If the ball was unemployed, it spent most of the time strolling to and fro, its hands clasped behind its back, on the plateau, avoiding the paths. It held the view that it was quite enough bothered with the paths during the game and that it had every right to recuperate on the open plain when no game was going on. Sometimes it would look up at the vaulted glass, but merely out of habit and quite without any intention of trying to make out anything up there. It had a rather straddling gait and maintained that it was not made for those narrow paths. That was partly true, for indeed those paths could hardly contain it, but it was also untrue, for the fact was that it was very carefully made to fit the width of the paths exactly, but the paths were certainly not meant to be comfortable for it, or else it would not have been a puzzle at all.

A COMMON EXPERIENCE, resulting in a common confusion. A. has to transact important business with B. in H. He goes to H. for a preliminary interview, accomplishes the journey there in ten minutes, and the journey back in the same time, and on returning boasts to his family of his expedition. Next day he goes again to H., this time to settle his business finally. As that by all appearances will require several hours, A. leaves very early in the morning. But although all the surrounding circumstances, at least in A.'s estimation, are exactly the same as the day before, this time it takes him ten hours to reach H. When he arrives there quite exhausted in the evening he is informed that B., annoyed at his absence, had left half an hour before to go to A.'s village, and that they must have passed each other on the road. A. is advised to wait. But in his anxiety about his business he sets off at once and hurries home. This time he covers the distance, without paying any particular attention to the fact, practically in an instant. At home he learns that B. had arrived quite early, immediately after A.'s departure, indeed that he had met A. on the threshold and reminded him of his business; but A. had replied that he had no time to spare, he must go at once. In spite of this incomprehensible behavior of A., however, B. had stayed on to wait for A.'s return. It is true, he had asked several times whether A. was not back yet, but he was still sitting up in A.'s room. Overjoyed at the opportunity of seeing B. at once and explaining everything to him, A. rushes upstairs. He is almost at the top, when he stumbles, twists a sinew, and almost fainting with the pain, incapable even of uttering a cry, only able to moan faintly in the darkness, he hears B.--impossible to tell whether at a great distance or quite near him--stamping down the stairs in a violent rage and vanishing for good.

 I was in great perplexity; I had to start on an urgent journey; a seriously ill patient was waiting for me in a village ten miles off; a thick blizzard of snow filled all the wide spaces between him and me; I had a gig, a light gig with big wheels, exactly right for our country roads; muffled in furs, my bag of instruments in my hand, I was in the courtyard all ready for the journey; but there was no horse to be had, no horse.  My own horse had died in the night, worn out by the fatigues of the icy winter; my servant girl was now running around the village trying to borrow a horse; but it was hopeless, I knew it, and I stood there forlornly, with the snow gathering more and more thickly upon me, more and more unable to move.  In the gateway the girl appeared, alone, and waved the lantern; of course, who would lend a horse at this time for such a journey?  I strode through the courtyard once more; I could see no way out; in my confused distress I kicked at the dilapidated door of the yearlong uninhabited pigsty.  It flew open and flapped to and fro on its hinges.  A steam and smell as of horses came out from it.  A dim stable lantern was swinging inside from a rope.  A man, crouching on his behind in that low space, showed an open blue-eyed face.  "Shall I yoke up?" he asked, crawling out on all fours.  I did not know what to say and merely stooped down to see what else was in the sty.  The servant girl was standing beside me.  "You never know what you're going to find in your own house," she said, and we both laughed.  "Hey there Brother, hey there Sister!" called the groom, and two horses, enormous creatures with powerful flanks, one after the other, their legs tucked close to their bodies, each well-shaped head lowered like a camel's, by sheer strength of buttocking squeezed out through the door hole which they filled entirely.  But at once they were standing up, their legs long and their bodies steaming thickly.  "Give him a hand," I said, and the willing girl hurried to help the groom with the harnessing.  Yet hardly was she beside him when the groom clipped hold of her and pushed his face against hers.  She screamed and fled back to me; on her cheek stood out in red the marks of two rows of teeth.  "You brute," I yelled in fury, "do you want a whipping?" but in the same moment reflected that the man was a stranger; that I did not know where he came from, and that of his own free will he was helping me out when everyone else had failed me.  As if he knew my thoughts he took no offense at my threat but still busied with the horses, only turned around once toward me.  "Get in," he said then, and indeed: everything was ready.  A magnificent pair of horses, I observed, such as I had never sat behind, and I climbed in happily.  "But I'll drive, you don't know the way," I said.  "Of course," said he, "I'm not coming with you anyway, I'm staying with Rose."  "No," shrieked Rose, fleeing into the house with a justified presentiment that her fate was inescapable; I heard the door chain rattle as she put it up; I heard the key turn in the lock; I could see, moreover, how she put out the lights in the entrance hall and in further flight all through the rooms to keep herself from being discovered.  "You're coming with me," I said to the groom, "or I won't go, urgent as my journey is.  I'm not thinking of paying for it by handing the girl over to you."  "Gee up!" he said; clapped his hands; the gig whirled off like a log in a freshet; I could just hear the door of my house splitting and bursting as the groom charged at it and then I was deafened and blinded by a storming rush that steadily buffeted all my senses.  But this only for a moment, since, as if my patient's farmyard had opened out just before my courtyard gate, I was already there; the horses had come quietly to a standstill; the blizzard had stopped; moonlight all around; my patient's parents hurried out of the house, his sister behind them; I was almost lifted out of the gig; from their confused ejaculations I gathered not a word; in the sickroom the air was almost unbreathable; the neglected stove was smoking; I wanted to push open a window; but first I had to look at my patient.  Gaunt, without any fever, not cold, not warm, with vacant eyes, without a shirt, the youngster heaved himself up from under the feather bedding, threw his arms around my neck, and whispered in my ear, "Doctor, let me die."  I glanced around the room; no one had heard it; the parents were leaning forward in silence waiting for my verdict; the sister had set a chair for my handbag; I opened the bag and hunted among my instruments; the boy kept clutching at me from his bed to remind me of his entreaty; I picked up a pair of tweezers, examined them in the candlelight, and laid them down again.  "Yes," I thought blasphemously, "in cases like this the gods are helpful, send the missing horse, add to it a second because of the urgency, and to crown everything bestow even a groom-"  And only now did I remember Rose again; what was I to do, how could I rescue her, how could I pull her away from under that groom at ten miles' distance, with a team of horses I couldn't control.  These horses, now, they had somehow slipped the reins loose, pushed the windows open from outside, I did not know how; each of them had stuck a head in at a window and, quite unmoved by the startled cries of the family, stood eyeing the patient.  "Better go back at once," I thought, as if the horses were summoning me to the return journey, yet I permitted the patient's sister, who fancied that I was dazed by the heat, to take my fur coat from me.  A glass of rum was poured out for me, the old man clapped me on the shoulder, a familiarity justified by this offer of his treasure.  I shook my head; in the narrow confines of the old man's thoughts I felt ill; that was my only reason for refusing the drink.  The mother stood by the bedside and cajoled me toward it; I yielded, and, while one of the horses whinnied loudly to the ceiling, laid my head to the boy's breast, which shivered under my wet beard.  I confirmed what I already knew; the boy was quite sound, something a little wrong with his circulation, saturated with coffee by his solicitous mother, but sound and best turned out of bed with one shove.  I am no world reformer and so I let him lie.  I was the district doctor and did my duty to the uttermost, to the point where it became almost too much.  I was badly paid and yet generous and helpful to the poor.  I had still to see that Rose was all right, and then the boy might have his way and I wanted to die too.  What was I doing there in that endless winter!  My horse was dead, and not a single person in the village would lend me another.  I had to get my team out of the pigsty; if they hadn't chanced to be horses I should have had to travel with swine.  That was how it was.  And I nodded to the family.  They knew nothing about it, and, had they known, would not have believed it.  To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.  Well, this should be the end of my visit, I had once more been called out needlessly, I was used to that, the whole district made my life a torment with my night bell, but that I should have to sacrifice Rose this time as well, the pretty girl who had lived in my house for years almost without my noticing her-that sacrifice was too much to ask, and I somehow had to get it reasoned out in my head with the help of what craft I could muster, in order not to let fly at this family, which with the best will in the world could not restore Rose to me.  But as I shut my bag and put an arm out for my fur coat, the family meanwhile standing together, the father sniffing at the glass of rum in his hand, the mother, apparently disappointed in me-why, what do people expect?-biting her lips with tears in her eyes, the sister fluttering a blood-soaked towel, I was somehow ready to admit conditionally that the boy might be ill after all.  I went toward him, he welcomed me smiling, as if I were bringing him the most nourishing invalid broth-ah, now both horses were whinnying together; the noise, I suppose, was ordained by heaven to assist my examination of the patient-and this time I discovered that the boy was indeed ill.  In his right side, near the hip, was an open wound as big as the palm of my hand.  Rose-red, in many variations of shade, dark in the hollows, lighter at the edges, softly granulated, with irregular clots of blood, open as a surface mine to the daylight.  That was how it looked from a distance.  But on a closer inspection there was another complication.  I could not help a low whistle of surprise.  Worms, as thick and as long as my little finger, themselves rose-red and blood-spotted as well, were wriggling from their fastness in the interior of the wound toward the light, with small white heads and many little legs.  Poor boy, you were past helping.  I had discovered your great wound; this blossom in your side was destroying you.  The family was pleased; they saw me busying myself; the sister told the mother, the mother the father, the father told several guests who were coming in, through the moonlight at the open door, walking on tiptoe, keeping their balance with outstretched arms.  "Will you save me?" whispered the boy with a sob, quite blinded by the life within his wound.  That is what people are like in my district.  Always expecting the impossible from the doctor.  They have lost their ancient beliefs; the parson sits at home and unravels his vestments, one after another; but the doctor is supposed to be omnipotent with his merciful surgeon's hand.  Well, as it pleases them; I have not thrust my services on them; if they misuse me for sacred ends, I let that happen to me too; what better do I want, old country doctor that I am, bereft of my servant girl!  And so they came, the family and the village elders, and stripped my clothes off me; a school choir with the teacher at the head of it stood before the house and sang these words to an utterly simple tune:

 Strip his clothes off, then he'll heal us,
 If he doesn't, kill him dead!
 Only a doctor, only a doctor.

Then my clothes were off and I looked at the people quietly, my fingers in my beard and my head cocked to one side.  I was altogether composed and equal to the situation and remained so, although it was no help to me, since they now took me by the head and feet and carried me to the bed.  They laid me down in it next to the wall, on the side of the wound.  Then they all left the room; the door was shut; the singing stopped; clouds covered the moon; the bedding was warm around me; the horses' heads in the open windows wavered like shadows.  "Do you know," said a voice in my ear, "I have very little confidence in you.  Why, you were only blown in here, you didn't come on your own feet.  Instead of helping me, you're cramping me on my deathbed.  What I'd like best is to scratch your eyes out."  "Right," I said, "it is a shame.  And yet I am a doctor.  What am I to do?  Believe me, it is not too easy for me either."  "Am I supposed to be content with this apology?  Oh, I must be, I can't help it.  I always have to put up with things.  A fine wound is all I brought into the world; that was my sole endowment."  "My young friend," said I, "your mistake is: you have not a wide enough view.  I have been in all the sickrooms, far and wide, and I tell you: your wound is not so bad.  Done in a tight corner with two strokes of the ax.  Many a one proffers his side and can hardly hear the ax in the forest, far less that it is coming nearer to him."  "Is that really so, or are you deluding me in my fever?"  "It is really so, take the word of honor of an official doctor."  And he took it and lay still.  But now it was time for me to think of escaping.  The horses were still standing faithfully in their places.  My clothes, my fur coat, my bag were quickly collected; I didn't want to waste time dressing; if the horses raced home as they had come, I should only be springing, as it were, out of this bed and into my own.  Obediently a horse backed away from the window; I threw my bundle into the gig; the fur coat missed its mark and was caught on a hook only by a sleeve.  Good enough.  I swung myself onto the horse.  With the reins loosely trailing, one horse barely fastened to the other, the gig swaying behind, my fur coat last of all in the snow.  "Gee up!" I said, but there was no galloping; slowly, like old men, we crawled through the snowy wastes; a long time echoed behind us the new but faulty song of the children:

 O be joyful, all you patients,
 The doctor's laid in bed beside you!

Never shall I reach home at this rate; my flourishing practice is done for; my successor is robbing me, but in vain, for he cannot take my place; in my house the disgusting groom is raging; Rose is his victim; I do not want to think about it anymore.  Naked, exposed to the frost of this most unhappy of ages, with an earthly vehicle, unearthly horses, old man that I am, I wander astray.  My fur coat is hanging from the back of the gig, but I cannot reach it, and none of my limber pack of patients lifts a finger.  Betrayed!  Betrayed!  A false alarm on the night bell once answered-it cannot be made good, not ever.

I have a curious animal, half kitten, half lamb. It is a legacy from my father. But it only developed in my time; formerly it was far more lamb than kitten. Now it is both in about equal parts. From the cat it takes its head and claws, from the lamb its size and shape; from both its eyes, which are wild and flickering, its hair, which is soft, lying close to its body, its movements, which partake both of skipping and slinking. Lying on the window sill in the sun it curls up in a ball and purrs; out in the meadows it rushes about like mad and is scarcely to be caught. It flees from cats and makes to attack lambs. On moonlight nights its favorite promenade is along the eaves. It cannot mew and it loathes rats. Beside the hen coop it can lie for hours in ambush, but it has never yet seized an opportunity for murder.

I feed it on milk; that seems to suit it best. In long draughts it sucks the milk in through its fanglike teeth. Naturally it is a great source of entertainment for children. Sunday morning is the visiting hour. I sit with the little beast on my knees, and the children of the whole neighborhood stand around me.

Then the strangest questions are asked, which no human being could answer: Why there is only one such animal, why I rather than anybody else should own it, whether there was ever an animal like it before and what would happen if it died, whether it feels lonely, why it has no children, what it is called, etc.

I never trouble to answer, but confine myself without further explanation to exhibiting my possession. Sometimes the children bring cats with them; once they actually brought two lambs. But against all their hopes there was no scene of recognition. The animals gazed calmly at each other with their animal eyes, and obviously accepted their reciprocal existence as a divine fact.

Sitting on my knees, the beast know neither fear nor lust of pursuit. Pressed against me it is happiest. It remains faithful to the family that brought it up. In that there is certainly no extraordinary mark of fidelity, but merely the true instinct of an animal which, though it has countless step-relations in the world, has perhaps not a single blood relation, and to which consequently the protection it has found with us is sacred.

Sometimes I cannot help laughing when it sniffs around me and winds itself between my legs and simply will not be parted from me. Not content with being a lamb and a cat, it almost insists on being a dog as well. Once when, as may happen to anyone, I could see no way out of my business problems and all that they involved, and was ready to let everything go, and in this mood was lying in my rocking chair in my room, the beast on my knees, I happened to glance down and saw tears dropping from its huge whiskers. Were they mine, or were they the animal's? Had this cat, along with the soul of a lamb, the ambitions of a human being? I did not inherit much from my father, but this legacy is quite remarkable.

It has the restlessness of both beasts, that of the cat and that of the lamb, diverse as they are. For that reason its skin feels too tight for it. Sometimes it jumps up on the armchair beside me, plants its front legs on my shoulder, and puts its muzzle to my ear. It is as if it were saying something to me, and as a matter of fact it turns its head afterwards and gazes in my face to see the impression its communication has made. And to oblige it I behave as if I had understood, and nod. Then it jumps to the floor and dances about with joy.

Perhaps the knife of the butcher would be a release for this animal; but as it is a legacy I must deny it that. So it must wait until the breath voluntarily leaves its body, even though it sometimes gazes at me with a look of human understanding, challenging me to do the right thing of which both of us are thinking.

Josef K. was dreaming:

It was a beautiful day and K. wanted to go on a walk. But no sooner had he taken a few steps than he was already at the graveyard. Its paths were highly artificial, impractical in their windings, yet he glided along such a path as if hovering unshakeably over raging water. From far away, he spotted a freshly dug burial mound at which he wanted to halt. This burial mound exerted an almost enticing effect on him, and he felt he could not get there fast enough. At times, however, he could barely glimpse the mound, it was covered with flags that twisted and flapped powerfully against one another; the flag bearers could not be seen, but there appeared to be great rejoicing.

While his eyes were still riveted in the distance, he abruptly saw the burial mound next to the path - indeed almost behind him by now. He hastily leaped into the grass. Since the path continued rushing along beneath his feet as he leaped off, he staggered and fell to his knees right in front of the mound. Two men were standing behind the grave, holding a headstone between them in the air; the moment K. showed up, they thrust the stone into the earth, and it stood there as if cemented to the ground. Instantly, a third man emerged from the bushes, and K. promptly identified him as an artist. He was wearing only trousers and a misbuttoned shirt; a velvet cap was on his head; in his hand, he clutched an ordinary pencil, drawing figures in the air even as he approached.

He now applied this pencil to the top end of the stone; the stone was very high, he did not even have to lean down, but he did have to bend forward, since he did not wish to step on the burial mound, which separated him from the stone. So he stood on tiptoe, steadying himself by propping his left hand against the surface of the stone. Through some extremely skillful manipulation, he succeeded in producing gold letters with that ordinary pencil; he wrote: "Here LIES---" Each letter came out clean and beautiful, deeply incised and in purest gold. After writing those two words, he looked back at K.; K., who was very eager to see what would come next in the inscription, gazed at the stone, paying little heed to the man. And in fact, the man was about to continue writing, but he could not, something was hindering him, he lowered the pencil and turned to K. again. This time, K. looked back at the artist, who, he noticed, was very embarrassed but unable to indicate the reason for his embarrassment. All his earlier liveliness had vanished. As a result, K. likewise felt embarrassed; they exchanged helpless glances; there was some kind of misunderstanding between them, which neither of them could clear up. To make matters worse, a small chime began tinkling inopportunely from the tomb chapel, but the artist waved his raised hand wildly, and the chime stopped. After a brief pause, it started in again; this time very softly and then promptly breaking off with no special admonition from him; it was as if it merely wanted to test its own sound. K. was inconsolable about the artist's dilemma, he began to cry, sobbing into his cupped hands for a long time. The artist waited for K. to calm down, and then, finding no other solution, he decided to keep writing all the same. His first small stroke was a deliverance for K., but the artist obviously managed to execute it only with utmost reluctance; moreover, the penmanship was not as lovely -- above all, it seemed to lack gold, the stroke moved along pale and unsteady, only the letter became very large. It was a J, it was almost completed; but now the artist furiously stamped one foot into the burial mound, making the dark soil fly up all around. At last, K. understood him; there was no time left to apologize; with all his fingers he dug into the earth, which offered scant resistance; everything seemed prepared; a thin crust of earth had been set up purely for show; right beneath it a huge hole with sheer sides gaped open, and K., flipped over on his back by a gently current, sank into the hole. But while, with his head still erect on his neck, he was welcomed down below by the impenetrable depth, his name, with tremendous embellishments, rushed across the stone up above.

Enraptured by this sight, he woke up.

Besides casual onlookers there were also relays of permanent watchers selected by the public, usually butchers, strangely enough, and it was their task to watch the hunger artist day and night, three of them at a time, in case he should have some secret recourse to nourishment. This was nothing but a formality, instituted to reassure the masses, for the initiates knew well enough that during his fast the artist would never in any circumstances, not even under forcible compulsion, swallow the smallest morsel of food; the honor of his profession forbade it. Not every watcher, of course, was capable of understanding this, there were often groups of night watchers who were very lax in carrying out their duties and deliberately huddled together in a retired corner to play cards with great absorption, obviously intending to give the hunger artist the chance of a little refreshment, which they supposed he could draw from some private hoard. Nothing annoyed the artist more than such watchers; they made him miserable; they made his fast seem unendurable; sometimes he mastered his feebleness sufficiently to sing during their watch for as long as he could keep going, to show them how unjust their suspicions were. But that was of little use; they only wondered at his cleverness in being able to fill his mouth even while singing. Much more to his taste were the watchers who sat up close to the bars, who were not content with the dim night lighting of the hall but focused him in the full glare of the electric pocket torch given them by the impresario. The harsh light did not trouble him at all, in any case he could never sleep properly, and he could always drowse a little, even when the hall was thronged with noisy onlookers. He was quite happy at the prospect of spending a sleepless night with such watchers; he was ready to exchange jokes with them, to tell them stories out of his nomadic life, anything at all to keep them awake and demonstrate to them that he had no eatables in his cage and that he was fasting as not one of them could fast. But his happiest moment was when the morning came and an enormous breakfast was brought them, at his expense, on which they flung themselves with the keen appetite of healthy men after a weary night of wakefulness. Of course there were people who argued that this breakfast was an unfair attempt to bribe the watchers, but that was going rather too far, and when they were invited to take on a night's vigil without a breakfast, merely for the sake of the cause, they made themselves scarce, although they stuck stubbornly to their suspicions.

Such suspicions, anyhow, were a necessary accompaniment to the profession of fasting. No one could possibly watch the hunger artist continuously, day and night, and so no one could produce first-hand evidence that the fast had really been rigorous and continuous; only the artist himself could know that, he was therefore bound to be the sole completely satisfied spectator of his own fast. Yet for other reasons he was never satisfied; it was not perhaps mere fasting that had brought him to such skeleton thinness that many people had regretfully to keep away from his exhibitions, because the sight of him was too much for them, perhaps it was dissatisfaction with himself that had worn him down. For he alone knew, what no other initiate knew, how easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. He made no secret of this, yet people did not believe him. At the best they set him down as modest, most of them, however, thought he was out for publicity or else he was some kind of cheat who found it easy to fast because he had discovered a way of making it easy, and then had the impudence to admit the fact, more or less. He had to put up with all that, and in the course of time had got used to it, but his inner dissatisfaction always rankled, and never yet, after any term of fasting--this must be granted to his credit--had he left the cage of his own free will. The longest period of fasting was fixed by his impresario at forty days, beyond that term he was not allowed to go, not even in great cities, and there was good reason for it, too. Experience had proved that for about forty days the interest of the public could be stimulated by a steadily increasing pressure of advertisement, but after that the town began to lose interest, sympathetic support began notably to fall off, there were of course local variations as between one town and another, but as a general rule forty days marked the limit. So on the fortieth day the flower-bedecked cage was opened, enthusiastic spectators filled the hall, a military band played, two doctors entered the cage to measure the results of the fast, which were announced through a megaphone, and finally two young ladies appeared, blissful at having been selected for the honor, to help the hunger artist down the few steps leading to a small table on which was spread a carefully chosen invalid repast. And at this very moment the artist always turned stubborn. True, he would entrust his bony arms to the outstretched helping hands of the ladies bending over him, but stand up he would not. Why stop fasting at this particular moment, after forty days of it? He had held out for a long time, an illimitably long time; why stop now, when he was in his best fasting form, or rather, not yet quite in his best fasting form? Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, for being not only the record hunger artist of all time, which presumably he was already, but for beating his own record by a performance beyond human imagination, since he felt that there were no limits to his capacity for fasting? His public pretended to admire him so much, why should it have so little patience with him; if he could endure fasting longer, why shouldn't the public endure it? Besides, he was tired, and now he was supposed to lift himself to his full height and go down to a meal the very thought of which gave him a nausea that only the presence of the ladies kept him from betraying, and even that with an effort. And he looked up into the eyes of the ladies who were apparently so friendly and in reality so cruel, and shook his head, which felt too heavy on its strengthless neck. But then there happened yet again what always happened. The impresario came forward, without a word--for the band made speech impossible--lifted his arms in the air above the artist, as if inviting Heaven to look down upon its creature here in the straw, this suffering martyr, which indeed he was, although in quite another sense; grasped him around the emaciated waist, with exaggerated caution, so that the frail condition he was in might be appreciated; and committed him to the care of the blenching ladies, not without secretly giving him a shaking so that his legs and body tottered and swayed. The artist now submitted completely; his head lolled on his breast as if it had landed there by chance; his body was hollowed out; his legs in a spasm of self-preservation clung to each other at the knees, yet scraped on the ground as if it were not really solid ground, as if they were only trying to find solid ground; and the whole weight of his body, a featherweight after all, relapsed onto one of the ladies, who looking round for help and panting a little--this post of honor was not at all what she expected it to be--first stretched her neck as far as she could to keep her face at least free from contact with the artist, then finding this impossible, and her more fortunate companion not coming to her aid, but merely holding extended on her own trembling hand the little bunch of knucklebones that was the artist's, to the great delight of the spectators burst into tears and had to be replaced by an attendant who had long been stationed in readiness. Then came the food, a little of which the impresario managed to get between the artist's lips, while he sat in a kind of half-fainting trance, to the accompaniment of cheerful patter designed to distract the public's attention from the artist's condition; after that, a toast was drunk to the public, supposedly prompted by a whisper from the artist in the impresario's ear; the band confirmed it with a mighty flourish, the spectators melted away, and no one had any cause to be dissatisfied with the proceedings, no one except the hunger artist himself, he only, as always.

So he lived for many years, with small regular intervals of recuperation, in visible glory, honored by all the world, yet in spite of that troubled in spirit, and all the more troubled because no one would take his trouble seriously. What comfort could he possibly need? What more could he possibly wish for? And if some good-natured person, feeling sorry for him, tried to console him by pointing out that his melancholy was probably caused by fasting, it could happen, especially when he had been fasting for some time, that he reacted with an outburst of fury and to the general alarm began to shake the bars of the cage like a wild animal. Yet the impresario had a way of punishing these outbreaks which he rather enjoyed putting into operation. He would apologize publicly for the artist's behavior, which was only to be excused, he admitted, because of the irritability caused by fasting; a condition hardly to be understood by well-fed people; then by natural transition he went on to mention the artist's equally incomprehensible boast that he could fast for much longer than he was doing; he praised the high ambition, the good will, the great self-denial undoubtedly implicit in such a statement; and then quite simply countered it by bringing out photographs, which were also on sale to the public, showing the artist on the fortieth day of a fast lying in bed almost dead from exhaustion. This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible. Time and time again in good faith he stood by the bars listening to the impresario, but as soon as the photographs appeared he always let go and sank with a groan back on to his straw, and the reassured public could once more come close and gaze at him.

A few years later when the witnesses of such scenes called them to mind, they often failed to understand themselves at all. For meanwhile the aforementioned chance in public interest had set in; it seemed to happen almost overnight; there may have been profound causes for it, but who was going to bother about that; at any rate the pampered hunger artist suddenly found himself deserted one fine day by the amusement seekers, who went streaming past him to other more favored attractions. For the last time the impresario hurried him over half Europe to discover whether the old interest might still survive here and there; all in vain; everywhere, as if by secret agreement, a positive revulsion from professional fasting was in evidence. Of course it could not really have sprung up so suddenly as all that, and many premonitory symptoms which had not been sufficiently remarked or suppressed during the rush and glitter of success now came retrospectively to mind, but it was now too late to take any countermeasures. Fasting would surely come into fashion again at some future date, yet that was no comfort for those living in the present. What, then, was the hunger artist to do? He had been applauded by thousands in his time and could hardly come down to showing himself in a street booth at village fairs, and as for adopting another profession, he was not only too old for that but too fanatically devoted to fasting. So he took leave of the impresario, his partner in an unparalleled career, and hired himself to a large circus; in order to spare his own feelings he avoided reading the conditions of his contract.

A large circus with its enormous traffic in replacing and recruiting men, animals and apparatus can always find a use for people at any time, even for a hunger artist, provided of course that he does not ask too much, and in this particular case anyhow it was not only the artist who was taken on but his famous and long-known name as well, indeed considering the peculiar nature of his performance, which was not impaired by advancing age, it could not be objected that here was an artist past his prime, no longer at the height of his professional skill, seeking a refuge in some quiet corner of a circus, on the contrary, the hunger artist averred that he could fast as well as ever, which was entirely credible, he even alleged that if he were allowed to fast as he liked, and this was at once promised him without more ado, he could astound the world by establishing a record never yet achieved, a statement which certainly provoked a smile among the other professionals, since it was left out of account the change in public opinion, which the hunger artist in his zeal conveniently forgot.

He had not, however, actually lost his sense of the real situation and took it as a matter of course that he and his cage should be stationed, not in the middle of the ring as a main attraction, but outside, near the animal cages, on a site that was after all easily accessible. Large and gaily painted placards made a frame for the cage and announced what was to be seen inside it. When the public came thronging out in the intervals to see the animals, they could hardly avoid passing the hunger artist's cage and stopping there a moment, perhaps they might even have stayed longer had not those pressing behind them in the narrow gangway, who did not understand why they should be held up on their way towards the excitements of the menagerie, made it impossible for anyone to stand gazing quietly for any length of time. And that was the reason why the hunger artist, who had of course been looking forward to these visiting hours as the main achievement of his life, began instead to shrink from them. At first he could hardly wait for the intervals; it was exhilarating to watch the crowds come streaming his way, until only too soon--not even the most obstinate self-deception, clung to almost consciously, could hold out against the fact--the conviction was borne in upon him that these people, most of them, to judge from their actions, again and again, without exception, were all on their way to the menagerie. And the first sight of them from the distance remained the best. For when they reached his cage he was at once deafened by the storm of shouting and abuse that arose from the two contending factions, which renewed themselves continuously, of those who wanted to stop and stare at him--he soon began to dislike them more than the others--not out of real interest but only out of obstinate self-assertiveness, and those who wanted to go straight on to the animals. When the first great rush was past, the stragglers came along, and these, whom nothing could have prevented from stopping to look at him as long as they had breath, raced past with long strides, hardly even glancing at him, in their haste to get to the menagerie in time. And all too rarely did it happen that he had a stroke of luck, when some father of a family fetched up before him with his children, pointed a finger at the hunger artist and explained at length what the phenomenon meant, telling stories of earlier years when he himself had watched similar but much more thrilling performances, and the children, still rather uncomprehending, since neither inside nor outside school had they been sufficiently prepared for this lesson--what did they care about fasting?--yet showed by the brightness of their intent eyes that new and better times might be coming. Perhaps, said the hunger artist to himself many a time, things could be a little better if his cage were set not quite so near the menagerie. That made it too easy for people to make their choice, to say nothing of what he suffered from the stench of the menagerie, the animals' restlessness by night, the carrying past of raw lumps of flesh for the beasts of prey, the roaring at feeding times, which depressed him continuously. But he did not dare to lodge a complaint with the management; after all, he had the animals to thank for the troops of people who passed his cage, among whom there might always be one here and there to take an interest in him, and who could tell where they might seclude him if he called attention to his existence and thereby to the fact that, strictly speaking, he was only an impediment on the way to the menagerie.

A small impediment, to be sure, one that grew steadily less. People grew familiar with the strange idea that they could be expected, in times like these, to take an interest in a hunger artist, and with this familiarity the verdict went out against him. He might fast as much as he could, and he did so; but nothing could save him now, people passed him by. Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting! Anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand it. The fine placards grew dirty and illegible, they were torn down; the little notice board telling the number of fast days achieved, which at first was changed carefully every day, had long stayed at the same figure, for after the first few weeks even this small task seemed pointless to the staff; and so the artist simply fasted on and on, as he had once dreamed of doing, and it was no trouble to him, just as he had always foretold, but no one counted the days, not one, not even the artist himself, knew what records he was already breaking, and his heart grew heavy. And when once in a time some leisurely passer-by stopped, made merry over the old figure on the board and spoke of swindling, that was in its way the stupidest lie ever invented by indifference and inborn malice, since it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world who was cheating him of his reward.

Many more days went by, however, and that too came to an end. An overseer's eye fell on the cage one day and he asked the attendants why this perfectly good cage should be left standing there unused with dirty straw inside it; nobody knew, until one man, helped out by the notice board, remembered about the hunger artist. They poked into the straw with sticks and found him in it. "Are you still fasting?" asked the overseer, "when on earth do you mean to stop?" "Forgive me, everybody," whispered the hunger artist, only the overseer, who had his ear to the bars, understood him. "Of course," said the overseer, and tapped his forehead with a finger to let the attendants know what state the man was in, "we forgive you." "I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist. "We do admire it," said the overseer, affably. "But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist. "Well then we don't admire it," said the overseer, "but why shouldn't we admire it?" "Because I have to fast, I can't help it," said the hunger artist. "What a fellow you are," said the overseer, "and why can't you help it?" "Because," said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable might be lost, "because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else." These were his last words, but in his dimming eyes remained the firm though no longer proud persuasion that he was continuing to fast.

"Well, clear this out now!" said the overseer, and they buried the hunger artist, straw and all. Into the cage they put a young panther. Even the most insensitive felt it refreshing to see this wild creature leaping around the cage that had so long been dreary. The panther was all right. The food he liked was brought him without hesitation by the attendants; he seemed not even to miss his freedom; his noble body, furnished almost to the bursting point with all that it needed, seemed to carry freedom around with it too; somewhere in his jaws it seemed to lurk; and the joy of life streamed with such ardent passion from his throat that for the onlookers it was not easy to stand the shock of it. But they braced themselves, crowded round the cage, and did not want ever to move away.

What shall we do in these spring days that are fast coming on? Early this morning the sky was grey, but now if you go to the window you are suprised, and lean your cheek against the window-latch.
Down below you can see the rays of the sun, though it's setting already, on the face of the young girl who's just strolling along and looking about her, and at the same time you see her caught in the shadow of the man who comes striding up faster behind her.
Then the man has already passed by and the face of the child is quite bright.

It is conceivable that Alexander the Great, in spite of the martial successes of his early days, in spite of the excellent army that he had trained, in spite of the power he felt within him to change the world, might have remained standing on the bank of the Hellespont and never have crossed it, and not out of fear, not out of indecision, not out of infirmity of will, but because of the mere weight of his own body.

The Emperor, so it runs, has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun; the Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. He has commanded the messenger to kneel down by the bed, and has whispered the message to him; so much store did he lay on it that he ordered the messenger to whisper it back into his ear again. Then by a nod of the head he has confirmed that it is right. Yes, before the assembled spectators of his death----all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and on the spacious and lofty-mounting open staircases stand in a ring the great princes of the Empire--before all these he has delivered his message. The messenger immediately sets out on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now with his left, he cleaves a way for himself through the throng; if he encounters resistance he points to his breast, where the symbol of the sun glitters; the way, too is made easier for him than it would be for any other man. But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end. If he could reach the open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you would hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. But instead how vainly does he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; he must fight his way next down the stair; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to be crossed; and after the courts the second outer palace; and once more stairs and courts; and once more another palace; and so on for thousands of years; and if at last he should burst through the outermost gate--but never, never can that happen--the imperial capital would lie before him, the center of the world, crammed to bursting with its own refuse. Nobody could fight his way through here, least of all one with a message from a dead man.--But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.

Honored members of the Academy!
 

You have done me the honor of inviting me to give your Academy an account of the life I formerly led as an ape.
 

I regret that I cannot comply with your request to the extent you desire.  It is now nearly five years since I was an ape, a short space of time, perhaps, according to the calendar, but an infinitely long time to gallop through at full speed, as I have done, more or less accompanied by excellent mentors, good advice, applause, and orchestral music, and yet essentially alone, since all my escorters, to keep the image, kept well off the course.  I could never have achieved what I have done had I been stubbornly set on clinging to my origins, to the remembrances of my youth.  In fact, to give up being stubborn was the supreme commandment I laid upon myself; free ape as I was, I submitted myself to that yoke.  In revenge, however, my memory of the past has closed the door against me more and more.  I could have returned at first, had human beings allowed it, through an archway as wide as the span of heaven over the earth, but as I spurred myself on in my forced career, the opening narrowed and shrank behind me; I felt more comfortable in the world of men and fitted it better; the strong wind that blew after me out of my past began to slacken; today it is only a gentle puff of air that plays around my heels; and the opening in the distance, through which it comes and through which I once came myself, has grown so small that, even if my strength and my willpower sufficed to get me back to it, I should have to scrape the very skin from my body to crawl through.  To put it plainly, much as I like expressing myself in images, to put it plainly: your life as apes, gentlemen, insofar as something of that kind lies behind you, cannot be farther removed from you than mine is from me.  Yet everyone on earth feels a tickling at the heels; the small chimpanzee and the great Achilles alike.
 

But to a lesser extent I can perhaps meet your demand, and indeed I do so with the greatest pleasure.  The first thing I learned was to give a handshake; a handshake betokens frankness; well, today now that I stand at the very peak of my career, I hope to add frankness in words to the frankness of that first handshake.  What I have to tell the Academy will contribute nothing essentially new, and will fall far behind what you have asked of me and what with the best will in the world I cannot communicate—nonetheless, it should indicate the line an erstwhile ape has had to follow in entering and establishing himself in the world of men.  Yet I could not risk putting into words even such insignificant information as I am going to give you if I were not quite sure of myself and if my position on all the great variety stages of the civilized world had not become quite unassailable.
 

