Kafka in Love Read Online Free PDF

might otherwise employ writing inaccurate, alarmingly incomplete, imprudent, dangerous letters to you, on this task where everything has grown calm and is headed along the right path. But don’t abandon me, Felice, to my terrible loneliness.”
    In choosing between Berlin and New York, between the pleasure of seeing the woman he loves and bringing a character into the world, naming him (“Karl Rossmann”), giving him a life in a bustling city on the other side of the planet (to which he knows he will never go), Franz does not hesitate for a second. Felice has supplied him the strength, the exaltation that he needs. She produced the spark, and the motor has caught and started to run. She performed magnificently the task that he set for her on the night they met. He loves her all the more for it. Or rather, he needs the passion that he feels for her.
    A passion without love.
    Exhilarated by his writing, he jokes: “Dearest, I beg you with my hands raised in supplication not to be jealous. If the people in my novel notice your jealousy, they will abandon me. And consider a bit that if they leave me, I will be obliged to follow them, even if it means going all the way to hell, where they are at home. No, Iwill not sever myself from my novel even when you are here. Surely not.”
    A few days later he crows: “Cry, dearest, cry, the time to cry has come! The hero of my little story has just died. It may comfort you to know that he died quite peacefully and reconciled to all.”
    Then in March, Franz collapses. He is working too much. The office, the asbestos factory, his reading, his correspondence with Felice, Max, Oskar Baum, Felix Weltsch, Ernst Weiss, and his sisters leave him no peace, his insomnia is worsening, his health is failing. His novel is stalled.
    He confesses his crushing doubts to Max. But his old friend has married Elsa, and a married friend is no longer a true friend. Franz misses seeing Max every night, going on trips with him.
    On January 12, his second sister, Valli, also marries. He feels more and more alone. A man without a wife is not a human being, the Talmud’s imprecation haunts him.
    Felice is his only port in the storm. If he wants to stay attached to her, he has to do more than write, he cannot go on avoiding her. In March the trip to Berlin becomes a necessity.
    Franz’s first visit to Berlin, more than seven months after their original meeting, can be told in a few words. Alightning visit, announced as problematic, which Franz cancels and then reinstates as a possibility: “Still undecided.” And which he then confirms on Friday night by express letter.
    On Saturday, March 22, 1913, he leaps into the train with his eyes closed. When he opens them again in Berlin, it is 10:30 at night and Felice is not on the platform. Reeling with fatigue, for as usual he has traveled third class, Franz goes to the Hotel Askanischer Hof. No word of welcome awaits him there. Anxious at the thought of actually seeing the woman he has been writing for seven months, he is unable to sleep.
    The next morning at 8:30, he sends her a note: “What has happened, Felice? Here I am in Berlin, but I will have to leave again this afternoon at 4 or 5. The hours are passing, and I hear nothing from you. Please send me an answer back with the boy.” The bicycle messenger returns with the words: “I will telephone you in a quarter of an hour.”
    By the time they meet, strained and excited, it is almost eleven o’clock. He gives her a hug and a furtive kiss on the cheek. They walk in the Tiergarten, it is chilly, the trees have hardly opened their buds. Felice has a funeral to attend at noon. She doesn’t want to be late, they run like lunatics, it’s the best moment of their meeting,they laugh, their movements are unhampered, they hold hands. At the cemetery, they part company. Franz watches the young lady walk off between two strange men as the procession gets under way. He doesn’t consider following her, staying at