Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian (unconventional lifestyle) novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature for his realistic writing.
One Kafka’s short and sweet story is doing rounds on whatsapp and Facebook these days; the story portrays some profound facets of life. It’s a real story revolving around a very young girl and Franz Kafka. It reflects about relationships to the world and each other. never married and had no children, he was 40, walking through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her most loved and dear doll. Kafka helped her search her doll, but the effort was futile. Kafka told her to meet him in the same place the next day and they would come back to search out the doll.
The next day they met, but they didn’t find the doll. The girl was sad, and she kept on crying. This is when Kafka gave the girl a letter to her saying that the doll had written the letter for the girl. The letter said “please don’t cry. I have taken took a trip to see the world. I promise you to write to you about my adventures.”
This is how a story began which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.
During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll which were written by Kafka very interestingly, full of adventures and conversations of the doll with the variety of people, their personality characters. The girl found the letters adorable. Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.
“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl. Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote: “my travels have changed me.” the little girl hugged the new doll and took her home happily. A year later Kafka died.
Many years later, when the girl grew adult, she found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written: “Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”
The story describes how Kafka calmed the girl by bringing letters supposedly written by the doll, describing her exciting adventures around the world. Eventually, the story goes, Kafka brought her a different doll, passing it off as the original one. Kafka dies.
About Kafka’s work
Kafka has written few other novels and they are famous even today. Writing was an important part of Kafka’s life. For him writing was a ‘form of prayer’, and nothing would stand in the way of his worship. His personality is described as (INFP) Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Prospecting personality traits. These rare personality types tend to be quiet, open-minded, and imaginative, and they apply a caring and creative approach to everything they do. Kafka experimented with his writing; he wrote funny, eerie, emotional novels. People found him mentally unsteady and physically ugly. However, many of those who met him invariably found him to possess obvious intelligence and a sense of humour; they also found him handsome because of his intellectual work, although often found in shabby appearance.
Kafka joined an insurance company where he didn’t enjoy his job. The long hours left him little time to write, and so he resigned from his position after only a year. Instead, Kafka found employment at the state insurance institute, where he finished work at 2 pm, giving him the whole afternoon to focus on writing. It may also have given him some inspiration for some of his more eerie and wicked narratives: his role was to investigate injuries suffered by industrial workers, who met with accidents in factories they worked, many had lost fingers, fractured limbs, and had bruised faces.
Conclusion
What I liked in the lost doll story is that Kafka says change can be happy and exciting as well as chaotic and complicated. But change cannot be avoided. Life is all about transformation – change is constant. Nothing stays forever with us. From birth till death man goes on changing in body, experience, learning, unlearning and in behaviour. We all experience happiness, grief, love and success or failure. Our life makes us learn and unlearn. But genuine love remains deep in our heart.
Love is a most beautiful feeling which always keeps changing. It grows with experiences and time. It changes in its form. Although many times we feel love is sceptical, everything we love eventually fades away. And it’s impossible to go back in time, therefore, we cannot experience the love we once had; we cannot have a straightforward connection with the feeling of love as time passes. Life is all about adapting to change, finding happiness, and experiencing love in different forms such as friendship, in children, in neighbourhood, romance, in hobbies, in creativity, in job, in life partner or any other form.
