Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  I wired you the address yesterday: H J c/o Karl Maier,191 Berlin W 15 Lietzenburger (or Lützenburger-) strasse No. 32

  Your telegram was very good. I wouldn’t have gone to see Jarmila otherwise; following your telegram I did. So she was the one who had dropped by two days ago. Actually she didn’t even say what she had wanted: she intended to send you a letter and wanted to ask me whether you could keep it safe from your husband (why keep it?), and now she’s reconsidered and no longer intends to send it, but it’s possible she might want to later after all, and in that case she’ll either send it to me or bring it—that’s how unclear it all was. But the main thing was that I was extremely boring (although very much against my will), as oppressive as a coffin lid, and my leaving brought her, Jarmila, salvation.

  Now some letters came after all (from Wednesday and Friday). (Also a letter from the Woche addressed to Frank K; how do they know my name is Frank?) Thank you for the addresses, I’ll write them down.192 Oh yes, to be close to you … Otherwise I have too much to do to just lie in the sanatorium, be fed, and stare up at the eternal reproach of the winter sky.

  Starting today I’m no longer alone in the office: this is tiring after being by myself for so long, even if questions—oh, now the poet was here for almost two hours and left in tears. And he’s probably unhappy about that, although, after all, crying is the best possible thing.

  Yes, of course, don’t write me if it’s a ‘chore,’ not even if you ‘want’ to write, and not even if you ‘have to’ write—but then what’s left? Just whatever’s more than all that.

  I’m enclosing something for the naughty niece.

  Yes, I’ll write to Staša.

  [Prague, September 7, 1920]

  Tuesday

  Misunderstanding through and through; no, it’s worse than mere misunderstanding, Milena, even if you do of course correctly understand the surface—but what is there to understand or not understand. This misunderstanding keeps recurring; it already happened once or twice in Meran. After all, I wasn’t asking you for advice the way I might ask the man sitting across the desk from me. I was talking to myself, asking myself for advice, sound asleep, and now you are waking me up.

  Apart from that, there’s nothing more to say about it, the Jarmila affair is over and done with, as I wrote you yesterday—you may still get the letter. Incidentally, the letter you are sending me now comes from Jarmila.

  […]193

  I don’t know how I’m supposed to ask her for that, I don’t know what you want; after all, I’ll hardly see or write her anymore and the idea of writing her something like this—?

  I also understood yesterday’s telegram to mean I shouldn’t write Staša anymore. I hope I understood it correctly.

  Yesterday I spoke with Max once more about the Tribuna. For political reasons he cannot agree to have something appear in the Tribuna. But just tell me why you’d like to have something Jewish and I can suggest or send you many other things.

  I don’t know if you understood my remark about the essay on Bolshevism correctly. What the author takes exception to is, as far as I’m concerned, the highest possible praise on Earth.

  Janowitz’s address, in case you didn’t receive the last letter: c/o Karl Maier, Berlin W 15 Lietzenburgerstrasse 32.—But I also wired it to you, I’m so distracted.

  Last evening I was with Přibram.194 Old times. He spoke of you kindly and well, not at all like you were a ‘servant girl.’ Incidentally, we (Max and I) treated him very badly, inviting him to join us for the evening, speaking innocuously for 2 hours about this and that and then suddenly attacking him (as a matter of fact, I led the attack) on the subject of his brother. But he defended himself brilliantly, his arguments were difficult to rebut; even invoking a former ‘patient’ didn’t help much. But the attempt isn’t over yet.

  If someone had told me last night (when around 8:00 I looked in from the street on the banquet hall of the Jewish Rathaus, where well over 100 Russian-Jewish emigrants are being housed—the hall is packed as full as during a national assembly—while they wait here for their American visas;195 later, at about 12:30 at night, I saw them there all asleep, one next to the other; they were even sleeping stretched out on chairs, here and there someone was coughing or turning over or walking carefully between the rows, the electric light is on throughout the night) if someone had told me last night I could be whatever I wanted, I would have chosen to be a small Jewish boy from the East, standing there in the corner without a trace of worry, his father talking with the men in the middle of the hall, his heavily clad mother rummaging through the bundles they have brought for the journey, his sister chatting with the girls and scratching in her beautiful hair—and in a few weeks one will be in America. Of course it’s not that simple; there have been cases of dysentery, there are people standing outside shouting threats through the window, there’s even fighting among the Jews themselves: two have already gone at one another with knives. But if one is small, able to grasp everything quickly and judge it properly, then what can happen? And plenty such boys were running around there, climbing over the mattresses, crawling underneath chairs and lying in wait for the bread which someone—they are all one people—was spreading with something—it is all edible.

  [Prague, September 10, 1920]

  Friday

  Your telegram just arrived. You’re absolutely right, the way I took care of it was disconsolately stupid and clumsy, but nothing else was possible, for we are living in misunderstandings; our questions are rendered worthless by our replies. Now we have to stop writing one another and leave the future to the future.

  Since I’m only allowed to telephone Vlasta and not write her, I won’t be able to tell her until tomorrow.

