Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  There was no letter today, but I’m not afraid, Milena, please don’t misunderstand me; I’m never afraid about you, even if it sometimes seems that way and it often does—it’s simply a weakness, a mood of the heart, which knows exactly why it’s beating nevertheless. Giants have their weaknesses as well; I believe even Hercules fainted once. With my teeth clenched, however, and with your eyes before me I can endure anything: distance, anxiety, worry, letterlessness.

  How happy I am, how happy you make me! A client came—imagine, I have clients too. The man interrupted my writing; I was annoyed, but he had a kind, friendly, fat face, at the same time a very correct face, as only Germans from the Reich have. He was gracious enough to consider jokes official business; nonetheless he had disturbed me, and I couldn’t forgive him. On top of that I had to get up and accompany him to other departments, but even that was too much for you, my kind one, and just when I was getting up the attendant brings in your letter and I open it on the staircase—good heavens, there is a picture inside, something which is absolutely inexhaustible, something which makes this a letter for a whole year, for an eternity and which is so good, it couldn’t be any better: a pitiful picture, which one may only behold through tears and palpitations of the heart, not in any other way.

  And again a stranger is sitting at my table.

  To continue what I was saying above: With you in my heart I can bear everything, and even if I did write that the days without letters were horrifying, it’s not true; they were just horribly difficult—the boat was heavy and it’s draught was horribly deep, but on your tide it floated nonetheless. There’s only one thing I cannot bear without your express help, Milena: the ‘fear.’ I’m much too weak for that, it’s so immense I cannot see beyond it—and this monstrous flood is washing me away.

  What you say about Jarmila is precisely one of those weaknesses of the heart; your heart stops being true to me just for a moment and that’s when such an idea pops into your head. In this sense are we still two different people? And is my ‘fear’ much different than the fear of self-abuse?

  Again I am interrupted; I will no longer be able to write in the office.

  The big letter you promised would almost scare me, if this letter weren’t so reassuring. What will it contain?

  Let me know at once whether the money arrived. If it got lost I’ll send some more, and if that should get lost, I’ll send still more, and so on, until we don’t have anything left, and only then will everything be as it should.

  F

  I didn’t receive the flower, at the last moment you must have considered it too good for me.

  [Prague, July 17, 1920]

  Saturday

  I knew what would be in your letter, it was lurking in back of all your letters, in your eyes—what could possibly hide in their clear depths?—in the lines of your forehead. I knew it all along, just like somebody who has spent the whole day behind closed shutters, submerged in some kind of sleep-dream-fear, who then opens the window in the evening and is naturally not amazed—having known it all along—to now find it dark, a wonderful deep darkness. And I see how you are tormenting yourself and writhing and how you cannot free yourself now and—let’s throw the match into the gunpowder— how you never will. I see all that but still can’t say: Stay where you are. But nor do I say the opposite; I simply stand beside you, looking into your lovely poor eyes (the picture you sent me really is pitiful, it’s torture to look at, a torture one submits to 100 times a day and—unfortunately—a possession I could defend against 10 strong men) and I am indeed strong, as you write; I do possess a certain strength which might be briefly and imprecisely described as being unmusical. On the other hand, this strength is not so great that I could go on writing just now. I am caught in a tide of sorrow and love which is carrying me away from writing.

  F

  [Prague, July 18, 1920]

  Sunday

  Still on the subject of yesterday:

  Concerning your letter, I am trying to look at the whole situation from the point of view I have most avoided up to now. From that angle it looks strange: I am not fighting your husband for you, this fight exists only within yourself; if the decision depended on a battle between your husband and me everything would have been decided long ago. I’m not overestimating your husband in the least—it’s even very likely that I’m underestimating him—but this much I know: if he does love me then it is a rich man’s love of poverty (which to some extent is also present in your relationship with me). In the atmosphere of your life with him I really am just the mouse in the ‘big house’ which is allowed to run freely across the carpet once a year at the most.

  That’s the way it is and there’s nothing strange about it, I am not surprised. But what does surprise me, and this probably cannot be explained, is that you who live in this ‘big house,’ you who belong there with all your senses, you who derive your strongest life from it, you who reign there as a great queen, that it is nonetheless possible for you—I am sure of this—not only to love me but also to be mine, to run across your own carpet. (But this is precisely because you can do anything: ‘after all, I never stop for—nor for—nor for—.’)91

  But this isn’t yet the summit of my surprise, which can be found in the fact that if you did want to come to me, if you wanted to give up the whole world—to judge musically—in order to descend to me, so far down your vision would not only be impaired, it would be completely obstructed; anyway, if you wanted to come to me, you wouldn’t have to climb down (oddly, oddly enough), you would have to grasp beyond yourself, beyond yourself in such a superhuman way you might tear in the process, or plunge, or disappear (along with me of course). And all that just to attain a place with no attractions, where I sit without happiness or unhappiness, without merit or guilt, simply because that’s where I was placed. On the ladder of mankind I’m something like a shopkeeper in your suburbs from before the war (not even a fiddler, not even that), even if I had fought or struggled to reach this position—which I didn’t—it would not be any great achievement.

