Diaries of Franz Kafka

by Franz Kafka

  Gandria: instead of streets, cellar steps and cellar passageways. A boy was being whipped; the hollow sound of beds being beaten. House overgrown with ivy. Seamstress in Gandria at the window without shutters, curtains, or panes. We were so tired we had to hold one another up on the way from the bathing place to Gandria. Solemn procession of boats behind a small black steamer. Young men looking at pictures, kneeling, lounging about on the wharf in Gandria, one of them a rather pale person well known to us as a ladies’ man and buffoon.

  On the quay in the evening in Porlezza. At the William Tell monument a full-bearded Frenchman we had already forgotten reminded us again of what had been memorable about him.

  3 September, Sunday. A German with a gold tooth who because of it would have stuck in the memory of anyone describing him, though the impression he made was otherwise an indeterminate one, bought a ticket for the swimming-pool as late as a quarter to twelve, despite its closing at twelve; the swimming master inside immediately called this to his attention in an incomprehensible Italian which for this reason sounded rather stern. Flustered by it even in his own language, the German stammeringly asked why in that case they had sold him a ticket at the entrance booth, complained that they should have sold him a ticket, and protested at its having been sold to him so late. From the Italian reply you could make out that he still had almost a quarter of an hour in which to swim and get dressed, didn’t he? Tears – Sat on the barrel in the lake. Hotel Belvedere: ‘With all due respect to the manager, the food is miserable.’

  4 September. Cholera reports: travel bureau, Corriere della Sera, North German Lloyd, Berliner Tageblatt, chambermaid brought us reports from a Berlin doctor; the general character of the reports varied according to the group and one’s physical condition; when we left Lugano for Porto Ceresio, at 1.05, they were fairly favourable – Felt a passing enthusiasm for Paris in the wind blowing on the third of September Excelsior, which we held open in front of us and ran off to a bench to read. There was still some advertising space to let on the bridge across Lake Lugano.

  Friday. Three crew members chased us away from the ship’s bow on the pretext that the helmsman had to have an unobstructed view forward of the light, and then pushed a bench over and sat down themselves. I should have liked to have sung.

  Under the eyes of the Italian who advised us to make the trip to Turin (exposition) and to whom we nodded agreement, we shook hands in confirmation of our common decision not to go to Turin at any price. Praised the cut-rate tickets. Cyclist circling about on the lake terrace of a house in Porto Ceresio. Whip that had only a little tail of horse-hair instead of a strap. A cyclist pedalling along with a rope in his hand, leading a horse that trotted beside him.

  Milan: Forgot guidebook in a store. Went back and stole it. Ate apple strudel in the courtyard of the Mercanti. Health cake. Teatro Fossati. Every hat and fan in motion. A child laughing up above. An elderly lady in the male orchestra. Poltrone – Ingresso – Pit on a level with the orchestra. All the windows in the back wall open. Tall, vigorous actor with delicately painted nostrils; the black of the nostrils continued to stand out even when the outline of his upturned face was lost in the light. Girl with a long slender neck ran off-stage with short steps and rigid elbows – you could guess at the high heels that went with the long neck. The importance of the laughter exaggerated, for there is a greater gap between laughter and uncomprehending gravity than between it and the gravity of an initiated spectator. Significance of every piece of furniture. Five doors in each of the two plays for any emergency. Nose and mouth of a girl shadowed by her painted eyes. Man in a box opened his mouth when he laughed until a gold molar became visible, then kept it open like that for a while. That kind of unity of stage and audience which is created for and against the spectator does not understand the language, a unity impossible to achieve in any other way.

  Young Italian woman whose otherwise Jewish face became non-Jewish in profile. How she stood up, leaned forward with her hands on the ledge so that only her narrow body could be seen, her arms and shoulders being concealed; how she extended her arms to either side of the window; how she clung in the breeze with both hands to one side of the window, as though to a tree. She was reading a paper-bound detective story that her little brother had been vainly begging from her for some time. Her father, near by, had a hooked nose whereas hers, at the same place, curved gently, was therefore more Jewish. She looked at me often, curious to see whether I shouldn’t finally stop my annoying staring. Her dress of raw silk. Tall, stout, perfumed woman near me scattering her scent into the air with her fan. I felt myself shrivel up next to her – In the baggage room the tin plate over the gas flame was shaped like a girl’s flat-brimmed hat. Pleasant variety of lattice-work on the houses. We had been looking for the Scala right under the arch of its entrance; when we came out on the square and saw its simple, worn façade we were not surprised at the error we had made.

