Date Published: 05.06.2024
Bringing to life Franz Kafka's papers, literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, photographs, and more.
Prof Carolin Duttlinger at the Weston Library
With 2024 marking the 100 year anniversary since Kafka's death, a programme of University-wide events celebrate the literary works and enduring global legacy of Franz Kafka. Among them, the free to the public exhibition at the Weston Library, Kafka: Making of an Icon, is now open.
The exhibition features materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries, which hold the majority of Franz Kafka's papers, including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, and photographs. Notably, the notebooks in the archive include the original manuscripts of two of Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (America), as well as a number of short stories.
"A century after his death, Kafka still sums up our surreal world"
Michal Strouhal, Deputy Head of Mission for the Embassy of the Czech Republic in London
Professor Barry Murnane, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian and Head of Gardens Libraries and Museums
Rachel Cooke of The Guardian said, "it was genuinely shiver-inducing to see the first page of the manuscript of The Metamorphosis in the gloom of the gallery."
Speaking at the official opening on May 29, Wadham's Ockenden Fellow and Tutor in German, Prof Carolin Duttlinger - one of the exhibition's curators - drew attention to the personality behind the manuscripts, singling out an early diary entry from 1911. In it, Kafka (then with only a few short stories published) declares: ‘Without a doubt I am now the intellectual centre of Prague.' Prof Duttlinger notes that "Kafka then obviously got scared by his own hubris, for he crossed out this sentence until it was (almost) completely illegible."
The exhibition also playfully shows the legacy of Kafka in the 'Kafkaesque' descriptor, with a wall dedicated to newspaper clippings with its use. Prof Duttlinger also writes about what Kafka himself would have thought about 'Kafkaesque' in a piece for the Spectator, published on June 3 - the exact date of the 100 year anniversary.
Overall, the rich archive brought to life in this exhibition not only sets Kafka in the context of his life and times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination. His notebooks show how his travels in Western Europe enabled him to practise descriptive writing, while his readings strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and made him aware of European colonialism.
Kafka: Making of an Icon is open until October 27.
This exhibition is curated by Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Katrin M. Kohl, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Barry Murnane, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Dr Meindert Peters, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages; and Dr Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. It is supported by Malgorzata Czepiel, Curator of the Kafka Archive at the Bodleian Libraries
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