couple of notebooks in . . .’s possession) — all these things, without
exception and preferably unread (I won’t absolutely forbid you to look at
them, though I’d far rather you didn’t and in any case no one else is to do so) –
– all these things without exception are to be burned, and I beg you to do this
as soon as possible.
FRANZ
If, in spite of these categorical instructions, I nevertheless refuse to perform the holocaust demanded of me by my friend, I have good and sufficient reasons for that.
Some of them do not admit of public discussion; but in my opinion those which I can
communicate are themselves amply sufficient to explain my decision.
The chief reason is this: when in 1921 I embarked on a new profession, I told Kafka
that I had made my will in which I had asked him to destroy this and that, to look through
some other things, and so forth. Kafka thereupon showed me the outside of the note
written in ink which was late: found in his desk, and said: “My last testament will be quite
simple — a request to you to burn everything.” I can still remember the exact wording of
the answer I gave him: “If you seriously think me capable of such a thing, let me tell you
here and now that I shall not carry out your wishes.” The whole conversation was
conducted in the jesting tone we generally used together, but with the underlying
seriousness which each of us always took for granted in the other. Convinced as he was
that I meant what I said, Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been
absolutely and finally determined that his instructions should stand.
I am far from grateful to him for having precipitated me into this difficult conflict of
conscience, which he must have foreseen, for he knew with what fanatical veneration I
listened to his every word. Among other things, this was the reason why, during the whole
twenty-two years of our unclouded friendship, I never once threw away the smallest scrap
of paper that came from him, no, not even a post card. Nor would I wish the words “I am
far from grateful” to be misunderstood. What does a conflict of conscience, be it never so
acute, signify when weighed in the balance against the inestimable blessing I owe to his
friendship which has been the mainstay of my whole existence!
Other reasons are: the instructions in the penciled note were not followed by Franz
himself; for later he gave the explicit permission to reprint parts of Meditation in a journal;
and he also agreed to the publication of three further short stories which he himself
brought out, together with Hunger-Artist, with the firm Die Schmiede. Besides, both sets
of instructions to me were the product of a period when Kafka’s self-critical tendency was
at its height. But during the last year of his life his whole existence took an unforeseen turn
for the better, a new, happy, and positive turn which did away with his self-hatred and
nihilism. Then, too, my decision to publish his posthumous work is made easier by the
memory of all the embittered struggles preceding every single publication of Kafka’s
which I extorted from him by force and often by begging. And yet afterwards he was
reconciled with these publications and relatively satisfied with them. Finally in a
posthumous publication a whole series of objections no longer applies; as, for instance,
that present publication might hinder future work and recall the dark shadows of personal
grief and pain. How closely non-publication was bound up for Kafka with the problem of
how to conduct his life (a problem which, to our immeasurable grief, no longer obtains)
could be gathered from many of his conversations and can be seen in this letter to me:
. . . I am not enclosing the novels. Why rake up old efforts? Only
because I have not burned them yet? . . . Next time I come I hope to do so.
Where is the sense in keeping such work which is “even” bungled from the
aesthetic point of view? Surely not in the hope of piecing a whole together from all these fragments, some kind of justification for my existence,