Jewish businessman who will later insist on German schools and the German University. Franz Kafka is brought up as a non-orthodox, Western Jew.
1889
Attends German elementary school until 1893. Birth of the first of his three sisters (two younger brothers die in infancy).
1893
Attends German Staatgymnasium until 1901.
1901
Studies Law at the German Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague but is drawn to the literary circles of the city.
1902
Kafka very quickly defines his ideal style – cool, sober and very elegant: a language ‘ohne Schnörkel und Schleier und Warzen’. Meets Max Brod.
1904
Begins ‘Description of a Struggle’.
1906
Receives law degree. Embarks on his year of practical training in Prague Law Courts.
1907
Writes ‘Wedding Preparations in the Country’. Takes temporary position with Assicurazioni Generali, Italian insurance company.
1908
Accepts position in Prague with Workers’ Accident Insurance Company, the Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt.
1909
Eight prose pieces published in
Hyperion.
Trip to Riva and Brescia (with Max and Otto Brod). Writes
Die Aeroplane in Brescia.
1910
Begins to write a diary in which he relentlessly analyses his inner life. Five prose pieces published in
Bohemia.
Trip to Paris (with Max and Otto Brod). Visit to Berlin.
1911
Official trip to Friedland and Reichenberg. Trip (with Max Brod) to Switzerland, Italy and France, writing travelogues. Becomes interested in Yiddish theatre and literature.
1912
Meets a Jewish girl from Berlin, Felice Bauer, to whom he will be engaged twice. The short story ‘Das Urteil’ (‘The Judgment’) is written six weeks later. Visits Leipzig and Weimar. Works on a novel to be called
Der Verschollene
, to be published posthumously in 1927 as
Amerika.
1913
Publication of
Betrachtung
(
Meditation
),
The Judgment
and
Der Heizer
(
The Stoker
). Visits Felice in Berlin. Travels to Vienna and Italy. Meeting with Grete Bloch and beginning of correspondence. (She becomes the mother of his son who dies in 1921, and of whose existence Kafka is ignorant.)
1914
Engaged to Felice. Breaks off his engagement. Visit to Germany. Starts working on
Der Prozess
(
The Trial
). Writes ‘In der Strafkolonie’ (‘In the Penal Colony’).
1915
‘Die Verwandlung’ (‘The Metamorphosis’), an acknowledged masterpiece of precision, lucidity and grotesque implication, is published. Reconciliation with Felice.
1916
Resumes writing after two years’ silence: the fragment of ‘A Country Doctor’, ‘The Hunter Gracchus’ and other stories later included in
A Country Doctor.
1917
Tuberculosis of the lung is confirmed. Relationship with Felice ends. Writes stories, among others: ‘A Report to an Academy’ ‘The Cares of a Family Man’ and ‘The Great Wall of China’. Learning Hebrew.
1919
Stays in various sanatoria. Briefly engaged to Julie Wohryzek who inspires him to write ‘Brief an der Vater’ (‘Letter to his Father’). ‘In the Penal Colony’ and
A Country Doctor
are published.
1920
Meets Milena Jesenska-Pollak, with whom he later corresponds.
1921
Goes back to work with the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company. ‘The Bucket Rider’ published.
1922
Writes
Der Schloss
(
The Castle
), ‘A Hunger Artist’ and ‘Investigations of a Dog’. Breaks off relations with Milena Jesenska-Pollak. Retires from the insurance company because of his ill-health and works until his death in a sanatorium near Vienna. ‘A Hunger Artist’ published.
1923
Meets Dora Dymant, daughter of an orthodox Polish rabbi, and lives with her for a time in Berlin. His illness drives him to Prague before he enters a sanatorium near Vienna. Writes ‘The Burrow’.
1924
Moves back to Prague. Writes ‘Josephine the Singer’. He is nursed in his last months by Dora Dymant, in a nursing home at Kierling. Dies there and is buried in Prague. Collection,
A Hunger Artist
, published shortly after his death. He leaves a testamentary direction that his work has to be destroyed after his death, which is disregarded by his friend and executor Max Brod.