I belong to the Gold Coast.  For the story of my capture I must depend on the evidence of others.  A hunting expedition sent out by the firm of Hagenbeck—by the way, I have drunk many a bottle of good red wine since then with the leader of that expedition—had taken up its position in the bushes by the shore when I came down for a drink at evening among a troop of apes.  They shot at us; I was the only one that was hit; I was hit in two places.
 

Once in the cheek; a slight wound; but it left a large, naked, red scar which earned me the name of Red Peter, a horrible name, utterly inappropriate, which only some ape could have thought of, as if the only difference between me and the performing ape Peter, who died not so long ago and had some small local reputation, were the red mark on my cheek.  This by the way.
 

The second shot hit me below the hip.  It was a severe wound, it is the cause of my limping a little to this day.  I read an article recently by one of the ten thousand windbags who vent themselves concerning me in the newspapers, saying: my ape nature is not yet quite under control; the proof being that when visitors come to see me, I have a predilection for taking down my trousers to show them where the shot went in.  The hand which wrote that should have its fingers shot away one by one.  As for me, I can take my trousers down before anyone if I like; you would find nothing but a well-groomed fur and the scar made—let me be particular in the choice of a word for this particular purpose, to avoid misunderstanding—the scar made by a wanton shot.  Everything is open and aboveboard; there is nothing to conceal; when the plain truth is in question, great minds discard the niceties of refinement.  But if the writer of the article were to take down his trousers before a visitor, that would be quite another story, and I will let it stand to his credit that he does not do it.  In return, let him leave me alone with his delicacy!
 

After these two shots I came to myself—and this is where my own memories gradually begin—between decks in the Hagenbeck steamer, inside a cage.  It was not a four-sided barred cage; it was only a three-sided cage nailed to a locker; the locker made the fourth side of it.  The whole construction was too low for me to stand up in and too narrow to sit down in.  So I had to squat with my knees bent and trembling all the time, and also, since probably for a time I wished to see no one, and to stay in the dark, my face was turned toward the locker while the bars of the cage cut into my flesh behind.  Such a method of confining wild beasts is supposed to have its advantages during the first days of captivity, and out of my own experiences I cannot deny that from the human point of view this is really the case.
 

But that did not occur to me then.  For the first time in my life I could see no way out; at least no direct way out; directly in front of me was the locker, board fitted close to board.  True, there was a gap running right through the boards which I greeted with the blissful howl of ignorance when I first discovered it, but the hole was not even wide enough to stick one's tail through and not all the strength of an ape could enlarge it.
 

I am supposed to have made uncommonly little noise, as I was later informed, from which the conclusion was drawn that I would either soon die or if I managed to survive the first critical period would be very amenable to training.  I did survive this period.  Hopelessly sobbing, painfully hunting for fleas, apathetically licking a coconut, beating my skull against the locker, sticking out my tongue at anyone who came near me—that was how I filled in time at first in my new life.  But over and above it all only the one feeling: no way out.  Of course what I felt then as an ape I can represent now only in human terms, and therefore I misrepresent it, but although I cannot reach back to the truth of the old ape life, there is no doubt that it lies somewhere in the direction I have indicated.
 

Until then I had had so many ways out of everything, and now I had none.  I was pinned down.  Had I been nailed down, my right to free movement would not have been lessened.  Why so?  Scratch your flesh raw between your toes, but you won't find the answer.  Press yourself against the bar behind you till it nearly cuts you in two, you won't find the answer.  I had no way out but I had to devise one, for without it I could not live.  All the time facing that locker—I should certainly have perished.  Yet as far as Hagenbeck was concerned, the place for apes was in front of a locker—well then, I had to stop being an ape.  A fine, clear train of thought, which I must have constructed somehow with my belly, since apes think with their bellies.
 

I fear that perhaps you do not quite understand what I mean by "way out."  I use the expression in its fullest and most popular sense—I deliberately do not use the word "freedom."  I do not mean the spacious feeling of freedom on all sides.  As an ape, perhaps, I knew that, and I have met men who yearn for it.  But for my part I desired such freedom neither then nor now.  In passing: may I say that all too often men are betrayed by the word freedom.  And as freedom is counted among the most sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can be also sublime.  In variety theaters I have often watched, before my turn came on, a couple of acrobats performing on trapezes high in the roof.  They swung themselves, they rocked to and fro, they sprang into the air, they floated into each other's arms, one hung by the hair from the teeth of the other.  "And that too is human freedom," I thought, "self-controlled movement."  What a mockery of holy Mother Nature!  Were the apes to see such a spectacle, no theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter.
 

No, freedom was not what I wanted.  Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out prove to be an illusion; the demand was a small one, the disappointment could be no bigger.  To get out somewhere, to get out!  Only not to stay motionless with raised arms, crushed against a wooden wall.
 

Today I can see it clearly; without the most profound inward calm I could never have found my way out.  And indeed perhaps I owe all that I have become to the calm that settled within me after my first few days in the ship.  And again for that calmness it vas the ship's crew I had to thank.
 

They were good creatures, in spite of everything.  I find it still pleasant to remember the sound of their heavy footfalls which used to echo through my half-dreaming head.  They had a habit of doing everything as slowly as possible.  If one of them wanted to rub his eyes, he lifted a hand as if it were a drooping weight.  Their jests were coarse, but hearty.  Their laughter had always a gruff bark in it that sounded dangerous but meant nothing.  They always had something in their mouths to spit out and did not care where they spat it.  They always grumbled that they got fleas from me; yet they were not seriously angry about it, they knew that my fur fostered fleas, and that fleas jump; it was a simple matter of fact to them.  When they were off duty some of them often used to sit down in a semicircle around me; they hardly spoke but only grunted to each other; smoked their pipes, stretched out on lockers; smacked their knees as soon as I made one slightest movement; and now and then one of them would take a stick and tickle me where I liked being tickled.  If I were to be invited today to take a cruise on that ship I should certainly refuse the invitation, but just as certainly the memories I could recall between its decks would not all be hateful.
 

The calmness I acquired among these people kept me above all from trying to escape.  As I look back now, it seems to me I must have had at least an inkling that I had to find a way out or die, but that my way out could not be reached through flight.  I cannot tell now whether escape was possible, but I believe it must have been; for an ape it must always be possible.  With my teeth as they are today I have to be careful even in simply cracking nuts, but at that time I could certainly have managed by degrees to bite through the lock of my cage.  I did not do it.  What good would it have done me?  As soon as I had poked out my head I should have been caught again and put in a worse cage; or I might have slipped among the other animals without being noticed, among the pythons, say, who were opposite me, and so breathed out my life in their embrace; or supposing I had actually succeeded in sneaking out as far as the deck and leaping overboard I should have rocked for a little on the deep sea and then been drowned.  Desperate remedies.  I did not think it out in this human way, but under the influence of my surroundings I acted as if I had thought it out.
 

I did not think things out; but I observed everything quietly.  I watched these men go to and fro, always the same faces, the same movements, often it seemed to me there was only the same man.  So this man or these men walked about unimpeded.  A lofty goal faintly dawned before me.  No one promised me that if I became like them the bars of my cage would be taken away.  Such promises for apparently impossible contingencies are not given.  But if one achieves the impossible, the promises appear later retrospectively precisely where one had looked in vain for them before.  Now, these men in themselves had no great attraction for me.  Had I been devoted to the aforementioned idea of freedom, I should certainly have preferred the deep sea to the way out that suggested itself in the heavy faces of these men.  At any rate, I watched them for a long time before I even thought of such things, indeed, it was only the mass weight of my observations that impelled me in the right direction.
 

It was so easy to imitate these people.  I learned to spit in the very first days.  We used to spit in each other's faces; the only difference was that I licked my face clean afterwards and they did not.  I could soon smoke a pipe like an old hand; and if I also pressed my thumb into the bowl of the pipe, a roar of appreciation went up between decks; only it took me a very long time to understand the difference between a full pipe and an empty one.
 

My worst trouble came from the schnapps bottle.  The smell of it revolted me; I forced myself to it as best I could; but it took weeks for me to master my repulsion.  This inward conflict, strangely enough, was taken more seriously by the crew than anything else about me.  I cannot distinguish the men from each other in my recollection, but there was one of them who came again and again, alone or with friends, by day, by night, at all kinds of hours; he would post himself before me with the bottle and give me instructions.  He could not understand me, he wanted to solve the enigma of my being.  He would slowly uncork the bottle and then look at me to see if I had followed him; I admit that I always watched him with wildly eager, too eager attention; such a student of humankind no human teacher ever found on earth.  After the bottle was uncorked he lifted it to his mouth; I followed it with my eyes right up to his jaws; he would nod, pleased with me, and set the bottle to his lips; I, enchanted with my gradual enlightenment, squealed and scratched myself comprehensively wherever scratching was called for; he rejoiced, tilted the bottle, and took a drink; I, impatient and desperate to emulate him, befouled myself in my cage, which again gave him great satisfaction; and then, holding the bottle at arm's length and bringing it up with a swing, he would empty it at one draught, leaning back at an exaggerated angle for my better instruction.  I, exhausted by too much effort, could follow him no farther and hung limply to the bars, while he ended his theoretical exposition by rubbing his belly and grinning.
 

After theory came practice.  Was I not already quite exhausted by my theoretical instruction?  Indeed I was; utterly exhausted.  That was part of my destiny.  And yet I would take hold of the proffered bottle as well as I was able; uncork it, trembling; this successful action would gradually inspire me with new energy; I would lift the bottle, already following my original model almost exactly; put it to my lips and—and then throw it down in disgust, utter disgust, although it was empty and filled only with the smell of the spirit, throw it down on the floor in disgust.  To the sorrow of my teacher, to the greater sorrow of myself; neither of us being really comforted by the fact that I did not forget, even though I had thrown away the bottle, to rub my belly most admirably and to grin.
 

Far too often my lesson ended in that way.  And to the credit of my teacher, he was not angry; sometimes indeed he would hold his burning pipe against my fur, until it began to smolder in some place I could not easily reach, but then he would himself extinguish it with his own kind, enormous hand; he was not angry with me, he perceived that we were both fighting on the same side against the nature of apes and that I had the more difficult task.
 

What a triumph it was then both for him and for me, when one evening before a large circle of spectators—perhaps there was a celebration of some kind, a gramophone was playing, an officer was circulating among the crew—when on this evening, just as no one was looking, I took hold of a schnapps bottle that had been carelessly left standing before my cage, uncorked it in the best style, while the company began to watch me with mounting attention, set it to my lips without hesitation, with no grimace, like a professional drinker, with rolling eyes and full throat, actually and truly drank it empty; then threw the bottle away, not this time in despair but as an artistic performer; forgot, indeed, to rub my belly; but instead of that, because I could not help it, because my senses were reeling, called a brief and unmistakable "Hallo!" breaking into human speech, and with this outburst broke into the human community, and felt its echo: "Listen, he's talking!" like a caress over the whole of my sweat-drenched body.
 

I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason.  And even that triumph of mine did not achieve much.  I lost my human voice again at once; it did not come back for months; my aversion for the schnapps bottle returned again with even greater force.  But the line I was to follow had in any case been decided, once for all.
 

When I was handed over to my first trainer in Hamburg I soon realized that there were two alternatives before me: the Zoological Gardens or the variety stage.  I did not hesitate.  I said to myself: do your utmost to get onto the variety stage; the Zoological Gardens means only a new cage; once there, you are done for.
 

And so I learned things, gentlemen.  Ah, one learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs.  One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition.  My ape nature fled out of me, head over heels and away, so that my first teacher was almost himself turned into an ape by it, had soon to give up teaching and was taken away to a mental hospital.  Fortunately he was soon let out again.
 

But I used up many teachers, indeed, several teachers at once.  As I became more confident of my abilities, as the public took an interest in my progress and my future began to look bright, I engaged teachers for myself, established them in five communicating rooms, and took lessons from them all at once by dint of leaping from one room to the other.
 

That progress of mine!  How the rays of knowledge penetrated from all sides into my awakening brain!  I do not deny it: I found it exhilarating.  But I must also confess: I did not overestimate it, not even then, much less now.  With an effort which up till now has never been repeated I managed to reach the cultural level of an average European.  In itself that might be nothing to speak of, but it is something insofar as it has helped me out of my cage and opened a special way out for me, the way of humanity.  There is an excellent idiom: to fight one's way through the thick of things; that is what I have done, I have fought through the thick of things.  There was nothing else for me to do, provided always that freedom was not to be my choice.
 

As I look back over my development and survey what I have achieved so far, I do not complain, but I am not complacent either.  With my hands in my trouser pockets, my bottle of wine on the table, I half lie and half sit in my rocking chair and gaze out of the window: if a visitor arrives, I receive him with propriety.  My manager sits in the anteroom; when I ring, he comes and listens to what I have to say.  Nearly every evening I give a performance, and I have a success that could hardly be increased.  When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific receptions, from social gatherings, there sits waiting for me a half-trained little chimpanzee and I take comfort from her as apes do.  By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye; no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it.  On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I set out to achieve.  But do not tell me that it was not worth the trouble.  In any case, I am not appealing for any man's verdict, I am only imparting knowledge, I am only making a report.  To you also, honored Members of the Academy, I have only made a report.



Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.
Copyright Schocken Books Inc.

From Leni's Franz Kafka page
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/academy.htm

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We all know Rotpeter [Red Peter], just as half the world knows him.  But when he came to our town for a guest performance, I decided to get to know him personally.  It is not difficult to be admitted.  In big cities where everyone in the know clamors to watch celebrities breathe from as close as possible, great difficulties may be encountered; but in our town one is content to marvel at the marvelous from the pit.  Thus I was the only one so far, as thc hotel servant told me, to have announced his visit.  Herr Busenau, the impresario, received me with extreme courtesy.  I had not expected to meet a man so modest, indeed almost timid.  He was sitting in the anteroom of Rotpeter's apartment, eating an omelet.  Although it was morning he already sat there in the evening clothes in which he appears at the performances.  Hardly had he caught sight of me—me the unknown, the unimportant guest—when he, possessor of highly distinguished medals, king of trainers, honorary doctor of great universities, jumped up, shook me by both hands, urged me to sit down, wiped his spoon on the tablecloth, and amiably offered it to me so that I might finish his omelet.  He would not accept my grateful refusal and promptly tried to feed me.  I had some trouble calming him down and warding him off, as well as his spoon and plate.
 

"Very kind of you to have come," he said with a strong foreign accent.  "Most kind.  You've also come at the right time, for alas Rotpeter cannot always receive.  Seeing people is often repugnant to him; on these occasions no one, it does not matter who he may be, is admitted; then I, even I can see him only on business, so to speak, on the stage.  And immediately after the performance I have to disappear, he drives home alone, locks himself in his room, and usually remains like that until the following evening.  He always has a big hamper of fruit in his bedroom, this is what he lives on at these times.  But I, who of course dare not let him out of my sight, always rent the apartment opposite his and watch him from behind curtains."
 

When I sit opposite you like this, Rotpeter, listening to you talk, drinking your health, I really and truly forget—whether you take it as a compliment or not, it's the truth—that you are a chimpanzee.  Only gradually, when I have forced myself out of my thoughts back to reality, do my eyes show me again whose guest I am.
 

Yes.
 

You're so silent suddenly, I wonder why?  Just a moment ago you were pronouncing such astonishingly correct opinions about our town, and now you're so silent.
 

Silent?
 

Is something wrong?  Shall I call the trainer?  Perhaps you're in the habit of taking a meal at this hour?
 

No, no.  It's quite all right.  I can tell you what it was.  Sometimes I'm overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching.  This, of course, has nothing to do with the individual human being, least of all with your charming presence.  It concerns all human beings.  There's nothing extraordinary about this.  Suppose, for instance, that you were to live continuously with apes, you'd probably have similar attacks, however great your self-control.  Actually, it's not the smell of human beings that repels me so much, it's the human smell which I have contracted and which mingles with the smell from my native land.  Smell for yourself!  Here on my chest!  Put your nose deeper into the fur!  Deeper, I say!
 

I'm sorry, but I can't smell anything special.  Just the ordinary men of a well-groomed body, that's all.  The nose of a city-dweller, of course, is no fair test.  You, no doubt, can scent thousands of things that evade us.
 

Once upon a time, sir, once upon a time.  That's over.
 

Since you brought it up yourself, I dare to ask: How long nave you actually been living among us?
 

Five years.  On the fifth of April it will be five years.
 

Terrific achievement.  To cast off apehood in five years and gallop through the whole evolution of mankind!  Certainly no one has ever done that before!  On this racecourse you have no rival.
 

It's a great deal, I know, and sometimes it surpasses even my understanding.  In tranquil moments, however, I feel less exuberant about it.  Do you know how I was caught?
 

I've read everything that's been printed about you.  You were shot at and then caught.
 

Yes, I was hit twice, once here in the cheek—the wound of course was far larger than the scar you see—and the second time below the hip.  I'll take my trousers down so you can see that scar, too.  Here then was where the bullet entered; this was the severe, decisive wound.  I fell from the tree and when I came to I was in a cage between decks.
 

In a cage!  Between decks!  It's one thing to read your story, and quite another to hear you tell it!
 

And yet another, sir, to have experienced it.  Until then I had never known what it means to have no way out.  It was not a four-sided barred cage, it had only three sides nailed to a locker, the locker forming the fourth side.  The whole contrivance was so low that I could not stand upright, and so narrow that I could not even sit down.  All I could do was squat there with bent knees.  In my rage I refused to see anyone, and so remained facing the locker; for days and nights I squatted there with trembling knees while behind me the bars cut into my flesh.  This manner of confining wild animals is considered to have its advantages during the first days of captivity, and from my experience I cannot deny that from the human point of view this actually is the case.  But at that time I was not interested in the human point of view.  I had the locker in front of me.  Break the boards, bite a hole through them, squeeze yourself through an opening which in reality hardly allows you to see through it and which, when you first discover it, you greet with the blissful howl of ignorance!  Where do you want to go?  Beyond the boards the forest begins....



Translated by Tania and James Stern.
Copyright Schocken Books Inc.

From Leni's Franz Kafka page
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/academy.htm

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Before the law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him." These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable to the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

  One evening Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor, was climbing up to his apartment - a laborious undertaking, for he lived on the sixth floor. While climbing up he thought, as he had so often recently, how unpleasant this utterly lonely life was: to reach his empty rooms he had to climb these six floors almost in secret, there put on his dressing gown, again almost in secret, light his pipe, read a little of the French magazine to which he had been subscribing for years, at the same time sip at a homemade kirsch, and finally, after half an hour, go to bed, but not before having completely rearranged his bedclothes which the unteachable charwoman would insist on arranging in her own way. Some companion, someone to witness these activities, would have been very welcome to Blumfeld. He had already been wondering whether he shouldn't acquire a little dog. These animals are gay and above all grateful and loyal; one of Blumfeld's colleagues has a dog of this kind; it follows no one but its master and when it hasn't seen him for a few moments it greets him at once with loud barkings, by which it is evidently trying to express its joy at once more finding that extraordinary benefactor, its master. True, a dog also has its drawbacks. However well kept it may be, it is bound to dirty the room. This just cannot be avoided; one cannot give it a hot bath each time before letting it into the room; besides, its health couldn't stand that.

   Blumfeld, on the other hand, can't stand dirt in his room. To him cleanliness is essential, and several times a week he is obliged to have words with his charwoman, who is unfortunately not very painstaking in this respect. Since she is hard of hearing he usually drags her by the arm to those spots in the room which he finds lacking in cleanliness. By this strict discipline he has achieved in his room a neatness more or less commensurate with his wishes.

   By acquiring a dog, however, he would be almost deliberately introducing into his room the dirt which hitherto he had been so careful to avoid. Fleas, the dog's constant companions, would appear. And once fleas were there, it would not be long before Blumfeld would be abandoning his comfortable room to the dog and looking for another one.

   Uncleanliness, however, is but one of the drawbacks of dogs. Dogs also fall ill and no one really understands dogs' diseases. Then the animal sits in a corner or limps about, whimpers, coughs, chokes from some pain; one wraps it in a rug, whistles a little melody, offers it milk-in short, one nurses it in the hope that this, as indeed is possible, is a passing sickness while it may be a serious, disgusting, and contagious disease.

   And even if the dog remains healthy, one day it will grow old, one won't have the heart to get rid of the faithful animal in time, and then comes the moment when one's own age peers out at one from the dog's oozing eyes. Then one has to cope with the half-blind, weak-lunged animal all but immobile with fat, and in this way pay dearly for the pleasures the dog once had given.

   Much as Blumfeld would like to have a dog at this moment, he would rather go on climbing the stairs alone for another thirty years than be burdened later on by such an old dog which, sighing louder than he, would drag itself up, step by step.

   So Blumfeld will remain alone, after all; he really feels none of the old maid's longing to have around her some submissive living creature that she can protect, lavish her affection upon, and continue to serve-for which purpose a cat, a canary, even a goldfish would suffice-or, if this cannot be, rest content with flowers on the window sill. Blumfeld only wants a companion, an animal to which he doesn't have to pay much attention, which doesn't mind an occasional kick, which even, in an emergency, can spend the night in the street, but which nevertheless, when Blumfeld feels like it, is promptly at his disposal with its barking, jumping, and licking of hands. This is what Blumfeld wants, but since, as he realizes, it cannot be had without serious drawbacks, he renounces it, and yet-in accordance with his thoroughgoing disposition-the idea from time to time, this evening, for instance, occurs to him again.

   While taking the key from his pocket outside his room, he is startled by a sound coming from within. A peculiar rattling sound, very lively but very regular. Since Blumfeld has just been thinking of dogs, it reminds him of the sounds produced by paws pattering one after the other over a floor. But paws don't rattle, so it can't be paws. He quickly unlocks the door and switches on the light.

   He is not prepared for what he sees. For this is magic-two small white celluloid balls with blue stripes jumping up and down side by side on the parquet; When one of them touches the floor the other is in the air, a game they continue ceaselessly to play. At school one day Blumfeld had seen some little pellets jumping about like this during a well-known electrical experiment, but these are comparatively large balls jumping freely about in the room and no electrical experiment is being made.

   Blumfeld bends down to get a good look at them. They are undoubtedly ordinary balls, they probably contain several smaller balls, and it is these that produce the rattling sound. Blumfeld gropes in the air to find out whether they are hanging from some threads-no, they are moving entirely on their own. A pity Blumfeld isn't a small child, two balls like these would have been a happy surprise for him, whereas now the whole thing gives him rather an unpleasant feeling. It's not quite pointless after all to live in secret as an unnoticed bachelor, now someone, no matter who, has penetrated this secret and sent him these two strange balls.

   He tries to catch one but they retreat before him, thus luring him on to follow them through the room. It's really too silly, he thinks, running after balls like this; he stands still and realizes that the moment he abandons the pursuit, they too remain on the same spot. I will try to catch them all the same, he thinks again, and hurries toward them. They immediately run away, but Blumfeld, his legs apart, forces them into a corner of the room, and there, in front of a trunk, he manages to catch one ball. It's a small cool ball, and it turns in his hand, clearly anxious to slip away. And the other ball, too, as though aware of its comrade's distress, jumps higher than before, extending the leaps until it touches Blumfeld's hand. It beats against his hand, beats in ever faster leaps, alters its angle of attack, then, powerless against the hand which encloses the ball so completely, springs even higher and is probably trying to reach Blumfeld's face. Blumfeld could catch this ball too, and lock them both up somewhere, but at the moment it strikes him as humiliating to take such measures against two little balls. Besides, it's fun owning these balls, and soon enough they'll grow tired, roll under the cupboard, and be quiet.

   Despite this deliberation, however, Blumfeld, near to anger, flings the ball to the ground, and it is a miracle that in doing so the delicate, all but transparent celluloid cover doesn't break. Without hesitation the two balls resume their former low, well-coordinated jumps.

   Blumfeld undresses calmly, arranges his clothes in the wardrobe which he always inspects carefully to make sure the charwoman has left everything in order. Once or twice he glances over his shoulder at the balls, which unpursued, seem to be pursuing him; they have followed him and are now jumping close behind him. Blumfeld puts on his dressing gown and sets out for the opposite wall to fetch one of the pipes which are hanging in a rack. Before turning around he instinctively kicks his foot out backwards, but the balls know how to get out of its way and remain untouched.

   As Blumfeld goes off to fetch the pipe the balls at once follow close behind him; he shuffles along in his slippers, taking irregular steps, yet each step is followed almost without pause by the sound of the balls; they are keeping pace with him.

   To see how the balls manage to do this, Blumfeld turns suddenly around. But hardly has he turned when the balls describe a semicircle and are already behind him again, and this they repeat every time he turns. Like submissive companions, they try to avoid appearing in front of Blumfeld. Up to the present they have evidently dared to do so only in order to introduce themselves; now, however, it seems they have actually entered into his service.

   Hitherto, when faced with situations he couldn't master, Blumfeld had always chosen to behave as thought he hadn't noticed anything. It had often helped and usually improved the situation. This, then, is what he does now; he takes up a position in front of the pipe rack and, puffing out his lips, chooses a pipe, fills it with particular care from the tobacco pouch close at hand, and allows the balls to continue their jumping behind him. But he hesitates to approach the, table, for to hear the sound of the jumps coinciding with that of his own steps almost hurts him. So there he stands, and while taking an unnecessarily long time to fill his pipe he measures the distance separating him from the table. At last, however, he overcomes his faintheartedness and covers the distance with such stamping of feet that he cannot hear the balls. But the moment he is seated he can hear them jumping up and down behind his chair as distinctly as ever.

   Above the table, within reach, a shelf is nailed to the wall on which stands the bottle of kirsch surrounded by little glasses. Beside it, in a pile, lie several copies of the French magazine. (This very day the latest issue has arrived and Blumfeld takes it down. He quietly forgets the kirsch; he even has the feeling that today he is proceeding with his usual activities only to console himself, for he feels no genuine desire to read. Contrary to his usual habit of carefully turning one page after the other, he opens the magazine at random and there finds a large photograph. He forces himself to examine it in detail. It shows a meeting between the Czar of Russia and the President of France. This takes place on a ship. All about, as far as can be seen, are many other ships, the smoke from their funnels vanishing in the bright sky. Both Czar and President have rushed toward each other with long strides and are clasping one another by the hand. Behind the Czar as well as behind the President stand two men. By comparison with the gay faces of the Czar and the President, the faces of their attendants are very solemn, the eyes of each group focused on their master. Lower down-the scene evidently takes place on the top deck-stand long lines of saluting sailors cut off by the margin.

   Gradually Blumfeld contemplates the picture with more interest, then holds it a little further away and looks at it with blinking eyes. He has always had a taste for such imposing scenes. The way the chief personages clasp each other's hand so naturally, so cordially and lightheartedly, this he finds most lifelike. And it's just as appropriate that the attendants-high-ranking gentlemen, of course, with their names printed beneath-express in their bearing the solemnity of the historical moment.)

   And instead of helping himself to everything he needs, Blumfeld sits there tense, staring at the bowl of his still unlit pipe. He is lying in wait. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, his numbness leaves him and with jerk he turns around in his chair. But the balls equally alert, or perhaps automatically following the law governing them, also change their position the moment Blumfeld turns, and hide behind his back.

   Blumfeld now sits with his back to the table, the cold pipe in his hand. And now the balls jump under the table and, since there's a rug there, they are less audible. This is a great advantage: only faint, hollow noises can be heard, one has to pay great attention to catch their sound. Blumfeld, however, does pay great attention, and hears them distinctly. But this is so only for the moment, in a little while he probably won't hear them any more. The fact that they cannot make themselves more audible on the rug strikes Blumfeld as a great weakness on the part of the balls. What one has to do is lay one or better two rugs under them and they are all but powerless. Admittedly only for a limited time, and besides, their very existence wields a certain power.

   Right now Blumfeld could have made good use of a dog, a wild young animal would soon have dealt with these balls; he imagines this dog trying to catch them with its paws, chasing them from their positions, hunting them all over the room, and finally getting hold of them between its teeth. It's quite possible that before long Blumfeld will acquire a dog.

   For the moment, however, the balls have no one to fear but Blumfeld, and he has no desire to destroy them just now, perhaps he lacks the necessary determination. He comes home in the evening tired from work and just when he is in need of some rest he is faced with this surprise. Only now does he realize how tired he really is. No doubt he will destroy the balls, and that in the near future, but not just yet, probably not until tomorrow. If one looks at the whole thing with an unprejudiced eye, the balls behave modestly enough.

   From time to time, for instance, they could jump into the foreground, show themselves, and then return again to their positions, or they could jump higher so as to beat against the tabletop in order to compensate themselves for the muffling effect of the rug. But this they don't do, they don't want to irritate Blumfeld unduly, they are evidently confining themselves to what is absolutely necessary.

   Even this measured necessity, however, is quite sufficient to spoil Blumfeld's rest at the table. He has been sitting there only a few minutes and is already considering going to bed. One of his motives for this is that he can't smoke here, for he has left the matches on his bedside table. Thus he would have to fetch these matches, but once having reached the bedside table he might as well stay there and lie down. For this he has an ulterior motive: he thinks that the balls, with their mania for keeping behind him, will jump onto the bed, and that there, in lying down, on purpose or not, he will squash them. The objection that what would then remain of the balls could still go on jumping, he dismisses. Even the unusual must have its limits. Complete balls jump anyway, even if not incessantly, but fragments of balls never jump, and consequently will not jump in this case, either.

   "Up!" he shouts, having grown almost reckless from this reflection and, the balls still behind him he stamps off to bed. His hope seems to be confirmed, for when he purposely takes up a position quite near the bed, one ball promptly springs onto it. Then, however, the unexpected occurs: the other ball disappears under the bed. The possibility that the balls could jump under the bed as well had not occurred to Blumfeld. He is outraged about the one ball, although he is aware how unjust this is, for by jumping under the bed the ball fulfills its duty perhaps better than the ball on the bed.

   Now everything depends on which place the balls decide to choose, for Blumfeld does not believe that they can work separately for any length of time. And sure enough a moment later the ball on the floor also jumps onto the bed. Now I've got them, thinks Blumfeld, hot with joy, and tears his dressing gown from his body to throw himself into bed. At that moment, however, the very same ball jumps back under the bed.

   Overwhelmed with disappointment, Blumfeld almost collapses. Very likely the ball just took a good look around up there and decided it didn't like it. And now the other one has followed, too, and of course remains, for it's better down there.

   "Now I'll have these drummers with me all night," thinks Blumfeld, biting his lips and nodding his head. He feels gloomy, without actually knowing what harm the balls could do him in the night. He is a good sleeper, he will easily be able to ignore so slight a noise. To make quite sure of this and mindful of his past experience, he lays two rugs on the floor. It's as if he owned a little dog for which he wants to make a soft bed. And as though the balls had also grown tired and sleepy, their jumping has become lower and slower than before. As Blumfeld kneels beside the bed, lamp in hand, he thinks for a moment that the balls might come to rest on the rug-they fall so weakly, roll so slowly along. Then, however, they dutifully rise again. Yet it is quite possible that in the morning when Blumfeld looks under the bed he'll find there two quiet, harmless children's balls. But it seems that they may not even be able to keep up their jumping until the morning, for as soon as Blumfeld is in bed he doesn't hear them anymore. He strains his ears, leans out of bed to listen-not a sound. The effect of the rugs can't be as strong as that; the only explanation is that the balls are no longer jumping, either because they aren't able to bounce themselves off the rug and have therefore abandoned jumping for the time being or, which is more likely, they will never jump again. Blumfeld could get up and see exactly what's going on, but in his relief at finding peace at last he prefers to remain where he is. He would rather not risk disturbing the pacified balls even with his eyes. Even smoking he happily renounces, turns over on his side, and promptly goes to sleep.

   But he does not remain undisturbed; as usual he sleeps without dreaming, but very restlessly. Innumerable times during the night he is startled by the delusion that someone is knocking at his door. He knows quite well that no one is knocking; who would knock at night and at his lonely bachelor's door? Yet although he knows this for certain, he is startled again and again and each time glances in suspense at the door, his mouth open, eyes wide, a strand of hair trembling over his damp forehead. He tries to count how many times he has been woken but, dizzy from the huge numbers he arrives at, he falls back to sleep again. He thinks he knows where the knocking comes from; not from the door, but somewhere quite different; being heavy with sleep, however, he cannot quite remember on what his suspicions are based. All he knows is that innumerable tiny unpleasant sounds accumulate before producing the great strong knocking. He would happily suffer all the unpleasantness of the small sounds if he could be spared the actual knocking, but for some reason it's too late; he cannot interfere, the moment has passed, he can't even speak, his mouth opens but all that comes out is a silent yawn, and furious at this he thrusts his face into the pillows. Thus the night passes.

   In the morning he is awakened by the charwoman's knocking; with a sigh of relief he welcomes the gentle tap on the door whose inaudibility has in the past always been one of his sources of complaint. He is about to shout "Come in!" when he hears another lively, faint, yet all but belligerent knocking. It's the balls under the bed. Have they woken up? Have they, unlike him, gathered new strength overnight?

   "Just a moment," shouts Blumfeld to the charwoman, jumps out of bed, and, taking great care to keep the balls behind him, throws himself on the floor, his back still toward them; then, twisting his head over his shoulder, he glances at the balls and-nearly lets out a curse. Like children pushing away blankets that annoy them at night, the balls have apparently spent all night pushing the rugs, with tiny twitching movements, so far away from under the bed that they are now once more on the parquet, where they can continue making their noise. "Back onto the rugs!" says Blumfeld with an angry face, and only when the balls, thanks to the rugs, have become quiet again, does he call in the charwoman.

   While she-a fat, dull-witted, stiff-backed woman-is laying the breakfast on the table and doing the few necessary chores, Blumfeld stands motionless in his dressing gown by his bed so as to keep the balls in their place. With his eyes he follows the charwoman to see whether she notices anything. This, since she is hard of hearing, is very unlikely, and the fact that Blumfeld thinks he sees the charwoman stopping here and there, holding on to some furniture and listening with raised eyebrows, he puts down to his overwrought condition caused by a bad night's sleep. It would relieve him if he could persuade the charwoman to speed up her work, but if anything she is slower than usual. She loads herself laboriously with Blumfeld's clothes and shuffles out with them into the corridor, stays away a long time, and the din she makes beating the clothes echoes in his ears with slow monotonous thuds.

   And during all this time Blumfeld has to remain on the bed, cannot move for fear of drawing the balls behind him, has to let the coffee-which he likes to drink as hot as possible-get cold, and can do nothing but stare at the drawn blinds behind which the day is dimly dawning.

   At last the charwoman has finished, bids him good morning, and is about to leave; but before she actually goes she hesitates by the door, moves her lips a little, and takes a long look at Blumfeld. Blumfeld is about to remonstrate when she at last departs. Blumfeld longs to fling the door open and shout after her that she is a stupid, idiotic old woman. However, when he reflects on what he actually has against her, he can only think of the paradox of her having noticed nothing and yet trying to give the impression that she has.

   How confused his thoughts have become! And all on account of a bad night. Some explanation for his poor sleep he finds in the fact that last night he deviated from his usual habits by not smoking or drinking any schnapps. When for once I don't smoke or drink schnapps-and this is the result of his reflections-I sleep badly.

   From now on he is going to take better care of his health, and he begins by fetching some cotton wool from his medicine chest which hangs over his bedside table and putting two little wads of it into his ears. Then he stands up and takes a trial step. Although the balls do follow he can hardly hear them; the addition of another wad makes them quite inaudible. Blumfeld takes a few more steps; nothing particularly unpleasant happens. Everyone for himself, Blumfeld as well as the balls, and although they are bound to one another they don't disturb each other.

   Only once, when Blumfeld turns around rather suddenly and one ball fails to make the countermovement fast enough, does he touch it with his knee. But this is the only incident. Otherwise Blumfeld calmly drinks his coffee; he is as hungry as though, instead of sleeping last night, he had gone for a long walk; he washes in cold, exceedingly refreshing water, and puts on his clothes.

   He still hasn't pulled up the blinds; rather, as a precaution, he has preferred to remain in semidarkness; he has no wish for the balls to be seen by other eyes.

   But now that he is ready to go he has somehow to provide for the balls in case they should dare-not that he thinks they will-to follow him into the street.

   He thinks of a good solution, opens the large wardrobe, and places himself with his back to it. As though divining his intention, the balls steer clear of the wardrobe's interior, taking advantage of every inch of space between Blumfeld and the wardrobe; when there's no other alternative they jump into the wardrobe for a moment, but when faced by the dark out they promptly jump again. Rather than be lured over the edge further into the wardrobe, they neglect their duty and stay by Blumfeld's side. But their little ruses avail them nothing, for now Blumfeld himself climbs backward into the wardrobe and they have to follow him. And with this their fate has been sealed, for on the floor of the wardrobe lie various smallish objects such as boots, boxes, small trunks which although carefully arranged-Blumfeld now regrets this-nevertheless considerably hamper the balls. And when Blumfeld, having by now pulled the door to, jumps out of it with an enormous leap such as he has not made for years, slams the door, and turns the key, the balls are imprisoned.

