Diaries of Franz Kafka 1911 Part 1

Diaries of Franz Kafka 1911.

Part 1

3 January. "You," I said, and then gave him a little shove with my knee, "I want to say good-bye." At this sudden utterance some saliva flew from my mouth as an evil omen.

"But you've been considering that for a long time," he said, stepped away from the wall and stretched.

"No, I haven't been considering it at all."

"Then what have you been thinking about?"

"For the last time I have been preparing myself a little more for the company. Try as you may, you won't understand that. I, an average man from the country, whom at any moment one could exchange for one of those who wait together by the hundreds in railway stations for particular trains."

4 January. Glaube und Heimat (Faith and Homeland) by Schonherr.

The wet fingers of the balconyites beneath me who wipe their eyes.

6 January. "You," I said, aimed, and gave him a little shove with my knee, "but now I'm going. If you want to see it too, open your eyes."

"Really, then?" he asked, at the same time looking at me from wide-open eyes with a direct glance that nevertheless was so weak that I could have fended it off with a wave of my arm. "You're really going, then? What shall I do? I cannot keep you. And if I could, I still wouldn't want to. By which I simply want to make clear to you your feeling that you could still be held back by me." And immediately he a.s.sumed that inferior servants' face by means of which they are permitted within an otherwise regulated state to make the children of their masters obedient or afraid.

7 January. N.'s sister who is so in love with her fiance that she maneuvers to speak with each visitor individually, since one can better express and repeat one's love to a single person.

As though by magic, since neither external nor internal circ.u.mstances-which are now more friendly than they have been for a year-prevented me, I was kept from writing the entire holiday, it is a Sunday. -Several new perceptions of the unfortunate creature that I am have dawned upon me consolingly.

12 January. I haven't written down a great deal about myself during these days, partly because of laziness (I now sleep so much and so soundly during the day, I have greater weight while I sleep) but also partly because of the fear of betraying my self-perception. This fear is justified, for one should permit a self-perception to be established definitively in writing only when it can be done with the greatest completeness, with all the incidental consequences, as well as with entire truthfulness. For if this does not happen-and in any event I am not capable of it-then what is written down will, in accordance with its own purpose and with the superior power of the established, replace what has been felt only vaguely in such a way that the real feeling will disappear while the worthlessness of what has been noted down will be recognized too late.

A few days ago Leonie Frippon, cabaret girl, Stadt Wien. Hair dressed in a bound-up ma.s.s of curls. Bad girdle, very old dress, but very pretty with tragic gestures, flutterings of the eyelids, thrusts of the long legs, skillful stretching of the arms along the body, significance of the rigid throat during ambiguous pa.s.sages. Sang: b.u.t.ton Collection in the Louvre.

Schiller, as drawn by Schadow in 1804 in Berlin, where he had been greatly honored. One cannot grasp a face more firmly than by this nose. The part.i.tion of the nose is a little pulled down as a result of the habit of pulling on his nose while working. A friendly, somewhat hollow-cheeked person whom the shaven face has probably made senile.

14 January. Novel, Eheleute (Married People), by Beradt. A lot of bad Jewishness. A sudden, monotonous, coy appearance of the author; for instance: All were gay, but one was present who was not gay. Or: Here comes a Mr. Stern (whom we already know to the marrow of his novelistic bones). In Hamsun too there is something like this, but there it is as natural as the knots in wood, here, however, it drips into the plot like a fashionable medicine on to sugar. Odd turns of expression are clung to interminably, for instance: He was busy about her hair, busy and again busy. Individual characters, without being shown in a new light, are brought out well, so well that even faults here and there do not matter. Minor characters mostly wretched.

17 January. Max read me the first act of Abschied von der Jugend (Parting of the Young People). How can I, as I am today, come up to this? I should have to look for a year before I found a true emotion in me, and am supposed, in the face of so great a work, in some way to have a right to remain seated in my chair in the coffeehouse late in the evening, plagued by the pa.s.sing flatulence of a digestion which is bad in spite of everything.

19 January. Every day, since I seem to be completely finished-during the last year I did not wake up for more than five minutes at a time-I shall either have to wish myself off the earth or else, without my being able to see even the most moderate hope in it, I shall have to start afresh like a baby. Externally, this will be easier for me than before. For in those days I still strove with hardly a suspicion after a description in which every word would be linked to my life, which I would draw to my heart, and which would transport me out of myself. With what misery (of course, not to be compared with the present) I began! What a chill pursued me all day long out of what I had written! How great the danger was and how uninterruptedly it worked, that I did not feel that chill at all, which indeed on the whole did not lessen my misfortune very much.

Once I projected a novel in which two brothers fought each other, one of whom went to America while the other remained in a European prison. I only now and then began to write a few lines, for it tired me at once. So once I wrote down something about my prison on a Sunday afternoon when we were visiting my grandparents and had eaten an especially soft kind of bread, spread with b.u.t.ter, that was customary there. It is of course possible that I did it mostly out of vanity, and by shifting the paper about on the tablecloth, tapping with my pencil, looking around under the lamp, wanted to tempt someone to take what I had written from me, look at it, and admire me. It was chiefly the corridor of the prison that was described in the few lines, above all its silence and coldness; a sympathetic word was also said about the brother who was left behind, because he was the good brother. Perhaps I had a momentary feeling of the worthlessness of my description, but before that afternoon I never paid much attention to such feelings when among relatives to whom I was accustomed (my timidity was so great that the accustomed was enough to make me halfway happy), I sat at the round table in the familiar room and could not forget that I was young and called to great things out of this present tranquillity. An uncle who liked to make fun of people finally took the page that I was holding only weakly, looked at it briefly, handed it back to me, even without laughing, and only said to the others who were following him with their eyes, "The usual stuff," to me he said nothing. To be sure, I remained seated and bent as before over the now useless page of mine, but with one thrust I had in fact been banished from society, the judgment of my uncle repeated itself in me with what amounted almost to real significance and even within the feeling of belonging to a family I got an insight into the cold s.p.a.ce of our world which I had to warm with a fire that first I wanted to seek out.

