by Franz Kafka
In reply to my question whether he would not show me passages which correspond, because that would interest me especially and because only then could I advise him what to do, he begins to read his essay, turns to another passage, leafs through it without finding anything, and finally says that everything was copied. Here, for instance, the paper says: The soul of the child is an unwritten page, and ‘unwritten page’ occurs in his essay too. Or the expression ‘suraamed’ is copied too, because how else could they hit upon ‘suraamed’. But he can’t compare individual passages. Of course, everything was copied, but in a disguised way, in a different sequence, abridged, and with small, foreign interpolations.
I read aloud a few of the more striking passages from the paper. Is that in the essay? No. This? No. This? No. Yes, but these are just the interpolated passages. In its spirit, the whole thing, the whole thing, is copied. But proving it, I am afraid, will be difficult. He’ll prove it, all right, with the help of a clever lawyer, that’s what lawyers are for, after all. (He looks forward to this proof as an entirely new task, completely separate from this affair, and is proud of his confidence that he will be able to accomplish it.)
That it is his essay, moreover, can be seen from the very fact that it was printed within two days. Usually it takes six weeks at the very least before a piece that is accepted is printed. But here speed was necessary, of course, so that he would not be able to interfere. That’s why two days were enough.
Besides, the newspaper essay is called ‘The Child as Creator’. That clearly refers to him, and besides, it is sarcasm. By ‘child’ they really mean him, because he used to be regarded as a ‘child’, as ‘dumb’ (he really was so only during his military service, he served a year and a half), and they now mean to say with this tide that he, a child, had accomplished something as good as this essay, that he had therefore proved himself as a creator, but at the same time remained dumb and a child in that he let himself be cheated like this. The child who is referred to in the original essay is a cousin from the country who is at present living with his mother.
But the plagiarism is proved especially convincingly by a circumstance which he hit upon only after a considerable amount of deliberation: ‘The Child’s Creator’ is on the first page of the magazine section, but on the third there is a little story by a certain ‘Feldstein’ woman. The name is obviously a pseudonym. Now one needn’t read all of this story, a glance at the first few lines is enough to show one immediately that this is an unashamed imitation of Lagerlöf. The whole story makes it even clearer. What does this mean? This means that this Feldstein, or whatever her name is, is the Durège woman’s tool, that she read the Gutsgeschichte, brought by him to the Durège woman, at her house, that in writing this story she made use of what she had read, and that therefore both women are exploiting him, one on the first page of the magazine section, the other on the third page. Naturally anyone can read and imitate Lagerlöf on his own initiative, but in this case, after all, his influence is too apparent. (He keeps waving the page back and forth.)
Monday noon, right after the bank closed, he naturally went to see Mrs Durège. She opens her door only a crack, she is very nervous: ‘But, Mr Reichmann, why have you come at noon? My husband is asleep. I can’t let you in now’ – ‘Mrs Durège, you must let me in by all means. It’s about an important matter.’ She sees I am in earnest and lets me come in. Her husband, of course, was definitely not at home. In the next room I see my manuscript on the table and this immediately starts me thinking. ‘Mrs Durege, what have you done with my manuscript. Without my consent you gave it to the Tagblatt. How much did they pay you?’ She trembles, she knows nothing, has no idea how it could have got into the paper. ‘J’accuse, Mrs Durège,’ I said, half jokingly, but still in such a way that she sees what I really mean, and I keep repeating this ‘J’accuse, Mrs Durège’ all the time I am there so that she can take note of it, and when I go I even say it several times at the door. Indeed, I understand her nervousness well. If I make it public or sue her, her position would really be impossible, she would have to leave the Women’s Progress, etc.
