The Diaries of Franz Kafka Read online

  A week ago a lecture in the banquet room of the Jewish Town Hall by Dr Theilhaber on the decline of the German Jews. It is unavoidable, for (1) if the Jews collect in the cities, the Jewish communities in the country disappear. The pursuit of profit devours them. Marriages are made only with regard to the bride’s settlement. Two-child system. (2) Mixed marriages. (3) Conversion.

  Amusing scene when Prof. Ehrenfels,41 who grows more and more handsome and who – with his bald head sharply outlined against the light in a curve that is puffed out at the top, his hands pressed together, with his full voice, which he modulates like a musical instrument, and a confident smile at the meeting – declares himself in favour of mixed races.

  5 February. Monday. Weary even of reading Dichtung und Wahrheit. I am hard on the outside, cold on the inside. Today, when I came to Dr F., although we approached each other slowly and deliberately, it was as though we had collided like balls that drive one another back and, themselves out of control, get lost. I asked him whether he was tired. He was not tired, why did I ask? I am tired, I replied, and sat down.

  To lift yourself out of such a mood, even if you have to do it by strength of will, should be easy. I force myself out of my chair, circle the table in long strides, exercise my head and neck, make my eyes sparkle, tighten the muscles around them. Defy my own feelings, welcome Löwy enthusiastically supposing he comes to see me, amiably tolerate my sister in the room while I write, swallow all that is said at Max’s, whatever pain and trouble it may cost me, in long draughts. Yet even if I managed fairly well in some of this, one obvious slip, and slips cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, the easy and the difficult alike, and I will have to turn backwards in the circle. So the best resource is to meet everything as calmly as possible, to make yourself an inert mass, and, if you feel that you are carried away, not to let yourself be lured into taking a single unnecessary step, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, to yield to the non-conscious that you believe far away while it is precisely what is burning you, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you, that is, to enlarge the final peace of the graveyard and let nothing survive save that. A characteristic movement in such a condition is to run your little finger along your eyebrows.42

  Short spell of faintness yesterday in the Café City with Löwy. How I bent down over a newspaper to hide it.

  Goethe’s beautiful silhouette. Simultaneous impression of repugnance when looking at this perfect human body, since to surpass this degree of perfection is unimaginable and yet it looks only as though it had been put together by accident. The erect posture, the dangling arms, the slender throat, the bend in the knees.

  My impatience and grief because of my exhaustion are nourished especially on the prospect of the future that is thus prepared for me and which is never out of my sight. What evenings, walks, despair in bed and on the sofa (7 February) are still before me, worse than those I have already endured!

  Yesterday in the factory. The girls, in their unbearably dirty and untidy clothes, their hair dishevelled as though they had just got up, the expressions on their faces fixed by the incessant noise of the transmission belts and by the individual machines, automatic ones, of course, but unpredictably breaking down, they aren’t people, you don’t greet them, you don’t apologize when you bump into them, if you call them over to do something, they do it but return to their machine at once, with a nod of the head you show them what to do, they stand there in petticoats, they are at the mercy of the pettiest power and haven’t enough calm understanding to recognize this power and placate it by a glance, a bow. But when six o’clock comes and they call it out to one another, when they untie the kerchiefs from around their throats and their hair, dust themselves with a brush that passes around and is constantly called for by the impatient, when they pull their skirts on over their heads and clean their hands as well as they can – then at last they are women again, despite pallor and bad teeth they can smile, shake their stiff bodies, you can no longer bump into them, stare at them, or overlook them, you move back against the greasy crates to make room for them, hold your hat in your hand when they say good evening, and do not know how to behave when one of them holds your winter coat for you to put on.

