কেন কাফকা তাঁর সব লেখা পুড়িয়ে ফেলতে বলেছিলেন? Why Franz Kafka Still Matters Today | Kafka Explained

0:05 November 1919 [Music] A patient suffering from tuberculosis is being treated in a hospital in Silesia. He has only four years left on earth. He is already very ill physically. He has recently broken up with his second lover. He is also mentally ill. He is having a very turbulent time in a chaotic room. One day, the man was sitting next to Jalna. Evening has fallen. What a gloomy wind is blowing outside. What did he suddenly think? He picked up paper and pen. He started writing a letter. The letter that begins like this. Dear father.

0:50 A few days ago you asked why I was so afraid of you? I couldn't answer this question quickly. Partly because of your fear, partly because I can't explain the magnitude of this fear with such a big answer. In this letter I am trying to answer your question. But let me also say that the answer will not be correct. Because even as I sit and write, my fear is gradually stopping the movement of my pen . And the scope of fear is so vast that even writing it all down is a difficult task for me. As he was writing, this man noticed that the letter was getting bigger. Still, he wrote as if this was his last chance to defend himself in front of his father. One day, I ran out of letters to write to my father.

1:37 The letter is finished. But he didn't have the courage to send the letter directly to his father. He made two copies of the letter and sent one copy to his mother. He told his mother to deliver the letter to his father. But due to various circumstances, his mother was unable to send the letter to his father. The man sent another letter, along with many other letters, to his only friend. He requested his friend to burn all the letters he had written. [Music] But his friend started reading everything. In a flash, he took steps to print the writings instead of burning them. And the context changes with printing. After the death of a man who

2:23 lacked confidence in his writing, he became a popular writer, uncriticized, and criticized overnight. By now, you may have realized that the man I'm talking about is Franz Kafka. The writer, who left this world at the age of just 40, is called the pioneer of modernism in literature. But did he write too much? Three incomplete novels, some short stories, some letters and a diary. That's all he wrote. Yet Kafka has become a

3:11 parameter of modern literature. To date, a third of the people who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature have directly acknowledged the influence of Kafka on their writing. After Shakespeare, no other writer has been written about as much as Kafka, and Kafka has had such a powerful influence. By the mid-1990s, over 100,000 research papers had been written about him. In his writings, he repeatedly brings up themes such as alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. The term Kafkaesque was also coined to describe the complexity of his writing. I'll come to these a little later. The

3:59 question arises: why was this man who turned the world upside down in an existential crisis? Why did he want to burn all his writings before his death? Are all of Kafka's writings really transcendent? Why is Kafka still relevant 100 years after his death? Much like Jibanananda Das, Kafka spent his entire life in a state of confusion over his writing. Jibanananda Das, for example, did not publish a single story or novel during his lifetime. He hid it in a black trunk, just like I see in Kafka's case. The one who hid most of his writings in a drawer of an art gallery. He had doubts about his own writing. He didn't even complete many of his writings. Left incomplete.

4:45 One such incomplete work is called The Trial. This is one of the books that automatically comes to mind when talking about Kafka. The protagonist of the novel is Joseph K. The innocent banker wakes up one morning to find two police officers standing by his bed, saying, "You're under arrest." Although Joseph doesn't know what his crime is, he only knows that he has been arrested. The funny thing is that even if he is arrested, he is not taken anywhere. He is told he can live as normal as he is. But it is also said that his trial will begin very soon.

5:34 [Music] What is the trial for? He is not told when it will start. He goes through a confusing situation. Eventually, the word trial slowly settled in his head like a giant stone. And the situation gets so bad that at some point there is only one road open before him. Going crazy. Joseph was doing quite well at the job he was doing. But he almost lost this job due to the strange mental stress of the trial. The trial of Gafkar deals with several issues. Before I talk about those things, let me

6:20 ask you a question first. Can you deny it ? We ourselves are not like Joseph, the protagonist of this novel. This is how our life, even this life, comes and goes so quickly. For example, two police officers came to arrest Joseph, and this is exactly what we find in Existential Crisis. What is called an existential crisis is called a snakebite. As the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. The same thing happened to Joseph. While thinking about the trial, he began to torture himself. He was in an existential crisis. In this context, French writer Albert Camus wrote in his Myth of Sisyphus that it is better to move forward without questioning than to search for the meaning of life. There is no