  Pleased by the connexion a pair of folding doors affords between the two rooms. Each of us can open a door. A good arrangement for married people too, Max thinks.

  First write down a thought, then recite it aloud; don’t write as you recite, for in that case only the beginning already inwardly pondered will succeed, while what is still to be written will be lost. A discussion of asphyxia and [lethal] heart injection at a little table in a coffee house on the Cathedral Square. Mahler asked for a heart injection too. As the discussion went on, I felt the time that we had planned to spend in Milan rapidly dwindling away, in spite of some resistance on my part – The Cathedral with its many spires is a little tiresome.

  Genesis of our decision to go to Paris: the moment in Lugano with the Excelsior; trip to Milan in consequence of our not altogether voluntary purchase of the Porto Ceresia-Milan tickets; from Milan to Paris out of fear of the cholera and the desire to be compensated for this fear. In addition, our calculation of the time and money this trip would save us.

  1. Rimini–Genoa–Nervi (Prague).

  2. Upper Italian lakes, Milan–Genoa (wavering between Locarno and Lugano).

  3. Omit Lago Maggiore, Lugano, Milan, trip through the cities as far as Bologna.

  4. Lugano–Paris.

  5. Lugano–Milan (several days)–Maggiore.

  6. In Milan: directly to Paris (possibly Fontainebleau).

  7. Got off at Stresa. Here, for the first time, we were at a point in our trip where it was possible to look backwards and forwards along it; it had passed out of its infant stages and there was something there to take by the waist.

  I have never yet seen people looking so small as they did in the Galleria in Milan. Max thought the Galleria was only as high as the other houses you saw outside; I denied it with some objection I have since forgotten, for I will always come to the defence of the Galleria. It had almost no superfluous ornamentation, there was nothing to arrest the sweep of the eye, seemed little because of this, as well as because of its height, but could afford that too. It was shaped like a cross, through which the air blew freely. From the roof of the Cathedral the people seemed to have grown bigger as against the Galleria. The Galleria consoled me completely for the fact that I did not see the ancient Roman ruins.

  Transparent inscription deep in the tiles over the brothel: Al vero Eden. Heavy traffic between there and the street, mostly single persons. Up and down the narrow streets of the neighbourhood. They were clean, some had pavements in spite of their narrow width; once we looked from one narrow street down another that ran into it at right angles and saw a woman leaning against the window-grating on the top floor of a house. I was lighthearted and unhesitating in everything at the time, and, as always in such moods, felt my body grow heavier. The girls spoke their French like virgins. Milanese beer smells like beer, tastes like wine. Max regrets what he writes only during the writing of it, never afterwards. Somewhat apprehensively, Max took a cat for a walk in the reading-room.

  A girl with a belly that had undoubtedly spread shapelessly over and between her outsp
read legs under her transparent dress while she had been sitting down; but when she stood up it was pulled in, and her body at last looked something like what a girl’s body should. The Frenchwoman whose sweetness, to an analytical eye, chiefly showed in her round, talkative, and devoted knees. An imperious and monumental figure that thrust the money she had just earned into her stocking – The old man who lay one hand atop the other on one knee – The woman by the door, whose sinister face was Spanish, whose manner of putting her hands on her hips was Spanish and who stretched herself in her close-fitting dress of prophylactic silk – At home it was with the German bordello girls that one lost a sense of one’s nationality for a moment, here it was with the French girls. Perhaps insufficiently acquainted with the conditions here.

  My passion for iced drinks punished: one grenadine, two aranciatas in the theatre, one in the bar on the Corso Emmanuele, one sherbet in the coffee-house in the Galleria, one French Thierry mineral water that all at once disclosed what had been the effect of everything that I had had before. Sadly went to bed, looking out from it on a sweeping, very Italianate prospect framed in the shallow bay window of a side-wall. Miserably awoke with a dry pressure against the walls of my mouth – The very unofficial elegance of the police who make their rounds carrying their knit gloves in one hand and their canes in the other.

