Diaries of Franz Kafka 1913 Part 2

11 December. In Toynbee Hall read the beginning of Michael Kohlhaas. Complete and utter fiasco. Badly chosen, badly presented, finally swam senselessly around in the text. Model audience. Very small boys in the front row. One of them tries to overcome his innocent boredom by carefully throwing his cap on the floor and then carefully picking it up, and then again, over and over. Since he is too small to accomplish this from his seat, he has to keep sliding off the chair a little. Read wildly and badly and carelessly and unintelligibly. And in the afternoon I was already trembling with eagerness to read, could hardly keep my mouth shut.

No push is really needed, only a withdrawal of the last force placed at my disposal, and I fall into a despair that rips me to pieces. Today, when I imagined that I would certainly be calm during the lecture, I asked myself what sort of calm this would be, on what it would be based, and I could only say that it would merely be a calm for its own sake, an incomprehensible grace, nothing else.

12 December. And in the morning I got up relatively quite fresh.

Yesterday, on my way home, the little boy bundled in gray who was running along beside a group of boys, hitting himself on the thigh, catching hold of another boy with his other hand, and shouting rather absentmindedly, which I must not forget-"Dnes to bylo docela hezky" ["Very nicely done today"].

The freshness with which, after a somewhat altered division of the day, I walked along the street about six o'clock today. Ridiculous observation, when will I get rid of this habit.

I looked closely at myself in the mirror a while ago-though only by artificial light and with the light coming from behind me, so that actually only the down at the edges of my ears was illuminated-and my face, even after fairly close examination, appeared to me better than I know it to be. A clear, well-shaped, almost beautifully outlined face. The black of the hair, the brows and the eye sockets stand livingly forth from the rest of the pa.s.sive ma.s.s. The glance is by no means haggard, there is no trace of that, but neither is it childish, rather unbelievably energetic, but perhaps only because it was observing me, since I was just then observing myself and wanted to frighten myself.

12 December. Yesterday did not fall asleep for a long time. F. B. Finally decided-and with that I fell uncertainly asleep-to ask Weiss to go to her office with a letter, and to write nothing else in this letter other than that I must have news from her or about her and have therefore sent Weiss there so that he might write to me about her. Meanwhile Weiss is sitting beside her desk, waits until she has finished reading the letter, bows, and-since he has no further instructions and it is highly unlikely that he will receive an answer-leaves.

Discussion evening at the officials' club. I presided. Funny, what sources of self-respect one can draw upon. My introductory sentence: "I must begin the discussion this evening with a regret that it is taking place." For I was not advised in time and therefore not prepared.

14 December. Lecture by Beerman. Nothing, but presented with a self-satisfaction that is here and there contagious. Girlish face with a goitre. Before almost every sentence the same contraction of muscles in his face as in sneezing. A verse from the Christmas Fair in his newspaper column today.Sir, buy it for your little lad So he'd laugh and not be sad.

Quoted Shaw: "I am a sedentary, faint-hearted civilian."

Wrote a letter to F. in the office.

The fright this morning on the way to the office when I met the girl from the seminar who resembles F., for the moment did not know who it was and simply saw that she resembled F., was not F., but had some sort of further relationship to F. beyond that, namely this, that in the seminar, at the sight of her, I thought of F. a great deal.

Now read in Dostoyevsky the pa.s.sage that reminds me so of my "being unhappy."

When I put my left hand inside my trousers while I was reading and felt the lukewarm upper part of my thigh.

15 December. Letters to Dr. Weiss and Uncle Alfred. No telegram came.

Read Wir Jungen von 1870-1. Again read with suppressed sobs of the victories and scenes of enthusiasm. To be a father and speak calmly to one's son. For this, however, one shouldn't have a little toy hammer in place of a heart.

"Have you written to your uncle yet?" my mother asked me, as I had maliciously been expecting for some time. She had long been watching me with concern, for various reasons did not dare in the first place to ask me, and in the second place to ask me in front of my father, and at last, in her concern when she saw that I was about to leave, asked me nevertheless. When I pa.s.sed behind her chair she looked up from her cards, turned her face to me with a long-vanished, tender motion somehow revived for the moment, and asked me, looking up only furtively, smiling shyly, and already humbled in the asking of the question, before any answer had been received.

16 December. "The thundering scream of the seraphim's delight."

I sat in the rocking chair at Weltsch's, we spoke of the disorder of our lives, he always with a certain confidence ("One must want the impossible"), I without it, eyeing my fingers with the feeling that I was the representative of my inner emptiness, an emptiness that replaces everything else and is not even very great.

17 December. Letter to W. commissioning him "to overflow and yet be only a pot on the cold hearth."

Lecture by Bergmann, "Moses and the Present." Pure impression-In any event I have nothing to do with it. The truly terrible paths between freedom and slavery cross each other with no guide to the way ahead and accompanied by an immediate obliterating of those paths already traversed. There are a countless number of such paths, or only one, it cannot be determined, for there is no vantage ground from which to observe. There am I. I cannot leave. I have nothing to complain about. I do not suffer excessively, for I do not suffer consistently, it does not pile up, at least I do not feel it for the time being, and the degree of my suffering is far less than the suffering that is perhaps my due.

The silhouette of a man who, his arms half raised at different levels, confronts the thick mist in order to enter it.

The good, strong way in which Judaism separates things. There is room there for a person. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better.

18 December. I am going to sleep, I am tired. Perhaps it has already been decided there. Many dreams about it.

19 December. Letter from F. Beautiful morning, warmth in my blood.

20 December. No letter.

The effect of a peaceful face, calm speech, especially when exercised by a strange person one hasn't seen through yet. The voice of G.o.d out of a human mouth.

An old man walked through the streets in the mist one winter evening. It was icy cold. The streets were empty. No one pa.s.sed near him, only now and then he saw in the distance, half concealed by the mist, a tall policeman or a woman in furs or shawls. Nothing troubled him, he merely intended to visit a friend at whose house he had not been for a long time and who had just now sent a servant girl to ask him to come.

It was long past midnight when there came a soft knock on the door of the room of the merchant Messner. It wasn't necessary to wake him, he fell asleep only towards morning, and until that time he used to lie awake in bed on his belly, his face pressed into the pillow, his arms extended, and his hands clasped over his head. He had heard the knocking immediately. "Who is it?" he asked. An indistinct murmur, softer than the knocking, replied. "The door is open," he said, and turned on the electric light. A small, delicate woman in a large gray shawl entered.

Copyright Schocken Books Inc.

Translated by Joseph Kresh.