Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  [Prague, January–February 1923]

  ‘Devil,’ it is admirable, not even mainly as instruction, not even as discovery, but because of the presence of an inconceivably courageous person and—this is even more inconceivable—a person who, as the final sentence shows, knows about other things than courage but stays courageous nonetheless. I don’t enjoy making the following comparison, but it suggests itself too strongly. What you offer the reader is itself like a married couple or perhaps the child of a marriage: a Jewish nation is on the verge of self-destruction when it is seized by the mighty hand of an angel (the angel is no longer clearly visible, having been obscured on Earth by the marriage, but in any case it was probably impossible to see him earlier, since he is too large for human eyes), by the mighty hand of an angel who loves these Jews so much he marries the whole nation so it will not perish. And now the child of this marriage is standing here looking all around and the first thing he sees is the devil at the hearth, a terrible apparition which didn’t even exist before the child was born. At any rate it was unknown to the child’s parents. In general, the Jews who had reached their—I almost wrote: happy—end did not know this particular devil; they could no longer differentiate among various infernal things, they considered the whole world a devil and the devil’s work—and that angel? What does an angel, as long as he’s not a fallen one, have in common with the devil? But on the other hand, the child sees the devil standing over his hearth very exactly. And now the struggle of the parents begins in the child, the struggle of their convictions trying to escape the devil. Again and again the angel hauls the Jews on high, to where they should defend themselves, and again and again they fall back down and the angel has to return with them if he doesn’t want them to be swallowed up completely. And there’s no reason to reproach either side, both are the way they are, one Jewish, one angelic. Then the latter begins to forget his high heritage and the former, feeling safe for the moment, becomes haughty. Their endless dialogue might be summarized in sentences like these, although it’s inevitable that Jewry will twist the words of the angel whenever possible:238

  JEWRY: ‘If there’s anything that avenges itself in this world, it is calculation and accounting in spiritual affairs.’

  ANGEL: ‘The only good reason for two people to get married is if it is impossible for them not to.’

  JEWRY: Well, so here are the calculations.

  ANGEL: Calculations?

  or

  JEWRY: ‘What lies deep down is deceiving, but you can know a person by the surface.’

  ANGEL: ‘But why don’t people promise one another they won’t scream when the roast is burned, etc.’

  JEWRY: You mean a person’s supposed to tell lies even on the surface. But that doesn’t have to be requested, by the way; he would have done so long ago of his own accord, if he were able to.

  or

  JEWRY: You’re absolutely right: ‘Why don’t they promise one another the freedom of silence, of space, of being alone?’

  ANGEL: I’m supposed to have said that? I never said that, that would contradict everything I have said.

  or

  ANGEL: ‘Either accept your fate … humbly … or seek your fate …’

  JEWRY: ‘… seeking requires faith!’

  At this point at last, at last, good heavens, the angel pushes the Jews back down and frees himself.

  A wonderfully stimulating essay, where your lightning quickness of thought is particularly well aimed and hard hitting. Whoever hasn’t been struck by it yet—and most people probably have—ducks down, whoever has been struck stretches out again inside a dream. And in this dream he says to himself: As trivial as these demands are, they are not trivial enough. There are no unhappy marriages, there are only incomplete ones and they are incomplete because they were made by incomplete human beings, human beings who have not fully evolved, who should be torn out of the field before the harvest. Sending such people into marriage is like teaching algebra in the first grade. In the corresponding higher grade, algebra is easier than one times one in the first grade, in fact it actually is one times one, but down here it’s impossible and just confuses the entire world of children, and maybe even other worlds as well. But it seems that Jewry is speaking here and we should probably stuff his mouth.

  Then your letter arrived. It’s a strange thing these days with my writing. You have to be patient with me—when didn’t you? For years I haven’t written a soul; I might as well have been dead, I felt no need to communicate with anyone. It was as if I wasn’t of this world, but not from any other either; it was as if throughout the years I had done everything demanded of me just on the side, while in reality I was only listening to find out whether I was being called—until the disease actually did call from the next room and I ran in and started belonging to it more and more. But the room is so dark and it’s hard to tell whether it really is the disease.

  In any case, thinking and writing became very difficult for me; occasionally while writing my hand would run empty over the page; this happens now too—I won’t even mention thinking (again and again I am amazed at your lightning thought, the way a handful of sentences gathers and then the lightning strikes). In any case, you have to be patient with me, this bud opens slowly and is really only a bud, because closed things are called buds.

