Read Online The Diaries of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka - Free Book Online
Authors: Franz Kafka
Ads: Link
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 todo 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 for 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 hesitatedto 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
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 todo 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 for 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 hesitatedto 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
Similar Books
