Without Lifting A Finger

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...

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.

Here he's writing to Grete Bloch again (she's been experiencing some dental pain): However, there is no doubt in my mind that a draft doesn't cause toothache in healthy teeth. Healthy teeth don't even begin to feel well until they are exposed to a draft. And if the deterioration of the teeth wasn't actually due to inadequate care, then it was due, as with me, to eating meat. One sits at table laughing and talking (for me at least there is the justification that I neither laugh nor talk), and meanwhile tiny shreds of meat between the teeth produce germs of decay and fermentation no less than a dead rat squashed between two stones.

None of these reasons, however, can hold out to the end: they are but pretexts, ghosts. Speak, F., let me get near these ghosts. What you said in the Tiergarten about your inadequate affection for me may have been true then, and may still be true; but other things were not true, as has now become apparent, at least your silence was not true. Now at last, F., do try to see what I am, and what I have become through my love for you. 

Don't know how many letters he wrote to Grete. She was apparently a friend of Felice's, sent to Prague to somehow act as a go-between. The introduction sheds very little light on her, and there isn't much on the Net. It's possible that Grete and Kafka "commingled" (Grete has a mysterious son--the "timing" makes it possible that he was Kafka's, but the intro seems to lean on the side of "he wasn't"--who later dies at age 7). Though there seems to be some uncertainty re her later fate, Grete apparently dies in the camps.  *** I was expecting to meet (after all, I knew nothing about you except that you were efficient) an elderly spinster with maternal feelings who, moreover -- I don't quite know why -- would be tall and strong. To this kind of girl, I thought, one might really be able to confess everything, which in itself would be a blessing, and perhaps one might get some good advice (the belief that an adult is capa...

     In my case it is the exact opposite. Talking is altogether against my nature. Whatever I may say is wrong, in my sense. For me, speech robs everything I say of its seriousness and importance. To me it seems impossible that it should be otherwise, since speech is continuously influenced by a thousand external factors and a thousand external constraints. Hence I am silent not only from necessity, but likewise from conviction. Writing is the only appropriate form of expression for me, and will continue to be so even when we are together.

Actually, I don't even ask for daily letters, if that's impossible; I've told you this often enough: all I want is to have regular letters, but even this is denied me. And you can bear to let Wednesday go by without sending me so much as a picture postcard, although you know that on Friday I tremble from one mail delivery to the next.

Now know this. Georg has the same number of letters as Franz, "Bendemann" is made up of Bende and Mann, Bende has the same number of letters as Kafka, and the two vowels are also in the same place; out of pity for poor "Bende," "Mann" is probably meant to fortify him for his struggles. "Frieda" has the same number of letters as Felice; it also starts with the same letter; "Frieda" and "Gluck" are also closely related; "Brandenfeld," owing to "feld," has some connection with "Bauer," and also starts with the same letter. And there are other similar things -- all of which, needless to say, I only discovered afterwards.

I, dearest, become estranged? I who die of longing for you here at my desk? While washing my hands outside in the dark passage today, I was somehow so overcome by the thought of you that I had to step across to the window to seek some comfort, if only from the gray sky. This is how I live. 

Because I for my part would never leave you, not even if it were my lot -- worse things could happen to me -- to have with you an inner relationship that corresponded to an outer circumstance such as having nothing to do but wait forever outside the side entrance to your house, while you passed in and out through the front door.

A few more bullets (I'm sure more will come): There are times when impossibility swamps possibility like a wave you must realize that you will never get unadulterated happiness from me those juicy Jewish sausages (at least here in Prague that's what they are like, plump as water rats) can be cut up by every relative all over the place (the sound of the taut sausage skin being cut has rung in my ears since childhood) -- all this and worse gives me no sensation of distaste whatever; on the contrary, it does me a great deal of good

Two recent bits I delighted in.      At first I was almost frightened by the man from Cairo. He is sure to be a good German, Arab draped in a sheet, chasing you in the empty office. What's the good of my place at your desk! Better to be the night watchman in your factory than so distant a lover as I. *** You once said you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write (I can't do much, anyway), but in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; . . . This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

Temporarily set aside Kafka's letters to read Julian Barnes' new book: Levels of Life . A last bit (for awhile) from Letters to Felice : Under the influence of the telegram I had gone to bed very early, before 9 (I handle myself somewhat capriciously), woke up at 2, and awake, with my eyes open, but still under the influence of sleep, and therefore with uninterrupted and rather magical visions, I thought of you, and of a possible journey to Berlin. Beautiful, easy connections were effected, without any trouble, motorcars soared like lovers, telephone conversations worked as though one were holding hands at the time, I had better stop thinking about it -- the more awake I was, the more restless I became, then got out of bed about 4, did my exercises, washed, and wrote two pages for myself, but felt too restless to go on, then wrote these preceding two pages, but abandoned them as well, and with a buzzing head went back to bed where I stayed until 9 in the morning in a heavy s...

But you don't even know your little story ["The Judgement"] yet. It is somewhat wild and meaningless and if it didn't express some inner truth (which can never be universally established, but has to be accepted or denied every time by each reader or listener in turn), it would be nothing. It is also hard to imagine how, being so short (17 typewritten pages), it could have so many faults; and I really don't know what right I have to dedicate to you such a very doubtful creation. But we each give what we can, I the little story with myself as an appendage, you the immense gift of your love. Oh, dearest, how happy I am through you; tears of happiness mingled with the single tear the end of your story brought to my eyes.

I am sure all my letters also got lost -- the one from Kratzau, from Reichenberg, this morning's letter, the ordinary, the registered, the express letters, all of them. For instance, you say I wrote only a few lines on Sunday night, whereas I sent you at least 8 pages and an infinite sigh. Dearest, if our mail doesn't bring us together soon, we shall never get together.

     May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.