Esque

The base reads "Franz Kafka"

Although there have been some historic markers around town for many decades,  Prague has only really begun to embrace Franz Kafka as the city's most famous writer fairly recently — and even then, the enthusiasm was somewhat muted. Oh, there have been "Kafka" cafes here and there, and his name inevitably appeared on maps and guidebooks sold to tourists, but those are commercial decisions, separate from formal municipal recognition.

Imagine Prague as confused parents discovering that their child, who as a youth became obsessed with juggling while reciting limericks backwards, has somehow, many years later as an adult, found tremendous fame overseas. Imagine those parents attempting to claim they always knew he was special, selling tickets to rabid fans wanting to visit the child's room to see where he learned those remarkable skills, while, late at night, turning to each other in confusion.

And it makes sense. For one thing, Kafka was Jewish, which of course put him behind the 8-ball with both the Fascist and then Communist governments here. He wrote only in German, never in Czech, which creates another distancing effect, and he was almost unknown before his death (though apparently he became better known fairly quickly thereafter). Perhaps most significantly, his most famous stories were about alienation, and described an ominous, confusing, and demanding world, where authorities — including government officials and bureaucrats —were anonymous, all-powerful, and irresistible. You can understand why, in real life, officials and bureaucrats might be slow to warm to him.

Finally, it's not clear that the Czechs ever quite knew what to do with him. The city wants to market itself both as an eccentric historical wonderland and as a progressive participant in modern Europe, but alienation, confusion, and man-turning-into-insects can be difficult to promote. One successful way the city has split the baby, as it were, is with the works of David Czerny, which populate the city with whimsy and humor.

"Gesture"

The Zizkov TV Tower Babies

Safe to say, unlike Cerny, Kafka is not known for whimsy.

Yet Prague slowly woke up to the fact that many of the millions of tourists that come here each year are actively interested in this foreign-language author who wrote about alienation, disaffection, and bureaucratic oppression, and the city has, for several years now, tried to catch up with the financial opportunities this creates for city coffers.

I went for a long walk though cold Prague on Saturday — a two-hour exploration of town, trying to focus on streets and neighborhoods I'm not particularly familiar with. And I came across some of the city's more recent attempts to honor its most famous son, including both the statue at the top of this post and a new "exhibit" at a square recently renamed to honor him. 

Unfortunately, only when I got home did I realize the text was out-of-focus

Ironically, I didn't stop by the most famous monument to Kafka —the "rotating" head that was, ironically, designed by David Czerny, and is located outside the Quadria shopping mall, facing City Hall.

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It was cold out there today! Gray, overcast, and damned chilly. A good day for mulled wine, or hot chocolate, or a fireplace. Having none of those, I settled for a hoodie, a puffy coat, too-thin gloves, and jeans, plus one quick stop for a cappuccino. Did the job. I did stop to take photos of Old Town square and a typical wall-of-wall-magnets at one of the approximately 4497 different souvenir stores that surround it.

Prague weather like this explains Kafka more than years of literary analysis

Don't worry. You won't run of out of magnet-options here.

Outside the Estates Theater I came across another statue that could, in fact, have been inspired by Kafka, but in fact commemorates Mozart's Don Giovanni, which debuted in that theater (conducted by Mozart himself) in 1787. The sculpture was created by Czech artist Anna Chromy and is titled Il Commendatore or Cloak of Conscience (though I don't see how it can be named in the alternative, which is confusing). According to AtlasObscura.com, "[although] it was created as a symbol for hope and peace, it's allegedly haunted: visitors have claimed faces in the figure's empty cloak have appeared in photos that have used flash photography. "

This is "a symbol of hope and peace"?

At least no haunting faces appear in my photo. But then, I guess, I didn't use a flash. 

Just for the hell of it, let's finish with a quote from Kafka himself: 

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”