Kafka's Castle

As I wrote yesterday, the main point of attraction in Frydlant is its castle. According to Wikipedia, it is a Gothic castle with a high tower and a Renaissance chateau. Moreover, this is the building that inspired Kafka the write the novel called “The Castle”.

Franz Kafka was born at the end of the 19th century in Prague to Jewish German-speaking parents. Most of his work, which was unfinished by the way, was published after his death. He died of tuberculosis in the beginning of the 20th century. His most famous work is The Trial; The Castle was his last.

According to Wikipedia, The Castle

is a novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village for unknown reasons. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with the Land Surveyor dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his “legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there”. Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man’s attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

The Viking had read the novel and was very curious to see the actual building that had inspired Kafka so much. Alas, we could only see it from the outside. You can only visit it with a guided tour and we had to wait until the afternoon before there was another one.

Just like Kafka, we were intrigued by the strange mixture of the different styles of the building. And with the high trees around it, the castle had a mysterious atmosphere, something that could not – or maybe should not – be reached. And I think the black and white pictures really suit this feeling.

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