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Milena: The Tragic Story of Kafka's Great Love

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Since the hardback edition of the new translation of Milena was published last year, Margarete Buber-Neumann, friend to the mistress of Kafka for four years at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, has died. She died old enough to see the collapse of the Stalinist system that imprisoned her in Siberia, old enough to feel the great hopes that the socialism she fought for will now at last sweep through Europe.

Milena Jesenska fought for the cause too, in her writing and through her actions, leading to her arrest and incarceration at Ravensbruck. She initially sought out Greta Buber to hear the truth about Stalin; what developed was a deep and passionate love. Though Buber-Neumann is no great stylist indeed the book at times fails to come alive because of her reverence for Milena this is a profoundly moving memoir, part biography, part autobiography and part love story, even if, as the subject predicted, told by an 'indulgent judge.' For Milena, on her deathbed, commissioned Buber-Neumann to write this book as a document of life in the camps. However, the camp is but the terrifying context for a tale about a beautiful girl who turned the eyes of the Prague Circle in the Twenties with her boyish looks and who began a painful love affair with Franz Kafka and of how she outlived him and of how 'the living fire' as Kafka described her was quenched.

This is a biography of Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist who was, in a way, a great love of Kafka's. She was an unusual woman for her time. Highly intelligent and with a rebellious streak, she fashioned herself into a journalist and became well-regarded for her literary and political writing. In her 20s she came to know Kafka when she translated his work into Czech. This gave rise to an impassioned correspondence between them, although the connection didn't turn into a real-life love affair, partly because Milena was married, and partly because of Kafka's numerous anxieties and aversions in the male/female domain. Unfortunately, those interested in insights into Kafka will not get many from this book, as he comes and goes quite quickly in the narrative. Rather, the book is a loving tribute to Milena by Margarete Buber-Neumann, with whom she was imprisoned at the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. The two had planned to write a book together when they were freed, but Milena died of kidney failure in May 1944, so Margarete chose instead to tell her friend's story.

Milena Jesenka is most known to the world through her connection to and correspondance with Kafka. Her friend Margerete Buber- Neumann tells her story with great insight and feeling. She tells especially of Milena, who imprisoned at Ravensbruck was a heroic helper of others there. This story inspires and saddens deeply because it shows the tragic and painful end of a truly noble and courageous human being.