Without Lifting A Finger

Tomorrow I’ll send the father-letter to your apartment, please take good care of it, I still might want to give it to my father someday. If possible don’t let anyone else read it. And as you read it understand all the lawyer’s tricks: it is a lawyer’s letter. And at the same time never forget your great Nevertheless.  * But now I have to go to my sister’s wedding.—By the way, why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you’re sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you’re lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if—you should leave Vienna. * How happy I am, how happy you make me! A client came—imagine, I have clients too. The man interrupted my writing; I was annoyed, but he h...

There's a chance I'll make it back to the eternal city. If only for a single night and too far from the Stare Mesto (but still within walking distance). Knight-errant thoughts: Mozart, the children's drawings of Terezin, Petrin Hill, The Hunger Wall, Kafka and Milena, getting lost (a good thing) in Prague. * A few clips from the letters: Of course I understand Czech. I’ve meant to ask you several times already why you never write in Czech. Not to imply that your command of German leaves anything to be desired. Most of the time it is amazing and on those occasions when it does falter, the German language becomes pliant just for you, of its own accord, and then it is particularly beautiful, something a German doesn’t even dare hope for; a German wouldn’t dare write so personally. But I wanted to read you in Czech because, after all, you do belong to that language, because only there can Milena be found in her entirety (the translation confirms this), whereas here ther...

My title, not the artist's. I don't know if she's given it a name. Saw it last weekend. Student galleries @ CSULB. Greeted us at the door. Took me a while to see anything in it. Then she whispered "Kafka" and the pieces started to make a whole. *                         

Kafka never stoops to just retelling a myth. He somehow (a somewhat intangible somehow) makes it his own. * PROMETHEUS T here are four legends concerning Prometheus: According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed. According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it. According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, the gods forgotten, the eagles, he himself forgotten. According to the fourth, every one grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily. There remained the inexplicable mass of rock.--The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable. [Fro...

A single clip (from a letter to Benjamin from Scholem): I have of course already had "individual thoughts" about Kafka, although these do not concern Kafka's position in the continuum of German literature (in which he has no position of any sort, something that he himself did not have the least doubt about; as you probably know, he was a Zionist), but his position in the continuum of Jewish literature. I advise you to begin any inquiry into Kafka with the Book of Job, or at least with a discussion of the possibility of divine judgment, which I regard as the sole subject of Kafka's production [worthy of] being treated in a work of literature.

Corvus monedula vs. Corvus brachyrhychos (I guess). Though I only have mind-pics (the breadcrumbs below are just pics of pics) to prove it. I'd taken a train from Prague to Poprad-Tatry. At the train station (the narrow-gauge took me up) I ate breakfast soup with the "day troopers" but passed on the breakfast beer. I stayed at a pretty much deserted hotel (in the last days of the peacefully dissolved Czechoslovakia). I took a good hike in the mountain forest. From a pine bough (the snow fell when he spoke), I swear I heard: Evermore. *         



The Trial : sparkling in patches, dragged at times (or was it me?). I liked the hyper-parabolic penultimate (doorkeeper, law, K. -- frontloaded in Orson's take) and the ending very much. From the finale: He saw how a light flickered on and the two halves of a window opened out, somebody, made weak and thin by the height and the distance, leant suddenly far out from it and stretched his arms out even further. Who was that? A friend? A good person? Somebody who wanted to help? Was he alone? Was it everyone? Would anyone help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? There must have been some. The logic cannot be refuted, but someone who wants to live will not resist it. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised both hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesig...

Don't forget in proceedings like this there are always lots of different things coming up to talk about, things that you just can't understand with reason alone, you just get too tired and distracted for most things and so, instead, people rely on superstition. I'm talking about the others, but I'm no better myself. One of these superstitions, for example, is that you can learn a lot about the outcome of a defendant's case by looking at his face, especially the shape of his lips. There are lots who believe that, and they said they could see from the shape of your lips that you'd definitely be found guilty very soon. 

Finished The Loser (will probably hit TB up again real soon) and have returned to Kafka: The Trial . Though certainly school has taken a toll on reading and writing. Drib-drab. Here-there. Lots of good biographical info in the Afterword (Mark M. Anderson) of The Loser , but I've chosen this bit because I found it quite telling and near the mark: Bernhard later noted that it was his grandfather who instilled in him a fierce intellectual independence, warning him, for instance, not to take school seriously or to believe his teachers.

Inspector A: None of this is going to show up very well in the record, Mr. K. My men say you even tried to stop them from putting this down [ points to notebook ]. Josef K.: Well, I tried to stop one of them from making a fool of himself. [ pointing ] Yes, yes: ovular. Inspector A:  What’s that? Josef K.: Ov-u-lar. Inspector A:  There’s no such word.

