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| 馬剋斯·布羅德 | |||
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馬剋斯·布羅德最為人們熟知的是他是弗蘭茨·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka）的終身摯友，是其遺作整理出版者和影響力推動者，“卡夫卡熱”的締造者；他是發現卡夫卡寫作天才和巨大價值的第一人。但除此之外，布羅德本人其實也是一位著作頗豐的作傢，而且是門類廣泛的評論傢。
馬剋斯·布羅德簡介
馬剋斯·布羅德(Max Brod，1884年5月27~1968年12月20日)，出生於今天捷剋共和國的首都布拉格（當時屬於奧匈帝國），猶太人。畢業於布拉格查理大學法律係，獲法學博士。畢業後先後在布拉格財政局、郵政局和法院工作，又進行文學創作，並且是報刊的戲劇和音樂評論傢。他1912年就參加過猶太復國運動，是一個堅定的猶太復國主義者。1939年捷剋被納粹德國吞併，布羅德被迫逃離布拉格去以色列，開始時任特拉維夫一傢劇院的戲劇顧問，後來專事創作。1968年12月20日布羅德逝世於特拉維夫。
馬剋斯·布羅德最為人們熟知的是他是弗蘭茨·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka）的終身摯友，是其遺作整理出版者和影響力推動者，“卡夫卡熱”的締造者；他是發現卡夫卡寫作天才和巨大價值的第一人。將但除此之外，布羅德本人其實也是一位著作頗豐的作傢，而且是門類廣泛的評論傢。
對於卡夫卡，這些年來國內介紹得不少，並先後出版了他的選集、文集和全集，各種評論文章也不斷見諸期刊報端。但對於布羅德，國內過去介紹得很少，除了知道他是卡夫卡遺囑的執行人和卡夫卡作品的出版者外，其他方面則知之甚少。其實，布羅德早從1906年起就開始發表作品，先後出版了中篇小說集《死亡屬於死者》(1906)、《妓女之訓練》(1909)，長篇小說《諾納皮格宮》(1908)、《一個捷剋女僕》(1909)、《猶太女人》(1911)等。他的早期作品有頽廢和追求奇特的傾嚮。後來他也受到表現主義的影響，作品主人公大多陷於追求肉欲生活和精神反抗的矛盾之中，這時期較重要的作品是長篇小說《弗蘭齊，又名二等愛情》(1922)、《被追求的女人》(1927)等，這些作品都比較怪誕、晦澀。藝術上較成功並使他獲得殊榮的是歷史小說三部麯《為真理而鬥爭》：第一部《蒂科 · 布拉赫走嚮上帝之路》(1916)，第二部《猶太人的君主雷本尼》(1925，獲本年度國傢奬)，第三部《伽利略在囚禁中》(1948)。這三部小說用宗教觀點分別描述了三位著名人物的生活道路，但在內容上並無聯繫。1939年捷剋為納粹德國吞併，布羅德逃離布拉格去以色列，開始時任特拉維夫一傢劇院的戲劇顧問，後來專事創作，作品內容也進一步轉嚮宗教主題。重要的有長篇小說《我主耶穌》(1952)和《可憐的西塞羅》(1955)。1953年他還把卡夫卡的《城堡》改編成話劇上演。他的自傳《反叛的心靈》(1957)、《迷霧中的青年時代》(1959)和《布拉格作傢圈》(1966)，描寫了在布拉格度過的青年和成年時期豐富多彩、充滿友情的生活。
馬剋斯·布羅德與弗蘭茨·卡夫卡
相識
卡夫卡和布羅德都是布拉格的猶太人，上的都是德語中學，都就讀於布拉格查理大學法律係。
1902年，當時還在讀大一的布羅德在一次“德語大學生閱讀演講廳”上作了一個題為《叔本華和尼采》的報告，這個報告引起了小小的震動。布羅德後來回憶說：“這是由於我當時是激烈的、狂熱的叔本華信徒，任何對我奉若神明的這位哲學家的論點的哪怕微不足道的反對意見我都一概認為是褻瀆神明；而尼采則被我一口咬定、不加掩飾地說成是個‘騙子’。”這個報告結束後，比布羅德大一歲的卡夫卡主動陪布羅德回傢，一路上對布羅德的觀點提出了不少反對意見——隨後他們談到了自己心愛的作傢，並各自為自己所愛的作傢辯護……兩人的友誼由此開始。
相知
布羅德成名要比卡夫卡早，1906年他就出版了他的一本書。但是，那時卡夫卡還沒有發表過任何作品。直到1909年卡夫卡第一次給布羅德朗讀了他自己的作品（《鄉村婚事》的開頭部分）後，布羅德發現了卡夫卡寫作的天才。從那以後，布羅德終其一生都在為卡夫卡作品的發表而努力。
卡夫卡是一個世界上少有的不願意拿自己的作品來發表的作傢（這也恰恰說明了他的天才），生前發表的許多作品都是在布羅德的鼓勵和推薦下發表的。不僅如此，他們還經常在一起探討文學、交流思想。布羅德也承認，卡夫卡對他的影響（包括文學上的影響）是很明顯的，但是他強調這種影響是相互的：他也大大地豐富了卡夫卡。布羅德的主動性和精力旺盛是卡夫卡所羨慕的。
善意的背叛
