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Kafka's Milena

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In this book Jane Cerna tells the story, or a part of the story of her mother. She writes of her with affection and understanding. She does not try to hide the difficulties of her mother's personality including her not being the kind of woman who could give herself over fully to being a mother. The biography of the daughter is the central text of this volume. But there is also an excellent introduction by George Gibian that gives the outline of Milena's whole life- story.
The first and central point for many readers is that Milena was one of the great loves of Kafka, and the correspondent in one of the great classics of letter- writing in Western literature, Kafka's 'Letters to Milena'. But what we learn from this book is that Milena in and by herself was a remarkable and heroic character. She was a journalist of no small ability, and a fighter for human -rights. As a child she had helped nurse her bed-ridden mother, and had rebelled against her authoritarian father. Her relationship with Kafka came in the midst of her first marriage to the philandering Ernst Pollak who she initially deeply loved, and married despite the opposition of her father. She shared with Kafka this deeply problematic relation to an overwhelmingly powerful father. But as her daughter makes clear she would never , given her adventurous character been able to live with the guilt- ridden and overly responsible Kafka. Milena would eventually die in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her close friend Margeret Buber- Neumann wrote a memoir about her there which describes her heroism in helping others.
This book enables us to have a deeper understanding of a character made legendary by literature who also was a remarkable person in her life.