by Franz Kafka
20 September. Letters to Löwy and Miss Taussig yesterday, to Miss B. and Max today.
23 September.52 This story, ‘The Judgement’, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd–23rd, from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs out from under the desk, they had got so stiff from sitting. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing over water. Several times during this night I heaved my own weight on my back. How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. How it turned blue outside the window. A wagon rolled by. Two men walked across the bridge. At two I looked at the clock for the last time. As the maid walked through the ante-room for the first time I wrote the last sentence. Turning out the light and the light of day. The slight pains around my heart. The weariness that disappeared in the middle of the night. The trembling entrance into my sisters’ room. Reading aloud. Before that, stretching in the presence of the maid and saying, ‘I’ve been writing until now.’ The appearance of the undisturbed bed, as though it had just been brought in. The conviction verified that with my novel-writing I am in the shameful lowlands of writing. Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul. Morning in bed. The always clear eyes. Many emotions carried along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something beautiful for Max’s Arkadia, thoughts about Freud, of course; in one passage, of Arnold Beer; in another, of Wassermann; in one, of Werfel’s giantess; of course, also of my ‘The Urban World’.
I, only I, am the spectator in the orchestra.
Gustav Blenkelt was a simple man with regular habits. He didn’t like any unnecessary display and had a definite opinion about people who went in for such display. Although he was a bachelor, he felt he had an absolute right to say a few deciding words in the marital affairs of his acquaintances and anyone who would even have questioned such a right would have fared badly with him. He used to speak his mind freely and did not in any way seek to detain those listeners whom his opinions happened not to suit. As there are everywhere, there were people who admired him, people who honoured him, people who put up with him, and, finally, those who wanted to have nothing to do with him. Indeed, every person, even the emptiest, is, if one will only look carefully, the centre of a tight circle that forms about him here and there, how could it be otherwise in the case of Gustav Blenkelt, at bottom an exceptionally social person?
In his thirty-fifth year, the last year of his life, he spent an unusual amount of time with a young couple named Strong. It is certain that for Mr Strong, who had opened a furniture store with his wife’s money, the acquaintance with Blenkelt had numerous advantages, since the largest part of the latter’s acquaintances consisted of young, marriageable people who sooner or later had to think of providing new furniture for themselves and who, out of old habit, were usually accustomed not to neglect Blenkelt’s advice in this matter, either. ‘I keep them on a tight rein,’ Blenkelt used to say.
24 September. My sister said: The house (in the story) is very like ours. I said: How? In that case, then, Father would have to be living in the toilet.
25 September. By force kept myself from writing. Tossed in bed. The congestion of blood in my head and the useless drifting by of things. What harmfulness! – Yesterday read at Baum’s, to the Baum family, my sisters, Marta, Dr Block’s wife, and her two sons (one of them a one-year volunteer in the army). Towards the end my hand was moving uncontrollably about and actually before my face. There were tears in my eyes. The indubitability of the story was confirmed – This evening tore myself away from my writing. Films in the National Theatre. Miss O., whom a clergyman once pursued. She came home soaked in cold sweat. Danzig. Life of Körner. The horses. The white horse. The smoke of powder. ‘Lützows wilde Jagd.’ 53
11 February. While I read the proofs of ‘The Judgement’, I’ll write down all the relationships which have become clear to me in the story as far as I now remember them. This is necessary because the story came out of me like a real birth, covered with filth and slime, and only I have the hand that can reach to the body itself and the strength of desire to do so:
The friend is the link between father and son, he is their strongest common bond. Sitting alone at his window, Georg rummages voluptuously in this consciousness of what they have in common, believes he has his father within him, and would be at peace with everything if it were not for a fleeting, sad thoughtfulness. In the course of the story the father, with the strengthened position that the other, lesser things they share in common give him – love, devotion to the mother, loyalty to her memory, the clientele that he (the father) had been the first to acquire for the business – uses the common bond of the friend to set himself up as Georg’s antagonist. Georg is left with nothing; the bride, who lives in the story only in relation to the friend, that is, to what father and son have in common, is easily driven away by the father since no marriage has yet taken place, and so she cannot penetrate the circle of blood relationship that is drawn around father and son. What they have in common is built up entirely around the father, Georg can feel it only as something foreign, something that has become independent, that he has never given enough protection, that is exposed to Russian revolutions, and only because he himself has lost everything except his awareness of the father does the judgement, which closes off his father from him completely, have so strong an effect on him.
Georg has the same number of letters as Franz. In Bendemann, ‘mann’ is a strengthening of ‘Bende’ to provide for all the as yet unforeseen possibilities in the story. But Bende has exactly the same number of letters as Kafka, and the vowel e occurs in the same places as does the vowel a in Kafka.
Frieda has as many letters as F. and the same initial, Brandenfeld has the same initial as B., and in the word ‘Feld’ a certain connexion in meaning, as well. Perhaps even the thought of Berlin was not without influence and the recollection of the Mark Brandenburg perhaps had some influence.
