back of a professional actor. The conscientiousness of people!
A few days ago an excellent lecture by Davis Trietsch on colonization in Palestine.
25 May. Weak tempo, little blood.
27 May. Yesterday Whit Sunday, cold weather, a not very nice excursion with Max and Weltsch. In the evening, coffeehouse, Werfel gives me Besuch aus dem
Elysium [Visit to Elysium].
Part of Niklasstrasse and all the bridge turns around to look sentimentally at a dog who, loudly barking, is chasing an ambulance. Until suddenly the dog stops, turns
away and proves to be an ordinary, strange dog who meant nothing in particular by his pursuit of the vehicle.
1 June. Wrote nothing.
2 June. Wrote almost nothing.
Yesterday lecture on America by Dr. Soukup. (The Czechs to Nebraska, all officials in America are elected, everyone must belong to one of the three
parties—Republican, Democratic, Socialist—Roosevelt’s election meeting, with his glass he threatened a farmer who had made an objection, street speakers who carry
a small box with them to serve as a platform.) Then spring festival, met Paul Kisch who talked about his dissertation, “Hebrew and the Czechs.”
6 June. Thursday. Corpus Christi. Two horses in a race, how one lowers its head out of the race and shakes its mane vigorously, then raises its head and only now,
apparently feeling better, resumes the race which it has never really interrupted.
I have just read in Flaubert’s letters: “My novel is the cliff on which I are hanging, and I know nothing of what is going on in the world”—Like what I noted down about
myself on 9 May.
Without weight, without bones, without body, walked through the streets for two hours considering what I overcame this afternoon while writing.
7 June. Bad. Wrote nothing today. Tomorrow no time.
6 July. Monday. Began a little. Am a little sleepy. Also lost among these entirely strange people.
9 July. Nothing written for so long. Begin tomorrow. Otherwise I shall again get into a prolonged, irresistible dissatisfaction; I am really in it already. The nervous
states are beginning. But if I can do something, then I can do it without superstitious precautions.
The invention of the devil. If we are possessed by the devil, it cannot be by one, for then we should live, at least here on earth, quietly, as with God, in unity, without
contradiction, without reflection, always sure of the man behind us. His face would not frighten us, for as diabolical beings we would, if somewhat sensitive to the sight,
be clever enough to prefer to sacrifice a hand in order to keep his face covered with it. If we were possessed by only a single devil, one who had a calm, untroubled
view of our whole nature, and freedom to dispose of us at any moment, then that devil would also have enough power to hold us for the length of a human life high
above the spirit of God in us, and even to swing us to and fro, so that we should never get to see a glimmer of it and therefore should not be troubled from that quarter.
Only a crowd of devils could account for our earthly misfortunes. Why don’t they exterminate one another until only a single one is left, or why don’t they subordinate
themselves to one great devil? Either way would be in accord with the diabolical principle of deceiving us as completely as possible. With unity lacking, of what use is
the scrupulous attention all the devils pay us? It simply goes without saying that the fading of a human hair must matter more to the devil than to God, since the devil
really loses that hair and God does not. But we still do not arrive at any state of well-being so long as the many devils are within us.
7 August. Long torment. Finally wrote to Max that I cannot clear up the little pieces that still remain, do not want to force myself to it, and therefore will not publish the
book [Kafka’s first book, Meditation, which Brod pestered him to put out].
8 August. Completed “Confidence Trickster” more or less satisfactorily. With the last strength of a normal state of mind. Twelve o’clock, how will I be able to sleep?