19 February. When I wanted to get out of bed this morning I simply folded up. This has a very simple cause, I am completely overworked. Not by the office but my other work. The office has an innocent share in it only to the extent that, if I did not have to go there, I could live calmly for my own work and should not have to waste these six hours a day which have tormented me to a degree that you cannot imagine, especially on Friday and Sat.u.r.day, because I was full of my own things. In the final a.n.a.lysis, I know, that is just talk, the fault is mine and the office has a right to make the most definite and justified demands on me. But for me in particular it is a horrible double life from which there is probably no escape but insanity. I write this in the good light of the morning and would certainly not write it if it were not so true and if I did not love you like a son.

For the rest, I shall certainly be myself again by tomorrow and come to the office where the first thing I hear will be that you want to have me out of your department.

The special nature of my inspiration in which I, the most fortunate and unfortunate of men, now go to sleep at 2 a.m. (perhaps, if I can only bear the thought of it, it will remain, for it is loftier than all before), is such that I can do everything, and not only what is directed to a definite piece of work. When I arbitrarily write a single sentence, for instance, "He looked out of the window," it already has perfection.

"Will you stay here for a long time?" I asked. At my sudden utterance some saliva dew from my mouth as an evil omen."Does it disturb you? If it disturbs you or perhaps keeps you from going up, I will go away at once, but otherwise I should still like to remain, because I'm tired."But finally he had every right to be satisfied too, and to become continually more satisfied the better I knew him. For he continually knew me even better, apparently, and could certainly stick me, with all my perceptions, in his pocket. For how otherwise could it be explained that I still remained on the street as though no house but rather a fire were before me. When one is invited into society, one simply steps into the house, climbs the stairs, and scarcely notices it, so engrossed is one in thought.

Only so does one act correctly towards oneself and towards society.

20 February. Mella Mars in the Cabaret Lucerna. A witty tragedienne who, so to speak, appears on a stage turned wrong side out in the way tragediennes sometimes show themselves behind the scenes. When she makes her appearance she has a tired, indeed even flat, empty, old face, which const.i.tutes for all famous actors a natural beginning. She speaks very sharply, her movements are sharp too, beginning with the thumb bent backwards, which instead of bone seems to be made of stiff fiber. Unusual changeability of her nose through the shifting highlights and hollows of the playing muscles around it. Despite the eternal flashing of her movements and words she makes her points delicately.

Small cities also have small places to stroll about in.

The young, clean, well-dressed youths near me on the promenade reminded me of my youth and therefore made an unappetizing impression on me.Kleist's early letters, twenty-two years old. Gives up soldiering. They ask him at home: Well, how are you going to earn a living, for that was something they considered a matter of course. You have a choice of jurisprudence or political economy. But then do you have connections at court? "I denied it at first in some embarra.s.sment, but then declared so much the more proudly that I, even if I had connections, should be ashamed, with my present ideas, to count on them. They smiled, I felt that I had been too hasty. One must be wary of expressing such truths."

21 February. My life here is just as if I were quite certain of a second life, in the same way, for example, I got over the pain of my unsuccessful visit to Paris with the thought that I would try to go there again very soon. With this, the sight of the sharply divided light and shadows on the pavement of the street.

For the length of a moment I fell myself clad in steel.How far from me are-for example-my arm muscles.

Marc Henry - Delvard. The tragic feeling bred in the audience by the empty hall increases the effect of the serious songs, detracts from that of the merry ones. Henry does the prologue, while Delvard, behind a curtain that she doesn't know is translucent, fixes her hair. At poorly attended performances, W., the producer, seems to wear his a.s.syrian beard-which is otherwise deep black-streaked with gray. Good to have oneself blown upon by such a temperament, it lasts for twenty-four hours, no, not so long. Much display of costumes, Breton costumes, the undermost petticoat is the longest, so that one can count the wealth from a distance-Because they want to save an accompanist, Delvard does the accompaniment first, in a very low-cut green dress, and freezes-Parisian street cries. Newsboys are omitted- Someone speaks to me; before I draw a breath I have been dismissed-Delvard is ridiculous, she has the smile of an old maid, an old maid of the German cabaret. With a red shawl that she fetches from behind the curtain, she plays revolution. Poems by Dauthendey in the same tough, unbreakable voice. She was charming only at the start, when she sat in a feminine way at the piano. At the song "a Batignolles" I felt Paris in my throat. Batignolles is supposed to live on its annuities, even its Apaches. Bruant wrote a song for every section of the city.THE URBAN WORLD.Oscar M., an older student-if one looked at him closely one was frightened by his eyes-stopped short in the middle of a snowstorm on an empty square one winter afternoon, in his winter clothes with his winter coat, over it a shawl around his neck and a fur cap on his head. His eyes blinked reflectively. He was so lost in thought that once he took off his cap and stroked his face with its curly fur. Finally he seemed to have come to a conclusion and turned with a dancing movement on to his homeward path.When he opened the door to his parental living room he saw his father, a smooth-shaven man with a heavy, fleshy face, seated at an empty table facing the door."At last," said the latter, when Oscar had barely set foot in the room. "Please stay by the door, I am so furious with you that I don't know what I might do.""But father," said Oscar, and became aware only when he spoke how he had been running."Silence," shouted the father and stood up, blocking a window. "Silence, I say. And keep your 'buts' to yourself, do you understand?" At the same time he took the table in both hands and carried it a step nearer to Oscar. "I simply won't put up with your good-for-nothing existence any longer. I'm an old man. I hoped you would be the comfort of my old age, instead you are worse than all my illnesses. Shame on such a son, who through laziness, extravagance, wickedness, and-why shouldn't I say so to your face-stupidity, drives his old father to his grave!" Here the father fell silent, but moved his face as though he were still speaking."Dear Father," said Oscar, and cautiously approached the table, "calm yourself, everything will be all right. Today I have had an idea that will make an industrious person out of me, beyond all your expectations.""How is that?" the father asked, and gazed towards a corner of the room."Just trust me, I'll explain everything to you at supper. Inwardly I was always a good son, but the fact that I could not show it outwardly embittered me so, that I preferred to vex you if I couldn't make you happy. But now let me go for another short walk so that my thoughts may unfold more clearly."The father, who, becoming attentive at first, had sat down on the edge of the table, stood up. "I do not believe that what you just said makes much sense, I consider it only idle talk. But after all you are my son. Come back early, we will have supper at home and you can tell me all about this matter then.""This small confidence is enough for me, I am grateful to you from my heart for it. But isn't it evident in my very appearance that I am completely occupied with a serious matter?""At the moment, no, I can't see a thing," said the father. "But that could be my fault too, for I have got out of the habit of looking at you at all." With this, as was his custom, he called attention to the pa.s.sage of time by regularly tapping on the surface of the table. "The chief thing, however, is that I no longer have any confidence at all in you, Oscar. If I sometimes yell at you-when you came in I really did yell at you, didn't I?-then I do it not in the hope that it will improve you, I do it only for the sake of your poor, good mother who perhaps doesn't yet feel any immediate sorrow on your account, but is already slowly going to pieces under the strain of keeping off such sorrow for she thinks she can help you in some way by this. But after all, these are really things which you know very well, and out of consideration for myself alone I should not have mentioned them again if you had not provoked me into it by your promises."During these last words the maid entered to look after the fire in the stove. She had barely left the room when Oscar cried out, "But Father! I would never have expected that. If in the past I had had only one little idea, an idea for my dissertation, let's say, which has been lying in my trunk now for ten years and needs ideas like salt, then it is possible, even if not probable, that, as happened today, I would have come running from my walk and said: 'Father, by good fortune I have such-and-such an idea.' If with your venerable voice you had then thrown into my face the reproaches you did, my idea would simply have been blown away and I should have had to march off at once with some sort of apology or without one. Now just the contrary! Everything you say against me helps my ideas, they do not stop, becoming stronger, they fill my head. I'll go, because only when I am alone can I bring them into order." He gulped his breath in the warm room."It may be only a piece of rascality that you have in your head," said the father with his eyes opened wide in surprise. "In that case I am ready to believe that it has got hold of you. But if something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you."Oscar turned his head as though someone had him by the throat, "Leave me alone now. You are worrying me more than is necessary. The bare possibility that you can correctly predict my end should really not induce you to disturb me in my reflections. Perhaps my past gives you the right to do so, but you should not make use of it.""There you see best how great your uncertainty must be when it forces you to speak to me so.""Nothing forces me," said Oscar, and his neck twitched. He also stepped up very close to the table so that one could no longer tell to whom it belonged. "What I said, I said with respect and even out of love for you, as you will see later, too, for consideration for you and Mama plays the greatest part in my decisions.""Then I must thank you right now," the father said, "as it is indeed very improbable that your mother and I will still be capable of it when the time comes.""Please, Father, just let tomorrow sleep on as it deserves. If you awaken it before its time, then you will have a sleepy day. But that your son must say this to you!

