Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  IN THE MARGIN: Yes, I knew I had skipped over something and, without being able to forget it, could not remember it: Fever? Real fever? Did you take your temperature?

  Now I’ve read the other letter after all, but actually just starting at: ‘I don’t want you to answer this.’178 I don’t know what comes before that; but confronted by your letters today, which provide irrefutable proof for your being the you I carry sealed in my innermost self, I am prepared to declare it true unread, and even if it should testify against me to the highest authorities. I am dirty, Milena, infinitely dirty, this is why I scream so much about purity. No one sings as purely as those who inhabit the deepest hell—what we take to be the song of angels is their song.

  IN THE MARGIN: There’s probably no swimming anymore? The view of your apartment, please.

  IN THE MARGIN: Jarmila did write back after all, three lines: that her letter is neither urgent nor important and that she thanks me. Concerning Vlasta, I’m still waiting for your answer.

  For a few days now I’ve been performing my ‘military service’—or more correctly ‘maneuvers,’ which is sometimes the best thing for me, as I discovered years ago.179 In the afternoon I sleep in bed as long as I can, then walk around for two hours, then stay awake as long as I can. But the catch is in this ‘as long as I can.’ ‘I can’t for long’—not in the afternoon, not at night, and still I’m practically wilted in the morning when I walk into the office. The real treasure lies hidden in the deep of the night, in the second, third, fourth hour; but these days if I don’t go to bed before midnight at the latest I am lost and so are night and day. Nevertheless none of that matters, this being-in-service is good even when there are no results. Nor will there be any; it takes me half a year to ‘loosen the tongue,’ and then I realize it’s already over, that my permission to serve has expired. But as I said: it’s good in itself, even if sooner or later the coughing intervenes tyrannically.

  Of course, the letters weren’t that bad, but I really don’t deserve this letter in pencil. Is there anyone in heaven or on Earth who does?

  [Prague, August 26–27, 1920]

  Thursday evening

  Today I did practically nothing except sit around and read a little here, a little there—but mostly I did nothing, or else listened to a very light pain working in the temples. All day long I was preoccupied with your letters: in agony, in love, in worry, and in an entirely indefinite fear of the indefinite, which is indefinite mainly because it is infinitely beyond my strength. At the same time I didn’t at all dare read the letter a second time and there is one half-page I didn’t dare read a first time. Why can’t one accept the fact that the right thing to do is live inside this very special tension which keeps suicide suspended? (I tried to laugh at you when you occasionally said something similar.) Why does one attempt instead to ease it, in petulance, and then burst out of it like an irrational animal (even loving this irrationality like an animal), thereby bodily absorbing all the disrupted, wild electricity, so that one is practically consumed?

  I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to say with that; I’d just like to somehow intercept the laments coming from your letters, not the written laments, but the silent ones, and I can do this since they’re basically my own. It’s the strangest thing that even here in the darkness we are so much of one mind—I can believe it literally only every other moment.

  Friday

  Instead of sleeping I spent the night with the letters (though not entirely voluntarily). That’s still not the worst. Of course no letter arrived, but that in itself doesn’t matter either. At the moment it’s much better not to write every day; you realized this in secret before I did. The daily letters weaken instead of strengthen; one used to drink the letters to the last drop and immediately feel ten times stronger (I’m talking about Prague and not Meran) and ten times thirstier. But now it’s all so serious, now one bites one’s lips while reading and nothing is as certain as the small pain in the temples. But even that is tolerable, just one thing: don’t get sick, Milena, don’t get sick. It’s fine if you don’t write; (how many days do I need to cope with 2 letters like yesterday’s? A stupid question—are days enough?) but it shouldn’t be because you’re sick. I’m only thinking of myself here. What would I do? Most probably the same thing I’m doing now, but how would I do it? No, I don’t want to think about that. And, at the same time, whenever I think of you, the clearest picture I have is always one where you’re lying in bed, the way you were lying in the meadow in Gmünd that evening (when I was telling you about my friend and you weren’t paying much attention). And this isn’t an agonizing picture at all, but the best I’m capable of right now: you’re lying in bed, I’m nursing you a little, now and then I walk over to you and place my hand on your forehead, I sink into your eyes whenever I’m looking at you, and feel your eyes on me whenever I’m walking around the room and all the time I am aware, with a pride I can no longer contain, that I am living for you, that I am allowed to do so, and that, in this way, I am beginning to thank you for the fact that you once stopped beside me and gave me your hand. Furthermore, this would only be a sickness which passes quickly, leaving you healthier than you were before, one which lets you arise once again in all your greatness; whereas I would just crawl under the earth: suddenly and soon, hopefully without noise and pain.—This doesn’t cause me the slightest agony, but the idea you might fall ill far away—