  What you write about the roots is very clear and correct. At any rate, in Turnau the main task consisted in first locating all the secondary roots and removing them; once just the taproot remained the real work was basically done, as the whole thing could then be torn out following a single stroke of the spade.92 I can still hear how it cracked. Of course there it was easy to tear things out, for one knew it was a tree that would thrive in other soil as well, and besides, it wasn’t even a tree yet, but a child.

  In general I don’t have the least desire to speak with Jarmila. Except if there’s some errand particularly important to you, then of course I’d go there right away.

  Yesterday I spoke with Laurin once again. I think we’re in complete agreement as far as he is concerned. He has several good qualities; for example, he’s at his best whenever he talks about you—yes, he really is a good person deep inside. What did he tell me? I was with him twice and each time he basically told me the same story with many minor details. A girl, engaged to someone else, comes to visit and stays at his place for 8–10 hours, despite his utmost aversion (one girl in his apartment in the morning, another in his office at night, that’s how he divides his waking time). She explains she absolutely has to have him and that she’ll jump out the window if he refuses. He does indeed refuse and consequently clears the way to the window. Now of course, nobody jumps, although something terrible does happen; the one girl has a screaming fit, the other—I’ve already forgotten. But now who the girls are. The one (in the apartment) was Jarmila before her wedding, the other one in the office his wife to whom he has been wedded since Thursday (naturally he spoke a little more gently of her, but not much more—as he always speaks a little gently). Now I don’t deny that all this, or worse, really happened the way he described; I just don’t understand why it’s so boring.

  Incidentally there was one nice moment in the stories he told about his fiancée. For two years her father suffered f
rom melancholia, she took care of him. The window in his room had to be kept open at all times, but it had to be closed for a moment whenever a car passed by below, since her father couldn’t stand the noise. The daughter saw to it that the window was shut. When Laurin told this story he added: ‘Just think, an art historian!’ (Which she actually is.)

  He also showed me her picture. A probably beautiful, melancholic, Jewish face, flattened nose, heavy eyes, long gentle hands, expensive dress.

  You ask about the girl, I don’t have any news about her. I haven’t seen her once since the time she gave me her letter to you. It’s true I did have an appointment with her at the time, but that was just when I received the first letters about your conversations with your husband. I didn’t feel capable of talking to her and canceled with a true but also truly friendly explanation. Later on I wrote her another note; however, she seems to have misunderstood that one, since she then sent me a didactic, motherly letter (in which she asked for your husband’s address among other things). I answered her accordingly at once by pneumatic mail, but it’s been over a week now; I haven’t heard a thing from her since then, nor do I know yet what you wrote her and how it affected her.

  IN THE MARGIN: I know your answer, but I’d like to see it in writing.

  You write you might come to Prague next month. I almost feel like saying: Don’t come. Leave me the hope that you’ll come immediately if I should ever be in urgent need and ask you to do so—but right now it would be better if you didn’t come, since you’d only have to leave again.

  As far as the beggarwoman is concerned, there was nothing good or bad in what I did;93 I was simply too distracted or too preoccupied with one thing for my behavior to be guided by anything except vague memories. And one such memory says for instance: ‘Don’t give beggars too much, you’ll regret it later.’ When I was a very small boy I once received a sechserl and very much wanted to give it to an old beggarwoman who used to sit between the Grosser and the Kleiner Rings.94 But the amount seemed enormous to me back then, bigger than anything ever given a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the woman to do something so unheard-of. Even so, I felt I had to give it to her, so I changed the sechserl, gave her one kreuzer, ran around the Rathaus and all the adjacent buildings and the arcade along the Kleiner Ring, then emerged on the left as a completely new benefactor. Once again I gave the woman a kreuzer, once again began to run, and did this ten times (or maybe a little less, since I believe the woman later lost her patience and disappeared). In any case, by the end I was so exhausted—morally as well as physically—that I ran home right away and cried until my mother gave me another sechserl.

  You see, I have bad luck with beggars, but I hereby declare myself willing to present my entire past and future fortune—in the smallest Viennese banknotes, one by one—to a beggarwoman there in front of the opera, under the condition that you are standing next to me and I may feel you close to me.95

  Franz

  [Prague, July 19, 1920]

  Monday

  There are several things you misunderstand, Milena:

  First of all, I’m not that sick and when I’ve had some sleep I actually feel almost better than I did in Meran. Pulmonary diseases are probably the kindest of all, even during a hot summer. How I’ll be able to cope with the autumn later on is also a question for later. For the moment I only have a few complaints—for example that I can’t get any work done at the office. If by chance I’m not writing to you, then I’m lying in my armchair, staring out the window. There’s enough to look at, the view is open enough, since the house across the street is only one story high. I don’t mean to imply I find this occupation particularly depressing—no, not at all—it’s just that I can’t tear myself away.

  Second, I am not in any need of money; I have more than enough. Some of it, like the money for your vacation, even oppresses me because it’s still just sitting there.

  Third, you have once and for all already made the decisive contribution to my recovery, which you renew every minute by thinking well of me.

