FRANZ KAFKA: Father of Hybrid, Prose poem and Flash fiction
It has been a matter of debate that prose written in post card form in a horizontal block should be kept in which genre? Flash fiction or prose poem! Sometimes they look like Siamese twins and many times they signal as a hybrid. A complete formula has not been formulated yet and it depends ultimately upon the writer to decide what to call a given work. There is not a clear-cut distinction which is universally accepted. Franz Kafka is the father of poem and flash prose.
Flash fiction is written within about 500 words or maximum up to 1000 words. Here the main challenge is to hide big talks in a few words. They are kept secretly between spaces, leaving most of the time upon the reader’s imagination. A mystery to solve! Poetry is also a mystery and according to W B Yeats whatever could be understood is definitely not poetry. This is the main cause which effaces the borderline between prose poems and flash fiction. This effacing heightened much after the invention of surrealism.
Prose poetry is written in block form without line breaks. It contains a major of poetry devices symbolism, imagery, syntax parallelism and similes. These devices are also used in literature of surrealism as it is talked about most of the time in a symbolic way. Franz Kafka expertise this genre and made it widespread though posthumously.
Fragmentary Piece of Kafka
The windless calm on some days, the noise made by those arriving, the way our people come running out of the houses to welcome, flags are put out here and there, people hurry down to the cellar to fetch wine, from a window a rose falls on to the cobbles, nobody has any patience, the boats, instantly gripped by a hundred arms, scrape the beach, the foreign men gaze around them and climb up into the broad daylight of the square.
Franz Kafka oeuvre contains many such fragments which can be placed into three categories: parables, prose poem, and flash fiction. Most of the time they can be interchanged. Especially his flash fictions are teeter on the edge of metaphor in major bulk, which could be drew in category of prose poem. Sometimes they calmly radiate the luminosity of ephemeral world through the clouds of surrealism. The dexterity with which Kafka handles the sentence, making its stretch accordion like, from a short phrase to a lengthy paragraph, justifying him as a prose poet.
Franz Kafka never wrote traditional poems but his first publication “Contemplation is categorized as prose poems which are in metaphor style.
Franz Kafka could be called the father of hybrid, amalgamator of flash fiction and prose poetry.
by
Dr Pragya Suman
copyright@pragyasuman