Diaries of Franz Kafka Page 15
24 November. Shechite (one who is learning the slaughterer’s art). Play by Gordin. In it quotations from the Talmud, for example:
If a great scholar commits a sin during the evening or the night, by morning you are no longer permitted to reproach him with it, for in his scholarship he has already repented of it himself.
If you steal an ox then you must return two, if you slaughter the stolen ox then you must return four, but if you slaughter a stolen calf then you must return only three because it is assumed that you had to carry the calf away, therefore had done hard work. This assumption influences the punishment even if the calf was led away without any difficulty.
Honesty of evil thoughts. Yesterday evening I felt especially miserable. My stomach was upset again. I had written with difficulty. I had listened with effort to Löwy’s reading in the coffee-house (which at first was quiet so that we had to restrain ourselves, but which then became full of bustle and gave us no peace), the dismal future immediately before me seemed not worth entering, abandoned, I walked through Ferdinandstrasse. Then at the junction with the Bergstein I once more thought about the more distant future. How would I live through it with this body picked up in a lumber room? The Talmud too says: A man without a woman is no person. I had no defence this evening against such thoughts except to say to myself: ‘It is now that you come, evil thoughts, now, because I am weak and have an upset stomach. You pick this time for me to think you. You have waited for your advantage. Shame on you. Come some other time, when I am stronger. Don’t exploit my condition in this way.’ And, in fact, without even waiting for other proofs, they yielded, scattered slowly and did not again disturb me during the rest of my walk, which was, naturally, not too happy. They apparently forgot, however, that if they were to respect all my evil moments, they would seldom get their chance.
The odour of petrol from a motor-car driving towards me from the theatre made me notice how visibly a beautiful home life (and were it lit by a single candle, that is all one needs before going to bed) is waiting for the theatre-goers coming towards me who are giving their cloaks and dangling opera glasses a last tug into place, but also how it seems that they are being sent home from the theatre like subordinates before whom the curtain has gone down for the last time and behind whom the doors have opened through which – full of pride because of some ridiculous worry or another – they had entered the theatre before the beginning of or during the first act.
28 November. Have written nothing for three days.
Spent all afternoon of the 25th in the Café City persuading M. to sign a declaration that he was just a clerk with us, therefore not covered by insurance, so that Father would not be obliged to make the large payment on his insurance. He promises it, I speak fluent Czech, I apologize for my mistakes with particular elegance, he promises to send the declaration to the office Monday, I feel that if he does not like me then at least he respects me, but on Monday he sends nothing, nor is he any longer in Prague, he has left.
Dull evening at Baum’s without Max. Reading of Die Hässliche, a story that is still too disorganized, the first chapter is rather the building-site of a story.
On Sunday, 26 November. Richard and Samuel with Max morning and afternoon until five. Then to N., a collector from Linz, recommended by Kubin, fifty, gigantic, towerlike movements; when he is silent for any length of time one bows one’s head, for he is entirely silent, while when he speaks he does not speak entirely; his life consists of collecting and fornicating.
Collecting: He began with a collection of postage stamps, then turned to drawings, then collected everything, then saw the aimlessness of this collection which could never be completed and limited himself to amulets, later to pilgrimage medals and pilgrimage tracts from lower Austria and southern Bavaria. These are medals and tracts which are issued anew for each pilgrimage, most of them worthless in their material and also artistically, but often have nice pictures. He now also began industriously to write about them, and indeed was the first to write on this subject, for the systematization of which he first established the points of reference. Naturally, those who had been collecting these objects and had put off publishing were furious, but had to put up with it nevertheless. Now he is an acknowledged expert on these pilgrimage medals, requests come from all over for his opinion and decision on these medals, his voice is decisive. Besides, he collects everything else as well, his pride is a chastity belt that, together with his amulets, was exhibited at the Dresden Hygienic Exhibition. (He has just been there to have everything packed for shipment.) Then a beautiful knight’s sword of the Falkensteiners. His relationship to art is unambiguous and clear in that bad way which collecting makes possible.
From the coffee-house in the Hotel Graf he takes us up to his overheated room, sits down on the bed, we on two chairs around him, so that we form a quiet group. His first question: ‘Are you collectors?’
‘No, only poor amateurs.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’ He pulls out his wallet and practically showers us with book-plates, his own and others’, jumbled with announcements of his next book, Magic and Superstition in the Mineral Kingdom. He has already written much, especially on ‘Motherhood in Art’, he considers the pregnant body the most beautiful, for him it is also the most pleasant to f—. He has also written about amulets. He was also in the employ of the Vienna Court Museum, was in charge of excavations in Braila at the mouth of the Danube, invented a process, named after him, for restoring excavated vases, is a member of thirteen learned societies and museums, his collection is willed to the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg, he often sits at his desk until one or two o’clock at night and is back at eight o’clock in the morning. We have to write something in a lady friend’s album which he has brought along to fill up on his journey. Those who themselves create come first. Max writes a complicated verse which Mr N. tries to render by the proverb, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ Before this, he had read it aloud in a wooden voice. I write down:
Little Soul,
Boundest in dancing, etc.
