Members of the Year 9 Athenaeum have recently explored the world of Franz Kafka, both in terms of his upbringing and environment, a corner of the Habsburg Empire, and the more interior world of his imagination. This focus on the internal and external is one beloved of Kafka as he explored the psyche of individuals finding themselves trapped in often incomprehensible situations; the man on trial for something he knew nothing about, or more dramatically, Gregor Samsa, who awoke to find himself transformed into a giant insect in the novella Metamorphosis.
Interest in Kafka continues to be strong with millions of hits on internet searches and a superb recent exhibition at the Weston Library in Oxford. Perhaps his most enduring legacy is the fact that were one to look in the Cambridge dictionary for an adjective to capture an “extremely unpleasant, frightening and confusing (situation)” the answer would be “Kafkaesque”.
Anyone who finds the external world at times bewildering and alien, could do worse than reach for the works of their fellow traveller Franz.
Although Mr Cavendish delivered the session, the resources were supplied by German Teacher Mrs Brown who, unfortunately, was not able to be there on the day. Something written by one and represented by another…I am sure Kafka would have approved.