  Here’s the ad, it could probably have been a little wittier and easier to understand, particularly the ‘Vienna Schools of Business and Languages’ are standing there senselessly, deserted; in any case, the comma after Teacher wasn’t mine. By the way, tell me what you’d like to have improved and I’ll have it changed for the next run. For now it has appeared on the 26th and will appear next on the 1st, 5th, and 12th.

  It turns out Max really isn’t able to mediate. Topič did indeed publish Tycho Brahe;180 since then, however, another Jewish-political brochure was supposed to appear—it had already been accepted—but then because of lack of paper, printing costs, etc., it was once again rejected. So he’s actually fallen out with Topič.

  [Prague, end of August, 1920]

  What I said still holds, I cannot force it or myself, but that only has to do with the following insofar as your suffering will still bring me some good; your suffering still cares for me, not by allowing me to approach with money, but by letting me participate in some way, from a distance, from very far away (whenever I’m allowed to of course); still I’m not afraid you’re going to refuse me, since there isn’t any reason to do so—I’m just afraid you won’t want to go to a sanatorium even now. And yet you liked Kreuzen so much, for example. You have 1,000 K from your father, correct? Or 1,200, right? 1,000 K is the least I can send you each month. That’s 8,000 Austrian krone all in all. The sanatorium won’t cost more than 250 K a day. And this way you can stay there through the fall and winter and if not in Kreuzen, then somewhere else. I confess: I’m hardly thinking of you—I’m so happy to breathe again with you so near. But that still doesn’t affect what I said.

  As a sign of this, instead of a card I’ll send something in print to your house the next time I write.

  [Prague, August 28, 1920]

  Saturday

  So beautiful, so beautiful, Milena, so beautiful. There’s nothing so beautiful in the letter (from Tuesday)—but the peace, the trust, the clarity from which it springs.

  There wasn’t anything this morning; that in itself would have been easy to cope with; receiving letters now is very different, although writing letters has hardly changed—the need and the joy of having to write remain. Anyhow I could have coped with that; why do I need a letter, if, for example, I spent the whole day yesterday and the evening and half the night in conversation with you, a conversation where I was as sincere and earnest as a child, and you as receptive and earnest as a mother (actually I’ve never seen such a child or such a mother), so all that would have been all right, I just have to know why you’re not
writing, so I don’t keep seeing you sick in bed, in the small room, the autumn rains outside, you alone, with a fever (you wrote that), with a cold (you wrote that), also night sweats and exhaustion (you wrote about all of that)—so if it isn’t all like this, things are fine and at the moment I don’t want anything better.

  I won’t attempt to answer the first paragraph of your letter, I still don’t even know the notorious first paragraph of the prior letter. Those are very complicated things which can only be solved in conversation between mother and child; perhaps they can only be solved there because they can’t possibly come up. I won’t attempt to do so because the pain is lurking in my temples. Did Cupid’s arrow pierce my temples instead of my heart? I won’t write about Gmünd anymore either, at least not intentionally. There’d be a lot to say, but in the end all it would come down to is that the first day in Vienna wouldn’t have been any better had I left in the evening. Even so, Vienna had the advantage over Gmünd because I arrived there halfunconscious with fear and exhaustion, but when I arrived in Gmünd, on the other hand, I felt—although I didn’t realize this, fool that I was—so grandly confident, as if nothing could happen to me anymore. I went there like a homeowner; it’s strange that, with all the uneasiness constantly coursing through my veins, this weariness of ownership is still possible; in fact, it may be my only genuine flaw, in this matter and in others.

