Diaries of Franz Kafka

by Franz Kafka

  Later I remembered that I had had the impression that the train was not really leaving but only moving the short length of the railway station in order to put on a play for us, and then was swallowed up. In a doze that same evening, Mrs Klug appeared to me unnaturally short, almost without legs, and wrung her hands with her face distorted as though a great misfortune had befallen her.

  This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength which I gain through this writing thus spends itself, a strength which I certainly have not intended for this purpose.

  As soon as Mr Klug comes to a new city one can see how his and his wife’s jewels disappear into the pawnshop. As their departure draws near he gradually redeems them again.

  Favourite saying of the wife of the philosopher Mendelssohn: Wie mies ist mir vor tout I’univers!

  One of the most important impressions at the departure of Mrs Klug: I was always forced to think that, as a simple middle-class woman, she holds herself by force below the level of her true human destiny and requires only a jump, a tearing open of the door, a turned-up light, in order to be an actress and to subjugate me. Actually, even, she stood above and I below, as in the theatre – She married at sixteen, is twenty-six years old.

  2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.

  In the newspapers, in conversation, in the office, the impetuosity of language often leads one astray, also the hope, springing from temporary weakness, for a sudden and stronger illumination in the very next moment, also mere strong self-confidence, or mere carelessness, or a great present impression that one wishes at any cost to shift into the future, also the opinion that true enthusiasm in the present justifies any future confusion, also delight in sentences that are elevated in the middle by one or two jolts and open the mouth gradually to its full size even if they let it close much too quickly and tortuously, also the slight possibility of a decisive and clear judgement, or the effort to give further flow to the speech that has really ended, also the desire to escape from the subject in a hurry, one’s belly if it must be, or despair that seeks a way out for its heavy breath, or the longing for a light without shadow – all this can lead one astray to sentences like: ‘The book which I have just finished is the most beautiful I have ever read,’ or, ‘is more beautiful than any I have ever read’.

  In order to prove that everything I write and think about them is false, the actors (aside from Mr and Mrs Klug) have again remained here, as Löwy, whom I met yesterday evening, told me; who knows whether for the same reason they will not depart again today, for Löwy did not call at the office despite the fact that he promised to.

  3 November. In order to prove that both things that I wrote were false, a proof that seems almost impossible, Löwy himself came yesterday evening and interrupted me while I was writing.

  N.’s habit of repeating everything in the same tone of voice. He tells someone a story about his business, of course not with so many details that it would in itself completely kill the story, but nevertheless in a slow manner, thorough only because of that, it is a communication which is not intended to be anything else and is therefore done with when it is finished. A short time passes with something else, suddenly he finds a transition to his story and produces it again in its old form, almost without additions, but also almost without omissions, with the innocence of a person who carries about the room a ribbon that someone has treacherously tied to his back. Now my parents like him particularly, therefore feel his habit more strongly than they notice it, and so it happens that they, especially my mother, unconsciously give him opportunities to repeat. If some evening the moment for repeating a story cannot quite be found, then Mother is there, she asks a question, and indeed with a curiosity that does not end even after the question is asked, as one might expect. As for stories that have already been repeated and could not return again by their own strength, Mother hunts after them with her questions even several evenings later. N.’s habit is, however, so obsessive that it often has the power to justify itself completely. No one else gets with such regular frequency into the position of having to tell members of the family individually a story that basically concerns all of them. The story must then be told, almost as often as there are persons, to the family circle that in such cases assembles slowly, at intervals, one person at a time. And because I am the one who alone has recognized N.’s habit, I am also usually the one who hears the story first and for whom the repetitions provide only the small pleasure of confirming an observation.

  Envy at nominal success of Baum whom I really like so much. With this, the feeling of having in the middle of my body a ball of wool that quickly winds itself up, its innumerable threads pulling from the surface of my body to itself.

  Löwy. My father about him: ‘Whoever lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.’ I could not contain myself and said something uncontrolled. To which Father with unusual quietness (to be sure, after a long interval which was otherwise occupied): ‘You know that I should not get excited and must be treated with consideration. And now you speak to me like that. I really have enough excitement, quite enough. So don’t bother me with such talk.’ I say: ‘I make every effort to restrain myself,’ and sense in my father, as always in such extreme moments, the existence of a wisdom of which I can grasp only a breath.

  Death of Löwy’s grandfather, a man who had an open hand, knew several languages, had made long journeys deep into Russia, and who once on a Saturday refused to eat at the house of a wonder-rabbi in Ekaterinoslav because the long hair and coloured neckerchief of the rabbi’s son made him suspect the piety of the house.

  The bed was set up in the middle of the room, the candlesticks were borrowed from friends and relatives, the room therefore full of the light and smoke of the candles. Some forty men stood around his bed all day to receive inspiration from the death of a pious man. He was conscious until the end and at the right moment, his hand on his breast, he began to repeat the death prayers. During his suffering and after his death the grandmother, who was with the women gathered in the next room, wept incessantly, but while he was dying she was completely calm because it is a commandment to ease the death of the dying man as much as one can. ‘With his own prayers he passed away.’ He was much envied for this death that followed so pious a life.