Besides, I really didn't intend to convince you yet, but only to break the news to you. And in that, at least, as you yourself must admit, I have succeeded.""Now, Oscar, there is only one thing more that really makes me wonder: why haven't you been coming to me often with something like this business of today. It corresponds so well with your character up to now. No, really, I am being serious.""Yes, wouldn't you have thrashed me, then, instead of listening to me? I ran home, G.o.d knows, in a hurry to give you a little pleasure. But I can't tell you a thing as long as my plan is not complete. Then why do you punish me for my good intentions and demand explanations from me that at this time might still injure the execution of my plan?""Keep quiet, I don't want to know a thing. But I have to answer you very quickly because you are retreating towards the door and apparently have something very urgent in hand: You have calmed my first anger with your trick, but now I am even sadder in spirit than before and therefore I beg you-if you insist, I can even fold my hands-at least say nothing to your mother of your ideas. Be satisfied with me.""This can't be my father speaking to me," cried Oscar, who already had his arm on the door latch. "Something has happened to you since noon, or I'm meeting a stranger now for the first time in my father's room. My real father"-Oscar was silent for a moment with his mouth open-"he would certainly have had to embrace me, he would have called my mother. What is wrong with you, Father?""Then you ought to have supper with your real father, I think. It would be more fun.""He will come, you can be sure of that. In the end he can't stay away. And my mother must be there. And Franz, whom I am now going to fetch. All." Thereupon Oscar pressed his shoulder against the door-it opened easily-as though he were trying to break it down.Having arrived in Franz's home, he bowed to the little landlady and said, "The Herr Engineer is asleep, I know, it doesn't matter." And without bothering about the woman, who because she was displeased by the visit walked aimlessly up and down in the anteroom, he opened the gla.s.s door-it quivered under his hand as though it had been touched in a sensitive spot-and called, paying no heed to the interior of the room into which he could scarcely see, "Franz, get up. I need your expert advice.

But I can't stand it here in the room, we must go for a lithe walk, you must also have supper with us. Quick, then.""Gladly," said the engineer from his leather sofa, "but which first? Get up, have supper, go for a walk, give advice? And some of it I probably haven't caught.""Most important, Franz, don't joke. That's the most important thing, I forgot that.""I'll do you that favor at once. But to get up! I would rather have supper for you twice than get up once.""Get up now! No arguments." Oscar grabbed the weak man by the front of his coat and sat him up."You're mad, you know. With all due respect. Have I ever pulled you off a sofa like that?" He wiped his closed eyes with his two little fingers."But Franz," said Oscar with a grimace. "Get dressed now. After all, I'm not a fool, to have waked you without a reason.""Just as I wasn't sleeping without a reason, either. Yesterday I worked the night shift, after that I'm done out of my afternoon nap, also because of you.""Why?""Oh, well, it annoys me how little consideration you have for me. It isn't the first time. Naturally, you are a free student and can do whatever you want. Not everyone is so fortunate. So you really must have some consideration, d.a.m.n it! Of course, I'm your friend, but they haven't taken my profession away yet because of that." This he indicated by shaking his hands up and down, palm to palm."But to judge by your present jabbering don't I have to believe that you've had more than your fill of sleep?" said Oscar, who had drawn himself up against a bedpost whence he looked at the engineer as though he now had somewhat more time than before."Well, what is it you really want of me? Or rather, why did you wake me?" the engineer asked, and rubbed his neck hard under his goatee in that more intimate relationship which one has to one's body after sleep."What I want of you," said Oscar softly, and gave the bed a kick with the heel of his foot. "Very little. I already told you what I want while I was still in the anteroom: that you get dressed.""If you want to point out by that, Oscar, that your news interests me very little, then you are quite right.""All the better. Then the interest my news will kindle in you will burn entirely on its own account, without our friendship adding to it. The information will be clearer too. I need clear information, keep that in mind. But if you are perhaps looking for your collar and tie, they are lying there on the chair.""Thanks," said the engineer, and started to fasten his collar and tie. "A person can really depend on you after all."