1925
Publication by Max Brod of
Der Prozess
(
The Trial
).
1926
Publication by Max Brod of
Das Schloss
(
The Castle
).
1927
Publication by Max Brod of the unfinished
Amerika.
DATE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1883
Maupassant:
Une Vie.
Nietzsche:
Thus Spake Zarathustra
(to 1884). Death of Turgenev.
1884
Huysmans:
À Rebours.
Tolstoy’s
What I Believe
is banned.
1885
Howells:
The Rise of Silas Lapham
. Maupassant:
Bel Ami.
Nietzsche:
Beyond Good and Evil.
1886
Rimbaud:
Les Illuminations.
Hardy:
The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Tolstoy:
The Death of Ivan Ilych.
His play,
The Power of Darkness
, offends the Tsar and is banned.
Henry James:
The Bostonians
and
The Princess Casamassima.
1888
Mallarmé:
Poésies.
Strindberg:
Miss Julie.
Sudermann:
Frau Sorge.
Birth of Anna Akhmatova.
1889
Ibsen:
Hedda Gabler.
Hauptmann:
Before Sunrise.
Strindberg:
The Creditors.
Birth of Jean Cocteau.
1890
Hamsun:
Hunger.
Wilde:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
and
The Critic as Artist.
Henry James:
The Tragic Muse.
William James:
The Principles of Psychology.
1891
Wilde:
The Soul of Man under Socialism.
Howells:
A Modern Instance.
Shaw:
Quintessence of Ibsenism.
Birth of Bulgakov.
1892
Hamsun:
Mysteries.
Ibsen:
The Master Builder.
Hauptmann:
The Weavers.
Hofmannsthal:
The Death of Titian.
1893
Fontane:
Frau Jenny Treibel.
Tolstoy:
The Kingdom of God is within You.
Sudermann:
Heimat.
Schnitzler:
Anatol.
Death of Maupassant.
1894
Hamsun:
Pan.
Bryusov publishes
The Russian Symbolists.
Heinrich Mann:
In a Family.
1895
Hardy:
Jude the Obscure.
Fontane:
Effi Briest.
Wilde’s trial and imprisonment; writes
An Ideal Husband
and
The Importance of Being Earnest.
Gorky:
Chelkash.
Birth of Ernst Jünger.
1896
Chekhov:
The Seagull.
Fontane:
Poggenpuhls.
1897
Housman:
A Shropshire Lad.
Henry James:
What Maisie Knew.
1898
Tolstoy:
What is Art?
Zola:
J’accuse.
Shaw:
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant.
Wilde:
The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Strindberg:
Inferno.
Thomas Mann:
Little Herr Friedemann.
Svevo:
As a Man Grows Older.
Birth of Erich Maria Remarque.
Death of Fontane and Mallarmé.
1899
Yeats:
The Wind Among the Reeds.
Tolstoy:
Resurrection.
Chekhov:
The Lady with the Little Dog.
Gorky:
Foma Gordeev.
Birth of Borges.
1900
Conrad:
Lord Jim.
Freud:
Interpretation of Dreams.
Schnitzler:
La Ronde.
Dreiser:
Sister Carrie.
Death of Wilde and Nietzsche.
1901
Chekhov:
Three Sisters.
Thomas Mann:
Buddenbrooks.
Strindberg:
Dance of Death.
1902
Rilke:
The Book of Pictures.
Gide:
L’Immoraliste.
Sudermann:
The Joy of Living.
Henry James:
The Wings of the Dove.
Death of Zola.
1903
Thomas Mann:
Tristan, Tonio Kröger.
Moore:
Principia Ethica.
Shaw:
Man and Superman.
1904
Henry James:
The Golden Bowl.
Conrad:
Nostromo.
Pirandello:
The Late Mattia Pascal.
1905
Thomas Mann:
Fiorenza. The Blood of the Walsungs
is withdrawn.
Rilke:
The Book of Hours.
Gumilev:
The Path of the Conquistadors.
Wharton:
The House of Mirth.
Birth of Sholokhov.
1906
Gorky:
The Mother
(to 1907).
