by Franz Kafka
I admitted the possibility of miracles more readily than that of real progress, but was too detached not to keep the sphere of miracles and that of real progress sharply divided. I was therefore able to spend a good deal of time before falling asleep in imagining that some day, a rich man in a coach and four. I would drive into the Jewish quarter, with a magic word set free a beautiful maiden who was being beaten unjustly, and carry her off in my coach; but untouched by this silly make-believe, which probably fed only on an already unhealthy sexuality, I remained convinced that I would not pass my final examinations that year, and if I did, I would not get on in the next class, and if by some swindle I could avoid even that, then I would certainly fail decisively in my graduation examination, convinced also that I would all at once – the precise moment did not matter – reveal some unheard-of inability and very definitely surprise my parents as well as the rest of the world, who had been lulled to sleep by my outwardly regular progress. Since I always looked only to my inability as my guide into the future – only seldom to my feeble literary work – considering the future never did me any good; it was only a spinning out of my present grief. If I chose to, I could of course walk erect, but it made me tired, nor could I see how a crooked back would hurt me in the future. If I should have a future, then, I felt, everything will straighten itself out of its own accord. I did not choose such a principle because it involved a confidence in a future in whose existence I did not believe, its purpose was only to make living easier for me, to walk, to dress, to wash, to read, above all to coop myself up at home in a way that took the least effort and required the least spirit. If I went beyond that I could think only of ridiculous solutions.
Once it seemed impossible to get along without a black dress suit, especially as I also had to decide whether I would join a dancing class. The tailor in Nusle was sent for and the cut of the suit discussed. I was undecided, as I always was in such cases, they made me afraid that by a definite statement I would be swept away not only into an immediate unpleasantness, but beyond that into something even worse. So at first I didn’t want a dress suit, but when they shamed me before the stranger by pointing out that I had no dress suit, I put up with having a tail-coat discussed; but since I regarded a tail-coat as a fearful revolution one could forever talk about but on which one could never decide, we agreed on a tuxedo, which, because of its similarity to the usual sack coat, seemed to me at least bearable. But when I heard that the vest of the tuxedo had to be cut low and I would therefore have to wear a stiff shirt as well, my determination almost exceeded my strength, since something like this had to be averted. I did not want such a tuxedo, rather, if I had to have one, a tuxedo lined and trimmed with silk indeed, but one that could be buttoned high. The tailor had never heard of such a tuxedo, but he remarked that no matter what I intended to do with such a jacket, it couldn’t be worn for dancing. Good, then it couldn’t be worn for dancing, I didn’t want to dance anyhow, that hadn’t been decided on yet in any case, on the contrary, I wanted the jacket made for me as I had described it. The tailor’s stubbornness was increased by the fact that until now I had always submitted with shamed haste to being measured for new clothes and to having them tried on, without expressing any opinions or wishes. So there was nothing else for me to do, and also since my mother insisted on it, but to go with him, painful as it was, across the Altstadster Ring to a second-hand clothing store in the window of which I had for quite some time seen displayed a simple tuxedo and had recognized it as suitable for me. But unfortunately it had already been removed from the window, I could not see it inside the store even by looking my hardest, I did not dare to go into the store just to look at the tuxedo, so we returned, disagreeing as before. I felt as though the future tuxedo was already cursed by the uselessness of this errand, at least I used my annoyance with the pros and cons of the argument as an excuse to send the tailor away with some small order or other and an indefinite promise about the tuxedo while I, under the reproaches of my mother, remained wearily behind, barred forever – everything happened to me forever – from girls, an elegant appearance, and dances. The instantaneous cheerfulness that this induced in me made me miserable, and besides, I was afraid that I had made myself ridiculous before the tailor as none of his customers ever had before.
3 January. Read a good deal in Die Neue Rundschau. Beginning of the novel Der Nackte Mann.39 The clarity of the whole a little too thin, sureness in the details. Gabriel Schillings Flucht by Hauptmann. Education of people. Instructive in the bad and the good.
New Year’s Eve I had planned to read to Max from the diaries in the afternoon, I looked forward to it, and it did not come off. We were not in tune, I felt a calculating pettiness and haste in him that afternoon, he was almost not my friend but nevertheless still dominated me to the extent that through his eyes I saw myself uselessly leafing through the notebooks over and over again, and found this leafing back and forth, which continually showed the same pages flying by, disgusting. It was naturally impossible to work together in this mutual tension, and the one page of Richard and Samuel that we finished amidst mutual resistance is simply proof of Max’s energy, but otherwise bad. New Year’s Eve at Čada’s. Not so bad, because Weltsch, Kisch, and someone else added new blood so that finally, although only within the limits of that group, I again found my way back to Max. I then pressed his hand on the crowded Graben, though without looking at him, and with my three notebooks pressed to me, as I remember, proudly went straight home.
The fern-shaped flames blazing up from a melting-pot on the street in front of a building under construction.