7:06 meaning or reason to what is happening around us, so the only important thing is to accept everything that is happening and move forward. [ Music] What Joseph failed to do was that if he had taken the trial a little easier and not overthink it so much, maybe his life could have been a little different. But in the end, that was not the case. French philosopher James Paul Scholten once said that the gaze of others, put simply, is a state where a person feels that the people around him are keeping him under surveillance and judging him. French historian Michel

7:51 Foucault describes the matter a little more vividly, saying that the way our social structure keeps us under surveillance is essentially the gaze of others. The protagonist of the story, Joseph, also has to deal with this concept. From the confines of the trial, he constantly has to face people's ridicule, glares, and judgments. All his personal matters suddenly become public knowledge. It turns into a joke. Another question arises from here. Have we been able to avoid this uncomfortable situation of having to deal with all the different judgments of everyone around us from the moment we are born? What will people say? Thinking about it, haven't we also fallen into a trial?

8:41 In the words of Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, "I have been on a troll for my entire life trial," another theme emerges: helplessness. Helplessness is the feeling that arises from the reaction to the fact that nothing in the world is under our control. In this novel, we see Joseph preoccupied with the trial. Joseph has no control over when this trial will begin or whether it will begin at all. He can only regret life and be disappointed. Again, does the fact that nothing around him will change even if he does all this really apply to our lives? This is our life, how much of what happens in our life is under

9:28 our control? This is what Sartre wrote about, since nothing is in our control, the only duty is to accept what is happening and move forward. In other words, as the saying goes, "Life gives you lemons, make lemonade." But is it so easy for everyone to accept life as it is? If that's the case, then why did Franz Kafka spend his entire life wondering why he was stuck in a no-man's land between what he wanted to be and what he became ? [Music] Kafka's famous The Metamorphosis can be brought here. It would be

10:13 better to call this book a part of Kafka's life rather than a novel. How? Let's see. Kafka saw his relationship with his father as a trial. Where there is less emotion. The rules are more important. He didn't see his father as a father, but as a ruler. That's why Kafka never had a face-to-face conversation with his father. The boy, who lacked confidence in front of his authoritarian father, never stood up with his head held high. Kafka's father, Hermann Kafka, rose from a very small place to become influential and influential through hard work and hardship, and he wanted his son to do the same. But the son's wishes were different. The thin, thin-faced boy just wanted to

10:59 write. Dad is angry with him. The boy is protesting by writing. A father is sending his son to study law to get rid of the ghost of writing. The boy, like other obedient boys, studies law, gets a job, and in the meantime, writes novels like Castle Trial, Metamorphosis, or America. What are you thinking? Did you bring the novel? No. These are all sharp statements against the father, against society, or about his own existential crisis, and this is where the topic of The Metamorphosis comes in. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that after having a very strange dream, the

11:45 innocent salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up and discovers that he is no longer human. He has transformed into a huge insect. In response to being transformed into an insect, the entire family has started treating him harshly. Parents and younger siblings all change overnight. Samsar realizes that no one can accept this change in him. This change is so unbearable that someone in the family might kill him at any time. This also seems to be the idea of samsara. And this is how the novel progresses towards the end. The first issue that The Metamorphoses deals with is called The Danger of Fear. This term was named after

12:31 Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. He said that people get scared when they are faced with things they are not familiar with. That fear later turns into anger. As can be said in the case of Samsung, everyone loved him before this unfortunate event in life. He had a good job. He was also the earning member of the house. But whenever Samsa's physical appearance changed, everyone in the house's love turned to hatred. This transformation is mainly due to fear. The more Samsa tried to connect with his family, the more his family attacked him. Mentally and physically, these are slowly leading to a terrible end.