Hofmannsthal:
Oedipus and the Sphinx.
Death of Ibsen.
1907
Blok:
The Terrible World.
Rilke:
New Poems.
Strindberg:
The Ghost Sonata.
Adams:
The Education of Henry Adams.
Conrad:
The Secret Agent.
William James:
Pragmatism.
1908
Forster:
A Room with a View.
Bennett:
The Old Wives’ Tale.
1909
Bely:
The Silver Dove.
Gide:
La Porte étroite
.
1910
Tsetsaeva:
Evening Album.
Rilke:
Sketches of Malte Laurids Brigge.
Forster:
Howards End.
Wells:
Mr Polly.
Döblin co-founds the Expressionist
Der Sturm.
Death of Tolstoy.
1911
Pound:
Canzoni.
Conrad:
Under Western Eyes.
Heinrich Mann’s manifesto:
Spirit and Deed.
The Poets’ Guild formed (founders of Russian Acmeism).
Wharton:
Ethan Frome.
1913
Proust:
A la Recherche du temps perdu
(to 1927).
Lawrence:
Sons and Lovers.
Trakl:
Poems.
Alain Fournier:
Le Grand Meaulnes.
Apollinaire:
Alcools.
Mandelstam:
Stone.
Gorky:
Childhood.
Cather:
O Pioneers!
1914
Joyce:
Dubliners.
Kaiser:
The Burghers of Calais.
Blok:
Carmen.
Akhmatova:
Rosary.
1915
Ford:
The Good Soldier.
Lawrence:
The Rainbow.
Woolf:
The Voyage Out.
Mayakovsky:
A Cloud in Trousers.
1916
Joyce:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Death of Henry James.
1917
Yeats:
The Wild Swans at Coole.
Eliot:
Prufrock and other Observations.
Pasternak:
Above the Barriers.
1918
Joyce:
Exiles.
Kraus:
The Last Days of Mankind
(to 1922).
Thomas Mann:
Considerations of an Unpolitical Man.
Spengler:
The Decline of the West
(to 1923).
Kaiser:
Gas
(to 1920).
Blok: ‘The Twelve’.
Birth of Solzhenitsyn.
1919
Sherwood Anderson:
Winesburg, Ohio.
Dos Passos:
One Man’s Initiation.
Cocteau:
Ode to Picasso.
1920
Lawrence:
Women in Love.
Wharton:
The Age of Innocence.
Sinclair Lewis:
Main Street.
Pound:
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
Mayakovsky:
150,000,000.
Čapek:
RUR.
1921
Death of Blok and Gumilev. Thomas Mann:
Goethe and Tolstoy.
Hašek:
The Good Soldier Švejk.
Pirandello:
Six Characters in Search of an Author.
1922
Eliot:
The Waste Land.
Woolf:
Jacob’s Room.
Joyce’s
Ulysses
published in Paris.
Brecht:
Baal, Drums in the Night.
Pasternak:
My Sister Life.
Toller:
The Machine Wreckers.
Mandelstam:
Tristia.
Borges:
Fervor de Buenos Aires.
Čapek:
The Absolute at Large.
Death of Proust.
1923
Gorky:
My Universities.
Babel:
Red Cavalry
(to 1925).
Rilke:
Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus.
Cather:
A Lost Lady.
1924
Mann:
The Magic Mountain
published.
Pasternak:
The Childhood of Luvers, Themes and Variations.
Mayakovsky:
Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
Ford:
Some Do Not.
Forster:
A Passage to India.
O’Neill:
Desire under the Elms.
O’Casey:
Juno and the Paycock.
1925
Woolf:
Mrs Dalloway
and
The Common Reader.
Cather:
The Professor’s House.
Scott Fitzgerald:
The Great Gatsby.
O’Neill:
The Fountain.
Dreiser:
An American Tragedy.
Stein:
The Making of Americans.
1926
Gide:
Si le Grain ne meurt.
Ford:
A Man Could Stand Up.
Death of Rilke.
1927
Woolf:
To the Lighthouse.
Hesse:
Der Steppenwolf.
Brecht:
Man is Man.
Birth of Günter Grass.

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