  5 September. Banca Commerciale on Scala Square. Letters from home – Card to my boss – Our astonishment when we entered the Cathedral – Wanted to make an architectural sketch of it; the Cathedral interior was purely architectural, there were no benches for the most part, few statues on the pillars, a few dim pictures on the distant walls; the individual visitors on the Cathedral floor provided a measure of its height, and their walking about provided a measure of its extent. Sublime, but recalled the Galleria too directly.

  Inexcusable to travel – or even live – without taking notes. The deathly feeling of the monotonous passing of the days is made impossible.

  Climbed to the roof of the Cathedral. A young Italian in front made the climb easier for us by humming a tune, trying to take off his coat, looking through cracks through which only sunlight could be seen, and continually tapping at the numerals that showed the number of steps – View from the roof: something was wrong with the tram-cars down below, they moved so slowly, only the curve of the rails carried them along. A conductor, distorted and foreshortened from where we stood, hurried to his tram and jumped in. A fountain shaped like a man, spinal column and brain removed to make a passage for the rainwater – Each of the great stained-glass windows was dominated by the colour of some one piece of clothing that recurred over and over again in the individual panes.

  Max: Toy railway station in the display of a toy store, rails that formed a circle and led nowhere; is and will remain his strongest impression of Milan. An attempt to show the variety of the stock could account for placing the railway station and Cathedral side by side in the display – From the back portal of the Cathedral you looked right into the face of a large clock on a roof – Teatro Fossati – Trip to Stresa. The people turning in their sleep in the crowded compartment The two lovers – Afternoon in Stresa.

  Thursday, 7 September. Bath, letters, departure – Sleeping in public –

  Friday, 8 September. Trip [to Paris]. Italian couple. Clergyman. American. The two little Frenchwomen with their fat behinds. Montreux. Your legs parted company on the broad Parisian streets – Japanese lanterns in the garden restaurants – The Place de la Concorde is arranged so that its sights are off in the distance, where one’s eye can easily find them out, but only if it looks for them.

  École Florentine (fifteenth century), apple scene – Tintoretto: Suzanne – Simone Martini: (1285, école de Sienne) Jésus Christ marchant au Calvaire – Mantegna: La Sagesse victorieuse des Vices 1431–1506, école Vénétienne – Titian: Le Concile de Trente 1477–1576 – Raphael: Apollo and Marsyas – Velázquez: Portrait de Philippe IV roi d’Espagne 1599–1600. Jacob Jordaens 1593–1678: Le Concert après le repas – Rubens: Kermesse.141

  Confiserie de l’enfant gâté, rue des Petits Champs. Washerwoman in morning undress – rue des Petits Champs so narrow it was entirely in the shade. Le sou du soldat, société anonyme. Capital one mill., avenue de l’Opéra – Robert, Samuel. Ambassadeur: a roll of the drums followed by brasses (the double s), with the eur the drumsticks are lifted up in the midst of their flourish and are silent – Gare de Lyon. The construction workers’ substitute for braces is a coloured sash worn round the waist; here, where sashes have an official meaning, it gives it a democratic effect.

  I didn’t know whether I was sleepy or not, and the question bothered me all morning on the train. Don’t mistake the nursemaids for French governesses of German children.

  Prise de Salins, 17 May 1668, par M. Lafarge. In the background a man dressed in red on a white horse and a man in dark clothes on a dark horse catch their breath after the siege of a city by going for a ride while a storm approaches – Voyage de Louis XVI à Cherbourg, 23 juin 1786 – Bivouak de Napoléon sur le champ de bataille de Wagram, nuit de 5 au 6 juillet 1809.142 Napoleon is sitting alone, one leg propped on a low table. Behind him a smoking campfire. The shadows of his right leg and of the legs of the table and camp stool lie in the foreground like rays about him. Peaceful moon. The generals, in a distant semi-circle, look into the fire or at him.

  How easy it is for a grenadine and seltzer to get into your nose when you laugh (bar in front of the Opéra Comique).

