by Franz Kafka
Naturally I am completely satisfied with your translation.104 Just that its relation to the text is like that of Frank to Franz, like your mountain climbing to my own, etc. And if the man can summon the power for nutno and abych,fn7 then things shouldn’t have gotten that far in the first place and he actually could have married after all, the foolish, foolish bachelor. But in any case please leave it the way you wanted and grant me the pleasure of being able to sigh in relief from myself.
Yesterday I advised you not to write me every day, I still hold the same opinion today and it would be very good for both of us, and so I repeat my advice today even more emphatically—only please, Milena, don’t listen to me, and write me every day anyway, it can even be very brief, briefer than today’s letters, just 2 lines, just one, just one word, but if I had to go without them I would suffer terribly.
F
[Prague, July 21, 1920]
Wednesday
One can get results after all, if one has the courage:
In the first place: maybe Gross is not so wrong, at least as far as I understand him—the fact that I am still alive speaks in his favor; otherwise, with the way my internal strength is divided, I actually should have stopped living long ago.
Furthermore: it’s not a question of what will happen later on, the only certainty is that I cannot live apart from you without completely submitting to fear, giving it even more than it demands, and I do this voluntarily, with delight, I pour myself into it.
You are right to reproach me in the name of fear for my behavior in Vienna, but this fear is particularly mysterious; I do not know its inner laws, only its hand on my throat—and that really is the most terrible thing I have ever experienced or could experience.
Perhaps the logical conclusion is that we’re both married: you in Vienna, I to my fear in Prague, in which case you’re not the only one tugging in vain at marriage. For you see, Milena, if you had been completely convinced by me in Vienna (even agreeing to take that step of which you were unsure), you would no longer be in Vienna in spite of everything: or rather in that case there would not be any ‘in spite of everything’—you’d simply be in Prague. Moreover, everything you console yourself with in your last letter really is mere consolation. Don’t you agree?
Had you come to Prague right away or had you at least decided right away to do so, it would still not have served as any proof for you—I don’t need any proofs for you; there is nothing in my mind as clear and certain as you, but it would have been a tremendous proof for me and this is what I’m missing now. Occasionally the fear feeds on this lack as well.
In fact it may even be much worse and I myself, the ‘savior,’ may be tying you down in Vienna like no one else has ever done.
So that was the storm which kept threatening in the forest, still we were happy all the same. Let’s go on living with its threats, since we don’t have any choice.
Laurin telephoned to say that a translation had appeared in Tribuna, but since you hadn’t mentioned it I didn’t know whether you wanted me to read it and so I haven’t yet.105 Now I’ll try to find it somewhere.
I don’t understand what you have against the girl’s letter.106 So it succeeded in its purpose of making you a little jealous, what of it? In the future I’m going to compose similar letters from time to time and write them myself, even better ones than that, and without any final rejections.
Please, a few words about your work! Cesta? Lípa? Kmen? Politika?107
There’s something else I wanted to say, but another young poet was here—I don’t understand,108 the minute someone shows up I remember my office work and can’t concentrate on anything else throughout the entire visit; I’m tired, can’t think of a thing, and my sole wish is to lay my head in your lap, feel your hand on my head, and stay that way through all eternity—
Yours
Here, this is what I wanted to say: your letter does contain one great truth (among other truths): ‘that you’re the one who doesn’t have any idea about …’109 That’s true word for word. It was all just filth, wretched abomination, drowning in hell, and in this respect I come to you as a child who has done something bad and is now standing before his mother and cries and cries and vows: I’ll never do it again. But this is precisely where the fear derives all its strength: ‘Exactly, exactly!’ it says. ‘He doesn’t have any idea! Nothing has happened yet! So-he-can-still-be-saved!’
I jump up. The telephone! Off to see the director!110 For the first time since I returned to Prague I am called down on official business! Now at last the whole swindle will come out. I haven’t done a thing for 18 days except write letters, read letters, and above all look out the window. I’ve held letters in my hand, put them down, picked them up, had a few visitors as well and apart from that nothing. But when I show up he is friendly, he smiles, tells me something official I don’t understand and says goodbye since he’s going on vacation: an inconceivably kind man. (For my part I mumbled inarticulately that I’m almost all through and tomorrow will begin dictation.) And now I’m quickly reporting this to my guardian angel. Strangely enough my letter from Vienna is still lying on his table, and on top of that another letter from Vienna; at first I almost thought, inarticulately, that it was about you.
[Prague, July 22, 1920]
Thursday
Oh yes, this letter. It’s as if one were looking into hell and a man below calls up to someone above and describes what his life is like and how he’s settled in. He first roasts a while in one cauldron, then in another, and afterward sits in the corner to steam off a little. But I don’t know her from before (I’ve just known that pitomecfn8 M for a long time, even Laurin calls him that, I didn’t notice) maybe she really is confused or crazy.111 How could she not be confused by such a fate since it left even us confused, and I think I would be very upset to find myself standing next to her, for she isn’t just a human being anymore but something else besides. And I can’t imagine she doesn’t notice this too, and that she doesn’t feel your disgust at her letter herself. Our words are often those of some unknown alien being—but to have to talk that way incessantly, as may be the case with Jarmila!
Incidentally, Haas appears not to have left her entirely, if I understand it correctly—but it isn’t a letter at all, just drunken sorrow and I don’t understand it in the least.112
Milena, industrious one, your room is undergoing a change in my mind; the desk and the whole place really didn’t look much like work before, but now it does, and so convincingly that I can feel this work; in your room it must be magnificently hot and cool and happy. Only the wardrobe remains as ponderous as always and sometimes the lock is broken and it doesn’t yield a thing, desperately staying shut, and in particular it refuses to give up the dress you wore on ‘Sunday’; if you should ever set up house again we’ll throw it out.
I’m very sorry for many things I’ve written lately; don’t be angry with me. And please stop tormenting yourself with the thought that it’s exclusively your fault you cannot free yourself, or that it’s even your fault at all. I am much more to be blamed, I’ll write about it sometime.
[Prague, July 23, 1920]
Friday
No, it really wasn’t so bad. And anyway, how else is the soul to free itself from a burden except by a little malice? Besides, even today I consider everything I wrote correct. You misunderstood some of it, for instance the part about the ‘only suffering’; it is your self-torment which is this ‘only suffering,’ not your letters which every morning give me the strength I need to get through each day—so much that I don’t want to miss a single one (not a single solitary one of these letters, that’s obvious) of these days. And the letters lying on the table in the front hall don’t contradict me in the least; even the possibility of writing them and putting them away has meant something. And I’m not at all jealous—believe me—but it really is very difficult to realize that jealousy is pointless, and I only occasionally succeed in doing so; on the other hand, I always succeed in not
being jealous. Yes, still on the subject of ‘saviors.’ ‘Saviors,’ you see, are characterized by a tendency to keep hammering in whatever they want to extract, with bestial seriousness. And they deserve this characterization; I stand apart and rejoice at this—not about individual cases but about this general law of the world.
Now at last I have something to tell Max, your opinion—actually rather brief—about his great book. You see he’s always asking about you and how you’re doing and what’s going on, and is always taking everything to heart. But there’s hardly anything for me to say to him; fortunately language alone makes it impossible. I can’t talk about some Milena in Vienna and then go on saying that ‘she’ thinks and says and does this or that. After all, you are neither ‘Milena’ nor ‘she’—that’s utter nonsense—and consequently I can’t say a thing. This is so obvious it doesn’t even make me sad.
Of course I can talk about you with people I don’t know; it’s actually an exquisite pleasure to do so. If I allowed myself to make a little comedy out of it—which is very tempting—the pleasure would be even greater. Recently I ran into Rudolf Fuchs.113 I like him, but normally I would not have been so overjoyed to see him, and I’m sure I would not have shaken his hand as ardently as I did. And even so, I knew that the result would not be that great—but I thought to myself: So what if it’s small. Immediately the conversation turned to Vienna and the people he had seen there. I was very interested in hearing names, he began to list them, no, I didn’t mean it that way, I was interested in hearing him name the women. ‘Well, there was Milena Pollak, whom I believe you know.’ ‘Yes, Milena,’ I repeated and looked down the Ferdinandstrasse, to see what it would say to that. Other names followed, my old cough returned, and the conversation fizzled out. How to revive it? ‘Can you tell me which year of the war it was that I was in Vienna?’ ‘1917.’ ‘Wasn’t E P in Vienna by then? I didn’t see him at the time. Wasn’t he married yet?’ ‘No.’ That was all. Now I could have had him tell me a little about you, but I lacked the necessary strength.
