by Franz Kafka
You misjudge the effect of your letters, Milena. I still haven’t finished reading the ones from Monday (‘but only fear for you’).38 I tried this morning, and even succeeded somewhat, although my proposal had to some extent rendered these letters obsolete—still I was unable to read through to the end. The Tuesday letter, on the other hand (and the unusual card as well, was it written in a café?—I still have to respond to your Werfel accusation, I really don’t answer anything you write, you’re much better at that, which makes me feel good), has left me sufficiently calm and self-assured today despite a night made virtually sleepless by Monday’s letter. Of course Tuesday’s has its barbs as well, cutting their way through my body, but youfn4 are guiding them, and—naturally this is only the truth of a moment, a moment trembling with joy and pain—could anything coming from you be hard to bear?
F
Once again I’m taking the letter out of the envelope, there’s room right here: Please say Du to me—not all the time, I don’t want that at all—say Du once again.
If the occasion presents itself and you don’t have anything against it, please say something nice to Werfel on my behalf.—Unfortunately there are some things you don’t respond to after all, for example the questions concerning your writing.39
Recently I had another dream about you, it was a big dream, but I hardly remember a thing. I was in Vienna, I don’t recall anything about that, next I went to Prague and had forgotten your address, not only the street but also the city, everything, only the name Schreiber kept somehow appearing, but I didn’t know what to make of that.40 So I had lost you completely. In my despair I made various very clever attempts, which were nevertheless not carried out—I don’t know why—I just remember one of them. I wrote on an envelope: M. Jesenská and underneath ‘Request delivery of this letter, because otherwise the Ministry of Finance will suffer terrible loss.’ With this threat I hoped to engage the entire government in my search for you. Clever? Don’t let this sway you against me. It’s only in dreams that I am so sinister.
[Meran, June 12, 1920]
Saturday
You misunderstand me a little, Milena; I agree with you almost completely. I don’t even want to go into the details.
I still can’t say whether I’m coming to Vienna, but I don’t think I am. If I had many reasons against it before, today I have just one, namely that it would tax my spiritual strength and—as a possible distant, second reason—because this is better for all of us. But I must add that it would be equally beyond my strength (if not more so) if you were to come to Prague under the circumstances you describe (‘keeping a person waiting’).41
My need to hear what you want to say about the 6 months is not just a temporary one.42 I am convinced it’s something terrible,43 I am convinced you’ve experienced or even committed terrible things, I am convinced I could not have stood being part of them (even if about 7 years ago I could have endured practically anything) I am also convinced I couldn’t stand such participation in the future—fine, but what does all this mean, is it your deeds and experiences which are important to me or isn’t it really you yourself? Even without the story, however, I know you much better than I do myself, by which I don’t mean to say I don’t know what state my hands are in. Your letter is not opposed to my suggestion, on the contrary, for you write: ‘most of all I’d like to escape along a third road going neither to you nor with him, but somewhere toward solitude.’44 This is my suggestion, perhaps you were even writing it the same day I was.
Of course if the illness has reached this stage you cannot leave your husband even temporarily, but as you wrote it’s not a disease which lasts forever; you mentioned only a few months, more than one has already passed and after one more you can be spared for a little while. By then it will only be August, September at the latest. Incidentally I confess: your letter belongs to those which I cannot read immediately and even if I have gulped it down four times in a row I still can’t tell you what I think, at least not right away. Nonetheless I believe the above has some validity.
Yours
[Meran, June 12, 1920]
once again Saturday
This crisscrossing of letters has got to stop, Milena, it’s driving us crazy, one doesn’t know what one has written, what has been answered, and in any case one is in constant trepidation. I understand your Czech very well, I also hear your laughter but I keep digging into your letters, burrowing between your words and your laughter—until I then hear one single word, one word which is, moreover, my very essence: fear.
I cannot determine whether you still want to see me after my letters of Wednesday and Thursday; I know my relationship to you (you belong to me, even if I should never see you again) […] these I know, insofar as they do not fall into the indistinct realm of fear, but I don’t know your relationship to me at all; this belongs entirely to fear.45 Nor do you know me—I repeat this, Milena.
You see, as far as I’m concerned what’s happening is incredible—my world is collapsing, my world is rebuilding itself: wait and see how you (meaning me) survive it all. I’m not lamenting the falling apart, it was already in a state of collapse, what I’m lamenting is the rebuilding, I lament my waning strength, I lament being born, I lament the light of the sun.
How will we go on living? If you say ‘yes’ to my letters then it is impossible for you to go on living in Vienna. Together with your letters today I received a letter from Max Brod, in which among other things he writes: ‘Something strange has happened which I “report” to you at least by way of suggestion. Reiner, the young editor of the Tribuna (they say a very fine and really exorbitantly young man—perhaps 20 years old) has poisoned himself.46 This was while you were still in Prague—I think. Now the reason comes to light: Willy Haas had an affair with his wife (whose maiden name was Ambrožová, a friend of Milena Jesenská) which was however ostensibly kept within platonic bounds.47 No one was caught or anything like that, only the woman so tormented the man (whom she had known for years prior to getting married) mainly with her words and her behavior that he killed himself in his office. Early in the morning she went with Haas to find out why he hadn’t come home after the night shift. He was already in the hospital and died before they arrived. Haas, who was just about to take his last exam, broke off his studies, fell out with his father and is running a film magazine in Berlin. Apparently he’s not doing very well. The woman is also living in Berlin and it is expected he will marry her.—I don’t know why I’m telling you this gruesome story. Perhaps only because the same demon is causing us to suffer and so the story belongs to us just as we belong to it.’
So much for the letter. I repeat you cannot remain in Vienna. What a terrible story. Once I caught a mole and carried him into the hops garden. When I tossed him on the ground he plunged into the earth like a madman, disappearing as if he had dived into water. That is how one would have to hide from this story.
That’s not the point, Milena, as far as I’m concerned you are not a woman, you’re a girl, I’ve never seen anyone who was more of a girl than you, and girl that you are, I don’t dare offer you my hand, my dirty, twitching, clawlike, fidgety, unsteady, hot-cold hand.
F
In regard to the Prague messenger, it’s a bad plan. You will only find an empty house. It’s my office. Meanwhile I’ll be sitting at my desk on the 3rd floor at Altstädter Ring #6 with my face in my hands.48
No, you really don’t understand me either, Milena, the ‘Jewish question’ was only a dumb joke.
[Meran, June 13, 1920]
Sunday
Today something which may explain a few things, Milena (what a rich, heavy name, almost too full to lift and which I didn’t like very much at first; it seemed to me a Greek or Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by Czech; the accent has been betrayed and yet the name is marvelous, in color and form:49 a woman to be carried in one’s arms out of the world, out of the fire—I don’t know which—and she presses herself into your arms willingly and full of trust,
except the strong accent on the ‘i’ is bad, doesn’t the name jump right back away from you? Or might that just be a leap for joy, which you yourself perform with your burden?)
You write two types of letters; I don’t mean the ones in pen and the ones in pencil, although this pencil itself is significant and enough to make one prick up one’s ears but this is not a crucial difference. The last letter, with the map of your apartment, for instance, is written in pencil and makes me happy nonetheless; you see, the peaceful letters are the ones that make me happy (understand, Milena, my age, the fact that I am used up, and, above all, my fear, and understand your youth, your vivacity, your courage. And my fear is actually growing, since it is a sign of my retreating from the world; which causes the world in turn to exert more pressure, which causes a further increase in fear; your courage, however, indicates an advance, hence a decrease in pressure, hence an increase in courage)—I could sit at the feet of these letters, happy beyond measure; they bring rain on my burning head. But whenever these other letters come, Milena, even if they are basically more auspicious than the first ones (although on account of my weakness it takes me days to penetrate to their happiness)—these letters which begin with exclamations (and after all, I am so far away), and which end with I don’t know what terrible things, then, Milena, I literally start to shake as if under an alarm bell; I am unable to read them and naturally I read them anyway, the way an animal dying of thirst drinks, and with that comes fear and more fear; I look for a piece of furniture to crawl under; trembling, totally unaware of the world, I pray you might fly back out of the window the way you came storming in inside your letter. After all, I can’t keep a storm in my room; in these letters you undoubtedly have the magnificent head of Medusa, the snakes of terror are quivering about your head so wildly, while the snakes of fear quiver even more wildly about my own.
Your letter from Wednesday, Thursday. But child, child (this actually applies to me, saying Medusa like that) you’re taking all my stupid jokes (with žid and nechápu and ‘hate’) in earnest,50 I just wanted to make you laugh a little, we’re misunderstanding one another out of fear, please don’t force me to write Czech, there wasn’t even a trace of reproach in that, I could sooner reproach you for having much too high an opinion of the Jews you do know (me included)—there are others!—at times I’d like to stuff them all, simply as Jews (me included) into, say, the drawer of the laundry chest. Next I’d wait, open the drawer a little to see if they’ve all suffocated, and if not, shut the drawer again and keep doing this to the end.—But what I said about your ‘speech’ was in earnest (Ernst keeps intruding into this letter.51 Perhaps I am doing him a terrible injustice—I can’t think about it—but equally strong is my feeling of being bound to him, more and more tightly; I almost said: in life and death. If only I could talk with him! But I’m afraid of him; he’s far more than a match for me. You know, Milena, that in going to him you took one large step down from your own level, but if you come to me you will be leaping into the abyss. Do you realize that? No, that wasn’t my ‘height’ in that letter but yours)—I was talking about your ‘speech,’ you meant it in earnest, too—I can’t be wrong about that.
Again I hear about your illness. Milena, what if you had to stay in bed? And perhaps you should. You may even be lying down as I am writing this. Wasn’t I a better man a month ago? I worried about you (though only in my head), knew about your being ill—not anymore; now I just think about my own sickness and health: however, in any case both of them, the first as well as the second, are you.
F
Today I went on a small excursion with my favorite engineer to escape this sleepless air. I also wrote a card to you from there, but couldn’t sign and send it. I can no longer write to you as to a stranger.
