Diaries 1914 by Kafka, Franz
Diaries 1914 by Kafka, Franz
2 January. A lot of time well spent with Dr. Weiss.
4 January. We had scooped out a hollow in the sand, where we felt quite comfortable. At night we rolled up together inside the hollow, Father covered it over with
trunks of trees, scattering underbrush on top, and we were as well protected as we could be from storms and wild beasts. “Father,” we would often call out in fright
when it had already grown dark under the tree trunks and Father had still not appeared. But then we would see his feet through a crack, he would slide in beside us,
would give each of us a little pat, for it calmed us to feel his hand, and then we would all fall asleep as it were together. In addition to our parents we were five boys and
three girls; the hollow was too small for us, but we should have felt afraid if we had not been so close to one another at night.
5 January. Afternoon. Goethe’s father was senile when he died. At the time of his father’s last illness Goethe was working on Iphigenie.
“Take that woman home, she’s drunk,” some court official said to Goethe about Christiane (his lover).
August (Goethe’s son by Christiane), a drunkard like his mother, vulgarly ran around with common women. Ottilie, whom he did not love but was made to marry by
his father for social reasons.
Wolf, the diplomat and writer.
Walter, the musician, couldn’t pass his examinations. Withdrew into the Gartenhaus for months; when the Tsarina wanted to see him: “Tell the Tsarina that I am not a
wild animal.” “My conscience is more lead than iron.”
Wolf’s petty, ineffectual literary efforts.
The old people in the garret rooms. Eighty-year-old Ottilie, fifty-year-old Wolf, and their old acquaintances.
Only in such extremes does one become aware of how every person is lost in himself beyond hope of rescue, and one’s sole consolation in this is to observe other people
and the law governing them and everything. How, outwardly, Wolf can be guided, moved here or there, cheered up, encouraged, induced to work systematically—and
how, inwardly, he is held fast and immovable.
Why don’t the Tchuktchis (who live in arctic Siberia) simply leave their awful country; considering their present life and wants they would be better off anywhere
else. But they cannot; all things possible do happen, only what happens is possible.
A wine cellar had been set up in the small town of F. by a wine dealer from the larger city near by. He had rented a small vaulted cellar in a house on the Ringplatz,
painted oriental decorations on the wall, and had put in old plush furniture almost past its usefulness.
6 January. Dilthey: Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Experience and Poetry): Love for humanity, the highest respect for all the forms it has taken; stands back
quietly in the best post from which he can observe. On Luther’s early writings: “the mighty shades, attracted by murder and blood, that step from an invisible world into
the visible one” —Pascal.
Letter for A. to his mother-in-law. Liesl kissed the teacher.
8 January. Fantl recited Tête d’or: “He hurls the enemy about like a barrel.”
Uncertainty, aridity, peace—all things will resolve themselves into these and pass away.
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
Description of inexplicable emotions. A.: Since that happened, the sight of women has been painful to me, it is neither sexual excitement nor pure sorrow, it is simply
pain. That’s the way it was too before I felt sure of Liesl.
12 January. Yesterday: Ottilie’s love affairs, the young Englishman—Tolstoy’s engagement; I have a clear impression of a young, sensitive, and violent person,
restraining himself, full of forebodings. Well dressed, dark, and dark blue.
The girl in the coffeehouse. Her tight skirt, her white, loose, fur-trimmed silk blouse, bare throat, close-fitting gray hat. Her full, laughing, eternally pulsating face;
friendly eyes, though a little affected. My face flushes whenever I think of F.