  It’s already 2:45, I didn’t receive your letter until 2:00, now I’m stopping to eat, all right?

  Not because it might have any significance for me, but just for the sake of sincerity: yesterday I heard that Lisl Beer may have a villa in Gilgen.181 Is that connected to any torment for you?

  The translation of the final sentence is very good.182 Every sentence, every word, every—if I may say so—music in that story is connected with the ‘fear.’ It was then, during one long night, that the wound broke open for the first time, and in my opinion the translation catches this association exactly, with that magic hand which is yours.

  You see what’s so agonizing about receiving letters—well, I don’t need to tell you. Today between your letter and mine there is a clear, good being together, breathing deeply—as far as this is possible in the great uncertainty—and now I have to wait for the answers to my earlier letters, and these scare me.

  Incidentally, how can you be expecting my letter Tuesday, if I didn’t receive your address until Monday?

  [Prague, August 28, 1920]

  You also like conductors, don’t you? Yes, that funny but lean conductor back then, so Viennese! But they’re good people here too; children want to grow up to be conductors, so they too will be powerful and respected, so they can drive around, stand on the running board, and bend down so low over other children, and they have a ticket punch as well and so many tram tickets; but all these possibilities rather intimidate me—I’d like to be a conductor so I can be so happy myself, and so interested in everything. Once I was walking behind a slow tram and the conductor.

  (The poet has arrived to take me out of the office, let him wait until I’m finished with the conductors)183

  was on the rear platform leaning over and shouting something to me—which I couldn’t hear due to the noise on the Josefsplatz; he was also waving his arms excitedly, wanting to show me something, but I couldn’t understand what, and meanwhile the tram was moving further away and his efforts were becoming more and more hopeless—at last I understood: the golden safety pin on my collar had come undone and he had been trying to call my attention to it. I thought about that when I boarded the tram this morning as dull as a sick ghost, following last night; the conductor gave me change for 5 K, and in order to cheer me up (not exactly me, as he hadn’t looked at me at all; he just wanted to cheer up the atmosphere) he made some friendly remark which I couldn’t hear about the bills he was handing me, whereupon a gentleman standing beside me also smiled at me in recognition of the distinction I had received. I could only answer by smiling myself and so everything became a little better. If it could only cheer up the rainy sky above St. Gilgen!

  [Prague, August 29–30, 1920]

  Sunday

  An unusual error yesterday. Yesterday at noon I was so happy because of your letter (from Tuesday), and when I reread it in the evening it turned out to be essentially the same as the last letters: it is far more unhappy than it admits. The error proves how much I think only of myself, how much I’m locked inside myself, how I cling to whatever part of you I can, and how I’d like most of all to run off with it somewhere in the desert, somewhere, so that no one can take it away from me. Because I had come running into my room after dictation, because your letter surprised me there, because I read it over greedily and gladly, because nothing seemed to be written against me in bold type, because by chance my temples were only quietly knocking, because I was just lightminded enough to imagine you bedded down in the peace and quiet of forest, lake, and mountains—for all these reasons and more, none of which had the slightest thing to do with your letter and your real situation, what you wrote struck me as happy and I replied with corresponding nonsense.

  Monday

  Dear Milena, how uncontrolled, how much being tossed to and fro on a sea which refuses to swallow one up out of sheer malice. Recently I asked you not to write me every day; this was sincere—I was afraid of your letters if on occasion one didn’t come I felt calmer; whenever I saw one on the table I had to gather all my strength—which was far from enough—and today I would have been unhappy, if these cards had not arrived (I have appropriated both). Thank you.

  […] Office work.184

  Of all the generalities I’ve read about Russia up to now, the enclosed essay made the greatest impression on me, or more accurately, on my body, my nerves, my blood.185 Incidentally, I did not take everything exactly as it’s written there; first I rearranged it for my orchestra. (Since the whole thing is a fragment anyway, I tore off the conclusion; it contains accusations against the Communists which don’t belong in this context.)