  Pesach festival. An association of rich Jews rents a bakery, its members take over for the heads of the families all the tasks of producing the so-called eighteen-minute matzos: the fetching of water, the koshering, the kneading, the cutting, the piercing.

  5 November. Yesterday slept, with Löwy after Bar Kokhba from seven on, read a letter from his father. Evening at Baum’s.

  I want to write, with a constant trembling on my forehead. I sit in my room in the very headquarters of the uproar of the entire house. I hear all the doors close, because of their noise only the footsteps of those running between them are spared me, I hear even the slamming of the oven door in the kitchen. My father bursts through the doors of my room and passes through in his dragging dressing-gown, the ashes are scraped out of the stove in the next room, Valli asks, shouting into the indefinite through the ante-room as though through a Paris street, whether Father’s hat has been brushed yet, a hushing that claims to be friendly to me raises the shout of an answering voice. The house door is unlatched and screeches as though from a catarrhal throat, then opens wider with the brief singing of a woman’s voice and closes with a dull manly jerk that sounds most inconsiderate. My father is gone, now begins the more delicate, more distracted, more hopeless noise led by the voices of the two canaries. I had already thought of it before, but with the canaries it comes back to me again, that I might open the door a narrow crack, crawl into the next room like a snake and in that way, on the floor, beg my sisters and their governess for quiet.

  The bitterness I felt yesterday evening when Max read my little motor-car story at
Baum’s. I was isolated from everyone and in the face of the story I kept my chin pressed against my breast, as it were. The disordered sentences of this story with holes into which one could stick both hands; one sentence sounds high, one sentence sounds low, as the case may be, one sentence rubs against another like the tongue against a hollow or false tooth; one sentence comes marching up with so rough a start that the entire story falls into sulky amazement; a sleepy imitation of Max (reproaches muffled – stirred up) seesaws in, sometimes it looks like a dancing course during its first quarter-hour. I explain it to myself by saying that I have too little time and quiet to draw out of me all the possibilities of my talent. For that reason it is only disconnected starts that always make an appearance, disconnected starts, for instance, all through the motor-car story. If I were ever able to write something large and whole, well shaped from beginning to end, then in the end the story would never be able to detach itself from me and it would be possible for me calmly and with open eyes, as a blood relation of a healthy story, to hear it read, but as it is every little piece of the story runs around homeless and drives me away from it in the opposite direction. – At the same time I can still be happy if this explanation is correct.

  Performance of Goldfaden’s Bar Kokhba. False judgement of the play throughout the hall and on the stage.

  I had brought along a bouquet for Mrs Tschissik, with an attached visiting card inscribed ‘in gratitude’, and waited for the moment when I could have it presented to her. The performance had begun late, Mrs Tschissik’s big scene was promised me only in the fourth act, in impatience and fear that the flowers might wilt I had them unwrapped by the waiter as early as during the third act (it was eleven o’clock), they lay on a table, the kitchen help and several dirty regular guests handed them from one to another and smelled them, I could only look on worriedly and angrily, nothing else, I loved Mrs Tschissik during her big scene in the prison, but still, I was anxious for her to bring it to its end, finally the act, unnoticed by me in my distraction, was finished, the head-waiter handed up the flowers, Mrs Tschissik took them between final curtains, she bowed in a narrow opening of the curtains and did not return again. No one noticed my love and I had intended to reveal it to all and so make it valuable in the eyes of Mrs Tschissik; the bouquet was hardly noticed. Meanwhile it was already past two o’clock, everyone was tired, several people had already left, I should have enjoyed throwing my glass at them.

  With me was Comptroller P. from our firm, a Gentile. He, whom I usually like, disturbed me. My worry was the flowers, not his affairs. At the same time I knew that he understood the play incorrectly, while I had no time, desire, or ability to force upon him assistance which he did not think he needed. Finally I was ashamed of myself before him because I myself was paying so little attention. Also he disturbed me in my conversation with Max and even by the recollection that I had liked him before, would again like him afterwards, and that he could take my behaviour today amiss.

  But not only I was disturbed. Max felt responsible because of his laudatory article in the paper. It was getting too late for the Jews in Bergmann’s convoy. The members of the Bar Kokhba Association had come because of the name of the play and could not help being disappointed. From what I know of Bar Kokhba from this play, I would not have named any association after him. In the back of the hall there were two shop-girls in their best clothes with their sweethearts who had to be silenced by loud shouts during the death scenes. Finally people on the street struck the huge panes in annoyance that they saw so little of the stage.

  The two Klugs were missing from the stage. Ridiculous extras. ‘Vulgar Jews,’ as Löwy said. Travelling salesmen who weren’t paid. Most of the time they were concerned only with concealing their laughter or enjoying it, even if aside from this they meant well. A round-cheeked fellow with a blond beard at the sight of whom you could scarcely keep from laughing looked especially funny when he laughed. His false beard shook unnaturally, because of his laughter it was no longer pasted in its right place on his cheeks. Another fellow laughed only when he wanted to, but then a lot. When Löwy died, singing, in the arms of these two elders and was supposed to slip slowly to earth with the fading song, they put their heads together behind his back in order finally to be able to laugh their fill for once, unseen by the audience (as they thought). Yesterday, when I remembered it at lunch, I still had to laugh.