26 March. Theosophical lectures by Dr Rudolf Steiner, Berlin. Rhetorical effect: Comfortable discussion of the objections of opponents, the listener is astonished at this strong opposition, further development and praise of these objections, the listener becomes worried, complete immersion in these objections as though they were nothing else, the listener now considers any refutation as completely impossible and is more than satisfied with a cursory description of the possibility of a defense.Continual looking at the palm of the extended hand.-Omission of the period. In general, the spoken sentence starts off from the speaker with its initial capital letter, curves in its course, as far as it can, out to the audience, and returns with the period to the speaker. But if the period is omitted then the sentence, no longer held in check, falls upon the listener immediately with full force.Before that, lecture by Loos and Kraus.

In Western European stories, as soon as they even begin to include any groups of Jews, we are now almost used immediately to hunting for and finding under or over the plot the solution to the Jewish question too. In the Judinnen, however, no such solution is indicated, indeed not even conjectured, for just those characters who busy themselves with such questions stand farthest from the center of the story at a point where events are already revolving more rapidly, so that we can, to be sure, still observe them closely, but no longer have an opportunity to get from them a calm report of their efforts. Offhand, we recognize in this a fault in the story, and feel ourselves all the more ent.i.tled to such a criticism because today, since Zionism came into being, the possibilities for a solution stand so clearly marshaled about the Jewish problem that the writer would have had to take only a few last steps in order to find the possibility of a solution suitable to his story.This fault, however, has still another origin. The Judinnen lacks non-Jewish observers, the respectable contrasting persons who in other stories draw out the Jewishness so that it advances towards them in amazement, doubt, envy, fear, and finally, finally is transformed into self-confidence, but in any event can draw itself up to its full height only before them. That is just what we demand, no other principle for the organization of this Jewish material seems justified to us. Nor do we appeal to this feeling in this case alone, it is universal in at least one respect. In the same way, too, the convulsive starting up of a lizard under our feet on a footpath in Italy delights us greatly, again and again we are moved to bow down, but if we see them at a dealer's by hundreds crawling over one another in confusion in the large bottles in which otherwise pickles are usually packed, then we don't know what to do.Both faults unite into a third. The Judinnen can do without that most prominent youth who usually, within his story, attracts the best to himself and leads it nicely along a radius to the borders of the Jewish circle. It is just this that we will not accept, that the story can do without this youth, here we sense a fault rather than see it.

28 March. P. Karlin the artist, his wife, two large, wide upper front teeth that gave a tapering shape to the large, rather flat face, Frau Hofrat B., mother of the composer, in whom old age so brings out her heavy skeleton that she looks like a man, at least when she is seated.Dr. Steiner is so very much taken up with his absent disciples. At the lecture the dead press so about him. Hunger for knowledge? But do they really need it?

Apparently, though-Sleeps two hours. Ever since someone once cut off his electric light he has always had a candle with him-He stood very close to Christ-He produced his play in Munich (you can study it all year there and won't understand it), he designed the costumes, composed the music-He instructed a chemist. Lowy Simon, soap dealer on Quai Moncey, Paris, got the best business advice from him. He translated his works into French. The wife of the Hofrat therefore has in her notebook, "How Does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? At S. Lowy's in Paris."In the Vienna lodge there is a theosophist, sixty-five years old, strong as a giant, a great drinker formerly, and a blockhead, who constantly believes and constantly has doubts. It is supposed to have been very funny when once, during a congress in Budapest, at a dinner on the Blocksberg one moonlit evening, Dr. Steiner unexpectedly joined the company; in fear he hid behind a beer barrel with his beer mug (although Dr. Steiner would not have been angered by it).He is, perhaps, not the greatest contemporary psychic scholar, but he alone has been a.s.signed the task of uniting theosophy and science. And that is why he knows everything too. Once a botanist came to his native village, a great master of the occult. He enlightened him.That I would look up Dr. Steiner was interpreted to me by the lady as the beginning of recollection. The lady's doctor, when the first signs of influenza appeared in her, asked Dr. Steiner for a remedy, prescribed this for the lady, and restored her to health with it immediately. A French woman said good-bye to him with "Au revoir."

Behind her back he shook his head. In two months she died. A similar case in Munich. A Munich doctor cures people with colors decided upon by Dr. Steiner. He also sends invalids to the picture gallery with instructions to concentrate for half an hour or longer before a certain painting.End of the Atlantic world, lemuroid destruction, and now through egoism. We live in a period of decision. The efforts of Dr. Steiner will succeed if only the Ahrimanian forces do not get the upper hand.He eats two liters of emulsion of almonds and fruits that grow in the air.He communicates with his absent disciples by means of thought-forms which he transmits to them without bothering further about them after they are generated. But they soon wear out and he must replace them.Mrs. F.: "I have a poor memory." Dr St.: "Eat no eggs."

MY VISIT TO DR STEINER.A woman is already waiting (upstairs on the third floor of the Victoria Hotel on Jungmannstra.s.se) but urges me to go in before her. We wait. The secretary arrives and gives us hope. I catch a glimpse of him down the hall. Immediately thereafter he comes toward us with arms half spread. The woman explains that I was there first.

So I walk behind him as he leads me into his room. His black Prince Albert which on those evenings when he lectures looks polished (not polished but just shining because of its clean blackness) is now in the light of day (3 p.m.) dusty and even spotted, especially on the back and elbows.In his room I try to show my humility, which I cannot feel, by seeking out a ridiculous place for my hat, I lay it down on a small wooden stand for lacing boots. Table in the middle, I sit facing the window, he on the left side of the table. On the table papers with a few drawings which recall those of the lectures dealing with occult physiology. An issue of the Annalen fur Naturphilosophie (Annals of Natural Philosophy) topped a small pile of the books which seemed to be lying about in other places as well. However, you cannot loook around because he keeps trying to hold you with his glance. But if for a moment he does not, then you must watch for the return of his glance. He begins with a few disconnected sentences. So you are Dr. Kafka? Have you been interested in theosophy long?But I push on with my prepared address: I feel that a great part of my being is striving toward theosophy, but at the same time I have the greatest fear of it. That is to say, I am afraid it will result in a new confusion which would be very bad for me, because even my present unhappiness consists only of confusion. This confusion is as follows: My happiness, my abilities, and every possibility of being useful in any way have always been in the literary field. And here I have, to be sure, experienced states (not many) which in my opinion correspond very closely to the clairvoyant states described by you, Herr Doktor, in which I completely dwelt in every idea, but also filled every idea, and in which I not only felt myself at my boundary, but at the boundary of the human in general. Only the calm of enthusiasm, which is probably characteristic of the clairvoyant, was still lacking in those states, even if not completely. I conclude this from the fact that I did not write the best of my works in those states. I cannot now devote myself completely to this literary field, as would be necessary and indeed for various reasons. Aside from my family relationships, I could not live by literature if only, to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character; besides, I am prevented also by my health and my character from devoting myself to what is, in the most favorable case, an uncertain life. I have therefore become an official in a social insurance agency. Now these two professions can never be reconciled with one another and admit a common fortune. The smallest good fortune in one becomes a great misfortune in the other. If I have written something good one evening, I am afire the next day in the office and can bring nothing to completion. This back and forth continually becomes worse.