How are you doing with pills right now and over the past few days? You mention headaches again for the first time.
What did Jarmila finally say to your invitation? Could you please say a few words about the Paris plan?
Where will you go now? (A place with good mail service?) When? For how long? 6 Months?
Always tell me right away where anything of yours is appearing. How had you actually planned the two-day trip to Prague? (I’m just curious)
Thank you for the nevertheless, a magical word which enters my bloodstream directly.
[Prague, July 23, 1920]
Friday afternoon
At home I found this letter. I’ve known the girl a long time: we’re probably distant relations—at least we have one relative in common, that cousin she mentions who was lying in Prague critically ill and whom she and her sister were nursing for months. Physically I find her almost unpleasant: her face is too big, round and red-cheeked, her body is small and round, her speech is annoyingly like a whisper. Apart from that I’ve heard good things about her; that is to say, relatives have always complained about her behind her back.
2 months ago my answer to such a letter would have been very simple: No, no, no. Now I don’t think I have any right to do that. Not that I think I’ll be able to help her in any way, of course; no less a person than Bismarck himself has already taken care of such letters once and for all with the observation that life is a poorly organized banquet where the guests wait impatiently for the appetizer, while the roast has already passed in silence, and then have to adjust themselves accordingly—this sagacity is so stupid, so terribly stupid!—it’s more for my own sake than for hers that I’m writing to say I am willing to meet with her. You, Milena, have placed something in my hand—I feel I shouldn’t keep it closed!
My uncle is leaving tomorrow, so once again I’ll get out of the city, into the air, the water, at least a little—I need it badly. She writes that only I am allowed to read the letter; in sending it to you I am complying with her request. Tear it up. A nice line, by the way: women don’t need much.114
[Prague, July 24, 1920]
Saturday
For about half an hour I’ve been reading the 2 letters and the card (not to mention the envelope, I’m surprised that the entire mailroom doesn’t come up and apologize in your name), and only now do I realize that I’ve been laughing the whole time. Was there ever any emperor in the history of the world better off than I am? I walk into my room and find three letters waiting for me, and I don’t have to do a thing except open them—my fingers are too slow!—lean back and—be unable to believe that I am so fortunate, so happy.
No, I wasn’t laughing the whole time, I won’t say a word about your carrying luggage, since I really can’t believe it, and if I can believe it, I cannot imagine it, and if I can imagine it you are as beautiful—no that wasn’t mere beauty, but an aberration of heaven—as you were on ‘Sunday,’ and I understand the ‘Herr’ (he probably gave you 20 K and asked for 3 K back). But then I still can’t believe it and even if it might have happened, I admit it was as terrifying as it was grand. But the fact that you are hungry and are not eating anything (whereas I am fed to the gills here, although I am never hungry) and that you have circles under your eyes (after all, the photo can’t have been retouched—these circles take away half the pleasure your picture gives me, which still leaves me enough to want to kiss your hand so long you’d never have to translate again or carry luggage from the station)—that I can’t forgive you and will never forgive you and even if we’re sitting in front of our hut a hundred years from now I’ll still reproach you for that. No, I’m not joking. You claim to be fond of me, thus to be for me, but you insist on hungering against me and here is the leftover money and there is the Weisser Hahn.