  I’ve started the Donadieu, but have read very little, I’m not really getting into it; besides, what little of his I have read didn’t say much to me. He is praised for his simplicity, but simplicity is at home in Germany and Russia. The old man is charming, but not compelling enough to prevent me from reading right past him. The most beautiful passages in what I’ve read to now (I’m still in Lyons) are in my opinion characteristic of France, but not of Philippe, a weak reflection of Flaubert, for instance, the sudden delight at a street corner (perhaps you remember the paragraph?). It’s as if 2 translators worked on the translation, at times it’s very good, at times almost incomprehensible. (Wolff is publishing a new translation.) In any case, I’m enjoying it very much; I’ve become a fairly good but very slow reader. Of course, my weakness of becoming very self-conscious around girls hampers me to the point that I don’t believe the writer’s girls really exist, because I can’t believe that he dared approach them. It’s a little as if the writer had made a puppet and were to name it Donadieu solely to distract the reader’s attention from the real Donadieu, who is a completely different person and in a completely different place. And despite all their charm I really feel these girlhood years are very contrived, as if what’s being told here didn’t really happen, just what comes later, and that this was only an overture invented after the fact according to the laws of music and then attuned to reality. And there are books where this feeling lasts to the very end.

  I don’t know ‘On the High Road.’239 But I love Chekhov very much, sometimes completely senselessly. Nor do I know ‘Will of the Mill,’ or anything by Stevenson, just that he is a favorite of yours.240

  I’ll send you Franzi.241 I’m sure you won’t like it at all, except in a few minor places. This can be explained by my theory that living authors have a living relationship with their books. With their very existence they fight for or against them. The true, independent life of the book doesn’t begin until the death of the author, or more correctly some time after his death, for these zealous men keep struggling for their books even a while after they have died. But then the book is left all alone and has to rely on the strength of its own heartbeat. That’s why, for instance, it was so sensible of Meyerbeer to want to assist this heartbeat by bequeathing something to each of his operas, perhaps varying the amount according to his confidence in each. But more (if not very important) things could be said about that. Applied to Franzi this means the book of the living author is really the bedroom at the end of his apartment, meant for kissing if he is meant for kissing and horrible in any other case. It is hardly a verdict on the book if I say I like it or if you—but perhaps not—say the opposite.

  T
oday I read further in Donadieu, but I can’t get anywhere with it. (Nor is it likely I’ll get anywhere with this explanation, since my sister is talking with the cook in the kitchen next door; of course I could interrupt them with my first slight cough but I don’t want to, as this girl—she’s only been with us for a few days, 19 years old, extremely strong—maintains she’s the most unhappy creature in the world, without reason, she’s only unhappy because she is unhappy and needs my sister’s consolation, who by the way has always—as my father says—‘preferred to sit with the maid.’) Whatever I say superficially against the book will be unfair, because all objections come from the core, and I don’t mean the core of the book. If someone committed a murder yesterday—and when could such a yesterday ever become the day before—he won’t be able to stomach reading murder mysteries today. To him they mean everything at once: they are painful, boring, and inflammatory. The solemn unsolemnity, the partial impartiality, the admiring irony of the book—I don’t want any of it. When Raphael seduces Donadieu it is undoubtedly very important for her, but what is the writer doing in the student’s room, and there’s even a fourth person, the reader, so that the little room turns into the auditorium of the School of Medicine or Psychology. And besides, the book contains little except despair.

  I still think about your essay often. Strangely enough, I really do believe there can be marriages—to carry over the imagined dialogue into a real one: Jews! Jews!—and even lofty, conscious marriages that do not stem from the despair of loneliness, and I think the angel essentially shares this belief. For what is to be gained by marrying out of despair? If one loneliness is placed inside another, the result is not a home but a katorga.fn21 One loneliness is reflected in the other even in the deepest darkest night. And if loneliness is coupled with assurance, it will be even worse for the loneliness (unless it is a tender girlish unconscious loneliness). Assuming a clear and strict definition, however, getting married means: being sure.

  At the moment the worst thing is—not even I would have expected it—that I cannot write these letters anymore, not even these important letters. The evil magic of letter writing is setting in and destroying my nights, even more than they are already destroying themselves. I have to stop, I can no longer write. Oh, your insomnia is different from mine. Please let’s not write anymore.

  Dobřichovice: 9.V.23

  Frau Milena Pollak

  Vienna VII

  Lerchenfelderstrasse 113/5

  Many thanks for your greetings. Concerning me: I’ve come out here for a few days; it was getting bad in Prague. But it still doesn’t count as a trip, just a flapping of my completely unsuitable wings.

  K.

  Dobřichovice: 9.V.23

  Frau Milena Pollak

  Vienna VII

  Lerchenfelderstrasse 113/5

  Dear Frau Milena, I trust you received my card from Dobřichovice. I’m still here, but am going back home in 2, 3 days—it’s too expensive (they also don’t return change correctly, sometimes too much and sometimes too little, it’s hard to check since the head waiter is so quick and alert), too sleepless and so forth, although of course beautiful beyond all measure. As far as future trips are concerned, this one may have made me a little more able to travel, if only to destinations an additional half hour away from Prague. It’s just that in the first place, I fear the costs—it’s so expensive here, it is really just for spending one’s last days before death, when there’s nothing left—and in the second place I fear—in the second place—heaven and hell. Apart from that the world is open to me.

  Cordial greetings

  K

  (Incidentally it’s the third time since we’ve known each other that—with a few lines—you have suddenly, at a specific, extreme moment, warned me or calmed me or however one might express it.)