From her house I go straight to the office of the Tagblatt and have the editor, Low, fetched. He comes out quite pale, naturally, is hardly able to walk. Nevertheless I do not want to begin with my business at once and I want to test him first too. So I ask him: ‘Mr Löw, are you a Zionist?’ (For I know he used to be a Zionist.) ‘No,’ he says. I know enough, he must be acting a part in front of me. Now I ask about the essay. Once more incoherent talk. He knows nothing, has nothing to do with the magazine section, will, if I wish, get the editor who is in charge of it. ‘Mr Wittmann, come here,’ he calls, and is happy that he can leave. Wittmann comes, also very pale. I ask: ‘Are you the editor of the magazine section?’ He: ‘Yes.’ I just say, ‘J’accuse,’ and leave.
In the bank I immediately telephone Bohemia. I want to give them the story for publication. But I can’t get a good connexion. Do you know why? The office of the Tagblatt is pretty close to the telephone exchange, so from the Tagblatt it’s easy for them to control the connexions as they please, to hold them up or put them through. And as a matter of fact, I keep hearing indistinct whispering voices on the telephone, obviously the editors of the Tagblatt. They have, of course, a good deal of interest in not letting this call go through. Then I hear (naturally very indistinctly) some of them persuading the operator not to put the call through, while others are already connected with Bohemia and are trying to keep them from listening to my story. ‘Operator,’ I shout into the telephone, ‘if you don’t put this call through at once, I’ll complain to the management.’ My colleagues all around me in the bank laugh when they hear me talking to the telephone operator so violently. Finally I get my party. ‘Let me talk to Editor Kisch. I have an extremely important piece of news for Bohemia. If you don’t take it, I’ll give it to another paper at once. It’s high time.’ But since Kisch is not there I hang up without revealing anything.
In the evening I go to the office of Bohemia and get the editor, Kisch, called out. I tell him the story but he doesn’t want to publish it. Bohemia, he says, can’t do anything like that, it would cause a scandal and we can’t risk it because we’re dependent. Hand it over to a lawyer, that would be best.
On my way from the Bohemia office I met you and so I am asking your advice.
‘I advise you to settle the matter in a friendly way.’
‘Indeed, I was thinking myself that would be best. She’s a woman, after all. Women have no souls, says Mohammed, with good reason. To forgive would be more humane, too, more Goethe-like.’
‘Certainly. And then you wouldn’t have to give up the recitation evening, either, which would otherwise be lost, after all.’
‘But what should I do now?’
‘Go to them tomorrow and say that this one time you are willing to assume it was unconscious influence.’
‘That’s very good. That’s just what I’ll do.’
‘But because of this you needn’t give up your revenge, either. Simply have the essay published somewhere else and then send it to Mrs Durège with a nice dedication.’
‘That will be the best punishment. I’ll have it published in the Deutsches Abendblatt. They’ll take it; I’m not worried about that. I’ll just not ask for any payment.’
Then we speak about his talent as an actor, I am of the opinion that he should really have training. ‘Yes, you’re right about that. But where? Do you perhaps know where it can be studied?’ I say: ‘That’s difficult. I really don’t know.’ He: ‘That doesn’t really matter. I’ll ask Kisch. He’s a journalist and has a lot of connexions. He’ll be able to give me good advice. I’ll just telephone him, spare him and myself the trip, and get all the information.’
‘And about Mrs Durège, you’ll do what I advised you to?’
‘Yes, but I forgot; what did you advise me to do?’ I repeat my advice.
‘Good, that’s what I’ll do.’ He turns into the Café C
orso, I go home, having experienced how refreshing it is to speak with a perfect fool. I hardly laughed, but was just thoroughly awakened.
The melancholy ‘formerly’, used only on business plaques.
2 March. Who is to confirm for me the truth or probability of this, that it is only because of my literary mission that I am uninterested in all other things and therefore heartless.
3 March. 28 February to hear Moissi. Unnatural spectacle. He sits in apparent calm, whenever possible keeps his folded hands between his knees, his eyes on the book lying before him, and lets his voice pass over us with the breath of a runner.