For once I’ll forgive what you say about the girl’s letter because (at last!) you call me tajemník (I’m called that because what I’ve been doing here for 3 weeks is very tajemnéfn9 and otherwise, too, you’re right. But is it enough to be right? And above all: I am not right, so won’t you also bear a small part of my wrong—it won’t work, I know, it’s only the willingness that matters—by reading past the girl’s indifferent letter and focusing on my wrong, which is written there as clear as can be? Besides, I don’t want to hear anything more about this exchange of letters which I caused so thoughtlessly. I sent your letter back to her with a few friendly lines. Since then I haven’t heard a thing; I couldn’t bring myself to suggest a meeting, hopefully everything will blow over silently and amicably.
You defend your letter to Staša and yet I was thanking you for it. I’m sure I keep doing both of them injustice and maybe someday I’ll bring myself to stop.
You were in Neu-Waldegg? And I go there so often, strange that we never met each other. Well, you climb and run so quickly you must have whizzed right by me, just like you did in Vienna. What kind of 4 days were those? A goddess left the cinema and a small porter was standing on the track—and that’s supposed to have been 4 days?
Max will receive your letter today. I didn’t read any more of it than could be done in secret.
Yes, you really were unlucky with Landauer.115 And it still seems good to you in German? What did you make of it, poor thing (not child, please notice!), tortured and confused by my letters as you were. Am I not right in saying my letters upset you? But what good is being right? If I receive letters I am right and endowed with everything, and if none were to arrive I would be neither right nor endowed with anything, including life.
Yes, to go to Vienna!
Please send me the translation, I can’t get my hands on enough of you.
There’s a great stamp collector here, he grabs the stamps out of my hand. Now he already has enough of these 1 K stamps, but he maintains that there are other stamps, bigger, blackish-brown ones for 1 K. I am thinking: I get the letters, shouldn’t I try to obtain the stamps for him? So if you could use these other one-krone
stamps or some other larger ones for 2 K.
[Prague, July 26, 1920]
Monday
Well, the telegram was not an answer but the letter of Thursday evening is. So my insomnia was very justified as was my terrible sadness this morning. Does your husband know about the blood? There’s no need to exaggerate, it may not mean a thing, bleeding has many causes—but still it’s blood and cannot be forgotten. And your response is to go on living your heroically happy life, go on living as if you were urging the blood on: ‘All right, come on, will you finally come.’ And so then it comes. And you don’t give the slightest thought to what I’m supposed to do here and of course you’re not an infant and of course you know what you’re doing,116 but am I supposed to stand here on the shore in Prague and watch as you drown in the Vienna sea, on purpose, right before my eyes? And if you have nothing to eat, isn’t that a need in itself?117 Or do you think it’s more my need than yours? Well, there you’re right, too. And unfortunately I won’t be able to send you money anymore, because at noon I’m going home and stuffing all those useless bills into the kitchen stove.
So we’ve drifted apart entirely, Milena, and the only thing we seem to share is the intense wish that you were here, and your face as close to me as possible. And of course we also share this death wish—this wish to die ‘comfortably,’ but in reality that is a wish small children have anyway, like myself for instance, during arithmetic: I would see the teacher leafing through his notebook, probably looking for my name, and would compare my inconceivable lack of knowledge to this spectacle of power, terror, and reality. Half dreaming with fear, I wished I could rise like a ghost and run down the aisle between the desks, fly by my teacher as light as my knowledge of mathematics, somehow pass through the door, then—once outside—I would pull myself together and be free in the wonderful air which, in all the world known to me, did not contain any greater tensions than those found in that classroom. That would have been ‘comfortable’ indeed. But that’s not the way it happened. I was called upon, given a problem which required a logarithmic table to solve. I had forgotten my table; nonetheless I lied that I had it in my desk (thinking the teacher would lend me his), was sent back to my desk to fetch it, noticed its absence with an alarm I didn’t even need to pretend (at school I never needed to pretend alarm), and the teacher (I ran into him 2 days ago) said to me: ‘You crocodile!’ I was immediately given an ‘Unsatisfactory’ and that was actually a good thing, since it was only a formality, and unfair besides (although I had lied, of course, no one could prove it; is that unfair?)—but above all, I didn’t have to show my shameless ignorance. So on the whole this, too, was quite ‘comfortable’ and under favorable conditions one could even ‘disappear’ in the room itself, and the possibilities were endless and one could even ‘die’ while still alive.