archaeography

What does a Museum of the Author look like? The Franz Kafka Museum in Prague is one attempt to present and make present the life and works of the enigmatic writer, who died in 1924. It is an exercise in fluid identities and immersive materialities, as it enlists 'common' artefacts and 'clever' new media to tell its stories.

This is how the museum’s website describes its artefacts and media aids:

• most of the first editions of Kafka's works
• letters, diaries, manuscripts, photographs and drawings never before displayed in Prague
• 3-D installations
• five audiovisual pieces and a soundtrack specially created for the exhibition

These are divided between two sections - Existential Space and Imaginary Topography:

Existential Space - In this first stage of our immersion into the world of Kafka, we look at what the city does with the writer, how it shapes his life, the kind of stamp it leaves on him. Prague acts on Kafka with all of its metamorphosing power, confining him to an existential space which he can only enter by "fixing my gaze on the surface of things", Prague forces Kafka into a spatial stranglehold, perversely dosing out its secrets. Prague contributes the myth, its obscure magic, a magnificent backdrop, but it abhors clarity. And this is precisely what Kafka detects.

Imaginary Topography - The way Kafka creates the layers of his city is one of the most enigmatic operations of modern literature. With the odd exception, Kafka does not name the places he describes in his novels and short stories. The city steps back, is no longer recognisable by its buildings, bridges and monuments. And even if they are recognised by an inhabitant of Prague or by a student of Kafka, they have become something else.