Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  You’re also right to place what I’ve now done in the same category as the old things; after all, I can only go on being the same person and go on living the same life. The sole difference is that I already have experience; I don’t wait with my screaming until they tighten the screws to force the confession—I start screaming as soon as the screws are brought out; in fact, I’m already screaming the minute something starts to move in the distance, so over-alert has my conscience become—no, not over-alert, not nearly alert enough. But there is another difference as well: you can stand the truth like no one else, and one can tell you the truth both for one’s own sake and for yours; in fact, one can even discover one’s own truth directly through you.

  But you are wrong to speak bitterly of my begging you not to leave me. In this regard I was no different then than I am today. I was living off your gaze (this isn’t any special deification of your person, in such a gaze anyone can be divine). I wasn’t standing on solid ground, and this is what I feared so much. But I didn’t realize it exactly; I had no idea how high I was floating above my Earth. This was not good: not for you, not for me. One word of truth, one word of the inevitable truth was enough to bring me down a notch, another word another notch—until finally there’s no longer any stopping and one is suddenly crashing to the ground and still it feels too slow. I’m not giving any examples of such ‘truth-words’ on purpose; that could only lead to confusion and would never be wholly correct.

  Please, Milena, come up with another way for me to write you. Sending fake cards is too dumb; also I don’t always know which books to send you; finally, the idea you might wind up going to the post office in vain is unbearable, please come up with something else.

  [Prague, September 20, 1920]

  Monday evening

  So Wednesday you’ll go to the post office and there won’t be any letter—yes, there will be the one from Saturday. I couldn’t write in the office because I wanted to work and I couldn’t work because I was thinking about us. This afternoon I couldn’t get out of bed, not because I was too tired but too ‘heavy,’ this word keeps recurring, it’s the only one that fits me, do you really understand it? It’s something like the ‘heaviness’ of a ship that has lost its rudder and says to the waves: ‘I’m too heavy for myself and too light for you.’ But it’s not exactly like that either; it can’t be expressed by analogy.

  But basically I didn’t write because I have the vague feeling there are so many things—and of such importance—I would have to write you, that all the free time in the world wouldn’t be enough for me to gather the strength to do so. That’s the way it really is.

  So since I can’t say anything about the present, there’s even less for me to say about the future. I literally just this minute climbed out of my sickbed (‘sickbed’ seen from the outside), I’m still clinging to it, and would like most of all to return there. Despite the fact I know what it means, this bed.

  What you, Milena, wrote about the people, ‘they lack the strength to love,’ was correct, even if you didn’t think so while writing it. Perhaps their strength to love consists solely in their ability to be loved. And even this is weakened by a further distinction which exists for these people. When one of them says to his beloved: ‘I believe you love me,’ it’s actually something completely different and much less than when he says: ‘I am loved by you.’ But these aren’t really lovers, they’re just grammarians.

  ‘Imperfection as a couple’ was actually a misunderstanding in your letter. I didn’t mean to say anything more than: I am living in my dirt, that’s my business. But dragging you down into it is an entirely different matter, not only as a transgression against you, that’s incidental. I don’t believe a transgression against another person could disturb my sleep, insofar as it only concerns the other person. So it isn’t that. Rather the terrible thing is that you make me so much more aware of my dirt and—above all—that this awareness makes salvation so much more difficult for me—no, so much more impossible (it’s impossible in any case, but here the impossibility increases). This makes my forehead break out in a fearful sweat; that it could be any fault of yours, Milena, is out of the question.

  But it was wrong and I regretted very much making comparisons to older events in my last letter. Let’s erase this together.

  So you really aren’t sick?

  [Prague, September 1920]

  Of course, Milena, you possess property here in Prague, no one’s challenging that except the night, which is fighting for it, but it fights for everything. But what property! I’m not making it smaller than it really is—it’s something so big, in fact, it could even eclipse a full moon up in your room. And you won’t be afraid of so much dark? Dark without the warmth of darkness.

  So you can see how I’m keeping myself ‘occupied,’ I’m enclosing a drawing. There are 4 posts, with poles running through the two middle ones to which the ‘delinquent’s’ hands are fastened; poles for the feet are run through the two posts on the outside. Once the man is thus secured, the poles are slowly pushed outward until the man is torn apart in the middle. The inventor is leaning against the column with his arms and legs crossed, putting on airs as if the whole thing were his original invention, whereas all he really did was watch the butcher in front of his shop, drawing out a disemboweled pig.

  The reason I ask if you won’t be afraid is because the person you write about does not exist and never did exist; the one in Vienna did not exist nor did the one in Gmünd, but if anyone did, it was the latter and may he be cursed. This is important to know because—in case we meet—the Viennese or even the man from Gmünd will reappear, in all innocence, as if nothing had happened, whereas down below the real person, unknown to all and to himself, who exists even less than the others but is more real than anything (why doesn’t he finally climb up and show himself?) will rise menacingly and destroy everything once again.

