WARMING MATERIAL OF A SMALL FORMAT

Miro Gavran: Kafka’s Friend (Mozaik knjiga, Zagreb, 2011)

By: Ivan Telebar

Max Brod sits in a small, stuffy office in Tel Aviv and goes through a new manuscript that came to his home address a few days ago. The sender is unknown, the only thing he can see is the name of the author under which is the title of the manuscript – Miro Gavran Kafka’s Friend. He has heard of this author, the literature circles talk of him as of the most translated Croatian writer and the only alive European dramatist to whom a whole festival has been dedicated to. He cared little for such epithets, he was more concerned about the text in front of him. He has read it several times and now he was just turning the pages and sometimes stopping on a chapter, searching for something more then black ink on a white paper.

In the shadow of Kafka

The significance of Franz Kafka’s work for the European literature is unquestionable and his work has also become a part of our culture. His life is also very interesting for the literature historians because it is firmly linked to his texts. The most well known detail from Kafka’s private life is his friendship with Max Brod, also a writer, and the saviour of Kafka’s literature. As the title of the novel suggest, this bond between these two writers is the main topic of the text.

The novel speaks of Franz’s and Max’s student years, mature age and all the way to their old age. Although based on real characters, the plot of the novel is, at some level, a product of author’s imagination, which is clearly stated at the end of the novel. The novel mostly speaks of the relationship between the two friends, their ideals, attitudes and thoughts on literature. The family bonds between Franz and his parents are also a part of the story, but they are only cogently described. The scenes that create the longest chapters in the novel and that seem to be the author’s obsession due to their completeness, are the scenes of love and sex. Max’s flirt with Franz’s mother Julia, Franz’s and later on Max’s passionate encounter with Milena Jesenska are the best described chapters and seem as the only parts were Gavran has let his hand and pen loose, because other chapters, in comparison with these, seem a bit restrained. Gavran did not use the potentials of Kafka’s biographical data to create a new story. He took on the real flow of events, with an emphasis on Kafka’s and, less but still present, Brod’s love life, while everything else around them is neglected. The most motivated and the shortest chapter in the novel is that which speaks of Max as Franz’s surrogate-brother. The story of their connection continues to flow through the novel, but there is no more mention of their ‘’brotherhood’’.

Unfortunately, Gavran missed other potentials of this topic as well. For example, the question of Max’s and Franz’s religious believes, Zionist ideas and their achievements. Here is were Gavran should had intervened with biographical facts and the story could have taken another path. In this way, author’s input seems inconsiderable and at the very least unnecessary. If you want to know more on Kafka’s life, you will not read a novel. You are more likely to read Kafka’s biography by Ronald Hayman and find out everything you want to know. There is an impression that Gavran got trapped in the authentic story that should have been used only as the basis. Here he turns his focus on erotic scenes and forgets everything else.

Deficient fragments

Gavran’s latest piece wants to be a short novel. The text has about 70 short chapters that are connected by mutual topic, but not by structure. It is hard to find a good reason for such fragmentation. Most of the chapters resemble embryos, but even if we try our best, we can not say that the novel has a draft of a (longer) novel, which would give some legitimacy to the fragmentation. It’s shortness is not the problem, on the contrary, a lot can be said with only a few words, but this is not the case. The problem is the emptiness of the chapters composed of unsophisticated and sterile sentences. The chapter were the storyteller speaks of Kafka’s sentences that have ‘’build a new world’’ at the same time using unbearably prosaical constructions, seem paradoxal. The style of the novel (apart from the erotical scenes) is more appropriate for a report than a work of literature. Dry, report-like storytelling kills the joy of reading and the incomplete chapters can irritate the reader. It seems more like an unfinished, than a short novel.

Deficiency of the text can also be seen in description of all the supporting characters that are only passing through, unambiguously coloured and framed. The best example are the family scenes where there is a strong lack of dynamics. Here, Gavran also managed to fail. All of the previous Gavran’s novels are marked by his dramatic writing, but in Kafka’s friend there simply is not any. This text seems miles away from his previous novel, The Only Witness Of Beauty, in which he maintains the readers’ attention by interlacing the story and relationships between the characters. Here he lacks life and tension and Gavran is very capable of such writing, which he has proven by other drama texts. The only good thing of this text is that he managed to step away from being ‘’a writer for the female public’’, but considering the result, maybe he should have kept to it.

(…)

Max kept staring at the papers in his hands. He was reminded of his good friend Franz and of his last whish. He knew it was the right thing to do and his eyes wondered over to the shelf above his desk where Kafka’s published work were. He stood up holding the manuscript in his left hand and went over to the window from which he often observes the life on the streets of Tel Aviv. Suddenly, he noticed his own breath and realised that it has gone cold. He turned around and took a few steps over to the little heating oven in which the fire was slowly dying. He looked at the manuscript once more, opened the small door of the heating oven and thrown it into the fire. The fire lightened up and soon the room was warm again.