Outwardly, I fulfil my duties satisfactorily in the office, not my inner duties, however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves. And to these two never-to-be-reconciled endeavors shall I now add theosophy as a third? Will it not disturb both the others and itself be disturbed by both? Will I, at present already so unhappy a person, be able to carry the three to completion? This is what I have come to ask you, Herr Doktor, for I have a presentiment that if you consider me capable of this, then I can really take it upon myself.He listened very attentively without apparently looking at me at all, entirely devoted to my words. He nodded from time to time, which he seems to consider an aid to strict concentration. At first a quiet head cold disturbed him, his nose ran, he kept working his handkerchief deep into his nose, one finger at each nostril.

Since in contemporary Western European stories about Jews the reader has become used immediately to hunting for and finding under or over the story the solution to the Jewish question too, and since in the Judinnen no such solution is indicated or even conjectured, there-fore it is possible that offhand the reader will recognize in this a fault of the Judinnen, and will look on only unwillingly if Jews go about in the light of day without political encouragement from the past or the future. He must tell himself in regard to this that, especially since the rise of Zionism, the possibilities for a solution stand marshaled so clearly about the Jewish problem that in the end all the writer has to do is turn his body in order to find a definite solution, suitable to the part of the problem under discussion.

27 May. Today is your birthday, but I'm not even sending you the usual book, for it would be only pretense; at bottom I am after all not even in a position to give you a book. I am writing only because it is so necessary for me today to be near you for a moment, even though it be only by means of this card, and I have begun with the complaint only so that you may recognize me at once.

15 August. The time which has just gone by and in which I haven't written a word has been so important for me because I have stopped being ashamed of my body in the swimming pools in Prague, Konigssaal and Czernoschitz. How late I make up for my education now, at the age of twenty-eight, a delayed start they would call it at the race track. And the harm of such a misfortune consists, perhaps, not in the fact that one does not win; this is indeed only the still visible, clear, healthy kernel of the misfortune, progressively dissolving and losing its boundaries, that drives one into the interior of the circle, when after all the circle should be run around. Aside from that I have also observed a great many other things in myself during this period which was to some extent also happy, and will try to write it down in the next few days.

20 August. I have the unhappy belief that I haven't the time for the least bit of good work, for I really don't have time for a story, time to expand myself in every direction in the world, as I should have to do. But then I once more believe that my trip will turn out better, that I shall comprehend better if I am relaxed by a little writing, and so try it again.

From his appearance I had a suspicion of the exertions which he had taken upon himself for my sake and which now, perhaps only because he was tired, gave him this certainty. A little more effort might have sufficed and the deception would have succeeded, it succeeded perhaps even now. Did I defend myself, then? Indeed, I stood stiff-necked here in front of the house, but-just as stiff-necked-I hesitated to go up. Was I waiting until the guests came to fetch me with a song?

I have been reading about d.i.c.kens. Is it so difficult and can an outsider understand that you experience a story within yourself from its beginning, from the distant point up to the approaching locomotives of steel, coal, and steam, and you don't abandon it even now, but want to be pursued by it and have time for it, therefore are pursued by it and of your own volition run before it wherever it may thrust and wherever you may lure it.

I can't understand it and can't believe it. I live only here and there in a small word in whose vowel ("thrust" above, for instance) I lose my useless head for a moment.

The first and last letters are the beginning and end of my fishlike emotion.

24 August. Sitting with acquaintances at a coffeehouse table in the open air and looking at a woman at the next table who has just arrived, breathing heavily beneath her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and who, with a heated, brownish, shining face, sits down. She leans her head back, a heavy down becomes visible, she turns her eyes up, almost in the way in which she perhaps sometimes looks at her husband, who is now reading an ill.u.s.trated paper beside her. If one could only persuade her that one may read at most a newspaper but never a magazine beside one's wife in a coffeehouse. After a moment she becomes aware of the fullness of her body and moves back from the table a little.

26 August. Tomorrow I am supposed to leave for Italy. Father has been unable to fall asleep these evenings because of excitement, since he has been completely caught up in his worries about the business and in his illness, which they have aggravated. A wet cloth on his heart, vomiting, suffocation, walking back and forth to the accompaniment of sighs. My mother in her anxiety finds new solace. He was always after all so energetic, he got over everything, and now . . . I say that all the misery over the business could after all last only another three months, then everything will have to be all right. He walks up and down, sighing and shaking his head. It is clear that from his point of view his worries will not be taken from his shoulders and will not even be made lighter by us, but even from our point of view they will not, even in our best intentions there is something of the sad conviction that he must provide for his family-By his frequent yawning or his poking into his nose (on the whole not disgusting) Father engenders a slight rea.s.surance as to his condition, which scarcely enters his consciousness, despite the fact that when he is well he usually does not do this. Ottla confirmed this for me-Poor Mother will go to the landlord tomorrow to beg.