  [Prague, September 1920]

  Yes, Mizzi Kuh was here, things went quite well.199 But if it’s at all possible I won’t write about other people anymore; their getting mixed up in our letters is to blame for everything. But that’s not why I’m no longer going to write about them (after all, they aren’t to blame for anything, they merely cut a path for the truth and whatever wants to follow). I don’t want to punish them with that—in case this might be considered a punishment—it just seems to me they no longer fit here. It’s dark here, a dark apartment where only the inhabitants can find their way, and only then with difficulty.

  Did I know it would pass? I knew it would not.

  When as a child I had done something very bad, although nothing bad or nothing all that bad in the public sense of the word, but something very bad in my private sense (the fact that it wasn’t publicly acknowledged as bad didn’t vouch for my merit as much as it showed the world was blind or asleep), I was amazed that everything continued along its course unchanged; the grown-ups, although somewhat gloomy, kept moving around me unchanged, and their mouths stayed shut and quiet, in a natural way, which I had admired from below since my earliest childhood. All this led me to conclude, after having watched a little while, that I couldn’t have done anything bad, in any sense whatsoever, and that it was childish of me to fear that I had; consequently I could start once again exactly where I had stopped in my first moment of shock.

  Later this notion of my surroundings changed. First I began to believe that other people paid careful attention to everything, further that they expressed their opinions clearly enough, just that my eye wasn’t sufficiently sharp, although I soon fixed that. But in the second place, although I was still amazed at how imperturbable the others were, if indeed they were so, this still could not be counted as evidence which might be used on my behalf. Fine, so they didn’t notice anything, nothing from my being entered into their world, as far as they were concerned I was irreproachable; thus the way of my being, my way, led outside their world. If this being was a stream, then at least a strong branch flowed outside their world.<
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  No, Milena, please, I beg you to come up with another possibility for writing. You shouldn’t go to the post office in vain, not even your little postman—where is he?—should do so, even the woman at the counter in the post office should not be asked unnecessarily. If you don’t find another possibility I’ll have to put up with it, but at least make some effort to find one.

  Yesterday I dreamt about you. I hardly remember the details, just that we kept on merging into one another, I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire; I remembered that fire can be smothered with cloth, took an old coat and beat you with it. But then the metamorphoses resumed and went so far that you were no longer even there; instead I was the one on fire and I was also the one who was beating the fire with the coat. The beating didn’t help, however, and only confirmed my old fear that things like that can’t hurt a fire. Meanwhile the firemen had arrived and you were somehow saved after all. But you were different than before, ghostlike, drawn against the dark with chalk, and you fell lifeless into my arms, or perhaps you merely fainted with joy at being saved. But here the transmutability came into play: maybe I was the one falling into someone’s arms.

  Paul Adler was here just now, do you know him?200 If only the visits would stop; everybody is so eternally alive, truly immortal, perhaps not in the direction of true immortality, but down to the depths of their immediate life. I’m so afraid of them. Out of fear I’d like to read his eyes in order to uncover his every wish, and out of gratitude I’d like to kiss his feet, if he would just leave without asking that I return his visit. Alone I am still alive, but whenever a visitor comes by he literally kills me, just so he can then revive me with his own power, except he isn’t powerful enough. Monday I’m supposed to go see him, the idea makes my head spin.

  [Prague, September 1920]

  Why, Milena, do you write about our common future which will never be, or is that why you write about it? Even when we were discussing it in Vienna one evening, I had the feeling we were looking for somebody we knew very well and missed very much and whom we consequently kept calling with the most beautiful names, but there was no answer; how could he answer, since he wasn’t there, nor anywhere nearby.

  Few things are certain, but one is that we’ll never live together, share an apartment, body to body, at a common table, never, not even in the same city. I almost said just now, it seems as certain to me as the certainty that I won’t get up tomorrow morning and go to work—(I’m supposed to lift myself alone! I can see me carrying myself, as if I were carrying a heavy cross, pressed to the ground on my belly, I have to work hard just to crouch and lift the corpse a little bit above me)—it’s true, too; I’m sure I won’t get up, but if getting up requires strength which is just a little more than human, that much I can attain; I can lift myself that much, but just barely.

  But don’t take all this about getting up too literally; it isn’t that bad; my getting up tomorrow is still more certain than the most distant possibility of our living together. Incidentally, Milena, you must agree when you examine yourself and me and take soundings of the ‘sea’ between ‘Vienna’ and ‘Prague’ with its insurmountably high waves.

  And as far as the dirt is concerned, why shouldn’t I go on exposing it, my sole possession (everybody’s sole possession—I just don’t realize this)? Out of modesty? Now that would be the only justifiable objection.

  The thought of death makes you anxious? I’m just terribly afraid of pain. That’s a bad sign. To want death but not pain is a bad sign. Otherwise one can risk death. One has simply been sent out as a biblical dove, and having found nothing green, now slips back into the darkness of the ark.

  I have received the brochures about the two sanatoria, they couldn’t possibly have contained any surprises, or at most regarding prices and the distance from Vienna.201 In this respect they resemble one another. Excessively expensive, over 400 K a day, probably 500 K, and even that is subject to change. About 3 hours from Vienna by train and another half hour by carriage—thus quite far, too, almost as far as Gmünd, but with the local train. Incidentally Grimmenstein seems to be a bit less expensive and so in an emergency, but only in emergency, I would choose it.