  This address with its short words, one underneath the other, sounds like a litany, a eulogy, doesn’t it?

  [Prague, August 31, 1920]

  Tuesday

  A letter from Friday, if none was written Thursday it’s fine, so long as none is lost.

  What you write about me is terribly smart, I don’t want to add anything, just leave it the way it stands. There’s just one thing—something you also mention—I would like to state a little more openly: my misfortune is that I consider all human beings to be good—naturally above all the ones I consider the most eminent—both with my mind and with my heart (a man just came in and was shocked because I was making a face which expressed these opinions to the void). My body, however, simply cannot believe these people will stay that good once they really have to; my body is afraid and would rather crawl slowly up the wall than await this trial, which really would—in this sense—redeem the world.

  Once again I’m starting to tear up letters, one last night. You’re very unhappy because of me (probably combined with other things, it’s all a mutual effect). Say it more and more frankly. Of course it takes time.

  Yesterday I was at the doctor’s. Contrary to my expectations, neither he nor the scales find me improved; on the other hand, I’m no worse. But he thinks I should leave. After I explained why, he quickly agreed that southern Switzerland was out of the question, and immediately named two sanatoria in lower Austria as the best, without any coaching from me: Sanatorium Grimmenstein (Dr. Frankfurter) and Sanatorium Wiener Wald, although at the moment he doesn’t have the address of either one. When you get a chance could you please find that out, at a pharmacist’s, from a doctor, in a postal or telephone directory? There’s no hurry. Nor does this mean I’m leaving. Those institutions are exclusively for the lung, houses that literally cough and shake with fever day and night, where you have to eat meat, where former hangmen dislocate your arm if you resist injections, and where Jewish doctors look on, stroking their beards, callous towa
rd Jews and Christians alike.

  In one of your last letters you wrote something (I don’t dare take these last letters out; it’s also possible that in glancing over them I misunderstood this, that’s the most likely possibility) about your situation there coming to its final end. How much of that was temporary suffering and how much abiding truth?

  I reread your letter and take back the ‘terribly,’ some things are missing there and there are a few things too many, so it’s merely ‘smart.’ It’s also difficult for people to play ‘tag’ with ghosts.

  You saw Blei?186 What’s he up to? I can easily believe the whole thing was silly—also that you were left with conflicting opinions. Of course, there’s an element of beauty as well, just that this is about 50,000 miles away and refuses to come, and if all the bells of Salzburg were to begin ringing it would cautiously retreat another several thousand miles.

  [Prague, September 1, 1920]

  Wednesday

  No letter today; it’s silly; I take exception when a letter doesn’t come, and when one does come I moan, but in this case I’m allowed to do that, you know that neither one nor the other is a genuine complaint. Jarmila came by my office today, so I’ve seen her a second time. I don’t know exactly why she came. She sat at my desk, we spoke a little about this and that, then we stood at the window, then at the table, then she sat down again, and then she left. She was quite pleasant to me, calm, peaceful, just a little less dead than last time: somewhat flushed, actually not very pretty, especially while sitting down, when she was even ugly, with her hat clumsily pulled down into her face. But I honestly don’t know why she came; it may be that she is too much alone and since she essentially and necessarily does nothing, coming to see me must have also counted as doing nothing. Moreover, our whole time together had the character of nothingness and was as unpleasant as the void. Of course it got more difficult toward the end, since obviously an end has to have something of reality, something set apart from nothingness, but reality was kept away as much as possible: the only result was that on some indefinite occasion, at some indefinite time when I’m taking a stroll in her neighborhood, I’ll drop in and see if she’s home, perhaps to take a short walk. As indefinite as it is, however, it’s still much too much and I’d gladly get out of it. But now she’s come by twice, and, after all, she isn’t someone I’d want to offend so blithely, even from a distance, so what should I do? If you have a particularly good idea maybe you could send me a telegram, since I won’t receive any answer by letter for another 10 days.