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Daniela, thanks so much for being here today.

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Um, it was always very important to me thinking about Oxford Reads, Kafka, that we move beyond the kind of German reception of Kafka.

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Um, and saw how he was received and read all over the world.

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And you're here today to talk about two Spanish novels, um, for the 1990s and 2000s that have,

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uh, taken, uh, Kafka's letters and his letters to Milena as the starting point.

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Can you tell us a little bit about. Yeah. So, um, they're written by two writers from slightly different generations.

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The first one is. So I'm going to go in chronological order, but the first one is what has improved who was born in 1923,

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but then actually ended up going into exile in in France with his family at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, 1936?

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Um, so he ended up writing mostly in French.

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We can still justify calling him Ines by calling him a Spanish officer.

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I think, um, I vindicate that, um, and he, he sort of then got very involved with the.

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With the um, resistance and France, um, against the Germans.

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Uh, as a result of that, he was, um, incarcerated in Buchenwald and upon his release,

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became an active member of the Spanish Communist Party, which obviously was forbidden under Franco.

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And he went back to Spain, uh, in that capacity and worked in the underground until he sort of fell out with the party leadership in the 60s,

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which is really when he takes up writing. And so, so the the book that I'm talking about or that I'm, I'm talking about today is from 1994.

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Um, and I think, um, he kind of uses buying the, the, the Haas edition of, uh, Kafka's Letters to Milena as a way in which he.

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Retrospectively, August, that he already wasn't toeing the party line in the 50s.

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So I think the idea that Kafka was a writer that wasn't, um,

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encouraged reading for the communists and that he was being subversive by reading that is also a way in which

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he positions himself retrospectively as already not having been totally aligned with the Communist Party.

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Um, so this is a kind of, um, uh, I don't want to call it life writing, but it's a sort of autofiction.

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Autofiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of his writing is sort of fictional, I would say.

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Yeah. Um, yes. That's right.

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So, um, he kind of in, in this, uh, in this novel autofiction, a novel called, uh, the critical love, uh, life or literature usually translated.

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Um, yeah. He tries to kind of think through the key moments, but I would argue also that he creates a kind of genealogy as a writer for himself.

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And so that's interesting how he incorporates Kafka into that.

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I think, uh, from various points of view. We'll certainly come back to that.

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Can you tell us a little bit about the other one? That's. Yeah. So the other one is, um, slightly later, born in 1956.

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Um, so very kind of firmly during the Franco period within Spain, Andalucia, um, and was also always in opposition to Franco,

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but not as actively as, as the other one and for generational reasons, hasn't lived through the Civil War, for example.

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But, um, certainly is interested in the 2000 when his novel severa is published, 2001, which is really a novel to make connections,

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I think, between Spanish history and European history from the Second World War onwards.

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Um, you know,

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to kind of build a few bridges and not think of the Francoist dictatorship as in occurring in isolation from other things that had been happening.

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So this is Antonio Munoz Munoz Molina. Yes. Sorry.

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Um, and the novel is called seafarer,

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which already picks up on this idea of seafarer is a kind of Hebrew name for Spain and goes back all the way to the kind of Spanish history,

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um, of the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.

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So there's a sort of way in which he tries to connect, I think, European history,

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Jewish history and Spanish history and sort of see how they intersect.

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And Kafka's letters to Milena, I think, are one way in which he is trying, trying to do that and justify that.

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And, and this is a key moment in Spanish history,

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because is at a moment in time when people are rethinking the way in which the transition to democracy has happened after the death of Franco in 1975.

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So it was a kind of peaceful transition, which was seen as successful at the time.

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But around the 2000 people are trying to ask whether that has come at a cost because they feel that, you know,

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people haven't quite dealt with a traumatic past in the same ways that maybe other countries have, like like Germany or even France.

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Um, because this pact, a transition, came with a kind of general amnesty,

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which meant that, you know, you couldn't necessarily, um, open legal cases and so on.

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And so I think there's a lot of kind of thinking going on around that time.

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And the novel has often been introduced or, or, um.

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It greeted us as a sort of milestone in that regard within Spain.

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Um, because it sort of opens up the horizon to look a little bit beyond.

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Spanish history to say what? However, other countries actually dealt with conflicting or traumatic pasts.