  [Prague, September 14, 1920]

  Tuesday

  Today 2 letters came and the picture postcard. I hesitated to open them. You are either inconceivably kind or inconceivably self-controlled; everything speaks for the first, some things for the second.

  I repeat: You were absolutely right. And if you—this is impossible—had inflicted on me something as inconsiderate, pigheaded, childishly foolish, smug, and even indifferent as I have done to you by what I said to Vlasta, I would have lost my mind, and not just for the time it took to send a telegram.

  I only read the telegram twice, once briefly when I received it, and then days later when I tore it up.

  It’s difficult to describe this first reading; so many things came together at once.

  The clearest was that you were beating me; I think it began with ‘sofort,’fn16 that was the blow.

  No, today I can’t write about that in detail, not because I’m particularly tired, but because I’m “heavy.” I have been overcome by the nothingness I once described.

  I’m sure it would all be impossible to understand if I had considered myself guilty while doing all the above; in that case, I would have been justly beaten. No, both of us are guilty—and neither one.

  After overcoming all justifiable resistance, you may nevertheless be able to reconcile yourself to Vlasta’s letter which you’ll find in Vienna. I went looking for her at your father’s apartment the very afternoon I got your telegram. Downstairs was a note saying ‘1 schody,’fn17 I had always taken that to be the first story and now it was all the way upstairs. A young pretty happy maid opened the door. Vlasta wasn’t there; I had expected that but had wanted to do something and find out when she arrived in the morning. (According to an inscription on the door of the apartment, your father appears to be editor of the Sportovní Revue.) So next morning I waited for her in front of the house; I liked her even better than last time—intelligent, candid, to the point. I didn’t say much more than what I told you in my telegram.

  IN THE MARGIN: I can partly dispel your apprehensions concerning your father, next time.

  Jarmila came to see me in the office three days ago, she hadn’t heard from you in a long time, didn’t know anything about the flood and came to ask about you. It went
all right. She only stayed a little while. I forgot to pass on your request concerning her writing; I then wrote her a few lines about that.

  I still haven’t read the letters carefully, I’ll write again when I have.

  Now the telegram arrived as well. Really? Really? And you’re no longer lashing out at me?

  No, you can’t be happy about it, that’s impossible; this is a telegram of the moment just like the other one and the truth is neither here nor there. Sometimes when one wakes up in the morning one thinks that truth is right next to the bed, like an open grave with a few wilted flowers, ready to receive.

  I scarcely dare read the letters; I can only read them by spells; I can’t stand the pain. Milena—and once again I am parting your hair—am I such an evil beast, evil toward myself and just as evil toward you, or wouldn’t it be more correct to say the evil is hunting me, driving me on? But I don’t even dare say that it is evil; just that when I’m writing you I think it is and then I say so.

  Otherwise it’s like I described. Whenever I write to you sleep is out of the question, both before and after; when I don’t write I at least get a few hours of shallow sleep. When I don’t write I’m merely tired, sad, heavy; when I do write I am torn by fear and anxiety. It seems we’re both asking for sympathy; I ask you to let me crawl away somewhere; you ask me—but the fact that this is possible is the most terrible paradox.

  But how is it possible? you ask. What do I want? What am I doing?

  It’s more or less like this: I, an animal of the forest, was at that time hardly even in the forest; I was lying somewhere in a dirty ditch (dirtied only by my presence, of course) when I saw you outside in the open—the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I forgot everything, forgot myself completely, I stood up, approached—admittedly anxious within this new but familiar freedom—I ventured even closer, all the way up to you. You were so good, I crouched down beside you as if it were my right, I laid my face in your hand, I was so happy, so proud, so free, so mighty, so much at home, again and again: so much at home—but in essence I remained a mere animal, just part of the forest, living in the open only by your grace. I was reading my destiny inside your eyes without knowing it (since I had forgotten everything). This couldn’t last. Although you were stroking me with the kindest of hands, you had to recognize certain peculiarities pointing to the forest, my true home and origin. Next came the necessary and necessarily repeated discussions about the ‘fear,’ which tortured me (and you, but you were innocent), to the point of touching my raw nerve; the feeling kept growing inside me what an unclean pest I was for you, disturbing you everywhere, always getting in your way. The misunderstanding with Max touched on this; in Gmünd it was already obvious, then came the understanding and misunderstanding with Jarmila, and finally my stupid-insensitive-careless behavior with Vlasta and many minor incidents in between. I remembered who I was, and saw that your eyes were no longer deceived; I had the nightmare (of feeling at home in a place one doesn’t belong), but for me this nightmare was real. I had to return to the darkness, I couldn’t stand the sun, I was desperate, truly like an animal gone astray; I started running as fast as I could and still could not escape the thought: ‘If only I could take her with me!’ and the counterthought: ‘But can there be any darkness where she resides?’

  You ask how I’m getting along; there’s your answer.

  [Prague, September 14, 1920]

  My first letter had already been sent when yours arrived. Apart from whatever might be underneath—under such things as ‘fear,’ etc.—and which nauseates me, not because it’s nauseating but because my stomach is too weak; apart from all that, it may be even simpler than you say. Something like: when one is alone, imperfection must be endured every minute of the day; a couple, however, does not have to put up with it. Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing, which cannot be exaggerated. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression of everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true.

  Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most—you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.

  Incidentally, you say the same thing: ‘they lack the strength to love,’196 shouldn’t that suffice to distinguish between ‘beast’ and ‘man’?

  [Prague, September 15, 1920]

  Wednesday

  There’s no law preventing me from writing you again and thanking you for this letter, which contains perhaps the most beautiful thing you could have written me: ‘I know that you …’

  Apart from that, however, you have been in agreement with me for a long time that we should now stop writing one another; it was only by accident that I happened to say it, you could have said it just as well. And since we both agree, it’s pointless to explain why not writing will be good.

  The only bad thing is that I’ll then have no, almost no possibility of writing you at all (from now on you shouldn’t ask at the post office), or else just the possibility of sending you a postcard without any text, which means a letter is waiting for you at the post office. It goes without saying you should write to me whenever it’s at all necessary.

  You don’t mention any letter from Vlasta. But she suggested in your father’s name that you visit a sanatorium of your choice (although one inside Czechoslovakia) for a few months. Since no one responded to your ad (which isn’t strange, there’s probably less interest in Czech this year) maybe you could accept this proposal. That isn’t advice; the thought just makes me happy.

  There’s no doubt I handled the matter with Vlasta very badly, but not as badly as it seemed to you in your initial moment of fright. First of all, I didn’t go as a petitioner, and even less in your name. I went as a stranger who knows you well, who has some insight into the situation in Vienna and who had, moreover, just received two sad letters from you. Admittedly I went to Vlasta in your interest, but every bit as much in your father’s interest as well. The gist of my presentation, which was clear although not stated expressly, was: at this point Milena’s father will not achieve the victory of her returning voluntarily, humbly, and convinced. That’s out of the question, but I’m sure it’s entirely possible for her to be brought back to him three months from now, critically ill. And that probably isn’t a victory and is certainly nothing to strive for, is it?

  That was one thing, the other was about money. I portrayed it just the way I saw it; in the face of those 2 letters, which canceled any further reflection on my part, it seemed to me that every time I falsified something in my account to Vlasta, I would bring you down another notch in Vienna. (It wasn’t exactly like that; this is the Jewish lawyer speaking, always quick with his tongue, but still it was partly like that.) So I said something to this effect: ‘Her husband spends his own salary almost all by himself. There’s nothing to argue about, Milena wouldn’t have it otherwise; she loves him the way things are and doesn’t want it any different; in fact, it’s partly her own doing. In any case, she consequently has to take care of everything else, even including her husband to some degree (although not his meals), since he doesn’t even earn enough for himself, because of the monstrous inflation in Vienna. Now it’s true she could nonetheless afford all that and would be happy to do so, but she only reached that stage last year; after all, when she left home she was pampered, inexperienced, without any real idea of her strengths and capabilities. It took her two years—not a very long time—before she got used to her new life, before she could provide for the household completely and by herself: giving private lessons, teaching in schools, translating, writing. But as I said, that didn’t happen until last year; for two years before that, money had to be borrowed, and these debts in turn cost money; they are impossible to pay off from this work alone. Moreover, they cause pressure and torment, they make it impossible to put things in
order and make it necessary to sell what they have; they force her to work excessively (and I didn’t cover up your carrying wood, carrying luggage, the piano) and ultimately fall ill. That’s the way it is.’

  I’m not saying goodbye. There isn’t any goodbye, unless gravity, which is lying in wait for me, pulls me down entirely. But how could it, since you are alive.

  [Prague, September 18, 1920]

  You cannot, Milena, exactly understand what it’s about, or in part was about, I don’t even understand it myself, I am shaking from the eruption; you can torture me to the point of insanity, but what it is and what it ultimately wants I do not know. I only know what it wants at the moment: quiet, darkness, crawling off somewhere, and I must obey, I have no other choice.

  It is an eruption and will pass and has already passed in part, but the powers which call it forth are always trembling inside me, before and after; indeed, this subterranean threat constitutes my life, my being; if it ceases, I cease. It’s how I participate in life; if it ceases I give up living, as easily and naturally as you close your eyelids. Wasn’t it always there, as long as we’ve known each other, and would you have even stolen a glance at me had it not been there?

  Obviously one can’t turn this around and say: Now it has passed and I’m nothing but calm and happy and grateful in our new togetherness. This cannot be said, although it’s almost true (the gratitude is absolutely true, the happiness only to a certain extent, and the calm is never true) because I will always frighten and be frightened, most of all by myself.197

  You mention the engagements and similar things: of course it was very simple, not the pain, but its effect. It was as if one had lived a dissolute life, and were suddenly arrested as punishment for all one’s debauchery and one’s head were placed in a vise, with screws on both temples. Then, as the screws were slowly tightened, one would be forced to say: ‘Yes, I’ll stick with my dissolute life’ or ‘No, I’ll give it up.’ Of course one would bellow ‘No’ until one’s lungs burst.