  You see, Milena, how I neglect everything else and only think about myself incessantly, or more precisely about the narrow ground we share which both my feeling and my will say is so crucial for us. I haven’t even thanked you for Kmen and Tribuna, although once again you have performed so beautifully.202 I’ll send you my own copy I have here on the table, but you may also want a few comments, in which case I’ll have to read it again and that isn’t easy. I very much enjoy reading your translations of other people’s writing. Was the Tolstoy conversation translated from Russian? […]203

  The enclosure. So that you also receive something from me that makes you laugh for once. ‘Jé, ona neví, co je biják? Kinásek.’fn18

  [Prague, September 1920]

  So you’ve had the flu? Well, at least I don’t have to reproach myself for having had particularly much fun here. (Sometimes I don’t understand how people came across the concept of “fun”; it was probably only abstracted as an opposite to sadness.)

  I was convinced you wouldn’t write me anymore, but I was neither surprised nor sad about it. Not sad because it seemed necessary beyond all sadness and because there probably aren’t enough weights in the whole world to raise my poor small weight, and not surprised because I wouldn’t really ever have been surprised before if you had said: “I’ve been friendly to you up to this point, but now I’m going to stop and leave you.” Actually all things are surprising, but that would have been one of the least surprising; it’s so much more surprising, for instance, that one gets up every morning. But this is not some surprise that inspires confidence as much as a curiosity which can occasionally cause nausea.

  Do you deserve a good word, Milena? Apparently I don’t deserve to tell you, otherwise I could.

  We’ll see each other sooner than I think? (I’m writing ‘see,’ you write ‘live together.’) However, I think we’ll never live together and never will be able to (and I see this confirmed everywhere, everywhere, in things which aren’t even related, everything is saying the same thing), and ‘sooner’ than ‘never’ is still just never.

  It turns out Grimmenstein is better anyway. The difference in price is probably about 50 K a day; besides, in the other sanatorium you have to bring everything you need for the rest cure (foot-muff, pillows, blankets, etc., I don’t have any of these), in Grimmenstein all this can be borrowed, in the ‘Wiener Wald’ you have to pay a large deposit, in Grimmenstein you don’t, moreover Grimmenstein is at a higher altitude, and so on. Anyway, I’m not leaving yet. Admittedly I did feel bad enough for one whole week (a slight fever and such shortness of breath, I was afraid to get up from the table, also a lot of coughing), but that just appears to be the result of a long walk during which I talked a bit; it’s a lot better now, so once again the sanatorium has become less important.

  Now I have the brochures right here: in the Wiener Wald the lowest price for a room with balcony and southern exposure is 380 K, in Grimmenstein the most expensive room costs 360 K. As disgustingly expensive as they both are, the difference is just too great. Of course the possibility of injections must be taken into account, the injections themselves cost extra. I’d be happy to go to the country, even more happy to stay in Prague and learn some craft; the last thing I want to do is go to a sanatorium. What am I supposed to do there? Have the head physician take me between his knees and use his carbolic fingers to stuff meat into my mouth and down my throat until I choke?

  Now I went to see the director as well, he called for me, it happened that Ottla was here to see him last week against my will, against my will I was examined by the company doctor, against my will I will be given sick leave.

  ‘Kupec’ is flawless.204 Apparently you assume there are mistakes because you can’t imagine that the German text is really as helplessly bad as it is. But it is exactl
y that bad.

  Just so you see I was reading it for mistakes: instead of bolí uvnitřv čele a v spáncích—uvnitř na … or something like that—the thought is namely that just as claws can work on the forehead from the outside, this can also happen on the inside; potírajíce se means to become confused? To thwart one another?—Right after that, instead of volné místo, it might be better to say náměstí—pronásledujte jen,fn19 I don’t know whether ‘nur’ is ‘jen’ here, you see this ‘nur’ is a Prague-Jewish nur, signifying a challenge, like ‘go ahead and do it’—the final words aren’t translated literally. You separate the maidservant and the husband, whereas in German they merge.

  You’re right about ‘ghost letters.’205 But they are real; they aren’t just wearing sheets.

  [Prague, September 1920]

  I’ve just been lying down on the sofa for two hours now, scarcely thinking of anything but you. You forget, Milena, that we’re really standing side by side watching this being which is me down on the ground; but in that case I who am looking am then without being.

  By the way, autumn is playing games with me as well; I’m sometimes suspiciously warm, sometimes suspiciously cold, but I’m not going to look into that, it can’t be anything bad. As a matter of fact, however, I’ve even thought about passing straight through Vienna, but only because my lungs really are worse than they were this summer—that’s to be expected—and anything resembling talking outside is difficult for me and has unpleasant consequences. If I have to leave this room I’d like to throw myself onto the deck chair in Grimmenstein as quickly as possible. But maybe the trip itself will do me good; and the Vienna air, which I once considered to be the true air of life.