Kafka, Love and Courage: The Life of Milena Jesenska

Amazon.com
Best known for her passionate epistolary relationship with Franz Kafka, Czech writer Milena Jesenka (1896-1944) was an important cultural figure in her own right: she was a perceptive journalist who colorfully captured the keyed-up atmosphere of Vienna and her native Prague during the 1920s and '30s; a powerful spokesperson for Czech nationalism; and a fearless antifascist who helped Jews escape from Nazi-occupied Prague. This thoughtful biography restores the strongminded, intelligent Jesenka to her proper stature as a humane voice in the ethically slippery world of Central European politics.

From Library Journal
Born and raised in Prague, Milena Jesenska (1896-1944) married young and moved to Vienna, where, homesick, she began her career as a journalist writing columns for a Czech newspaper. Her writings show a woman of complex sensibilities?she wrote as passionately about fashion as she did about politics (her own leanings were Communist). During the early 1920s, she began translating some of Kafka's work into Czech and struck up an intimate correspondence with him that lasted on and off until his death in 1924. Hockaday (BBC World Service) weaves a compelling narrative from the drama of Jesenska's short life: in 1939, with Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia, Jesenska turned her full attention to the plight of refugees; she died at the age of 47 in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. For another take on Jesenska, see Milena, Margarete Buber-Neumann's memoir of their friendship (LJ 4/15/88). Highly recommended.?Diane G. Premo, Rochester P.L., N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A shrewdly intelligent exploration of the life of Milena Jesensk , best known as Kafka's inamorata, but also well worth knowing for other reasons. Jesensk  first bobbed into view when Franz Kafka's letters to her appeared in print in the 1950s. Since then biographies have been written of her, but none better than this one. Hockaday, a senior journalist with BBC World Service, has drawn on Czech and German sources (many previously untapped) to present an engaging and well-written account of this woman's life. A Bohemian in both senses of the word, Jesensk  was born into a venerable Prague family in 1896. Defiant by nature, she posed nude for artists while still a teenager, had an abortion before she was 20, and traveled with the artistic set. She scandalized her Catholic family by marrying Oskar Pollak, a Jewish writer and coffeehouse habitu‚. Chronically in need of money in postwar Vienna's era of shortages, Jesensk  became a journalist and wrote evocatively about the often frantic, cynical culture of the times. Pollak was a womanizer, and Jesensk  too had a number of liaisons, including one with novelist Hermann Broch, but most famously with Kafka. Hockaday is very good on their relationship. ``Kafka's sense of humour,'' she cannily observes of his correspondence with Jesensk , ``flashes like glittering veins in the rock of his seriousness.'' Kafka was in his late 30s (soon to die of TB) and Jesensk  was in her early 20s when they began corresponding. He did not live to see the rise of fascism in Austria and Germany, but Jesensk  did. Hockaday elegantly renders her bold struggle against Nazism, her heroic acts on behalf of Jews, and her death in Ravensbrck, a concentration camp, at age 47. Ignore the melodramatic title. This is a fine book. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

The first full-length biography of Kafka's famous Milena: resistance fighter, journalist, and muse

Milena Jesenska is best known as the recipient of Franz Kafka's Letters to Milena. They met when Milena approached Kafka, asking for permission to translate his work, and the two were soon engaged in an intense, deeply intimate and revelatory correspondence. Kafka wrote to Milena of his illness, his sleeplessness, his self-doubt. Milena wrote of her failing marriage and her frustration with Vienna. Milena was, however, more than Kafka's correspondent. Charismatic, courageous, and creative, she moved among the literary circles of Prague and Vienna that included Max Brod and Hermann Broch. As a journalist she left a vivid record of the times, writing on diverse subjects, from the latest fashions to contemporary politics and, in time, the Munich crisis and Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the Second World War started, she was part of the underground resistance until her arrest and detention in Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Drawing on Milena's journalism, as well as unpublished letters and other archival material from Prague, Mary Hockaday casts Milena's life against the backdrop of cosmopolitan Prague before it vanished behind the Iron Curtain. In this richly detailed biography, Milena emerges as a fascinating and complex woman of enormous vitality and passion.

"[An] eloquent biography that illuminates her subject's charismatic complexity. . . . Hockaday has gathered enough evidence to make Milena a vivid character in her own right--not just a great man's lover, but an important figure in Czech literature and Central European feminism." --Voice Literary Supplement


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices