Franz Kafka e Italo Svevo

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the similarities, both in their works and in their biographies, between Franz Kafka and Italo Svevo. Both characterised by an indispensable literary identity to be defended and preserved in the strict world of bourgeois conventions, and at the same time by a strong and equally contradictory connection to their Jewish origins, the lives of Kafka and Svevo are constantly divided between authenticity and appearance, between integration and exclusion, between the need to nurture their nature as writers on the one hand, and the desire to fit into a social role on the other. This deep split in their personalities is clearly expressed in their stories about animals, which often adopt the parabolic structure of the Jewish tradition and effectively describe the inner conflict of the two authors.