  IN THE MARGIN: And besides, please rest assured about me; I’ll wait on the last day just as I did on the first.

  Fourth, all the doubts you so quietly express concerning the trip to Prague are correct. ‘Correct’ is also what I wired, although there it referred to speaking with your husband, and that was indeed the only correct thing to do. This morning, for instance, I suddenly began to fear, to fear out of love, to fear in anguish that you might come to Prague, misled by some trivial, accidental whim. But could such a trivial whim really have such influence on you, you who live life so intensely, down to its very depths? And you shouldn’t even be misled by the days in Vienna. Isn’t it possible we owed something to your unconscious hope of being able to see him again in the evening? No more on that. Or just this: I just now learned two new facts from your letter—first the Heidelberg plan, second the plan concerning Paris and fleeing the bank.96 The first demonstrates to me that I somehow do fit in the category of ‘saviors’ and violent criminals. But then again I don’t. The second makes it clear that your future-life exists there, too: plans, possibilities, prospects, your prospects as well.

  Fifth, a part of your awful self-torment—the only suffering you inflict on me—consists in your writing me every day. Write less frequently; if you want I’ll still send you a daily note. You’ll also have more peace for the work you enjoy.

  Thanks for the Donadieu.97 (Couldn’t I somehow send you the books?) At the moment I’ll hardly be able to read it—this is another minor complaint: I can’t read, although this fact doesn’t particularly pain me; it’s simply an impossibility. I have to read a long manuscript of Max’s98 (Judaism, Christianity, Paganism—a great book), he’s already practically pressing me, and I’ve barely begun. A young poet brought me 75 poems today, some of them several pages long; no doubt I’ll antagonize him again as I already did once before, incidentally.99 Back then I read Claudel’s essay immediately, but just once and too quickly; my enthusiasm, however, was neither directed at Claudel nor at Rimbaud.100 I didn’t want to write about it until after I had read it a second time, nonetheless I was very glad this was exactly what you chose to translate. Is it complete? (What does ‘pamatikální’ mean?)101 Actually the only thing I remember clearly is the Ave-Maria experience of some pious person in the first column.

  I am enclosing the letter the girl sent by way of reply; it should enable you to reconstruct my own letter. This way you can see how I am rejected—not without reason. I won’t answer anymore.

  Yesterday afternoon wasn’t much better than last Sunday. It actually began quite well; it was 36° in the shade when I left the house to go to the cemetery and the trams were on strike, but this particularly pleased me, since I was looking forward to the walk, as much as I had been looking forward to walking to the little garden next to the Stock Exchange that Saturday. But when I reached the cemetery I couldn’t find the grave; the information booth was closed, no attendant and none of the women knew a thing.102 I also checked in a book but it was the wrong one, I wandered around for hours, completely befuddled from reading the inscriptions and left the cemetery in a similar state—

  F

  [Prague, July 20, 1920]

  Tuesday

  Between dictation, for which I’ve pulled myself together today:

  Letters like the two today, small and happy or at least spontaneous, are almost (almost almost almost almost) forest, and wind in your sleeves and a view of Vienna. Milena, how good it is to be with you!

  Today the girl sends me your letter without a word—just a few passages underlined in pencil. Apparently she’s not very pleased with it; well, like any letter adorned with pencil marks it has its defects; looking at it I realize what an inane, impossible thing I asked you to do and beg you many times for forgiveness. Of course I should ask her to forgive me as well, because no matter how it was written, it was bound to upset her. When you write for instance, very considerately, ‘because he had neith
er spoken nor written about you,’ it must have hurt her, just as the opposite would have also hurt her. Again: forgive me.103

  Incidentally, with a different letter, the one to Staša, you helped me very much.

  Afternoon

  In the office I succeeded in keeping myself away from this letter, but this cost me so much effort there was nothing left for my work.

  The letter to Staša: Jílovský came to see me yesterday morning and mentioned that a letter from you had arrived; he saw it on the table as he was leaving the house in the morning, but he didn’t know what was inside—Staša would tell me in the evening. In the face of his friendliness I felt uneasy, thinking of all the things your letter might contain, things caused in part by me. But that evening it turned out the letter was very positive and both of them were satisfied, at least as far as its friendly mood was concerned (I didn’t read it). Above all, it contained a brief word of thanks to the husband, which could have only originated in something I wrote, and which made Staša very happy and caused his own eyes to shine a little more than usual. They are good people after all—if one strains to forget certain things, makes oneself comfortable, and if one’s stomach, one’s nervous stomach can hold out—especially when they’re together or if he is alone (Staša alone is a more dubious proposition) and Staša had a wonderfully beautiful moment as she studied your photograph, actually inconceivably long and very concentrated and silent and serious. Maybe I’ll say more about the evening later; I was tired, empty, boring, deserving to be spanked, indifferent, and from the beginning all I wanted to do was go to bed. (They asked me to send you the enclosed piece of paper, a drawing by Staša with explanations by Jílovský—we were talking about the layout of your room.) By the way they live very richly, require more than 60,000 K a year and say it’s impossible to get by with less.