  8 February. Goethe: ‘My delight in creating was infinite.’

  I have become more nervous, weaker, and have lost a large part of the calm on which I prided myself years ago. Today, when I received the card from Baum in which he writes that he cannot give the talk at the evening for the Eastern Jews after all, and when I was-therefore compelled to think that I should have to take it over, I was overpowered by uncontrollable twitchings, the pulsing of my arteries sprang along my body like little flames; if I sat down, my knees trembled under the table and I had to press my hands together. I shall, of course, give a good lecture, that is certain, besides, the restlessness itself, heightened to an extreme on that evening, will pull me together in such a way that there will not be room for restlessness and the talk will come straight out of me as though out of a gun barrel. But it is possible that I shall collapse after it, in any event I shall not be able to get over it for a long time. So little physical strength! Even these few words are written under the influence of weakness.

  Yesterday evening with Löwy at Baum’s. My liveliness. Recently Löwy translated a bad Hebrew story, ‘The Eye’, at Baum’s.

  13 February. I am beginning to write the lecture for Löwy’s performance. It is on Sunday, the 18th. I shall not have much time to prepare and am really striking up a kind of recitative here as though in an opera. The reason is only that an incessant excitement has been oppressing me for days and that, somewhat hesitant in the face of the actual beginning of the lecture, I want to write down a few words only for myself; in that way, given a little momentum, I shall be able to stand up before the audience. Cold and heat alternate in me with the successive words of the sentence, I dream melodic rises and falls, I read sentences of Goethe’s as though my whole body were running down the stresses.

  25 February. Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don’t surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment. I spent this evening at the family table in complete indifference, my right hand on the arm of the chair in which my sister sat playing cards, my left hand weak in my lap. From time to time I tried to realize my unhappiness, I barely succeeded.

  I have written nothing for so long because of having arranged an evening for Löwy in the banquet room of the Jewish Town Hall on 18 February, at which I delivered a little introductory lecture on Yiddish. For two weeks I worried for fear that I could not produce the lecture. On the evening before the lecture I suddenly succeeded.

  Preparations for the lecture: Conferences with the Bar Kokhba Society, getting up the programme, tickets, hall, numbering the seats, key to the piano (Toynbee Hall), setting up the stage, pianist, costumes, selling tickets, newspaper notices, censorship by the police and the religious community.

  Places in which I was and people with whom I spoke or to whom I wrote. In general: with Max, with Schmerler, who visited me, with Baum, who at first assumed the responsibility for the lecture but then refused it, whose mind I changed again in the course of an evening devoted to that purpose and who the next day again notified me of his refusal by special delivery, with Dr Hugo Hermann and Leo Hermann in the Café Arco, often with Robert Weltsch at his home; about selling tickets with Dr Bl. (in vain), Dr H., Dr Fl., visit to Miss T., lecture at Afike Jehuda (by Rabb. Ehrentreu on Jeremiah and his time, during the social part of the evening that followed, a short, abortive talk about Löwy), at the teacher W.’s place (then in the Café, then for a walk, from twelve to one he stood in front of my door as large as life and would not let me go in). About the hall, at Dr Karl B.’s, twice at L.’s house on Heuwagsplatz, several times at Otto Pick’s, in the bank; about the key to the piano for the Toynbee lecture, with Mr R. and the teacher S., then to the latter
’s home to get the key and to return it; about the stage, with the custodian and the porter of the town hall; about payment, in the town hall office (twice); about the sale, with Mrs Fr. at the exposition, ‘The Set Table’. Wrote to Miss T., to one Otto Kl. (in vain), for the Tagblatt (in vain), to Löwy (‘I won’t be able to give the talk, save me!’).

  Excitements: About the lecture, one night twisted up in bed, hot and sleepless, hatred of Dr B., fear of Weltsch (he will not be able to sell anything), Afike Jehuda, the notices are not published in the papers the way in which they were expected to be, distraction in the office, the stage does not come, not enough tickets are sold, the colour of the tickets upsets me, the lecture has to be interrupted because the pianist forgot his music at home in Košiř, a great deal of indifference towards Löwy, almost disgust.

  Benefits: Joy in Löwy and confidence in him, proud, unearthly consciousness during my lecture (coolness in the presence of the audience, only the lack of practice kept me from using enthusiastic gestures freely), strong voice, effortless memory, recognition, but above all the power with which I loudly, decisively, determinedly, faultlessly, irresistibly, with clear eyes, almost casually, put down the impudence of the three town hall porters and gave them, instead of the twelve kronen they demanded, only six kronen, and even these with a grand air. In all this are revealed powers to which I would gladly entrust myself if they would remain. (My parents were not there.)

