Diaries of Franz Kafka

by Franz Kafka

  All such writing is an assault on the frontiers; if Zionism had not intervened, it might easily have developed into a new secret doctrine, a Kabbalah. There are intimations of this. Though of course it would require genius of an unimaginable kind to strike root again in the old centuries, or create the old centuries anew and not spend itself withal, but only then begin to flower forth.

  17 January. Hardly different.

  18 January. A moment of thought: Resign yourself, learn (learn, forty-year-old) to rest content in the moment (yes, once you could do it). Yes, in the moment, the terrible moment. It is not terrible, only your fear of the future makes it so. And also looking back on it in retrospect. What have you done with your gift of sex? It was a failure, in the end that is all that they will say. But it might easily have succeeded. A mere trifle, indeed so small as not to be perceived, decided between its failure and success. Why are you surprised? So it was with the greatest battles in the history of the world. Trifles decide trifles.

  M. is right: fear means unhappiness but it does not follow from this that courage means happiness; not courage, which possibly aims at more than our strength can achieve (there were perhaps only two Jews in my class possessed of courage, and both shot themselves while still at school or shortly after); not courage, then, but fearlessness with its calm, open eye and stoical resolution. Don’t force yourself to do anything, yet don’t feel unhappy that you force yourself, or that if you were to do anything, you would have to force yourself. And if you don’t force yourself, don’t hanker after the possibilities of being forced. Of course, it is never as clear as all that, or rather, it is; it is always as clear as all that; for instance: sex keeps gnawing at me, hounds me day and night, I should have to conquer fear and shame and probably sorrow too to satisfy it; yet on the other hand I am certain that I should at once take advantage, with no feeling of fear or sorrow or shame, of the first opportunity to present itself quickly, close at hand, and willingly; according to the above, then, I am left with the law that fear, etc., should not be conquered (but also that one should not continually dally with the idea of conquest), but rather take advantage of opportunities as they come (and not complain if none should come). It is true that there is a middle ground between ‘doing’ and the ‘opportunity to do’, namely this, to make, to tempt one’s ‘opportunities’ to one, a practice I have unfortunately followed not only in this but everything. As far as the ‘law’ is concerned, there is hardly anything to be said against this, though this ‘tempting’ of opportunities, especially when it makes use of ineffectual expedients, bears a considerable resemblance to ‘dallying with the idea of conquest’, and there is no trace in it of calm, open-eyed fearlessness. Despite the fact that it satisfies the ‘letter’ of the ‘law’, there is something detestable in it which must be unconditionally shunned. To be sure, one would have to force oneself to shun it – and so I shall never have done with the matter.

  19 January. What meaning have yesterday’s conclusions today? They have the same meaning as yesterday, are true, except that the blood is oozing away in the chinks between the great stones of the law.

  The infinite, deep, warm, saving happiness of sitting beside the cradle of one’s child opposite its mother.

  There is in it also something of this feeling: matters no longer rest with you, unless you wish it so. In contrast, this feeling of those who have no children: it perpetually rests with you, whether you will or no, every moment to the end, every nerve-racking moment, it perpetually rests with you, and without result. Sisyphus was a bachelor.

  Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.

  The two questions:122

  Because of several piddling signs I am ashamed to mention, it was my impression that your recent visits were indeed kind and noble as ever but somewhat tiresome to you nevertheless, somewhat forced, too, like the visits one pays an invalid. Is my impression correct?

  Did you find in the diaries some final proof against me?

  20 January. A little calmer. How needed it was. No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm. As though I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. That is probably true too.

  Seized by the collar, dragged through the streets, pushed through the door. In abstract, that is how it is; in reality, there are counterforces, only a trifle less violent than the forces they oppose – the trifle that keeps life and torment alive. I the victim of both.

  This ‘too calm’. It is as if the possibility of a calm creative life – and so creativity in general – were somehow closed to me because of physical reasons, because of year-long physical torments (confidence! confidence!) – for torment has no meaning for me beyond itself, is closed off against everything.

  The torso: seen in profile, from the top of the stocking up, knee, thigh, and hip of a dark woman.

