The Aeroplanes At Brescia

The Aeroplanes at Brescia is an article by Franz Kafka, which appeared in the newspaper Bohemia in September 1909. The novel describes an air show in the city of Brescia, with two friends took part in the Kafka ( Max and Otto Brod) during a trip to Italy. This is the first description of aircraft in the German literature.

Content

Kafka portrays the Mediterranean before and bustle in the Aerodrome, the sun-baked wide sites and mood-lifting effect of the southern sun. Spectators at the spectacle are, inter alia, persons with high -sounding Italian name, ladies presenting their modern, some strange robes. Also, two prominent artists are in the audience, namely Giacomo Puccini and Gabriele D' Annunzio, the latter accompanied by his translator Karl Gustav Vollmoeller.

It take the famous aviator Henri Rougier, Glenn Curtiss, Louis Blériot part ( the high-flyer of the English Channel ) and Alfred Leblanc. They prepare very differently for the starting line: Rougier is restless, Curtiss sits alone and intensively reading newspaper. Bleriot flying machine is to get only after intensive efforts of workers in transition. Bleriot takes it stoically. Now the aircraft climb. Bleriot has certain difficulties, but ends up healing.

Curtiss wins with a perfect performance in the Grand Prix of Brescia. Rougier rises far up, it appears to the stars. Kafka and his friends - as well as the other public - but to break even before the flights are over, to get a car for the return trip. The heaven-storming Rougier, who still makes his rounds, is still admired, but the company is in the thought no longer really with him.

Here already hinted seen later Kafka's literary theme: the loneliness of the artist, and away unnoticed by the audience the only follows his vocation.

Form

In this article, Kafka demonstrates the technique of motion reproduction, in which he brings The Man Who Disappeared especially for use later. As coordinates of seeing here lose closeness and distance of its distinctive features. A look into the vastness of the horizon in the description of ascending into heaven aircraft can dissolve all boundaries. The text mimics a human perception practice, the rest points examined, to handle motion impressions can.

Expenditure

Secondary literature

• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. C. H. Beck, Munich, 2005.
• Peter- André Alt: Kafka and the film. C. H. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58748-1.
• Peter Demetz: The Air Show from Brescia. Kafka, d' Annunzio and the men who fell from the sky, Vienna 2002, ISBN 9783552051997
• Ronald Perlwitz: The Aeroplane in Brescia. In: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 127-129, ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0.
• Joachim Unseld: Franz Kafka. A writer lives. Carl Hanser Verlag, 1982, ISBN 3-446-13568-5 Ln.
• Klaus Wagenbach: Kafka. rororo 1080, ISBN 3-499-50091-4.