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Fantastic. That's really helpful to set the scene a little bit.

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So, um. Two writers writing in this moment of transition, um, thinking about, uh, large history as well as Spanish history.

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Uh, aspects of Jewishness, aspects of literature and life.

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They're very big questions, and they choose to focus.

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Well, I was going to say on Kafka, but not quite on Kafka, on Kafka's letters to, uh, Milena, uh,

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his and his, uh, companion, uh, a Czech, uh, journalist, writer, uh, translator of Kafka into Czech.

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Um, and so I, I suppose the question is, in the midst of all this, why why Kafka?

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And you've sort of hinted already at something that that my bit may be about, but also then why this text of letters as well?

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So why Kafka Festival, do you think? It seems rather strange.

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Yeah, but I think they, they sort of think of him as a canonical figure,

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not necessarily just a German, you know, not not someone who writes in German, but someone who.

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Maybe crosses certain national context as well.

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So I think in that sense he appeals to someone like some prune. And then I think the for him.

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Um, this this idea that he. But maybe for both of them, he has a kind of slightly prophetic quality, I think, for them,

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and much more so in regard to the kind of Soviet regime, the communist totalitarianism, that.

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Forms part of the history of of the 20th century.

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Um. Um, you know, slightly anachronistically, and I think Munoz Molina does it very differently at a different point in time.

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He sort of I think he, he reimagines, for example, and it's another thing that doesn't say Kafka,

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but I think clearly the characters modelled on Kafka.

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You know, someone getting on a train, the other passengers being suspicious because, you know, this passenger has a Jewish look,

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and so and so so I think he, he almost reinsert some into the pre Holocaust,

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um, anti-Semitic sort of era in a sense, without overtly sort of naming him.

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But he's travelled, travelling to movement and this is sort of, you know, issues with passport control and so on.

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So it seems like. He sees it more as a prophet of the Holocaust, maybe in a in a slightly anachronistic way.

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And I think that's to do with millennia, really, maybe millennia own history.

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Well, that's so that's the next question, uh, in a sense. So Kafka is there in both texts, but brilliantly.

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I mean, I didn't know these texts before you suggested them.

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Um, they both refer explicitly to Kafka's letters to Milena, and then not only that, they both have the same quotation from the letters in so.

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So we'll talk about that in a second. But so you said how important Milena is as a sort of bridge for thinking, um, about writing and then.

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Kind of putting it into the perspective of the Holocaust and perhaps dealing with the Holocaust in Spain.

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Is that is that what you're saying, that that's part of the reason for this choice?

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Well, Spain was in a very peculiar situation because nominally it was neutral during World War Two, one of the very few countries in the world.

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Even though Hitler tried very hard to to get Franco to openly join the axis.

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Also on the basis of the support he had lent him during the Civil War.

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But Frank was clever enough never to quite commit to that.

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So. So the whole the sort of history of the Holocaust in many ways is quite an unknown quantity in Spain until much later than elsewhere.

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So of course people knew about it. But I think in, in the popular imagination it's not very present until maybe the 90s.

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Um, so I think also the figure of of Milena is isn't so well known,

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but I think because Kafka is well known, she allows someone like Munoz Molina to to make that connection.

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Maybe she's also more approachable than Kafka himself.

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So if you're trying to, you know, position yourself as a writer, I think it may seem a bit presumptuous to say, well,

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you know, I'm I'm following in a direct line on from from Kafka, but sort of Milena makes it more approachable, I think.

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Um, and she's always seen in a, in a sexist way.

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I think we have to say, as you know, in connection to Kafka, she is not necessarily seen by either of these writers as.

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You know, being a completely independent, um, woman because of course, she she, you know, had many merits in her own right.

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And she ended up in Ravensbrück because she was so actively participating in the, in the Czech resistance to the Germans.

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But in a sense, it's almost as if that is, um, of less importance for the for the two of them.

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So I think it's almost as if she's the bridge of, you know, Kafka, maybe in his writing.

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There was something there about these anonymous, um, bureaucratic processes that form then part of the Holocaust.

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And, and, you know, she ended up in violence, which is, of course, not not true.