It had already become a custom for the four friends, Robert, Samuel, Max, and Franz, to spend their short holidays every summer or autumn on a trip together. During the rest of the year their friendship consisted mostly of the fact that they all four liked to come together one evening every week, usually at Samuel's, who, as the most well-to-do, had a rather large room, to tell each other various things and to accompany it by drinking a moderate amount of beer. They were never finished with the telling of things when they separated at midnight; since Robert was secretary of an a.s.sociation, Samuel an employee in a business office, Max a Civil Service official, and Franz an employee in a bank, almost everything that anyone had experienced in his work during the week was not only unknown to the other three and had to be told to them quickly, but it was also incomprehensible without rather lengthy explanations. But more than anything else the consequence of the difference of these professions was that each was compelled to describe his profession to the others again and again, since the descriptions (they were all only weak people, after all) were not thoroughly understood, and for that very reason and also out of friendship were demanded again and again.Talk about women, on the other hand, was seldom engaged in, for even if Samuel for his part would have found it to his liking he was still careful not to demand that the conversation adapt itself to his requirements, in this regard the old maid who brought up the beer often appeared to him as an admonition. But they laughed so much during these evenings that Max said on the way home that this eternal laughing is really to be regretted, because of it one forgets all the serious concerns of which everyone, after all, really has enough. While one laughs one thinks there is still time enough for seriousness. That isn't correct, however, for seriousness naturally makes greater demands on a person, and after all it is clear that one is also able to satisfy greater demands in the society of friends than alone. One should laugh in the office because there is nothing better to be accomplished there. This opinion was aimed at Robert, who worked hard in the art a.s.sociation he was putting new life into and at the same time observed in the old the most comical things with which he entertained his friends.As soon as he began, the friends left their places, stood around him or sat down on the table, and laughed so self-obviously, especially Max and Franz, that Samuel carried all the gla.s.ses over to a side-table. If they tired of talking Max sat down at the piano with suddenly renewed strength and played, while Robert and Samuel sat beside him on the bench; Franz, on the other hand, who understood nothing of music, stood alone at the table and looked through Samuel's collection of picture postcards or read the paper. When the evenings became warmer and the window could be left open, all four would perhaps come to the window and with their hands behind their backs look down into the street without letting themselves be diverted from their conversation by the light traffic outside. Now and then one returned to the table to take a swallow of beer, or pointed to the curls of two girls who sat downstairs in front of their wine-shop, or to the moon that quietly surprised them, until finally Franz said it was getting cool, they ought to close the window.In summer they sometimes met in a public garden, sat at a table off to one side where it was darker, drank to one another, and, their heads together in conversation, hardly noticed the distant bra.s.s band. Arm in arm and in step, they then walked home through the park. The two on the outside twirled their canes or struck at the shrubs, Robert called on them to sing, but then he sang alone, well enough for four, the other one in the middle felt himself made especially comfortable by this.On one such evening, Franz, drawing his two neighbors more closely to him, said it was really so beautiful to be together that he couldn't understand why they met only once a week when they could certainly arrange without difficulty to see each other, if not often, then at least twice a week. They all were in favor of it, even the fourth one on the end, who had heard Franz's soft words only indistinctly. A pleasure of this sort would certainly be worth the slight effort which it would now and then cost one of them. It seemed to Franz as though he had a hollow voice as punishment for speaking uninvited for all of them. But he did not stop. And if sometimes one of them couldn't come, that's his loss and he can be consoled for it the next time, but do the others then have to give each other up, aren't three enough for each other, even two, if it comes to that? Naturally, naturally, they all said. Samuel disengaged himself from the end of the line and stood close in front of the three others, because in this way they were closer to each other. But then it didn't seem so, and he preferred to link up with the others again.Robert made a proposal. "Let's meet every week and study Italian. We are determined to learn Italian, last year already we saw in the little part of Italy where we were that our Italian was only sufficient to ask the way when we got lost, remember, among the vineyard walls of the Campagna. And even then it managed to do only thanks to the greatest efforts on the part of those we asked. We'll have to study it if we want to go to Italy again this year. We simply have to. And so isn't it best to study together?""No," said Max, "we shall learn nothing together. I am as certain of that as you, Samuel, are certain that we ought to study together.""Am I !" Samuel said. "We shall certainly learn very well together, I always regret that we weren't together even at school. Do you realize that we've known each other only two years?" He bent forward to look at all three. They had slowed down their steps and let go their arms."But we haven't studied anything together yet," said Franz. "I like it very well that way, too. I don't want to learn a thing. But if we have to learn Italian, then it is better for each one to learn it by himself.""I don't understand that," Samuel said. "First you want us to meet every week, then you don't want it.""Come now," Max said. "Franz and I, after all, just don't want our being together to be disturbed by studying, or our studying by being together, nothing else.""Yes," said Franz."And indeed there isn't much time," said Max. "It is June now and in September we want to leave.""That's the very reason why I want us to study together," Robert said, and stared in surprise at the two who opposed him. His neck became especially flexible when someone contradicted him.

One thinks that one describes him correctly, but it is only approximate and is corrected by the diary.

It probably lies in the essence of friendship and follows it like a shadow-one will welcome it, the second regret it, the third not notice it at all- 26 September. The artist Kubin recommends Regulin as a laxative, a powdered seaweed that swells up in the bowels, shakes them up, is thus effective mechanically in contrast to the unhealthy chemical effect of other laxatives which just tear through the excrement and leave it hanging on the walls of the bowels.He met Hamsun at Langen. He (Hamsun) grins mockingly for no reason. During the conversation, without interrupting it, he put one foot on his neck, took a large pair of scissors from the table, and trimmed the frayed edges of his trousers. Shabbily dressed, with one or so rather expensive details, his tie, for example.Stories about an artist's pension in Munich where painters and veterinaries lived (the latters' school was in the neighborhood) and where they acted in such a debauched way that the windows of the house across the way, from which a good view could be had, were rented out. In order to satisfy these spectators, one of the residents in the pension would sometimes jump up on the window sill in the posture of a monkey and spoon his soup out of the pot.A manufacturer of fraudulent antiques who got the worn effect by means of buckshot and who said of a table: "Now we must drink coffee on it three more times, then it can be shipped off to the Innsbruck Museum."Kubin himself: very strong, but somewhat monotonous facial expression, he describes the most varied things with the same movement of muscles. Looks different in age, size, and strength according to whether he is sitting, standing, wearing just a suit, or an overcoat.

27 September. Yesterday on the Wenzelsplatz met two girls, kept my eye too long on one while it was just the other, as it proved too late, who wore a plain, soft, brown, wrinkled, ample coat, open a little in front, had a delicate throat and delicate nose, her hair was beautiful in a way already forgotten-Old man with loosely hanging trousers on the Belvedere. He whistles; when I look at him he stops; if I look away he begins again; finally he whistles even when I look at him-The beautiful large b.u.t.ton, beautifully set low on the sleeve of a girl's dress. The dress worn beautifully too, hovering over American boots. How seldom I succeed in creating something beautiful, and this unnoticed b.u.t.ton and its ignorant seamstress succeeded-The woman talking on the way to the Belvedere, whose lively eyes, independent of the words of the moment, contentedly surveyed her story to its end-The powerful half-turn of the neck of a strong girl.

