The Diaries of Franz Kafka Read online

  ‘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, God 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 ante-room, he opened the glass 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 little 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 favour 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, damn 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 ante-room: 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 defence.

  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 Jüdinnen, however, no such solution is indicated, indeed not even conjectured, for just those characters who busy themselves with such questions stand farthest from the centre 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 entitled to such a criticism because today, since Zionism came into being, the possibilities for a solution stand so clearly marshalled 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 Jüdinnen 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 Jüdinnen 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. Löwy 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?11 At S. Löwy’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 assigned 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 colours 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 litres 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 Jungmannstrasse), 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 für Naturphilosophie topped a small pile of the books which seemed to be lying about in other places as well. However, you cannot look 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 favourable 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 endeavours 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 Jüdinnen no such solution is indicated or even conjectured, therefore it is possible that offhand the reader will recognize in this a fault of the Jüdinnen, 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 marshalled 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 pan 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 pretence; 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 f
or me because I have stopped being ashamed of my body in the swimming pools in Prague, Königssaal, 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?12

  I have been reading about Dickens. 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.