He reads aloud again, I help, finally he says: ‘A Persian rhythm? Now what is that called? Ghazel? Right.’ We are not in a position to agree with this nor even to guess at what he means. Finally he quotes a ‘ritornello by Rückert’. Yes, he meant ritornello. However, it is not that either. Very well, but it has a certain melody.
He is a friend of Halbe. He likes to talk about him. We would much rather talk about Blei. There is not much to say about him, however, Munich literary society does not think much of him because of his intellectual double-crossing, he is divorced from his wife who had had a large practice as a dentist and supported him, his daughter, sixteen, blonde, with blue eyes, is the wildest girl in Munich. In Sternheim’s Hose – N. was at the theatre with Halbe – Blei played an ageing man-about-town. When N. met him the next day he said: ‘Herr Doktor, yesterday you played Dr Blei.’
‘What? What?’ he said in embarrassment, ‘but I was playing so-and-so.’
When we leave he throws open the bed so that it may thoroughly take on the warmth of the room, he arranges for additional heating besides.
29 November. From the Talmud: When a scholar goes to meet his bride, he should take an am ha-aretz 36 along, he is too deeply sunk in his scholarliness, he would not observe what should be observed.
As a result of bribery the telephone and telegraph wires around Warsaw were put up in a complete circle, which in the sense of the Talmud makes the city a bounded area, a courtyard, as it were, so that on Saturday it is possible even for the most pious person to move about, carry trifles (like handkerchiefs) on his person, within this circle.
The parties of the Hasidim where they merrily discourse on talmudic problems. If the entertainment runs down or if someone does not take part, they make up for it by singing. Melodies are invented, if one is a success, members of the family are called in and it is repeated and rehearsed with them. At one such entertainment a wonder-rabbi who often had hallucinations sud
denly laid his face on his arms, which were resting on the table, and remained in that position for three hours while everyone was silent. When he awoke he wept and sang an entirely new, gay, military march. This was the melody with which the angels of the dead had just escorted to heaven the soul of a wonder-rabbi who had died at this time in a far-off Russian city.
On Friday, according to the Kabbalah, the pious get a new, more delicate soul, entirely divine, which remains with them until Saturday evening.
On Friday evening two angels accompany each pious man from the synagogue to his home; the master of the house stands while he greets them in the dining-room; they stay only a short time.
The education of girls, their growing up, getting used to the ways of the world, was always especially important to me. Then they no longer run so hopelessly out of the way of a person who knows them only casually and would like to speak casually with them, they have begun to stop for a moment, even though it be not quite in that part of the room in which you would have them, you need no longer hold them with glances, threats, or the power of love; when they turn away they do so slowly and do not intend any harm by it, then their backs have become broader too. What you say to them is not lost, they listen to the whole question without your having to hurry, and they answer, jokingly to be sure, but directly to the point. Yes, with their faces lifted up they even ask questions themselves, and a short conversation is not more than they can stand. They hardly ever let a spectator disturb them any more in the work they have just undertaken, and therefore pay less attention to him, yet he may look at them longer. They withdraw only to dress for dinner. This is the only time when you may be insecure. Apart from this, however, you need no longer run through the streets, lie in wait at house doors, and wait over and over again for a lucky chance, even though you have really long since learned that such chances can’t be forced.
But despite this great change that has taken place in them it is no rarity for them to come towards us with mournful faces when we meet them unexpectedly, to put their hands flatly in ours and with slow gestures invite us to enter their homes as though we were business acquaintances. They walk heavily up and down in the next room; but when we penetrate there too, in desire and spite, they crouch in a window-seat and read the paper without a glance to spare for us.
3 December. I have read a part of Schäfer’s Karl Stauffers Lebensgang. Eine Chronik der Leidenschaft, and am so caught up and held fast by this powerful impression forcing its ways into that inner part of me which I listen to and learn from only at rare intervals, but at the same time am driven to such a pass by the hunger imposed on me by my upset stomach and by the usual excitements of the free Sunday, that I must write, just as one can get relief from external excitement forced upon one from the outside only by flailing one’s arms.
The unhappiness of the bachelor, whether seeming or actual, is so easily guessed at by the world around him that he will curse his decision, at least if he has remained a bachelor because of the delight he takes in secrecy. He walks around with his coat buttoned, his hands in the upper pockets of his jacket, his arms akimbo, his hat pulled down over his eyes, a false smile that has become natural to him is supposed to shield his mouth as his glasses do his eyes, his trousers are tighter than seem proper for his thin legs. But everyone knows his condition, can detail his sufferings. A cold breeze breathes upon him from within and he gazes inward with the even sadder half of his double face. He moves incessantly, but with predictable regularity, from one apartment to another. The farther he moves away from the living, for whom he must still – and this is the worst mockery – work like a conscious slave who dare not express his consciousness, so much the smaller a space is considered sufficient for him. While it is death that must still strike down the others, though they may have spent all their lives in a sickbed – for even though they would have gone down by themselves long ago from their own weakness, they nevertheless hold fast to their loving, very healthy relatives by blood and marriage – he, this bachelor, still in the midst of life, apparently of his own free will resigns himself to an ever smaller space, and when he dies the coffin is exactly right for him.