  Longing for the country? It isn’t certain. The country calls forth the longing, the infinite longing.

  M. is right about me: ‘All things are glorious, only not for me, and rightly so.’ I say rightly, and show that I am sanguine at least to this extent. Or am I? For it is not really ‘rightness’ that I am thinking of; life, because of its sheer power to convince, has no room in it for right and wrong. As in the despairing hour of death you cannot meditate on right and wrong, so you cannot in the despairing hour of life. It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.

  On the other hand, there is no trace in me of a general condemnation of my generation.

  21 January. As yet, it is not too calm. In the theatre suddenly, when I see Florestan’s prison, the abyss opens. Everything – singers, music, audience, neighbours, everything – more remote than the abyss.

  No one’s task was as difficult, so far as I know. One might say that it is not a task at all, not even an impossible one, it is not even impossibility itself, it is nothing, it is not even as much of a child as the hope of a barren woman. But nevertheless it is the air I breathe, so long as I shall breathe at all.

  I fell asleep past midnight, awoke at five, a remarkable achievement for me, remarkable good fortune; apart from that I still felt sleepy. My good fortune, however, proved my misfortune, or now the inevitable thought came: you don’t deserve so much good fortune; all the venging furies flung themselves upon me, I saw their enraged chieftain widely spread her fingers and threaten me, or horribly strike cymbals. The excitement of the two hours until seven o’clock not only devoured what benefit I had got from sleep but made me tremulous and uneasy all day.

  Without forebears, without marriage, without heirs, with a fierce longing for forebears, marriage, and heirs. They all of them stretch out their hands to me: forebears, marriage, and heirs, but too far away for me.

  There is an artificial, miserable substitute for everything, for forebears, marriage, and heirs. Feverishly you contrive these substitutes, and if the fever has not already destroyed you, the hopelessness of the substitutes will.

  22 January. Nocturnal resolve.

  The remark about ‘bachelors remembered from our youth’ was clairvoyant, though of course under very favourable circumstances.123 My resemblance to Uncle Rudolf, however, is even more disconcerting: both of us quiet (I less so), both dependent on our parents (I more so), at odds with our fathers, loved by our mothers (he in addition condemned to the horror of living with his father, though of course his father was likewise condemned to live with him), both of us shy, excessively modest (he more so), both regarded as noble, good men – there is nothing of these qualities in me and, so far as I know, very little in him (shyness, modesty, timidity are accounted noble and good because they offer little resistance to other people’s aggressive impulses) – both hypochondriacal at first, then really ill, both, for do-nothings, kept fairly well by the world (he, because he was less of a do-nothing, kept much more poorly, so far as it is possible to make a comparison now), both officials (he a better one
), both living the most unvarying lives, with no trace of any development, young to the end of our days (‘well-preserved’ is a better expression), both on the verge of insanity; he, far away from Jews, with tremendous courage, with tremendous vitality (by which one can measure the degree of the danger of insanity) escaped into the church where, so far as one could tell, his tendencies to madness were somewhat held in check, he himself had probably not been able for years to hold himself in check. One difference in his favour, or disfavour, was his having had less artistic talent than I, he could therefore have chosen a better path in life for himself in his youth, was not inwardly pulled apart, not even by ambition. Whether he had had to contend (inwardly) with women I do not know, a story by him that I read would indicate as much; when I was a child, moreover, they spoke of something of the sort. I know much too little about him, I don’t dare ask about it. Besides, up to this point. I have been writing about him as irreverently as if he were alive. It isn’t true that he was not good, I never found a trace of niggardliness, envy, hate, or greed in him; he was probably too unimportant a person to be able to help others. He was infinitely more innocent than I, there is no comparison. In single details he was my caricature, in essentials I am his.