29 September. Goethe's diaries. A person who keeps none is in a false position in the face of a diary. When for example he reads in Goethe's diaries: "1/11/1797. All day at home busy with various affairs," then it seems to him that he himself had never done so little in one day.Goethe's observations on his travels different from today's because made from a mail-coach, and with the slow changes of the region, develop more simply and can be followed much more easily even by one who does not know those parts of the country. A calm, so-to-speak pastoral form of thinking sets in. Since the country offers itself unscathed in its indigenous character to the pa.s.sengers in a wagon, and since highways too divide the country much more naturally than the railway lines to which they perhaps stand in the same relationship as do rivers to ca.n.a.ls, so too the observer need do no violence to the landscape and he can see systematically without great effort. Therefore there are few observations of the moment, mostly only indoors, where certain people suddenly and hugely bubble up before one's eyes; for instance, Austrian officers in Heidelberg, on the other hand the pa.s.sage about the men in Wiesenheim is closer to the landscape, "They wear blue coats and white vests ornamented with woven flowers" (quoted from memory). Much written down about the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, in the middle in larger letters: "Excited ideas."

Cabaret Lucerna. Lucie Konig showing photographs with old hairstyles. Threadbare face. Sometimes, with her turned-up nose, with her arm held aloft and a turn of all her fingers, she succeeds on something. A milksop face-Longen (the painter Pittermann), mimic jokes. A production that is obviously without joy and yet cannot be considered so, for if it were, then it couldn't be performed every evening, particularly since it was so unhappy a thing even at the moment it was created that no satisfactory pattern has resulted which would dispense with frequent appearances of the whole person. Pretty jump of a clown over a chair into the emptiness of the wings. The whole thing reminds one of a private production where, because of social necessity, one vigorously applauds a wretched, insignificant performance in order to get something smooth and rounded from the minus of the production by means of the plus of the applause.The singer Vaschata. So bad that one loses oneself in his appearance. But because he is a powerful person he holds the attention of the audience with an animal force of which certainly I am consciously aware.Grunbaum is effective with what is apparently only the seeming inconsolability of his existence.Odys, dancer. Stiff hips. Real fleshlessness. Red knees only suit the "Moods of Spring" dance.

30 September. The girl in the adjoining room yesterday. I lay on the sofa and, on the point of dozing off, heard her voice. She seemed to me in my mind to be overdressed not only because of the clothes she wore, but also because of the entire room; only her shapely, naked, round, strong, dark shoulders which I had seen in the bath prevailed against her clothes. For a moment she seemed to me to be steaming and to be filling the whole room with her vapors. Then she stood up in her ash-gray-colored bodice that stood off from her body so far at the bottom that one could sit down on it and after a fashion ride along.

More on Kubin: The habit always of repeating in an approving tone someone else's last words, even if it appears from his own words added on that he by no means agrees with the other person. Provoking-When you listen to his many stories it is easy to forget his importance. Suddenly you are reminded of this and become frightened. Someone said that a place we wanted to go to was dangerous; he said he wouldn't go there, then; I asked him whether he was afraid to, and he answered (moreover, his arm was pa.s.sed through mine): "Naturally, I am young and have a lot in front of me yet."All evening he spoke often and-in my opinion-entirely seriously about my constipation and his. Towards midnight, however, when I let my hand hang over the edge of the table, he saw part of my arm and cried: "But you are really sick." Treated me from then on even more indulgently and later also kept off the others who wanted to talk me into going to the brothel with them. When we had already said good-bye he called to me again from the distance: "Regulin!"

Tucholsky and Szafranski. The aspirated Berlin dialect in which the voice makes use of intervals consisting of "nich". The former, an entirely consistent person of twenty-one. From the controlled and powerful swing of his walking-stick that gives a youthful lift to his shoulders to the deliberate delight in and contempt for his own literary works. Wants to be a defense lawyer, sees only a few obstacles and at the same time how they may be overcome: his clear voice that after the manly sound of the first half-hour of talk pretends to become revealingly girlish-doubt of his own capacity to pose, which, however, he hopes to get with more experience of the world-fear, finally, of changing into a melancholic, as he has seen happen in older Berlin Jews of his type, in any event for the time being he sees no sign of this. He will marry soon.

Szafranski, a disciple of Bernhardt's, grimaces while he observes and draws in a way that resembles what is drawn. Reminds me that I too have a p.r.o.nounced talent for metamorphosing myself which no one notices. How often I must have imitated Max. Yesterday evening, on the way home, if I had observed myself from the outside I should have taken myself for Tucholsky. The alien being must be in me, then, as distinctly and invisibly as the hidden object in a picture-puzzle, where, too, one would never find anything if one did not know that it is there. When these metamorphoses take place, I should especially like to believe in a dimming of my own eyes.

1 October. The Altneu Synagogue yesterday. Kol Nidre. Suppressed murmur of the stock market. In the entry, boxes with the inscription: "Merciful gifts secretly left a.s.suage the wrath of the bereft." Churchly inside. Three pious, apparently Eastern Jews. In socks. Bowed over their prayer books, their prayer shawls drawn over their heads, become as small as they possibly can. Two are crying, moved only by the holy day. One of them may only have sore eyes, perhaps, to which he fleetingly applies his still-folded handkerchief, at once to lower his face to the text again. The words are not really, or chiefly, sung, but behind them arabesque-like melodies are heard that spin out the words as fine as hairs. The little boy without the slightest conception of it all and without any possibility of understanding, who, with the clamor in his ears, pushes himself among the thronging people and is pushed. The clerk (apparently) who shakes himself rapidly while he prays, which is to be understood only as an attempt at putting the strongest possible-even if possibly incomprehensible-emphasis on each word, by means of which the voice, which in any case could not attain a large, clear emphasis in the clamor, is spared. The family of a brothel owner. I was stirred immeasurably more deeply by Judaism in the Pinkas Synagogue.