My recent reading of Mörike’s autobiography to my sisters began well enough but improved as I went on, and finally, my fingertips together, it conquered inner obstacles with my voice’s unceasing calm, provided a constantly expanding panorama for my voice, and finally the whole room round about me dared admit nothing but my voice. Until my parents, returning from business, rang.
Before falling asleep felt on my body the weight of the fists on my light arms.
8 December. Friday, have not written for a long time, but this time it was really in part because of satisfaction, as I have finished the first chapter of Richard and Samuel and consider it, particularly the original description of the sleep in the train compartment, a success. Even more, I think that something is happening within me that is very close to Schiller’s transformation of emotion into character. Despite all the resistance of my inner being I must write this down.
Walk with Löwy to the Lieutenant-Governor’s castle, which I called Fort Zion. The entrance gates and the colour of the sky matched very well
Another walk to Hetz Island. Story about Mrs Tschissik, how they took her into the company in Berlin out of pity, at first an insignificant singer of duets in an antiquated dress and hat. Reading of a letter from Warsaw in which a young Warsaw Jew complains about the decline of the Jewish theatre and writes that he prefers to go to the ‘Nowosti’, the Polish operetta theatre, rather than to the Jewish one, for the miserable equipment, the indecencies, the ‘mouldy’ couplets, etc., are unbearable. Just imagine the big scene of a Jewish operetta in which the prima donna, with a train of small children behind her, marches through the audience on to the stage. Each of them is carrying a small scroll of the Torah and is singing: Toire iz di beste s’khoire – the Torah is the best merchandise.
Beautiful lonely walk over the Hradschin and the Belvedere after those successful parts of Richard and Samuel. In the Nerudagasse a sign: Ann Křižová, Dressmaker, Trained in France by the Aid of the Dowager Duchess Ahrenberg, née Princess Ahrenberg – In the middle of the first castle court I stood and watched the calling out of the castle guard.
The last section I wrote hasn’t pleased Max, probably because he regards it as unsuitable for the whole, but possibly also because he considers it bad in itself. This is very probable because he warned me against writing such long passages and regards the effect of such writing as somewhat jellylike.
In order to be able to speak to young girls I need older persons near me. The slight disturbance emanating from them enlivens my speech, I immediately feel that the demands made on me are diminished; what I speak out of myself without previous consideration can always, if it is not suitable for the girl, be directed to the older person, from whom I can also, if it becomes necessary, draw an abundance of help.
Miss H. She reminds me of Mrs Bl., only her long, slightly double-curved, and relatively narrow nose looks like the ruined nose of Mrs Bl. But apart from that there is also in her face a blackness, hardly caused externally, that can be driven into the skin only by a strong character. Broad back, well on the way to being a woman’s swelling back; heavy body that seems thin in the well-cut jacket and on which the narrow jacket is even loose. She raises her head freely to show that she has found a way out of the embarrassing moments of the conversation. Indeed, I was not put down in this conversation, had not surrendered even inwardly, but had I just looked at myself from the outside, I should not have been able to explain my behaviour in any other way. In the past I could not express myself freely in the company of new acquaintances because the presence of sexual wishes unconsciously hindered me, now their conscious absence hinders me.
Ran into the Tschissik couple at the Graben. She was wearing the hussy’s dress she wore in Der Wilde Mensch. When I break down her appearance into its details as I saw it then at the Graben, she becomes improbable. (I sa
w her only for a moment, for I became frightened at the sight of her, did not greet her, nor did she see me, and I did not immediately dare to turn around.) She seemed much smaller than usual, her left hip was thrust forward, not just at the moment, but permanently, her right leg was bent in at the knee, the movements of her throat and head, which she brought close to her husband, were very quick, with her right arm crooked outwards she tried to take the arm of her husband. He was wearing his little summer hat with the brim turned down in front. When I turned they were gone. I guessed that they had gone to the Café Central, waited awhile on the other side of the Graben, and was lucky enough after a long interval to see her come to the window. When she sat down at the table only the rim of her cardboard hat, covered with blue velvet, was visible.
I then dreamed that I was in a very narrow but not very tall glass-domed house with two entrances like the impassable passageways in the paintings of Italian primitives, also resembling from the distance an arcade leading off from the rue des Petits Champs that we saw in Paris. Except that the one in Paris was really wider and full of stores, but this one ran along between blank walls, appeared to have scarcely enough room for two people to walk side by side, but when one really entered it, as I did with Mrs Tschissik, there was a surprising amount of room, which did not really surprise us. While I left by one exit with Mrs Tschissik in the direction of a possible observer of all this, and Mrs Tschissik at the same time apologized for some offence or other (it seemed to be drunkenness) and begged me not to believe her detractors, Mr Tschissik, at the second of the house’s two exits, whipped a shaggy, blond St Bernard which stood opposite him on its hind legs. It was not quite clear whether he was just playing with the dog and neglected his wife because of it, or whether he had himself been attacked by the dog in earnest, or whether he wished to keep the dog away from us.