In 1920, at the age of 38, Franz Kafka wrote a letter to his father, Hermann, accusing him of ruining his life by his dictatorial and insensitive behaviour, which left him lacking in self-belief and unable to escape his father’s dominance.

Kafka never sent this letter to his father, but instead showed it to friends.

Justin Cartwright imagines the father’s reply.

My dear Franz,

Your letter to me, which I read with disgust and sorrow, is the product of your oversensitive imagination and your weak constitution, both of which are, alas, faults with which you were born.  

You are misguided on so many points, starting with the nature of a father’s duty to his children and the nature of a son’s obligations to his father, that I hardly know where to start, except to say that your spite and lack of gratitude are monumental.

The most vicious aspect of your letter is the charge that I have deprived you of a happy life. You say that I have made you afraid, not only of me, but of life. You claim that I threatened you, raising my hand to you, saying that I would rip you open like a fish. You say too that at mealtimes I behaved like a peasant, always criticising the food and ridiculing my children. You say that I have — I am quoting — a mysterious innocence — a ridiculous phrase — which permitted me to abuse anyone I chose to, without regret, while never allowing anyone else to utter a word of criticism. Your list of charges goes on over many pages and they are all the product of your inflamed and unstable mind. I have, apparently, deliberately fostered a sense of worthlessness in you in order to bolster my own importance, as if I needed to do so in competition with a little worm like you. You even claim that when, out of the goodness of my heart, I took you swimming, I would show off my physique, deliberately to belittle you, because you have always had something of the insect about you. You chose to describe yourself as like a little skeleton and I cannot argue with that. It is as if you believe that my vitality and robustness have been bought at your expense. This is the logic of the feeble, who will not understand that life is essentially a struggle.

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