Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

  But then two hours later came letters and flowers, kindness and consolation.

  Your F

  Milena, the addresses are again unclear, the Post Office has written over them and filled them in. After my first request the address was magnificent, a model collection of beautiful, varied, but not exactly legible styles of handwriting. If the Post Office had my eyes it could probably read your addresses alone and no others. But since it’s the Post Office—

  [Meran, June 15, 1920]

  Tuesday

  Early this morning I had another dream about you. We were sitting next to each other and you were warding me off, not angrily but in a friendly way. I was very unhappy. Not because you were warding me off, but because I was treating you like some mute woman, ignoring the voice that was speaking out of you directly to me. Or perhaps I wasn’t ignoring it, but just unable to answer. I left more disconsolate than in the first dream.

  At the same time something occurs to me I once read at somebody’s house, something like this: ‘My beloved is a fiery column passing over the earth. Now it is holding me enclosed. But it does not guide those who are enclosed, just those who see.’

  Yours

  (now I’m even losing my name—it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)

  [Meran, June 20, 1920]

  Sunday

  After a short walk with you (how easy it is to write that: a short walk with you. I should stop writing out of shame, because it is so easy).

  First of all what most terrifies me about the story is the conviction that the Jews are necessarily bound to fall upon you Christians, just as predatory animals are bound to murder, although the Jews will be horrified since they are not animals, but rather all too aware. It is impossible for you to imagine this in all its fullness and power, even if you understand everything else in the story better than I do. I don’t understand how whole nations of people could ever have thought of ritual murder before these recent events (at most they may have felt general fear and jealousy, but here there is no question, we see ‘Hilsner’ committing the crime step by step;55 what difference does it make that the virgin embraces him at the same time?) But on the other hand, I also don’t understand how nations could believe that the Jew might murder without stabbing himself in the process, for that is what he does—but of course the nations don’t need to worry about that.

  Once again I am exaggerating, these are all exaggerations. They are exaggerations, because people seeking salvation always throw themselves at women, and these women can be either Christian or Jewish. And what is meant by the girls’ innocence is not the usual chastity, but the innocence of sacrifice, an innocence which has just as much to do with the body.

  There are some things I could say about the report, but I’d rather maintain my silence—in the first place I know Haas only slightly (although oddly his congratulations on my engagement were the warmest I received) and I don’t know the others at all, moreover you might be mad at me if I were to get mixed up in this affair with my speculations, since it’s really your own business and, besides, no one can help here anymore anyway; it would just be a guessing game.

  (I’m still afraid you might condemn me unjustly concerning the girl I was supposed to meet in Karlsbad and to whom I told the truth as well as I could following my telegram and two vague notes—in her mind I’m still going out of my way not to praise her in any way. My fear is all the greater since I should of course be condemned and very severely, but by no means according to the essence of what you wrote—in that case even more severely, you may say, fine, I’d rather bear the more severe condemnation I deserve than the lighter one which doesn’t pertain. Excuse my unclear speech. It’s something I have to come to terms with on my own: while doing so I will only be allowed to see you from afar.)

  As far as Max is concerned, I also think that—for the time being—one would have to know him personally in order to judge him in his entirety. But then one has to love him, admire him, be proud of him, and of course sympathize with him as well. Whoever does not act that way toward him (assuming goodwill) does not know him.

  F.

  [Meran, June 21, 1920]

  Monday

  You’re right, just now when I read your reproach concerning ‘child, child’—unfortunately I didn’t receive the letters until late in the evening and early tomorrow I’m planning to go on a short trip to Bolzano with the engineer—I really did say to myself: Enough, you can’t read these letters today, you have to get at least some sleep if you want to go on the trip tomorrow, and it took some time before I went back to reading and understood and the tension passed and I could have laid my head in your lap with a sigh of relief—if you were here (and I don’t mean just in body). This is surely a sign of sickness, isn’t it? But I do know you, after all, and also know that ‘child, child’ isn’t such a terrible way to address somebody. I, too, can take a joke, but anything can also become a threat to me. If you were to write me: ‘yesterday I counted the “ands” in your letter, there were such-and-such many; how dare you write “and” to me and especially such-and-such many times’—and if you kept a serious face I might even become convinced that I had insulted you and would be sufficiently unhappy. And in the end perhaps it really does annoy you, it’s difficult to find out.

