by Franz Kafka
[Final entry of 1917. There are no entries for 1918.]
27 June. A new diary, really only because I have been reading the old ones. A number of reasons and intentions, now, at a quarter to twelve, impossible to ascertain.
30 June. Was in Rieger Park. Walked up and down with J.116 beside the jasmine bushes. False and sincere, false in my sighs, sincere in my feelings of closeness to her, in my trustfulness, in my feeling of security. Uneasy heart.
6 July. The same thought continually, desire, anxiety. Yet calmer than usual, as if some great development were going forward the distant tremor of which I feel. Too much said.
5 December. Again pulled through this terrible, long, narrow crack; it can only be forced through in a dream. On purpose and awake, one could certainly never do it.
8 December. Spent Monday, a holiday, in the park, the restaurant, and the Gallerie. Sorrow and joy, guilt and innocence, like two hands indissolubly clasped together; one would have to cut through flesh, blood, and bones to part them.
9 December. A lot of Eleseus.117 But wherever I turn, the black wave rushes down on me.
11 December. Thursday. Cold. With J. in Rieger Park, said not a word. Seduction on the Graben. All this is too difficult. I am not sufficiently prepared. It is the same thing, in a certain sense, as twenty-six years ago my teacher Beck saying, of course without realizing the prophetic joke he was making: ‘Let him continue in the fifth grade for a while, he still isn’t strong enough; rushing him in this way will have its consequences later on.’ And in fact such has been my growth, like a shoot forced too soon and forgotten; there is a certain hothouse delicacy in the way in which I shrink from a puff of wind, if you like, even something affecting in it, but that is all. Like Eleseus and his spring trips to the cities. By the way, he is not to be underestimated: Eleseus could have become the hero of the book, and in Hamsun’s youth such would probably have happened.
6 January. His every action seems extraordinarily new to him. If it had not this fresh and living quality, of itself it would inevitably be something out of the old swamp of hell, this he knows. But this freshness deceives him: it allows him to forget his knowledge, or be heedless of it, or, though he see through the freshness, see without pain.
Today is undoubtedly the day, is it not, on which progress prepares to progress farther?
9 January. Superstition and principle and what makes life possible: Through a heaven of vice a hell of virtue is reached. So easily? So dirtily? So unbelievably? Superstition is easy.
A segment has been cut out of the back of his head. The sun, and the whole world with it, peep in. It makes him nervous, it distracts him from his work, and moreover it irritates him that just he should be the one to be debarred from the spectacle.
It is no disproof of one’s presentiment of an ultimate liberation if the next day one’s imprisonment continues on unchanged, or is even made straiter, or if it is even expressly stated that it will never end. All this can rather be the necessary preliminary to an ultimate liberation.118
15 October [1921]. About a week ago gave M.119 all the diaries. A little freer? No. Am I still able to keep a diary? It will in any case be a different kind of diary, or rather it will hide itself away, there won’t be any diary at all; only with the greatest of effort could I note something down on Hardt, for example, though I was rather taken with him. It is as if I had already written everything there was to write about him long ago, or, what is the same thing, as if I were no longer alive. I could probably write about M., but would not willingly do it, and moreover it would be aimed too directly at myself; I no longer need to make myself so minutely conscious of such things, I am not so forgetful as I used to be in this respect, I am a memory come alive, hence my insomnia.
16 October. Sunday. The misery of having perpetually to begin, the lack of the illusion that anything is more than, or even as much as, a beginning, the foolishness of those who do not know this and play football, for example, in order at last ‘to advance the ball’, one’s own foolishness buried within one as if in a coffin here, hence a coffin that one can transport, open, destroy, exchange.
Among the young women up in the park. No envy. Enough imagination to share their happiness, enough judgement to know I am too weak to have such happiness, foolish enough to think I see to the bottom of my own and their situation. Not foolish enough; there is a tiny crack there, and wind whistles through it and spoils the full effect. Should I greatly yearn to be an athlete, it would probably be the same thing as my yearning to go to heaven and to be permitted to be as despairing there as I am here.
No matter how sorry a constitution I may have, even if – ‘given the same circumstances’ – it be the sorriest in the world (particularly in view of my lack of energy), I must do the best I can with it (even in my sense of the word) – it is hollow sophistry to argue that there is only one thing to be done with such a constitution, which must perforce be its best, and that that one thing is to despair.
17 October. There may be a purpose lurking behind the fact that I never learned anything useful and – the two are connected – have allowed myself to become a physical wreck. I did not want to be distracted, did not want to be distracted by the pleasures life has to give a useful and healthy man. As if illness and despair were not just as much of a distraction!