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But then I think she has has other advantages for them as well, because she's a kind of ghostly presence that,

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you know, we don't that they look at his letters, but we don't have her reply.

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So it's she's always kind of present and ups and at the same time,

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the something very odd isn't because, um, uh, both text, as we've said, use the same quotation.

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Um, and it's a quotation from Kafka's letter, um, to Milena, where he says, um,

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it occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail.

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Uh, and then it carries on about him remembering the way she moves.

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Um, but there's a sort of ghostly ness. You said a ghost.

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So there's an image of Milena, which isn't remembered.

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And yet it's conjured by both of these authors to talk about memory.

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So there's something very interesting about that, isn't that?

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Yeah, yeah. I think. I think it's sort of about the power of memory, the power of memory to overcome that which you don't remember.

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I mean, I know it's slightly paradoxical, but I think also there's a a kind of romantic view of love underpinning that sort of, you know,

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the fact that you can never pin down because I think for someone like Sam Prune is also

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about the desirability of this figure that is moving away from you and that you can't,

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you know, you can't latch onto and hold onto and make permanent and memories a little bit similar, I suppose.

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So maybe, maybe there's a way in which, you know, memory can be made more tangible in its elusiveness.

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You know, you're trying to hold on to something that is always moving away from you.

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And it's interesting also that this is so they don't talk about Kafka's main works.

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Um, they talk about correspondence, um, which seems to me an interesting way into this.

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Um, um, the reason I sort of linked that is because Kafka famously writes about, um, correspondence.

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I mean, he found all kind of, uh, communication very difficult and worried about phones and telegrams and so on.

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Um, but particularly the idea that ghosts are there. Yeah.

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Sucking up your correspondence. You're sort of as it's on its way to reaching someone.

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Um, and that fits very well with this, this spectral quality in the two texts.

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Yeah. And I think Munoz Molina sees that. I mean, in them both using the same quotation.

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I almost tried. I wanted to prove that Munoz Molina had sort of taken it from some prune, but I couldn't I couldn't find any evidence, so, you know.

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Um, but I think that the ghostly presence from Munoz Molina is linked to correspondence, and he picks up on not to telegraph.

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But I think this idea of rail travel. So, you know, as a way in which you've bridged the distance.

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But at the same time, then he thinks about the prominence of the railway in the 20th century, when it comes even to concentration camps and so on.

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So, you know, there are these ghostly trains. What's in them?

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I think all of that, um, is kind of layered, um, to, to, to, to create a sort of web of references, which I think is crystallised through millennia.

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So in that sense is quite clever.

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They they do in passing refer to other works by Kafka, but I think they also see that it's much more risky to, to kind of enter the territory.

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So the only way that um, Munoz Molina refers to The Metamorphosis is that he again imagines Milena retelling it,

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her own version to, uh, Margareta Papa Newman.

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When the raven's broken in a way in which they can overcome the the, the dreadful ness of their surroundings.

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But that's very much imagined. I couldn't see that necessarily being, um, supported by any other evidence, although that's very powerful, isn't it?

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I mean, the idea of this. Ghostly figure and a kind of fictional reimagining of her telling this story in a concentration camp.

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It kind of places Kafka right in the centre of this.

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Um, you said right at the beginning that, um, the effect of these novels is to see Kafka as, uh, uh, prophesying the Holocaust.

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And I always, I have to say, I really worry about seeing Kafka as a prophet.

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I mean, in many ways, he's a very ordinary guy, um, uh, who wrote extraordinary literature.

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But where do you sort of stand on this? I agree.

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I mean, I think what makes a profit.

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But on the other hand, I think I can also see why they want to see him in that way, because it's very compelling in retrospect to.

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To to think. If only we had listened to someone who was writing and who was signalling to us, you know what was was to come.

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I think as a writer, it's almost irresistible to, to to think in that way, perhaps.

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Um, and then I think it's about the power of literature in some ways, you know, in retrospect.

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But also, you know, that example, the other example is, is kind of what Primo Levi does as well, this idea that, you know, literature.

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Does have a purpose.

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You know, even in a, in such a a situation where you've reduced to their life or not even that and dehumanised, maybe you can do something so.

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So yes, I wouldn't recommend reading Kafka necessarily in that way, but I can can also see why it appeals to them to do that.