The diaries of Franz Kafka: an introduction

Abstract

For fourteen years, Franz Kafka kept twelve quarto-size notebooks, in which he recorded his peculiar existence. Known as his personal diaries, these notebooks serve as a valuable source for understanding not only his life but also – and especially – his literary legacy. Nevertheless, little attention is still given by critics and academia to these texts as an exclusive object of investigation, sometimes due to the constraints exerted by the remnants of post-structuralist approaches, sometimes due to the peculiarities of their reception and translation. This article aims to present an overview of those twelve notebooks, discussing their origin, reception, translation, particularities, structure and content. As the criticism in Brazil concerning both the diary genre and Kafka’s notebooks is scarce, this introduction can help potential readers and researchers interested in these diaries to contextualize them and consequently to facilitate the development of more advanced research about these notes.