13:18 Man provided or respected or even loved he simply and that's why [Music] We have all heard the famous TV series Breaking Bad's gossiping mouth. We all get proof of this once again when looking at Samsa, when Samsa realizes that no one in the family appreciates, loves or hates him, he still tries to do something for the family. While trying to do this, he one day confronts his father. Samsa's father was frightened and threw an apple at this ugly-looking insect. And Samsa died from this apple.

14:07 One thing is clear here. If he wanted, Kafka could have had someone else do the murder. But here he brought Samsa's father. Why? Did he write this part thinking a little of his own father? He wanted his son to be like him and whenever he couldn't do that, he attacked him badly. From here, I come to another topic, The Concept of Sameness. But before talking about that, it is necessary to talk about Utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, was the creator of this doctrine of Utilitarianism. The main idea of this doctrine is that an action should be done as long as it benefits many people and makes them happy. It is

14:55 under this concept that we see the concept of self. The concept's main function is to maintain social order and norms. Let's imagine a society where wearing colorful clothes is the norm. You wore white clothes there. You will be publicly shamed. Simply put, anything you do outside of orthodox thought will be stopped by the concept of shame. In that context, he said below that great persons cannot become great because of social obligations. They have to lead a typical life. As we see in the case of Samsa in Metamorphosis. Whenever he became untouchable in conventional society, transformed into a giant insect, attempts were made to crush him through the concept of shame. As was done

15:41 with Kafka. He wanted to be a writer but found sarcasm. This happened to you and me too. Many times from time to time. The Metamorphosis, The Trial, America, or Country Doctor. The way Franz Kafka brought out the absurdity of life through characters and situations. This pattern was later followed by many writers. A great example in this context is Haruki Murakami's Kafka on Sorrow. Kafka Tamura is the central character of Kafka Shore. As it deals with the Absoluteness of Life. It also deals with the concept of shame or social complexity. This novel also deals with the clash between fate and free will.

16:27 We have seen the distance between Tamura and his father in many of Kafka's novels. Again, Albiar Camus' existential and thematic world view, as well as Luis Borges' surrealism, were largely inspired by Kafka. Gabriel Garcia Marquez openly acknowledged the contribution of Metamorphoses as the inspiration behind his magic realism. That is, it is clear that this is a literary philosophy or a complex matter close to life. No one could afford to ignore Kafka's influence. [Music] Kafka once wrote, I think we should read those books that create wounds within us or shock us. If the book we are reading does

17:13 n't wake us up, then why do we read it? Yes God to be happy. We would probably be happiest if we didn't have any books. Kafka's books are basically like that. He had such a clear understanding of the world and people of his time that his writing style became known as Kaf Gaesque. And Kafkas becomes a definition wherever surrealism, nightmare, disaster, torture, ambiguity, complexity, helplessness, and existential crisis are uttered. This particular word is repeated many times. Gafka once wrote in his religious diary, "With a terrible world in my head, I

17:59 move forward. It is a thousand times better to tear my head apart and cut it into pieces than to keep them inside myself. In fact, this is why I came to this world." Kafka has been doing that for the longest time in the history of the world. Many have called his writings boring. Some said it was pointless. But as time passed, it became clearer. What Kafka said is not meaningless or unrealistic, but very real. Let me give you an example. It's about 1956. The Soviets crushed the Hungarian resistance movement. Famous philosopher Gierglukas has been arrested in Budha Paste. He was then taken prisoner and taken to a Romanian fortress. But he is not being told what his crime is. But it is said that you have all your legal rights. It

18:45 means that the arrangement is being made to keep the person waiting endlessly without telling them anything. Do you remember any of Kafka's books? If you remember, you will understand the significance of Lucas's response to this statement. That means Kafka was actually a realist. This is a world where there is no justification for anything, where everyone is spending their days doing whatever they want, however they want. Is it because of being a citizen of a planet that has no seven quadrants, Kafka repeatedly says in a dull voice, "I have deeply absorbed the negative aspects of my time. I live in a time that

19:31 I have no legal right to fight against, but I have the right to represent the future? Is Kafka's future still going on? If it is not going on, then why does Kafka repeatedly return to us as a relevant figure, and laments in a low voice, "I am a cage in search of a bird."