  [Berlin, late November 1923]

  When youfn22 suddenly (but not surprisingly) disappeared after our last meeting, I didn’t hear from you again until the beginning of September and then in a manner which was very bad for me.

  Meanwhile in July something great had happened to me—what great things exist! I had gone to Müritz on the Baltic with the help of my oldest sister.242 In any case, away from Prague, out of the closed room. At first I felt downright nauseous. Then in Müritz the Berlin possibility sprang up unexpectedly. I had, after all, wanted to go to Palestine in October—we talked about that—naturally it would have never happened; it was a fantasy, like the fantasy of someone convinced he’ll never leave his bed again. If I’m never going to leave my bed why shouldn’t I go at least as far as Palestine? But in Müritz I came across a summer colony of the Jewish Volksheim in Berlin—mostly Eastern Jews. I was very attracted to it, it was on my way. I started considering the possibility of moving to Berlin. At the time this possibility was not much more real than the Palestine plan, but then it became so. Of course it was impossible (in every respect) for me to live in Berlin alone, and not just in Berlin, but anywhere for that matter. In Müritz, however, help in this matter sprang up as well, in its own way equally unexpectedly.243 Then in the middle of August I went to Prague and then stayed over a month with my youngest sister in Schelesen. There I happened to hear about the burned letter; I was desperate, I immediately wrote you to ease my burden, but didn’t mail the letter after all, since I hadn’t heard anything from you, and finally I burned my letter before leaving for Berlin. To this day I don’t know a thing about the other three letters you mention. I was in despair about some terrible disgrace which had been inflicted on someone, although I didn’t know exactly on which of the three people involved. But I’m sure I would not have avoided despair in any case, even if it were a different kind, even if I had received the letter in Müritz as I should have.

  Then at the end of September I went to Berlin; shortly before leaving I received your card from Italy. I carried out my departure with the last scrap of strength I could find, or more correctly, completely devoid of strength, just like a funeral.

  And so now I’m here; so far things in Berlin haven’t been as bad as you seem to think; I am practically living in the country, in a small villa with a garden.244 It seems to me I’ve never had such a beautiful apartment, I’m also sure I’ll soon lose it—it is too beautiful for me (incidentally, it’s the second apartment I’ve had here). Up to now the food hasn’t been essentially different from the food in Prague, that is to say, my food. The same holds true for my health. That is all. I don’t dare say any more; I’ve already said too much, and the ghosts of the air are gulping it down their insatiable throats. And you say even less in your letter. Is your general situation good, bearable? I can’t figure it out. Of course one cannot even figure out one’s own riddles; this is precisely the meaning of ‘fear.’

  Berlin-Steglitz 25.12.23

  Frau Milena Pollak

  Vienna VII

  Lerchenfelderstrasse 113/5

  Dear Milena, a piece of a letter has been lying here ready for you such a long time, but I am unable to finish it, for the old grief, the old pain has found me here as well, attacked me and knocked me down a little. Everything takes effort, every stroke of the pen, everything I put on paper seems to me too grandiose, out of proportion to my strength, and if I write down ‘cordial regards,’ then are these greetings really strong enough to enter the wild, noisy, gray, urban Lerchenfelderstrasse, where it was impossible for me and mine to even breathe? Consequently I do not write at all, just wait for better times or even worse ones, and by the way, I’m being cared for gently and well to the limit of earthly possibility. My only source of news about the world—but it’s a very vivid source—is the rising cost of living; I do not receive any newspapers from Prague and cannot afford the ones from Berlin. How would you like to send me an occasional clipping from the Národní Listy—the kind that once gave me so much pleasure. Incidentally, for the past few weeks my address has been: Steglitz Grunewaldstrasse 13 c/o Hr. Seifert. And now my ‘best regards’ after all—what does it matter if they collap
se at your garden gate; perhaps your strength will be all the greater.

  K.

  NOTES

  Letters to Milena

  1 Meran-Untermais, Pension Ottoburg: Kafka had arrived in Meran at the beginning of April; after some searching, he moved into the Pension Ottoburg on April 8, 1920.

  2 F Kafka: At first Kafka signed his letters using the formal ‘Ihr’ (‘Ihr F Kafka,’ ‘Ihres Kafka’). He later switched to the informal Du. In this translation, ‘Yours’ always indicates the informal ‘Dein.’

  3 translation: Milena was working on her translation of Kafka’s story ‘The Stoker,’ which became the first chapter of his unfinished novel Amerika (Der Verschollene). Her translation appeared in the journal Kmen on April 22, 1920; Kafka asked his sister Ottla to purchase twenty copies.

  4 Wolff: Kurt Wolff (1887–1963), Kafka’s publisher, presumably wrote to Milena granting his permission to translate Kafka’s work into Czech.

  5 your husband: Ernst Pollak (1886–1947)—after 1938 he used the Czech spelling, Polák—had been married to Milena since March 1918.

  6 ‘Pane doktore, you’re not going to last very long’: In Czech: Pane doktore, s Vámi to dloubo nepotrvá. Pane doktore is the Czech equivalent of the German Herr Doktor.