12 February. In describing the friend I kept thinking of Steuer. Now when I happened to meet him about three months after I had written the story, he told me that he had become engaged about three months ago.
After I read the story at Weltsch’s yesterday, old Mr Weltsch went out and, when he returned after a short time, praised especially the graphic descriptions in the story. With his arm extended he said, ‘I see this father before me,’ all the time looking directly at the empty, chair in which he had been sitting while I was reading.
My sister said, ‘It is our house.’ I was astonished at how mistaken she was in the setting and said, ‘In that case, then, Father would have to be living in the toilet.’
28 February. Ernst Liman arrived in Constantinople on a business trip one rainy autumn morning and, as was his custom – this was the tenth time he was making this trip – without paying attention to anything else, drove through the otherwise empty streets to the hotel at which he always stopped and which he found suited him. It was almost cool, and drizzling rain blew into the carriage, and, annoyed by the bad weather which had been pursuing him all through his business trip this year, he put up the carriage window and leaned back in a corner to sleep away the fifteen minutes or so of the drive that was before him. But since the driver took him straight through the business district, he could get no rest, and the shouts of the street vendors, the rolling of the heavy wagons, as well as other noises, meaningless on the surface, such as a crowd clapping its hands, disturbed his usually sound sleep.
At the end of his drive an unpleasant surprise awaited him. During the last great fire in Stambul, about which Liman had probably read during his trip, the Hotel Kingston, at which it was his habit to stop, had been burned almost to the ground, but the driver, who of course knew this, had nevertheless carried out his passenger’s instructions with complete indifference, and without a word had brough
t him to the site of the hotel which had burned down. Now he calmly got down from the box and would even have unloaded Liman’s luggage if the latter had not seized him by the shoulder and shaken him, whereupon the driver then let go of the luggage, to be sure, but as slowly and sleepily as if not Liman but his own change of mind had diverted him from it.
Part of the ground floor of the hotel was still intact and had been made fairly habitable by being boarded over at the top and sides. A notice in Turkish and French indicated that the hotel would be rebuilt in a short time as a more beautiful and more modern structure. Yet the only sign of this was the work of three day labourers, who with shovels and rakes were heaping up the rubble at one side and loading it into a small handbarrow.
As it turned out, part of the hotel staff, unemployed because of the fire, was living in these ruins. A gentleman in a black frock-coat and a bright red tie at once came running out when Liman’s carriage stopped, told Liman, who sulkily listened to him, the story of the fire, meanwhile twisting the ends of his long, thin beard around his finger and interrupting this only to point out to Liman where the fire started, how it spread, and how finally everything collapsed. Liman, who had hardly raised his eyes from the ground throughout this whole story and had not let go the handle of the carriage door, was just about to call out to the driver the name of another hotel to which he could drive him when the man in the frock-coat, with arms raised, implored him not to go to any other hotel, but to remain loyal to this hotel, where, after all, he had always received satisfaction. Despite the fact that this was only meaningless talk and no one could remember Liman, just as Liman recognized hardly a single one of the male and female employees he saw in the door and windows, he still asked, as a man to whom his habits were dear, how, then, at the moment, he was to remain loyal to the burned-down hotel. Now he learned – and involuntarily had to smile at the idea – that beautiful rooms in private homes were available for former guests of this hotel, but only for them, Liman need but say the word and he would be taken to one at once, it was quite near, there would be no time lost and the rate – they wished to oblige and the room was of course only a substitute – was unusually low, even though the food, Viennese cooking, was, if possible, even better and the service even more attentive than in the former Hotel Kingston, which had really been inadequate in some respects.
‘Thank you,’ said Liman, and got into the carriage. ‘I shall be in Constantinople only five days, I really can’t set myself up in a private home for this short space of time, no, I’m going to a hotel. Next year, however, when I return and your hotel has been rebuilt, I’ll certainly stop only with you. Excuse me!’ And Liman tried to close the carriage door, the handle of which the representative of the hotel was now holding. ‘Sir,’ the latter said pleadingly, and looked up at Liman.
‘Let go!’ shouted Liman, shook the door and directed the driver: ‘To the Hotel Royal.’ But whether it was because the driver did not understand him, whether it was because he was waiting for the door to be closed, in any event he sat on his box like a statue. In no case, however, did the representative of the hotel let go of the door, he even beckoned eagerly to a colleague to rouse himself and come to his aid. There was some girl he particularly hoped could do something, and he kept calling, ‘Fini! Hey, Fini! Where’s Fini?’ The people at the windows and the door had turned towards the inside of the house, they shouted in confusion, one saw them running past the windows, everyone was looking for Fini.
The man who was keeping Liman from driving off and whom obviously only hunger gave the courage to behave like this, could have been easily pushed away from the door. He realized this and did not dare even to look at Liman; but Liman had already had too many unfortunate experiences on his travels not to know how important it is in a foreign country to avoid doing anything that attracts attention, no matter how very much in the right one might be. He therefore quietly got out of the carriage again, for the time being paid no attention to the man who was holding the door in a convulsive grip, went up to the driver, repeated his instructions, expressly added that he was to drive away from here as fast as he could, then walked up to the man at the door of the carriage, took hold of his hand with an apparently ordinary grip, but secretly squeezed the knuckles so hard that the man almost jumped and was forced to remove his hand from the door handle, shrieking ‘Fini!’ which was at once a command and an outburst of pain.