It is easy to recognize a concentration in me of all my forces on writing. When it became clear in my organism that writing was the most productive direction for my being to take, everything rushed in that direction and left empty all those abilities which were directed towards the joys of sex, eating, drinking, philosophical reflection, and above all music. I atrophied in all these directions. This was necessary because the totality of my strengths was so slight that only collectively could they even half-way serve the purpose of my writing. Naturally, I did not find this purpose independently and consciously, it found itself, and is now interfered with only by the office, but that interferes with it completely. In any case I shouldn’t complain that I can’t put up with a sweetheart, that I understand almost exactly as much of love as I do of music and have to resign myself to the most superficial efforts I may pick up, that on New Year’s Eve I dined on parsnips and spinach, washed down with a glass of Ceres, and that on Sunday I was unable to take part in Max’s lecture on his philosophical work – the compensation for all this is clear as day. My development is now complete and, so far as I can see, there is nothing left to sacrifice; I need only throw my work in the office out of this complex in order to begin my real life in which, with the progress of my work, my face will finally be able to age in a natural way.
The sudden turn a conversation takes when in the discussion, which at first has dealt in detail with worries of the inner existence, the question is raised (not really breaking the conversation off, but naturally not growing out of it, either) of when and where one will meet the next time and the circumstances that must be considered in deciding this. And if the conversation also ends with a shaking of hands, then one takes one’s leave with momentary faith in the pure, firm structure of our life and with respect for it.
In an autobiography one cannot avoid writing ‘often’ where truth would require that ‘once’ be written. For one always remains conscious that the word ‘once’ explodes that darkness on which the memory draws; and though it is not altogether spared by the word ‘often’, either, it is at least preserved in the opinion of the writer, and he is carried across parts which perhaps never existed at all in his life but serve him as a substitute for those which his memory can no longer guess at.
4 January. It is only because of my vanity that I like so much to read to my sisters (so that today, for instance, it is already too late t
o write). Not that I am convinced that I shall achieve something significant in the reading, it is only that I am dominated by the passion to get so close to the good works I read that I merge with them, not through my own merit, indeed, but only through the attentiveness of my listening sisters, which has been excited by what is being read and is unresponsive to inessentials; and therefore too, under the concealment my vanity affords me, I can share as creator in the effect which the work alone has exercised. That is why I really read admirably to my sisters and stress the accents with extreme exactness just as I feel them, because later I am abundantly rewarded not only by myself but also by my sisters.
But if I read to Brod or Baum or others, just because of my pretensions my reading must appear horribly bad to everyone, even if they know nothing of the usual quality of my reading; for here I know that the listener is fully aware of the separation between me and what is being read, here I cannot merge completely with what I read without becoming ridiculous in my own opinion, an opinion which can expect no support from the listener; with my voice I flutter around what is being read, try to force my way in here and there because they don’t expect that much from me at all; but what they really want me to do, to read without vanity, calmly and distantly, and to become passionate only when a genuine passion demands it, that I cannot do; but although I believe that I have resigned myself to reading badly to everyone except my sisters, my vanity, which this time has no justification, still shows itself: I feel offended if anyone finds fault with my reading, I become flushed and want to read on quickly, just as I usually strive, once I have begun, to read on endlessly, out of an unconscious yearning that during the course of the long reading there may be produced, at least in me, that vain, false feeling of integration with what I read which makes me forget that I shall never be strong enough at any one moment to impose my feelings on the clear vision of the listener and that at home it is always my sisters who initiate this longed-for substitution.
5 January. For two days I have noticed, whenever I choose to, an inner coolness and indifference. Yesterday evening, during my walk, every little street sound, every eye turned towards me, every picture in a showcase, was more important to me than myself.
Uniformity. History.
When it looks as if you had made up your mind finally to stay at home for the evening, when you have put on your house jacket and sat down after supper with a light on the table to the piece of work or the game that usually precedes your going to bed, when the weather outside is unpleasant so that staying indoors seems natural, and when you have already been sitting quietly at the table for so long that your departure must occasion not only paternal anger but surprise to everyone, when besides, the stairs are in darkness and the front door locked and in spite of all that you have started up in a sudden fit of resdessness, changed your jacket, abruptly dressed yourself for street, explained that you must go out and with a few curt words of leave-taking actually gone out, banging the flat door more or less hastily according to the degree of displeasure you think you have left behind you and so cut off the general discussion of your departure, and when you find yourself once more in the street with limbs swinging extra freely in answer to the unexpected liberty you have procured for them, when as a result of this decisive action you feel aroused within yourself all the potentialities of decisive action, when you recognize with more than usual significance that your strength is greater than your need to accomplish effortlessly the swiftest of changes, that left alone you grow in understanding and calm, and in the enjoyment of them – then for that evening you have so completely got away from your family that the most distant journey could not take you farther and you have lived through what is for Europe so extreme an experience of solitude that one can only call it Russian. All this is still heightened if at such a late hour in the evening you look up a friend to see how he is getting on.40
Invited Weltsch to come to Mrs Klug’s benefit. Löwy, with his severe headaches that probably indicate a serious head ailment, leaned against a wall down in the street where he was waiting for me, his right hand pressed in despair against his forehead. I pointed him out to Weltsch who, from his sofa, leaned out of the window. I thought it was the first time in my life that I had so easily observed from the window an incident down in the street that concerned me so closely. In and of itself, this kind of observation is familiar to me from Sherlock Holmes.
