I like to think about the most recent and then delve into the past. Memories have no terrain. They move in crests and troughs. Sometimes, they do not move and become a narrative of the past, entertaining present. My trip to Prague was by far the most enriching experience. The city moves you. The concrete under your feet softens the pace.
While coming back from Prague, on the last day of the trip, I visited Kafka Museum. I couldn't leave the city without it. Prague is full of narratives and I could understand why it has moved Kafka, Milan Kundera, Eluard and so on. The walls are full of radical posters, on which drunk youngsters lean and kiss each other. Streets are full of music, where one singer sings a folk song and a nearby Vietnamese store entertains the tourists with drum beats and 'temperature' songs.
There's so much.
But today, it is Kafka's day.Happy Birthday Kafka.
There were no lights. A deafening music, but a piercing one. No, it was not loud. It was just sharp. There's difference.
The first wall has Kafka's childhood picture, noting- "Kafka was born into a myth called Prague".
So many times, Praha has been remodeled. From the scholars of Kebbala to the Jewish astrologers/ astronomers, everyone wanted to be there. 1895, urbanization, Praha was again organized into a new myth. Kaflka must be young at that time, probably around eight.
He must have preserved his memories of the old myth.
Walking to the school with his cook, encircling the town, carrying images of his father's shop near the town square. That circle of the city center. It encircled his life. Made him a ravachol.
Buried in the piles of bureaucratic work, Kafka wanted to move out.
But.
"Prague doesn't let go, of either of us. This Old Crone has claws."
Praha truly doesn't let go, it mesmerizes you to the point that you do not want to go out of that city's myth.
Pain can be mesmerizing too. Emptiness, nothingness, fullness.
A step further and you see Kafka's letters to his father. To his father, who was always busy expanding business and bringing the latest brands and styles. Kafka was disgusted. He leaned his shoulders, wore ill fitted clothes just to be that ravachol. To be away from that designed meaninglessness.
When an old man comes to you at two in the night, and says, "I have nothing to eat, nowhere to go. I am old. Prague is for tourists. Prague is not for old men."
When you see the windows, houses always closed. And you wonder why.
When you know that all those are just hotels, to bring people to the myth.
But Kafka had those narratives. Behind the walls. Outside those windows.
He knew, his life is about writing. Not insurance. Not bureaucracy.
There is big slide through which Kafka shouts.
" I am nothing but literature and I want to be nothing else."
Yes. Literature consumes. It asks for that exchange of sensitivities.
His letters depict that.
There is a room that has all the posters of women Kafka loved and wrote letters to.
My favorite is Milena.
After reading all the letters, I don't know why, but I always wanted those letters.
Kafka's confession from being sleepless to discussing Dostoyevsky. His confession that her letters make him calmer, sitting in that balcony.
He writes, (My 38 Jewish years have this to say in face of your 24 years)
"Your two letters arrived together, at noon; they aren't to be read, but to be unfolded, to rest one's face on while losing one's mind."
...
"I am too heavy for myself and too light for you."
I owe my hopeless romantic ideas to these letters. I know, that though there is nothingness, boredom, metamorphosis, but there's that spark. That spark of being charmingly united. Of loving and expecting similar things in life. And even if different things, then loving each other too much.
While coming back from Prague, on the last day of the trip, I visited Kafka Museum. I couldn't leave the city without it. Prague is full of narratives and I could understand why it has moved Kafka, Milan Kundera, Eluard and so on. The walls are full of radical posters, on which drunk youngsters lean and kiss each other. Streets are full of music, where one singer sings a folk song and a nearby Vietnamese store entertains the tourists with drum beats and 'temperature' songs.
There's so much.
But today, it is Kafka's day.Happy Birthday Kafka.
There were no lights. A deafening music, but a piercing one. No, it was not loud. It was just sharp. There's difference.
The first wall has Kafka's childhood picture, noting- "Kafka was born into a myth called Prague".
So many times, Praha has been remodeled. From the scholars of Kebbala to the Jewish astrologers/ astronomers, everyone wanted to be there. 1895, urbanization, Praha was again organized into a new myth. Kaflka must be young at that time, probably around eight.
He must have preserved his memories of the old myth.
Walking to the school with his cook, encircling the town, carrying images of his father's shop near the town square. That circle of the city center. It encircled his life. Made him a ravachol.
Buried in the piles of bureaucratic work, Kafka wanted to move out.
But.
"Prague doesn't let go, of either of us. This Old Crone has claws."
Praha truly doesn't let go, it mesmerizes you to the point that you do not want to go out of that city's myth.
Pain can be mesmerizing too. Emptiness, nothingness, fullness.
A step further and you see Kafka's letters to his father. To his father, who was always busy expanding business and bringing the latest brands and styles. Kafka was disgusted. He leaned his shoulders, wore ill fitted clothes just to be that ravachol. To be away from that designed meaninglessness.
When an old man comes to you at two in the night, and says, "I have nothing to eat, nowhere to go. I am old. Prague is for tourists. Prague is not for old men."
When you see the windows, houses always closed. And you wonder why.
When you know that all those are just hotels, to bring people to the myth.
But Kafka had those narratives. Behind the walls. Outside those windows.
He knew, his life is about writing. Not insurance. Not bureaucracy.
There is big slide through which Kafka shouts.
" I am nothing but literature and I want to be nothing else."
Yes. Literature consumes. It asks for that exchange of sensitivities.
His letters depict that.
There is a room that has all the posters of women Kafka loved and wrote letters to.
My favorite is Milena.
After reading all the letters, I don't know why, but I always wanted those letters.
Kafka's confession from being sleepless to discussing Dostoyevsky. His confession that her letters make him calmer, sitting in that balcony.
He writes, (My 38 Jewish years have this to say in face of your 24 years)
"Your two letters arrived together, at noon; they aren't to be read, but to be unfolded, to rest one's face on while losing one's mind."
...
"I am too heavy for myself and too light for you."
I owe my hopeless romantic ideas to these letters. I know, that though there is nothingness, boredom, metamorphosis, but there's that spark. That spark of being charmingly united. Of loving and expecting similar things in life. And even if different things, then loving each other too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment