Letters to Milena Read online

You don’t have to be scared by the ‘well meant’ of my last letter. It was a time of complete insomnia, by no means the only such time here. I had written down the story, this story I have often thought through in connection with you, but once I was finished I no longer knew why I had told it, with all the tension spanning my temples right and left; besides, most of what I wanted to tell you, as I sat outside on the balcony, had not yet crystallized in my mind, and so all I could do was refer to my basic feeling; even now there isn’t much else I can do.

  You have everything of mine which has appeared except the last book, Country Doctor, a collection of short stories which Wolff will send to you; at least I wrote him about that a week ago. Nothing is being printed at the moment, nor do I have any idea what might appear later. Whatever you want to do with the books and translations will be fine, it’s a pity they aren’t worth more to me, so that in leaving them in your hands I could really express my trust in you. On the other hand I am happy to be able to make a small offering with the few notes you requested on ‘The Stoker’; this will serve as a foretaste to that torment of hell which consists in having to review one’s entire life with the knowledge that comes of hindsight, where the worst thing is not the confrontation with obvious misdeeds but with deeds one once considered worthy.

  Despite all this, writing really is a good thing; I am now calmer than I was 2 hours ago outside on the balcony with your letter. While I was lying there a beetle had fallen on its back one step away and was desperately trying to right itself; I would have gladly helped—it was so easy, so obvious, all that was required was a step and a small shove—but I forgot about it because of your letter; I was just as incapable of getting up. Only a lizard again made me aware of the life around me, its path led over the beetle, which was already so completely still that I said to myself, this was not an accident but death throes, the rarely witnessed drama of an animal’s natural death; but when the lizard slid off the beetle, the beetle was righted although it did lie there a little longer as if dead, but then ran up the wall of the house as if nothing had happened. Somehow this probably gave me, too, a little courage; I got up, drank some milk and wrote to you.

  FranzK

  So here are the notes:12

  Column I line 2 arm here also has the secondary meaning: pitiable, but without any special emphasis of feeling, a sympathy without understanding that Karl has with his parents as well, perhaps ubozí

  I 9 freie Lüfte is a little more grand but there’s probably no alternative.

  I 17 z dobré nálady a poněvadž byl silný chlapec should be removed entirely.

  No, I’d rather mail the letter, I’ll send you the notes tomorrow, anyway there are very few of them, nothing for page after page, even though the truth of your translation is obvious it still continues to amaze me—hardly a single misunderstanding; which wouldn’t mean so much in itself, but I find there is constant powerful and decisive understanding as well. I just don’t know whether Czechs won’t hold its very faithfulness against you, which for me is the nicest part of the translation (not because of the story but for my own sake); my feel for Czech—I have one too—is fully satisfied, but it is extremely biased. In any case, if someone should attack you on this point, try to balance the offense with my gratitude.

  [Meran, May 1920]

  Dear Frau Milena (yes, this heading is becoming burdensome, although it is something to cling to in this uncertain world, like a crutch for sick people; but it’s no sign of recovery when the crutches grow to be a burden), I have never lived among Germans. German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties;13 I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting; even so, when I then want to raise my eyes to your face, in the middle of the letter—what a story!—fire breaks out and I see nothing but fire.

  It might tempt one into believing in that law you have laid down for your life. Naturally you don’t want to be pitied for these rules to which you presumably adhere, for laying down the law is nothing but pure arrogance and conceit (‘I am the one who pays’);14 however, the cases where you have put this law to the test require no further discussion, one can only kiss your hand in silence. As far as I’m concerned, I do believe in your law, but I can’t believe that it could loom over your life so exclusively, forever and blatantly cruel, it is of course an insight, but only an insight along the way, and the way is endless.

  But uninfluenced by that, it is frightening for the mundanely limited mind of a human to see you in the overheated oven in which you live. For the moment I only want to speak about myself. If we treat the whole thing as a school assignment, you had three possible ways of dealing with me. For instance, you could have refrained from saying anything at all about yourself, but then you would have deprived me of the good fortune of knowing you and the even greater fortune of being able to put myself to the test. And so you really weren’t allowed to keep yourself locked away from me. Then you might have kept certain things from me or glossed them over and you could still do so, but in my current state I would sense this even if I didn’t say so, and it would hurt me twice as much. So you aren’t allowed to do that either. There remains only the third choice: to look out for yourself a bit. As a matter of fact, your letters show that this is a slight possibility. There’s often talk about stability and calm, but I frequently read about other things as well (although just for the time being) and recently even: ‘absolute horror.’15

  What you say about your health (my own is good, just that I don’t sleep well in the mountain air) does not satisfy me. I don’t find the doctor’s diagnosis especially favorable, it’s really neither favorable nor unfavorable, your attitude alone can decide how it should be interpreted. Of course doctors are stupid or rather no more stupid than other people but their pretensions are ridiculous—still you have to count on their becoming more and more stupid from the moment you start dealing with them, and what the doctor is now demanding is neither very stupid nor impossible. Nonetheless it is and shall remain impossible for you to become really sick. How has your life changed since you spoke with the doctor—that is the main question.

  But now please permit me a few questions on the side: Why and since when do you have no money? Are you in touch with your relatives? (I think you must be, because you once gave me an address from which you regularly received packages, has that stopped?) Why did you, as you write, once see many people in Vienna and now no one?

  You don’t want to send me your feuilletons, so you obviously don’t trust me to place them properly in the picture I am forming of you.16 All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart.

  FranzK

  [Meran, May 29, 1920]

  Dear Frau Milena, the day is so short, between you and a few other things which are of no significance it is over and done with. There’s hardly any time left to write to the real Milena, since the even more real one was here the whole day, in the room, on the balcony, in the clouds.

  Where does the liveliness, the good mood, the lack of worry come from in your last letter? Has something changed? Or am I mistaken and are the prose pieces helping? Or are you so much in control of yourself and other things as well? What is it?

  Your letter begins like a judge pronouncing a sentence, I mean that in earnest. And you’re right with your accusation ‘or not so entirely correct,’17 just as you were basically right about the ‘well meant.’18 This is obvious. Had I been as completely and incessantly worried as I wrote, I would not have been able to bear lying on the deck chair and would have appeared in your room the next day despite all obstacles. The only proof of sincerity, everything else is mere talk, this included. Or an appeal to the underlying feeling, which, however, remains silent, just twiddling its thumbs.

  How
is it that you’re not fed up with the ridiculous people you describe (with love and therefore with magic), the inquisitive one, for instance, and many others. After all you must pronounce sentence, in the end it’s always the woman who judges. (The legend of Paris obscures this a little, but even Paris is only judging which goddess has the strongest final judgment.) It doesn’t matter that what they do is ridiculous, it might just be a temporary absurdity, which then becomes completely serious and good, is it this hope which keeps you bound to these people? Who can claim to know the judge’s secret thoughts, but I have the impression that you condone these absurdities as such, that you understand, love, and ennoble them by your love. But they are nothing more than a dog’s zigzag run, while its master goes right on walking, straight ahead, not exactly through the middle, but wherever the path happens to lead. Even so, there must be some reason for your love, I firmly believe this (only I still can’t help asking you, and finding it strange) and it reminds me of a pronouncement made by one of the employees at my office, which I will relate just to stress one aspect of the problem. Some years ago I often went rowing on the Moldau in a small boat, I would row upstream and then float down with the current underneath the bridges, completely stretched out. Because of my emaciation this probably looked quite comical from the bridge. This comic aspect was not lost on the clerk mentioned above, when he once saw me from the bridge, on my back in this way. He proceeded to summarize his impressions as follows: It looked like the Last Judgment was at hand, the coffins had just been opened, but the dead were still lying there, motionless.

  I took a small outing (not the long one I mentioned and which never materialized) and for nearly three days I was virtually unable to do a thing, not even write, due to (a not unpleasant) weariness. I just read, the letter, your essays, again and again, convinced that such prose does not exist merely for its own sake, but serves as a signpost on the road to a human being, a road one keeps following, happier and happier, until arriving at the realization some bright moment that one is not progressing, simply running around inside one’s own labyrinth, only more nervously, more confused than before. But in any case: this was not written by any ordinary writer. After reading it I have almost as much faith in your writing as I do in you yourself. The only linguistic music I know in Czech (given my limited knowledge) is that of Božena Němcová, this music is different, but related to Němcová’s in its resolution, passion, charm, and above all in a certain clairvoyant intelligence.19 And this is the result of just the last few years? Did you write earlier as well? Of course you can say that I’m ridiculously biased and of course you’re right, but I am not biased by what I first discovered in the pieces (which incidentally are uneven, revealing the newspaper’s detrimental influence in places), but what I rediscovered in them. You can immediately recognize the inferiority of my judgment, however, by the fact that I was misled by 2 passages into thinking the mutilated fashion article was also yours. I would gladly hold on to the clippings, at least long enough to show them to my sister, but since you need them right away I am enclosing them, I also notice some arithmetic is in the margin.

  Apparently I had judged your husband differently. In the café circle he seemed to me the calmest, most reliable, understanding person, almost exaggeratedly paternal, although also inscrutable, but not enough to cancel out the above attributes. I always respected him, I never had the occasion or the ability to get to know him better, but friends, especially Max Brod, had a high opinion of him, and this was always on my mind whenever I thought of him.20 At one time I especially liked his peculiar habit of receiving evening telephone calls in every café. Probably somebody was sitting next to the phone instead of sleeping, just dozing, using the back of the chair as a pillow, jumping up every now and then to call. A state I understand so well that it may be the only reason I’m writing about it.

  Incidentally I think both Staša and he are right;21 I can justify anything I cannot attain myself; just that when no one is looking I secretly think Staša is more right.

  FranzK

  What do you think? Can I still get a letter by Sunday? It should be possible. But this passion for letters is senseless. Isn’t one letter enough, isn’t one knowing enough? Of course it is, but nevertheless I am tilting my head way back, drinking the letters, aware only that I don’t want to stop drinking. Explain that, teacher Milena!

  [Meran, May 30, 1920]

  Just how well, Milena, do you know human nature? I sometimes have my doubts. For example, when you wrote about Werfel you wrote with love and maybe only love, but this love is without understanding, and even if you ignore all that W is and just stick to the accusation that he is fat (which moreover seems to me unjustified; even though I only see him in passing, I think W is growing more and more beautiful and lovable from year to year).22 Don’t you know that fat people alone are to be trusted? Only in strong-walled vessels like these does everything get thoroughly cooked, only these capitalists of airspace are immune from worry and insanity, to the extent it is humanly possible, and only they can go calmly about their business and, as someone once said, they are the only useful citizens of this planet, for they provide warmth in the north and shade in the south. (Of course this can be twisted around, but then it isn’t true.)23

  Then there’s the question of being Jewish. You ask me if I’m a Jew, maybe that’s just a joke, maybe you’re only asking if I’m one of those anxious Jews, in any case as a woman from Prague you can’t be as innocuous in this respect as was, for instance, Mathilde, Heine’s wife. (Perhaps you don’t know the story. It seems to me I had something more important to tell you, besides, I’m convinced I’ll somehow harm myself, not so much with the story as with its telling, but you should also hear something nice from me for once. Meissner, a German-Bohemian writer—not Jewish—tells it in his memoirs. Mathilde was always annoying him with her outbursts against the Germans: the Germans are malicious, pedantic, self-righteous, petty, pushy; in short, unbearable. ‘But you don’t know the Germans at all,’ Meissner finally replied one day, ‘after all, the only people Henry sees are German journalists, and here in Paris all of them are Jewish.’ ‘Oh,’ said Mathilde, ‘you’re exaggerating, there might be a Jew among them here and there, for instance Seiffert—’ ‘No,’ said Meissner, ‘he’s the only one who isn’t Jewish.’ ‘What?’ said Mathilde, ‘you mean that Jeitteles (a large, strong, blond man) is Jewish?’ ‘Absolutely,’ said Meissner. ‘But what about Bamberger?’ ‘Bamberger too.’ ‘But Arnstein?’ ‘The same.’ And they went on like this exhausting all of their acquaintances. Finally Mathilde got annoyed and said: ‘You’re just pulling my leg, in the end you’ll claim that Kohn is a Jewish name too, but Kohn is one of Henry’s nephews and Henry is Lutheran.’ Meissner had nothing to say to that.) In any case you don’t seem to be afraid of Jews. And that is rather heroic considering the last two generations of Jews in our cities and—all joking very far aside!—when a pure, innocent girl says to her relatives, ‘Let me go,’ and moves to one of these cities, it means more than Joan of Arc departing from her village. Furthermore you may reproach Jews for their particular type of anxiety, nevertheless such a general accusation shows a more theoretical knowledge of human nature than a practical one, more theoretical because first the reproach does not—according to your earlier description—apply to your husband, second—according to my experience—it does not apply to most Jews, and third it only applies to isolated cases, but then very strongly, as it does to me. The strangest thing of all is that the reproach is generally unfounded. Their insecure position, insecure within themselves, insecure among people, would above all explain why Jews believe they possess only whatever they hold in their hands or grip between their teeth, that furthermore only tangible possessions give them a right to live, and that finally they will never again acquire what they once have lost—which swims happily away from them, gone forever. Jews are threatened by dangers from the most improbable sides or, to be more precise, let’s leave the dangers aside and say: ‘
They are threatened by threats.’ An example close to you. It’s true I may have promised not to speak about it (at a time when I scarcely knew you) but now I mention it without hesitation, as it won’t tell you anything new, just show you the love of relatives, and I won’t mention names and details since I have forgotten them. My youngest sister is supposed to marry a Czech, a Christian;24 once he was talking with one of your relatives about his intention of marrying a Jew, and this person said: ‘Anything but that, just don’t go getting mixed up with Jews! Listen, our Milena, etc.’ Where am I trying to lead you with all this? I’ve lost my way a little, but that doesn’t matter, because if you’ve accompanied me, then we’re both lost. What is particularly beautiful about your translation, that it is faithful (go ahead and scold me on account of this ‘faithful’—I know you can do everything, but maybe you scold best of all, I’d like to be your pupil just so you would constantly scold me; I’m sitting at my desk, scarcely daring to look up, you are bent over me and your index finger is glittering in the air, finding fault, isn’t this the way it is?), as I was saying, your translation is faithful and I have the feeling that I’m taking you by the hand through the story’s subterranean passages, gloomy, low, ugly, almost endless (that’s why the sentences are almost endless, didn’t you realize that?), almost endless (only two months, you say?) hopefully in order to have the good sense to disappear into the daylight at the exit.

  A reminder to stop for today, to release my hand, that bearer of good fortune. Tomorrow I’ll write again and explain why I—inasmuch as I can speak for myself—cannot come to Vienna, and I will not be satisfied until you say: He is right.

  F

  Please write the address a little more legibly, once your letter is in the envelope then it’s already virtually my property and you should treat other people’s property more carefully, with a greater sense of responsibility. So!25 Incidentally I also have the impression, without being able to ascertain anything more precise, that one of my letters was lost. Jewish anxiety! Instead of fearing that the letters might have arrived safely!