Diaries 1913 by Kafka, Franz
Diaries 1913 by Kafka, Franz
11 February. While I read the proofs of “The Judgment,” I’ll write down all the relationships which have become clear to me in the story as far as I now remember
them. This is necessary because the story came out of me like a real birth, covered with filth and slime, and only I have the hand that can reach to the body itself and
the strength of desire to do so:
The friend is the link between father and son, he is their strongest common bond. Sitting alone at his window, Georg rummages voluptuously in this consciousness of
what they have in common, believes he has his father within him, and would be at peace with everything if it were not for a fleeting, sad thoughtfulness. In the course of
the story the father, with the strengthened position that the other, lesser things they share in common give him—love, devotion to the mother, loyalty to her memory, the
clientele that he (the father) had been the first to acquire for the business—uses the common bond of the friend to set himself up as Georg’s antagonist. Georg is left
with nothing; the bride, who lives in the story only in relation to the friend, that is, to what father and son have in common, is easily driven away by the father since no
marriage has yet taken place, and so she cannot penetrate the circle of blood relationship that is drawn around father and son. What they have in common is built up
entirely around the father, Georg can feel it only as something foreign, something that has become independent, that he has never given enough protection, that is
exposed to Russian revolutions, and only because he himself has lost everything except his awareness of the father does the judgment, which closes off his father from
him completely, have so strong an effect on him.
Georg has the same number of letters as Franz. In Bendemann, “mann” is a strengthening of “Bende” to provide for all the as yet unforeseen possibilities in the story.
But Bende has exactly the same number of letters as Kafka, and the vowel e occurs in the same places as does the vowel a in Kafka.
Frieda has as many letters as F[elice] and the same initial, Brandenfeld has the same initial as B[auer], and in the word “Feld” a certain connection in meaning, as well.
Perhaps even the thought of Berlin was not without influence and the recollection of the Mark Brandenburg perhaps had some influence.
12 February. In describing the friend I kept thinking of Steuer. Now when I happened to meet him about three months after I had written the story, he told me that he
had become engaged about three months ago.
After I read the story at Weltsch’s yesterday, old Mr. Weltsch went out and, when he returned after a short time, praised especially the graphic descriptions in the
story. With his arm extended he said, “I see this father before me,” all the time looking directly at the empty chair in which he had been sitting while I was reading.
My sister said, “It is our house.” I was astonished at how mistaken she was in the setting and said, “In that case, then, Father would have to be living in the toilet.”
28 February. Ernst Liman arrived in Constantinople on a business trip one rainy autumn morning and, as was his custom—this was the tenth time he was making this
trip—without paying attention to anything else, drove through the otherwise empty streets to the hotel at which he always stopped and which he found suited him. It was
almost cool, and drizzling rain blew into the carriage, and, annoyed by the bad weather which had been pursuing him all through his business trip this year, he put up the
carriage window and leaned back in a corner to sleep away the fifteen minutes or so of the drive that was before him. But since the driver took him straight through the
business district, he could get no rest, and the shouts of the street vendors, the roping of the heavy wagons, as well as other noises, meaningless on the surface, such as a