It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that there was ever a time with­out the word “Kafkaesque.” Yet the term would have meant noth­ing at all to any­one alive at the same time as Franz Kaf­ka — includ­ing, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, Kaf­ka him­self. Born in Prague in 1883, he grew up under a stern, demand­ing, and per­pet­u­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed father, then made his way through col­lege and entered the work­force. He end­ed up at the Work­ers’ Acci­dent Insur­ance Insti­tute, where he was “sub­ject to long hours, unpaid over­time, mas­sive amounts of paper­work, and absurd, com­plex, bureau­crat­ic sys­tems,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Pur­suit of Won­der video above. But it was dur­ing that same peri­od that he wrote The Tri­al, The Cas­tle, and Ameri­ka.

Of course, Kaf­ka did­n’t actu­al­ly pub­lish those even­tu­al­ly acclaimed books in his life­time. After his death, that task would fall to Max Brod, the writer’s only real friend, and it entailed vio­lat­ing the author’s explic­it­ly stat­ed wish­es. On his deathbed, Kaf­ka “instruct­ed Max Brod to burn all of his unpub­lished man­u­scripts”; instead, Brod “spent the fol­low­ing year or so work­ing to orga­nize and pub­lish his notes and man­u­scripts.” Now that he’s been gone more than a cen­tu­ry, Kafka’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the great­est lit­er­ary fig­ures of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is more than secure, and it would take a ded­i­cat­ed con­trar­i­an indeed to argue that Brod did wrong not to toss his papers onto the bon­fire.

Per­haps Kafka’s rep­u­ta­tion would have found a way to grow one way or anoth­er, respond as his writ­ing does to a psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­com­fort we’ve all felt to one degree or anoth­er, in one set­ting or anoth­er: doing our tax­es, wait­ing in air­port secu­ri­ty lines, call­ing tech sup­port. On such occa­sions, we reach for the term “Kafkaesque,” which “tends to refer to the bureau­crat­ic nature of cap­i­tal­is­tic, judi­cia­ry, and gov­ern­ment sys­tems, the sort of com­plex, unclear process­es in which no one indi­vid­ual ever has a com­pre­hen­sive grasp on what is going on, and the sys­tem does­n’t real­ly care.” Typ­i­cal Kaf­ka pro­tag­o­nists are “faced with sud­den, absurd cir­cum­stances. There are no expla­na­tions, and in the end, there is no real chance of over­com­ing them.”

These char­ac­ters are “out­matched by the arbi­trary, sense­less obsta­cles they face, in part because they can’t under­stand or con­trol any of what is hap­pen­ing.” They feel “the unyield­ing desire for answers in con­quest over the exis­ten­tial prob­lems of anx­i­ety, guilt, absur­di­ty, and suf­fer­ing, paired with an inabil­i­ty to ever real­ly under­stand or con­trol the source of the prob­lems and effec­tive­ly over­come them.” Yet “even in the face of absurd, despair­ing cir­cum­stances, Kafka’s char­ac­ters don’t give up. At least ini­tial­ly, they con­tin­ue on and fight against their sit­u­a­tions, try­ing to rea­son, under­stand, or work their way out of the sense­less­ness, but in the end, it is ulti­mate­ly to no avail.” To Kaf­ka, it was all part of anoth­er day in moder­ni­ty. Here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, it seems we may need to start look­ing for an even more pow­er­ful adjec­tive.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb Cre­ates an Illus­trat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

Franz Kaf­ka Ago­nized, Too, Over Writer’s Block: “Tried to Write, Vir­tu­al­ly Use­less;” “Com­plete Stand­still. Unend­ing Tor­ments” (1915)

“Lynchi­an,” “Kubrick­ian,” “Taran­ti­noesque” and 100+ Film Words Have Been Added to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

In most places across the world, speak the name of Dante, and your lis­ten­ers will think of Infer­no. Since its first pub­li­ca­tion more than 700 years ago, its depic­tion of Hell has become influ­en­tial enough to shape the per­cep­tions of even those who don’t believe that such a place exists. Take the thor­ough­ly Dan­tean idea that Hell is con­struct­ed of nine con­cen­tric cir­cles, each inhab­it­ed by a dif­fer­ent kind of sin­ner being eter­nal­ly pun­ished in a man­ner that reflects the nature of the offense. The glut­tons on lev­el three, for exam­ple, “are doomed to grov­el end­less­ly in thick, putrid mud” while “bom­bard­ed by icy rain.”

So explains Tom­mie Trelawny, cre­ator of the YouTube chan­nel Hochela­ga, in his twen­ty-minute expla­na­tion of Infer­no at the top of the post. While going over the broad out­lines of Dan­te’s Vir­gil-guid­ed jour­ney into the under­world, he address­es ques­tions you may not have con­sid­ered even if you’ve read this super-canon­i­cal poem before.

Why, for instance, was it writ­ten in the first place? “In Dan­te’s day, the top­ic of sin and pun­ish­ment was a major issue in the Church,” he says. Thus, “ideas around Hell were becom­ing more and more sophis­ti­cat­ed” in art and lit­er­a­ture, not least in order to send a cau­tion­ary mes­sage to the com­mon peo­ple.

For Dante, how­ev­er, the mat­ter was some­what more per­son­al. The poet “was embroiled in a con­flict between rival fac­tions in his native city of Flo­rence. He backed the wrong side, lead­ing to his exile.” Launch­ing into the com­po­si­tion of Infer­no there­after, he set about “putting peo­ple he dis­liked into his vision of Hell,” like the “cler­gy­men who used their posi­tions to amass wealth through church dona­tions rather than serv­ing their flock faith­ful­ly.” They were con­signed to the cir­cle of greed. It’s cer­tain­ly not with­out sat­is­fac­tion that Dante watch­es his real-life polit­i­cal rival Fil­ip­po Argen­ti get torn apart in the riv­er Styx of cir­cle five, reserved for the wrath­ful.

Sure­ly Dante — or at least the fic­tion­al Dante — was also com­mit­ting some kind of sin by rel­ish­ing in the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers, even oth­ers more sin­ful than him­self. But that’s less rel­e­vant to the sec­ond and third parts of the sto­ry, Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso, which togeth­er with Infer­no make up what we now know as Dan­te’s Div­ina Com­me­dia, or Divine Com­e­dy. The lat­ter two-thirds of the work may be less wide­ly read than Infer­no, but they’re no less imag­i­na­tive; when we today describe an expe­ri­ence as pur­ga­to­r­i­al, we’re evok­ing on some lev­el the in-between realm for the mild­ly unvir­tu­ous that Dante envi­sioned on a far-flung island on the oth­er side of the earth. And if you nev­er did get around to read­ing Par­adiso, this video sum­ma­ry may pique your curios­i­ty about it, describ­ing as it does a sto­ry­line in which Dante goes to out­er space: a place very near­ly as inter­est­ing as Hell.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: A Free Course from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Beau­ti­ful 19th-Cen­tu­ry Maps of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: Infer­no, Pur­ga­to­ry, Par­adise & More

Rarely Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.