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The first time Kafka met Felice, it was in the company of friends. They were talking about a recent trip Kafka and his friend Max Brod had taken. Photographs from the trip were shared across the table. Felice looked at the pictures keenly. She was keen to learn about Meditations too, a small book Kafka had just managed to get published. He had Felice’s attention, and he knew it. She mentioned going to philistine with him, a statement made on whim, which suggested volumes to Kafka. Letters filled with elation followed after this meeting. But they were not deprived of complains: about his health, about his weak frame, about imagined fears, about his embarrassment at speaking her full name, referring to her as F. in correspondences with other friends, about the inherent psychosis that was also to give birth to some of the greatest literature of our times. For days that followed, he was excited to get back from work to write letters to Felice and eagerly waited for her responses. Elias Canetti, in his long essay on these letters, suggests that it is around the same time, in a frantic rush of inspiration, he finished his masterpiece: The Metamorphosis.

Canetti interprets Kafka’s elation thus: “He was feeling what he needed to feel. Security somewhere far off, a source of strength sufficiently distant to leave his sensitivity lucid, not perturbed by too close a contact � a woman who was there for him, who did not expect more from him than his words.� Elsewhere in the essay he observes: “For Kafka, who seldom felt free in conversation, love came to being through his written word.� His feelings for Felice came into being through letters.

Because Felice’s responses could not be saved in the balance of time, in so much as has been gauged from Kafka’s letters, she could take in his self-pity quite well, and this must have made him trust her more, to the extent that they also underwent an engagement. She was also abused during childhood, but except faint marks around her strong arms she was generally sturdier (both in body and mind) than Kafka, who could never in his lifetime overcome a sense of deep inherent damage. What is apparent in the early letters, notes Canetti, is that: “He needs her strength, as a steady flow of sustenance for his work; yet she is not capable of comprehending who it is that she is sustaining with her letters.� But not long after a realization dawns, which kafka summarizes to a friend in a letter: “I yield not a particle of my demand for a fantastic life arranged solely in the interest of my work; she, indifferent to every mute request, wants the average: a comfortable home, an interest on my part in the factory, good food, bed at eleven, central heating…�

Central heating, all things considered, may not be the bane of our existence, but it is essential, and it is not the comfort of a good life Kafka seems to be deriding, but his conflict is that of a genuine artist: he wants to pursue his writing with a dedication and perseverance that can be easily threatened by what you have to do to “maintain� the central heating. That is why he expects a calculated affection from Felice, an affection that has some distance in between, because in too much closeness with her he will lose his life-work. He tries to explain this to Felice in a letter that is so wonderful it can work as a pure statement on the writing life:

“You once said you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write� For writing means revealing oneself to excess� This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one’s disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray� I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locker seller with my writings and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my room, outside the cellar’s outermost door. The walk to my food, in my dressing gown, through the vaulted cellars, would be my only exercise. I would then return to my table, eat slowly and with deliberation, then start writing again at once. And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up!�

Perhaps anyone who has to retire to their inner depths to drag things up are a difficult company to their partners. In almost funny sequences reminiscent of Kierkegaard, Kafka keeps Felice in a sort of orbit around him, not allowing her the full intimacy a relationship requires, but not letting go of her completely, to the point of causing annoyance to one of the few people this strange genius ever felt some sort of closeness towards. And in time there is the engagement, which he so reluctantly agrees to that a relevant passage from his diary explains everything we need to know:

“Was tied hand and foot like a criminal. Had they sat me down in a corner bound in real chains, placed policemen in front of me and let me look on simply like that, it could not have been worse. And that was my engagement.�

The embarrassment was enhanced by the fact that his and Felice’s families were both present “watching�. An event that could possibly bring joy to someone was humiliating for him. When Kafka suffered humiliation, he suffered it so fully that the relief could come only in the feeling of being squashed like a bug. This personal metaphor is so famous now that it hardly requires further expounding, but Canetti makes an interesting observation, an observation so beautiful it illuminates the elusive source of where literature comes from. He suggests that Kafka’s engagement and K.’s arrest are synonymous. The absurd freedom of movement after the arrest in The Trial is suggestive of the shackled freedom of the engagement ring. Think about it! The entire essay is worth this single insight.

That he broke off the engagement and went on to achieve world-wide posthumous fame is just incidental, but if there was a faint ray of hope that could be traced in Kafka’s suffocating life and his equally suffocating parables, it was in the affection he sought at a calculated distance. Seen in this light, one can gain renewed pleasure from this unforgettable passage from The Trial:

“His glance fell on the top story of the house adjoining the quarry. With a flicker as of a light going up, the casements of a window there suddenly flew open; a human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and that height, leaned abruptly far forward and stretched both arms still farther. Who was it? A friend? A good man? Someone who sympathized? Someone who wanted to help? Was it one person only? Or was it mankind?