  Platform tickets – that vulgar intrusion on family life – are unknown.

  Alone [in Erlenbach]143 in the reading-room with a lady who was hard of hearing; while she looked elsewhere, I vainly introduced myself to her; she considered the rain I pointed to outside as a continuing humidity. She was telling fortunes by cards according to the instructions given in a book beside her, into which she intently peered with her head propped against her fist. There must have been a hundred little miniature cards printed on both sides in her fist that she hadn’t used yet. Near by, his back to me, an old gentleman dressed in black was reading the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten. A pouring rain. Travelled with a Jewish goldsmith. He was from Cracow, a little more than twenty years old, had been in America two and a half years, had been living in Paris for two months, and had had only fourteen days’ work. Badly paid (only ten francs a day), no place to do business. When you’ve just come to a city you don’t know what your work is worth. Fine life in Amsterdam. Full of people from Cracow. Every day you knew what was new in Cracow, for someone was always going there or coming back. There were entire streets where only Polish was spoken. Made a lot of money in New York because the girls earn a lot there and can deck themselves out. Paris wouldn’t compare with it, the minute you stepped into the boulevards you could see that. Left New York because his people live here, after all, and because they wrote him: We’re here in Cracow and still make a living too; how long are you going to stay in America? Quite right. Enthusiastic over the way the Swiss live. Living out in the country as they do and raising cattle, they must get to be as strong as giants. And the rivers. But the most important thing is, bathe in running water after you get up – He had long, curly hair, only occasionally ran his fingers through it, very bright eyes, a gently curving nose, hollows in his cheeks, a suit of American cut, a frayed shirt, falling socks. His bag was small, but when he got off he carried it as if it had been a heavy burden. His German was disturbed by an English pronunciation and English expressions; his English was so strong that his Yiddish was given a rest. Full of animation after a night spent in travelling. ‘You’re an Austrian, aren’t you? You have one of those rain-capes too. All the Austrians have them.’ By showing him the sleeves I proved that it was not a cape but a coat. He still maintained that every Austrian had a cape. This was how they threw it on. He turned to a third person and showed him how they did it. He pretended to fasten something behind on his shirt collar, bent his body to see whether it held, then pulled this something first ove
r his right then over his left arm, until he was entirely enveloped in it and nice and warm, as you could see. Although he was sitting down, the movements of his legs showed how easily and unconcernedly an Austrian wearing a cape like that could walk. There was almost no mockery in all this, rather it was done as if by someone who had travelled around a bit and seen something of the world. There was a little child-like touch to it all.

  My walk in the dark little garden in front of the sanatorium.

  Morning setting-up exercises accompanied by the singing of a song from Wunderhorn which someone played on the cornet.

  The secretary who went for walking trips every winter, to Budapest, southern France, Italy. Barefoot, ate raw food only (whole-wheat bread, fish, dates), lived two weeks with two other people in the region around Nice, mostly naked, in a deserted house.

  Fat little girl who was always picking her nose, clever but not especially pretty, had a nose with no expectations, was called Waltraute and, according to a young woman, there was something radiant about her.

  I dreaded the pillars of the dining-room in advance, because of the pictures (tall, shining, solid marble) I had seen in the prospectus, and cursed myself during the trip across on the little steamer. But they turned out to be made of very unpretentious brick painted in bad imitation of marble, and unusually low.

  Lively conversation between a man in the pear tree opposite my window and a girl on the ground floor whom I couldn’t see.

  A pleasant feeling when the doctor listened over and over again to my heart, kept asking me to change my position, and couldn’t make up his mind. He tapped the area around my heart for an especially long time; it lasted so long he seemed almost absent-minded.

  The quarrel at night between the two women in the compartment, the lamp of which they had covered over. The Frenchwoman lying down screamed out of the darkness, and the elderly woman whom her feet were pressing against the wall and who spoke French badly didn’t know what to do. According to the Frenchwoman she should have left the seat, carried all her luggage over to the other side, the back seat, and permitted her to stretch out. The Greek doctor in my compartment said she was definitely in the wrong, in bad, clear French that was apparently based on German. I fetched the conductor, who settled matters between them.