There are several ways in which I could complete this thought and so reach a happy conclusion for myself, but don’t dare, and don’t believe – at least today, and most of the time as well – that a happy solution exists.
I do not envy particular married couples, I simply envy all married couples together; and even when I do envy one couple only, it is the happiness of married life in general, in all its infinite variety, that I envy – the happiness to be found in any one marriage, even in the likeliest case, would probably plunge me into despair.
I don’t believe people exist whose inner plight resembles mine; still, it is possible for me to imagine such people – but that the secret raven forever flaps about their heads as it does about mine, even to imagine that is impossible.
It is astounding how I have systematically destroyed myself in the course of the years, it was like a slowly widening breach in a dam, a purposeful action. The spirit that brought it about must now be celebrating triumphs; why doesn’t it let me take part in them? But perhaps it hasn’t yet achieved its purpose and can therefore think of nothing else.
18 October. Eternal childhood. Life calls again.
It is entirely conceivable that life’s splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.
19 October. The essence of the Wandering in the Wilderness. A man who leads his people along this way with a shred (more is unthinkable) of consciousness of what is happening. He is on the track of Canaan all his life; it is incredible that he should see the land only when on the verge of death. This dying vision of it can only be intended to illustrate how incomplete a moment is human life, incomplete because a life like this could last forever and still be nothing but a moment. Moses fails to enter Canaan not because his life is too short but because it is a human life. This ending of the Pentateuch bears a resemblance to the final scene of L’Éducation sentimentale.
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate – he has little success in this – but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. This assumes that he does not need both hands, or more hands than he has, in his struggle against despair.
20 October. In the afternoon Langer, then Max, who read Franzi aloud.
A short dream, during an agitated, short slee
p, in agitation clung to it with a feeling of boundless happiness. A dream with many ramifications, full of a thousand connexions that became clear in a flash; but hardly more than the basic mood remains: My brother had committed a crime, a murder, I think, I and other people were involved in the crime; punishment, solution, and salvation approached from afar, loomed up powerfully, many signs indicated their ineluctable approach; my sister, I think, kept calling out these signs as they appeared and I kept greeting them with insane exclamations, my insanity increased as they drew nearer. I thought I should never be able to forget my fragmentary exclamations, brief sentences merely, because of their succinctness, and now don’t clearly remember a single one. I could only have uttered brief exclamations because of the great effort it cost me to speak – I had to puff out my cheeks and at the same time contort my mouth as if I had a toothache before I could bring a word out. My feeling of happiness lay in the fact that I welcomed so freely, with such conviction and such joy, the punishment that came, a sight that must have moved the gods, and I felt the gods’ emotion almost to the point of tears.
21 October. It had been impossible for him to enter the house, for he had heard a voice saying to him: ‘Wait till I lead you in!’ And so he continued to lie in the dust in front of the house, although by now, probably, everything was hopeless (as Sarah would say).
All is imaginary – family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies closest, however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.
22 October. A connoisseur, an expert, someone who knows his field, knowledge, to be sure, that cannot be imparted but that fortunately no one seems to stand in need of.
23 October. A film about Palestine in the afternoon.
25 October. Ehrenstein yesterday.
My parents were playing cards; I sat apart, a perfect stranger; my father asked me to take a hand, or at least to look on; I made some sort of excuse. What is the meaning of these refusals, oft repeated since my childhood? I could have availed myself of invitations to take part in social, even, to an extent, public life; everything required of me I should have done, if not well, at least in middling fashion; even cardplaying would probably not have bored me overmuch – yet I refused. Judging by this, I am wrong when I complain that I have never been caught up in the current of life, that I never made my escape from Prague, was never made to learn a sport or trade, and so forth – I should probably have refused every offer, just as I refused the invitation to play cards. I allowed only absurd things to claim my attention, my law studies, the job at the office, and later on such senseless additional occupations as a little gardening, carpentering, and the like; these later occupations are to be looked on as the actions of a man who throws a needy beggar out the door and then plays the benefactor by himself by passing alms from his right hand to his left.
I always refused, out of general weakness, probably, and in particular out of weakness of will – it was rather a long time before I understood as much. I used to consider this refusal a good sign (misled by the vague great hopes I cherished for myself); today only a remnant of this benevolent interpretation remains.
29 October. A few evenings later I did actually join in, to the extent of keeping score for my mother. But it begot no intimacy, or whatever trace there was of it was smothered under weariness, boredom, and regret for the wasted time. It would always have been thus. I have seldom, very seldom crossed this borderland between loneliness and fellowship, I have even been settled there longer than in loneliness itself. What a fine bustling place was Robinson Crusoe’s island in comparison!
