Daniela, thanks so much for being here today.
Um, it was always very important to me thinking about Oxford Reads, Kafka, that we move beyond the kind of German reception of Kafka.
Um, and saw how he was received and read all over the world.
And you're here today to talk about two Spanish novels, um, for the 1990s and 2000s that have,
uh, taken, uh, Kafka's letters and his letters to Milena as the starting point.
Can you tell us a little bit about. Yeah. So, um, they're written by two writers from slightly different generations.
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,
but then actually ended up going into exile in in France with his family at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, 1936?
Um, so he ended up writing mostly in French.
We can still justify calling him Ines by calling him a Spanish officer.
I think, um, I vindicate that, um, and he, he sort of then got very involved with the.
With the um, resistance and France, um, against the Germans.
Uh, as a result of that, he was, um, incarcerated in Buchenwald and upon his release,
became an active member of the Spanish Communist Party, which obviously was forbidden under Franco.
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,
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.
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.
Retrospectively, August, that he already wasn't toeing the party line in the 50s.
So I think the idea that Kafka was a writer that wasn't, um,
encouraged reading for the communists and that he was being subversive by reading that is also a way in which
he positions himself retrospectively as already not having been totally aligned with the Communist Party.
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.
Autofiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of his writing is sort of fictional, I would say.
Yeah. Um, yes. That's right.
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.
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.
And so that's interesting how he incorporates Kafka into that.
I think, uh, from various points of view. We'll certainly come back to that.
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.
Um, so very kind of firmly during the Franco period within Spain, Andalucia, um, and was also always in opposition to Franco,
but not as actively as, as the other one and for generational reasons, hasn't lived through the Civil War, for example.
But, um, certainly is interested in the 2000 when his novel severa is published, 2001, which is really a novel to make connections,
I think, between Spanish history and European history from the Second World War onwards.
Um, you know,
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.
So this is Antonio Munoz Munoz Molina. Yes. Sorry.
Um, and the novel is called seafarer,
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,
um, of the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.
So there's a sort of way in which he tries to connect, I think, European history,
Jewish history and Spanish history and sort of see how they intersect.
And Kafka's letters to Milena, I think, are one way in which he is trying, trying to do that and justify that.
And, and this is a key moment in Spanish history,
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.
So it was a kind of peaceful transition, which was seen as successful at the time.
But around the 2000 people are trying to ask whether that has come at a cost because they feel that, you know,
people haven't quite dealt with a traumatic past in the same ways that maybe other countries have, like like Germany or even France.
Um, because this pact, a transition, came with a kind of general amnesty,
which meant that, you know, you couldn't necessarily, um, open legal cases and so on.
And so I think there's a lot of kind of thinking going on around that time.
And the novel has often been introduced or, or, um.
It greeted us as a sort of milestone in that regard within Spain.
Um, because it sort of opens up the horizon to look a little bit beyond.
Spanish history to say what? However, other countries actually dealt with conflicting or traumatic pasts.
Fantastic. That's really helpful to set the scene a little bit.
So, um. Two writers writing in this moment of transition, um, thinking about, uh, large history as well as Spanish history.
Uh, aspects of Jewishness, aspects of literature and life.
They're very big questions, and they choose to focus.
Well, I was going to say on Kafka, but not quite on Kafka, on Kafka's letters to, uh, Milena, uh,
his and his, uh, companion, uh, a Czech, uh, journalist, writer, uh, translator of Kafka into Czech.
Um, and so I, I suppose the question is, in the midst of all this, why why Kafka?
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?
So why Kafka Festival, do you think? It seems rather strange.
Yeah, but I think they, they sort of think of him as a canonical figure,
not necessarily just a German, you know, not not someone who writes in German, but someone who.
Maybe crosses certain national context as well.
So I think in that sense he appeals to someone like some prune. And then I think the for him.
Um, this this idea that he. But maybe for both of them, he has a kind of slightly prophetic quality, I think, for them,
and much more so in regard to the kind of Soviet regime, the communist totalitarianism, that.
Forms part of the history of of the 20th century.
Um. Um, you know, slightly anachronistically, and I think Munoz Molina does it very differently at a different point in time.
He sort of I think he, he reimagines, for example, and it's another thing that doesn't say Kafka,
but I think clearly the characters modelled on Kafka.
You know, someone getting on a train, the other passengers being suspicious because, you know, this passenger has a Jewish look,
and so and so so I think he, he almost reinsert some into the pre Holocaust,
um, anti-Semitic sort of era in a sense, without overtly sort of naming him.
But he's travelled, travelling to movement and this is sort of, you know, issues with passport control and so on.