卡夫卡於1924年去世後，布羅德是搜集、整理卡夫卡著作和遺著的熱心人，也是當時惟一的出版人(在這一點上他違背了卡夫卡的遺願)。在他的努力下，三十年代出版了卡夫卡著作六捲集，五十年代出版了九捲全集。與此同時，他對卡夫卡和卡夫卡作品進行了研究，發表了一係列關於卡夫卡的論著，重要的有《卡夫卡傳》(1937)、《卡夫卡的信仰和教義》(1948)、《卡夫卡作品中的絶望和解救》(1959)，以上三個專著於1966年合集，書名為《論卡夫卡》。毫無疑問，布羅德的論著，確實提供了關於卡夫卡的許多第一手資料。但是也應該指出，布羅德的論著更多的是從民族和宗教的角度(猶太主義)，以寬恕和嚴懲兩個極端，對卡夫卡的生平和創作進行闡釋，就卡夫卡作品本身進行深入研究則比較少。尤其是在後期，布羅德拒絶接受文學研究中的新趨勢、新方法，觀點上保守、僵化，曾受到同行的批評。但是，布拉格德語文學所以在世界文學中占有一席之地，卡夫卡的作品所以能陸續發表流傳於世，布羅德有着不可磨滅的功績。可以這樣說，如果沒有布羅德的堅持不懈的努力和宣傳推薦，也就沒有卡夫卡的今天。
對於這個善意的背叛，布羅德曾這樣為自己辯護：“如果他（指卡夫卡）真想燒掉所有手稿，就應該交由其他人去完成——他知道我不會那樣做。”
布羅德之所以這樣做，很可能和他觀察到卡夫卡在生命的最後階段産生的一些“變化”有關——就是他在他的《卡夫卡傳》中提到的：“在這個意義上，我看到卡夫卡在他生命的最後一年中（這一年儘管他的病非常可怕，仍然使他得以圓滿地結束一生）在正確道路上，在他的生活伴侶的伴隨下確實感到幸福。他興致勃勃地工作，把《矮女人》念給我聽，寫《地洞》，他也給我念了其中幾個部分。當我把他介紹給“鍛造”出版社領導人時，不須發揮長時間的說服藝術，他很快就同意發表四篇小說，他給它們（根據其中一篇的題目）起了個總題目（《饑餓藝術傢》）。由於他這一根本上的轉變，由於這一切轉嚮生活的跡象，我後來才能鼓起勇氣，將他給我的（在此很久以前寫下的）禁止發表任何遺墨的叮囑視為無效。”
卡夫卡給馬剋斯·布羅德的遺囑
最親愛的馬剋斯，我最後的請求是：我遺物裏（就是書箱裏、衣櫃裏、寫字檯裏、傢裏和辦公室裏，或者可能放東西的以及你想的起來的任何地方），凡屬日記本、手稿、來往信件、各種草稿等等，請勿閱讀，並一點不剩地全部予以焚毀。同樣，凡在你或別人手裏的所有我寫的東西和我的草稿，要求你，也請你以我的名義要求他們交給你焚毀。至於別人不願意交給你的那些信件，他們至少應該自行負責焚毀。
你的弗蘭茨·卡夫卡
Biography
Max Brod was born in Prague, then part of the province of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, now the capital of the Czech Republic. At the age of four, Brod was diagnosed with a severe spinal curvature and spent a year in corrective harness; despite this he would have a hunchback his entire life. A German-speaking Jew, he went to the Piarist school together with his life-long friend Felix Weltsch, later attended the Stephans Gymnasium, then studied law at the German Charles-Ferdinand University (which at the time was divided into a German language university and a Czech language university; he attended the German one) and graduated in 1907 to work in the civil service. From 1912, he was a pronounced Zionist (which he attributed to the influence of Martin Buber) and when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918, he briefly served as vice-president of the Jüdischer Nationalrat. From 1924, already an established writer, he worked as a critic for the Prager Tagblatt.