30 October. In the afternoon to the theatre, Pallenberg.
The possibilities within me, I won’t say to act or write The Miser, but to be the miser himself. It would need only a sudden determined movement of my hands, the entire orchestra gazes in fascination at the spot above the conductor’s stand where the baton will rise.
Feeling of complete helplessness.
What is it that binds you more intimately to these impenetrable, talking, eye-blinking bodies than to any other thing, the penholder in your hand, for example? Because you belong to the same species? But you don’t belong to the same species, that’s the very reason why you raised this question.
The impenetrable outline of human bodies is horrible.
The wonder, the riddle of my not having perished already, of the silent power guiding me. It forces one to this absurdity: ‘Left to my own resources, I should have long ago been lost.’ My own resources.
1 November. Werfel’s Goat Song.
Free command of the world at the expense of its laws. Imposition of the law. The happiness in obeying the law.
But the law cannot merely be imposed upon the world, and then everything left to go on as before except that the new lawgiver be free to do as he pleases. Such would be not law, but arbitrariness, revolt against law, self-defeat.
2 November. Vague hope, vague confidence.
An endless, dreary Sunday afternoon, an afternoon swallowing down whole years, its every hour a year. By turns walked despairingly down empty streets and lay quietly on the couch. Occasionally astonished by the leaden, meaningless clouds almost uninterruptedly drifting by. ‘You are reserved for a great Monday!’ Fine, but Sunday will never end.
7 November. This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observes me, I have to observe myself all the closer.
I envy the ease with which all those who fall out with me, or grow indifferent, or find me a nuisance, can shake me off – provided, probably, that it is not a life-and-death matter for me; once, with F., when it seemed to be a matter of life and death, it was not easy to shake me off, though of course I was young then, and strong, with strong desires.
1 December. After paying four calls on me, M. left; she goes away tomorrow. Four calmer days in the midst of tormented ones. I feel no sorrow at her departure, no real sorrow; it is a long way from this unconcern to the point where her departure would cause me endless sorrow. Sorrow, I confess it, is not the greatest evil.
2 December. Writing letters in my parents’ room – the forms my decline takes are inconceivable! This thought lately, that as a little child I had been defeated by my father and because of ambition have never been able to quit the battlefield all these years despite the perpetual defeats I suffer – Always M. or not M. – but a principle, a light in the darkness!
6 December. From a letter: ‘During this dreary winter I warm myself by it.’ Metaphors are one among many things which make me despair of writing. Writing’s lack of independence of the world, its dependence on the maid who tends the fire, on the cat warming itself by the stove; it is even dependent on the poor old human being warming himself by the stove. All these are independent activities ruled by their own laws; only writing is helpless, cannot live in itself, is a joke and a despair.
Two children, alone in their house, climbed into a large trunk; the cover slammed shut, they could not open it, and suffocated.
20 December. Suffered in my thoughts.
I was startled out of a deep sleep. By the light of a candle I saw a strange man sitting at a little table in the centre of the room. Broad and heavy, he sat in the dim light, his unbuttoned winter coat making him appear even broader.
Don’t forget:
Raabe, while dying, when his wife stroked his forehead: ‘How pleasant.’
The toothless mouth of the grandfather laughing at his grandchild.
Undeniably, there is a certain joy in being able calmly to write down: ‘Suffocation is inconceivably horrible.’ Of course it is inconceivable – that is why I have written nothing down.
23 December. Again sat over Náš Skautík.120 Ivan Ilyich.121
16 January. This past week I suffered something very like a breakdown; the only one to match it was on that night two years ago; apart from then I have never e
xperienced its like. Everything seemed over with, even today there is no great improvement to be noticed. One can put two interpretations on the breakdown, both of which are probably correct.
First: breakdown, impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake, impossible to endure life, or, more exactly, the course of life. The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demoniac or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the two worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner. There are doubtless several reasons for the wild tempo of the inner process; the most obvious one is introspection, which will suffer no idea to sink tranquilly to rest but must pursue each one into consciousness, only itself to become an idea, in turn to be pursued by renewed introspection.
Secondly: this pursuit, originating in the midst of men, carries one in a direction away from them. The solitude that for the most part has been forced on me, in part voluntarily sought by me – but what was this if not compulsion too? – is now losing all its ambiguity and approaches its dénouement. Where is it leading? The strongest likelihood is, that it may lead to madness; there is nothing more to say, the pursuit goes right through me and rends me asunder. Or I can – can I? – manage to keep my feet somewhat and be carried along in the wild pursuit. Where, then, shall I be brought? ‘Pursuit,’ indeed, is only a metaphor. I can also say, ‘assault on the last earthly frontier’, an assault, moreover, launched from below, from mankind, and since this too is a metaphor, I can replace it by the metaphor of an assault from above, aimed at me from above.