A Manuscript page of the Diaries (see this page).
6 January. Yesterday Vizekdnig by Feimann. My receptivity to the Jewishness in these plays deserts me because they are too monotonous and degenerate into a wailing that prides itself on isolated, violent outbreaks. When I saw the first plays it was possible for me to think that I had come upon a Judaism on which the beginnings of my own rested, a Judaism that was developing in my direction and so would enlighten and carry me farther along in my own clumsy Judaism, instead, it moves farther away from me the more I hear of it. The people remain, of course, and I hold fast to them.
Mrs Klug was giving a benefit and therefore sang several new songs and made a few new jokes. But only her opening song held me wholly under her influence; after that I had the strongest reaction to every detail of her appearance, to her arms, stretched out when she sings, and her snapping fingers, to the tightly twisted curls at her temples, to her thin shirt, flat and innocent under her vest, to her lower lip that she pursed once while she savoured the effect of a joke (‘Look, I speak every language, but in Yiddish’), to her fat little feet in their thick white stockings. But when she sang new songs yesterday she spoiled the main effect she had on me, which lay in the fact that here was a person exhibiting herself who had discovered a few jokes and songs that revealed her temperament and all its strong points to the utmost perfection. When this display is a success, everything is a success, and if we like to let this person affect us often, we will naturally – and in this, perhaps, all the audience agrees with me – not let ourselves be misled by the constant repetition of the songs, which are always the same, we will rather approve of it as an aid to concentration, like the darkening of the hall, for example, and, as far as the woman is concerned, recognize in her that fearlessness and self-awareness which are exactly what we are seeking. So when the new songs came along, songs that could reveal nothing new in Mrs Klug since the old ones had done their duty so completely, and when these songs, without any justification at all, claimed one’s attention purely as songs, and when they in this way distracted one’s attention from Mrs Klug but at the same time showed that she herself was not at ease in them either, part of the time making a failure of them and part of the time exaggerating her grimaces and gestures, one had to become annoyed and was consoled only by the fact that the memory of her perfect performances in the past, resulting from her unshakeable integrity, was too firm to be disturbed by the present sight.
7 January. Unfortunately Mrs Tschissik always has parts which show only the essence of her character, she always plays women and girls who all at once are unhappy, despised, dishonoured, wronged, but who are not allowed time to develop their characters in a natural sequence. The explosive, natural strength with which she plays these roles makes them climactic only when she acts them, in the play as it is written, because of the wealth of acting they require, these roles are only suggestions, but this shows what she would be capable of. One of her important gestures begins as a shudder in her trembling hips, which she holds somewhat stiffly. Her little daughter seems to have one hip completely stiff. When the actors embrace, they hold each other’s wigs in place.
Recently, when I went up to Löwy’s room with him so that he could read me the letter he had written to the Warsaw writer, Nomberg, we met the Tschissik couple on the landing. They were carrying their costumes for Kol Nidre, wrapped in tissue paper like matzos, up to their room. We stopped for a little while. The railing supported my hands and the intonations of my sentences. Her large mouth, so close in front of me, assumed surprising but natural shapes. It was my fault that the conv
ersation threatened to end hopelessly, for in my effort hurriedly to express all my love and devotion I only remarked that the affairs of the troupe were going wretchedly, that their repertoire was exhausted, that they could therefore not remain much longer and that the lack of interest that the Prague Jews took in them was incomprehensible. Monday I must – she asked me – come to see Sedernacht, although I already know the play. Then I shall hear her sing the song (‘Hear, O Israel’) which, she remembers from a remark I once made, I love especially.
‘Yeshivahs’ are talmudic colleges supported by many communities in Poland and Russia. The cost is not very great because these schools are usually housed in old, unusable buildings in which, besides the rooms where the students study and sleep, is found the apartment of the Rosh Yeshivah, who also performs other services in the community, and of his assistant. The students pay no tuition and take their meals in turn with the various members of the community. Although these schools are based on the most severely orthodox principles, it is precisely in them that apostate progress has its source: since young people from distant places come together here, precisely the poor, the energetic and those who want to get away from their homes; since the supervision is not very strict and the young people are entirely thrown upon one another, and since the most essential part of the instruction is common study and mutual explanation of difficult passages; since the orthodoxy in the various home towns of the students is always the same and therefore not much of a topic for conversation, while the suppressed progressive tendencies take the most varied forms, differing in strength according to the varying circumstances of the towns, so that there is always a lot to talk about; since, furthermore, one person always lays hands on only one or another copy of the forbidden progressive literature, while in the Yeshivah many such copies are brought together from everywhere and exercise a particularly telling effect because every possessor of a copy propagates not only the text but also his own zeal – because of all these reasons and their immediate consequences, in the recent past all the progressive writers, politicians, journalists, and scholars have come out of these schools. The reputation of these schools among the orthodox has therefore deteriorated very much, while on the other hand young people of advanced inclinations stream to them more than ever.