   "Well that worked," thinks Blumfeld, wiping the sweat from his face. What a din the balls are making in the wardrobe! It sounds as though they are desperate. Blumfeld, on the other hand, is very contented. He leaves the room and already the deserted corridor has a soothing effect on him. He takes the wool out of his ears and is enchanted by the countless sounds of the waking house. Few people are to be seen, it's still very early.

   Downstairs in the hall in front of the low door leading to the charwoman's basement apartment stands that woman's ten year-old son. The image of his mother, not one feature of the woman has been omitted in this child's face. Bandy-legged, hands in his trouser pockets, he stands there wheezing, for he already has a goiter and can breathe only with difficulty. But whereas Blumfeld, whenever the boy crosses his path, usually quickens his step to spare himself the spectacle, today he almost feels like pausing for a moment.

   Even if the boy has been brought into the world by this woman and shows every sign of his origin, he is nevertheless a child, the thoughts of a child still dwell in this shapeless head, and if one were to speak to him sensibly and ask him something, he would very likely answer in a bright voice, innocent and reverential, and after some inner struggle one could bring oneself to pat these cheeks.

   Although this is what Blumfeld thinks, he nevertheless passes him by. In the street he realizes that the weather is pleasanter than he had suspected from his room. The morning mist has dispersed and patches of blue sky have appeared, brushed by a strong wind. Blumfeld has the balls to thank for his having left his room much earlier than usual; even the paper he has left unread on the table; in any case he has saved a great deal of time and can now afford to walk slowly.

   It is remarkable how little he worries about the balls not that he is separated from them. So long as they were following him they could have been considered as something belonging to him, something which, in passing judgment on his person, had somehow to be taken into consideration. Now, however, they were mere toys in his wardrobe at home. And it occurs to Blumfeld that the best way of rendering the balls harmless would be to put them to their original use. There in the hall stands the boy; Blumfeld will give him the balls, not lend them, but actually present them to him, which is surely tantamount to ordering their destruction. And even if they were to remain intact they would mean even less in the boy's hands than in the wardrobe, the whole house would watch the boy playing with them, other children would join in, and the general opinion that the balls are things to play with and in no way life companions of Blumfeld would be firmly and irrefutably established.

   Blumfeld runs back into the house. The boy has just gone down the basement stairs and is about to open the door. So Blumfeld has to call the boy and pronounce his name, a name that to him seems as ludicrous as everything else connected with the child.

   "Alfred! Alfred!" he shouts. The boy hesitates for a long time. "Come here!" shouts Blumfeld, "I've got something for you."

   The janitor's two little girls appear from the door opposite and, full of curiosity, take up positions on either side of Blumfeld. They grasp the situation much more quickly than the boy and cannot understand why he doesn't come at once. Without taking their eyes off Blumfeld they beckon to the boy, but cannot fathom what kind of present is awaiting Alfred. Tortured with curiosity, they hop from one foot to the other. Blumfeld laughs at them as well as at the boy.

   The latter seems to have figured it all out and climbs stiffly, clumsily up the steps. Not even in his gait can he manage to belie his mother, who, incidentally, has appeared in the basement doorway. To make sure that the charwoman also understands and in hope that she will supervise the carrying out of his instructions, should it be necessary, Blumfeld shouts excessively loud.

   "Up in my room," says Blumfeld, "I have two lovely balls. Would you like to have them?" Not knowing how to behave, the boy simply screws up his mouth, turns around, and looks inquiringly down at his mother. The girls, however, promptly begin to jump around Blumfeld and ask him for the balls. "You will be allowed to play with them too," Blumfeld tells them, but waits for the boy's answer.

   He could of course give the balls to the girls, but they strike him as too unreliable and for the moment he has more confidence in the boy. Meanwhile, the latter, without having exchanged a word, has taken counsel with his mother and nods his assent to Blumfeld's repeated question. "Then listen," says Blumfeld, who is quite prepared to receive no thanks for his gift. "Your mother has the key of my door, you must borrow it from her. But here is the key of my wardrobe, and in the wardrobe you will find the balls. Take good care to lock the wardrobe and the room again. But with the balls you can do what you like and you don't have to bring them back. Have you understood me?"

   Unfortunately, the boy has not understood. Blumfeld has tried to make everything particularly clear to this hopelessly dense creature, but for this very reason has repeated everything too often, has in turn too often mentioned keys, room, and wardrobe, and as a result the boy stares at him as though he were rather a seducer than his benefactor. The girls, on the other hand, have understood everything immediately, press against Blumfeld, and stretch out their hands for the key.

   "Wait a moment," says Blumfeld, by now annoyed with them all. Time, moreover, is passing, he can't sit about much longer.

   If only the mother would say that she has understood him and take matters in hand for the boy! Instead of which she still stands down by the door, smiles with the affection of the bashful deaf, and is probably under the impression that Blumfeld up there has suddenly fallen for the boy and is hearing him his lessons. Blumfeld on the other hand can't very well climb down the basement stairs and shout into the charwoman's ear to make her son for God's sake relieve him of the balls! It had required enough of his self-control as it was to entrust the key of his wardrobe for a whole day to this family. It is certainly not in order to save himself trouble that he is handing the key to the boy rather than himself leading the boy up and there giving him the balls.

   But he can't very well first give the balls away and then immediately deprive the boy of them by-as would be bound to happen-drawing them after him as his followers.

   "So you still don't understand me?" asks Blumfeld almost wistfully after having started a fresh explanation which, however, he immediately interrupts at sight of the boy's vacant stare. So vacant a stare renders one helpless. It could tempt one into saying more than one intends, if only to fill the vacancy with sense. Whereupon "We'll fetch the balls for him!" shout the girls.

   They are shrewd and have realized that they can obtain the balls only through using the boy as an intermediary, but that they themselves have to bring about this mediation. From the janitor's room a clock strikes, warning Blumfeld to hurry. "Well, then, take the key," says Blumfeld, and the key is more snatched from his hand than given by him. He would have handed it to the boy with infinitely more confidence.

   "The key to the room you'll have to get from the woman," Blumfeld adds. "And when you return with the balls you must hand both keys to her."

   "Yes, yes!" shout the girls and run down the steps. They know everything, absolutely everything; and as though Blumfeld were infected by the boy's denseness, he is unable to understand how they could have grasped everything so quickly from his explanations.

   Now they are already tugging at the charwoman's skirt but, tempting as it would be, Blumfeld cannot afford to watch them carrying out their task, not only because it's already late, but also because he has no desire to be present at the liberation of the balls. He would in fact far prefer to be several streets away when the girls first open the door of his room. After all, how does he know what else he might have to expect from these balls!

   And so for the second time this morning he leaves the house. He has one last glimpse of the charwoman defending herself against the girl's, and of the boy stirring his bandy legs to come to his mother's assistance. It's beyond Blumfeld's comprehension why a creature like this servant should prosper and propagate in this world.

   While on his way to the linen factory, where Blumfeld is employed, thoughts about his work gradually get the upper hand. He quickens his step and, despite the delay caused by the boy, he is the first to arrive in his office.

   This office is a glass-enclosed room containing a writing desk for Blumfeld and two standing desks for the two assistants subordinate to him. Although these standing desks are so small and narrow as to suggest they are meant for schoolchildren, this office is very crowded and the assistants cannot sit down, for then there would be no place for Blumfeld's chair. As a result they stand all day, pressed against their desks. For them of course this is very uncomfortable, but it also makes it very difficult for Blumfeld to keep an eye on them. They often press eagerly against their desks not so much in order to work as to whisper to one another or even to take forty winks. They give Blumfeld a great deal of trouble; they don't help him sufficiently with the enormous amount of work that is imposed on him. This work involves supervising the whole distribution of fabrics and cash among the women homeworker who are employed by the factory for the manufacture of certain fancy commodities. To appreciate the magnitude of this task an intimate knowledge of the general conditions is necessary. But since Blumfeld's immediate superior has died some years ago, no one any longer possesses this knowledge, which is also why Blumfeld cannot grant anyone the right to pronounce an opinion on his work.

   The manufacturer, Herr Ottomar, for instance, clearly underestimates Blumfeld's work; no doubt he recognizes that in the course of twenty years Blumfeld has deserved well of the factory, and this he acknowledges not only because he is obliged to, but also because he respects Blumfeld as a loyal, trustworthy person. He underestimates his work, nevertheless, for he believes it could be conducted by methods more simple and therefore in every respect more profitably than those employed by Blumfeld.

   It is said, and it is probably not incorrect, that Ottomar shows himself so rarely in Blumfeld's department simply to spare himself the annoyance that the sight of Blumfeld's working methods causes him. To be so unappreciated is undoubtedly sad for Blumfeld, but there is no remedy, for he cannot very well compel Ottomar to spend let us say a whole month on end in Blumfeld's department in order to study the great variety of work being done accomplished there, to apply his own allegedly better methods, and to let himself be convinced of Blumfeld's soundness by the collapse of the department-which would be the inevitable result. And so Blumfeld carries on his work undeterred as before, gives gives a little start whenever Ottomar appears after a long absence, then with the subordinate's sense of duty makes a feeble effort to explain to Ottomar this or that arrangement, whereupon the latter, his eyes lowered and giving a silent nod, passes on.

   But what worries Blumfeld more than this lack of appreciation is the thought that one day he will be compelled to leave his job, the immediate consequence of which will be pandemonium, a confusion no one will be able to straighten out because so far as he knows there isn't a single soul in the factory capable of replacing him and of carrying on his job in a manner that could be relied upon to prevent months of the most serious interruptions. Needless to say, if the boss underestimates an employee the latter's colleagues try their best to surpass him in this respect. In consequence everyone underestimates Blumfeld's work; no one considers it necessary to spend any time training in Blumfeld's department, and when new employees are hired not one of them is ever assigned to Blumfeld. As a result Blumfeld's department lacks a younger generation to carry on.

   When Blumfeld, who up to then had been managing the entire department with the help of only one servant, demanded an assistant, weeks of bitter fighting ensued. Almost every day Blumfeld appeared in Ottomar's office and explained to him calmly and in minute detail why an assistant was needed in his department. He was needed not by any means because Blumfeld wished to spare himself, Blumfeld had no intention of sparing himself, he was doing more than his share of work and this he had no desire to change, but would Herr Ottomar please consider how in the course of time the business had grown, how every department had been correspondingly enlarged, with the exception of Blumfeld's department, which was invariably forgotten! And would he consider too how much the work had increased just there!

   When Blumfeld had entered the firm, a time Herr Ottomar probably could not remember, they had employed some ten seamstresses, today the number varied between fifty and sixty. Such a job requires great energy; Blumfeld could guarantee that he was completely wearing himself out in this work, but that he will continue to master it completely he can henceforth no longer guarantee. True, Herr Ottomar had never flatly refused Blumfeld's requests, this was something he could not do to an old employee, but the manner in which he hardly listened, in which he talked to others over Blumfeld's head, made halfhearted promises and had forgotten everything in a few days-this behavior was insulting, to say the least. Not actually to Blumfeld, Blumfeld is no romantic, pleasant as honor and recognition may be, Blumfeld can do without them, in spite of everything he will stick to his desk as long as it is at all possible, in any case he is in the right, and right, even though on occasion it may take a long time, must prevail in the end.

   True, Blumfeld has at last been given two assistants, but what assistants! One might have thought Ottomar had realized he could express his contempt for the department even better by granting rather than by refusing it these assistants. It was even possible that Ottomar had kept Blumfeld waiting so long because he was looking for two assistants just like these, and-as may be imagined-took a long time to find them. And now of course Blumfeld could no longer complain; if he did, the answer could easily be foreseen; after all, he had asked for one assistant and had been given two, that's how cleverly Ottomar had arranged things.

   Needless to say, Blumfeld complained just the same, but only because his predicament all but forced him to do so, not because he still hoped for any redress. Nor did he complain emphatically, but only by the way, whenever the occasion arose. Nevertheless, among his spiteful colleagues the rumor soon spread that someone had asked Ottomar if it were really possible that Blumfeld, who after all had been given such unusual aid, was still complaining. To which Ottomar answered that this was correct, Blumfeld was still complaining, and rightly so. He, Ottomar, had at last realized this and he intended gradually to assign to Blumfeld one assistant for each seamstress, in other words some sixty in all. In case this number should prove insufficient, however, he would let him have even more and would not cease until the bedlam, which had been developing for years in Blumfeld's department, was complete.

   Now it cannot be denied that in this remark Ottomar's manner of speech had been cleverly imitated, but Blumfeld had no doubts whatever that Ottomar would not dream of speaking about him in such a way. The whole thing was a fabrication of the loafers in the offices on the first floor. Blumfeld ignored it-if only he could as calmly have ignored the presence of the assistants! But there they stood, and could not be spirited away. Pale, weak children. According to their credentials they had already passed school age, but in reality this was difficult to believe. In fact their rightful place was so clearly at their mother's knee that one would hardly have dared to entrust them to a teacher. They still couldn't even stand properly; standing up for any length of time tired them inordinately, especially when they first arrived. When left to themselves they promptly doubled up in their weakness, standing hunched and crooked in their corner. Blumfeld tried to point out to them that if they went on giving in to their indolence they would become cripples for life.

   To ask the assistants to make the slightest move was to take a risk; once when one of them had been ordered to carry something a short distance, he had run so eagerly that he had banged his knee against a desk. The room had been full of seamstresses, the desks covered in merchandise, but Blumfeld had been obliged to neglect everything and take the sobbing assistant into the office and there bandage his wound. Yet even this zeal on the part of the assistant was superficial; like actual children they tried once in a while to excel, but far more often-indeed almost always-they tried to divert their superior's attention and to cheat him.

   Once, at a time of the most intensive work, Blumfeld had rushed past them, dripping with sweat, and had observed them secretly swapping stamps among the bales of merchandise. He had felt like banging them on the head with his fists, it would have been the only possible punishment for such behavior, but they were after all only children and Blumfeld could not very well knock children down. And so he continued to put up with them.

   Originally he had imagined that the assistants would help him with the essential chores which at the moment of the distribution of goods required so much effort and vigilance. He had imagined himself standing in the center behind his desk, keeping an eye on everything, and making the entries in the books while the assistants ran to and for, distributing everything according to his orders. He had imagined that his supervision, which, sharp as it was, could not cope with such a crowd, would be complemented by the assistants' attention; he had hoped that these assistants would gradually acquire experience, cease depending entirely on his orders, and finally learn to discriminate on their own between the seamstresses as to their trustworthiness and requirements.

   Blumfeld soon realized that all these hopes had been in vain and that he could not afford to let them even talk to the seamstresses. From the beginning they had ignored some of the seamstresses, either from fear or dislike; others to whom they felt partial they would sometimes run to meet at the door. To them the assistants would bring whatever the women wanted, pressing it almost secretly into their hands, although the seamstresses were perfectly entitled to receive it, would collect on a bare shelf for these favorites various cuttings, worthless remnants, but also a few still useful odds and ends, waving them blissfully at the women behind Blumfeld's back and in return having sweets popped into their mouths. Blumfeld of course soon put an end to this mischief and the moment the seamstresses arrived he ordered the assistants back into their glass-enclosed cubicles.

   But for a long time they considered this to be a grave injustice, they sulked, willfully broke their nibs, and sometimes, although not daring to raise their heads, even knocked loudly against the glass panes in order to attract the seamstresses' attention to the bad treatment that in their opinion they were suffering at Blumfeld's hands. The wrong they do themselves the assistants cannot see.

   For instance, they almost always arrive late at the office. Blumfeld, their superior, who from his earliest youth has considered it natural to arrive half an hour before the office opens-not from ambition or an exaggerated sense of duty but simply from a certain feeling of decency-often has to wait more than an hour for his assistants. Chewing his breakfast roll he stands behind his desk, looking through the accounts in the seamstresses' little books. Soon he is immersed in his work and thinking of nothing else when suddenly he receives such a shock that his pen continues to tremble in his hand for some while afterwards. One of the assistants has dashed in, looking as though he is about to collapse; he is holding on to something with one hand while the other is pressed against his heaving chest. All this, however, simply means that he is making excuses for being late, excuses so absurd that Blumfeld purposely ignores them, for if he didn't he would have to give the young man a well-deserved thrashing. As it is he just glances at him for a moment, points with outstretched hand at the cubicle, and turns back to his work.

   Now one really might expect the assistant to appreciate his superior's kindness and hurry to his place. No, he doesn't hurry, he dawdles about, he walks on tiptoe, slowly placing one foot in front of the other. Is he trying to ridicule his superior? No. Again it's just that mixture of fear and self-complacency against which one is powerless. How else explain the fact that even today Blumfeld, who has himself arrived unusually late in the office and now after a long wait-he doesn't feel like checking the books-sees, through the clouds of dust raised by the stupid servant with his broom, the two assistants sauntering peacefully along the street? Arm in arm, they appear to be telling one another important things which, however, are sure to have only the remotest and very likely irreverent connections with the office. The nearer they approach the glass door, the slower they walk. One of them seizes the door handle but fails to turn it; they just go on talking, listening, laughing.

   "Hurry out and open the door for our gentlemen!" shouts Blumfeld at the servant, throwing up his hands. But when the assistants come in, Blumfeld no longer feels like quarreling, ignores their greetings, and goes to his desk. He starts doing his accounts, but now and again glances up to see what his assistants are up to. One of them seems to be very tired and rubs his eyes. When hanging up his overcoat he takes the opportunity to lean against the wall. On the street he seemed lively enough, but the proximity of work tires him. The other assistant, however, is eager to work, but only work of a certain kind. For a long time it has been his wish to be allowed to sweep. But this is work to which he is not entitled; sweeping is exclusively the servant's job; in itself Blumfeld would have nothing against the sweeping, let the assistant sweep, he can't make a worse job of it than the servant, but if the assistant wants to sweep then he must come earlier, before the servant begins to sweep, and not spend on it time that is reserved exclusively for office work. But since the young man is totally deaf to any sensible argument, at least the servant-that half-blind old buffer whom the boss would certainly not tolerate in any department but Blumfeld's and who is still alive only by the grace of the boss and God-at least the servant might be sensible and hand the broom for a moment to the young man who, being clumsy, would soon lose his interest and run after the servant with the broom in order to persuade him to go on sweeping.

   It appears, however, that the servant feels especially responsible for the sweeping; one can see how he, the moment the young man approaches him, tries to grasp the broom more firmly with his trembling hands; he even stands still and stops sweeping so as to direct his full attention to the ownership of the broom. The assistant doesn't actually plead in words, for he is afraid of Blumfeld, who is ostensibly doing his accounts; moreover, ordinary speech is useless, since the servant can be made to hear only by excessive shouting. So at first the assistant tugs the servant by the sleeve. The servant knows, of course, what it is about, glowers at the assistant, shakes his head, and pulls the broom nearer up to his chest. Whereupon the assistant folds his hands and pleads. Actually, he has no hope of achieving anything by pleading, but the pleading amuses him and so he pleads. The other assistant follows the goings-on with low laughter and seems to think, heaven knows why, that Blumfeld can't hear him. The pleading makes not the slightest impression on the servant, who turns around and thinks he can safely use the broom again. The assistant, however, has skipped after him on tiptoe and, rubbing his hands together imploringly, now pleads from another side. This turning of the one and skipping of the other is repeated several times. Finally the servant feels cut off from all sides and realizes-something which, had he been slightly less stupid, he might have realized from the beginning- that he will be tired out long before the assistant. So, looking for help elsewhere, he wags his finger at the assistant and points at Blumfeld, suggesting that he will lodge a complaint if the assistant refuses to desist. The assistant realizes that if he is to get the broom at all he'll have to hurry, so he impudently makes a grab for it. An involuntary scream from the other assistant heralds the imminent decision. The servant saves the broom once more by taking a step back and dragging it after him. But now the assistant is up in arms: with open mouth and flashing eyes he leaps forward, the servant tries to escape, but his old legs wobble rather than run, the assistant tugs at the broom and though he doesn't succeed in getting it he nevertheless causes it to drop and in this way it is lost to the servant. Also apparently to the assistant for, the moment the broom falls, all three, the two assistants and the servant, are paralyzed, for now Blumfeld is bound to discover everything. And sure enough Blumfeld at his peephole glances up as though taking in the situation only now. He stares at each one with a stern and searching eye, even the broom on the floor does not escape his notice. Perhaps the silence has lasted too long or perhaps the assistant can no longer suppress his desire to sweep, in any case he bends down-albeit very carefully, as though about to grab an animal rather than a broom-seizes it, passes it over the floor, but, when Blumfeld jumps up and steps out of his cubicle, promptly casts it aside in alarm.

   "Both of you back to work! And not another sound out of you!" shouts Blumfeld, and with an outstretched hand he directs the two assistants back to their desks. They obey at once, but not shamefaced or with lowered heads, rather they squeeze themselves stiffly past Blumfeld, staring him straight in the eye as though trying in this way to stop him from beating them. Yet they might have learned from experience that Blumfeld on principle never beats anyone. But they are over apprehensive, and without any tact keep trying to protect their real or imaginary rights.

They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other--since there are no kings--messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.

The onlookers go rigid when the train goes past.
 

"If he should forever ahsk me."  The ah, released from the sentence, flew off like a ball on the meadow.
 

His gravity is the death of me.  His head in its collar, his hair arranged immovably on his skull, the muscles of his jowels below, tensed in their places-
 

Are the woods still there?  The woods were still almost there.  But hardly had my glance gone ten steps farther when I left off, again caught up in the tedious conversation.
 

In the dark woods, on the sodden ground, I found my way only by the whiteness of his collar.
 

In a dream I asked the dancer Eduardova to dance the Czardas just one time more.  She had a broad streak of shadow or light across the middle of her face between the lower part of her forehead and the cleft of her chin.  Just then someone with the loathsome gestures of an unconscious intriguer approached to tell her the train was leaving immediately.  The manner in which she listened to this announcement made it terribly clear to me that she would not dance again.  "I am a wicked, evil woman, am I not?" she said.  "Oh, no," I said, "not that," and turned away aimlessly.
 

Before that I had questioned her about the many flowers that were stuck into her girdle.  "They are from all the princes of Europe," said she.  I pondered as to what this might mean-that all those fresh flowers stuck in her girdle had been presented to the dancer Eduardova by all the princes of Europe.
 

The dancer Eduardova, a lover of music, travels in the tram, as everywhere else, in the company of two vigorous violinists whom she makes play often.  For there is no known reason why one should not play in the tram if the playing is good, pleasing to the fellow passengers, and costs nothing; i.e., if the hat is not passed round afterwards.  Of course, at first it is a little surprising and for a short while everybody finds it improper.  But at full speed, in a strong breeze and on a silent street, it sounds quite nice.
 

The dancer Eduardova is not as pretty in the open air as on the stage.  Her faded color, her cheekbones which draw her skin so taut that there is scarcely a trace of motion in her face and a real face is no longer possible, the large nose, which rises as though out of a cavity, with which one can take no liberties-such as testing the hardness of the point or taking it gently by the bridge and pulling it back and forth while one says, "But now you come along."  The large figure with the high waist in skirts with too many pleats-whom can that please? -she looks like one of my aunts, an elderly lady; many elderly aunts of many people look like that.  In the open air Eduardova really has nothing to compensate for these disadvantages, moreover, aside from her very good feet; there is actually nothing that would give occasion for enthusiasm, astonishment, or even for respect.  And so I have actually seen Eduardova very often treated with a degree of indifference that even gentlemen, who were otherwise very adroit, very correct, could not conceal, although they naturally made every effort to do so in the presence of so famous a dancer as Eduardova still was.
 

The auricle of my ear felt fresh, rough, cool, succulent as a leaf, to the touch.
 

I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body.

When despair shows itself so definitely, is so tied to its object, so pent up, as in a soldier who covers a retreat and thus lets himself be torn to pieces, then it is not true despair.  True despair overreaches its goal immediately and always, (at this comma it became clear that only the first sentence was correct.)

Do you despair?

Yes?  You despair?

You run away?  You want to hide?
 
 

I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved.
 

Writers speak a stench.
 

The seamstresses in the downpour of rain.
 

Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me, though all were under obligation to do so, it occurs to me to talk to myself again.  Whenever I really questioned myself, there was always a response forthcoming, there was always something in me to catch fire, in this heap of straw that I have been for five months and whose fate, it seems, is to be set afire during the summer and consumed more swiftly than the onlooker can blink his eyes.  If only that would happen to me!  And tenfold ought that to happen to me, for I do not even regret this unhappy time.  My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest-so what is it then?  That I do not know this is probably connected with my inability to write.  And without knowing the reason for it, I believe I understand the latter.  All those things, that is to say, those things which occur to me, occur to me not from the root up but rather only from somewhere about their middle.  Let someone then attempt to seize them, let someone attempt to seize a blade of grass and hold fast to it when it begins to grow only from the middle.

There are some people who can do this, probably, Japanese jugglers, for example, who scramble up a ladder that does not rest on the ground but on the raised soles of someone half lying on the ground, and which does not lean against a wall but just goes up into the air.  I cannot do this-aside from the fact that my ladder does not even have those soles at its disposal.  This, naturally, isn't all, and it isn't such a question that prompts me to speak.  But every day at least one line should be trained at me, as they now train telescopes on comets.  And if then I should appear before that sentence once, lured by that sentence, just as, for instance, I was last Christmas, when I was so far gone that I was barely able to control myself and when I seemed really on the last rung of my ladder, which, however, rested quietly on the ground and against a wall.  But what ground, what a wall!  And yet that ladder did not fall, so strongly did my feet press it against the ground, so strongly did my feet raise it against the wall.

Today, for instance, I acted three pieces of insolence, towards a conductor, towards someone introduced to me-well, there were only two, but they hurt like a stomachache.  On the part of anyone they would have been insolent, how much the more so on my part.  Therefore I went outside myself, fought in the air amid the mist, and, worst of all, no one noticed that I was even insolent to my companions, a piece of insolence as such, and had to be, and had to assume the proper manner for it and the responsibility; but the worst was when one of my acquaintances took this insolence not even as the indication of a personality but rather as a personality itself, called my attention to my insolence and admired it.  Why don't I stay within myself?  To be sure I now say to myself: Look, the world submits to your blows, the conductor and the person introduced to you remained undisturbed; as you left, the latter even said goodbye.  But that means nothing.  You can achieve nothing if you forsake yourself; but what do you miss, aside from this, in your own circle?  To this appeal I answer only: I too would rather submit to blows within the circle than myself deal the blows outside it-but where the devil is this circle?  For a time, indeed, I did see it lying on the earth, as if sprayed in lime, but now it just seems to hover about me, indeed does not even hover.
 
 

Night of comets, 17-18 May.

Together with Blei, his wife and child, from time to time listened to myself outside of myself, it sounded like the whimpering of a young cat.
 

How many days have again gone silently by; today is 28 May.  Have I not even the resolution to take this penholder, this piece of wood, in my hand every day?  I really think I do not.  I row, ride, swim, lie in the sun.  Therefore my calves are good, my thighs not bad, my belly will pass muster, but my chest is very shabby and if my head set low between my shoulders-
 
 

Sunday, 19 July, slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
 

When I think about it, I must say that my education has done me great harm in some respects.  I was not, as a matter of fact, educated in any out-of-the-way place, in a ruin, say, in the mountains-something against which in fact I could not have brought myself to say a word of reproach.  In spite of the risk of all my former teachers not understanding this, I should prefer most of all to have been such a little dweller in the ruins, burnt by the sun which would have shone for me there on the tepid ivy between the remains on every side; even though I might have been weak at first under the pressure of my good qualities, which would have grown tall in me with the might of weeds.
 

When I think about it, I must say that my education has done me great harm in some respects.  This reproach applies to a multitude of people-that is to say, my parents, several relatives, individual visitors to our house, various writers, a certain particular cook who took me to school for a year, a crowd of teachers (whom I must press tightly together in my memory, otherwise one would drop out here and there-but since I have pressed them together so, the whole mass crumbles away bit by bit anyhow), a school inspector, slowly walking passers-by; in short, this reproach twists through society like a dagger.  And no one, I repeat, unfortunately no one, can be sure as to whether the point of the dagger won't suddenly appear sometimes in front, at the back, or from the side.  I do not want to hear this reproach contradicted; since I have already heard too many contradictions, and since most of the contradictions, moreover, have refuted me, I include these contradictions in my reproach and now declare that my education and this refutation have done me great harm in many respects.
 

Often I think it over and then I always have to say that my education has done me great harm in some ways.  This reproach is directed against a multitude of people; indeed, they stand here together and, as in old family photographs, they do not know what to do about each other, it simply does not occur to them to lower their eyes, and out of anticipation they do not dare smile.  Among them are my parents, several relatives, several teachers, a certain particular cook, several girls at dancing school, several visitors to our house in earlier times, several writers, a swimming teacher, a ticket-seller, a school inspector, then some people that I met only once on the street, and others that I just cannot recall and those whom I shall never again recall, and those, finally, whose instruction, being somehow distracted at the time, I did not notice at all; in short, there are so many that one must take care not to name anyone twice.  And I address my reproach to them all, introduce them to one another in this way, but tolerate no contradiction.  For honestly I have borne enough contradictions already, and since most of them have refuted me, all I can do is include these refutations, too, in my reproach, and say that aside from my education these refutations have also done me great harm in some respects.
 
Does one suspect, perhaps, that I was educated in some out-of-the-way place?  No, I was educated in the middle of the city, in the middle of the city.  Not, for example, in a ruin in the mountains or beside the lake.  My reproach had until now covered my parents and their retinue and made them gray; but now they easily push it aside and smile, because I have drawn my hands away from them to my forehead and am thinking: I should have been that little dweller in the ruins, hearkening to the cries of the crows, soared over by their shadows, cooling under the moon, burnt by the sun which would have shone for me from all sides on my bed of ivy, even though I might have been a little weak at first under the pressure of my good qualities, which would have had to grow in me with the might of weeds.
 

Often I think it over and give my thoughts free rein, without interfering, and always, no matter how I turn or twist it, I come to the conclusion that in some respects my education has done me terrible harm.  There inheres in the recognition of this a reproach directed against a multitude of people.  There are my parents and my relatives, a certain particular cook, my teachers, several writers-the love with which they harmed me makes their guilt even greater, for how much [good] they could have [done] me with their love-several families friendly with my family, a swimming teacher, natives of summer resorts, several ladies in the city park of whom this would not at all have been expected, a hairdresser, a beggarwoman, a helmsman, the family doctor, and many more besides; and there would be still more if I could and wanted to name them all; in short, there are so many that one must be careful not to name anyone in the lot twice.

Now one might think that these great numbers would make a reproach lose its firmness, that it would simply have to lose its firmness, because a reproach is not an army general, it just goes straight ahead and does not know how to distribute its forces.  Especially in this case, when it is directed against persons in the past.  Forgotten energy may hold these persons fast in memory, but they would hardly have any ground left under them and even their legs would have already turned to smoke.  And how expect it to be of any use to throw up to people in such a condition the mistakes they once made in earlier times in educating a boy who is as incomprehensible to them now as they to us.  But indeed one cannot even do as much as make them remember those times, no person can compel them to do so; obviously one cannot mention compulsion at all, they can remember nothing, and if you press them, they push you dumbly aside, for most probably they do not even hear the words.  Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.

But if you actually did make them hear and speak, then your ears would only hum with counter-reproaches, for people take the conviction of the venerability of the dead together with them into the beyond and uphold it ten times as much from there.  And if perhaps this opinion is not correct and the dead do stand in especially great awe of the living, they would side with their own living past all the more-after all, it's closest to them-and again our ears would hum.  And if this opinion, too, is not correct and the dead are after all very impartial, even then they could never sanction their being disturbed by unverifiable reproaches.  For such reproaches are unverifiable even as between one person and another.  The existence of past mistakes in education cannot be proved, so how much the less the original responsibility for them.  And now let me see a reproach that in such a situation would not be transformed into a sigh.

That is the reproach that I have to make.  It has a sound core, theory supports it.  That which really has been spoiled in me, however, I forget for the moment or excuse, and don't as yet make any fuss about it.  On the other hand, I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became.  It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding into the world beyond.  But all this only serves a different purpose.  The reproach for having after all spoiled a part of me-for having spoiled a good, beautiful part (in my dreams sometimes it appears to me the way a dead bride appears to others) -this reproach that is forever on the point of becoming a sigh, this reproach should before all else reach there undamaged as an honest reproach, which is what it is, too.  Thus it happens that the great reproach, to which nothing can happen, takes the small one by the hand, if the great one walks, the small one hops, but when the small one gets there, it distinguishes itself-which is what we have always expected-and sounds the trumpet for the drummer.
 

Often I think it over and give my thoughts free rein, without interfering, but I always come to the conclusion that my education has spoiled me more than I can understand.  Externally I am a man like others, for my physical education kept as close to the ordinary as my body itself was ordinary, and even if I am pretty short and a little stout, I still please many, even girls.  There is nothing to be said about that.  Only recently one of them said something very intelligent: "Ah, if I could only see you naked once, then you ought to be really pretty and kissable."  But if I lacked an upper lip here, there an ear, here a rib, there a finger, if I had hairless spots on my head and pockmarks on my face, this would still be no adequate counterpart to my inner imperfection.  This imperfection is not congenital and therefore so much the more painful to bear.  For like everyone, I too have my center of gravity inside me from birth, and this not even the most foolish education could displace.  This good center of gravity I still have, but to a certain extent I no longer have the corresponding body.  And a center of gravity that has no work to do becomes lead, and sticks in the body like a musket ball.  But this imperfection is not earned either, I have suffered its emergence through no fault of my own.  This is why I can find nowhere within myself any repentance, much as I may seek it.  For repentance would be good for me, it cries itself out all by itself, it takes the pain to one side and settles everything alone like an affair of honor; we remain upright because it relieves us.

My imperfection is, as I said, not congenital, not earned, nevertheless I bear it better than others, by means of great labor of the imagination and sought-out expedients, bear much smaller misfortunes-a horrible wife, for instance, poverty, a miserable profession-and am at the same time not at all black in the face with despair, but rather white and red.

I would not be so, if my education had penetrated into me as deeply as it wanted to.  Perhaps my youth was too short for that, in which case, now in my forties, I still rejoice over its shortness with all my heart.  That alone made it possible for me to have enough strength left to become conscious of the deprivations of my youth; further, to suffer through these deprivations; further, to reproach the past in all respects; and, finally, to have left a remnant of strength for myself.  But all these strengths are, again, only a remnant of those that I possessed as a child, which exposed me more than others to the corrupters of youth, yes, a good racing chariot is the first to be pursued and overtaken by dust and wind, and its wheels fly over obstacles so that one might almost believe in love.

What I still am now is revealed most clearly to me by the strength with which the reproaches urge their way out of me.  There were times when I had nothing else inside me except reproaches driven by rage, so that, although physically well, I would hold on to strangers in the street because the reproaches inside me tossed from side to side like water in a basin that was being carried rapidly.

Those times are past.  The reproaches lie around inside me like strange tools that I hardly have the courage to seize and lift any longer.  At the same time the corruption left by my old education seems to begin to affect me again more and more; the passion to remember, perhaps a general characteristic of bachelors of my age, opens my heart again to those people who should be the objects of my reproaches; and an event like that of yesterday, formerly as frequent as eating, is now so rare that I make a note of it.

But even above and beyond that, I myself, I who have just now put down my pen in order to open the window, am perhaps the best aid of my assailants.  For I underestimate myself, and that in itself means an overestimation of others; but even aside from that I overestimate them.  And aside from that I also do harm to myself directly.  If I am overcome by the desire to make reproaches, I look out of the window.  Who could deny that the fishermen sit there in their boats like pupils who have been taken out to the river from school; good, their immobility is often incomprehensible, like that of flies on window-panes.  And over the bridge go the trams, naturally as always with a roaring rude as the wind's, and they sound like spoiled clocks; and the policeman, no doubt, black from head to foot, with the yellow light of the badge on his chest, reminds one of nothing else but hell when now, with thoughts similar to mine, he contemplates a fisherman who suddenly-is he crying, has he seen an apparition, or is his float bobbing?-bends down to the side of his boat.  All this is all right, but in its own time; now only my reproaches are right.

They are directed against a multitude of people; this is really frightening and not only I at the open window but everyone else as well would rather look at the river.  There are my parents and relatives.  That they have done me harm out of love makes their guilt all the greater, for how much good they could have done me out of love, then friendly families with the evil eye, out of their sense of guilt they make themselves heavy and refuse to rise up into memory; then a crowd of nurses, teachers, and writers and among them a certain particular cook; then, their punishment being that they fade into one another, a family doctor, a hairdresser, a helmsman, a beggarwoman, a newspaper vendor, a park watchman, a swimming teacher, then strange ladies in the city park of whom one would not have expected it at all, natives of summer resorts, an insult to the innocence of nature, and many others; but there were still more, if I could and wanted to name them all; in short, there are so many that one must take care not to name any one of them twice.
 
