Final Adventure in Prague

  I spent our last morning in Prague stuffing my face with pastries and groveling in the desperation, depression, and cynicism of Kafka. It was wonderful. After purchasing a peach pastry and gingerbread star at our favorite bakery next to Hostel Mango, I set off to visit the Kafka Museum by myself since I am the lone but proud English major among this group of music students. I figured honoring the greats of my discipline was the least I could do to make up for the weeks I'd been spending with insufferable music nerds (jk, I'm loving it--proof that non-music majors can benefit as much from this trip as the future starving artists. Not that I can't say the latter is my fate either, though, haha...).
     Franz Kafka was a very troubled man. He had a sort of Leopold-Wolfgang Mozart relationship with his dad, except Hermann Kafka was much more dominating and Franz was much more introverted, emotionally unstable, and friendless than Wolfgang. Kafka more noticeably shriveled from every blow his father made.
     The museum did a fantastic job of capturing Kafka's state of mind and the emotional environment and contrived landscape of Prague in which he lived and worked. It was dark, images playing across screens were contorted, the spaces were often claustrophobic, eerie mash-ups of Jewish/German/Czech music played in the background, and you weren't ever sure if you were walking into a corner or if there would be a passageway leading you to another room. There was one room filled with giant, black, ceiling-to-wall filing cabinets where only three opened, and I wasn't even sure if there was a way out until I found the deceptive door around the corner. It was a thoroughly creepy experience, especially because I was one of like three people in the museum.
There were original manuscript pieces from The Trial and The Castle, and journal entries and letters to Kafka's father were woven into all the exhibits and photographic displays. It was heartbreaking. Overlapping his story were those of his lovers and sisters, the majority of whom died during the Nazi invasion and occupation, and it was especially through the stories of the women he encountered that I feel like I came to understand Kafka better. He loved strongly for a short amount of time before his fear of commitment, confinement, and disappointment to his father would cause him to break off the relationship. Perhaps you know his famous quote: "All I am is literature and I am not willing or able to be anything else." He didn't know how to live outside his head. He couldn't find reality, when there were infinite other worlds being lived, making one life as meaningless and gripped with terror as another. I love the modernist writers because of that, the rich, dark labyrinth of inner lives they present, the complexity of human existence they explore.
     If you get the chance to go, I highly suggest visiting this museum; it was very thought-provoking and insightful. However, if you know nothing about Kafka, do some research first, because there is very little strict museum-like background given on him and his work. I personally loved the non-traditional homage to this man. On to Salzburg!