The hall’s good acoustics. Not a word is lost, nor is there the whisper of an echo, instead everything grows gradually larger, as though the voice, already occupied with something else, continued to exercise a direct after-effect, it grows stronger after the initial impetus and swallows us up. The possibilities one sees here for one’s own voice. Just as the hall works to the advantage of Moissi’s voice, his voice works to the advantage of ours. Unashamed tricks and surprises at which one must look down at the floor and which one would never use oneself: singing individual verses at the very beginning, for instance, ‘Sleep, Miriam, my child’;43 wandering around of the voice in the melody; rapid utterance of the May song, it seems as if only the tip of the tongue were stuck between the words; dividing the phrase ‘November wind’ in order to push the ‘wind’ down and then let it whistle upwards. If one looks up at the ceiling of the hall, one is drawn upward by the verses.
Goethe’s poems unattainable for the reciter, but one cannot for that reason find fault with this recitation, for each poem moves towards the goal. Great effect later, when in reciting the encore, Shakespeare’s ‘Rain Song’, he stood erect, was free of the text, pulled at his handkerchief and then crushed it in his hands, and his eyes sparkled. Round cheeks and yet an angular face. Soft hair, stroked over and over again with soft movements of his hand. The enthusiastic reviews that one has read are a help to him, in our opinion, only until the first hearing, then he becomes entangled in them and cannot produce a pure impression.
This sort of reciting from a chair, with the book before one, reminds one a little of ventriloquism. The artist, seemingly not participating, sits there like us, in his bowed face we see only the mouth move from time to time, and instead of reading the verses himself, he lets them be read over his head. Despite the fact that so many melodies were to be heard, that the voice seemed as controlled as a light boat in the water, the melody of the verses could really not be heard. Many words were dissolved by the voice, they were taken hold of so gently that they shot up into the air and had nothing more to do with the human voice until, out of sheer necessity, the voice spoke some sharp consonant or other, brought the word back to earth, and completed it.
Later, a walk with Ottla, Miss Taussig, the Baum couple, and Pick; the Elizabeth Bridge, the Quai, the Kleinseite, the Radetzky Café, the Stone Bridge, Karlsgasse. I still saw the prospect of a good mood, so that really there was not much fault to find with me.
5 March. These revolting doctors! Businesslike, determined and so ignorant of healing that, if this businesslike determination were to leave them, they would stand at sick-beds like schoolboys. I wished I had the strength to found a nature-cure society. By scratching around in my sister’s ear Dr K. turns an inflammation of the eardrum into an inflammation of the inner ear; the maid collapses while fixing the fire; with the quick diagnosis which is his custom in the case of maids, the doctor declares it to be an upset stomach and a resulting congestion of blood. The next day she takes to her bed again, has a high fever; the doctor turns her from side to side, affirms it is angina, and runs away so that the next moment will not refute him. Even dares to speak of the ‘vulgarly violent reaction of this girl’, which is true to this extent, that he is used to people whose physical condition is worthy of his curative power and is produced by it, and he feels insulted, more than he is aware, by the strong nature of this country girl.
Yesterday at Baum’s. Read Der Damon. Total impression unfriendly. Good, precise mood on the way up to Baum’s, died down immediately I got up there, embarrassment in the presence of the child.
Sunday: In the Continental, at the card-players’. Journalisten with Kramer first, one and a half acts. A good deal of forced merriment can be seen in Bolz, which produces, indeed, a little that is really delicate. Met Miss Taussig in front of the theatre in the intermission after the second act. Ran to the cloakroom, returned with cloak flying, and escorted her home.
8 March. Day before yesterday was blamed because of the factory. Then for an hour on the sofa thought about jumping-out-of-the-window. Yesterday, Harden lecture on “The Theatre’. Apparently entirely impromptu; I was in a fairly good mood and therefore did not find it as empty as did the others. Began well: ‘At this hour in which we have met together here to discuss the theatre, the curtain is rising in every theatre of Europe and the other continents to reveal the stage to the audience.’ With an electric light attached to a stand in front of him at the level of his breast so that it can be moved about, he lights up the front of his shirt as though it were on display, and during the course of the lecture he changes the lighting by moving the light. Toe-dancing to make himself taller, as well as to tighten up his talent for improvisation. Trousers tight even around the groin. A short tail-coat like that tacked on to a doll. Almost strained, serious face, sometimes like an old lady’s, sometimes like Napoleon’s. Fading colour of his forehead as of a wig. Probably corseted.