 

I often think it over and give my thoughts free rein without interfering, but I always come to the same conclusion: that my education has spoiled me more than all the people I know and more than I can conceive.  Yet only once in a long while can I say this, for if I am asked immediately after, "Really?  Is that possible?  Are you supposed to believe that?" out of nervous fear I immediately try to restrict it.

Externally I look like everybody else; have legs, body and head, trousers, coat, and hat; they put me through a thorough course of gymnastics and if I have nevertheless remained rather short and weak, that just could not be helped.  Besides, I am agreeable to many people, even young girls, and those to whom I am not agreeable still find me bearable.
 
 

It is reported, and we are inclined to believe it, that when men are in danger they have no consideration even for beautiful strange women; they shove them against walls, shove them with head and hands, knees and elbows, if these women happen only to be in the way of their flight from the burning theater.  At this point our chattering women fall silent, their endless talking reaches a verb and period, their eyebrows rise out of their resting places, the rhythmic movement of their thighs and hips is interrupted; into their mouths, only loosely closed by fear, more air than usual enters and their cheeks seem a little puffed out.
 

"You," I said, and gave him a little shove with my knee (at this sudden utterance some saliva flew from my mouth as an evil omen), "don't fall asleep!"

"I'm not falling asleep," he answered, and shook his head while opening his eyes.  "If I were to fall asleep, how could I guard you then?  And don't I have to do that?  Isn't that why you grabbed hold of me then in front of the church?  Yes, it was a long time ago, as we know it, just leave your watch in your pocket."

"It's really very late," I said.  I had to smile a little and in order to conceal it I looked intently into the house.

"Does it really please you so much?  So you would like to go up, very much like to?  Then just say so, after all, I won't bite you.  Look, if you think that it will be better for you up there than down here, then just go up there at once without thinking of me.  It's my opinion-therefore the opinion of a casual passer-by-that you will soon come down again and that it would then be very good if somehow someone should be standing here whose face you won't even look at, but who'll take you under the arm, strengthen you with wine in a nearby tavern, and then lead you to his room which, miserable as it is, still has a few panes of glass between itself and the night; for the time being you don't have to give a damn about this opinion.  True it is, and I can repeat that in front of anyone you like, that it goes badly with us here below; yes, it's even a dog's life, but there's no help for me now; whether I lie here in the gutter and stow away the rain water or drink champagne with the same lips up there under the chandelier makes no difference to me.  Besides, I don't even have so much as a choice between the two things; indeed, anything that attracts people's attention never happens to me, and how could it happen within the framework of the ceremonies that are necessary for me, within which indeed I can only crawl on, no better than some sort of vermin.  You, to be sure, who know all that may be hidden in yourself, you have courage, at least you think you have.  Try it anyhow, what do you have to lose, after all-often you can already recognize yourself, if you pay attention, in the face of the servant at the door."

"If I just knew definitely that you were being sincere with me, I should have been up there long ago.  But how could I even tell whether you were sincere with me?  You're looking at me now as though I were a little child, that doesn't help me at all, that indeed makes it even worse.  But perhaps you want to make it worse.  At the same time I can no longer stand the air in the street, so I already belong with the company up there.  When I pay attention there's a scratching in my throat, there you have it.  Besides, I cough.  And have you any idea how I'll get along up there?  The foot with which I step into the hall will already be transformed before I can draw the other one after it."

"You are right, I am not sincere with you."

"I want to leave, want to mount the steps, if necessary, by turning somersaults.  From that company I promise myself everything that I lack, the organization of my strength, above all, for which the sort of intensification that is the only possibility for this bachelor on the street is insufficient.  The latter would be satisfied just to maintain his-really-shabby physique, protect his few meals, avoid the influence of other people, in short, to preserve only as much as is possible in the disintegrating world.  But if he loses anything, he seeks to get it back by force, though it be transformed, weakened, yes, even though it be his former property only in seeming (which it is for the most part).  His nature is suicidal, therefore, it has teeth only for his own flesh and flesh only for his own teeth.  For without a center, without a profession, a love, a family, an income; i.e. without holding one's own against the world in the big things-only tentatively, of course-without, therefore, making to a certain extent an imposing impression on it by a great complex of possessions, one cannot protect oneself from losses that momentarily destroy one.  This bachelor with his thin clothes, his art of prayer, his enduring legs, his lodgings that he is afraid of, with his otherwise patched-up existence now brought out again after a long period-this bachelor holds all this together with his two arms and can never pick up any unimportant chance object without losing two others of his own.  The truth, naturally, lies in this, the truth that is nowhere so clearly to be seen.  For whoever appears as a complete citizen, that is, travels over the sea in a ship with foam before him and wake behind, that is, with much effect round about, quite different from the man in the waves on a few planks of wood that even bump against and submerge each other-he, this gentleman and citizen, is in no lesser danger.  For he and his property are not one, but two, and whoever destroys the connection destroys him at the same time.  In this respect we and our acquaintances are indeed unknowable, for we are entirely concealed; I, for instance, am now concealed by my profession, by my imagined or actual sufferings, by literary inclinations, etc., etc.  But it is just I who feel my depth much too often and much too strongly to be able to be even only halfway satisfied.  And this depth I need but feel uninterruptedly for a quarter of an hour and the poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man.

"There is at the moment scarcely any difference between me and the bachelor, only that I can still think of my youth in the village and perhaps, if I want to, perhaps even if my situation alone demands it, can throw myself back there.  The bachelor, however, has nothing before him and therefore nothing behind him.  At the moment there is no difference, but the bachelor has only the moment.  He went astray at that time-which no one can know today, for nothing can be so annihilated as that time-he went astray at that time when he felt his depth lastingly, the way one suddenly notices an ulcer on one's body that until this moment was the least thing on one's body-yes, not even the least, for it appeared not yet to exist and now is more than everything else that we had bodily owned since our birth.  If until now our whole person had been oriented upon the work of our hands, upon that which was seen by our eyes, heard by our ears, upon the steps made by our feet, now we suddenly turn ourselves entirely in the opposite direction, like a weathervane in the mountains.

"Now, instead of having run away at that moment, even in this latter direction, for only running away could have kept him on the tips of his toes and only the tips of his toes could have kept him on the earth, instead of that he lay down, as children now and then lie down in the snow in winter in order to freeze to death.  He and these children, they know of course that it is their fault for having lain down or yielded in some other way, they know that they should not have done it at any cost, but they cannot know that after the transformation that is taking place in them on the fields or in the cities they will forget every former fault and every compulsion and that they will move about in the new element as if it were their first.  But forgetting is not the right word here.  The memory of this man has suffered as little as his imagination.  But they just cannot move mountains; the man stands once and for all outside our people, outside our humanity, he is continually starved, he has only the moment, the everlasting moment of torment which is followed by no glimpse of a moment of recovery, he has only one thing always: his pain; in all the circumference of the world no second thing that could serve as a medicine, he has only as much ground as his two feet take up, only as much of a hold as his two hands encompass, so much the less, therefore, than the trapeze artist in a variety show, who still has a safety net hung up for him below.

"We others, we, indeed, are held in our past and future.  We pass almost all our leisure and how much of our work in letting them bob up and down in the balance.  Whatever advantage the future has in size, the past compensates for in weight, and at their end the two are indeed no longer distinguishable, earliest youth later becomes distinct, as the future is, and the end of the future is really already experienced in all our sighs, and thus becomes the past.  So this circle along whose rim we move almost closes.  Well, this circle indeed belongs to us, but belongs to us only so long as we keep to it, if we move to the side just once, in any chance forgetting of self, in some distraction, some fright, some astonishment, some fatigue, we have already lost it into space, until now we had our noses stuck into the tide of the times, now we step back, former swimmers, present walkers, and are lost.  We are outside the law, no one knows it and yet everyone treats us accordingly."

"You mustn't think of me now.  And how can you want to compare yourself with me?  I have been here in the city for more than twenty years already.  Can you even imagine what that means?  I have spent each season here twenty times"- Here he shook his slack fist over our heads- "The trees have been growing here for twenty years, how small should a person become under them.  And all these nights, you know, in all the houses.  Now you lie against this, now against that wall, so that the window keeps moving around you.  And these mornings, you look out of the window, move the chair away from the bed and sit down to coffee.  And these evenings, you prop up your arm and hold your ear in your hand.  Yes, if only that weren't all!  If only you at least acquired a few new habits such as you can see here in the streets every day-  Now it perhaps seems to you as though I wanted to complain about it?  But no, why complain about it, after all neither the one nor the other is permitted me.  I must just take my walks and that must be sufficient, but in compensation there is no place in all the world where I could not take my walks.  But now it looks again as though I were being vain of it."

"I have it easy, then.  I shouldn't have stopped here in front of the house."

"Therefore don't compare yourself in that with me and don't let me make you doubtful.  You are after all a grown man, are besides, as it seems, fairly forsaken here in the city."

I am indeed close to being so.  Already, what protected me seemed to dissolve here in the city.  I was beautiful in the early days, for this dissolution takes place as an apotheosis, in which everything that holds us to life flies away, but even in flying away illumines us for the last time with its human light.  So I stand before my bachelor and most probably he loves me for it, but without himself really knowing why.  Occasionally his words seem to indicate that he knows himself thoroughly, that he knows whom he has before him and that he may therefore allow himself anything.  No, it is not so, however.  He would rather meet everyone this same way, for he can live only as a hermit or a parasite.  He is a hermit only by compulsion, once this compulsion is overcome by forces unknown to him, at once he is a parasite who behaves insolently whenever he possibly can.  Of course, nothing in the world can save him any longer and so his conduct can make one think of the corpse of a drowned man which, borne to the surface by some current, bumps against a tired swimmer, lays its hands upon him and would like to hold on.  The corpse does not come alive, indeed is not even saved, but it can pull the man down.
 
 

"You," I said, and gave him a little shove with my knee (at this sudden utterance some saliva flew from my mouth as an evil omen), "now you're falling asleep."

"I haven't forgotten you," he said, and shook his head while he was still opening his eyes.

"I wasn't afraid of it either," I said.  I ignored his smile and looked down on the pavement.  "I just wanted to tell you that now, come what may, I am going up.  For, as you know, I have been invited up there, it is already late and the company is waiting for me.  Perhaps some arrangements have been put off until I come.  I don't insist it is so, but it is always possible.  You will now ask me whether I could not perhaps forego the company altogether."

"I won't, for in the first place you are burning to tell me, and in the second place it doesn't interest me at all, down here and up there are all the same to me.  Whether I lie here in the gutter and stow away the rain water or drink champagne up there with the same lips makes no difference to me, not even in the taste, for which, besides, I easily console myself, for neither the one nor the other is permitted me and therefore it is not right for me to compare myself to you.  And you!  How long really have you been in the city?  How long have you been in the city, I ask?"

"Five months.  But still, I know it well enough already.  You, I have given myself no rest.  When I look back like this I don't know at all whether there have been any nights, everything looks to me, can you imagine, like one day without any mornings, afternoons, and evenings, even without any differences in light."
 
 

6 November.  Lecture by a Madame Ch. on Musset.  Jewish women's habit of lip-smacking.  Understand French through all the preliminaries and complications of the anecdote, until, right before the last word, which should live on in the heart on the ruins of the whole anecdote, the French disappears before our eyes, perhaps we have strained ourselves too much up to that point, the people who understand French leave before the end, they have already heard enough, the others haven't yet heard nearly enough, acoustics of the hall which favor the coughing in the boxes more than the words of the lecturer.  Supper at Rachel's, she is reading Racine's Phèdre with Musset, the book lies between them on the table upon which in addition there is everything else imaginable lying.

Consul Claudel, brilliance in his eyes, which his broad face picks up and reflects, he keeps wanting to say goodbye, he succeeds in part too, but not entirely, for when he says goodbye to one, another is standing there who is joined again by the one to whom goodbye has already been said.  Over the lecture platform is a balcony for the orchestra.  All possible sorts of noise disturb.  Waiters from the corridor, guests in their rooms, a piano, a distant string orchestra, hammering, finally a squabble that is irritating because of the difficulty of telling where it is taking place.  In a box a lady with diamonds in her earrings that sparkle almost uninterruptedly.  At the box office young, black-clothed people of a French Circle.  One of them makes a sharp bow in greeting that causes his eyes to sweep across the floor.  At the same time he smiles broadly.  But he does this only before girls, immediately after he looks the men straight in the face with his mouth solemnly pursed, by which he at the same time declares the former greeting to be perhaps a ridiculous but in any case unavoidable ceremony.
 
 

7 November.  Lecture by Wiegler on Hebbel.  Sits on the stage against a set representing a modern room as if his beloved will bound in through a door to begin the play at last.  No, he lectures.  Hunger of Hebbel.  Complicated relationship with Elisa Lensing.  In school he has an old maid for a teacher who smokes, takes snuff, thrashes, and gives the good ones raisins.  He travels everywhere (Heidelberg, Munich, Paris) with no real apparent purpose.  Is at first a servant of a parish bailiff, sleeps in the same bed with the coachman under the steps.
 

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld-drawing by Friedrich Olivier, he is sketching on a slope, how pretty and earnest he is there (a high hat like a flattened clown's cap with a stiff, narrow brim extends over his face, curly, long hair, eyes only for his picture, quiet hands, the board on his knees, one foot has slipped a little on the slope).  But no, that is Friedrich Olivier, drawn by Schnorr.
 
 

10 o'clock, 15 November.  I will not let myself become tired.  I'll jump into my story even though it should cut my face to pieces.
 
 

12 o'clock, 16 November.  I'm reading Iphigenie auf Tauris.  Here, aside from some isolated, plainly faulty passages, the dried-up German language in the mouth of a pure boy is really to be regarded with absolute amazement.  The verse, at the moment of reading, lifts every word up to the heights where it stands in perhaps a thin but penetrating light.
 

27 November.  Bernard Kellermann read aloud.  “Some unpublished things from my pen,” he began.  Apparently a kind person, an almost gray brush of hair, painstakingly close-shaven, a sharp nose, the flesh over his cheekbones often ebbs and flows like a wave.  He is a mediocre writer with good passages (a man goes out into the corridor, coughs, and looks around to see if anyone is there), also an honest man who wants to read what he promised, but the audience wouldn't let him; because of the fright caused by the first story about a hospital for mental disorders, because of the boring manner of the reading, the people, despite the story's cheap suspense, kept leaving one by one with as much zeal as if someone were reading next door.  When, after the first third of the story, he drank a little mineral water, a whole crowd of people left.  He was frightened.  “It is almost finished,” he lied outright.  When he was finished everyone stood up, there was some applause that sounded as though there were one person in the midst of all the people standing up who had remained seated and was clapping by himself.  But Kellermann still wanted to read on, another story, perhaps even several.  But all he could do against the departing tide was to open his mouth.  Finally, after he had taken counsel, he said, “I should still like very much to read a little tale that will take only fifteen minutes. I will pause for five minutes.”  Several still remained, whereupon he read a tale containing passages that were justification for anyone to run out from the farthest point of the hall right through the middle of and over the whole audience.
 
 

15 December.  I simply do not believe the conclusions I have drawn from my present condition, which has already lasted almost a year, my condition is too serious for that.  Indeed, I do not even know whether I am say that it is not a new condition.  My real opinion, however, is that this condition is new-I have had similar ones, but never one like this.  It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones.  Almost every word I write jars against the next, I hear the consonants rub leadenly against each other and the vowels sing an accompaniment like Negroes in a minstrel show.  My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then!  I do not see the word at all, I invent it.  Of course, that wouldn't be the greatest misfortune, only I ought to be able to invent words capable of blowing the odor of corpses in a direction other than straight into mine and the reader's face.  When I sit down at the desk I feel no better than someone who falls and breaks both legs in the middle of the traffic of the Place de l'Opéra.  All the carriages, despite their noise, press silently from all directions in all directions, but that man's pain keeps better order than the police, it closes his eyes and empties the Place and the streets without the carriages having to turn about.  The great commotion hurts him, for he is really an obstruction to traffic, but the emptiness is no less sad, for it unshackles his real pain.
 
 

16 December.  I won't give up the diary again.  I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.
 
 

I would gladly explain the feeling of 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 (Shadow Journey).  “And a book like this hardly exists, no one knows it.”
 

Die Strasse der Verlassenheit (The Street of Abandonment) 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 manner that 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 (Young of 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 the letter 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 m 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 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 it describes, for the true feeling was driven away by my sister)?  In no way.  How do I excuse my not yet having written anything today?  In no way.  Especially as my disposition is not so bad.  I have continually an invocation in my ear: “Were you to come, invisible judgment!”
 

In order that these false passages which refuse to leave the story at any price may at last give me peace, I write down two here:

”His breathing was loud like sighs in a dream, where unhappiness is more easily borne than in our world so that simple breathing can serve as sighs.”
 
“Now I look him over as aloofly as one looks over a small puzzle about which one says to oneself: What does it matter if I cannot get the pellets into their holes, it all belongs to me, after all, the glass, the case, the pellets, and whatever else there is; I can simply stick the whole affair into my pocket.”
 
 

21 December. Curiosities from Taten des grossen Alexander (Deeds of Alexander the Great) by Michail Kusmin:

“Child whose upper half dead, lower alive, child's corpse with moving little red legs.”

“The four kings God and Magog, who were nourished on worms and flies, he drove into riven cliffs and sealed them in until the end of the world with the seal of Solomon.”

“Rivers of stone, where in place of water stones rolled with a great din past the brooks of sand that flow for three days to the south and for three days to the north.”

“Amazons, women with their right breasts burned away, short hair, male footgear.”

“Crocodiles who with their urine burned down trees.”
 

Was at Baum's, so heard nice things.  I, frail as before and always.  To have the feeling of being bound and at the same time the other, that if one were unbound it would be even worse.
 

22 December.  Today I do not even dare to reproach myself. Shouted into this empty day, it would have a disgusting echo.
 

24 December.  I have now examined my desk more closely and have seen that nothing good can be done on it. There is so much lying about, it forms a disorder without proportion and without that compatibility of disordered things which otherwise makes every disorder bearable. Let disorder prevail on the green baize as it will, the same is true of the orchestras of old theatres. But that (25 December) wads of old newspapers, catalogues, picture postcards, letters, all partly torn, partly open, should stick out from the standing-room-the open pigeonhole under the centerpiece-in the shape of a staircase, this unseemly state of affairs spoils everything.   Individual, relatively huge things in the orchestra appear in the greatest possible activity, as though it were permissible for the merchant to audit his books in the theater, the carpenter to hammer, the officer to brandish his sabre, the cleric to speak to the heart, the scholar to the reason, the politician to the sense of citizenship, the lovers not to restrain themselves, etc.  Only the shaving mirror stands erect on my table, in the way it is used for shaving, the clothes-brush lies with its bristles on the cloth, the wallet lies open in case I want to make a payment, from the key ring a key sucks out in readiness and the tie still twines itself partly around the collar I have taken off.  The next higher open pigeonhole, already hemmed in by the small closed drawers, is nothing but a lumber-room, as though the first balcony of the auditorium, really the most visible part of the theatre, were reserved for the most vulgar people, for old men-about-town m whom the dirt gradually moves from the inside to the outside, rude fellows who let their feet hang down over the balcony railing.  Families with so many children that one merely glances at them without being able to count them here set up the filth of poor nurseries (indeed, it is already running into the orchestra), in the dark background sit the incurably sick, fortunately one sees them only when one shines a light in there, etc.  In this pigeonhole lie old papers that I should long ago have thrown away if I had a wastepaper basket, pencils with broken points, an empty matchbox, a paperweight from Karlsbad, a ruler with an edge the unevenness of which would be awful even for a country road, a lot of collar buttons, used razor blades (for these there is no place in the world), tie clips and still another heavy iron paperweight.  In the pigeonhole above-
 

Wretched, wretched, and yet with good intentions.  It is midnight, but since I have slept very well, that is an excuse only to the extent that by day I would have written nothing.   The burning electric light, the silent house, the darkness outside, the last waking moments, they give me the right to write even if it be only the most miserable stuff.  And this right I use hurriedly.  That's the person I am.
 
 

26 December.  Two and a half days I was, though not completely, alone, and already I am, if not transformed, at any rate on the way.  Being alone has a power over me that never fails.  My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper.  A slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more, for disorder is the worst thing in small talents.
 
 

27 December.  My strength no longer suffices for another sentence.  Yes, if it were a question of words, if it were sufficient to set down one word and one could turn away in the calm consciousness of having entirely filled this word with oneself.
 

I slept part of the afternoon away, while I was awake I lay on the sofa, thought about several love experiences of my youth, lingered in a pique over a neglected opportunity (at the time I was lying in bed with a slight cold and my governess read me The Kreutzer Sonata, which enabled her to enjoy my agitation), imagined my vegetarian supper, was satisfied with my digestion, and worried whether my eyesight would last all my life.
 

28 December.  When I have acted like a human being for a few hours, as I did today with Max and later at Baum's, I am already full of conceit before I go to sleep.




Translated by Joseph Kresh.
Copyright Schocken Books Inc.

From Leni's Franz Kafka page
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/diary1910.html

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3 January.   “You,” I said, and then gave him a little shove with my knee, “I want to say good-bye.”  At this sudden utterance some saliva flew from my mouth as an evil omen.

“But you've been considering that for a long time,” he said, stepped away from the wall and stretched.

“No, I haven't been considering it at all.”

“Then what have you been thinking about?”

“For the last time I have been preparing myself a little more for the company.  Try as you may, you won't understand that.  I, an average man from the country, whom at any moment one could exchange for one of those who wait together by the hundreds in railway stations for particular trains.”
 
 

4 January.  Glaube und Heimat (Faith and Homeland) by Schönherr.

The wet fingers of the balconyites beneath me who wipe their eyes.
 
 

6 January.  “You,” I said, aimed, and gave him a little shove with my knee, “but now I'm going.  If you want to see it too, open your eyes.”

“Really, then?” he asked, at the same time looking at me from wide-open eyes with a direct glance that nevertheless was so weak that I could have fended it off with a wave of my arm.  “You're really going, then?  What shall I do?  I cannot keep you.  And if I could, I still wouldn't want to.  By which I simply want to make clear to you your feeling that you could still be held back by me.”  And immediately he assumed that inferior servants' face by means of which they are permitted within an otherwise regulated state to make the children of their masters obedient or afraid.
 
 

7 January.  N.'s sister who is so in love with her fiancé that she maneuvers to speak with each visitor individually, since one can better express and repeat one's love to a single person.
 

As though by magic, since neither external nor internal circumstances—which are now more friendly than they have been for a year—prevented me, I was kept from writing the entire holiday, it is a Sunday. —Several new perceptions of the unfortunate creature that I am have dawned upon me consolingly.
 
 

12 January.  I haven't written down a great deal about myself during these days, partly because of laziness (I now sleep so much and so soundly during the day, I have greater weight while I sleep) but also partly because of the fear of betraying my self-perception.  This fear is justified, for one should permit a self-perception to be established definitively in writing only when it can be done with the greatest completeness, with all the incidental consequences, as well as with entire truthfulness.  For if this does not happen—and in any event I am not capable of it—then what is written down will, in accordance with its own purpose and with the superior power of the established, replace what has been felt only vaguely in such a way that the real feeling will disappear while the worthlessness of what has been noted down will be recognized too late.
 

A few days ago Leonie Frippon, cabaret girl, Stadt Wien.  Hair dressed in a bound-up mass of curls.  Bad girdle, very old dress, but very pretty with tragic gestures, flutterings of the eyelids, thrusts of the long legs, skillful stretching of the arms along the body, significance of the rigid throat during ambiguous passages.  Sang: Button Collection in the Louvre.

Schiller, as drawn by Schadow in 1804 in Berlin, where he had been greatly honored.  One cannot grasp a face more firmly than by this nose.  The partition of the nose is a little pulled down as a result of the habit of pulling on his nose while working.  A friendly, somewhat hollow-cheeked person whom the shaven face has probably made senile.
 
 

14 January.  Novel, Eheleute (Married People), by Beradt.  A lot of bad Jewishness.  A sudden, monotonous, coy appearance of the author; for instance: All were gay, but one was present who was not gay.  Or: Here comes a Mr. Stern (whom we already know to the marrow of his novelistic bones).  In Hamsun too there is something like this, but there it is as natural as the knots in wood, here, however, it drips into the plot like a fashionable medicine on to sugar.  Odd turns of expression are clung to interminably, for instance: He was busy about her hair, busy and again busy.  Individual characters, without being shown in a new light, are brought out well, so well that even faults here and there do not matter.  Minor characters mostly wretched.
 
 

17 January.  Max read me the first act of Abschied von der Jugend (Parting of the Young People).  How can I, as I am today, come up to this?  I should have to look for a year before I found a true emotion in me, and am supposed, in the face of so great a work, in some way to have a right to remain seated in my chair in the coffeehouse late in the evening, plagued by the passing flatulence of a digestion which is bad in spite of everything.
 
 

19 January.  Every day, since I seem to be completely finished—during the last year I did not wake up for more than five minutes at a time—I shall either have to wish myself off the earth or else, without my being able to see even the most moderate hope in it, I shall have to start afresh like a baby.  Externally, this will be easier for me than before.  For in those days I still strove with hardly a suspicion after a description in which every word would be linked to my life, which I would draw to my heart, and which would transport me out of myself.  With what misery (of course, not to be compared with the present) I began!  What a chill pursued me all day long out of what I had written!  How great the danger was and how uninterruptedly it worked, that I did not feel that chill at all, which indeed on the whole did not lessen my misfortune very much.

Once I projected a novel in which two brothers fought each other, one of whom went to America while the other remained in a European prison.  I only now and then began to write a few lines, for it tired me at once.  So once I wrote down something about my prison on a Sunday afternoon when we were visiting my grandparents and had eaten an especially soft kind of bread, spread with butter, that was customary there.  It is of course possible that I did it mostly out of vanity, and by shifting the paper about on the tablecloth, tapping with my pencil, looking around under the lamp, wanted to tempt someone to take what I had written from me, look at it, and admire me.  It was chiefly the corridor of the prison that was described in the few lines, above all its silence and coldness; a sympathetic word was also said about the brother who was left behind, because he was the good brother.  Perhaps I had a momentary feeling of the worthlessness of my description, but before that afternoon I never paid much attention to such feelings when among relatives to whom I was accustomed (my timidity was so great that the accustomed was enough to make me halfway happy), I sat at the round table in the familiar room and could not forget that I was young and called to great things out of this present tranquillity.  An uncle who liked to make fun of people finally took the page that I was holding only weakly, looked at it briefly, handed it back to me, even without laughing, and only said to the others who were following him with their eyes, “The usual stuff,” to me he said nothing.  To be sure, I remained seated and bent as before over the now useless page of mine, but with one thrust I had in fact been banished from society, the judgment of my uncle repeated itself in me with what amounted almost to real significance and even within the feeling of belonging to a family I got an insight into the cold space of our world which I had to warm with a fire that first I wanted to seek out.
 
 

19 February.  When I wanted to get out of bed this morning I simply folded up.  This has a very simple cause, I am completely overworked.  Not by the office but my other work.  The office has an innocent share in it only to the extent that, if I did not have to go there, I could live calmly for my own work and should not have to waste these six hours a day which have tormented me to a degree that you cannot imagine, especially on Friday and Saturday, because I was full of my own things.  In the final analysis, I know, that is just talk, the fault is mine and the office has a right to make the most definite and justified demands on me.  But for me in particular it is a horrible double life from which there is probably no escape but insanity.  I write this in the good light of the morning and would certainly not write it if it were not so true and if I did not love you like a son.

For the rest, I shall certainly be myself again by tomorrow and come to the office where the first thing I hear will be that you want to have me out of your department.
 

The special nature of my inspiration in which I, the most fortunate and unfortunate of men, now go to sleep at 2 a.m. (perhaps, if I can only bear the thought of it, it will remain, for it is loftier than all before), is such that I can do everything, and not only what is directed to a definite piece of work.  When I arbitrarily write a single sentence, for instance, “He looked out of the window,” it already has perfection.
 

“Will you stay here for a long time?” I asked.  At my sudden utterance some saliva dew from my mouth as an evil omen.

“Does it disturb you?  If it disturbs you or perhaps keeps you from going up, I will go away at once, but otherwise I should still like to remain, because I'm tired.”

But finally he had every right to be satisfied too, and to become continually more satisfied the better I knew him.  For he continually knew me even better, apparently, and could certainly stick me, with all my perceptions, in his pocket.  For how otherwise could it be explained that I still remained on the street as though no house but rather a fire were before me.  When one is invited into society, one simply steps into the house, climbs the stairs, and scarcely notices it, so engrossed is one in thought.  Only so does one act correctly towards oneself and towards society.
 
 

20 February.  Mella Mars in the Cabaret Lucerna.  A witty tragedienne who, so to speak, appears on a stage turned wrong side out in the way tragediennes sometimes show themselves behind the scenes.  When she makes her appearance she has a tired, indeed even flat, empty, old face, which constitutes for all famous actors a natural beginning.  She speaks very sharply, her movements are sharp too, beginning with the thumb bent backwards, which instead of bone seems to be made of stiff fiber.  Unusual changeability of her nose through the shifting highlights and hollows of the playing muscles around it.   Despite the eternal flashing of her movements and words she makes her points delicately.
 

Small cities also have small places to stroll about in.
 

The young, clean, well-dressed youths near me on the promenade reminded me of my youth and therefore made an unappetizing impression on me.

Kleist's early letters, twenty-two years old.  Gives up soldiering.  They ask him at home: Well, how are you going to earn a living, for that was something they considered a matter of course.  You have a choice of jurisprudence or political economy.  But then do you have connections at court?  “I denied it at first in some embarrassment, but then declared so much the more proudly that I, even if I had connections, should be ashamed, with my present ideas, to count on them.  They smiled, I felt that I had been too hasty.  One must be wary of expressing such truths.”
 
 

21 February.  My life here is just as if I were quite certain of a second life, in the same way, for example, I got over the pain of my unsuccessful visit to Paris with the thought that I would try to go there again very soon.  With this, the sight of the sharply divided light and shadows on the pavement of the street.
 

For the length of a moment I fell myself clad in steel.

How far from me are—for  example—my arm muscles.
 

Marc Henry - Delvard.  The tragic feeling bred in the audience by the empty hall increases the effect of the serious songs, detracts from that of the merry ones.  Henry does the prologue, while Delvard, behind a curtain that she doesn't know is translucent, fixes her hair.  At poorly attended performances, W., the producer, seems to wear his Assyrian beard—which is otherwise deep black—streaked with gray.  Good to have oneself blown upon by such a temperament, it lasts for twenty-four hours, no, not so long.  Much display of costumes, Breton costumes, the undermost petticoat is the longest, so that one can count the wealth from a distance—Because they want to save an accompanist, Delvard does the accompaniment first, in a very low-cut green dress, and freezes—Parisian street cries.  Newsboys are omitted— Someone speaks to me; before I draw a breath I have been dismissed—Delvard is ridiculous, she has the smile of an old maid, an old maid of the German cabaret.  With a red shawl that she fetches from behind the curtain, she plays revolution.  Poems by Dauthendey in the same tough, unbreakable voice.   She was charming only at the start, when she sat in a feminine way at the piano.  At the song “À Batignolles” I felt Paris in my throat.  Batignolles is supposed to live on its annuities, even its Apaches.  Bruant wrote a song for every section of the city.
 

Oscar M., an older student—if one looked at him closely one was frightened by his eyes—stopped short in the middle of a snowstorm on an empty square one winter afternoon, in his winter clothes with his winter coat, over it a shawl around his neck and a fur cap on his head.  His eyes blinked reflectively.   He was so lost in thought that once he took off his cap and stroked his face with its curly fur.  Finally he seemed to have come to a conclusion and turned with a dancing movement on to his homeward path.

When he opened the door to his parental living room he saw his father, a smooth-shaven man with a heavy, fleshy face, seated at an empty table facing the door.

“At last,” said the latter, when Oscar had barely set foot in the room. “Please stay by the door, I am so furious with you that I don't know what I might do.”

“But father,” said Oscar, and became aware only when he spoke how he had been running.

“Silence,” shouted the father and stood up, blocking a window.  “Silence, I say.  And keep your ‘buts’ to yourself, do you understand?”  At the same time he took the table in both hands and carried it a step nearer to Oscar.  “I simply won't put up with your good-for-nothing existence any longer.  I'm an old man.  I hoped you would be the comfort of my old age, instead you are worse than all my illnesses.  Shame on such a son, who through laziness, extravagance, wickedness, and—why shouldn't I say so to your face—stupidity, drives his old father to his grave!”  Here the father fell silent, but moved his face as though he were still speaking.

“Dear Father,” said Oscar, and cautiously approached the table, “calm yourself, everything will be all right.  Today I have had an idea that will make an industrious person out of me, beyond all your expectations.”

“How is that?” the father asked, and gazed towards a corner of the room.

“Just trust me, I'll explain everything to you at supper.  Inwardly I was always a good son, but the fact that I could not show it outwardly embittered me so, that I preferred to vex you if I couldn't make you happy.  But now let me go for another short walk so that my thoughts may unfold more clearly.”

The father, who, becoming attentive at first, had sat down on the edge of the table, stood up.  “I do not believe that what you just said makes much sense, I consider it only idle talk. But after all you are my son.  Come back early, we will have supper at home and you can tell me all about this matter then.”

“This small confidence is enough for me, I am grateful to you from my heart for it.  But isn't it evident in my very appearance that I am completely occupied with a serious matter?”

“At the moment, no, I can't see a thing,” said the father.  “But that could be my fault too, for I have got out of the habit of looking at you at all.”  With this, as was his custom, he called attention to the passage of time by regularly tapping on the surface of the table.  “The chief thing, however, is that I no longer have any confidence at all in you, Oscar.  If I sometimes yell at you—when you came in I really did yell at you, didn't I?—then I do it not in the hope that it will improve you, I do it only for the sake of your poor, good mother who perhaps doesn't yet feel any immediate sorrow on your account, but is already slowly going to pieces under the strain of keeping off such sorrow for she thinks she can help you in some way by this.  But after all, these are really things which you know very well, and out of consideration for myself alone I should not have mentioned them again if you had not provoked me into it by your promises.”

During these last words the maid entered to look after the fire in the stove.  She had barely left the room when Oscar cried out, “But Father!  I would never have expected that.  If in the past I had had only one little idea, an idea for my dissertation, let's say, which has been lying in my trunk now for ten years and needs ideas like salt, then it is possible, even if not probable, that, as happened today, I would have come running from my walk and said: ‘Father, by good fortune I have such-and-such an idea.’  If with your venerable voice you had then thrown into my face the reproaches you did, my idea would simply have been blown away and I should have had to march off at once with some sort of apology or without one.   Now just the contrary!  Everything you say against me helps my ideas, they do not stop, becoming stronger, they fill my head.  I'll go, because only when I am alone can I bring them into order.”  He gulped his breath in the warm room.

“It may be only a piece of rascality that you have in your head,” said the father with his eyes opened wide in surprise.  “In that case I am ready to believe that it has got hold of you.   But if something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight.  I know you.”

Oscar turned his head as though someone had him by the throat, “Leave me alone now. You are worrying me more than is necessary.  The bare possibility that you can correctly predict my end should really not induce you to disturb me in my reflections.  Perhaps my past gives you the right to do so, but you should not make use of it.”

“There you see best how great your uncertainty must be when it forces you to speak to me so.”

“Nothing forces me,” said Oscar, and his neck twitched.  He also stepped up very close to the table so that one could no longer tell to whom it belonged.  “What I said, I said with respect and even out of love for you, as you will see later, too, for consideration for you and Mama plays the greatest part in my decisions.”

“Then I must thank you right now,” the father said, “as it is indeed very improbable that your mother and I will still be capable of it when the time comes.”

“Please, Father, just let tomorrow sleep on as it deserves.  If you awaken it before its time, then you will have a sleepy day.   But that your son must say this to you!  Besides, I really didn't intend to convince you yet, but only to break the news to you.   And in that, at least, as you yourself must admit, I have succeeded.”

“Now, Oscar, there is only one thing more that really makes me wonder: why haven't you been coming to me often with something like this business of today.  It corresponds so well with your character up to now.  No, really, I am being serious.”

“Yes, wouldn't you have thrashed me, then, instead of listening to me?  I ran home, God knows, in a hurry to give you a little pleasure.  But I can't tell you a thing as long as my plan is not complete.  Then why do you punish me for my good intentions and demand explanations from me that at this time might still injure the execution of my plan?”

“Keep quiet, I don't want to know a thing.  But I have to answer you very quickly because you are retreating towards the door and apparently have something very urgent in hand: You have calmed my first anger with your trick, but now I am even sadder in spirit than before and therefore I beg you—if you insist, I can even fold my hands—at least say nothing to your mother of your ideas.  Be satisfied with me.”

“This can't be my father speaking to me,” cried Oscar, who already had his arm on the door latch.  “Something has happened to you since noon, or I'm meeting a stranger now for the first time in my father's room.  My real father”—Oscar was silent for a moment with his mouth open—“he would certainly have had to embrace me, he would have called my mother.   What is wrong with you, Father?”

“Then you ought to have supper with your real father, I think.   It would be more fun.”

“He will come, you can be sure of that.  In the end he can't stay away.  And my mother must be there.  And Franz, whom I am now going to fetch.  All.”  Thereupon Oscar pressed his shoulder against the door—it opened easily—as though he were trying to break it down.

Having arrived in Franz's home, he bowed to the little landlady and said, “The Herr Engineer is asleep, I know, it doesn't matter.”  And without bothering about the woman, who because she was displeased by the visit walked aimlessly up and down in the anteroom, he opened the glass door—it quivered under his hand as though it had been touched in a sensitive spot—and called, paying no heed to the interior of the room into which he could scarcely see, “Franz, get up.  I need your expert advice.  But I can't stand it here in the room, we must go for a lithe walk, you must also have supper with us.  Quick, then.”

“Gladly,” said the engineer from his leather sofa, “but which first?  Get up, have supper, go for a walk, give advice?  And some of it I probably haven't caught.”

“Most important, Franz, don't joke.  That's the most important thing, I forgot that.”

“I'll do you that favor at once.  But to get up!  I would rather have supper for you twice than get up once.”

“Get up now! No arguments.”  Oscar grabbed the weak man by the front of his coat and sat him up.

“You're mad, you know.  With all due respect.  Have I ever pulled you off a sofa like that?”  He wiped his closed eyes with his two little fingers.

“But Franz,” said Oscar with a grimace.  “Get dressed now.  After all, I'm not a fool, to have waked you without a reason.”

“Just as I wasn't sleeping without a reason, either.  Yesterday I worked the night shift, after that I'm done out of my afternoon nap, also because of you.”

“Why?”

“Oh, well, it annoys me how little consideration you have for me.  It isn't the first time.  Naturally, you are a free student and can do whatever you want.  Not everyone is so fortunate.  So you really must have some consideration, damn it!  Of course, I'm your friend, but they haven't taken my profession away yet because of that.”  This he indicated by shaking his hands up and down, palm to palm.

“But to judge by your present jabbering don't I have to believe that you've had more than your fill of sleep?” said Oscar, who had drawn himself up against a bedpost whence he looked at the engineer as though he now had somewhat more time than before.

“Well, what is it you really want of me?  Or rather, why did you wake me?” the engineer asked, and rubbed his neck hard under his goatee in that more intimate relationship which one has to one's body after sleep.

“What I want of you,” said Oscar softly, and gave the bed a kick with the heel of his foot.  “Very little.  I already told you what I want while I was still in the anteroom: that you get dressed.”

“If you want to point out by that, Oscar, that your news interests me very little, then you are quite right.”

“All the better.  Then the interest my news will kindle in you will burn entirely on its own account, without our friendship adding to it.  The information will be clearer too.  I need clear information, keep that in mind.  But if you are perhaps looking for your collar and tie, they are lying there on the chair.”

“Thanks,” said the engineer, and started to fasten his collar and tie.  “A person can really depend on you after all.”
 
 

26 March.  Theosophical lectures by Dr Rudolf Steiner, Berlin.  Rhetorical effect: Comfortable discussion of the objections of opponents, the listener is astonished at this strong opposition, further development and praise of these objections, the listener becomes worried, complete immersion in these objections as though they were nothing else, the listener now considers any refutation as completely impossible and is more than satisfied with a cursory description of the possibility of a defense.

Continual looking at the palm of the extended hand.—Omission of the period.  In general, the spoken sentence starts off from the speaker with its initial capital letter, curves in its course, as far as it can, out to the audience, and returns with the period to the speaker.  But if the period is omitted then the sentence, no longer held in check, falls upon the listener immediately with full force.

Before that, lecture by Loos and Kraus.
 

In Western European stories, as soon as they even begin to include any groups of Jews, we are now almost used immediately to hunting for and finding under or over the plot the solution to the Jewish question too. In the Jüdinnen, however, no such solution is indicated, indeed not even conjectured, for just those characters who busy themselves with such questions stand farthest from the center of the story at a point where events are already revolving more rapidly, so that we can, to be sure, still observe them closely, but no longer have an opportunity to get from them a calm report of their efforts.  Offhand, we recognize in this a fault in the story, and feel ourselves all the more entitled to such a criticism because today, since Zionism came into being, the possibilities for a solution stand so clearly marshaled about the Jewish problem that the writer would have had to take only a few last steps in order to find the possibility of a solution suitable to his story.

This fault, however, has still another origin.  The Jüdinnen lacks non-Jewish observers, the respectable contrasting persons who in other stories draw out the Jewishness so that it advances towards them in amazement, doubt, envy, fear, and finally, finally is transformed into self-confidence, but in any event can draw itself up to its full height only before them.  That is just what we demand, no other principle for the organization of this Jewish material seems justified to us.  Nor do we appeal to this feeling in this case alone, it is universal in at least one respect.  In the same way, too, the convulsive starting up of a lizard under our feet on a footpath in Italy delights us greatly, again and again we are moved to bow down, but if we see them at a dealer's by hundreds crawling over one another in confusion in the large bottles in which otherwise pickles are usually packed, then we don't know what to do.

Both faults unite into a third. The Jüdinnen can do without that most prominent youth who usually, within his story, attracts the best to himself and leads it nicely along a radius to the borders of the Jewish circle.  It is just this that we will not accept, that the story can do without this youth, here we sense a fault rather than see it.
 
 

28 March.  P. Karlin the artist, his wife, two large, wide upper front teeth that gave a tapering shape to the large, rather flat face, Frau Hofrat B., mother of the composer, in whom old age so brings out her heavy skeleton that she looks like a man, at least when she is seated.

Dr. Steiner is so very much taken up with his absent disciples.  At the lecture the dead press so about him.  Hunger for knowledge?  But do they really need it?  Apparently, though—Sleeps two hours.  Ever since someone once cut off his electric light he has always had a candle with him—He stood very close to Christ—He produced his play in Munich (you can study it all year there and won't understand it), he designed the costumes, composed the music—He instructed a chemist.  Löwy Simon, soap dealer on Quai Moncey, Paris, got the best business advice from him.  He translated his works into French.  The wife of the Hofrat therefore has in her notebook, “How Does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?  At S. Löwy's in Paris.”

In the Vienna lodge there is a theosophist, sixty-five years old, strong as a giant, a great drinker formerly, and a blockhead, who constantly believes and constantly has doubts.  It is supposed to have been very funny when once, during a congress in Budapest, at a dinner on the Blocksberg one moonlit evening, Dr. Steiner unexpectedly joined the company; in fear he hid behind a beer barrel with his beer mug (although Dr. Steiner would not have been angered by it).

He is, perhaps, not the greatest contemporary psychic scholar, but he alone has been assigned the task of uniting theosophy and science.  And that is why he knows everything too.  Once a botanist came to his native village, a great master of the occult.  He enlightened him.

That I would look up Dr. Steiner was interpreted to me by the lady as the beginning of recollection.  The lady's doctor, when the first signs of influenza appeared in her, asked Dr. Steiner for a remedy, prescribed this for the lady, and restored her to health with it immediately.  A French woman said good-bye to him with “Au revoir.” Behind her back he shook his head.  In two months she died.  A similar case in Munich.  A Munich doctor cures people with colors decided upon by Dr. Steiner.  He also sends invalids to the picture gallery with instructions to concentrate for half an hour or longer before a certain painting.

End of the Atlantic world, lemuroid destruction, and now through egoism.  We live in a period of decision.  The efforts of Dr. Steiner will succeed if only the Ahrimanian forces do not get the upper hand.

He eats two liters of emulsion of almonds and fruits that grow in the air.

He communicates with his absent disciples by means of thought-forms which he transmits to them without bothering further about them after they are generated.  But they soon wear out and he must replace them.

Mrs. F.: “I have a poor memory.”  Dr St.: “Eat no eggs.”
 
 

A woman is already waiting (upstairs on the third floor of the Victoria Hotel on Jungmannstrasse) but urges me to go in before her.  We wait.  The secretary arrives and gives us hope.  I catch a glimpse of him down the hall.  Immediately thereafter he comes toward us with arms half spread.  The woman explains that I was there first.  So I walk behind him as he leads me into his room.  His black Prince Albert which on those evenings when he lectures looks polished (not polished but just shining because of its clean blackness) is now in the light of day (3 p.m.) dusty and even spotted, especially on the back and elbows.

In his room I try to show my humility, which I cannot feel, by seeking out a ridiculous place for my hat, I lay it down on a small wooden stand for lacing boots.  Table in the middle, I sit facing the window, he on the left side of the table.  On the table papers with a few drawings which recall those of the lectures dealing with occult physiology.  An issue of the Annalen für Naturphilosophie (Annals of Natural Philosophy) topped a small pile of the books which seemed to be lying about in other places as well.  However, you cannot loook around because he keeps trying to hold you with his glance.  But if for a moment he does not, then you must watch for the return of his glance.  He begins with a few disconnected sentences.  So you are Dr. Kafka?  Have you been interested in theosophy long?

But I push on with my prepared address: I feel that a great part of my being is striving toward theosophy, but at the same time I have the greatest fear of it.  That is to say, I am afraid it will result in a new confusion which would be very bad for me, because even my present unhappiness consists only of confusion.  This confusion is as follows: My happiness, my abilities, and every possibility of being useful in any way have always been in the literary field.  And here I have, to be sure, experienced states (not many) which in my opinion correspond very closely to the clairvoyant states described by you, Herr Doktor, in which I completely dwelt in every idea, but also filled every idea, and in which I not only felt myself at my boundary, but at the boundary of the human in general.  Only the calm of enthusiasm, which is probably characteristic of the clairvoyant, was still lacking in those states, even if not completely.  I conclude this from the fact that I did not write the best of my works in those states.  I cannot now devote myself completely to this literary field, as would be necessary and indeed for various reasons.  Aside from my family relationships, I could not live by literature if only, to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character; besides, I am prevented also by my health and my character from devoting myself to what is, in the most favorable case, an uncertain life.  I have therefore become an official in a social insurance agency.  Now these two professions can never be reconciled with one another and admit a common fortune.  The smallest good fortune in one becomes a great misfortune in the other.  If I have written something good one evening, I am afire the next day in the office and can bring nothing to completion.  This back and forth continually becomes worse.  Outwardly, I fulfil my duties satisfactorily in the office, not my inner duties, however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves.  And to these two never-to-be-reconciled endeavors shall I now add theosophy as a third?  Will it not disturb both the others and itself be disturbed by both?  Will I, at present already so unhappy a person, be able to carry the three to completion?  This is what I have come to ask you, Herr Doktor, for I have a presentiment that if you consider me capable of this, then I can really take it upon myself.

He listened very attentively without apparently looking at me at all, entirely devoted to my words.  He nodded from time to time, which he seems to consider an aid to strict concentration.  At first a quiet head cold disturbed him, his nose ran, he kept working his handkerchief deep into his nose, one finger at each nostril.
 
 

Since in contemporary Western European stories about Jews the reader has become used immediately to hunting for and finding under or over the story the solution to the Jewish question too, and since in the Jüdinnen no such solution is indicated or even conjectured, there-fore it is possible that offhand the reader will recognize in this a fault of the Jüdinnen, and will look on only unwillingly if Jews go about in the light of day without political encouragement from the past or the future.  He must tell himself in regard to this that, especially since the rise of Zionism, the possibilities for a solution stand marshaled so clearly about the Jewish problem that in the end all the writer has to do is turn his body in order to find a definite solution, suitable to the part of the problem under discussion.
 
 

27 May.  Today is your birthday, but I'm not even sending you the usual book, for it would be only pretense; at bottom I am after all not even in a position to give you a book.  I am writing only because it is so necessary for me today to be near you for a moment, even though it be only by means of this card, and I have begun with the complaint only so that you may recognize me at once.
 
 

15 August.  The time which has just gone by and in which I haven't written a word has been so important for me because I have stopped being ashamed of my body in the swimming pools in Prague, Königssaal and Czernoschitz.  How late I make up for my education now, at the age of twenty-eight, a delayed start they would call it at the race track.  And the harm of such a misfortune consists, perhaps, not in the fact that one does not win; this is indeed only the still visible, clear, healthy kernel of the misfortune, progressively dissolving and losing its boundaries, that drives one into the interior of the circle, when after all the circle should be run around.  Aside from that I have also observed a great many other things in myself during this period which was to some extent also happy, and will try to write it down in the next few days.
 

20 August.  I have the unhappy belief that I haven't the time for the least bit of good work, for I really don't have time for a story, time to expand myself in every direction in the world, as I should have to do.  But then I once more believe that my trip will turn out better, that I shall comprehend better if I am relaxed by a little writing, and so try it again.
 

From his appearance I had a suspicion of the exertions which he had taken upon himself for my sake and which now, perhaps only because he was tired, gave him this certainty.  A little more effort might have sufficed and the deception would have succeeded, it succeeded perhaps even now.  Did I defend myself, then?  Indeed, I stood stiff-necked here in front of the house, but—just as stiff-necked—I hesitated to go up.  Was I waiting until the guests came to fetch me with a song?

 
I have been reading about Dickens.  Is it so difficult and can an outsider understand that you experience a story within yourself from its beginning, from the distant point up to the approaching locomotives of steel, coal, and steam, and you don't abandon it even now, but want to be pursued by it and have time for it, therefore are pursued by it and of your own volition run before it wherever it may thrust and wherever you may lure it.
 

I can't understand it and can't believe it.  I live only here and there in a small word in whose vowel (“thrust” above, for instance) I lose my useless head for a moment.  The first and last letters are the beginning and end of my fishlike emotion.
 
 

24 August.  Sitting with acquaintances at a coffeehouse table in the open air and looking at a woman at the next table who has just arrived, breathing heavily beneath her heavy breasts, and who, with a heated, brownish, shining face, sits down.  She leans her head back, a heavy down becomes visible, she turns her eyes up, almost in the way in which she perhaps sometimes looks at her husband, who is now reading an illustrated paper beside her.  If one could only persuade her that one may read at most a newspaper but never a magazine beside one's wife in a coffeehouse.  After a moment she becomes aware of the fullness of her body and moves back from the table a little.
 
 

26 August.  Tomorrow I am supposed to leave for Italy.  Father has been unable to fall asleep these evenings because of excitement, since he has been completely caught up in his worries about the business and in his illness, which they have aggravated.  A wet cloth on his heart, vomiting, suffocation, walking back and forth to the accompaniment of sighs.  My mother in her anxiety finds new solace.  He was always after all so energetic, he got over everything, and now . . .   I say that all the misery over the business could after all last only another three months, then everything will have to be all right.  He walks up and down, sighing and shaking his head.  It is clear that from his point of view his worries will not be taken from his shoulders and will not even be made lighter by us, but even from our point of view they will not, even in our best intentions there is something of the sad conviction that he must provide for his family—By his frequent yawning or his poking into his nose (on the whole not disgusting) Father engenders a slight reassurance as to his condition, which scarcely enters his consciousness, despite the fact that when he is well he usually does not do this.  Ottla confirmed this for me—Poor Mother will go to the landlord tomorrow to beg.
 

It had already become a custom for the four friends, Robert, Samuel, Max, and Franz, to spend their short holidays every summer or autumn on a trip together.  During the rest of the year their friendship consisted mostly of the fact that they all four liked to come together one evening every week, usually at Samuel's, who, as the most well-to-do, had a rather large room, to tell each other various things and to accompany it by drinking a moderate amount of beer.  They were never finished with the telling of things when they separated at midnight; since Robert was secretary of an association, Samuel an employee in a business office, Max a Civil Service official, and Franz an employee in a bank, almost everything that anyone had experienced in his work during the week was not only unknown to the other three and had to be told to them quickly, but it was also incomprehensible without rather lengthy explanations.  But more than anything else the consequence of the difference of these professions was that each was compelled to describe his profession to the others again and again, since the descriptions (they were all only weak people, after all) were not thoroughly understood, and for that very reason and also out of friendship were demanded again and again.

Talk about women, on the other hand, was seldom engaged in, for even if Samuel for his part would have found it to his liking he was still careful not to demand that the conversation adapt itself to his requirements, in this regard the old maid who brought up the beer often appeared to him as an admonition.  But they laughed so much during these evenings that Max said on the way home that this eternal laughing is really to be regretted, because of it one forgets all the serious concerns of which everyone, after all, really has enough.  While one laughs one thinks there is still time enough for seriousness.  That isn't correct, however, for seriousness naturally makes greater demands on a person, and after all it is clear that one is also able to satisfy greater demands in the society of friends than alone.  One should laugh in the office because there is nothing better to be accomplished there.  This opinion was aimed at Robert, who worked hard in the art association he was putting new life into and at the same time observed in the old the most comical things with which he entertained his friends.

As soon as he began, the friends left their places, stood around him or sat down on the table, and laughed so self-obviously, especially Max and Franz, that Samuel carried all the glasses over to a side-table.  If they tired of talking Max sat down at the piano with suddenly renewed strength and played, while Robert and Samuel sat beside him on the bench; Franz, on the other hand, who understood nothing of music, stood alone at the table and looked through Samuel's collection of picture postcards or read the paper.  When the evenings became warmer and the window could be left open, all four would perhaps come to the window and with their hands behind their backs look down into the street without letting themselves be diverted from their conversation by the light traffic outside.  Now and then one returned to the table to take a swallow of beer, or pointed to the curls of two girls who sat downstairs in front of their wine-shop, or to the moon that quietly surprised them, until finally Franz said it was getting cool, they ought to close the window.

In summer they sometimes met in a public garden, sat at a table off to one side where it was darker, drank to one another, and, their heads together in conversation, hardly noticed the distant brass band.  Arm in arm and in step, they then walked home through the park.  The two on the outside twirled their canes or struck at the shrubs, Robert called on them to sing, but then he sang alone, well enough for four, the other one in the middle felt himself made especially comfortable by this.

On one such evening, Franz, drawing his two neighbors more closely to him, said it was really so beautiful to be together that he couldn't understand why they met only once a week when they could certainly arrange without difficulty to see each other, if not often, then at least twice a week.  They all were in favor of it, even the fourth one on the end, who had heard Franz's soft words only indistinctly.  A pleasure of this sort would certainly be worth the slight effort which it would now and then cost one of them.  It seemed to Franz as though he had a hollow voice as punishment for speaking uninvited for all of them.  But he did not stop.  And if sometimes one of them couldn't come, that's his loss and he can be consoled for it the next time, but do the others then have to give each other up, aren't three enough for each other, even two, if it comes to that?  Naturally, naturally, they all said.  Samuel disengaged himself from the end of the line and stood close in front of the three others, because in this way they were closer to each other.  But then it didn't seem so, and he preferred to link up with the others again.

Robert made a proposal.  “Let's meet every week and study Italian.  We are determined to learn Italian, last year already we saw in the little part of Italy where we were that our Italian was only sufficient to ask the way when we got lost, remember, among the vineyard walls of the Campagna.  And even then it managed to do only thanks to the greatest efforts on the part of those we asked.  We'll have to study it if we want to go to Italy again this year.  We simply have to.  And so isn't it best to study together?”

“No,” said Max, “we shall learn nothing together.  I am as certain of that as you, Samuel, are certain that we ought to study together.”

“Am I !” Samuel said.  “We shall certainly learn very well together, I always regret that we weren't together even at school.  Do you realize that we've known each other only two years?”  He bent forward to look at all three.  They had slowed down their steps and let go their arms.

“But we haven't studied anything together yet,” said Franz.  “I like it very well that way, too.  I don't want to learn a thing.  But if we have to learn Italian, then it is better for each one to learn it by himself.”

“I don't understand that,” Samuel said.  “First you want us to meet every week, then you don't want it.”

“Come now,” Max said.  “Franz and I, after all, just don't want our being together to be disturbed by studying, or our studying by being together, nothing else.”

“Yes,” said Franz.

“And indeed there isn't much time,” said Max.  “It is June now and in September we want to leave.”

“That's the very reason why I want us to study together,” Robert said, and stared in surprise at the two who opposed him.  His neck became especially flexible when someone contradicted him.
 

One thinks that one describes him correctly, but it is only approximate and is corrected by the diary.
 

It probably lies in the essence of friendship and follows it like a shadow—one will welcome it, the second regret it, the third not notice it at all—

26 September.  The artist Kubin recommends Regulin as a laxative, a powdered seaweed that swells up in the bowels, shakes them up, is thus effective mechanically in contrast to the unhealthy chemical effect of other laxatives which just tear through the excrement and leave it hanging on the walls of the bowels.

He met Hamsun at Langen.  He (Hamsun) grins mockingly for no reason.  During the conversation, without interrupting it, he put one foot on his neck, took a large pair of scissors from the table, and trimmed the frayed edges of his trousers.  Shabbily dressed, with one or so rather expensive details, his tie, for example.

Stories about an artist's pension in Munich where painters and veterinaries lived (the latters' school was in the neighborhood) and where they acted in such a debauched way that the windows of the house across the way, from which a good view could be had, were rented out.  In order to satisfy these spectators, one of the residents in the pension would sometimes jump up on the window sill in the posture of a monkey and spoon his soup out of the pot.

A manufacturer of fraudulent antiques who got the worn effect by means of buckshot and who said of a table: “Now we must drink coffee on it three more times, then it can be shipped off to the Innsbruck Museum.”

Kubin himself: very strong, but somewhat monotonous facial expression, he describes the most varied things with the same movement of muscles.  Looks different in age, size, and strength according to whether he is sitting, standing, wearing just a suit, or an overcoat.
 
 

27 September.  Yesterday on the Wenzelsplatz met two girls, kept my eye too long on one while it was just the other, as it proved too late, who wore a plain, soft, brown, wrinkled, ample coat, open a little in front, had a delicate throat and delicate nose, her hair was beautiful in a way already forgotten—Old man with loosely hanging trousers on the Belvedere.  He whistles; when I look at him he stops; if I look away he begins again; finally he whistles even when I look at him—The beautiful large button, beautifully set low on the sleeve of a girl's dress.  The dress worn beautifully too, hovering over American boots.  How seldom I succeed in creating something beautiful, and this unnoticed button and its ignorant seamstress succeeded—The woman talking on the way to the Belvedere, whose lively eyes, independent of the words of the moment, contentedly surveyed her story to its end—The powerful half-turn of the neck of a strong girl.
 
 

29 September.  Goethe's diaries.  A person who keeps none is in a false position in the face of a diary.  When for example he reads in Goethe's diaries: “1/11/1797.  All day at home busy with various affairs,” then it seems to him that he himself had never done so little in one day.

Goethe's observations on his travels different from today's because made from a mail-coach, and with the slow changes of the region, develop more simply and can be followed much more easily even by one who does not know those parts of the country.  A calm, so-to-speak pastoral form of thinking sets in.  Since the country offers itself unscathed in its indigenous character to the passengers in a wagon, and since highways too divide the country much more naturally than the railway lines to which they perhaps stand in the same relationship as do rivers to canals, so too the observer need do no violence to the landscape and he can see systematically without great effort.  Therefore there are few observations of the moment, mostly only indoors, where certain people suddenly and hugely bubble up before one's eyes; for instance, Austrian officers in Heidelberg, on the other hand the passage about the men in Wiesenheim is closer to the landscape, “They wear blue coats and white vests ornamented with woven flowers” (quoted from memory).  Much written down about the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, in the middle in larger letters: “Excited ideas.”
 

Cabaret Lucerna.  Lucie König showing photographs with old hairstyles.  Threadbare face.  Sometimes, with her turned-up nose, with her arm held aloft and a turn of all her fingers, she succeeds on something.  A milksop face—Longen (the painter Pittermann), mimic jokes.  A production that is obviously without joy and yet cannot be considered so, for if it were, then it couldn't be performed every evening, particularly since it was so unhappy a thing even at the moment it was created that no satisfactory pattern has resulted which would dispense with frequent appearances of the whole person.  Pretty jump of a clown over a chair into the emptiness of the wings.  The whole thing reminds one of a private production where, because of social necessity, one vigorously applauds a wretched, insignificant performance in order to get something smooth and rounded from the minus of the production by means of the plus of the applause.

The singer Vaschata.  So bad that one loses oneself in his appearance.  But because he is a powerful person he holds the attention of the audience with an animal force of which certainly I am consciously aware.

Grünbaum is effective with what is apparently only the seeming inconsolability of his existence.

Odys, dancer.  Stiff hips.  Real fleshlessness.  Red knees only suit the “Moods of Spring” dance.
 

30 September.  The girl in the adjoining room yesterday.  I lay on the sofa and, on the point of dozing off, heard her voice.  She seemed to me in my mind to be overdressed not only because of the clothes she wore, but also because of the entire room; only her shapely, naked, round, strong, dark shoulders which I had seen in the bath prevailed against her clothes.  For a moment she seemed to me to be steaming and to be filling the whole room with her vapors.  Then she stood up in her ash-gray-colored bodice that stood off from her body so far at the bottom that one could sit down on it and after a fashion ride along.
 

More on Kubin: The habit always of repeating in an approving tone someone else's last words, even if it appears from his own words added on that he by no means agrees with the other person.  Provoking—When you listen to his many stories it is easy to forget his importance.  Suddenly you are reminded of this and become frightened.  Someone said that a place we wanted to go to was dangerous; he said he wouldn't go there, then; I asked him whether he was afraid to, and he answered (moreover, his arm was passed through mine): “Naturally, I am young and have a lot in front of me yet.”

All evening he spoke often and—in my opinion—entirely seriously about my constipation and his.  Towards midnight, however, when I let my hand hang over the edge of the table, he saw part of my arm and cried: “But you are really sick.”  Treated me from then on even more indulgently and later also kept off the others who wanted to talk me into going to the brothel with them.  When we had already said good-bye he called to me again from the distance: “Regulin!”
 

Tucholsky and Szafranski.  The aspirated Berlin dialect in which the voice makes use of intervals consisting of “nich”.  The former, an entirely consistent person of twenty-one.  From the controlled and powerful swing of his walking-stick that gives a youthful lift to his shoulders to the deliberate delight in and contempt for his own literary works.  Wants to be a defense lawyer, sees only a few obstacles and at the same time how they may be overcome: his clear voice that after the manly sound of the first half-hour of talk pretends to become revealingly girlish—doubt of his own capacity to pose, which, however, he hopes to get with more experience of the world—fear, finally, of changing into a melancholic, as he has seen happen in older Berlin Jews of his type, in any event for the time being he sees no sign of this.  He will marry soon.
 

Szafranski, a disciple of Bernhardt's, grimaces while he observes and draws in a way that resembles what is drawn.  Reminds me that I too have a pronounced talent for metamorphosing myself which no one notices.  How often I must have imitated Max.  Yesterday evening, on the way home, if I had observed myself from the outside I should have taken myself for Tucholsky.  The alien being must be in me, then, as distinctly and invisibly as the hidden object in a picture-puzzle, where, too, one would never find anything if one did not know that it is there.  When these metamorphoses take place, I should especially like to believe in a dimming of my own eyes.
 
 

1 October.  The Altneu Synagogue yesterday.  Kol Nidre.   Suppressed murmur of the stock market.  In the entry, boxes with the inscription: “Merciful gifts secretly left assuage the wrath of the bereft.”  Churchly inside.  Three pious, apparently Eastern Jews.  In socks.  Bowed over their prayer books, their prayer shawls drawn over their heads, become as small as they possibly can.  Two are crying, moved only by the holy day.  One of them may only have sore eyes, perhaps, to which he fleetingly applies his still-folded handkerchief, at once to lower his face to the text again.  The words are not really, or chiefly, sung, but behind them arabesque-like melodies are heard that spin out the words as fine as hairs.  The little boy without the slightest conception of it all and without any possibility of understanding, who, with the clamor in his ears, pushes himself among the thronging people and is pushed.  The clerk (apparently) who shakes himself rapidly while he prays, which is to be understood only as an attempt at putting the strongest possible—even if possibly incomprehensible—emphasis on each word, by means of which the voice, which in any case could not attain a large, clear emphasis in the clamor, is spared.  The family of a brothel owner.  I was stirred immeasurably more deeply by Judaism in the Pinkas Synagogue.
 

The day before the day before yesterday.  The one, a Jewish girl with a narrow face—better, that tapers down to a narrow chin, but is loosened by a broad, wavy hairdo.  The three small doors that lead from the inside of the building into the salon.  The guests as though in a police station on the stage, drinks on the table are scarcely touched.

Several girls here dressed like the marionettes for children's theaters that are sold in the Christmas market, i.e. with ruching and gold stuck on and loosely sewn so that one can rip them with one pull and they then fall apart in one's fingers.  The landlady with the pale blonde hair drawn tight over doubtless disgusting pads, with the sharply slanting nose the direction of which stands in some sort of geometric relation to the sagging breasts and the stiffly held belly, complains of headaches which are caused by the fact that today, Saturday, there is so great an uproar and there is nothing in it.
 

More on Kubin: The story about Hamsun is suspect.  One could tell such stories as one's own experiences by the thousand from his works.
 

More on Goethe: “Excited ideas” are only the ideas which the Rhine Falls excite.  One sees this from a letter to Schiller—The isolated momentary observation, “Castanet rhythms of the children in wooden shoes,” made such an impression, is so universally accepted, that it is unthinkable that anyone, even if he had never read this remark, could feel this observation as an original idea.
 
 

2 October.  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.  Then I awaken, all the dreams are gathered about me, but I am careful nor to reflect on them.  Towards 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.

The horrible apparition last night of a blind child, apparently the daughter of my aunt in Leitmeritz who, however, has no daughter but only sons, one of whom once broke his leg.  On the other hand there were resemblances between this child and Dr. M.'s daughter who, as I have recently seen, is in the process of changing from a pretty child into a stout, stiffly dressed little girl.  This blind or weak-sighted child had both eyes covered by a pair of glasses, the left, under a lens held at a certain distance from the eye, was milky-gray and bulbous, the other receded and was covered by a lens lying close against it.  In order that this eyeglass might be set in place with optical correctness it was necessary, instead of the usual support going behind the ears, to make use of a lever, the head of which could be attached to no place but the cheekbone, so that from this lens a little rod descended to the cheek, there disappeared into the pierced flesh and ended on the bone, while another small wire rod came out and went back over the ear.

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 towards 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 suppressed, 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 word helps me, during the night it cuts me to pieces unhindered.  I always think in this connection of Paris, where at the time of the siege and later, until the Commune, the population of the northern and eastern suburbs, up to that time strangers to the Parisians, for a period of months moved through the connecting streets into the center of Paris, dawdling like the hands of a clock.

My consolation is—and with it I now go to bed—that I have not written for so long, that therefore this writing could find no right place within my present circumstances, that nevertheless, with a little fortitude, I'll succeed, at least temporarily.

I was so weak today that I even told my chief the story of the child.  I remembered the glasses in the dream derive from my mother, who in the evening sits next to me and, while playing cards, looks across at me not very pleasantly under her eyeglasses.  Her glasses even have, which I do not remember having noticed before, the right lens nearer the eye than the left.
 
 

3 October.  The same sort of night, but fell asleep with even more difficulty.  While falling asleep a vertically moving pain in my head over the bridge of the nose, as though from a wrinkle too sharply pressed into my forehead.  To make myself as heavy as possible, which I consider good for falling asleep, I had crossed my arms and laid my hands on my shoulders, so that I lay there like a soldier with his pack.  Again it was the power of my dreams, shining forth into wakefulness even before I fall asleep, which did not let me sleep.  In the evening and the morning my consciousness of the creative abilities in me is more than I can encompass.  I feel shaken to the core of my being and can get out of myself whatever I desire.  Calling forth such powers, which are then not permitted to function, reminds me of my relationship with B.  Here toe there are effusions which are not released but must instead spend themselves in being repulsed, but here—this is the difference—it is a matter of more mysterious powers which are of an ultimate significance to me.
 

On the Josefsplatz a large touring car with a family sitting crowded together drove by me.  In the wake of the car, with the smell of petrol, a breath of Paris blew across my face.
 

While dictating a rather long report to the district Chief of Police, towards the end, where a climax was intended, I got stuck and could do nothing but look at K., the typist, who, in her usual way, became especially lively, moved her chair about, coughed, tapped on the table and so called the attention of the whole room to my misfortune.  The sought-for idea now has the additional value that it will make her be quiet, and the more valuable it becomes the more difficult it becomes to find it.  Finally I have the word “stigmatize” and the appropriate sentence, but still hold it all in my mouth with disgust and a sense of shame as though it were raw meat, cut out of me (such effort has it cost me).  Finally I say it, but retain the great fear that everything within me is ready for a poetic work and such a work would be a heavenly enlightenment and a real coming-alive for me, while here, in the office, because of so wretched an official document, I must rob a body capable of such happiness of a piece of its flesh.
 
 

4 October.  I feel restless and vicious.  Yesterday, before falling asleep, I had a flickering, cool little flame up in the left side of my head.  The tensions over my left eye has already settled down and made itself at home.  When I think about it, it seems to me that I couldn't hold out in the office even if they told me that in one month I'd be free.  And most of the time in the office I do what I am supposed to, am quite calm when I can be sure that my boss is satisfied, and do not feel that my condition is dreadful.  By the way, last night I purposely made myself dull, went for a walk, read Dickens, then felt a little better and had lost the strength for sorrow.  I still regarded the sorrow as justified but it seemed to have withdrawn somewhat, I looked at it from a distance and therefore hoped for better sleep.  It was a little deeper too, but not enough, and often interrupted.  I told myself, as consolation, that I had indeed once more repressed the great agitation in me but that I did not wish to succumb at once, as I had always done in the past after such occasions; rather, I wished to remain entirely conscious of the final flutterings of that agitation, which I had never done before.  Perhaps in this way I would find hidden steadfastness in myself.
 

Towards evening, in the dark of my room on the sofa.  Why does one take a rather long time to recognize a color, but then, after the understanding has reached the decisive turning point, quickly become all the more convinced of the color.  If the light from the anteroom and the kitchen shines on the glass door simultaneously from the outside, then greenish—or rather, not to detract from the definiteness of the impression—green light pours down almost the length of the panes.  If the light in the anteroom is turned off and only the kitchen light remains, then the pane nearer the kitchen becomes deep blue, the other whitish blue, so whitish that all the drawings on the frosted glass (stylized poppies, tendrils, various rectangles, and leaves) dissolve.

The lights and shadows thrown on the walls and the ceiling by the electric lights in the street and the bridge down below are distorted, partly spoiled, overlapping, and hard to follow.  When they installed the electric arc-lamps down below and when they furnished this room, there was simply no housewifely consideration given to how my room would look from the sofa at this hour without any lights of its own.

The glare thrown on the ceiling by the tram passing down below moves whitely, wraithlike and with mechanical pauses along the one wall and ceiling, broken in the corner.  The globe stands on the linen chest in the first, fresh, full reflection of the street lights, a greenishly clean light on top, has a highlight on its roundness and gives the impression that the glare is really too strong for it, although the light passes over its smoothness and goes off leaving it rather brownish like a leather apple.  The light from the anteroom throws a large patch of glare on the wall over the bed.  This patch is bounded by a curved line beginning at the head of the bed, gives the illusion that the bed is pressed down, widens the dark bedposts, raises the ceiling over the bed.
 
 

5 October.  Restlessness again for the first time in several days, even now that I am writing.  Rage at my sister who comes into the room and sits down at the table with a book.  Waiting for the next trifling occasion to let this rage explode.   Finally she takes a visiting card from the tray and fiddles around with it between her teeth.  With departing rage, of which only a stinging vapor remains behind in my head, and dawning relief and confidence, I begin to work.
 

Last night Café Savoy.  Yiddish troupe.  Mrs. K., “male impersonator."  In a caftan, short black trousers, white stockings, from the black shirt a thin white woollen waistcoat emerges that is held in front at the throat by a knot and then flares into a wide, loose, long, spreading collar.  On her head, confining her woman's hair but necessary anyhow and worn by her husband as well, a dark, brimless skullcap, over it a large, soft black hat with a turned-up brim.

I ready don't know what sort of person it is that she and her husband represent.  If I wanted to explain them to someone to whom I didn't want to confess my ignorance, I should find that I consider them sextons, employees of the temple, notorious lazybones with whom the community has come to terms, privileged shnorrers for some religious reason, people who, precisely as a result of their being set apart, are very close to the center of the community’s life, know many songs as a result of their useless wandering about and spying, see clearly to the core the relationship of all the members of the community, but as a result of their lack of relatedness to the workaday world don't know what to do with this knowledge, people who are Jews in an especially pure form because they live only in the religion, but live in it without effort, understanding, or distress.  They seem to make a fool of everyone, laugh immediately after the murder of a noble Jew, sell themselves to an apostate, dance with their hands on their earlocks in delight when the unmasked murderer poisons himself and calls upon God, and yet all this only because they are as light as a feather, sink to the ground under the slightest pressure, are sensitive, cry easily with dry faces (they cry themselves out in grimaces), but as soon as the pressure is removed haven't the slightest specific gravity but must bounce right back up in the air.

