Zmiennie niezmienny. Franz Kafka w listach do rodziców

The article puts forward the theme and style specificity of Franz Kafka’s correspondence with his parents. Firstly, the letters feature information about facts from Kafka’s biography, his existence-related choices, as well as social and religious views; secondly, they refer the reader to the figures of speech and communicative games typical of the world of literature. The metamorphoses of style found in the analysis of Kafka’s letters require the reader to see the author as a literary figure and a human being; a person who does not create borders between his literary output and everyday existence. What is more, he is a person who found space of artistic fulfillment even in the relationship with his own parents. The analysis of Franz Kafka’s correspondence in the present article was conducted in two thematic sections. First section regards the issue of the writer’s attempts to acquire housing and existential independence from his parents. The other section describes Kafka’s efforts to protect his privacy in time of his lethal illness. In the case of both thematic sections, Kafka turns out to be an excellent stylist, changing his narrative style from one attracting the addressees emotionally to one repelling them. Another writing technique, constantly present in Kafka’s epistolography is stylistic dialectic which consists in exaggerating or downplaying phenomena, facts and inner states. As a result, thanks to his literary artistry Kafka achieves predominance of literary form over biographical reality as well as of symbolic and mythical images over the univocality of his lethal illness.