Why writers need matches

That's why I keep matches and some lighter fluid next to my manuscripts:

"A literary friendship in which one writer is ‘more equal’ than the other,  Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Max Brod (1884-1968) met at Charles University in Prague, and remained lifelong friends. Brod was a successful author, composer and journalist.  Now, however, he tends to be remembered mainly as Kafka’s friend, biographer, and literary executor. Perhaps he wouldn’t have minded. He is said to have “unselfishly promoted other writers and musicians.”

Franz Kafka was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century
Kafka asked Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death.  According to Brod’s account, he didn’t promise, and he didn’t burn them. When the Nazis arrived in 1939, Brod and his wife fled to what was then called Palestine, and they took Kafka’s manuscripts with them. Brod settled in Tel Aviv, and edited and published some of Kafka’s work."

SOURCE

Franz Kafka's unknown writings

"For more than 50 years, a vast treasure trove containing the bulk of the Czech author's writing has been hidden away in 10 safety deposit boxes, tantalising Kafka enthusiasts around the world. Their hopes of unearthing a major literary find have come closer to fruition after Israel's supreme court ended a two-year legal tussle over the ownership of Kafka's estate by ordering that the boxes finally be opened. [...]

The saga of publishing Kafka's works is a long one, dating back to the author's death from tuberculosis in 1924.

Shortly before he died, Kafka entrusted his portfolio to Max Brod, his biographer and mentor, asking him to destroy its contents.

Ignoring his friend's wishes, Brod published some of the novels, such as The Trial and The Castle that were to propel Kafka into the pantheon of modern literary genius.

But he retained the bulk of the papers, taking them to Tel Aviv after fleeing the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and then leaving them to his secretary and, so rumour has it, lover, Ester Hoffe."

SOURCE

Franz Kafka's "Strange and deep darkness"

Franz Kafka to Milena:

"I knew in advance what I would find in the letter, after all it was in all your letters, it was hidden in your eyes (what can one not find in their depth), in the wrinkles on your forehead; I knew it like someone who spends all day in a dark room, in deep abyss of sleep, dreams and fear, and then opens the windows not at all surprised that it is dark outside, because I knew in advance that out there I shall find strange and deep darkness."

From time to time I like to return to Kafka's letters to Felice and to Milena. I recall reading them for the first time when I was about seventeen, and feeling as though I wrote them, they were straight from the heart. I read somewhere that when these letters were first published readers felt embarrassed, as though anyone might when reading someone's innermost thoughts. They emanate authenticity. Elias Canetti wrote about them:

"I can only say that these letters hit me as only authentic life can, and are now so mystical and familiar as though they belonged to me for a long time, ever since I started to observe and absorb other people so as to understand them better."