In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, Brod and his wife Elsa Taussig fled to Palestine. He settled in Tel Aviv, where he continued to write and worked as a dramaturg for Habimah, later the Israeli national theatre, for 30 years. For a period following the death of his wife in 1942, Brod published very few works. He became very close to a couple named Otto and Esther Hoffe, regularly taking vacations with the two and employing Esther as a secretary for many years; it is often presumed that their relationship had a romantic dimension. He would later pass stewardship of the Kafka materials in his possession to Esther in his will. He was additionally supported by his close companion Felix Weltsch. Their friendship lasted 75 years, from the elementary school of the Piarists in Prague to Weltsch's death in 1964. Brod died on December 20, 1968 in Tel Aviv.
Literary career
Unlike Kafka, Brod rapidly became a prolific, successful published writer who eventual published 83 titles. His first novel and fourth book overall, Schloß Nornepygge (Nornepygge Castle), published in 1908 when he was only 24, was celebrated in Berlin literary circles as a masterpiece of expressionism. This and other works made Brod a well-known personality in German-language literature. In 1913, together with Weltsch, he published the work Anschauung und Begriff which made him more famous in Berlin and also in Leipzig, where their publisher Kurt Wolff worked.
He unselfishly promoted other writers and musicians. Among his protégés was Franz Werfel, whom he would later fall out with as Werfel abandoned Judaism for Christianity. He would also write at various times both for and against Karl Kraus, a convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. His critical endorsement would be crucial to the popularity of Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Svejk, and he played a crucial role in the diffusion of Leoš Janáček's operas.
Friendship with Kafka
Brod first met Kafka on October 23, 1902, when both were students at Charles University. Brod had given a lecture at the German students' hall on Arthur Schopenhauer. Kafka, one year older, addressed him after the lecture and accompanied him home. "He tended to participate in all the meetings, but up to then we had hardly considered each other," wrote Brod. The quiet Kafka "would have been... hard to notice... even his elegant, usually dark-blue, suits were inconspicuous and reserved like him. At that time, however, something seems to have attracted him to me, he was more open than usual, filling the endless walk home by disagreeing strongly with my all too rough formulations."
From then on, Brod and Kafka met frequently, often even daily, and remained close friends until Kafka's death. Kafka was a frequent guest in Brod's parents' house. There he met his future girlfriend and fiancée Felice Bauer, cousin of Brod's brother-in-law Max Friedmann. After graduating, Brod worked for a time for the post office. The relatively short working hours gave him time to begin a career as an art critic and freelance writer. For similar reasons, Kafka took a job at an insurance agency involved in workmen's accident insurance. Brod, Kafka and Brod's close friend Felix Weltsch constituted the so-called "Der enge Prager Kreis" or "close Prague circle".
During Kafka's lifetime, Brod tried repeatedly to reassure him of his writing talents, of which Kafka was chronically doubtful. Brod pushed Kafka to publish his work, and it is probably owing to Brod that he began to keep a diary. Brod tried, but failed, to arrange common literary projects. Notwithstanding their inability to write in tandem—which stemmed from clashing literary and personal philosophies—they were able to publish one chapter from an attempted travelogue in May 1912, for which Kafka wrote the introduction. It was published in the journal Herderblätter. Brod prodded his friend to complete the project several years later, but the effort was in vain. Even after Brod's 1913 marriage with Elsa Taussig, he and Kafka remained each other's closest friends and confidants, assisting each other in problems and life crises.