  23 January. A feeling of fretfulness again. From what did it arise? From certain thoughts which are quickly forgotten but leave my fretfulness unforgettably behind. Sooner than the thoughts themselves I could list the places in which they occurred to me; one, for example, on the little path that passes the Altneu Synagogue. Fretful too because of a certain sense of contentment that now and then drew near me, though timidly enough and sufficiently far off. Fretful too that my nocturnal resolve remains merely a resolve. Fretful that my life till now has been merely marking time, has progressed at most in the sense that decay progresses in a rotten tooth. I have not shown the faintest firmness of resolve in the conduct of my life. It was as if I, like everyone else, had been given a point from which to prolong the radius of a circle, and had then, like everyone else, to describe my perfect circle round this point Instead, I was forever starting my radius only constantly to be forced at once to break it off. (Examples: piano, violin, languages, Germanics, anti-Zionism, Zionism, Hebrew, gardening, carpentering, writing, marriage attempts, an apartment of my own.) The centre of my imaginary circle bristles with the beginnings of radii, there is no room left for a new attempt; no room means old age and weak nerves, and never to make another attempt means the end. If I sometimes prolonged the radius a little farther than usual, in the case of my law studies, say, or engagements, everything was made worse rather than better just because of this little extra distance.

  Told M. about the night, unsatisfactory. Accept your symptoms, don’t complain of them; immerse yourself in your suffering.

  Heart oppression.

  The second opinion kept in reserve. The third opinion: already forgotten.

  24 January. How happy are the married men, young and old both, in the office. Beyond my reach, though if it were within my reach I should find it intolerable, and yet it is the only thing with which I have any inclination to appease my longing.

  Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

  Steadfastness. I don’t want to pursue any particular course of development, I want to change my place in the world entirely, which actually means that I want to go to another planet; it would be enough if I could exist alongside myself, it would even be enough if I could consider the spot on which I stand as some other spot.

  My development was a simple one. While I was still contented I wanted to be discontented, and with all the means that my time and tradition gave me, plunged into discontent – and then wanted to turn back again. Thus I have always been discontented, even with my contentment. Strange how make-believe, if engaged in systematically enough, can change into reality. Childish games (though I was well aware that they were so) marked the beginning of my intellectual decline. I deliberately cultivated a facial tic, for instance, or would walk across the Graben with arms crossed behind my head. A repulsively childish but successful game. (My writing began in the same way; only later on its development came to a halt, unfortunately.) If it is possible so to force misfortune upon oneself, it is possible to force anything upon oneself. Much as my development seems to contradict me, and much as it contradicts my nature to think it, I cannot grant that the first beginnings of my unhappiness were inwardly necessitated; they may have indeed had a necessity, but not an inward one – they swarmed down on me like flies and could have been as easily driven off.

  My unhappiness on the other shore would have been as great, greater probably (thanks to my weakness); after all, I have had some experience of it, the lever is still trembling somewhat from the time when I last tried to shift it – why then do I add to the unhappiness that this shore causes me by longing to cross over to the other?

  Sad, and with reason. My sadness depends on this reason. How easy it was the first time, how difficult now! How helplessly the tyrant looks at me: ‘Is that where you are taking me!’ And yet no peace in spite of everything; the hopes of the morning are buried in the afternoon. It is impossible amicably to come to terms with such a life; surely there has never been anyone who could have done so. When other people approached this boundary – even to have approached it is pitiful enough – they turned back; I cannot. It even seems to me as if I had not come by myself but had been pushed here as a child and then chained to this spot; the consciousness of my misfortune only gradually dawned on me, my misfortune itself was already complete; it needed not a prophetic but merely a penetrating eye to see it.

  In the morning I thought: ‘There is a possibility that I could go on living in this fashion, only guard such a way of life against women.’ Guard it against women – why, they are already lurking in the ‘in-this-fashion’.

  It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me; but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.

  Even in the sense of my ‘resolve’ I have a right to despair boundlessly over my situation.

  27 January. Spindelmühle. I must be above such mixtures of bad luck and clumsiness on my own part as the mistake with the sledge, the broken trunk, the rickety table, the poor light, the impossibility of having quiet in the hotel during the afternoon, etc. Such superiority cannot be got by not caring, for one cannot remain indifferent to such things; it can only be got by summoning up new strength. Here, indeed, surprises await one, this the most despairing person will allow; experience proves that something can come of nothing, that the coachman and his horses can crawl out of the tumble-down pig-sty.124

  My strength crumbling away during the sleigh ride. One cannot make a life for oneself as a tumbler makes a handstand.

