Franz Kafka’s ‘Letters to Felice’: Seven months and 800 pages of torment

Throughout the collection, Kafka's voice alone resonates as an enduring, anguished monologue that absorbs all the reader's attention. It eclipses Bauer's voice, which lingers in the background, hinted at but never fully realised.

Bauer emerges as an unassuming woman from Berlin with aspirations of marriage and family. However, places his writing as a barrier between them – betraying her through his literary pursuits. As for Bauer, she couldn't fathom this peculiar form of treachery.

Curious contradictions

Three decades have passed since Kafka's demise, and his standing in global literature continues to ascend. Did Bauer, toward the end of her life, wonder where her own letters to Kafka ended up?

Kafka claimed to keep Bauer's most recent letters to him in his pocket to keep her close, which contradicts his supposed intention to eventually dispose of her letters, as many believe he did. Perhaps his ego, inherent in his bitter writing, wanted to be rid of any textual evidence that could disrupt his peaceful immortality.

Kafka met Bauer on 13 August 1912, during a visit to his friend Max Brod's residence. They did not meet again for nearly seven months, during which Kafka penned nearly half of his letters to her.

He wrote the first letter on 20 September, five weeks after their first meeting.

In it, he said, "In the likelihood that you no longer have even the remotest recollection of me, I am introducing myself once more: my name is Franz Kafka, and I am the person who greeted you for the first time that evening at Director Brod's in Prague, the one who subsequently handed you across the table, one by one, photographs of a Thalia trip."

Erratic letters

In that first letter, Kafka candidly warned Bauer that he was an erratic writer. Bauer, a typical young woman, might have already picked up on his peculiar nature on her own, from their very first encounter – not because of anything he said, but through his strange demeanour and his swiftness in sending her that initial letter.

Kafka and Bauer forged an unusual connection, between Prague and Berlin, bridging the gap between his physical frailty and Bauer's robust vitality.

His letters would often lament his sleepless nights, his struggles with long working hours, and his reluctance to write. Yet, he marvelled at Bauer's liveliness and her graceful presence in Brod's apartment.

During that entirely unremarkable first meeting, he amassed hundreds of notes about her. He envied Bauer's boundless energy and physical health while feeling repulsed by her fit physique. The combination of envy and aversion expressed cryptically and suggestively, remained perplexing to Bauer, who continually grappled with Kafka's eccentricities.

Unrequited infatuation

Kafka penned at least one, if not two, letters to Bauer every day. He asked about her meals, her attire, her coworkers, her family, her room's furnishings, her window, and the landscape outside her window.

Daily, he would request a letter or a brief postcard in return. But Bauer wasn't nearly as fixated as he was. She would occasionally succumb to his obsession, while at other times, she simply chose to ignore it.

Meanwhile, Kafka employed over-the-top literary imagery in his pages to her; in one instance, he wrote, "If I were the mailman delivering this letter to your house, I wouldn't allow myself to be detained by any astonished member of your family, but would walk straight through all the rooms to yours and put the letter in your hands; or better still, I would stand outside your door and keep on ringing the bell for my pleasure, a pleasure that would relieve all tension!"

All-consuming compulsions

Perhaps happiness, in Bauer's eyes, was marriage and parenthood. This starkly contrasted to Kafka, who sought to stoke the flames of his inner torment through writing.

He was possessed by his need to purge his creative ideas and thoughts. He dedicated ten uninterrupted hours to completing his short story The Judgment during that period. Within two weeks, he set aside four chapters from his novel Amerika to pen his novella The Metamorphosis, while marking remarkable progress on another work, Diaries.

When Bauer sent Kafka a photograph of herself with her family, he immediately delved into decoding its meaning. He analysed every element – hand gestures, smiles, shadows, lighting, clothes, and gazes within and beyond the frame.

Striving to conceal his overwhelming literary insights, he inquired about mundane details about the people in the photograph, keeping his interpretations at bay.

He feared Bauer would realise that anything in his hands quickly became fodder for his writing, casting doubt on the sincerity of his affections.

A lukewarm review

On December 11, 1912, Kafka's debut book, Meditation, was published. He sent it to Bauer with a plea: "Please be kind to my poor book! Show the book to as few people as possible."

Two days later, on December 13, he again referred to his book, "I am so happy that my book, no matter how much I find fault with it, is now in your possession."

Then, on December 23, he wrote to express his exasperation with a friend of Bauer's who seemingly failed to grasp the difficulty of writing, as evidenced by her curt response. It appeared that Bauer had tacitly shared her friend's sentiments on it.

In 1919, approximately 15 months after parting ways with Kafka, Bauer married a wealthy Berlin businessman. She had two children, a son, and a daughter.

News of Bauer's marriage reached Kafka through his correspondence with a second lover, Milena, whose letters to Kafka have also been lost to history.

An emaciated figure

In one of Kafka's letters to Milena, he vividly depicted himself as an emaciated man adrift on a boat, donning a swimsuit, and floating downstream. Observed from a bridge, his bony, motionless figure resembled that of the dead prior to the unveiling of coffins on Judgment Day.

In Letter to His Father, Kafka wrote about his diminutive physique by the pool in contrast to the strong stature of his father, Hermann, who served as the yardstick by which everything was measured.

Yet, Kafka couldn't help but feel disgusted by his father's voracious appetite at the dining table, where crumbs of bread would scatter.

Could Kafka have gained a reasonable amount of weight without inheriting an insatiable appetite like his father?

This paradox continued to haunt Kafka, much like many other things in his life – including Bauer and her great, unbridgeable contrast to him.