Publication of Kafka's work
On Kafka's death in 1924 Brod was the administrator of the estate and preserved his unpublished works from incineration despite what was stipulated in Kafka's will. He defended this course by saying that when Kafka asked him to burn his papers, he told him he would not carry out this wish: "Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been absolutely and finally determined that his instructions should stand." Before even a line of Kafka's most famous work had been made public, Brod had already praised him as "the greatest poet of our time", ranking with Goethe or Tolstoy. As Kafka's works were posthumously published (The Trial arrived in 1925, followed by The Castle in 1926 and Amerika in 1927), this early positive assessment was bolstered by more general critical acclaim.
When Brod fled Prague in 1939, he took with him a suitcase of Kafka's papers, many of them unpublished notes, diaries, sketches, and so forth. Although some of these materials were later edited and published in 6 volumes of collected works, much of them remained unreleased. Upon his death, this trove of materials was passed to Esther Hoffe, who maintained most of them until her own death in 2007 (one original maunuscript of The Trial was auctioned in 1988 for $2 million). Due to certain ambiguities regarding Brod's wishes, the proper disposition of the materials is now being litigated. On one side is the National Library of Israel, which believes that Brod passed the papers to Esther as an executor of his actual intent to have the papers donated to the institution. On the other side are Esther's daughters, who claim that Brod passed the papers to their mother as a pure inheritance which should be theirs. The sisters have announced their intention to sell the materials to the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany.
Published work
Schloß Nornepygge (Nornepygge Castle, 1908)
Weiberwirtschaft (Woman's Work, 1913)
Über die Schönheit häßlicher Bilder (On the Beauty of Ugly Pictures, 1913)
Die Höhe des Gefühls (The Height of Feeling, 1913)
Anschauung und Begriff: Grundzüge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung, 1913 (together with Felix Weltsch)-->
Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott (Tycho Brahe's Path to God 1915)
Heidentum, Christentum, Judentum: Ein Bekenntnisbuch (Paganism, Christianity, Judaism: A Credo, 1921)
Sternenhimmel: Musik- und Theatererlebnisse (1923, reissued as Prager Sternenhimmel)
Reubeni, Fürst der Juden (Reubeni, Prince of the Jews, 1925)
Zauberreich der Liebe (The Charmed Realm of Love, 1930)
Biografie von Heinrich Heine (Biography of Heinrich Heine, 1934)
Die Frau, die nicht enttäuscht (The Woman Who Does Not Disappoint, 1934)
Novellen aus Böhmen (Novellas from Bohemia, 1936)
Rassentheorie und Judentum (Race Theory and Judaism, 1936)
Annerl (Annie, 1937)
Franz Kafka, eine Biographie (Franz Kafka, a Biography, 1937, later collected in Über Franz Kafka, 1974)
Franz Kafkas Glauben und Lehre (Franz Kafka's Thought and Teaching, 1948)
Die Musik Israels (The Music of Israel, Tel Aviv, 1951)
Beinahe ein Vorzugsschüler, oder pièce touchée: Roman eines unauffälligen Menschen (Almost a Gifted Pupil, 1952)
Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt (The Woman For Whom One Longs, 1953)
Rebellische Herzen (Rebellious Hearts, 1957)
Verzweiflung und Erlösung im Werke Franz Kafkas (Despair and Redemption in the Works of Franz Kafka, 1959)
Beispiel einer deutsch-jüdischen Symbiose (An Example of German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1961)
Die verkaufte Braut, translation of the Czech libretto of Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedřich Smetana), and numerous other translations of Czech opera libretti
Über Franz Kafka, (Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1974)
Music
Brod's musical compositions are little known. They include songs, works for piano and incidental music for his plays. He translated some of Bedřich Smetana's and Leoš Janáček's operas into German, and wrote the first book on Janáček (first published in Czech in 1924). Authored a study of Gustav Mahler, Beispiel einer deutsch-jüdischen Symbiose, in 1961.
Award
In 1948, Brod was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.