They must have caused a lot of difficulty in a serious play, such as Der Meshumed (The Apostate) by Lateiner is, for they are forever—large as life and often on tiptoe or with both feet in the air—at the front of the stage and do not unravel but rather cut apart the suspense of the play.  The seriousness of the play spins itself out, however, in words so compact, carefully considered even where possibly improvised, so full of the tension of a unified emotion, that even when the plot is gong along only at the rear of the stage, it always keeps its meaning.  Rather, the two in caftans are suppressed now and then which befits their nature, and despite their extended arms and snapping fingers one sees behind them only the murderer, who, the poison in him, his hand at his really too large collar, is staggering to the door.

The melodies are long, one's body is glad to confide itself to them.  As a result of their long-drawn-out forward movement, the melodies are best expressed by a swaying of the hips, by raising and lowering extended arms in a calm rhythm, by bringing the palms close to the temples and taking care not to touch them.  Suggests the šlapak (a Czech folk dance).

Some songs, the expression “yiddische kinderlach (yiddish children's laughter),” some of this woman's acting (who, on the stage, because she is a Jew, draws us listeners to her because we are Jews, without any longing for or curiosity about Christians) made my cheeks tremble.  The representative of the government, with the exception of a waiter and two maids standing to the left of the stage, perhaps the only Christian in the hall, is a wretched person, afflicted with a facial tic that—especially on the left side of his face, but spreading also far on to the right—contracts and passes from his face with the almost merciful quickness, I mean the haste but also the regularity, of a second hand.  When it reaches the left eye it almost obliterates it.  For this contraction new, small, fresh muscles have developed in the otherwise quite wasted face.

The talmudic melody of minute questions, adjurations, or explanations.  The air moves into a pipe and takes the pipe along, and a great screw, proud in its entirety, humble in its turns, twists from small, distant beginnings in the direction of the one who is questioned.
 
 

6 October.  The two old men up front at the long table near the stage.  One leans both his arms on the table and has only his face (whose false, bloated redness with an irregular, square, matted beard beneath it sadly conceals his old age) turned up to the right towards the stage, while the other, directly opposite the stage, holds his face, which old age has made quite dry, back away from the table on which he leans only with his left arm, holding his right arm bent in the air in order better to enjoy the melody that his fingertips follow and to which the short pipe in his right hand weakly yields.   “Tateleben, come on and sing,” cries the woman now to one, now to the other, at the same time stooping a little and stretching her arms forward encouragingly.

The melodies are made to catch hold of every person who jumps up and they can, without breaking down, encompass all his excitement even if one won't believe they have inspired it.  The two in caftans are particularly in a hurry to meet the singing, as though it were stretching their body according to its most essential needs, and the clapping of the hands during the singing is an obvious sign of the good health of the man in the actor.  The children of the landlord, in a corner of the stage, remain children in their relationship to Mrs. K. and sing along, their mouths, between their pursed lips, full of the melody.

The play: Twenty years ago Seidemann, a rich Jew, obviously having marshalled all his criminal instincts towards that end, had himself baptized, poisoning his wife at the same time, since she would not let herself be forced into baptism.  Since then he has made every effort to forget the jargon that unintentionally echoes in his speech, especially at first so that the audience can notice it and because the approaching events still leave time for it, and continually expresses great disgust for everything Jewish.  He has promised his daughter to the officer, Dragomirow, while she, who is in love with her cousin, young Edelmann, in a big scene, drawing herself up in an unusual stony position, broken only at the waist, declares to her father that she holds fast to Judaism and ends a whole act with contemptuous laughter for the violence done her.  (The Christians in the play are: an honest Polish servant of Seidemann's who later contributes to his unmasking, honest chiefly because Seidemann must be ranged round with contrasts; the officer with whom the play—aside from portraying his guilt—concerns itself little, because as a distinguished Christian he interests no one, just the same as a presiding judge who appears later; and finally a court attendant whose malice does not exceed the requirements of his position and the mirth of the two in caftans, although Max calls him a pogromist.)  Dragomirow, however, for some reason or other can marry only if his notes, which old Edelmann holds, are taken up, but which the latter, although he is about to leave for Palestine and although Seidemann wants to pay them in cash, will not hand over.  The daughter acts haughtily towards the enamored officer and boasts of her Judaism although she has been baptized, the officer does not know what to do, and, his arms slack, his hands loosely clasped at the ends of them, looks beseechingly at the father.  The daughter runs away to Edelmann, she wants to be married to her beloved, even if for the time being in secret, since according to civil law a Jew cannot marry a Christian woman and she obviously cannot convert to Judaism without the consent of her father.  The father arrives, sees that without some stratagem all is lost, and outwardly gives his blessing to this marriage.  They all forgive him, yes, begin to love him as though they had been in the wrong, even old Edelmann, and especially he, although he knows that Seidemann had poisoned his sister.  (These inconsistencies arose perhaps through cutting, but perhaps also because the play is passed on orally most of the time, from one troupe of actors to another.)  Through his reconciliation Seidemann gets hold, first of all, of Dragomirow's notes—“You know,” he says, “I don't want this Dragomirow to speak badly of the Jews”—and Edelmann gives them to him for nothing, then Seidemann calls him to the portière in the background, ostensibly to show him something, and from behind gives him a fatal thrust with a knife through his dressing-gown into his back.  (Between the reconciliation and the murder Seidemann was removed from the stage for a time to think out the plan and buy the knife.)  In this way he intends to bring young Edelmann to the gallows, for it is he whom suspicion must fall upon, and his daughter will become free for Dragomirow.  He runs away, Edelmann lies behind the portière.  The daughter, wearing her bridal veil, enters on the arm of young Edelmann, who has put on his prayer shawl.  The father, they see, unfortunately is not yet there.  Seidemann enters and seems happy at the sight of the bridal couple.
 
 

8 October.  Then a man appears, perhaps Dragomirow himself, perhaps only an actor, but actually a detective unknown to us, and explains that he has to search the house since “your life isn't safe in this house.” Seidemann: “Children, don't worry, this is of course an obvious mistake. Everything will be straightened out.” Edelmann's body is found, young Edelmann torn from his beloved and arrested.  For a whole act Seidemann, with great patience and very well-stressed little asides (Yes, yes, very good.  No, that's wrong.  Yes, now that's better.  Of course, of course), instructs the two in caftans how they are to testify in court concerning the alleged enmity that has existed between old and young Edelmann for years.  They get going with difficulty, there are many misunderstandings (they come forward at an improvised rehearsal of the court scene and declare that Seidemann had commissioned them to represent the affair in the following way), until finally they immerse themselves in that enmity so thoroughly that even Seidemann can no longer restrain them—they now know how the murder itself took place and the man stabs the woman to death with a French bread.  This of course is again more than will be required of them.  But Seidemann is satisfied enough with the two and hopes with their help for a favorable outcome to the trial.  Here, for the spectator who is religious, without its having been expressed because it is self-evident, God himself reaches into the play in place of the author and strikes the villain blind.

In the last act the presiding judge is again the eternal Dragomirow actor (in this, too, contempt is revealed for the Christian, one Jewish actor can play three Christian roles well, and if he plays them badly, it doesn’t matter either) and beside him, as defense attorney, with great display of hair and moustache, recognized at once, Seidemann's daughter.  Of course, you recognize her easily, but in view of Dragomirow you assume for a long time that she is playing a second part until, towards the middle of the act, you realize that she has disguised herself to save her beloved.  The two caftans are each supposed to testify individually, but that is very difficult for them as they have rehearsed it together.  Also, they don't understand the judge's High German, though it is true that the defense attorney helps him out when he gets too involved, as he has to prompt him in other respects as well.  Then comes Seidemann, who had already tried to direct the two in caftans by tugging at their clothes, and by his fluent, decisive speech, by his reasonable bearing, by correctly addressing the presiding judge in contrast to the former witnesses, makes a good impression which is in terrible contrast to what we know of him.  His testimony is pretty much without content, unfortunately he knows very little about the whole case.  But the last witness, the servant, is, though not entirely aware of it, Seidemann's real accuser.  He had seen Seidemann buy the knife, he knows that at the crucial time Seidemann was at Edelmann's, he knows, finally, that Seidemann hates the Jews and especially Edelmann and wanted his notes.  The two in caftans jump up and are happy to be able to confirm all this.  Seidemann defends himself as a somewhat confused man of honor.  Then the discussion turns to his daughter.  Where is she?  At home, naturally, and she’ll bear him out.  No, that she won't do, insists the defense attorney, and he will prove it, turns to the wall, takes off the wig, and turns toward the horrified Seidemann in the person of his daughter.  The clean whiteness of her upper lip looks threatening when she takes off the moustache.  Seidemann has taken poison in order to escape the justice of this world, confesses his misdeeds, but hardly any longer to the people, rather to the Jewish God whom he now professes.  Meanwhile the piano player has struck up a tune, the two in caftans feel moved by it and must start dancing.  In the background stands the reunited bridal pair, they sing the melody, especially the serious bridegroom, in the customary old way.
 

First appearance of the two in caftans. They enter Seidemann's empty room with collection boxes for the temple, look around, feel ill at ease, look at each other.  Feel along the doorposts with their hand, don't find a mezuzah (small roll of parchment with Biblical verses encased in a small wooden or metal case and put on the doorpost of a Jewish house).  None on the other doors, either.  They don't want to believe it and jump up beside doors as if they were catching flies, jumping up and failing back, slapping the very tops of the doorposts again and again.  Unfortunately all in vain.  Up to now they haven't spoken a word.
 

Remembrance between Mrs. K and last year's Mrs. W.  Mrs. K. has a personality perhaps a trifle weaker and more monotonous, to make up for it she is prettier and more respectable.  Mrs. W.’s standing joke was to bump her fellow players with her large behind.  Besides, she had a worse singer with her and was quite new to us.
 

“Male impersonator” is really a false title.  By virtue of the fact that she is stuck into a caftan, her body is entirely forgotten.  She only reminds one of her body by shrugging her shoulder and twisting her back as though she were being bitten by fleas.  The sleeves, though short, have to be pulled up a little every minute; this the spectator enjoys and even watches for it to happen, anticipating the great relief it will be for this woman who has so much to sing and to explain in the talmudic manner.

Would like to see a large Yiddish theater as the production may after all suffer because of the small cast and inadequate rehearsal.  Also, would like to know Yiddish literature, which is obviously characterized by an uninterrupted tradition of national struggle that determines every work.  A tradition, therefore, that pervades no other literature, not even that of the most oppressed people.  It may be that other peoples in times of war make a success out of a pugnacious national literature, and that other works, standing at a greater remove, acquire from the enthusiasm of the audience a national character too, as is the case with The Bartered Bride, but here there appear to be only works of the first type, and indeed always.
 

The appearance of the simple stage that awaits the actors as silently as we.  Since, with its three walls, the chair, and the table, it will have to suffice for all the scenes, we expect nothing from it, rather with all our energy await the actors and are therefore unresistingly attracted by the singing from behind the blank walls that introduces the performance.
 
 

9 October.  If I reach my fortieth year, then I'll probably marry an old maid with protruding upper teeth left a little exposed by the upper lip.  The upper front teeth of Miss K., who was in Paris and London, slant towards each other a little like legs which are quickly crossed at the knees.  I'll hardly reach my fortieth birthday, however; the frequent tension over the left half of my skull, for example, speaks against it—it  feels like an inner leprosy which, when I only observe it and disregard its unpleasantness, makes the same impression on me as the skull cross-section in textbooks, or as an almost painless dissection of the living body where the knife—a little coolingly, carefully, often stopping and going back, sometimes lying still—splits still thinner the paper-thin integument close to the functioning parts of the brain.
 

Last night's dream which in the morning I myself didn't even consider beautiful except for a small comic scene consisting of two counter-remarks which resulted in that tremendous dream satisfaction but which I have forgotten.

I walked—whether Max was there right at the start I don't know—through a long row of houses at the level of the first or second floor, just as one walks through a tunnel from one carriage to another.  I walked very quickly, perhaps also because the house was so rickety that for that reason alone one hurried.  The doors between the houses I did not notice at all, it was just a gigantic row of rooms, and yet not only the differences between the individual apartments but also between the houses were recognizable.  They were perhaps all rooms with beds through which I went.  One typical bed has remained in my memory.  It stood at the side to the left of me against the dark or dirty wall, which sloped like an attic's, perhaps had a low pile of bedclothes, and its cover, really only a coarse sheet crumpled by the feet of the person who had slept here, hung down in a point.  I felt abashed to walk through people's rooms at a time when many of them were still lying in their beds, therefore took long strides on tiptoes, by which I somehow or other hoped to show that I was passing through only by compulsion, was as considerate of everything as was at all possible, walked softly, and that my passing through did not, as it were, count at all.  Therefore, too, I never turned my head in any one room and saw only either what lay on the right towards the street or on the left towards the back wall.

The row of houses was often interrupted by brothels; and although I was making this journey seemingly because of them, I walked through them especially quickly so that I remember nothing except that they were there.  However, the last room of all the houses was again a brothel, and here I remained.  The wall across from the door through which I entered, therefore the last wall of the row of houses, was either of glass or merely broken through, and if I had walked on I should have fallen.  It is even more probable that it was broken through, for the whores lay towards the edge of the floor.  Two I saw clearly on the ground, the head of one hung down a little over the edge into the open air.  To the left was a solid wall, on the other hand the wall on the right was not finished, you could see down into the court, even if not to the bottom of it, and a ramshackle gray staircase led down in several flights.  To judge by the light in the room the ceiling was like that in the other rooms.

I occupied myself chiefly with the whore whose head was hanging down, Max with the one lying beside her on the left.  I fingered her legs and then for a long time pressed the upper parts of her thighs in regular rhythm.  My pleasure in this was so great that I wondered that for this entertainment, which was after all really the most beautiful kind, one still had to pay nothing.  I was convinced that I (and I alone) deceived the world.  Then the whore, without moving her legs, raised the upper part of her body and turned her back to me, which to my horror was covered with large sealing-wax-red circles with paling edges, and red splashes scattered among them.  I now noticed that her whole body was full of them, that I was pressing my thumb to her thighs in just such spots, and that there were these little red particles—as though from a crumbled seal—on my fingers too.

I stepped back among a number of men who seemed to be waiting against the wall near the opening of the stairway, on which there was a small amount of traffic.  They were waiting in the way men in the country stand together in the market place on Sunday morning.  Therefore it was Sunday too.  It was here that the comic scene took place, when a man I and Max had reason to be afraid of went away, then came up the stairs, then stepped up to me, and while I and Max anxiously expected some terrible threat from him, put a ridiculously simple-minded question to me.  Then I stood there and with apprehension watched Max, who, without fear in this place, was sitting on the ground somewhere to the left eating a thick potato soup out of which the potatoes peeped like large balls, especially one.  He pushed them down into the soup with his spoon, perhaps with two spoons, or just turned them.
 
 

10 October.  Wrote a sophistic article for the Tetschen-Bodenbacher Zeitung for and against my insurance institute.
 

Yesterday evening on the Graben.  Three actresses coming towards me from a rehearsal.  It is so difficult quickly to become familiar with the beauty of three women when in addition you also want to look at two actors who are approaching behind them with that too swinging actors' walk.  The two—of whom the one on the left, with his fat, youthful face and open overcoat wrapped around his strong body, is representative enough of both—overtake the ladies, the one on the left on the pavement, the one on the right down in the roadway.  The one on the left grasps his hat high up near the top, seizes it with all five fingers, raises it high and calls (the one on the right recollects himself only now): Good-bye!  Good night!  But while this overtaking and greeting has separated the gentlemen, the ladies addressed, as though led by the one nearest the roadway who seems to be the weakest and tallest but also the youngest and most beautiful, continue on their way quite undisturbed, with an easy greeting which scarcely interrupts their harmonious conversation.  The whole thing seemed to me at the moment to be strong proof that theatrical affairs here are orderly and well conducted.
 

Day before yesterday among the Jews in Café Savoy.  Die Sedernacht (The Seder Night) by Feimann.  At times (at the moment the consciousness of this pierced me) we did not interfere in the plot only because we were too moved, not because we were mere spectators.
 
 

12 October.  Yesterday at Max's wrote in the Paris diary.  In the half-darkness of Rittergasse, in her autumn outfit, fat, warm R. whom we have known only in her summer blouse and thin, blue summer jacket, in which a girl with a not entirely faultless appearance is, after all, worse than naked.  Then you really were able to see the large nose in her bloodless face and the cheeks to which you cold have pressed your hands for a long time before any redness appeared, the heavy blonde down which heaped itself up on the cheek and upper lip, the railway dust which had strayed between the nose and cheek, and the sickly whiteness where her blouse was cut away.  Today, however, we ran after her respectfully, and when I had to make my farewells at the entrance to a house that went through to Ferdinandstrasse (I was unshaven and otherwise shabby in appearance), I afterward felt a few slight impulses of affection for her.  And when I considered why, I had to keep telling myself: because she was so warmly dressed.
 
 

13 October.  Inaesthetic transition from the taut skin of my boss's bald spot to the delicate wrinkles of his forehead.  An obvious, very easily imitated fault of nature, bank notes should not be made so.

I didn't consider the description of R. good, but nevertheless it must have been better than I thought, or my impression of R. the day before yesterday must have been so incomplete that the description was adequate to it or even surpassed it.  For when I went home last night the description came to my mind for a moment, imperceptibly replaced the original impression and I felt that I had seen R. only yesterday, and indeed without Max, so that I prepared myself to tell him about her just as I have described her here for myself.
 

Yesterday evening on Schützen Island, did not find my colleagues and left immediately.  I made some stir in my short jacket with my crushed soft hat in my hand, because it was cold out, but too hot inside from the breath of the beer drinkers, smokers, and the wind-instrument players of the military band.  This band was not very high up, could not be, either, because the hall is pretty low, and filled the one end of the hall to the side walls. The mass of musicians was crowded into this end of the room as though cut to size.  This crowded impression was then lost a little in the hall, as the places near the band were pretty empty and the hall filled up only towards the middle.
 

Talkativeness of Dr. K.  Walked around with him for two hours behind the Franz-Josef railway station, begged him from time to time to let me leave, had clasped my hands in impatience and listened as little as possible.  It seemed to me that a person who is good at his job, when he has got himself involved in talking shop, must become irresponsible; he becomes conscious of his proficiency, there are associations with every story, and indeed several, he surveys them all because he has experienced them, must in haste and out of consideration for me suppress many, some I also destroy by asking questions but remind him by these of others, show him thereby that he is also in control deep into my own thinking, he himself plays in most of the stories a handsome role which he just touches upon, because of which the suppressed seems even more significant to him, now he is however so certain of my admiration that he can also complain, for even in his misfortune, his trouble, his doubt, he is admirable, his opponents are also capable people and worth talking about; in an attorney's office which had four clerks and two chiefs there was a controversy in which he alone opposed this office, for weeks the daily subject of discussion of the six lawyers.  Their best speaker, a sharp lawyer, opposed him—to this is attached the Supreme Court whose decisions are allegedly bad, contradictory, in a tone of farewell I say a word of defense for this court, now he produces proofs that the court cannot be defended, and once more we must walk up and down the street, I am immediately surprised at the badness of this court, whereupon he explains to me why it must be so, the court is overburdened, why and how, well, I must leave, but now the Court of Appeals is better and the Court of Administration much better still, and why and how, finally I can't be detained any longer, whereupon he brings in my own affairs (setting up the factory), which is what I come to him about and which we had already fully discussed, he unconsciously hopes in this way to trap me and to be able to tempt me back to his stories again.  I say something, but while speaking I hold out my hand in farewell and so escape.

He is a very good storyteller, by the way, in his stories the detailed expansiveness of the brief is mixed with the vivacious speech that one often finds in such fat, black Jews, healthy for the present, of medium height, excited by continuous smoking of cigarettes.  Legal expressions give the speech steadiness, paragraphs are numbered to a high count that seems to banish them into a distance.  Each story is developed from its very beginning, speech and counter-speech are produced and, as it were, shuffled up by personal asides, matters that are beside the point, that no one would think of, are first mentioned, then called beside the point and set aside (“A man, his name is beside the point”), the listener is personally drawn in, questioned, while alongside the plot of the story thickens, sometimes, preliminary to a story which cannot interest him at all, the listener is even questioned, uselessly of course, in order to establish some sort of provisional connection, the listener's interjected remarks are not immediately introduced, which would be annoying (Kubin), but are shortly put in the right place as the story goes on, so that the listener is flattered and drawn into the story and given a special right to be a listener.
 
 

14 October.  Yesterday evening at the Savoy.  Sulamith by A. Goldfaden.  Really an opera, but every sung play is called an operetta, even this trifle seems to me to point to an artistic endeavor that is stubborn, hasty, and passionate for the wrong reasons, that cuts across European art in a direction that is partly arbitrary.

The story: A hero saves a girl who is lost in the desert (“I pray thee, great, almighty God”) and because of the torments of thirst has thrown herself into a well.  They swear to be true to each other (“My dear one, my loved one, my diamond found in the desert”) by calling upon the well and a red-eyed desert cat in witness.  The girl, Sulamith (Mrs. Ts.), is taken back to Bethlehem to her father, Manoach (Ts.), by Cingitang, the savage servant of Absalom (P.), while Absalom (K.) goes on another journey to Jerusalem; there, however, he falls in love with Abigail, a rich girl of Jerusalem (Mrs. K.), forgets Sulamith, and marries.  Sulamith waits for her lover at home in Bethlehem.  “Many people go to Yerusholaim and arrive beshulim.”   “He, the noble one, will be untrue to me!”  By means of despairing outbursts she gains a confidence prepared for anything and determines to feign insanity in order not to have to marry and to be able to wait.  “My will is of iron, my heart I make a fortress.”  And even in the insanity which she now feigns for years she enjoys sadly and aloud all her memories of her lover, for her insanity is concerned only with the desert, the well, and the cat.  By means of her insanity she immediately repels her three suitors with whom Manoach was able to get along in peace only by organizing a lottery: Joel Gedoni (U.), “I am the most powerful Jewish hero,” Avidanov, the landowner (R.P.), and the potbellied priest, Nathan (Löwy), who feels superior to everyone, “Give her to me, I die for her.”  Absalom suffered a misfortune, one of his children was bitten to death by a desert cat, the other falls into a well.  He remembers his guilt, confesses all to Abigail.  “Restrain your crying.”  “Cease with your words to split my heart.”  “Alas, it is all emes that I speak.”  Some ideas seem on the point of taking shape around the two and then disappear.  Is Absalom to return to Sulamith and desert Abigail?  Sulamith too deserves rachmones (compassion).  Finally Abigail releases him.  In Bethlehem Manoach laments over his daughter: “Alas, oh, the years of my old age.”  Absalom cures her with his voice.  “The rest, Father, I will tell thee later.”  Abigail collapses there in the Jerusalem vineyard, Absalom has as justification only his heroism.

At the end of the performance we still expect the actor Löwy, whom I would admire in the dust.  He is supposed, as is customary, “to announce”: “Dear guests, I thank you in all our names for your visit and cordially invite you to tomorrow's performance, when the world-famous masterpiece — by — will be produced.  Until we meet again!”  Exit with a flourish of his hat.  Instead, we see the curtain first held tightly closed, then tentatively drawn apart a little.  This goes on quite a while.  Finally it is drawn wide open, in the middle a button holds it together, behind it we see Löwy walking towards the footlights and, his face turned to us, the audience, defending himself with his hands against someone who is attacking him from behind, until suddenly the whole curtain with its wire supports on top is pulled down by Löwy who is looking for something to hold on to.  Before our eyes P., who had played the savage and who is still bowed down as if the curtain were drawn, grabs Löwy (who is on his knees) by his head and pushes him sideways off the stage.  Everyone runs together into the wing of the theater.  “Close the curtain!” they shout on the almost completely exposed stage on which Mrs. Ts., with her pale Sulamith face, is standing pitiably.  Little waiters on tables and chairs put the curtain somewhat in order, the landlord tries to calm the government representative who, however, wants only to get away and is being held back by this attempt to calm him, behind the curtain one hears Mrs. Ts.: “And we who claim to preach morals to the public from the stage....”  The association of Jewish office workers, Zukunft, which took over the next night under its own direction and before tonight's performance had held a regular membership meeting, decides because of this occurrence to call a special meeting within half an hour, a Czech member of the association prophesies complete ruin for the actors as a result of their scandalous behavior.  Then suddenly one sees Löwy, who seemed to have dis-appeared, pushed towards a door by the headwaiter, R., with his hands, perhaps also with his knees.  He is simply being thrown out.  This headwaiter, who before and later stands before every guest, before us as well, like a dog, with a doglike muzzle which sags over a large mouth closed by humble wrinkles on the side, has his—
 

    -
16 October.  Strenuous Sunday yesterday.  The whole staff gave Father notice.  By soft words, cordiality, effective use of his illness, his size and former strength, his experience, his cleverness, he wins almost all of them back in group and individual discussions.  An important clerk, F., wants time until Monday to think it over because he has given his word to our manager who is stepping out and would like to take the whole staff along into his newly-to-be-established business.  On Sunday the bookkeeper writes he cannot remain after all, R. will not release him from his promise.

I go to see him in Zizkov.  His young wife with round cheeks, longish face, and a small, thick nose of the sort that never spoils Czech faces.  A too-long, very loose, flowered and spotted housecoat.  It seems especially long and loose because she moves especially hurriedly in order to greet me, to place the album properly on the table in a final straightening of the room and to disappear in order to have her husband called.  The husband enters with similar hurried movements, perhaps imitated by his very dependent wife, the upper part of his body bent forward and his arms swinging rapidly like pendulums while the lower part is noticeably behind it.  Impression of a man you have known for ten years, seen often, regarded little, with whom you suddenly come into a closer relationship.  The less success I have with my Czech arguments (indeed, he already had a signed contract with R., he was just so embarrassed by my father Saturday evening that he had not mentioned the contract), the more catlike his face becomes.  Towards the end I act a little with a very pleasurable feeling, so I look silently around the room with my face drawn rather long and my eyes narrowed, as though I were pursuing something significant into the ineffable.  Am, however, not unhappy when I see that it has little effect and that I, instead of being spoken to by him in a new tone, must begin afresh to persuade him.  The conversation was begun with the fact that on the other side of the street another T. lives, it was concluded at the door with his surprise at my thin clothes in the cold weather.  Indicative of my first hopes and final failure.  I made him promise, however, to come to see Father in the afternoon.  My arguments in places too abstract and formal.  Mistake not to have called his wife into the room.

Afternoon to Radotin to keep the clerk.  Miss, as a result, the meeting with Löwy of whom I think incessantly.  In the carriage: pointed nose of the old woman with still almost youthful, taut skin.  Does youth therefore end at the tip of the nose and death begin there?  The swallowing of the passengers that glides down their throats, the widening of their mouths as a sign that in their judgment the railway journey, the combination of the other passengers, their seating arrangements, the temperature in the carriage, even the copy of Pan that I hold on my knees and that several glance at from time to time (as it is after all something that they would not have expected in the compartment), are harmless, natural, unsuspicious, while at the same time they sill believe that everything could have been much worse.

Up and down in Mr. H. 's yard, a dog puts his paw on the tip of my foot which I shake.  Children, chickens, here and there adults.  A children's nurse, occasionally leaning on the railing of the Pawlatsche or hiding behind a door, has her eye on me.  Under her eyes I do not know just what I am, whether indifferent, embarrassed, young or old, impudent or devoted, holding my hands behind or before me, animal lover or man of affairs, friend of H. or supplicant, superior to those gathered at the meeting who sometimes go from the tavern to the pissoir and back in an unbroken line, or ridiculous to them because of my thin clothes, Jew or Christian, etc.  The walking around, wiping my nose, occasional reading of Pan, timid avoiding of the Pawlatsche with my eyes only suddenly to see that it is empty, watching the poultry, being greeted by a man, seeing through the tavern window the flat faces of the men set crookedly close together and turned towards a speaker, everything contributes to it.  Mr. H. leaves the meeting from time to time and I ask him to use his influence for us with the clerk whom he had brought into our office.  Black-brown beard growing around cheeks and chin, black eyes, between eyes and beard the dark shadings of his cheeks.  He is a friend of my father's, I knew him even as a child and the idea that he was a coffee-roaster always made him even darker and more manly for me than he was.
 
 

17 October.  I finish nothing because I have no time and it presses so within me.  If the whole day were free and this morning restlessness could mount within me until midday and wear itself out by evening, then I could sleep.  This way, however, there is left for this restlessness only an evening twilight hour at most, it gets somewhat stronger, is then suppressed, and uselessly and injuriously undermines the night for me.  Shall I be able to bear it long?  And is there any purpose in bearing it, shall I, then, be given time?
 

Napoleon is reminiscing at the royal table in Erfurt: When I was still a mere lieutenant in the Fifth Regiment . . . (the royal highnesses look at each other in embarrassment, Napoleon notices it and corrects himself), when I still had the honor to be a mere lieutenant . . .  When I think of this anecdote the arteries in my neck swell with the pride that I can easily feel with him and that vicariously thrills through me.
 

Again in Radotin: freezing, I then walked around alone in the garden, then recognized in an open window the children's nurse who had walked to this side of the house with me.
 
 

20 October.  The 18th at Max's; wrote about Paris.  Wrote badly, without really arriving at that freedom of true description which releases one's foot from the experienced.  I was also dull after the great exaltation of the previous day that had ended with Löwy's lecture.  During the day I was not yet in any unusual frame of mind, went with Max to meet his mother who was arriving from Gablonz, was in the coffeehouse with them and then at Max's, who played a gypsy dance from La Jolie Fille de Perth for me.  A dance in which for pages only the hips rock gently in a monotonous ticking and the face has a slow, cordial expression.  Until finally, towards the end, briefly and late, the inner wildness that has been tempted outward arrives, shakes the body, overpowers it, compresses the melody so that it beats into the heights and depths (unusually bitter, dull tones are heard in it) and then comes to an unheeded close.  At the beginning, and unmistakable through it all, a strong feeling of closeness to gypsydom, perhaps because a people so wild in the dance shows its tranquil side only to a friend.  Impression of great truth of the first dance.  Then leafed through Aussprüche Napoleons (Napoleon's Remarks).  How easily you become for the moment a little part of your own tremendous notion of Napoleon!  Then, already boiling, I went home, I couldn't withstand one of my ideas, disordered, pregnant, disheveled, swollen, amidst my furniture which was rolling about me; overwhelmed by my pains and worries, taking up as much space as possible, for despite my bulk I was very nervous, I entered the lecture hall.   From the way in which I was sitting, for instance, and very truly sat, I should as a spectator immediately have recognized my condition.

Löwy read humorous sketches by Sholom Aleichem, then a story by Peretz, the Lichtverkäuferin (The Light Shopgirl) by Rosenfeld, a poem by Bialik (the one instance where the poet stooped from Hebrew to Yiddish, himself translating his original Hebrew poem into Yiddish, in order to popularize this poem which, by making capital out of the Kishinev pogrom, sought to further the Jewish cause).  A recurrent widening of the eyes, natural to the actor, which are then left so for awhile, framed by the arched eyebrows.  Complete truth of all the reading; the weak raising of the right arm from the shoulder, the adjusting of the pince-nez that seems borrowed for the occasion, so poorly does it fit the nose; the position under the table of the leg that is stretched out in such a way that the weak joint between the upper and lower parts of the leg is particularly in motion; the crook of the back, weak and wretched-looking since the unbroken surface of a back cannot deceive an observer in the way that a face does, with its eyes, the hollows and projections of its cheeks, or even with some trifle be it only a stubble of beard.  After the reading, while still on my way home, I felt all my abilities concentrated, and on that account complained to my sisters, even to my mother, at home.
 

On the 19th at Dr. K.'s about the factory (the asbestos factory his brother-in-law established and which Kafka was forced into helping to set up and run).  The little theoretical hostility that is bound to arise between contracting parties when contracts are being made.  The way my eyes searched H.'s face, which was turned toward the lawyers.  This hostility is bound to arise all the more between two people who otherwise are not accustomed to think through their mutual relationship and therefore make difficulties about every trifle.  Dr. K.'s habit of walking diagonally up and down the room with the tense, forward rocking of the upper part of his body, as though in a drawing-room, at the same time telling stories and frequently, at the end of a diagonal, shaking off the ash of his cigarette into one of the three ashtrays placed about the room.
 

This morning at N. N. Co.  The way the boss leans back sideways in his armchair in order to get room and support for the Eastern Jewish gestures of his hand.  The interaction and reciprocal reinforcement of the play of his hands and face.  Sometimes he combines the two, either by looking at his hands, or for the convenience of the listener, holding them close to his face.  Temple melodies in the cadence of his speech; the melody is led from finger to finger as though through various registers, especially when enumerating several points.  Then met Father at the Graben with Mr. Pr., who raises his hand to make his sleeve fall back a little (since he doesn't himself want to draw back the sleeve) and there in the middle of the Graben makes powerful screwing motions by opening up his hand and letting it fall away with the fingers spread.
 

I am probably sick, since yesterday my body has been itching all over.  In the afternoon my face was so hot and blotched that I was afraid the assistant giving me a haircut, who could see me and my reflected image all the time, would recognize that I had a serious disease.  Also the connection between stomach and mouth is partly disturbed, a lid the size of a gulden moves up or down, or stays down below from where it exerts an expanding effect of light pressure that spreads upward over my chest.
 

More on Radotin: invited her to come down.  The first answer was serious although until then, together with the girl entrusted to her, she had giggled and flirted across at me in a way she would never have dared from the moment we became acquainted.  We then laughed a great deal together although I was freezing down below and she up above at the open window.  She pressed her breasts against her crossed arms and, her knees apparently bent, pressed her whole body against the window sill.  She was seventeen years old and took me to be fifteen or sixteen (actually he was twenty-eight); I couldn't make her change her mind throughout our entire conversation.  Her small nose was a littte crooked and threw an unusual shadow across her cheek, which, to be sure, wouldn't help me to recognize her again.  She was not from Radotin but from Chuchle (the next station on the way to Prague), which she wouldn't let me forget.

Then a walk with the clerk (who even without my trip would have remained with our firm) in the dark out of Radotin on the highway and back to the railway station.  On one side waste hills used by a cement factory for its supply of chalky sand.  Old mills.  Story of a poplar whirled out of the earth by a tornado.  Face of the clerk: dough-like reddish flesh on heavy bones, looks tired but robust within his limits.  Does not show surprise even by his voice that we are walking here together.  A clear moon over a large field, the chimney smoke looking like clouds in the light; the field, right in the middle of the town, bought up as a precaution by a factory but left unused for the time being, surrounded by factory buildings which were strongly but only partly lit up by electric lights.  Train signals.  Scuffling of rats near the path worn across the field by the townspeople in defiance of the will of the factory.
 

Examples of the way this writing, which is on the whole trivial, strengthens me after all:

Monday, the 16th, I was with Löwy at the National Theater to see Dubrovacka Trilogjia.  Play and production were hopeless.  Of the first act I remember the beautiful chime of a mantel clock; the singing of the “Marseillaise” by Frenchmen marching outside the window, the fading song is repeatedly taken up by the newcomers and rises again; a girl dressed in black carries her shadow through the streak of light that the setting sun throws on the parquet floor.  Of the second act only the delicate throat of a girl, which rises out of shoulders dressed in red-brown, expands from between puffed sleeves, and lengthens into a small head.  Of the third act the crushed Prince Albert, the dark fancy vest of an old, stooped descendant of the former gospodars with the gold watch-chain drawn diagonally across it.  So it is not much.  The seats were expensive, I was a poor benefactor to have thrown money away here while L. was in need; finally he was even somewhat more bored than I.  In short, I had again demonstrated the misfortune that follows every undertaking that I begin by myself.  But while I usually unite myself indivisibly with this misfortune, attract all earlier cases of misfortune up to me, all later ones down to me, I was this time almost completely independent, bore everything quite easily as something that happens just once, and for the first time in the theater even felt my head, as the head of a spectator, raised high out of the collective darkness of the seat and the body into a distinct light, independent of the bad occasion of this play and this production.

A second example: Yesterday evening I simultaneously held out both my hands to my two sisters-in-law on Mariengasse with a degree of adroitness as if they were two right hands and I a double person.
 

21 October.  A counter-example: When my boss confers with me about office matters (today the filing cabinet), I cannot look him in the eye for long without there coming into my eyes against my will a slight bitterness which forces either my look or his away.  His look yields more briefly but more often to every impulse to look away, since he is not aware of the reason, but his glance immediately returns as he considers it all only a momentary fatigue of his eyes.  I defend myself against it more vigorously, therefore hasten the zigzagging of my glance, look by preference along his nose and across to the shadows of his cheeks, often only keep my face towards him by the aid of the teeth and tongue in my tight-shut mouth—when I must, I lower my eyes, to be sure, but never farther than to his tie, but get the most direct look immediately after he turns his eyes away, when I follow him closely and without consideration.
 

