9 August. The upset night. Yesterday the maid who said to the little boy on the steps, “Hold on to my skirt!”
My inspired reading aloud of Der arme Spielmann. The perception in this story of what is manly in Grillparzer. The way he can risk everything and risks nothing,
because there is nothing but truth in him already, a truth that even in the face of the contradictory impressions of the moment will justify itself as such when the crucial
time arrives. The calm self-possession. The slow pace that neglects nothing. The immediate readiness, when it is needed, not sooner, for long in advance he sees
everything that is coming.
10 August. Wrote nothing. Was in the factory and breathed gas in the engine room for two hours. The energy of the foreman and the stoker before the engine, which
for some undiscoverable reason will not start. Miserable factory.
11 August. Nothing, nothing. How much time the publishing of the little book takes from me and how much harmful, ridiculous pride comes from reading old things with
an eye to publication. Only that keeps me from writing. And yet in reality I have achieved nothing, the disturbance is the best proof of it. In any event, now, after the
publication of the book, I will have to stay away from magazines and reviews even more than before, if I do not wish to be content with just sticking the tips of my
fingers into the truth. How immovable I have become! Formerly, if I said only one word that opposed the direction of the moment, I at once flew over to the other side,
now I simply look at myself and remain as I am.
14 August. Letter to Rowohlt.
Dear Mr. Rowohlt,
I am enclosing the little prose pieces you wanted to see; they will probably be enough to make up a small book. While I was putting them together towards this end, I
sometimes had to choose between satisfying my sense of responsibility and an eagerness to have a book among your beautiful books. Certainly I did not in each
instance make an entirely clear-cut decision. But now I should naturally be happy if the things pleased you sufficiently to print them. After all, even with the greatest
skill and the greatest understanding the bad in them is not discernible at first sight. Isn’t what is most universally individual in writers the fact that each conceals his bad
qualities in an entirely different way?
Faithfully—
15 August. Wasted day. Spent sleeping and lying down. Feast of St. Mary on the Altstädter Ring. The man with a voice that seemed to come from a hole in the
ground. Thought much of—what embarrassment before writing down names—F. B. [Felice Bauer, later Kafka’s fiancee]. O. has just been reciting poems by
Goethe. She chooses them with right feeling. “Trost in Tränen.” “An Lotte.” “An Werther.” “An den Mond.”
Again read old diaries instead of keeping away from them. I live as irrationally as is at all possible. And the publication of the thirty-one pages is to blame for
everything. Even more to blame, of course, is my weakness, which permits a thing of this sort to influence me. Instead of shaking myself, I sit here and consider how I
could express all this as insultingly as possible. But my horrible calm interferes with my inventiveness. I am curious as to how I shall find a way out of this state. I don’t
permit others to push me, nor do I know which is “the right path.” So what will happen? Have I finally run aground, a great mass in shallow water? In that case,
however, I should at least be able to turn my head. That’s what I do, however.
16 August. Nothing, either in the office or at home. Wrote a few pages in the Weimar diary.
This evening the whimpering of my poor mother because I don’t eat.
20 August. Outside my window, across the university building site partly overgrown with weeds, the little boys, both in blue blouses, one in light blue, the other, smaller
one in darker blue, are each carrying a bundle of dry hay that fills their arms. They struggle up a slope with it. Charm of it all for the eyes.