  Also: Academy of the Herder Association on the Sophien Island. Bie shoves his hand in his trouser pocket at the beginning of the lecture. This face, satisfied despite all disappointment, of people who work as they please. Hofmannsthal reads with a false ring in his voice. A close-knit figure, beginning with the ears pressed close to his head. Wiesenthal. The beautiful parts of the dance, for example, when in sinking to the ground the natural heaviness of the body is revealed.

  Impression of Toynbee Hall.

  Zionist meeting. Blumenfeld. Secretary of the World Zionist Organization.

  A new stabilizing force has recently appeared in my deliberations about myself which I can recognize now for the first time and only now, since during the last week I have been literally disintegrating because of sadness and uselessness.

  Changing emotions among the young people in the Café Arco.

  26 February. Better consciousness of myself. The beating of my heart more as I would wish it. The hissing of the gaslight above me.

  I opened the front door to see whether the weather would tempt me to take a walk. The blue sky could not be denied, but large grey clouds through which the blue shimmered, with flap-shaped, curved edges, hovered low, one could see them against the near-by wooded hills. Nevertheless the street was full of people out for a walk. Baby carriages were guided by the firm hands of mothers. Here and there in the crowd a vehicle came to a stop until the people made way for the prancing horses. Meanwhile the driver, quietly holding the quivering reins, looked ahead, missed no details, examined everything several times and at the right moment set the carriage in motion. Children

  “Were able to run about, little room as there was. Girls in light clothes with hats as emphatically coloured as postage stamps walked arm in arm with young men, and a song, suppressed in their throats, revealed itself in their dancing pace. Families stayed close together, and even if sometimes they were shaken out into a single file, there were still arms stretched back, hands waving, pet names called, to join together those who had strayed. Men who had no part in this tried to shut themselves off even more by sticking their hands in their pockets. That was petty nonsense. First I stood in the doorway, then I leaned against the doorpost in order to look on more comfortably. Clothes brushed against me, once I seized a ribbon that ornamented the back of a girl’s skirt and let her draw it out of my hand as she walked away; once, when I stroked the shoulder of a girl, just to flatter her, the passer-by behind her struck me over the fingers. But I pulled him behind the bolted half of the door, I reproached him with raised hands, with looks out of the corners of my eyes, a step towards him, a step away from him, he was happy when I let go of him with a shove. From then on, naturally, I often called people to me, a crook of my finger was enough, or a quick, unhesitating glance.

  How sleepily and without effort I wrote this useless, unfinished thing.

  Today I am writing to Löwy. I am copying down the letters to him here because I hope to do something with them:

  Dear friend –

  27 February. I have no time to write letters in duplicate.

  Yesterday evening, at ten o’clock, I was walking at my sad pace down the Zeltnergasse. Near the Hess hat store a young man stops three steps in front of me, so forces me to stop too, removes his hat, and then runs at me. In my first fright I step back, think at first that someone wants to know how to get to the station, but why in this way? – then think, since he approaches me confidentially and looks up into my face because I am taller: Perhaps he wants money, or something worse. My confused attention and his confused speech mingle.

  ‘You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? A doctor? Please, couldn’t you give me some advice? I have a case here for which I need a lawyer.’

  Because of caution, general suspicion, and fear that I might make a fool of myself, I deny that I am a lawyer, but am ready to advise him, what is it? He begins to talk, it interests me; to increase my confidence I ask him to talk while we walk, he wants to go my way, no, I would rather go with him, I have no place in particular to go.