So it seems like. He sees it more as a prophet of the Holocaust, maybe in a in a slightly anachronistic way.
And I think that's to do with millennia, really, maybe millennia own history.
Well, that's so that's the next question, uh, in a sense. So Kafka is there in both texts, but brilliantly.
I mean, I didn't know these texts before you suggested them.
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.
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.
Kind of putting it into the perspective of the Holocaust and perhaps dealing with the Holocaust in Spain.
Is that is that what you're saying, that that's part of the reason for this choice?
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.
Even though Hitler tried very hard to to get Franco to openly join the axis.
Also on the basis of the support he had lent him during the Civil War.
But Frank was clever enough never to quite commit to that.
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.
So of course people knew about it. But I think in, in the popular imagination it's not very present until maybe the 90s.
Um, so I think also the figure of of Milena is isn't so well known,
but I think because Kafka is well known, she allows someone like Munoz Molina to to make that connection.
Maybe she's also more approachable than Kafka himself.
So if you're trying to, you know, position yourself as a writer, I think it may seem a bit presumptuous to say, well,
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.
Um, and she's always seen in a, in a sexist way.
I think we have to say, as you know, in connection to Kafka, she is not necessarily seen by either of these writers as.
You know, being a completely independent, um, woman because of course, she she, you know, had many merits in her own right.
And she ended up in Ravensbrück because she was so actively participating in the, in the Czech resistance to the Germans.
But in a sense, it's almost as if that is, um, of less importance for the for the two of them.
So I think it's almost as if she's the bridge of, you know, Kafka, maybe in his writing.
There was something there about these anonymous, um, bureaucratic processes that form then part of the Holocaust.
And, and, you know, she ended up in violence, which is, of course, not not true.
But then I think she has has other advantages for them as well, because she's a kind of ghostly presence that,
you know, we don't that they look at his letters, but we don't have her reply.
So it's she's always kind of present and ups and at the same time,
the something very odd isn't because, um, uh, both text, as we've said, use the same quotation.
Um, and it's a quotation from Kafka's letter, um, to Milena, where he says, um,
it occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail.
Uh, and then it carries on about him remembering the way she moves.
Um, but there's a sort of ghostly ness. You said a ghost.
So there's an image of Milena, which isn't remembered.
And yet it's conjured by both of these authors to talk about memory.
So there's something very interesting about that, isn't that?
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.
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,
the fact that you can never pin down because I think for someone like Sam Prune is also
about the desirability of this figure that is moving away from you and that you can't,
you know, you can't latch onto and hold onto and make permanent and memories a little bit similar, I suppose.
So maybe, maybe there's a way in which, you know, memory can be made more tangible in its elusiveness.
You know, you're trying to hold on to something that is always moving away from you.
And it's interesting also that this is so they don't talk about Kafka's main works.
Um, they talk about correspondence, um, which seems to me an interesting way into this.
Um, um, the reason I sort of linked that is because Kafka famously writes about, um, correspondence.
I mean, he found all kind of, uh, communication very difficult and worried about phones and telegrams and so on.
Um, but particularly the idea that ghosts are there. Yeah.
Sucking up your correspondence. You're sort of as it's on its way to reaching someone.
Um, and that fits very well with this, this spectral quality in the two texts.
Yeah. And I think Munoz Molina sees that. I mean, in them both using the same quotation.
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.
Um, but I think that the ghostly presence from Munoz Molina is linked to correspondence, and he picks up on not to telegraph.
But I think this idea of rail travel. So, you know, as a way in which you've bridged the distance.
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.
So, you know, there are these ghostly trains. What's in them?
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.
So in that sense is quite clever.
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.
So the only way that um, Munoz Molina refers to The Metamorphosis is that he again imagines Milena retelling it,
her own version to, uh, Margareta Papa Newman.
When the raven's broken in a way in which they can overcome the the, the dreadful ness of their surroundings.
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?
I mean, the idea of this. Ghostly figure and a kind of fictional reimagining of her telling this story in a concentration camp.
It kind of places Kafka right in the centre of this.
Um, you said right at the beginning that, um, the effect of these novels is to see Kafka as, uh, uh, prophesying the Holocaust.
And I always, I have to say, I really worry about seeing Kafka as a prophet.
I mean, in many ways, he's a very ordinary guy, um, uh, who wrote extraordinary literature.
But where do you sort of stand on this? I agree.
I mean, I think what makes a profit.
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.
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.
I think as a writer, it's almost irresistible to, to to think in that way, perhaps.
Um, and then I think it's about the power of literature in some ways, you know, in retrospect.
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.
Does have a purpose.
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.
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.