The Jewish actors.  Mrs. Tschissik has protuberances on her cheeks near her mouth.  Caused in part by hollow cheeks as a result of the pains of hunger, childbed, journeys, and acting, in part by the relaxed unusual muscles she had to develop for the actor's movements of her large, what originally must have been a heavy mouth.  Most of the time, as Sulamith, she wore her hair loose, which covered her checks so that her face sometimes looked like the face of a girl out of the past.  She has a large, bony, moderately robust body and is tightly laced.  Her walk easily takes on a solemnity since she has the habit of raising, stretching and slowly moving her long arms.  Especially when she sang the Jewish national anthem, gently rocked her large hips and moved her arms, bent parallel to her hips, up and down with hands cupped as though she were playing with a slowly flying ball.
 

22 October.  Yesterday with the Jews.  Kol Nidre by Scharkansky, pretty bad play with a good, witty letter-writing scene, a prayer by the lovers standing up beside each other with hands clasped, the converted Grand Inquisitor pressing himself against the curtain of the Ark of the Covenant, he mounts the stairs and remains standing there, his head bowed, his lips against the curtain, holds the prayer book before his chattering teeth.  For the first time on this fourth evening my distinct inability to get a clear impression.  Our large company and the visits at my sisters' table were also responsible for it.  Nevertheless, I needn't have been so weak.  With my love for Mrs. Ts., who only thanks to Max sat beside me, I behaved wretchedly.  I'll recover again, however, even now I feel better.
 

Mrs. Tschissik (I enjoy writing the name so much) likes to bow her head at the table even while eating roast goose, you believe you can get in under her eyelids with your glance if you first carefully look along her cheeks and then, making yourself small, slip in, in doing which you don't even first have to raise the lids, for they are raised and even let a bluish gleam through which lures you on to the attempt.  Out of her truthful acting flourishes of her fist now and then emerge, turns of her arm that drape invisible trains about her body; she places her outspread fingers on her breast because the artless shriek does not suffice.  Her acting is not varied: the frightened look at her antagonist, the seeking for a way out on the small stage, the soft voice that, without being raised, mounts heroically in even, short ascents aided only by a greater inner resonance, the joy that spreads through her face across her high forehead into her hair; the self-sufficiency and independence of all other means when she sings solos, the holding herself erect when she resists that compels the spectator to devote his attention to her whole body—but not much more.  But there is the truth of the whole and as a result the conviction that the least of her effects cannot be taken from her, that she is independent of the play and of us. The sympathy we have for these actors who are so good, who earn nothing and who do not get nearly enough gratitude and fame is really only sympathy for the sad fate of many noble strivings, above all of our own.  Therefore, too, it is so immoderately strong, because on the surface it is attached to strangers and in reality belongs to us.  Nevertheless, in spite of everything, it is so closely bound up with the actors that I cannot disengage it even now.  Because I recognize this and in spite of it this sympathy attaches itself even more closely to them.
 

The striking smoothness of Mrs. Tschissik's cheeks alongside her muscular mouth.   Her somewhat shapeless little girl.
 

Walking with Löwy and my sister for three hours.
 
 

23 October.  The actors by their presence always convince me to my horror that most of what I've written about them until now is false.  It is false because I write about them with steadfast love (even now, while I write it down, this too becomes false) but varying ability, and this varying ability does not hit off the real actors loudly and correctly but loses itself dully in this love that will never be satisfied with the ability and therefore thinks it is protecting the actors by preventing this ability from exercising itself.

Quarrel between Tschissik and Löwy.  Ts.: Edelstatt is the greatest Jewish writer.  He is sublime.  Rosenfeld is of course also a great writer, but not the foremost.  Löwy: Ts. is a socialist and because Edelstatt writes socialist poems, because he is editor of a Jewish socialist news-paper in London, therefore Ts. considers him the greatest.  But who is Edelstatt, his party knows him, no one else, but the world knows Rosenfeld.  –Ts.: It is not a question of recognition.  Everything of Edelstatt's is sublime.  –L.: Of course, I'm well acquainted with him too.  The Selbstmörder (Suicide), for example, is very good.  –Ts.: What's the use of arguing.  We won't agree.  I'll repeat my opinion until tomorrow and you the same.  –L.: I until the day after tomorrow.
 

Goldfaden, married, spendthrift, even if terribly badly off.  About a hundred pieces.  Stolen liturgical melodies made popular.  The whole people sings them.  The tailor at his work (is imitated), the maid, etc.
 

With so little room for dressing you are bound, as Ts. says, to get into quarrels.  You come off the stage excited, everyone considers himself the greatest actor, then if someone, for example, steps on someone else's foot, which cannot be avoided, not only a quarrel but a good battle is ready to break out.  But in Warsaw there were seventy-five small, individual dressing rooms, each one with light.
 

At six o'clock I met the actors in their coffeehouse seated around two tables, divided into the two hostile groups.  A book by Peretz was on the table of the Ts. group.  Löwy had just shut it and stood up to leave with me.
 

Until the age of twenty Löwy was a bocher who studied and spent the money of his well-to-do father.  There was a society of young people of the same age who met in a locked tavern precisely on Satur-day and, dressed in their caftans, smoked and otherwise sinned against the Sabbath commandments.
 

“The great Adler” from New York, the most famous Yiddish actor, who is a millionaire, for whom Gordin wrote Der Wilde Mensch (The Wild Man) and whom Löwy in Karlsbad had asked not to come to the performance because he didn't have the courage to act in his presence on their poorly equipped stage.—Real  sets, not this miserable stage on which you cannot move.  How shall we play the wild man!  You need a sofa for it.  In the Crystal Palace in Leipzig it was magnificent.  Windows you could open, the sun shone in, you needed a throne in the play, good, there was a throne, I walked towards it through the crowd and was really a king.  It is much easier to act there.  Here everything confuses you.
 
 

24 October.  Mother works all day, is merry and sad as the fancy strikes her, without taking advantage of her own condition in the slightest, her voice is clear, too loud for ordinary speech but does you good when you are sad and suddenly hear it after some time.  For a long time now I have been complaining that I am always ill, but never have any definite illness that would compel me to go to bed.  This wish certainly goes back chiefly to the fact that I know how comforting Mother can be when, for example, she comes from the lighted living room into the twilight of the sickroom, or in the evening, when the day begins to change monotonously into night, returns from business and with her concerns and hurried instructions once more causes the day, already so late, to begin again and rouses the invalid to help her in this.  I should wish that for myself once more, because then I should be weak, therefore convinced by everything my mother did, and could enjoy childish pleasure with age's keener capacity for gratification.  Yesterday it occurred to me that I did not always love my mother as she deserved and as I could, only because the German language prevented it.  The Jewish mother is no “Mutter,” to call her “Mutter” makes her a little comic (not to herself, because we are in Germany), we give a Jewish woman the name of a German mother, but forget the contradiction that sinks into the emotions so much the more heavily, “Mutter” is peculiarly German for the Jew, it unconsciously contains, together with the Christian splendor Christian coldness also, the Jewish woman who is called “Mutter” therefore becomes not only comic but strange.  Mama would be a better name if only one didn't imagine “Mutter” behind it.  I believe that it is only the memories of the ghetto that still preserve the Jewish family, for the word “Vater” too is far from meaning the Jewish father.
 

Today I stood before Counselor L., who asked about my illness unexpectedly, uninvited, childishly, lyingly, ridiculously and to the point where I lost patience.  We hadn't spoken so intimately for a long time, or perhaps never at all—I felt my face, which had never before been so closely observed by him, reveal parts to him in spurious frankness that he hardly understood but that nevertheless surprised him.  I was unrecognizable to myself.  I know him quite well.
 
 

26 October.  Thursday.  All afternoon yesterday Löwy read from Gott, Mensch, Teufel (God, Man, Devil) by Gordin and then from his own Paris diaries.  The day before yesterday I saw the performance of Der Wilde Mensch by Gordin. Gordin is better than Lateiner, Scharkansky, Feimann, etc., because he has more detail, more order, and more logical sequence in this order, he therefore somehow lacks the immediate Jewishness that is always being improvised in other plays, the clamor of this Jewishness - rings more dully and therefore in less detail.  Of course, concessions are made to the audience and sometimes you believe you must stretch in order to see the play over the heads of the Jewish theater audience of New York (the character of the wild man, the whole story of Mrs. Selde), but worse is the fact that palpable concessions are made also to some vaguely felt art; for example, in Der Wilde Mensch the plot rambles as a result of hesitancy, the wild man delivers speeches humanly unintelligible but dramatically so clumsy that one would prefer to close one's eyes, the same is true of the older girl in Gott, Mensch, Teufel.  Parts of the plot of Der Wilde Mensch are very spirited.  A young widow marries an old man with four children and immediately brings her lover, Vladimir Vorobeitchik, along into the marriage.  The two proceed to ruin the whole family, Shmul Leiblich (Pipes) must hand over all his money and becomes sick, the oldest son, Simon (Klug), a student, leaves the house, Alexander becomes a gambler and drunkard, Lise (Tschissik) becomes a prostitute, and Lemech (Löwy), the idiot, is driven to idiotic insanity by hate of Mrs. Selde, because she takes the place of his mother, and by love, because she is the first young woman to whom he feels close.  At this point the plot reaches a climax with the murder of Selde by Lemech.  All the others remain incomplete and helpless in the spectator's memory.  The conception of this woman and her lover, a conception that asks no one's opinion, gave me a vague, different self-confidence.

The discreet impression made by the playbill.  One learns not only the names but a little more, yet only so much as the audience has to know, even a very cool audience with the best intentions, about a family exposed to their judgment.  Shmul Leiblich is a “rich merchant,” however, it is not said that he is old and infirm, that he is a ridiculous ladies' man, a bad father, and an irreverent widower who remarries on the anniversary of his wife's death.  And yet all these characterizations would be more accurate than that on the playbill, for at the end of the play he is no longer rich, because the Selde woman has thoroughly robbed him, he is also hardly a merchant any longer, since he has neglected his business.  Simon is “a student” on the playbill, therefore something very vague, something we know many sons of our most distant acquaintances are.  Alexander, this characterless young man, is just “Alexander”; of Lise, the home-loving girl, we know also only that she is “Lise.”  Lemech is unfortunately “an idiot,” for that is something that cannot be hushed up.  Vladimir Vorobeitchik is only “Selde's lover,” but not the corrupter of a family, not a drunkard, gambler, wastrel, idler, parasite.  In the characterization, “Selde's lover,” much of course is betrayed, but considering his behavior it is the least that can be said.  In addition to this the scene of action is Russia, the scarcely assembled characters are scattered over a tremendous area, or assembled in a small, unrevealed place in this area, in short, the play has become impossible, the spectator will get to see nothing.

—Nevertheless, the play begins, the obviously great powers of the author begin to work, things come to light which one would not expect of the characters on the playbill but which fall to their lot with the greatest inevitability if one can only persuade oneself to believe in all the whipping, snatching away, beating, slapping on the shoulder, fainting, throat-cutting, limping, dancing in Russian topboots, dancing with raised skirts, rolling on the sofa, which are after all things that it does no good to contradict.  Yet not even the climax of the spectator's excitement, remembered afterward, is necessary in order to recognize that the discreet impression made by the playbill is a false impression which can originate only in some tired outsider, since for one who judges honestly no decent relationship can be seen between the playbill and the play after its performance.

From the dash on, written in despair, because today they are playing cards with unusual uproar, I must sit at the common table, O. laughs with all her mouth, gets up, sits down, reaches across the table, speaks to me, and I, to complete the misfortune, write so badly and must think of Löwy's Paris recollections, well written with an uninterrupted feeling, which come out of an independent fire while I, at least now (mostly, I am certain, because I have so little time), am almost entirely under Max's influence, which sometimes, to cap it all, even spoils my enjoyment of his work as well.  Because it consoles me I write down an autobiographical remark of Shaw's, although it actually is the opposite of consoling: As a boy he was apprentice in the office of an estate agent's in Dublin.  He soon gave up this position, went to London, and became a writer.  In the first nine years, from 1876 to 1885, he earned 140 kronen in all.  “But although I was a strong young man and my family found itself in poor circumstances, I did not throw myself into the struggle for a livelihood; I threw my mother in and let her support me.  I was no support for my old father; on the contrary, I hung on to his coattails.”  In the end this is little consolation for me.  The free years he spent in London are already past for me, the possible happiness becomes ever more impossible, I lead a horrible synthetic life and am cowardly and miserable enough to follow Shaw only to the extent of having read the passage to my parents.  How this possible life flashes before my eyes in colors of steel, with spanning rods of steel and airy darkness between!
 
 

27 October.  Löwy's stories and diaries: How Notre Dame frightens him, how the tiger in the Jardin des Plantes affects him as an image of one who despairs and hopes, appeasing his despair and hope with food, how his pious father in misapprehension questions him as to whether he can now go for walks on Saturday, whether he now has time to read modern books, whether he now may eat on the fast days, while as a matter of fact he must work on Saturdays, has no time for anything, and fasts more than any religion prescribed.  When he walks through the streets chewing his black beard it looks from a distance as though he were eating chocolate.  The work in the cap factory and his friend the socialist who considers everyone a bourgeois who does not work exactly the way he does—such as Löwy with his fine hands—who is bored on Sundays, who despises reading as something luxurious, cannot read himself and ironically asks Löwy to read him a letter that he had received.
 

The Jewish ritual bath that every Jewish community in Russia has, which I picture to myself as a cabin with a basin of exactly determined outline, with arrangements appointed and supervised by the rabbi, which must only wash the earthly dirt from the soul, whose external condition is therefore a matter of indifference, that is, a symbol, there-fore can be, and is, filthy and stinking, but still fulfils its purpose.  The woman comes here to purify herself of her period, the Torah scribe to purify himself of all sinful thoughts before writing the last verse of a book of the Torah.
 

Custom, immediately after awakening, to dip the fingers three times in water, as the evil spirits have settled during the night on the second and third joints of the fingers.  Rationalist explanation: To prevent the fingers directly touching the face, since, uncontrolled during sleep and dreams, they could after all have touched every possible part of the body, the armpits, the behind, the genitals.
 

The dressing room behind their stage is so narrow that if by chance you are standing in front of the mirror behind the portière on the set and someone else wants to pass by, he must raise the curtain and willy-nilly show himself for a moment to the audience.
 

Superstition: The evil spirits gain entry into a person who drinks out of an imperfect glass.
 

How bruised the actors appeared to me after the performance, how I feared to touch them with a word.  How instead I quickly left after a hasty handshake, as though I were angry and dissatisfied, because the truth of my impression was so impossible to express.  Everyone seemed false to me except Max, who quietly made some meaningless remark.  And the person who asked about some irrelevant detail was false, the person who gave a facetious reply to a remark by an actor, the ironic one and the one who began to explain his varied impressions, all the rabble that had been crowded into the back of the auditorium where it belonged and now, late at night, got up and once more became aware of its importance. (Very far from correct.)
 
 

28 October.  Of course, I had a similar feeling, but neither acting nor play came anywhere near seeming perfect to me that evening.  For that very reason I owed the actors particular respect.  When there are small, even if many deficiencies in one's impression, who knows whose fault they are?  Mrs. Tschissik once stepped on the hem of her dress and tottered for a moment in her princess-style hussy's dress like a massive pillar; once she made a mistake in her lines and, in order to calm her tongue, turned in great agitation towards the back wall, despite the fact that this did not quite suit the words; it irritated me, but it did not prevent the sudden flutter of a shudder upon my cheekbone, which I always feel when I hear her voice.  But because my acquaintances had got a much less pure impression than I, they seemed to me to owe even greater respect, because in my opinion their respect would have been much more effective than mine, so that I had double reason to curse their behavior.
 

“Axioms for the Drama” by Max in the Schaubühne (Showstage).  Has quite the character of a dream truth, which the expression “axioms” suits too.  The more dreamlike it inflates itself, all the more coolly must you seize it.  The following principles are formulated:

The thesis is, that the essence of the drama lies in a lack.

The drama (on the stage) is more exhaustive than the novel, because we see everything about which we otherwise just read.

It only seems to be, for in the novel the author can show us only what is important, in the drama, on the other hand, we see everything, the actor, the settings, and so not just what is important, therefore less.  From the point of view of the novel, therefore, the best drama would be entirely unstimulating, for example, a philosophical drama that would be read by seated actors in any set at all that represented a room.

And yet the best drama is that which is the most stimulating in time and space, frees itself of all the demands of life, limits itself only to the speeches, to the thoughts in the monologues, to the main points of what happens; everything else is left to the stimulation that has been aroused, and, raised high on a shield borne by the actors, painters, directors, obeys only its most extreme inspirations.

Error in this chain of reasoning:  It changes its point of view without indicating it, sees things now from the writer's room, now from the audience.  Granted that the audience does not see everything from the point of view of the author, that even he is surprised by the performance (29 October, Sunday), it is still the author who had the play with all its details within himself, who moved along from detail to detail, and who only because he assembled all the details in the speeches has given them dramatic weight and force.  Because of this the drama in its highest development achieves an unbearable humanization which it is the task of the actor—with his role blowing loosely and in tatters about him—to draw down, to make bearable.  The drama therefore hovers in the air, but not like a roof carried along on a storm, rather like a whole building whose foundation walls have been torn up out of the earth with a force which today is still close to madness.  Sometimes it seems that the play is resting up in the flies, the actors have drawn down strips of it the ends of which they hold in their hands or have wound about their bodies for the play, and that only now and then a strip that is difficult to release carries an actor, to the terror of the audience, up in the air.
 

I dreamed today of a donkey that looked like a greyhound, it was very cautious in its movements.  I looked at it closely because I was aware how unusual a phenomenon it was, but remember only that its narrow human feet could not please me because of their length and uniformity.  I offered it a bunch of fresh, dark-green cypress leaves which I had just received from an old Zürich lady (it all took place in Zürich), it did not want it, just sniffed a little at it; but then, when I left the cypress on a table, it devoured it so completely that only a scarcely recognizable kernel resembling a chestnut was left.  Later there was talk that this donkey had never yet gone on all fours but always held itself erect like a human being and showed its silvery shining breast and its little belly.  But actually that was not correct.

Besides this, I dreamed about an Englishman whom I met at a meeting like the one the Salvation Army held in Zürich.  There were seats there like those in school, under the blackboard there was even an open shelf; once when I reached in to straighten something I wondered at the ease with which one makes friends on a trip.  By this apparently was meant the Englishman, who shortly thereafter approached me.  He had loose, light clothes in very good condition, but high up on the back of the arms, instead of the material of the clothing, or at least sewn on over it, there was a gray, wrinkled material, hanging a little, torn in strips, stippled as though by spiders, that reminded one as much of the leather reinforcements on riding-breeches as of the sleeve protectors of seamstresses, salesgirls, clerks.  His face was also covered with a gray material that had very clever slits for mouth, eyes, probably also for the nose.  But this material was new, napped, rather like flannel, very flexible and soft, of excellent English manufacture.  All this pleased me so, that I was eager to become acquainted with the man.  He wanted to invite me to his house too, but since I had to leave as soon as the day after tomorrow, that came to nothing.  Before he left the meeting he put on several more apparently very practical pieces of clothing that made him look quite inconspicuous after he had buttoned them.  Although he could not invite me to his home, he nevertheless asked me to go into the street with him.  I followed him, we stopped across the street from the meeting place on the curb, I below, he above, and found again after some discussion that nothing could be done about the invitation.

Then I dreamed that Max, Otto, and I had the habit of packing our trunks only when we reached the railway station.  There we were, carrying our shirts, for example, through the main hall to our distant trunks.  Although this seemed to be a general custom, it was not a good one in our case, especially since we had begun to pack only shortly before the arrival of the train.  Then we were naturally excited and had hardly any hope of still catching the train, let alone getting good seats.
 

Although the regular guests and employees of the coffeehouse are fond of the actors, they cannot remain respectful amid the depressing impressions, and despise the actors as starvellings, tramps, fellow Jews, exactly as in the past.  Thus, the headwaiter wanted to throw Löwy out of the hall, the doorman, who used to work in a brothel and is now a pimp, shouted little Tschissik down when she, in the excitement of her sympathy during Der Wilde Mensch, wanted to pass something to the actors, and the day before yesterday, when I accompanied Löwy back to the coffeehouse after he had read me the first act of Gordin's Eliezar ben Schevia in the City Café, that fellow called to him (he squints, and between his crooked, pointed nose and his mouth there is a hollow out of which a small moustache bristles):  “Come on, idiot.  (Allusion to the role in Der Wilde Mensch.)  Someone's waiting.  There's a visitor you really don't deserve.  An officer candidate in the artillery is here.  Look.”  And he points to one of the curtained coffeehouse windows behind which the officer candidate is allegedly sitting.  Löwy passes his hand over his forehead:  “From Eliezar ben Schevia to this.”
 

The sight of stairs moves me so today.  Early in the day already, and several times since, I have enjoyed the sight from my window of the triangular piece cut out of the stone railing of the staircase that leads down on the right from the Czech Bridge to the quay level.  Very steep, as though it were giving only a hasty suggestion.  And now, over there across the river, I see a stepladder on the slope that leads down to the water.  It has always been there, but is revealed only in the autumn and winter by the removal of the swimming school in front of it, and it lies there in the dark grass under the brown trees in the play of perspective.
 

Löwy: Four young friends became great Talmud scholars in their old age.  But each had a different fate.  One became mad, one died, Rabbi Eliezar became a free-thinker at forty and only the oldest one, Akiva, who had not begun his studies until the age of forty, achieved complete knowledge.  The disciple of Rabbi Eliezar was Rabbi Meyer, a pious man whose piety was so great that he was not harmed by what the free-thinker taught him.  He ate, as he said, the kernel of the nut, the shell he threw away.  Once, on Saturday, Eliezar went for a ride, Rabbi Meyer followed on foot, the Talmud in his hand, of course only for two thousand paces, for you are not permitted to go any farther on Saturday.  And from this walk emerged a symbolic demand and the reply to it.  Come back to your people, said Rabbi Meyer.  Rabbi Eliezar refused with a pun.
 
 

30 October.  This craving that I almost always have, when for once I feel my stomach is healthy, to heap up in me notions of terrible deeds of daring with food.  I especially satisfy this craving in front of pork butchers.  If I see a sausage that is labeled as an old, hard sausage; I bite into it in my imagination with all my teeth and swallow quickly, regularly, and thoughtlessly, like a machine.  The despair that this act, even in the imagination, has as its immediate result, increases my haste.  I shove the long slabs of rib meat unbitten into my mouth, and then pull them out again from behind, tearing through stomach and intestines.  I eat dirty delicatessen stores completely empty.  Cram myself with herrings, pickles, and all the bad, old, sharp foods.  Bonbons are poured into me like hail from their tin boxes.  I enjoy in this way not only my healthy condition but also a suffering that is without pain and can pass at once.

It is an old habit of mine, at the point when an impression has reached its greatest degree of purity, whether of joy or pain, not to allow it to run its salutary course through all my being, but rather to cloud and dispel its purity by new, unexpected, weak impressions.  It is not that I evilly intend my own harm, I am only too weak to bear the purity of that impression.  Instead of admitting this weakness, which alone would be right, because in revealing itself it calls forth other forces to its support, I rathher quietly and with seeming arbitrariness try to evoke new impressions in an effort to help myself.

On Saturday evening, for example, after hearing Miss T.'s excellent story, which after all belongs more to Max, at least belongs to him to a greater extent than one of his own stories, and later after hearing the excellent play Konkurrenz (Competition) by Baum, in which dramatic force can be seen in the work and in the effect quite as uninterruptedly as in the production of a living craftsman, after the hearing of both these works I was so cast down and my insides, already fairly empty for several days, quite without warning filled with such deep sorrow that I declared to Max on the way home that nothing can come of Richard and Samuel.  For this declaration too, not the smallest courage was needed at the time, as far as either I or Max was concerned.  The dis-cussion that followed confused me a little, as Richard and Samuel was then far from being my chief concern and I therefore did not find the right answers to Max's objections.  But later, when I was alone, and not only the disturbance of my sorrow by the conversation but also the almost effective consolation of Max's presence had disappeared, my hopelessness grew to such an extent that it began to dissolve my thinking (at this point, while I am stopping for dinner, Löwy comes to the house and interrupts me and delights me from seven to ten o'clock).  Still, instead of waiting at home for what would happen next, I carelessly read two issues of Aktion, a little in Die Missgeschickten (The Unfortunate Ones), finally also in my Paris notes, and went to bed, really more content than before, but obdurate.  It was the same several days ago when I returned from a walk and found myself imitating Löwy to such a degree that the force of his enthusiasm, externally, worked towards my goal.  Then, too, I read and spoke a great deal in confusion at home and slowly collapsed.
 
 

31 October.  Despite the fact that today I have read here and there in the Fischer catalogue, in the Insel Almanach, in the Rundschau, I am now pretty sure that, whether I have assimilated everything either thoroughly or casually, I have in any case defended myself against all harm.  And I should have enough self-confidence tonight if I didn't have to go out with Löwy again.
 

When on Sunday afternoon, just after passing three women, I stepped into Max's house, I thought: There are still one or two houses in which I have something to do, there are still women walking behind me who can see me turn in on a Sunday afternoon at a house door in order to work, talk, purposefully, hurriedly, only occasionally looking at the matter in this way.
This must not remain so for long.
 

I read the stories of Wilhelm Schäfer, especially when aloud, with the same attentive enjoyment that I should get from drawing a piece of twine over my tongue.  At first I did not like Valli very much yesterday afternoon, but after I had lent her Die Missgeschickten and she had already read it a little while and must already have been properly under the influence of the story, I loved her because of this influence and caressed her.
 

In order not to forget it, should my father once again call me a bad son, I write it down that, in the presence of several relatives, without special occasion, whether it may have been simply to put me in my place, whether it was supposedly to rescue me, he called Max a “meshuggener ritoch (crazy hothead),” and that yesterday, when Löwy was in my room, ironically shaking his body and contorting his mouth, he referred to these strange people who were being let into the house, what could interest one in a strange person, why one enters into such useless relationships, etc.  After all, I should not have written it down, for I have written myself almost into a hatred of my father, for which after all he has given no occasion today and which, at least as far as Löwy is concerned, is out of all proportion to what I have written down as having been said by my father, and which even increases because I cannot remember what was really wicked in my father's behavior yesterday.

PART 2

1 November.  Today, eagerly and happily began to read the History of the Jews by Graetz.  Because my desire for it had far outrun the reading, it was at first stranger to me than I thought, and I had to stop here and there in order by resting to allow my Jewishness to collect itself.  Towards the end, however, I was already gripped by the imperfection of the first settlements in the newly conquered Canaan and the faithful handing down of the imperfections of the popular heroes (Joshua, the Judges, Elijah).
 
 

Last night, good-bye to Mrs. Klug.  We, I and Löwy, ran alongside the train and saw Mrs. Klug looking out from the darkness behind a closed window in the last coach.  She quickly stretched her arm towards us while still in her compartment, stood up, opened the window, fixing it for a moment with her unbuttoned cloak, until the dark Mr. Klug (all he can do is open up his mouth wide and bitterly and then snap it shut, as though forever) got up opposite her.  During the fifteen minutes I spoke very little to Mr. Klug and looked at him for perhaps only two seconds, otherwise I could not, during the weak, uninterrupted conversation, turn my eyes away from Mrs. Klug.  She was completely under the domination of my presence, but more in her imagination than in reality.  When she turned to Löwy with the repeated introductory phrase, “You, Löwy,” she spoke to me, when she leaned close against her husband who sometimes left her with only her right shoulder showing at the window and pressed against her dress and her baggy overcoat, she was attempting in that way to make me an empty sign.
 
 

The first impression I had at the performances, that she did not like me especially, was probably correct, she seldom invited me to sing with her; when, without real feeling, she asked me something, I unfortunately answered incorrectly (“Do you understand that?”  “Yes,” I said, but she wanted “No” in order to reply, “Neither do I”); she did not offer me her picture postcards a second time, I preferred Mrs. Tschissik, to whom I wanted to give some flowers in order to spite Mrs. Klug.  To this disinclination, however, was joined a respect for my doctorate which was not impaired by my childish appearance, indeed, it was even increased by it.  This respect was so great and it became so articulate in her frequent but by no means particularly stressed way of addressing me—“You know, Herr Doktor”—that I half unconsciously regretted that I deserved it so little and asked myself whether I had a right to be addressed like that by everyone.  But while I was so respected by her as a person, as a spectator I was even more respected.  I beamed when she sang, I laughed and looked at her all the time while she was on the stage, I sang the tunes with her, later the words, I thanked her after several performances; because of this, again, she naturally liked me very well.  But if she spoke to me out of this feeling I was so embarrassed that she undoubtedly fell back into her original disinclination and remained there.  She had to exert herself all the more to reward me as a spectator, and she was glad to do it because she is a vain actress and a good-natured woman.
 

She looked at me, especially when she was silent up there in the window of the compartment, with a mouth rapturously contorted by embarrassment and slyness and with twinkling eyes that swam on the wrinkles spreading from her mouth.  She must have believed I loved her, as was indeed true, and with these glances she gave me the sole fulfillment that a young but experienced woman, a good wife and mother, could give a doctor of her imagination.  These glances were so urgent, and were supported by expressions like “There were such nice guests here, especially some of them,” that I defended myself, and those were the moments when I looked at her husband.  I had, when I compared the two, an unjustified sense of astonishment at the fact that they should depart from us together and yet concern themselves only with us and have no glance for one another.  Löwy asked whether they had good seats.  “Yes, if it remains as empty as this,” Mrs. Klug answered, and looked casually into the inside of the compartment the warm air of which her husband will spoil with his smoking.  We spoke of their children for whose sake they were leaving; they have four children, three boys among them, the oldest is nine years old, they haven't seen them for eighteen months now.  When a gentleman got hurriedly into a nearby compartment, the train seemed about to leave, we quickly said good-bye, shook each other's hands, I tipped my hat and then held it against my chest, we stepped back as one does when trains leave, by which one means to show that everything is finished and one has come to terms with it.  The train did not leave yet, however, we stepped up close again, I was rather happy about it, she asked after my sisters.  Surprisingly, the train began to move slowly.  Mrs. Klug prepared to wave her handkerchief, I must write to her, she called, do I know her address, she was already too far away for me to be able to answer her, I pointed to Löwy from wham I could get the address, that's good, she nodded to me and him quickly, and let her handkerchief float in the wind, I tipped my hat, at first awkwardly, then, the farther away she was, the more freely.
 

Later I remembered that I had had the impression that the train was not really leaving but only moving the short length of the railway station in order to put on a play for us, and then was swallowed up.  In a doze that same evening, Mrs. Klug appeared to me unnaturally short, almost without legs, and wrung her hands with her face distorted as though a great misfortune had befallen her.
 

This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength which I gain through this writing thus spends itself, a strength which I certainly have not intended for this purpose.
 

As soon as Mr. Klug comes to a new city one can see how his and his wife's jewels disappear into the pawnshop.  As their departure draws near he gradually redeems them again.
 

Favorite saying of the wife of the philosopher Mendelssohn: Wie mies ist mir vor tout l’univers! (How wretched the whole universe is before me!)
 

One of the most important impressions at the departure of Mrs. Klug: I was always forced to think that, as a simple middle-class woman, she holds herself by force below the level of her true human destiny and requires only a jump, a tearing open of the door, a turned-up light, in order to be an actress and to subjugate me.  Actually, even, she stood above and I below, as in the theater—She married at sixteen, is twenty-six years old.
 
 

2 November.  This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.
 

In the newspapers, in conversation, in the office, the impetuosity of language often leads one astray, also the hope, springing from temporary weakness, for a sudden and stronger illumination in the very next moment, also mere strong self-confidence, or mere carelessness, or a great present impression that one wishes at any cost to shift into the future, also the opinion that true enthusiasm in the present justifies any future confusion, also delight in sentences that are elevated in the middle by one or two jolts and open the mouth gradually to its full size even if they let it close much too quickly and tortuously, also the slight possibility of a decisive and clear judgment, or the effort to give further flow to the speech that has really ended, also the desire to escape from the subject in a hurry, one's belly if it must be, or despair that seeks a way out for its heavy breath, or the longing for a light without shadow—all this can lead one astray to sentences like: “The book which I have just finished is the most beautiful I have ever read,” or, “is more beautiful than any I have ever read.”
 

In order to prove that everything I write and think about them is false, the actors (aside from Mr. and Mrs. Klug) have again remained here, as Löwy, whom I met yesterday evening, told me; who knows whether for the same reason they will not depart again today, for Löwy did not call at the office despite thc fact that he promised to.
 
 
 

3 November.  In order to prove that both things that I wrote were false, a proof that seems almost impossible, Löwy himself came yesterday evening and interrupted me while I was writing.
 

N.'s habit of repeating everything in the same tone of voice.  He tells someone a story about his business, of course not with so many details that it would in itself completely kill the story, but nevertheless in a slow manner, thorough only because of that, it is a communication which is not intended to be anything else and is therefore done with when it is finished.  A short time passes with something else, suddenly he finds a transition to his story and produces it again in its old form, almost without additions, but also almost without omissions, with the innocence of a person who carries about the room a ribbon that someone has treacherously tied to his back.  Now my parents like him particularly, therefore feel his habit more strongly than they notice it, and so it happens that they, especially my mother, unconsciously give him opportunities to repeat.  If some evening the moment for repeating a story cannot quite be found, then Mother is there, she asks a question, and indeed with a curiosity that does not end even after the question is asked, as one might expect.  As for stories that have already been repeated and could not return again by their own strength, Mother hunts after them with her questions even several evenings later.  N.'s habit is, however, so obsessive that it often has the power to justify itself completely.  No one else gets with such regular frequency onto the position of having to tell members of the family individually a story that basically concerns all of them.  The story must then be told, almost as often as there are persons, to the family circle that in such cases assembles slowly, at intervals, one person at a time.  And because I am the one who alone has recognized N.'s habit, I am also usually the one who hears the story first and for whom the repetitions provide only the small pleasure of confirming an observation.
 

Envy at nominal success of Baum whom I really like so much.  With this, the feeling of having in the middle of my body a ball of wool that quickly winds itself up, its innumerable threads pulling from the surface of my body to itself.
 

Löwy.  My father about him: “Whoever lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.”  I could not contain myself and said something uncontrolled.  To which Father with unusual quietness (to be sure, after a long interval which was otherwise occupied): “You know that I should not get excited and must be treated with consideration.  And now you speak to me like that.  I really have enough excitement, quite enough.  So don't bother me with such talk.”  I say: “I make every effort to restrain myself,” and sense in my father, as always in such extreme moments, the existence of a wisdom of which I can grasp only a breath.
 

Death of Löwy's grandfather, a man who had an open hand, knew several languages, had made long journeys deep into Russia, and who once on a Saturday refused to eat at the house of a wonder-rabbi in Ekaterinoslav because the long hair and colored neckerchief of the rabbi's son made him suspect the piety of the house.
 

The bed was set up in the middle of the room, the candlesticks were borrowed from friends and relatives, the room therefore full of the light and smoke of the candles.  Some forty men stood around his bed all day to receive inspiration from the death of a pious man.  He was conscious until the end and at the right moment, his hand on his breast, he began to repeat the death prayers.  During his suffering and after his death the grandmother, who was with the women gathered in the next room, wept incessantly, but while he was dying she was completely calm because it is a commandment to ease the death of the dying man as much as one can.  “With his own prayers he passed away.”  He was much envied for this death that followed so pious a life.
 

Pesach (Passover) festival.  An association of rich Jews rents a bakery, its members take over for the heads of the families all the tasks of producing the so-called eighteen-minute matzos: the fetching of water, the koshering, the kneading, the cutting, the piercing.
 
 

5 November.  Yesterday slept, with Löwy after Bar Kokhba from seven on, read a letter from his father.  Evening at Baum's.
 

I want to write, with a constant trembling on my forehead.  I sit in my room in the very headquarters of the uproar of the entire house.  I hear all the doors close, because of their noise only the footsteps of those running between them are spared me, I hear even the slamming of the oven door in the kitchen.  My father bursts through the doors of my room and passes through in his dragging dressing-gown, the ashes are scraped out of the stove in the next room, Valli asks, shouting into the indefinite through the anteroom as though through a Paris street, whether Father's hat has been brushed yet, a hushing that claims to be friendly to me raises the shout of an answering voice.  The house door is unlatched and screeches as though from a sore throat, then opens wider with the brief singing of a woman's voice and closes with a dull manly jerk that sounds most inconsiderate.  My father is gone, now begins the more delicate, more distracted, more hopeless noise led by the voices of the two canaries.  I had already thought of it before, but with the canaries it comes back to me again, that I might open the door a narrow crack, crawl into the next room like a snake and in that way, on the floor, beg my sisters and their governess for quiet.
 