  He is a good reciter, he was not nearly as good in the past as he is now, now he can already imitate Kainz so that no one can tell the difference. People may say he only imitates him, but he puts in a lot of his own too. He is short, to be sure, but he has mimicry, memory, presence, everything, everything. During his military service out there in Milowitz, in camp, he recited, a comrade sang, they really had a very good time. It was a beautiful time. He prefers to recite Dehmel most of all, the passionate, frivolous poems, for instance, about the bride who pictures her bridal night to herself, when he recites that it makes a huge impression, especially on the girls. Well, that is really obvious. He has Dehmel very beautifully bound in red leather. (He describes it with dropping gestures of his hands.) But the binding really doesn’t matter. Aside from this he likes very much to recite Rideamus. No, they don’t clash with one another at all, he sees to it that there’s a transition, talks between them, whatever occurs to him, makes a fool of the public. Then ‘Prometheus’ is on his programme too. There he isn’t afraid of anyone, not even of Moissi, Moissi drinks, he doesn’t. Finally, he likes very much to read from Swet Marten; he’s a new Scandinavian writer. Very good. It’s sort of epigrams and short sayings. Those about Napoleon,’ especially, are excellent, but so are all the others about other great men. No, he can’t recite any of this yet, he hasn’t learned it yet, not even read it all, but his aunt read it to him recently and he liked it so much.

  So he wanted to appear in public with this programme and therefore offered himself to the Women’s Progress for an evening’s appearance. Really, at first he wanted to present Eine Gutsgeschichte by Lagerlöf, and had even lent this story to the chairwoman of the Women’s Progress, Mrs Durège-Wodnanski, to look over. She said the story was beautiful, of course, but too long to be read. He saw that, it was really too long, especially as, according to the plan of the evening, his brother was supposed to play the piano too. This brother, twenty-one years old, a very lovely boy, is a virtuoso, he was at the music college in Berlin for two years (four years ago, now). But came home quite spoiled. Not really spoiled, but the woman with whom he boarded fell in love with him. Later he said that he was often too tired to play because he had to keep riding around on this boarding-bag.

  So, since the Gutsgeschichte wouldn’t do, they agreed on the other programme: Dehmel, Rideamus, ‘Prometheus’, and Swet Marten. But now, in order to show Mrs Durège in advance the sort of person he really was, he brought her the manuscript of an essay, ‘The Joy of Life’, which he had writ
ten this summer. He wrote it in a summer resort, wrote it in shorthand during the day, in the evening made a clean copy, polished, crossed out, but really it wasn’t much work because it came off at once. He’ll lend it to me if I like, it’s written in a popular style, of course, on purpose, but there are good ideas in it and it is betamt, as they say. (Pointed laughter with chin raised.) I may leaf through it here under the electric light. (It is an appeal to youth not to be sad, for after all there is nature, freedom, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, flowers, insects, etc.) The Durège woman said she really didn’t have time to read it just then, but he could lend it to her, she would return it in a few days. He suspected something even then and didn’t want to leave it there, evaded, said, for instance, ‘Look, Mrs Durège, why should I leave it here, it’s really just ordinary, it’s well written, of course, but …’ None of it did any good, he had to leave it there. This was on Friday.

  (28 February.) Sunday morning, while washing, it occurs to me that he hadn’t seen the Tagblatt yet. He opens it by chance just at the first page of the magazine section. The title of the first essay, ‘The Child as Creator’, strikes him. He reads the first few lines – and begins to cry with joy. It is his essay, word for word his essay. So for the first time he is in print, he runs to his mother and tells her. What joy! The old woman, she has diabetes and is divorced from his father, who, by the way, is in the right, is so proud. One son is already a virtuoso, now the other is becoming an author!

  After the first excitement he thinks the matter over. How did the essay get into the paper? Without his consent? Without the name of the author? Without his being paid a fee? This is really a breach of faith, a fraud. This Mrs Durège is really a devil. And women have no souls, says Mohammed (often repeated). It’s really easy to see how the plagiarism came about. Here was a beautiful essay, it’s not easy to come across one like it. So Mrs D. therefore went to the Tagblatt, sat down with one of the editors, both of them overjoyed, and now they begin to rewrite it. Of course, it had to be rewritten, for in the first place the plagiarism should not be obvious at first sight and in the second place the thirty-two-page essay was too long for the paper.