Letters to Philis 2/1

Author's name: Franz Kafka

Kafka corresponded with an unknown woman, always referring to her in his diaries by the initial "F." This name remained a mystery, and people had no idea who she was, constantly guessing from all possible sources without ever finding the correct answer. Then, in 1955, five years before her death, a woman named Felice Bauer published letters she claimed Kafka had addressed to her. Her full name, Felice Bauer, was revealed for the first time, and it emerged that she and Kafka had a five-year love affair, from 1912 to 1917. During this period, they were engaged twice, but Kafka broke off both engagements for various reasons. Kafka also wrote several important works during this correspondence, including "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony," and his first attempts at writing the novel "The Trial." The novelist Elias Canetti, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature, said of these letters: "I found these letters more interesting than any literary work I have read for many years... I can say that they flowed into me like real life, and that they are now so familiar to me that they seem like part of my golden possessions from the moment I began to deal with people comprehensively within my mind, until I arrive from time to time at a renewed understanding of them."