In a co-presentation between 92NY’s Unterberg Poetry Center and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, acclaimed actor Josh Hamilton performs a dramatic reading of Franz Kafka’s Diaries, now published in a complete and newly translated edition by Ross Benjamin. A conversation between Benjamin and scholar Veronika Tuckerova will follow the reading.
Dating from 1909 to 1923, Kafka’s handwritten diaries contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications. By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves.
“‘Diaries’ stand at the threshold of life and literature. In my translation, I seek to reveal Kafka’s genius not as something fully formed, embalmed and fit for a museum, but as that propensity for unsparing self-examination and open-ended literary experimentation that animated all his work.”
"This new and scrupulously faithful translation of the Diaries brings us...the true inner life of the twentieth century’s most complex and enigmatic literary prophet." —Cynthia Ozick, author of Antiquities
The reading takes place in person at the Bohemian National Hall. It will also be live streamed. Tickets to the in-person and online program are available online. The book will be available for purchase.
About
FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including The Metamorphosis, The Judgment, and The Stoker. He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.
JOSH HAMILTON's theater credits include Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and The Coast of Utopia. He performed in The Cherry Orchard at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, alongside Ethan Hawke, who was his co-star in the 1993 film Alive. On TV he was a regular on The Walking Dead. He received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in hit indie film Eighth Grade.
ROSS BENJAMIN’s translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Joseph Roth’s Job, and Daniel Kehlmann’s You Should Have Left and Tyll. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov, and he received a Guggenheim fellowship for his work on Franz Kafka’s diaries.
VERONIKA TUCKEROVA is a literary scholar and translator. She teaches at Harvard University's Slavic Department. Her interests include Czech and German literature, art and literature of dissent, and translation theory and practice. She collaborated on the exhibition From Franz Kafka to the Velvet Revolution and recently completed a book on the Czechoslovak reception of Kafka, from 1920s to 1989.
The program is organized by 92NY’s Unterberg Poetry Center and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York.
The event is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. The program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.