  Mrs Tschissik in prison must take the helmet off the drunken Roman governor (young Pipes) who is visiting her and then put it on herself. When she takes it off, a crushed towel falls out which Pipes had apparently stuffed in because the helmet pinched too much. Although he certainly must have known that the helmet would be taken off his head on the stage, he looks reproachfully at Mrs Tschissik, forgetting his drunkenness.

  Beautiful: the way Mrs Tschissik, under the hands of the Roman soldiers (whom, however, she first had to pull to her, for they obviously were afraid to touch her), writhed while the movements of the three actors by her care and art almost, only almost, followed the rhythm of the singing; the song in which she proclaims the appearance of the Messiah, and, without destroying the illusion, sheerly by the spell she casts, represents the playing of a harp by the motions of bowing a violin; in the prison where at the frequent approach of footsteps she breaks off her song of lamentation, hurries to her treadmill and turns it to the accompaniment of a work song, then again escapes to her song and again to the mill, the way she sings in her sleep when Papus visits her and her mouth is open like a twinkling eye, the way in general the corners of her mouth in opening remind one of the corners of her eyes. In the white veil, as in the black, she was beautiful.

  New among her familiar gestures: pressing her hand deep into her not very good bodice, abrupt shrug of her shoulders and hips in scorn, especially when she turns her back on the one scorned.

  She led the whole performance like the mother of a family. She prompted everyone but never faltered herself; she instructed the extras, implored them, finally shoved them if need be; her clear voice, when she was off stage, joined in the ragged chorus on stage; she held up the folding screen (which in the last act was supposed to represent a citadel) that the extras would have knocked down ten times.

  I had hoped, by means of the bouquet of flowers, to appease my love for her a little, it was quite useless. It is possible only through literature or through sleeping together. I write this not because I did not know it, but rather because it is perhaps well to write down warnings frequently.

  7 November. Tuesday. Yesterday the actors and Mrs Tschissik finally left. I went with Löwy to the coffee-house in the evening, but waited outside, did not want to go in, did not want to see Mrs Tschissik. But while I was walking up and down I saw her open the door and come out with Löwy, I went towards them with a greeting and met them in the middle of the street. Mrs Tschissik thanked me for my bouquet in the grand but natural vocables of her speech, she had only just now learned that it was from me. This liar Löwy had therefore said nothing to her. I was worried about her because she was wearing only a thin, dark blouse with short sleeves and I asked her – I almost touched her in order to force her – to go into the restaurant so that she would not catch cold. No, she said, she does not catch cold, indeed she has a shawl, and she raised it a little to show it and then drew it together more closely about her breast. I could not tell her that I was not really concerned about her but was rather only happy to have found an emotion in which I could enjoy my love, and therefore I told her again that I was worried.

  Meanwhile her husband, her little girl, and Mr Pipes had also come out and it turned out that it had by no means been decided that they would go to Brünn as Löwy had convinced me, on the contrary, Pipes was even determined to go to Nuremberg. That would be best, a hall would be easy to get, the Jewish community is large, moreover, the trip to Leipzig and Berlin very comfortable. Furthermore they had discussed it all day and Löwy, who had slept until four, had simply kept them waiting and made them miss the sev
en-thirty for Brünn. Amidst these arguments we entered the tavern and sat down at a table, I across from Mrs Tschissik. I should so have liked to distinguish myself, this would not have been so difficult, I should just have had to know several train connexions, tell the railway stations apart, bring about a choice between Nuremberg and Brünn, but chiefly shout down Pipes who was behaving like his Bar Kokhba. To Pipes’s shouting Löwy very reasonably, if unintentionally, counterposed a very quick, uninterruptable chatter in his normal voice that was, at least for me, rather incomprehensible at the time. So instead of distinguishing myself I sat sunk in my chair, looked from Pipes to Löwy, and only now and then caught Mrs Tschissik’s eye on the way, but when she answered me with her glance (when she smiled at me because of Pipes’s excitement, for instance) I looked away. This had its sense. Between us there could be no smiling at Pipes’s excitement. Facing her, I was too serious for this, and quite tired by this seriousness. If I wanted to laugh at something I could look across her shoulder at the fat woman who had played the governor’s wife in Bar Kokhba. But really I could not look at her seriously either. For that would have meant that I loved her. Even young Pipes behind me, in all his innocence, would have had to recognize that. And that would have been really unheard of. A young man whom everyone takes to be eighteen years old declares in the presence of the evening’s guests at the Café Savoy, amidst the surrounding waiters, in the presence of the table full of actors, declares to a thirty-year-old woman whom hardly anyone even considers pretty, who has two children, ten and eight years old, whose husband is sitting beside her, who is a model of respectability and economy – declares to this woman his love to which he has completely fallen victim and, now comes the really remarkable part which of course no one else would have observed, immediately renounces the woman, just as he would renounce her if she were young and single. Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.