On Writing Franz Kafka's Noble Nightmares and Reasons

A funny thing happened on my way to getting out of bed Sunday morning, Father’s Day. A sentence that had first popped into my head somewhere around the beginning of the year suddenly, for no reason I could determine, popped up again. It revealed itself as follows:

If ever the term “tortured genius” was applicable to one of the giants of literary history, it was without question to the Prague-born Jewish author Franz Kafka.

Once this sentence uttered itself with such quiet authority in my head for the second time in half a year, I decided it would be wise to write it down. I wrote quickly so I could go ahead and get dressed, then do whatever I was going to do for Father’s Day. Then I got another surprise. Apparently my pen was not in a mood to be abandoned, holiday or not, because after that first sentence it kept flowing blue liquid gel ink until I had composed an entire paragraph. Although I write the word ‘I,’ the truth is that my muse was clearly very present and playing the role of literary task master.

Reading over the paragraph just scribbled, I smiled at the realization that, having just barely woke from a dream about sitting in an algebra class, I had written the beginnings of what should become a decent essay on Ernst Pawel’s biography of Franz Kafka. One side of my brain made a note to complete it later on. The other side said forget that and continued writing until I had completed a full first draft.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, minus clothing, I stared at the legal-sized pages that I had filled writing about Kafka without having had a single cup of coffee and tried to remember the last time I had been seized by such a powerful fit of relentless inspiration. The answer came that it had when writing the poems in my angel series––only the first, ‘The Angel of Gratitude,’ had been a deliberately structured composition. The others had arrived at their own creative will and, as with the Kafka essay, seemed to insist on being written when I was eager to do other things.

In that first draft, where I wanted to reference Kafka’s date of birth, was a blank space because I did not know it. I looked it up and nearly fell off the bed when I saw it was July 3, 1883. That meant the 124^th anniversary of his birth was only two weeks away. That, I decided, was about as amazing as Kafka himself. Although it was his birthday, I was the one who had received the gift, and I’m happy to share it at this link: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=30654&AuthorID=25279 .       

by Aberjhani