The Diaries of Franz Kafka Read Online Free PDF

happiness which, like now, I have within me from time to time. It is really something effervescent that fills me completely with a light, pleasant quiver and that persuades me of the existence of abilities of whose non-existence I can convince myself with complete certainty at any moment, even now.
    Hebbel praises Justinus Kerner’s
Reiseschatten
. ‘And a book like this hardly exists, no one knows it.’
    Die Strasse der Verlassenheit
by W. Fred. How do such books get written? A man who on a small scale produces something fairly good here blows up his talent to the size of a novel in so pitiful a mannerthat one becomes ill even if one does not forget to admire the energy with which he misuses his own talent.
    This pursuit of the secondary characters I read about in novels, plays, etc. This sense of belonging together which I then have! In the
Jungfern vom Bischofsberg
(is that the title?), there is mention made of two seamstresses who sew the linen for the play’s one bride. What happens to these two girls? Where do they live? What have they done that they may not be part of the play but stand, as it were, outside in front of Noah’s ark, drowning in the downpour of rain, and may only press their faces one last time against a cabin window, so that the audience in the stalls sees something dark there for a moment?
    17 December. Zeno, pressed as to whether anything is at rest, replied: Yes, the flying arrow rests.
    If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!
    That I have put aside and crossed out so much, indeed almost everything I wrote this year, that hinders me a great deal in writing. It is indeed a mountain, it is five times as much as I have in general ever written, and by its mass alone it draws everything that I write away from under my pen to itself.
    18 December. If it were not absolutely certain that the reason why I permit letters (even those that may be foreseen to have insignificant contents, like this present one) to lie unopened for a time is only weakness and cowardice, which hesitate as much to open a letter as they would hesitate to open the door of a room in which someone, already impatient, perhaps, is waiting for me, then one could explain this allowing of letters to lie even better as thoroughness. That is to say, assuming that I am a thorough person, then I must attempt to protract everything pertaining to the letter to the greatest possible extent. I must open it slowly, read it, slowly and often, consider it for a long time, prepare a clean copy after many drafts, and finally delay even the posting. All this lies within my power, only the sudden receipt of theletter cannot be avoided. Well, I slow even that down in an artificial manner, I do not open it for a long time, it lies on the table before me, it continuously offers itself to me, continuously I receive it but do not accept it.
    11.30 p.m. That I, so long as I am not freed of my office, am simply lost, that is clearer to me than anything else, it is just a matter, as long as it is possible, of holding my head so high that I do not drown. How difficult that will be, what strength it will necessarily drain me of, can be seen already in the fact that today I did not adhere to my new time schedule, to be at my desk from 8 to 11 p.m., that at present I even consider this as not so very great a disaster, that I have only hastily written down these few lines in order to get into bed.
    19 December. Started to work in the office. Afternoon at Max’s.
    Read a little in Goethe’s diaries. Distance already holds this life firm in tranquillity, these diaries set fire to it. The clarity of all the events makes it mysterious, just as a park fence rests the eye when looking at broad tracts of turf, and yet inspires inadequate respect in us.
    Just now my married sister 7 is coming to visit us for the first time.
    20 December. How do I excuse yesterday’s remark about Goethe (which is almost as untrue as the feeling