Who was the woman Kafka loved? Christine estimé says that we should know her story

Twelve years ago, Canadian writer Christine Estima was broke and living in England when she came across a journalism scholarship appointed for Milena Jenská.

Estima had never heard of her before, so she started to dig – and learned that Jenská was a journalist, translator and courageous resistance of the Nazi regime.

In history, however, Jenská most often remembers the lover of Franz Kafka.

She translated her work from German into Czech, starting passionate correspondence which finally led to a case.

And while Kafka’s letters in Jenská are immortalized in the book Letters to MilenaHis answers have never been found.

“I wanted her not known as the Kafka lover,” said on Livre Serre with Mattea Roach. “I wanted him to be known as his.”

This desire sparked the first novel of esteem, Letters to KafkaWho shares the story of Jenská and gives the floor to a woman often overshadowed in history.

Estimated also wrote the News Collection The benevolent society of Syrian ladies. She was Long list For the price of the short history of the CBC in 2015.

The author of Toronto joined Roach on Maid To discuss the power of women writers and the wealthy moments she had during her research.

Matea Roach: What is Milena Jenská’s story in particular that you found so convincing to become a novel?

Christine estimated: One of the main things was that it existed at a time when being a woman who also made her live as a writer was so ostentatious and unexpected.

She is a Czech woman, married, living in Vienna at the end of the Great War. If you were not dead in the Great War, then the Spanish flu epidemic finished you. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire collapsed. There are fuel shortages and carbon shortages and bread pipes and inflation is through the roof.

The men come back from the front with faces distributed in haste and ghost members and respectable women sell their bodies in the street to support their families. And Milena is like: “What do you know? I’m going to be an author.” It takes so much character and so much Moxie.

In your novel, we see the first time that Jenská and Kafka meet is this fortuitous meeting in a Café in Prague. There is this immediate mutual attraction. What is going on between them and what do you think attracted them together?

I think Milena considered herself a way that was not represented in her status in society. She came from very good to make the family in Prague. Her father suffered an oral operation and when she decided to marry, it was against the wishes of her father because she married a Jewish man and so she had to run in Vienna.

But while she lived in Prague, she had rubbed shoulders with the intelligentsia and the literacy circles of the Czech company and the Bohemian society at the time.

When she moved to Vienna, she was broke. Her husband did not really share her salary with her, so she had to get luggage at the station just to reach both ends. She was incredibly intellectual, however. His aunt had also been a writer for Czech newspapers and magazines.

So I think she had the impression: “I do not deserve to work here at this station. I deserve to express my thoughts and feelings and my intelligence in the written word.”

So when she is in Prague and she is at Cafe Arco, who was a famous coffee in the center of Prague where all the Czech intelligentsia used to spend time, and she meets her, I think it was like where she was supposed to be. Kafka, at this stage, he is not the famous name we know now, but he is well known in the Czech and German circles at this stage. It is fairly well read and therefore this kind of resentment as a meeting of mind.

It was: “Okay, I met my match, I met my equal intellectual.” Through this, it also triggered what turned out to be an erotic and sexual attraction.

YOr spent four years looking for the novel before you even start writing, which included many trips to Vienna and Prague to be in the places Milena lived. Can you talk a bit about this process?

I have traveled the census files and the voter lists and declassified military files. I interviewed one of his biographers. I took notes in all museums. I had to become essentially a scholar on the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and also which was responsible for it. There have been a lot of visits to concentration camps.

I discovered certain in situ things that were not in any text that I encountered. The most important thing was that when Milena was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939, she was arrested during her last address which was literally only four minutes walk from Kafka’s tomb.

He had died for 15 years when she was arrested. So when I made, walking on this street, that he was buried there, I was like that should be a choice. She could have lived anywhere in Prague. It was in a way on the outskirts of Prague, so why would she choose to live near the new Jewish cemetery?

I know that you also returned to Vienna for about a month during the process of writing the manuscript and found a similar and fortuitous link between you and Milena. Can you talk about this story and what this discovery looked like?

When I discovered that there was an opportunity for a month to sit in the heart of Vienna, I jumped on it. The house was located in a street called Lerchenfelder Straße and Milena and her first husband, Ernst Pollack, lived in the same street. But it’s a very long street, so I didn’t think about it much.

But when I got home, I was literally in front of this apartment in which she lived when she corresponded to Kafka. I was super excited.

While I was there, I also took care of this dog. So every time I was doing the dog for a walk, I walked near Milena’s apartment and I said to myself: “Hi, Milena.”

Then, once, I passed and the front door of the building where she lived was open. And I picked up the puppy and I say to myself: “We are entering.”

Obviously, I could not enter her apartment, but in the book, I describe her going up and down the stairwell. I am able to describe it because I was in this staircase. I know what it looked like. And it was just such a joy to walk your street and see your neighborhood.

It was so exciting, and I think this excitement at that time informed the work.

This interview has been modified for duration and clarity. Katy Swailes were produced.