  Nor should you forget that although it’s easy to distinguish between what is said in jest and what in earnest, when it comes to people who mean so much to us that our lives depend on them, then it isn’t so easy after all, the risk is so great it turns our eyes into microscopes, and once equipped with those it’s impossible to distinguish anything. In this respect I was never strong, even when I was at my strongest. For example in the first grade: Our cook, a small dry thin person with a pointed nose, hollow cheeks, somewhat jaundiced but firm, energetic, and superior, took me to school every morning. We were living in the house which separates the Kleiner Ring from the Grosser Ring. So you first had to cross the Ring, then turn onto the Teingasse, then proceed through a kind of vaulted gate on to the Fleischmarktgasse and down to the Fleischmarkt. And every morning for about a year the same thing happened. On our way out of the house the cook would say she was going to tell the teacher how naughty I had been at home. In fact, I probably wasn’t all that badly behaved, but I was stubborn, good-for-nothing, sad, ill-tempered, and probably sufficiently so that she could always concoct something nice for the teacher. I knew that and so didn’t take the cook’s threats too lightly. But mainly I thought the way to school was terribly long and that many things could still happen along the way (anxiety and dead-eyed seriousness develop precisely out of such apparently childish nonsense, but gradually, since no way ever is so terribly long), moreover, at least while on the Altstädter Ring, I still doubted whether the cook would even dare speak to the teacher, who commanded the respect of the world; for although the cook commanded respect, she did so only at home. But whenever I would say something to that effect, the cook would usually answer curtly, with her thin pitiless lips, that I didn’t have to believe it, but she would tell anyway. Somewhere near the entry to the Fleischmarktgasse—which still has a slight historical significance for me (in which neighborhood did you live as a child?)—the fear of the threat prevailed. School in itself was a nightmare and now the cook wanted to make it even worse. I would start to beg, she would shake her head; the more I pleaded, the greater the danger. I would stop and ask for forgiveness, she would drag me along, I would threaten her with retaliation from my parents, she would laugh, here she was almighty, I would cling to the doors of the shops, to the cornerstones, I didn’t want to go any further until she had forgiven me, I would pull her back by her dress (she didn’t have an easy time either) but she would drag me on, assuring me that this, too, would be reported to the teacher. It was getting late, the Jakobskirche was striking 8, you could hear the school bells, the other children would start to run—I always had the greatest terror of being late—now we had to run as well and all the time the thought: ‘She
’ll tell, she won’t tell.’ It turns out she never told, not once, but there was always the possibility she might, an evergrowing possibility (I didn’t tell yesterday, but you can be sure I’ll tell today) which she never gave up. And sometimes—imagine, Milena—she would be so angry she would even stamp her feet on the street, and sometimes there was a woman selling coal nearby, watching. Milena, what nonsense! And how much I belong to you with all these cooks and threats and this terrible dust, which has been stirred up by 38 years and is now settling in my lungs.

  But that’s not at all what I wanted to tell you, or at least I wanted to say it differently, it’s late, I have to stop so I can go to sleep and I won’t be able to sleep because I will have stopped writing to you. Sometime if you’d like to know what my earlier years were like, I’ll send you from Prague the gigantic letter I wrote to my father about a half a year ago, but which I have not yet given him.56

  And I’ll answer your letter tomorrow, or if it should get too late, then not until the day after. Since I’ve decided not to visit my parents in Franzensbad, I’m staying a few days longer, although simply lying around on the balcony doesn’t really deserve to be called a decision.

  F

  And once again thank you for your letter

  [Meran, June 23, 1920]

  Wednesday

  It’s difficult to tell the truth, since there is only one truth, but that truth is alive and therefore has a lively, changing face (‘never really beautiful, not by any means, perhaps pretty on occasion’).57 If I had answered you Monday night it would have been terrible; I was lying in bed as if on the rack, the whole night I kept formulating my reply to you, complaining to you, trying to scare you away from me, cursing myself. (Also because I had received the letter late in the evening and was too sensitive and upset by the nearness of night for serious words.) Then I left early for Bolzano, taking the electric train to Klobenstein, 1,200 meters high, right across the first chain of the Dolomites I breathed the pure almost cold air, to be sure not entirely in my right mind. Later, on my way back, I wrote you the following, which I now copy, although even this strikes me as far too harsh, at least today; so the days change:

  At last I’m by myself, the engineer stayed on in Bolzano, I am on my way back. The fact that the engineer and the landscapes came between us didn’t cause me too much suffering, since I wasn’t entirely there myself. I spent last evening until 12:30 with you, with writing, and even more with thinking, then I stayed in bed until 6:00, hardly sleeping a wink. Afterward I jumped up, like a stranger pulling another stranger out of bed, and that was a good thing, since otherwise I would have written and dozed the day away in Meran without any consolation. It doesn’t matter that this excursion has barely even crawled into my consciousness and that it will remain in my memory only as a very vague dream. The night passed the way it did because with your letter (you have a very penetrating gaze, which wouldn’t mean much in itself—after all, people run around in the street all but asking for such a gaze—but you have the courage to match your gaze and above all the power to see beyond it; this ability to see beyond is the main thing, and you have exactly that) you have once again awakened all the old devils who sleep with one eye closed and one open, waiting for an opportunity. Of course this is frightening and makes me break out in a cold sweat (I swear to you: only because of them, the impalpable forces). Nevertheless it’s a good thing, it’s healthy, one watches the antics of these forces and knows that they are there. Still your interpretation of my ‘you should leave Vienna’ isn’t entirely correct. I did not write this carelessly (but under the impression of the whole report; that context hadn’t ever even occurred to me beforehand; at the time I was so beside myself that your immediate departure from Vienna seemed the most natural thing. This was because I consider—really very selfishly—that whatever even grazes your husband strikes me square on, ten times and a hundred times harder, cutting me to pieces. It’s no different than with you) nor did I fear the material burden (I don’t earn much, but it would easily be enough for both of us, I think, barring any illness, of course), and moreover I am sincere as long as I have the power to think and express myself (I was before, too, but you’re really the first one to make that helpful observation). The only thing I do fear—and I fear this with my eyes wide open, I am drowning in this fear, helpless (if I could sleep as deeply as I sink into fear I would no longer be alive)—is this inner conspiracy against myself (which the letter to my father will help you understand better, although not entirely, since the letter is much too focused on its purpose), which is based on the fact that I, who am not even the pawn of a pawn in the great chess game, far from it, now want to take the place of the queen, against all the rules and to the confusion of the game—I, the pawn of a pawn, a piece which doesn’t even exist, which isn’t even in the game—and next I may want to take the king’s place as well or even the whole board. Moreover, if that were what I really wanted, it would have to happen in some other, even more inhuman way. That’s why the suggestion I made to you means much more to me than it does to you. At the moment it’s the only thing beyond doubt, the only thing not sicklied over, the only thing which makes me unconditionally happy.

  That’s the way it was yesterday; today, for example, I’d say I will certainly come to Vienna, but since today is today and tomorrow tomorrow I’m going to leave myself some freedom. In any case I will not surprise you, nor will I come any later than Thursday. If I am coming I’ll send you a letter by pneumatic mail—I wouldn’t be able to see anyone but you, I know that much—and certainly not before Tuesday. I would arrive at the Südbahnhof, I still don’t know where I would depart, so I would stay somewhere near the Südbahnhof; it’s a shame I don’t know where you give your Südbahnhof lessons, since I could wait for you there at 5:00. (I must have read this sentence once in a fairy tale, somewhere near the other sentence: And they lived happily ever after.) Today I looked at a map of Vienna, for a moment it seemed incomprehensible to me that they would build such a huge city when you only need one room.

  F

  I may have also addressed poste restante letters to Pollak.

  [Meran, June 24, 1920]

  Thursday

  One is a lot brighter unrested than after a good night’s sleep. Yesterday I had slept a little better and immediately wrote certain stupidities concerning the trip to Vienna. After all, this trip isn’t something trivial, isn’t anything to joke about. I won’t surprise you under any circumstances; I tremble at the very idea. I won’t even enter your apartment. If you haven’t received a pneumatic letter by Thursday then I have gone to Prague. By the way, I am told I would arrive at the Westbahnhof—yesterday I believe I wrote Südbahnhof—but this is immaterial. Although I am impractical, negligent, and difficult to transport, I am not excessively so (provided I’ve slept some), you don’t have to worry about that, if I board the car bound for Vienna then I will most likely get off in Vienna; just getting on is a little difficult. So auf Wiedersehn (but it doesn’t have to be in Vienna, it can also be in letters)

  F.

  Ropucha is beautiful—beautiful, but not very beautiful—not very beautiful, the story is like a centipede, as soon as it has been fixed by wit it is paralyzed, no longer able to move, not even backwards, and all the freedom and movement of the first half is lost.58 But apart from that it reads like a letter of Milena J.—and if it is a letter then I will answer it.

  And in regard to Milena, the name has nothing at all to do with Germanness and Jewishness. The people who understand Czech best (apart from Czech Jews, of course) are the gentlemen from Naše Řeč, second best are the readers of that journal, and third best the subscribers—of which I am one.59 And as such I say to you that the only thing really Czech about the name Milena is the diminutive: milenkafn6 Whether you like it or not, that is what philology says.

  [Meran, June 25, 1920]

  We are indeed beginning to misunderstand one another, Milena. You think I wanted to help you, but it was me I was trying
to help. No more about that. And as far as I know I didn’t ask you for any sleeping pills.

  I hardly knew Otto Gross; but I did notice that there was something essential in him, something which was at least attempting to extend a hand from amid everything so ‘ridiculous.’60 The bewildered mood of his friends and relatives (wife, brother-in-law, even the strangely quiet infant between the suitcases—there so he wouldn’t fall out of bed when left alone—who drank black coffee, ate fruit or anything else you care to name) was somewhat reminiscent of the mood prevailing among Christ’s disciples as they stood beneath the Crucified. At the time I was just coming from Budapest, where I had accompanied my fiancée, returning to Prague and my hemorrhage. Gross, his wife and brother-in-law were all taking the same night train. Kuh sang and made noise through half the night, shy-unshy as always; the woman was propped up in a corner, surrounded by filth—we only had seats in the corridor—and was sleeping (very much tended to by Gross but without apparent result). Throughout most of the night, however, Gross was telling me something (excepting small interruptions when he was probably giving himself injections), at least it seemed that way to me, for I really couldn’t understand a thing. He demonstrated his learning with a passage from the Bible I didn’t know, a fact I did not admit due to cowardice and exhaustion. He kept on endlessly dismantling this passage, endlessly adding new material, endlessly demanding my agreement. I would nod mechanically, while he would practically disappear before my eyes. Incidentally, I don’t think I would have understood if I had been awake either—my own thinking is cold and slow. In this way the night passed. But there were other interruptions as well. Occasionally he would stand and hold on to something above him, and would be joggled through and through by the train to the point where he would become completely relaxed and even sleep. Later in Prague I only saw him in passing.