Read through some old notebooks. It takes all my strength to last it out. The unhappiness one must suffer when one interrupts oneself in a task that can never succeed except all at once, and this is what has always happened to me until now; in rereading one must re-experience this unhappiness in a more concentrated way though not as strongly as before.
Today, while bathing, I thought I felt old powers, as though they had been untouched by the long interval.
10 March. Sunday. He seduced a girl in a small place in the Iser mountains where he spent a summer to restore his delicate lungs. After a brief effort to persuade her, incomprehensibly, the way lung cases sometimes act, he threw the girl – his landlord’s daughter, who liked to walk with him in the evening after work – down in the grass on the river bank and took her as she lay there unconscious with fright. Later he had to carry water from the river in his cupped hands and pour it over the girl’s face to restore her. ‘Julie, but Julie,’ he said countless times, bending over her. He was ready to accept complete responsibility for his offence and was only making an effort to make himself realize how serious his situation was. Without thinking about it he could not have realized it. The simple girl who lay before him, now breathing regularly again, her eyes still closed because of fear and embarrassment, could make no difficulty for him; with the tip of his toe, he, the great, strong person, could push the girl aside. She was weak and plain, could what had happened to her have any significance that would last even until tomorrow? Would not anyone who compared the two of them have to come to this conclusion? The river stretched calmly between the meadows and fields to the distant hills. There was still sunshine only on the slope of the opposite shore. The last clouds were drifting out of that clear evening sky.
Nothing, nothing. This is the way I raise up ghosts before me. I was involved, even if only superficially, only in the passage, ‘Later he had.…’ mostly in the ‘pour’. For a moment I thought I saw something real in the description of the landscape.
So deserted by myself, by everything. Noise in the next room.
11 March. Yesterday unendurable. Why doesn’t everyone join in the evening meal? That would really be so beautiful.
The reciter, Reichmann, landed in the lunatic asylum the day after our conversation.
Today burned many old, disgusting papers.
W., Baron von Biedermann, Gespräche mit Goethe. The way the daughters of the Leipzig copperplate-engraver, Stock, comb his hair, 1767.
The way, in 1772, Kestner found him lying in the grass in Garbenheim and the way he ‘was conversing with several people who were standing around, an Epicurean philosopher (v. Gone, a great genius), a Stoic philosopher (v. Kielmansegg) and a cross between the two (Dr König), and he really enjoyed himself’.
With Seidel [Goethe’s valet] in 1783: ‘Once he rang in the middle of the night, and when I came into his room he had rolled his iron trundle bed from the farthest end of the room up to the window and was watching the sky. “Haven’t you seen anything in the sky?” he asked me, and when I denied this, “Then just run to the guardroom and ask the sentry whether he saw anything.” I ran there; but the sentry had seen nothing, which I reported to my master, who was still lying in the same position fixedly regarding the sky. “Listen,” he then said to me, “this is an important moment. Either we are having an earthquake at this very instant or we shall have one.” And now I had to sit down on his bed and he showed me what signs had led him to this conclusion.’ (Messina earthquake.)
A geological walk with von Trebra (September 1783) through underbrush and rocks. Goethe in front To Herder’s wife in 1788. Among other things he said also that before he left Rome he cried like a child every day for fourteen days. The way Herder’s wife watched him in order to report everything to her husband in Italy. Goethe shows great concern for Herder in the presence of his wife.
14 September, 1794, from eleven-thirty, when Schiller got dressed, until eleven o’clock, Goethe spent the time without interruption in literary consultation with Schiller, and often so.