‘Here she comes! Here she comes!’ shouts now came from all the windows, and a laughing girl, her hands still held to her hair, which had just been dressed, her head half bowed, came running out of the house towards the carriage. ‘Quick! Into the carriage! It’s pouring,’ she cried, grasping Liman by the shoulders and holding her face very close to his. ‘I am Fini,’ she then said softly, and let her hands move caressingly along his shoulders.
They really don’t mean so badly by me, Liman said to himself, smiling at the girl, too bad that I’m no longer a young fellow and don’t permit myself risky adventures.
‘There must be some mistake, Miss,’ he said, and turned towards his carriage; ‘I neither asked them to call you nor do I intend to drive off with you.’ From inside the carriage he added, ‘Don’t trouble yourself any further.’
But Fini had already set one foot on the step and said, her arms crossed over her breast, ‘Now why won’t you let me recommend a place for you to stay?’
Tired of the annoyances to which he had already been subjected, Liman leaned out to her and said, ‘Please don’t delay me any longer with useless questions! I am going to a hotel and that’s all. Take your foot off the step, otherwise you may be hurt. Go ahead, driver!’
‘Stop!’ the girl shouted, however, and now in earnest tried to swing herself into the carriage. Liman, shaking his head, stood up and blocked all of the door with his stout body. The girl tried to push him away, using her head and knees in the attempt, the carriage began to rock on its wretched springs, Liman had no real grip.
‘And why won’t you take me with you? And why won’t you take me with you?’ the girl kept repeating.
Certainly Liman would have been able to push away the girl without exerting any special force, even though she was strong, if the man in the frock-coat, who had remained silent until now as though he had been relieved by Fini, had not now, when he saw Fini waver, hurried over with a bound, supported Fini from behind and tried to push the girl into the carriage by exerting all his strength against Liman’s still restrained efforts at defence. Sensing that he was holding back, she actually forced her way into the carriage, pulled at the door which at the same time was slammed shut from the outside, said, as though to herself, ‘Well, now,’ first hastily straightened her blouse and then, more deliberately, her hair. ‘This is unheard of,’ said Liman, who had fallen back into his seat, to the girl who was sitting opposite him.
2 May. It has become very necessary to keep a diary again. The uncertainty of my thoughts, F., the ruin in the office, the physical impossibility of writing and the inner need for it.
Valli walks out through our door behind my brother-in-law who tomorrow will leave for Czortkov for manoeuvres. Remarkable, how much is implied in this following-after of a recognition of marriage as an institution which one has become thoroughly used to.
The story of the gardener’s daughter who interrupted my work the day before yesterday. I, who want to cure my neurasthenia through my work, am obliged to hear that the young lady’s brother, his name was Jan and he was the actual gardener and presumed successor of old Dvorsky, already even the owner of the flower garden, had poisoned himself because of melancholia two months ago at the age of twenty-eight. During the summer he felt relatively well despite his solitary nature, since at least he had to have contact with the customers, but during the winter he was entirely withdrawn. His sweetheart was a clerk – uřednice – a girl as melancholy as he. They often went to the cemetery together.
The gigantic Menasse at the Yiddish performance. Something magical that seized hold of m
e at his movements in harmony with the music. I have forgotten what.
My stupid laughter today when I told my mother that I am going to Berlin54 at Whitsuntide. ‘Why are you laughing?’ said my mother (among several other remarks, one of which was, ‘Look before you leap,’ all of which, however, I warded off with remarks like, ‘It’s nothing,’ etc.). ‘Because of embarrassment,’ I said, and was happy for once to have said something true in this matter.
Yesterday met B.55 Her calmness, contentedness, clarity, and lack of embarrassment, even though in the last two years she has become an old woman, her plumpness – even at that time a burden to her – that will soon have reached the extreme of sterile fatness, her walk has become a sort of rolling or shuffle with the belly thrust, or rather carried, to the fore, and on her chin – at a quick glance only on her chin – hairs now curling out of what used to be down.
3 May. The terrible uncertainty of my inner existence.
How I unbutton my vest to show Mr B. my rash. How I beckon him into another room.
The leper and his wife. The way her behind – she is lying in bed on her belly – keeps rising up with all its ulcers again and again although a guest is present. The way her husband keeps shouting at her to keep covered.
The husband has been struck from behind by a stake – no one knows where it came from – knocked down and pierced. Lying on the ground with his head raised and his arms stretched out, he laments. Later he is able to stand up unsteadily for a moment. He can talk about nothing except how he was struck, and points to the approximate direction from which in his opinion the stake came. This talk, always the same, is by now tiresome to the wife, particularly since the man is always pointing in another direction.