The day before the day before yesterday. The one, a Jewish girl with a narrow face-better, that tapers down to a narrow chin, but is loosened by a broad, wavy hairdo. The three small doors that lead from the inside of the building into the salon. The guests as though in a police station on the stage, drinks on the table are scarcely touched.Several girls here dressed like the marionettes for children's theaters that are sold in the Christmas market, i.e. with ruching and gold stuck on and loosely sewn so that one can rip them with one pull and they then fall apart in one's fingers. The landlady with the pale blonde hair drawn tight over doubtless disgusting pads, with the sharply slanting nose the direction of which stands in some sort of geometric relation to the sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the stiffly held belly, complains of headaches which are caused by the fact that today, Sat.u.r.day, there is so great an uproar and there is nothing in it.

More on Kubin: The story about Hamsun is suspect. One could tell such stories as one's own experiences by the thousand from his works.

More on Goethe: "Excited ideas" are only the ideas which the Rhine Falls excite. One sees this from a letter to Schiller-The isolated momentary observation, "Castanet rhythms of the children in wooden shoes," made such an impression, is so universally accepted, that it is unthinkable that anyone, even if he had never read this remark, could feel this observation as an original idea.

2 October. Sleepless night. The third in a row. I fall asleep soundly, but after an hour I wake up, as though I had laid my head in the wrong hole. I am completely awake, have the feeling that I have not slept at all or only under a thin skin, have before me anew the labor of falling asleep and feel myself rejected by sleep. And for the rest of the night, until about five, thus it remains, so that indeed I sleep but at the same time vivid dreams keep me awake. I sleep alongside myself, so to speak, while I myself must struggle with dreams. About five the last trace of sleep is exhausted, I just dream, which is more exhausting than wakefulness. In short, I spend the whole night in that state in which a healthy person finds himself for a short time before really falling asleep. Then I awaken, all the dreams are gathered about me, but I am careful nor to reflect on them. Towards morning I sigh into the pillow, because for this night all hope is gone. I think of those nights at the end of which I was raised out of deep sleep and awoke as though I had been folded in a nut.The horrible apparition last night of a blind child, apparently the daughter of my aunt in Leitmeritz who, however, has no daughter but only sons, one of whom once broke his leg. On the other hand there were resemblances between this child and Dr. M.'s daughter who, as I have recently seen, is in the process of changing from a pretty child into a stout, stiffly dressed little girl. This blind or weak-sighted child had both eyes covered by a pair of gla.s.ses, the left, under a lens held at a certain distance from the eye, was milky-gray and bulbous, the other receded and was covered by a lens lying close against it. In order that this eyegla.s.s might be set in place with optical correctness it was necessary, instead of the usual support going behind the ears, to make use of a lever, the head of which could be attached to no place but the cheekbone, so that from this lens a little rod descended to the cheek, there disappeared into the pierced flesh and ended on the bone, while another small wire rod came out and went back over the ear.I believe this sleeplessness comes only because I write. For no matter how little and how badly I write, I am still made sensitive by these minor shocks, feel, especially towards evening and even more in the morning, the approaching, the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open, which could make me capable of anything, and in the general uproar that is within me and which I have no time to command, find no rest. In the end this uproar is only a suppressed, restrained harmony, which, left free, would fill me completely, which could even widen me and yet still fill me. But now such a moment arouses only feeble hopes and does me harm, for my being does not have sufficient strength or the capacity to hold the present mixture, during the day the visible word helps me, during the night it cuts me to pieces unhindered. I always think in this connection of Paris, where at the time of the siege and later, until the Commune, the population of the northern and eastern suburbs, up to that time strangers to the Parisians, for a period of months moved through the connecting streets into the center of Paris, dawdling like the hands of a clock.My consolation is-and with it I now go to bed-that I have not written for so long, that therefore this writing could find no right place within my present circ.u.mstances, that nevertheless, with a little fort.i.tude, I'll succeed, at least temporarily.I was so weak today that I even told my chief the story of the child. I remembered the gla.s.ses in the dream derive from my mother, who in the evening sits next to me and, while playing cards, looks across at me not very pleasantly under her eyegla.s.ses. Her gla.s.ses even have, which I do not remember having noticed before, the right lens nearer the eye than the left.

3 October. The same sort of night, but fell asleep with even more difficulty. While falling asleep a vertically moving pain in my head over the bridge of the nose, as though from a wrinkle too sharply pressed into my forehead. To make myself as heavy as possible, which I consider good for falling asleep, I had crossed my arms and laid my hands on my shoulders, so that I lay there like a soldier with his pack. Again it was the power of my dreams, shining forth into wakefulness even before I fall asleep, which did not let me sleep. In the evening and the morning my consciousness of the creative abilities in me is more than I can encompa.s.s. I feel shaken to the core of my being and can get out of myself whatever I desire. Calling forth such powers, which are then not permitted to function, reminds me of my relationship with B. Here toe there are effusions which are not released but must instead spend themselves in being repulsed, but here-this is the difference-it is a matter of more mysterious powers which are of an ultimate significance to me.

On the Josefsplatz a large touring car with a family sitting crowded together drove by me. In the wake of the car, with the smell of petrol, a breath of Paris blew across my face.

While dictating a rather long report to the district Chief of Police, towards the end, where a climax was intended, I got stuck and could do nothing but look at K., the typist, who, in her usual way, became especially lively, moved her chair about, coughed, tapped on the table and so called the attention of the whole room to my misfortune. The sought-for idea now has the additional value that it will make her be quiet, and the more valuable it becomes the more difficult it becomes to find it.

Finally I have the word "stigmatize" and the appropriate sentence, but still hold it all in my mouth with disgust and a sense of shame as though it were raw meat, cut out of me (such effort has it cost me). Finally I say it, but retain the great fear that everything within me is ready for a poetic work and such a work would be a heavenly enlightenment and a real coming-alive for me, while here, in the office, because of so wretched an official doc.u.ment, I must rob a body capable of such happiness of a piece of its flesh.

4 October. I feel restless and vicious. Yesterday, before falling asleep, I had a flickering, cool little flame up in the left side of my head. The tensions over my left eye has already settled down and made itself at home. When I think about it, it seems to me that I couldn't hold out in the office even if they told me that in one month I'd be free. And most of the time in the office I do what I am supposed to, am quite calm when I can be sure that my boss is satisfied, and do not feel that my condition is dreadful. By the way, last night I purposely made myself dull, w