Diary
Franz Kafka kept diaries throughout his short life, most of which were published posthumously with a dash of distain from most protectors of his legacy. Milan Kundera handles the subject of the publishing of one's personal papers swimmingly, and further reading can be done in his "The Castrating Shadow of Saint Garda" from his exquisite collection titled Testaments Betrayed. (Purely parenthetical - the book also has a stunning essay in defense of Hemingway that is not to be missed.) In short: Kafka's publisher, Max Brod, did wrong by publishing the diaries and letters of his friend and furthered the wound by then writing a book with Kafka as the central figure (thinly veiled in the disguise of the character Garda -- funny, the second and last letter is A just like in Kafka's name.) Since Kundera essentially wrote the perfect defense of Kafka for me, I'll save the time and skip my own fiendish diatribe on how Kafka's personal papers should have been handled and simply let you, dear reader, find the essay and read it at your leisure. Below are several bits from his diaries that fit with this format here of defining words, and nevermind the fact that he was betrayed in order for us readers to have access to these pages. I feel that these slip into this space with an ease that is all too breezy and prove, at least to me, that we are intertwined in some far off way, tied with the same strings and burnt with similar scars, as much so as me and my love.
Suicide
To awaken on a cold autumn morning full of yellowish light. To force your way through the half-shut window and while still in front of the panes, before you fall, to hover, arms extended, belly arched, legs curved backward, like the figures on the bows of ships in old times.
14 November 1911
Turmoil
Sleepless night. The third in a row. I fall asleep soundly, but after an hour I wake up, as though I had laid my head in the wrong hole. I am completely awake, have the feeling that I have not slept at all or only under a thin skin, have before me anew the labor of falling asleep and feel myself rejected by sleep. And for the rest of the night, until about five, thus it remains, so that indeed I sleep but at the same time vivid dreams keep me awake. I sleep alongside myself, so to speak, while I myself must struggle with dreams. About five the last trace of sleep is exhausted, I just dream, which is more exhausting than wakefulness. In short, I spend the whole night in that state in which a healthy person finds himself for a short time before really falling asleep. When i waken, all the ddreams are gathered about me, but I am careful not to reflect on them. Toward morning I sigh into the pillow, because for this night all hope is gone. I think of those nights at the end of which I was raised out of deep sleep and awoke as though I had been folded in a nut.
I believe this sleeplessness comes only because I write. For no matter how little and how badly I write, I am still made sensitive by these minor shocks, feel, especially toward evening and even more in the morning, the approaching, the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open, which could make me capable of anything, and in the general uproar that is within me and which I have no time to command, find no rest. In the end this uproar is only a surpressed, restrained harmony, which, left free, would fill me completely, which could even widen me and yet still fill me. But now such a moment arouses only feeble hopes and does me harm, for my being does not have sufficient strength or the capacity to hold the present mixture, during the day the visible world helps me, during the night it cuts me to pieces unhindered.
2 October 1911
Bound
Yesterday evening this iddea took hold of me. For it is only by summoning up all their strength and helping one another with loving care that human beings are able to maintain themselves at a tolerable height above the infernal abyss toward which they gravitate. They are joined together by ropes, and it is a bitter thing when the roapes around one of them slacken and he sinks a little lower than the others into the void, and it is quite horrible when the ropes around one of them break, and he then falls. That is why we should always hold on to other people. I incline to the belief that the girls sustain us because they are so light; that is why we have to love the girls and why they should love us.
21 December 1903
People
For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie sleekly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.
from The Penal Colony
Author
...Without weight, without bones, without body. Walked through the streets for two hours considering what I overcame this afternoon while writing.
6 June 1912