Definitely a "lighter" version of Kafka. Fewer stings and more smiles. Apparently Kafka knew and liked his work. I've been busy lately, otherwise I would've posted more (lots of "electronic" dog-ears). Am almost to the end of Jakob and am already looking ahead to revisiting Gombrowicz -- a new read: Trans-Atlantyk and an old friend: Gombrowicz's Diary . *** A few "clips" from Jakob von Gunten : They're kind out of Weltschmerz and pleasant out of fear. Can anyone console a Jakob von Gunten? As long as I have a healthy body, there can be no question of it. If I want to, if I tell myself to, I can revere everything, even bad behavior, but it must have the color of money. To be robust means not spending time on thought but quickly and quietly entering into what has to be done. Oh, you little world-conqueror, out in a profession, endeavoring, achieving things, whole seas of boredom, emptiness, loneliness will yawn at you. Is He...

Finished with Kafka and Felice. He gets diagnosed with tuberculosis toward the end of the correspondence. Was sort of in between texts (still am but I think I'll return to Strindberg), so I read the appendices of the Letters to Milena  (I've read the letters thrice but my new Kindle version included some extra goodies: some letters from Milena to Max Brod, some of Milena's articles/essays, and the obit she wrote for Kafka). These bits are from letters Milena wrote to Max: I really was very shocked; I didn't know that Franz's illness was so serious -- he was really quite healthy here, I didn't hear him cough at all, he was bright and cheerful and slept well. He doesn't understand the simplest things in the world. Were you ever in a post office with him? After he composes a telegram and picks out whatever little counter he likes best, shaking his head, he then drifts from one counter to another, without the slightest idea to what end or why, until he f...

Kafka remarking (in a letter) on Rilke's words re Kafka's work: Incidentally, back in Prague I remembered Rilke's words. After some extremely kind remarks about "The Stoker," he went on to say that neither Metamorphosis nor "In the Penal Colony" had achieved the same effect. This observation may not be easy to understand, but it is discerning. The footnote on this passage reads (in part): Rilke and Kafka probably never met personally. Kafka may have heard of Rilke's opinion about his works through Eugen Mondt. Since "In the Penal Colony" was not printed at the time, Rilke, who then lived in Munich, must have seen the manuscript which had arrived in Munich on September 30 and discussed it with Eugen Mondt....   Rilke followed Kafka's work with great interest; in a letter to Kurt Wolff of February 17, 1922, he says, "Please put me down especially for anything that appears by Franz Kafka. I am, I might assure you, not his ...

We are his contemporaries and his successors. One has only to close one's eyes and one's own blood delivers lectures on Strindberg.

How you come to terms with Zionism is your affair; any coming to terms with it (indifference is out of the question) will give me pleasure. It is too soon to discuss it now, but should you one day feel yourself to be a Zionist (you flirted with it once, but these were mere flirtations, not a coming to terms), and subsequently realize that I am not a Zionist -- which would probably emerge from an examination -- it wouldn't worry me, nor need it worry you; Zionism is not something that separates well-meaning people.

Soaked up quite a bit of Strindberg, now I'm returning to Franz's letters to Felice Bauer. This postcard, dated August 13, 1916, is worth inserting whole: Dearest, reading incontestable matters such as these, one becomes more and more confused: In 1876 Fontane accepted a civil service appointment as Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, and resigned from it at the end of 3 1/2 months amid appalling quarrels with his wife. To a woman friend he writes: "The whole world condemns me, thinks me childish, high-handed. I am forced to put up with it. I have ceased to discuss it, etc." Later: "I have held this appointment for 3 1/2 months. During the entire time I have derived not a single moment of enjoyment, experienced not a single pleasant sensation. The job is as distasteful to me from the personal as from the practical point of view. Everything galls me; everything stultifies me; everything laureates me. I have the distinct feeling that I shall always be unha...

Another name I knew but hadn't gotten to. Kafka finally pushed me to it. Started with Inferno because it was autobiographical (to what extent?), seemed "up my alley," and because it was only $0.99 on Kindle. An excerpt: On the morning of my last day (as I suppose) I rise in a resigned frame of mind, which might be called religious; I have no more ties binding me to life. I have put my papers in order, written necessary letters, and burnt what had to be burnt. Then I go to bid farewell to the world in the Jardin des Plantes.

From Letters to Felice : But to prevent me from becoming presumptuous, someone right above my head in a studio (empty, not even let!!) stamps around all day in heavy boots and has installed some kind of quite pointless noise-machine to simulate the sound of a game of nine-pins. A heavy ball is rolled at great speed along the full length of the ceiling, lands in a corner, and comes slowly bumping back. Although the lady who lets the room can hear it too, she tries -- since nothing must be left untried for a lodger -- to use logic to deny the existence of the noise by pointing out that the studio is untenanted and empty. To which I can only reply that this noise is not the only illogical, and therefore irremediable, vexation in the world.