  The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps saving comfort that there is in writing: it is a leap out of murderers’ row; it is a seeing of what is really taking place. This occurs by a higher type of observation, a higher, not a keener type, and the higher it is and the less within reach of the ‘row’, the more independent it becomes, the more obedient to its own laws of motion, the more incalculable, the more joyful, the more ascendant its course.

  Despite my having legibly written down my name, despite their having correctly written to me twice already, they have Joseph K.125 down in the directory. Shall I enlighten them, or shall I let them enlighten me?

  28 January. A little dizzy, tired from the tobogganing; weapons still exist for me, however seldom I may employ them; it is so hard for me to lay hold of them because I am ignorant of the joys of their use, never learned how when I was a child. It is not only ‘Father’s fault’ that I never learned their use, but also my wanting to disturb the ‘peace’, to upset the balance, and for this reason I could not allow a new person to be born elsewhere while I was bending every effort to bury him here. Of course, in this too there is a question of ‘fault’, for why did I want to quit the world? Be
cause ‘he’ would not let me live in it, in his world. Though indeed I should not judge the matter so precisely, for I am now a citizen of this other world, whose relationship to the ordinary one is the relationship of the wilderness to cultivated land (I have been forty years wandering from Canaan); I look back at it like a foreigner, though in this other world as well – it is the paternal heritage I carry with me – I am the most insignificant and timid of all creatures and am able to keep alive thanks only to the special nature of its arrangements; in this world it is possible even for the humblest to be raised to the heights as if with lightning speed, though they can also be crushed forever as if by the weight of the seas. Should I not be thankful despite everything? Was it certain that I should find my way to this world? Could not ‘banishment’ from one side, coming together with rejection from this, have crushed me at the border? Is not Father’s power such that nothing (not I, certainly) could have resisted his decree? It is indeed a kind of Wandering in the Wilderness in reverse that I am undergoing: I think that I am continually skirting the wilderness and am full of childish hopes (particularly as regards women) that ‘perhaps I shall keep in Canaan after all’ – when all the while I have been decades in the wilderness and these hopes are merely mirages born of despair, especially at those times when I am the wretchedest of creatures in the desert too, and Canaan is perforce my only Promised Land, for no third place exists for mankind.

  29 January. Suffered some attacks on the road through the snow in the evening. There are conflicting thoughts always in my head, something like this: My situation in this world would seem to be a dreadful one, alone here in Spindelmühle, on a forsaken road, moreover where one keeps slipping in the snow in the dark, senseless road, moreover, without an earthly goal (to the bridge? Why there? Besides, I didn’t even go that far); I too forsaken in this place (I cannot place a human, personal value on the help the doctor gives me, I haven’t earned it; at bottom the fee is my only relationship to him), incapable of striking up a friendship with anyone, incapable of tolerating a friendship, at bottom full of endless astonishment when I see a group of people cheerfully assembled together (here in the hotel, indeed, there is little that is cheerful; I won’t go so far as to say that I am the cause of this, in my character, perhaps, as ‘the man with the too-great shadow’, though my shadow in this world is too great – with fresh astonishment I observe the capacity for resistance some people have, who, ‘in spite of everything’, want to live under this shadow, directly under it; but there is much more than this to be said on the matter), or especially when I see parents with their children; forsaken, moreover, not only here but in general, even in Prague, my ‘home’, and, what is more, forsaken not by people (that would not be the worst thing, I could run after them as long as I was alive), but rather by myself vis-à-vis people, by my strength vis-à-vis people; I am fond of lovers but I cannot love, I am too far away, am banished, have – since I am human after all and my roots want nourishment – my proxies ‘down’ (or up) there too, sorry, unsatisfactory comedians who can satisfy me (though indeed they don’t satisfy me at all and it is for this reason that I am so forsaken) only because I get my principal nourishment from other roots in other climes, these roots too are sorry ones, but nevertheless better able to sustain life.