Another day another trdlnik

After a wholesome brunch

I made my way to Mala Strana, “Lesser Town,” where the Kafka Museum is. Here you can find glorious buildings such as this.

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Ignoramus that I am, I thought Kafka was German, but he was born in Bohemia, and said of this city “Prague never seems to let go of you.”

The Kafka Museum, in a word, is strange.

I guess I was expecting a glamorized bookstore with some letters and portraits of Franz, but what I got was a sort of maze through a dark attic that began with pictures of Prague during FK’s lifetime, his family tree, and his ferocious letters to his father. Then around the corner is a movie screen, the top half leaning forward, showing imagines of Prague with quotes about FK’s society. To the right are round tables illuminated from within showing books, portraits, and descriptions of the literati FK admired. Around the next corner was a tall file cabinet with certain drawers permanently opened. Some contained FK’s correspondence, some his sketches, which were mostly of a man’s silhouette hunched over a desk. Further on are screens hanging from the ceiling, each one showing a black and white picture of one of FK’s loves. Below the hanging portraits are remembrances of each affair, pictures, quotes, and letters. The museum is very dark and each exhibit is so brightly lit it’s like a star in a night sky. Through the next hallway is a semi circular table with letters asking for a reprieve from insurance writing work due to health. Kafka was educated as a lawyer and spent his working hours writing law stuff for an insurance place. The next hallway is a modern mausoleum, each square with an engraved plate with a FK character engraved on it. Everyone knows that mausoleums are big freaky cereal boxes of death, so I didn’t examine the name plates after I found our dear Mr. Samsa. Now you curve around through a white hallway with a curve such that your shadow and the shadow of the person ahead of you meet and create a totally new shadow that follows your motions but looks nothing like your own silhouette. Next is a sort of movie room with a projection on the far wall and a mirror on the wall to your left. As you sit, the images reflect from the mirror and join your own reflection. First a shadow of a man waking along a path, but getting no closer to the castle in the distance. Then a fence. Then fog and clouds. You are in this movie with this walking man, and before you are stuck forever you leave and find some first editions along with sketches made for The Metamorphosis (In the sketches, Gregor’s body is a dark red with black legs). The proofs of FK’s final work The Castle, which FK worked on as he was slowly starving to death due to cancer of the larynx. Then more letters about his health and finally his obituary. He succumbed to TB, as if throat cancer wasn’t enough.

Overall this was not only a strange experience but also uncomfortable. There was no single exhibit that was repulsive, but finding the way through the darkened museum with other people seemed almost intrusive, as though it is ok if *I* drop in on FK’s subconscious (or regular conscious, as in his letters to his daddio), but with other people there it seemed too public. It’s unlike any museum I’ve ever seen.

I crossed the bridge in the sun with everyone else ever born.

I visited a second museum today, a tiny one dedicated to Johannes Kepler, astronomer. I have a special interest in Kepler because of his relationship with Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer and notorious party animal (Google how he died). Kepler is pretty famous among science types, and to those people I would like to point out that the horoscopes Kepler wrote were just as respected as those “laws” he’s so well known for. Kepler and Brahe had a sort of difficult work relationship due to Brahe’s larger than life ideas and personality and Kepler’s quiet insistence on being treated as an equal, not an assistant.

Here’s a statue of these two scallywags.

This is a sketch of a pavilion-like structure showing that Kepler’s ideas were based on those who came before him, such as Copernicus and our dear Mr. Brahe.