The Friday letter didn’t arrive till Wednesday; express and registered letters take longer than regular mail.
[Meran, June 14, 1920]
Monday
Shortly before waking up this morning, it was also shortly after having fallen asleep, I had a horrid, not to say terrifying (happily the impressions left by dreams fade quickly), thus only a horrid dream. Incidentally, I also owe it some sleep since you don’t wake from such dreams until they’re over, you can’t wrest yourself away any sooner because they hold you by the tongue.
It was in Vienna, similar to the way I picture it in my daydreams in case I should travel there (in these daydreams Vienna consists only of a quiet square, bordered on one side by your house, opposite is my hotel, to the left is the Westbahnhof where I arrive, to the left of that the Franz Josefs Bahnhof from which I depart, and congenially located on the ground floor of my hotel is a vegetarian restaurant, where I eat not in order to eat, but to bring some sort of weight back to Prague.52 Why am I telling you this? It doesn’t really belong to the dream, evidently it still makes me afraid). It wasn’t exactly like that, it was a true metropolis, toward evening, wet, dark, an inconceivable amount of traffic; a long, rectangular public garden separated the house where I was staying from your own.
I had gone to Vienna suddenly, overtaking my own letters, which were still on their way to you (a fact which later caused me particular pain). Still you had been informed and I was supposed to meet you. Fortunately (though at the same time I also resented it) I was not alone, a small group was with me—including, I believe, a girl, but I don’t know anything more about them, I considered them something like my seconds. If they had only kept quiet, but they went on talking and talking among themselves, most likely about affairs of mine; I could just hear their murmuring, which made me nervous: I could not and did not want to understand anything. I stood on the edge of the sidewalk to the right of my house and studied yours. It was a low villa with a beautiful, simple, vaulted loggia of stone in front, reaching to the second floor.
Then it was suddenly breakfast time, the table was set in the loggia, I watched from the distance as your husband came, sat down in a cane chair on the right, still sleepy and stretching, arms extended. Then you came and sat down in full view behind the table. But I couldn’t see you exactly, it was so far away, although I could make out your husband’s features a lot more clearly—I don’t know why, you just remained something bluish-white, flowing, ghostlike. You had also spread your arms out, but not to stretch; it was more a ceremonial gesture.
Shortly thereafter—but now it was once again the evening before—you were outside with me, you stood on the sidewalk, I had one foot in the street, I was holding your hand and now an insanely quick conversation began, all short sentences; it went bang bang bang and lasted almost without interruption throughout the dream.
I can’t retell it; actually I only remember the first 2 and the last 2 sentences, the middle was one long torment impossible to convey in more detail.
Instead of a greeting I said quickly, in response to something, in your face: ‘You imagined me differently.’ You replied: ‘Frankly I thought you’d be a little more fesch’fn5 (actually you said something even more Viennese, but I forgot what).
Those were the first two phrases (on which subject it occurs to me: Do you know that I am completely unmusical, more completely than anyone I have ever known?) but with that everything had been decided;53 what more could there be? However, we then began negotiating another meeting: the vaguest possible expressions on your side, incessant pushy questions on mine.
Then my companions intervened, producing the explanation that I had also come to Vienna to visit an agricultural school in the vicinity of the city, and now it seemed I might have time after all; they were evidently trying to take me away, out of charity. I saw through this, but went along with them to the train station, probably because I was hoping that such a serious intention to depart would impress you. We all went to the nearby station, but it turned out I had forgotten the name of the place where the school was supposed to be. We stood in front of the large timetables, they kept running their fingers over the names of the stations and asking me whether it might be this one or th
at one, but it was neither.
In the meantime I was able to observe you some, though it didn’t matter to me in the least what you looked like—your words were all I cared about. You didn’t resemble yourself very much, in any case you were much darker, a thin face—no one with plump cheeks could be so cruel. (But was it really cruel?) Your suit was of the same material as mine, also very masculine and I didn’t really like it at all. But then I remembered a phrase from one of your letters (the verse: ‘I only have two dresses but I still look fine’) and so great was the power of your words over me that from then on I liked what you were wearing very much.54
But now the end had come, my companions were still looking through the schedules, we were standing off to the side and negotiating. Our last arguments went something like this: the next day was Sunday—it was incomprehensible to you, to the point of repugnance, that I could presume you might have time for me on Sunday. But finally you conceded and said you’d try to save 40 minutes for me. (The most horrible thing about the conversation was not the words, of course, but the underlying tone, the senselessness of it all, also your continuous, unspoken argument: ‘I don’t want to come. So what good is it to you if I do come?’) But I couldn’t find out from you when you might have these free 40 minutes. You didn’t know; in spite of all your apparently intense concentration you couldn’t say. Finally I asked: ‘Maybe I should wait the whole day?’ ‘Yes’ you said and turned to face a group of people standing by, waiting for you. But your reply really meant that you wouldn’t come at all and that the only concession you could grant me was permission to wait. ‘I won’t wait’ I said to myself quietly and since I thought you hadn’t heard me and since after all it was my last trump, I shouted the words after you in despair. You didn’t care, however, you were no longer concerned. Somehow I staggered back into town.