The bitterness I felt yesterday evening when Max read my little motor-car story at Baum's.  I was isolated from everyone and in the face of the story I kept my chin pressed against my breast, as it were.  The disordered sentences of this story with holes into which one could stick both hands; one sentence sounds high, one sentence sounds low, as the case may be, one sentence rubs against another like the tongue against a hollow or false tooth; one sentence comes marching up with so rough a start that the entire story falls into sulky amazement; a sleepy imitation of Max (reproaches muffled—stirred up) seesaws in, sometimes it looks like a dancing course during its first quarter-hour.  I explain it to myself by saying that I have too little time and quiet to draw out of me all the possibilities of my talent.  For that reason it is only disconnected starts that always make an appearance, disconnected starts, for instance, all through the motor-car story.  If I were ever able to write something large and whole, well shaped from beginning to end, then in the end the story would never be able to detach itself from me and it would be possible for me calmly and with open eyes, as a blood relation of a healthy story, to hear it read, but as it is every little piece of the story runs around homeless and drives me away from it in the opposite direction.—At the same time I can still be happy if this explanation is correct.
 

Performance of Goldfaden's Bar Kokhba.  (Story of Simon Bar Kokhba, who led the Jews in their revolt against the Romans in 132-135 C.E., which was ruthlessly put down.)  False judgment of the play throughout the hall and on the stage.
 

I had brought along a bouquet for Mrs. Tschissik, with an attached visiting card inscribed “in gratitude,” and waited for the moment when I could have it presented to her.  The performance had begun late, Mrs. Tschissik's big scene was promised me only in the fourth act, in impatience and fear that the flowers might wilt I had them unwrapped by the waiter as early as during the third act (it was eleven o'clock), they lay on a table, the kitchen help and several dirty regular guests handed them from one to another and smelled them, I could only look on worriedly and angrily, nothing else, I loved Mrs. Tschissik during her big scene in the prison, but still, I was anxious for her to bring it to its end, finally the act, unnoticed by me in my distraction, was finished, the headwaiter handed up the flowers, Mrs. Tschissik took them between final curtains, she bowed in a narrow opening of the curtains and did not return again.  No one noticed my love and I had intended to reveal it to all and so make it valuable in the eyes of Mrs. Tschissik; the bouquet was hardly noticed.  Meanwhile it was already past two o'clock, everyone was tired, several people had already left, I should have enjoyed throwing my glass at them.
 

With me was Comptroller P. from our firm, a Gentile.  He, whom I usually like, disturbed me.  My worry was the flowers, not his affairs.  At the same time I knew that he understood the play incorrectly, while I had no time, desire, or ability to force upon him assistance which he did not think he needed.  Finally I was ashamed of myself before him because I myself was paying so little attention.  Also he disturbed me in my conversation with Max and even by the recollection that I had liked him before, would again like him afterwards, and that he could take my behavior today amiss.
 

But not only I was disturbed.  Max felt responsible because of his laudatory article in the paper.  It was getting too late for the Jews in Bergmann's convoy.  The members of the Bar Kokhba Association had come because of the name of the play and could not help being disappointed.  From what I know of Bar Kokhba from this play, I would not have named any association after him.  In the back of the hall there were two shopgirls in their best clothes with their sweethearts who had to be silenced by loud shouts during the death scenes.  Finally people on the street struck the huge panes in annoyance that they saw so little of the stage.
 

The two Klugs were missing from the stage.  Ridiculous extras.  “Vulgar Jews,” as Löwy said.  Travelling salesmen who weren't paid.  Most of the time they were concerned only with concealing their laughter or enjoying it, even if aside from this they meant well.  A round-cheeked fellow with a blond beard at the sight of whom you could scarcely keep from laughing looked especially funny when he laughed.  His false beard shook unnaturally, because of his laughter it was no longer pasted in its right place on his cheeks.  Another fellow laughed only when he wanted to, but then a lot.  When Löwy died, singing, in the arms of these two elders and was supposed to slip slowly to earth with the fading song, they put their heads together behind his back in order finally to be able to laugh their fill for once, unseen by the audience (as they thought).  Yesterday, when I remembered it at lunch, I still had to laugh.
 

Mrs. Tschissik in prison must take the helmet off the drunken Roman governor (young Pipes) who is visiting her and then put it on herself. When she takes it off, a crushed towel falls out which Pipes had apparently stuffed in because the helmet pinched too much.  Although he certainly must have known that the helmet would be taken off his head on the stage, he looks reproachfully at Mrs. Tschissik, forgetting his drunkenness.
 

Beautiful: the way Mrs. Tschissik, under the hands of the Roman soldiers (whom, however, she first had to pull to her, for they obviously were afraid to touch her), writhed while the movements of the three actors by her care and art almost, only almost, followed the rhythm of the singing; the song in which she proclaims the appearance of the Messiah, and, without destroying the illusion, sheerly by the spell she casts, represents the playing of a harp by the motions of bowing a violin; in the prison where at the frequent approach of footsteps she breaks off her song of lamentation, hurries to her treadmill and turns it to the accompaniment of a work song, then again escapes to her song and again to the mill, the way she sings in her sleep when Papus visits her and her mouth is open like a twinkling eye, the way in general the corners of her mouth in opening remind one of the corners of her eyes.  In the white veil, as in the black, she was beautiful.
 

New among her familiar gestures: pressing her hand deep into her not very good bodice, abrupt shrug of her shoulders and hips in scorn, especially when she turns her back on the one scorned.
 

She led the whole performance like the mother of a family.  She prompted everyone but never faltered herself; she instructed the extras, implored them, finally shoved them if need be; her clear voice, when she was off stage, joined in the ragged chorus on stage, she held up the folding screen (which in the last act was supposed to represent a citadel) that the extras would have knocked down ten times.
 

I had hoped, by means of the bouquet of flowers, to appease my love for her a little, it was quite useless.  It is possible only through literature or through sleeping together.  I write this not because I did not know it, but rather because it is perhaps well to write down warnings frequently.
 
 

7 November.  Tuesday.  Yesterday the actors and Mrs. Tschissik finally left.  I went with Löwy to the coffeehouse in the evening, but waited outside, did not want to go in, did not want to see Mrs. Tschissik. But while I was walking up and down I saw her open the door and come out with Löwy, I went towards them with a greeting and met them in the middle of the street.  Mrs. Tschissik thanked me for my bouquet in the grand but natural vocables of her speech, she had only just now learned that it was from me.  This liar Löwy had therefore said nothing to her.  I was worried about her because she was wearing only a thin, dark blouse with short sleeves and I asked her—I almost touched her in order to force her—to go into the restaurant so that she would not catch cold.  No, she said, she does not catch cold, indeed she has a shawl, and she raised it a little to show it and then drew it together more closely about her breast.  I could not tell her that I was not really concerned about her but was rather only happy to have found an emotion in which I could enjoy my love, and therefore I told her again that I was worried.
 

Meanwhile her husband, her little girl, and Mr. Pipes had also come out and it turned out that it had by no means been decided that they would go to Brünn as Löwy had convinced me, on the contrary, Pipes was even determined to go to Nuremberg.  That would be best, a hall would be easy to get, the Jewish community is large, moreover, the trip to Leipzig and Berlin very comfortable.  Furthermore they had discussed it all day and Löwy, who had slept until four, had simply kept them waiting and made them miss the seven-thirty for Brünn.  Amidst these arguments we entered the tavern and sat down at a table, I across from Mrs. Tschissik.  I should so have liked to distinguish myself, this would not have been so difficult, I should just have had to know several train connections, tell the railway stations apart, bring about a choice between Nuremberg and Brünn, but chiefly shout down Pipes who was behaving like his Bar Kokhba.  To Pipes's shouting Löwy very reasonably, if unintentionally, counterposed a very quick, uninterruptable chatter in his normal voice that was, at least for me, rather incomprehensible at the time.  So instead of distinguishing myself I sat sunk in my chair, looked from Pipes to Löwy, and only now and then caught Mrs. Tschissik's eye on the way, but when she answered me with her glance (when she smiled at me because of Pipes's excitement, for instance) I looked away.  This had its sense.  Between us there could be no smiling at Pipes's excitement.  Facing her, I was too serious for this, and quite tired by this seriousness.  If I wanted to laugh at something I could look across her shoulder at the fat woman who had played the governor's wife in Bar Kokhba.  But really I could not look at her seriously either.  For that would have meant that I loved her.  Even young Pipes behind me, in all his innocence, would have had to recognize that.  And that would have been really unheard of.  A young man whom everyone takes to be eighteen years old declares in the presence of the evening's guests at the Café Savoy, amidst the surrounding waiters, in the presence of the table full of actors, declares to a thirty-year-old woman whom hardly anyone even considers pretty, who has two children, ten and eight years old, whose husband is sitting beside her, who is a model of respectability and economy—declares to this woman his love to which he has completely fallen victim and, now comes the really remarkable part which of course no one else would have observed, immediately renounces the woman, just as he would renounce her if she were young and single.  Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.
 

Mrs. Tschissik was beautiful yesterday.  The really normal beauty of small hands, of light fingers, of rounded forearms which in themselves are so perfect that even the unaccustomed sight of this nakedness does not make one think of the rest of the body.  The hair separated into two waves, brightly illumined by the gaslight.  Somewhat bad complexion around the right corner of her mouth.  Her mouth opens as though in childish complaint, running above and below into delicately shaped curves, one imagines that the beautiful shaping of words, which spreads the light of the vowels throughout the words and preserves their pure contours with the tip of the tongue, can succeed only once, and admires how everlasting it is.  Low, white forehead.  The powdering that I have so far seen I hate, but if this white color, this somewhat cloudy milk-colored veil hovering low over the skin is the result of powder, then every woman should powder.  She likes to hold two fingers to the right corner of her mouth, perhaps she even stuck the tips of her fingers into her mouth—yes, perhaps she even put a toothpick into her mouth; I didn't look closely at these fingers, but it seemed almost as though she were poking in a hollow tooth with a toothpick and let it stay there a quarter of an hour.
 
 

8 November.  All afternoon at the lawyer's about the factory.
 

The girl who only because she was walking arm in arm with her sweetheart looked quietly around.
 

The clerk in N.'s office reminded me of the actress who played Manette Salomon at the Odéon in Paris a year and a half ago.  At least when she was sitting.  A soft bosom, broader than it was high, encased in a woolly material.  A broad face down to the mouth, but then rapidly narrowing.  Neglected, natural curls in a flat hairdo.  Zeal and calm in a strong body.  The resemblance was strengthened too, as I see now, because she worked on unmoved (the keys flew—Oliver system—on her typewriter like old-time knitting needles), also walked about, but scarcely spoke two words in half an hour, as though she had Manette Salomon within her.
 

When I was waiting at the lawyer's I looked at the one typist and thought how hard it was to make out her face even while looking at it.  The relationship between a hairdo standing out almost at the same distance all around her head, and the straight nose that most of the time seemed too long, was especially confusing.  When the girl who was reading a document made a more striking movement, I was almost confounded by the observation that through my contemplation I had remained more of a stranger to the girl than if I had brushed her skirt with my little finger.
 

When the lawyer, in reading the agreement [about the shares in the factory] to me, came to a passage concerning my possible future wife and possible children, I saw across from me a table with two large chairs and a smaller one around it.  At the thought that I should never be in a position to seat in these or any other three chairs myself, my wife, and my child, there came over me a yearning for this happiness so despairing from the very start that in my excitement I asked the lawyer the only question I had left after the long reading, which at once revealed my complete misunderstanding of a rather long section of the agreement that had just been read.
 

Continuation of the farewell: in Pipes, because I felt oppressed by him, I saw first of all the jagged and darkly spotted tips of his teeth. Finally I got half an idea: “Why go as far as Nuremberg in one jump?” I asked.  “Why not give one or two performances at a smaller local station?”
 

“Do you know one?” asked Mrs. Tschissik, not nearly as sharply as I write it, and in this way forced me to look at her.  All that part of her body which was visible above the table, all the roundness of shoulders, back, and breast, was soft despite her (in European dress, on the stage) bony, almost coarse build.  Ridiculously I mentioned Pilsen.  Some regular guests at the next table very reasonably mentioned Teplitz.  Mr. Tschissik would have been in favor of any local station, he has confidence only in small undertakings, Mrs. Tschissik agreed without their having consulted much with one another, aside from that she asks around about the fares.  Several times they said that if they just earned enough for parnusse (enough to live on), it would be sufficient.  Her daughter rubs her cheek against her arm; she certainly does not feel it, but to the adult there comes the childish conviction that nothing can happen to a child who is with its parents, even if they are travelling actors, and that if you think about it, real troubles are not to be met with so close to the earth but only at the height of an adult's face.  I was very much in favor of Teplitz because I could give them a letter of recommendation to Dr. P. and so use my influence for Mrs. Tschissik.  In the face of the objection of Pipes, who himself prepared the lots to be drawn for the three possible cities and conducted the drawing with great liveliness, Teplitz was drawn for the third time.  I went to the next table and excitedly wrote the letter of recommendation.  I took my leave with the excuse that I had to go home to get the exact address of Dr. P., which was not necessary, however, and which they didn't know at home, either.  In embarrassment, while Löwy prepared to accompany me, I played with the hand of the woman, the chin of her little girl.
 
 

9 November.  A dream the day before yesterday: Everything theater, I now up in the balcony, now on the stage, a girl whom I had liked a few months ago was playing a part, tensed her lithe body when she held on to the back of a chair in terror; from the balcony I pointed to the girl who was playing a male role, my companion did not like her.  In one act the set was so large that nothing else was to be seen, no stage, no auditorium, no dark, no footlights; instead, great crowds of spectators were on the set which represented the Altstädter Ring, probably seen from the opening of Niklasstrasse.  Although one should really not have been able to see the square in front of the Rathaus clock and the small Ring, short turns and slow rockings of the stage floor nevertheless made it possible to look down, for example, on the small Ring from Kinsky Palace.  This had no purpose except to show the whole set whenever possible, since it was already there in such perfection anyhow, and since it would have been a crying shame to miss seeing any of this set which, as I was well aware, was the most beautiful set in all the world and of all time.  The lighting was that of dark, autumnal clouds.  The light of the dimmed sun was scatteredly reflected from one or another stained-glass window on the southeast side of the square.  Since everything was executed in life size and without the smallest false detail, the fact that some of the casement windows were blown open and shut by the slight breeze without a sound because of the great height of the houses, made an overwhelming impression.  The square was very steep, the pavement almost black, the Tein Church was in its place, but in front of it was a small imperial castle in the courtyard of which all the monuments that ordinarily stood in the square were assembled in perfect order: the Pillar of St. Mary, the old fountain in front of the Rathaus that I myself have never seen, the fountain before the Niklas Church, and a board fence that has now been put up round the excavation for the Hus memorial.
 

They acted—in the audience one often forgets that it is only acting, how much truer is this on the stage and behind the scenes—an imperial fête and a revolution.  The revolution, with huge throngs of people sent back and forth, was probably greater than anything that ever took place in Prague; they had apparently located it in Prague only because of the set, although really it belonged in Paris.  Of the fête one saw nothing at first, in any event, the court had ridden off to a fête, meanwhile the revolution had broken out, the people had forced its way into the castle, I myself ran out into the open right over the ledges of the fountain in the churchyard, but it was supposed to be impossible for the court to return to the castle.  Then the court carriages came from Eisengasse at so wild a pace that they had to brake while still far from the castle entrance, and slid across the pavement with locked wheels. They were the sort of carriages—one sees them at festivals and processions—on which living tableaux are shown, they were therefore flat, hung with garlands of flowers, and from the carriage doors a colored cloth covering the wheels hung down all around.  One was all the more aware of the terror that their speed indicated.  As though unconsciously, the horses, which reared before the entrance, pulled the carriages in a curve from Eisengasse to the castle.  Just then many people streamed past me out into the square, mostly spectators whom I knew from the street and who perhaps had arrived this very moment.  Among them there was also a girl I know, but I do not know which; beside her walked a young, elegant man in a yellowish-brown ulster with small checks, his right hand deep in his pocket.  They walked toward Niklasstrasse.  From this moment on I saw nothing more.
 

Schiller some place or other: The chief  thing is (or something similar) “to transform emotion into character.”
 
 

11 November.  Saturday.  Yesterday all afternoon at Max's.  Decided on the sequence of the essays for The Beauty of Ugly Pictures.  Without good feeling.  It is just then, however, that Max loves me most, or does it only seem so because then I am so clearly conscious how little deserving I am.  No, he really loves me more.  He wants to include my “Brescia” in the book too.  Everything good in me struggles against it.  I was supposed to go to Brünn with him today.  Everything bad and weak in me held me back.  For I cannot believe that I shall really write something good tomorrow.
 

The girls, tightly wrapped up in their work aprons, especially behind.  One at Löwy's and Winterberg's this morning whose apron flaps, which closed only on her behind, did not tie together as they usually do, but instead closed over each other so that she was wrapped up like a child in swaddling clothes.  Sensual impression like that which, even unconsciously, I always had of children in swaddling clothes who are so squeezed in their wrappings and beds and so laced with ribbons, quite as though to satisfy one's lust.
 

Edison, in an American interview, told of his trip through Bohemia, in his opinion the relatively higher development of Bohemia (in the suburbs there are broad streets, gardens in front of the houses, in travelling through the country you see factories being built) is due to the fact that the emigration of Czechs to America is so large, and that those returning from there one by one bring new ambition back.
 

As soon as I become aware in any way that I leave abuses undisturbed which it was really intended that I should correct (for example, the extremely satisfied, but from my point of view dismal, life of my married sister [Elli]), I lose all sensation in my arm muscles for a moment.
 

I will try, gradually, to group everything certain in me, later the credible, then the possible, etc.  The greed for books is certain in me.  Not really to own or to read them, but rather to see them, to convince myself of their actuality in the stalls of a bookseller.  If there are several copies of the same book somewhere, each individual one delights me.  It is as though this greed came from my stomach, as though it were a perverse appetite.  Books that I own delight me less, but books belonging to my sisters do delight me.  The desire to own them is incomparably less, it is almost absent.
 
 

12 November.  Sunday.  Yesterday lecture by Richepin: “La Légende de Napoléon” in the Rudolphinum.  Pretty empty.  As though on sudden inspiration to test the manners of the lecturer, a large piano is standing in the way between the small entrance door and the lecturer's table.  The lecturer enters, he wants, with his eyes on the audience, to reach his table by the shortest route, therefore comes close to the piano, is startled, steps back and walks around it softly without looking at the audience again.  In the enthusiasm at the end of his speech and in the loud applause, he naturally forgot the piano, as it did not call attention to itself during the lecture.  With his hands on his chest, he wants to turn his back on the audience as late as possible, therefore takes several elegant steps to the side, naturally bumps gently into the piano and, on tiptoe, must arch his back a little before he gets into the clear again.  At least that is the way Richepin did it.
 

A tall, powerful man of fifty with a waistline.  His hair is stiff and tousled (Daudet's, for example) although pressed fairly close to his skull.  Like all old Southerners with their thick nose and the broad, wrinkled face that goes with it, from whose nostrils a strong wind can blow as from a horse's muzzle, and of whom you know very well that this is the final state of their faces, it will not be replaced but will endure for a long time; his face also reminded me of the face of an elderly Italian woman wearing a very natural, definitely not false beard.
 

The freshly painted light gray of the podium rising behind him was distracting at first.  His white hair blended with the color and there was no outline to be seen.  When he bent his head back the color was set in motion, his head almost sank in it.  Only towards the middle of the lecture, when your attention was fully concentrated, did this disturbance come to an end, especially when he raised his large, black-clad body during a recitation and, with waving hands, conducted the verses and put the gray color to flight—in the beginning he was embarrassing, he scattered so many compliments in all directions.  In telling about a Napoleonic soldier whom he had known personally and who had had fifty-seven wounds, he remarked that the variety of colors on the torso of this man could have been imitated only by a great colorist such as his friend Mucha, who was present.
 

I observed in myself a continual increase in the degree to which I am affected by people on a podium.  I gave no thought to my pains and cares.  I was squeezed into the left corner of my chair, but really into the lecture, my clasped hands between my knees.  I felt that Richepin had an effect upon me such as Solomon must have felt when he took young girls into his bed.  I even had a slight vision of Napoleon who, in a connected fantasy, also stepped through the little entrance door although he could really have stepped out of the wood of the podium or out of the organ.  He overwhelmed the entire hall, which was tightly packed at that moment.  Near as I actually was to him, I had and would have had even in reality never a doubt of his effect.  I should perhaps have noticed any absurdity in his dress, as in the case of Richepin as well, but noticing it would not have disturbed me.  How cool I had been, on the other hand, as a child!  I often wished to be brought face to face with the Emperor to show him how little effect he had.  And that was not courage, it was just coolness.
 

He recited poems as though they were speeches in the Chamber.  An impotent onlooker at battles, he pounded the table, he flung out his outstretched arms to clear a path for the guards through the middle of the hall, “Empereur!” he shouted, with his raised arm become a banner, and in repeating it made it echo as though an army was shouting down in the plain.  During the description of a battle, a little foot kicked against the floor somewhere, the matter was looked into, it was his foot that had had too little confidence in itself.  But it did not disturb him.  After “The Grenadiers,” which he read in a translation by Gérard de Nerval and which he thought very highly of, there was the least applause.
 

In his youth the tomb of Napoleon had been opened once a year and the embalmed face was displayed to disabled soldiers filing past in procession; the face was bloated and greenish, more a spectacle of terror than of admiration; this is why they later stopped opening the tomb.  But nevertheless Richepin saw the face from the arm of his grand-uncle, who had served in Africa and for whose sake the Commandant opened the tomb.
 

He announces long in advance that a poem he intends to recite (he has an infallible memory, which a strong temperament must really always have), discusses it, the coming verses already cause a small earthquake under his words, in the case of the first poem he even said he would recite it with all his fire.  He did.
 

He brought things to a climax in the last poem by getting imperceptibly into the verses (by Victor Hugo), standing up slowly, not sitting down again even after he finished the verses, picking up and carrying on the sweeping movements of the recitation with the final force of his own prose.  He closed with the vow that even after a thousand years each grain of dust of his corpse, if it should have consciousness, would be ready to answer the call of Napoleon.
 

The French, short-winded from the quick succession of its escaping breaths, withstood even the most unskillful improvisations, did not break down even under his frequent talking about poets who beautify everyday life, about his own imagination (eyes closed) being that of a poet's, about his hallucinations (eyes reluctantly wrenched open on the distance) being those of a poet's, etc.  At the same time he sometimes covered his eyes and then slowly uncovered them, taking away one finger after another.
 

He served in the army, his uncle in Africa, his grandfather under Napoleon, he even sang two lines of a battle song.  13 November.  And this man is, I learned today, sixty-two years old.
 
 

14 November.  Tuesday.  Yesterday at Max's who returned from his Brünn lecture.
 

In the afternoon while falling asleep.  As though the solid skullcap encircling the insensitive cranium had moved more deeply inwards and left a part of the brain exposed to the free play of light and muscles.
 

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 backwards, like the figures on the bows of ships in old times.
 

Before falling asleep.
 

It seems so dreadful to be a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one's dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in company, having to carry one's meal home in one's hand, unable to expect anyone with a lazy sense of calm confidence, able only with difficulty and vexation to give a gift to someone, having to say good night at the front door, never being able to run up a stairway beside one's wife, to lie ill and have only the solace of the view from one's window when one can sit up, to have only side doors in one's room leading into other people's living rooms, to feel estranged from one’s family, with whom one can keep on close terms only by marriage, first by the marriage of one's parents, then, when the effect of that has worn off, by one's own, having to admire other people's children and not even being allowed to go on saying: “I have none myself,” never to feel oneself grow older since there is no family growing up around one, modeling oneself in appearance and behavior on one or two bachelors remembered from our youth.
 

This is all true, but it is easy to make the error of unfolding future sufferings so far in front of one that one's eye must pass beyond them and never again return, while in reality, both today and later, one will stand with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead that is, for smiting on with one's hand.
 

Now I'll try a sketch for the introduction to Richard and Samuel.
 
 

15 November.  Yesterday evening, already with a sense of foreboding, pulled the cover off the bed, lay down, and again became aware of all my abilities as though I were holding them in my hand; they tightened my chest, they set my head on fire, for a short while, to console myself for not getting up to work, I repeated: “That's not healthy, that's not healthy,” and with almost visible purpose tried to draw sleep over my head.  I kept thinking of a cap with a visor which, to protect myself, I pulled down hard over my forehead.  How much did I lose yesterday, how the blood pounded in my tight head, capable of anything and restrained only by powers which are indispensable for my very life and are here being wasted.
 

It is certain that everything I have conceived in advance, even when I was in a good mood, whether word for word or just casually, but in specific words appears dry, wrong, inflexible, embarrassing to everybody around me, timid, but above all incomplete when I try to write it down at my desk, although I have forgotten nothing of the original conception.  This is naturally related in large part to the fact that I conceive something good away from paper only in a time of exaltation, a time more feared than longed for, much as I do long for it; but then the fullness is so great that I have to give up.  Blindly and arbitrarily I snatch handfuls out of the stream so that when I write it down calmly, my acquisition is nothing in comparison with the fullness in which it lived, is incapable of restoring this fullness, and thus is bad and disturbing because it tempts to no purpose.
 
 

16 November.  This noon, before falling asleep, but I did not fall asleep, the upper part of the body of a wax woman lay on top of me.  Her face was bent back over mine, her left forearm pressed against my breast.
 

No sleep for three nights, at the slightest effort to do anything my strength is immediately exhausted.
 

From an old notebook: “Now, in the evening, after having studied since six o'clock in the morning, I noticed that my left hand had already for some time been sympathetically clasping my right hand by the fingers.”
 
 

18 November.  Yesterday in the factory.  Rode back on the trolley, sat in a corner with legs stretched out, saw people outside, lights in stores, walls of viaducts through which we passed, backs and faces over and over again, a highway leading from the business street of the suburb with nothing human on it save people going home, the glaring electric lights of the railway station burned into the darkness, the low, tapering chimneys of a gasworks, a poster announcing the guest appearance of a singer, de Treville, that gropes its way along the walls as far as an alley near the cemeteries, from where it then returned with me out of the cold of the fields into the liveable warmth of the city.  We accept foreign cities as a fact, the inhabitants live there without penetrating our way of life, just as we cannot penetrate theirs, a comparison must be made, it can't be helped, but one is well aware that it has no moral or even psychological value, in the end one can often even omit the comparison because the difference in the condition of life is so great that it makes it unnecessary.
 

The suburbs of our native city, however, are also foreign to us, but in this case comparisons have value, a half-hour's walk can prove it to us over and over again, here live people partly within our city, partly on the miserable, dark edge of the city that is furrowed like a great ditch, although they all have an area of interest in common with us that is greater than any other group of people outside the city.  For this reason I always enter and leave the suburb with a weak mixed feeling of anxiety, of abandonment, of sympathy, of curiosity, of conceit, of joy in travelling, of fortitude, and return with pleasure, seriousness, and calm, especially from Zizkov.
 
 

19 November.  Sunday.  Dream: In the theater.  Performance of Das Weite Land (The Waste Land) by Schnitzler, adapted by Utitz.  I sit right up at the front, think I am sitting in the first row until it finally appears that it is the second.  The back of the row is turned towards the stage so that one can see the auditorium comfortably, the stage only by turning.  The author is somewhere nearby, I can't hold back my poor opinion of the play which I seem to know from before, but add that the third act is supposed to be witty.  With this “supposed to be,” however, I mean to say that if one is speaking of the good parts, I do not know the play and must rely on hearsay; therefore I repeat this remark once more, not just for myself, but nevertheless it is disregarded by the others.  There is a great crush around me.  The audience seems to have come in its winter clothes, everyone fills his seat to overflowing.  People beside me, behind me, whom I do not see, interrupt me, point out new arrivals, mention their names, my attention is called especially to a married couple forcing their way along a row of seats, since the woman has a dark-yellow, mannish, long-nosed face, and besides, as far as one can see in the crowd out of which her head towers, is wearing men's clothes; near me, remarkably free, the actor Löwy, but very unlike the real one, is standing and making excited speeches in which the word “principium” is repeated, I keep expecting the words “tertium comparationis,” they do not come.  In a box in the second tier, really only in a right-hand corner (seen from the stage) of the balcony that connects with the boxes there, a third son of the Kisch family, dressed in a beautiful Prince Albert with its flaps opened wide, stands behind his mother, who is seated, and speaks out into the theater.  Löwy's speeches have a connection with these speeches.  Among other things, Kisch points high up to a spot on the curtain and says, “There sits the German Kisch,” by this he means my schoolmate who studied Germanics.  When the curtain goes up the theater begins to darken, and Kisch, in order to indicate that he would disappear in any case, marches up and away from the balcony with his mother, again with all his arms, coats, and legs spread wide.
 

The stage is somewhat lower than the auditorium, you look down with your chin on the back of the seat.  The set consists chiefly of two low, thick pillars in the middle of the stage.  The scene is a banquet in which girls and young men take part.  Despite the fact that when the play began many people in the first rows left, apparently to go backstage, I can see very little, for the girls left behind block the view with their large, flat hats, most of which are blue, that move back and forth along the whole length of the row.  Nevertheless, I see a small ten- to fifteen-year-old boy unusually clearly on the stage.  He has dry, parted, straight-cut hair.  He cannot even place his napkin properly on his lap, must look down carefully when he does, and is supposed to be a man-about-town in this play.  In consequence, I no longer have much confidence in this theater.  The company on the stage now waits for various newcomers who come down onto the stage from the first rows of the auditorium.  But the play is not well rehearsed, either.  Thus, an actress named Hackelberg has just entered, an actor, leaning back in his chair like a man of the world, addresses her as “Hackel,” then becomes aware of his mistake and corrects himself.  Now a girl enters whom I know (her name is Frankel, I think), she climbs over the back of the seat right where I am sitting, her back, when she climbs over, is entirely naked, the skin not very good, over the right hip there is even a scratched, bloodshot spot the size of a doorknob.  But then, when she turns around on the stage and stands there with a clean face, she acts very well.  Now a singing horseman is supposed to approach out of the distance at a gallop, a piano reproduces the clatter of hoofs, you hear the stormy song approaching, finally I see the singer too, who, to give the singing the natural swelling that takes place in a rapid approach, is running along the balcony up above towards the stage.  He is not yet at the stage or through with the song and yet he has already passed the climax of haste and shrieking song, and the piano too can no longer reproduce distinctly the sound of hoofs striking against the stones.  Both stop, therefore, and the singer approaches quietly, but he makes himself so small that only his head rises above the railing of the balcony, so that you cannot see him very clearly.
 

With this, the first act is over, but the curtain doesn't come down, the theater remains dark too.  On the stage two critics sit on the floor, writing, with their backs resting against a piece of scenery.  A dramatic coach or stage manager with a blond, pointed beard jumps on to the stage, while still in the air he stretches one hand out to give some instructions, in the other hand he has a bunch of grapes that had been in a fruit dish on the banquet table and which he now eats.
 

Again facing the auditorium I see that it is lit by simple paraffin lamps that are stuck up on simple chandeliers, like those in the streets, and now, of course, burn only very low.  Suddenly, impure paraffin or a damaged wick is probably the cause, the light spurts out of one of these lanterns and sparks pour down in a broad gush on the crowded audience that forms a mass as black as earth.  Then a gentleman rises up out of this mass, walks on it towards the lamp, apparently wants to fix the lamp, but first looks up at it, remains standing near it for a short while, and, when nothing happens, returns quietly to his place in which he is swallowed up.  I take him for myself and bow my face into the darkness.
 

I and Max must really be different to the very core.  Much as I admire his writings when they lie before me as a whole, resisting my and anyone else’s encroachment (a few small book reviews even today), still, every sentence he writes for Richard and Samuel is bound up with a reluctant concession on my part which I feel painfully to my very depths.  At least today.
 

This evening I was again filled with anxiously restrained abilities.
 
 

20 November.  Dream of a picture, apparently by Ingres.  The girls in the woods in a thousand mirrors, or rather: the virgins, etc.  To the right of the picture, grouped in the same way and airily drawn like the pictures on theater curtains, there was a more compact group, to the left they sat and lay on a gigantic twig or flying ribbon, or soared by their own power in a chain that rose slowly towards the sky.  And now they were reflected not only towards the spectator but also away from him, became more indistinct and multitudinous; what the eye lost in detail it gained in fullness.  But in front stood a naked girl untouched by the reflections, her weight on one leg, her hip thrust forward.  Here Ingres's draftsmanship was to be admired, but I actually found with satisfaction that there was too much real nakedness left in this girl even for the sense of touch.  From behind her came a gleam of pale, yellowish light.
 

My repugnance for antitheses is certain.  They are unexpected, but do not surprise, for they have always been there; if they were unconscious, it was at the very edge of consciousness.  They make for thoroughness, fullness, completeness, but only like a figure on the “wheel of life,” we have chased our little idea around the circle.  They are as undifferentiated as they are different, they grow under one's hand as though bloated by water, beginning with the prospect of infinity, they always end up in the same medium size.  They curl up, cannot be straightened out, are mere clues, are holes in wood, are immobile assaults, draw antitheses to themselves, as I have shown.  If they would only draw all of them, and forever.
 

For the drama: Weise, English teacher, the way he hurried by with squared shoulders, his hands deep in his pockets, his yellowish overcoat tightly folded, crossing the tracks with powerful strides right in front of the trolley that still stood there but was already signaling its departure with its bell.  Away from us.
 

E: Anna!

A [looking up]: Yes.

E: Come here.

A [long, quiet steps]: What do you want?

E: I wanted to tell you that I have been dissatisfied with you for some time.

A: Really!

E: It is so.

A: Then you must certainly give me notice, Emil.

E: So quickly?  And don't you even ask the reason?

A: I know it.

E: You do?

A: You don't like the food.

E [stands up quickly, loud]: Do you or don't you know that Kurt is leaving this evening?

A [inwardly undisturbed]: Why yes, unfortunately he is leaving, you didn't have to call me here for that.
 
 

21 November.  My former governess, the one with the black-and-yellow face, with the square nose and a wart on her cheek which used to delight me so, was at our house today for the second time recently to see me.  The first time I wasn't home, this time I wanted to be left in peace and to sleep and made them tell her I was out.  Why did she bring me up so badly, after all I was obedient, she herself is saying so now to the cook and the governess in the anteroom, I was good and had a quiet disposition.  Why didn't she use this to my advantage and prepare a better future for me?  She is a married woman or a widow, has children, has a lively way of speaking that doesn't let me sleep, thinks I am a tall, healthy gentleman at the beautiful age of twenty-eight who likes to remember his youth and in general knows what to do with himself.  Now, however, I lie here on the sofa, kicked out of the world, watching for the sleep that refuses to come and will only graze me when it does, my joints ache with fatigue, my dried-up body trembles toward its own destruction in turmoils of which I dare not become fully conscious, in my head are astonishing convulsions.  And there stand the three women before my door, one praises me as I was, two as I am.  The cook says I shall go straight—she means without any detour—to heaven.  This it shall be.
 

Löwy: A rabbi in the Talmud made it a principle, in this case very pleasing to God, to accept nothing, not even a glass of water, from anyone.  Now it happened, however, that the greatest rabbi of his time wanted to make his acquaintance and therefore invited him to a meal.  To refuse the invitation of such a man, that was impossible.  The first rabbi therefore set out sadly on his journey.  But because his principle was so strong, a mountain raised itself up between the two rabbis.
 

[ANNA sits at the table, reading the paper.

KARL walks round the room, when he comes to the window he stops and looks out, once he even opens the inner window.]

ANNA: Please leave the window closed, it's really freezing.

KARL [closes the window]: Well, we have different things to worry about.

(22 November) ANNA: No, but you have developed a new habit, Emil, one that's quite horrible.  You know how to catch hold of every trifle and use it to find something bad in me.

KARL [rubs his fingers]: Because you have no consideration, because in general you are incomprehensible.
 

It is certain that a major obstacle to my progress is my physical condition.  Nothing can be accomplished with such a body.  I shall have to get used to its perpetual balking.  As a result of the last few nights spent in wild dreams but with scarcely a few snatches of sleep, I was so incoherent this morning, felt nothing but my forehead, saw a halfway bearable condition only far beyond my present one, and in sheer readiness to die would have been glad simply to have curled up in a ball on the cement floor of the corridor with the documents in my hand.  My body is too long for its weakness, it hasn't the least bit of fat to engender a blessed warmth, to preserve an inner fire, no fat on which the spirit could occasionally nourish itself beyond its daily need without damage to the whole.  How shall the weak heart that lately has troubled me so often be able to pound the blood through all the length of these legs?  It would be labor enough to the knees, and from there it can only spill with a senile strength into the cold lower parts of my legs.  But now it is already needed up above again, it is being waited for, while it is wasting itself down below.  Everything is pulled apart throughout the length of my body.  What could it accomplish then, when it perhaps wouldn't have enough strength for what I want to achieve even if it were shorter and more compact.
 

From a letter of Löwy's to his father: When I come to Warsaw I will walk about among you in my European clothes like “a spider before your eyes, like a mourner at a wedding.”
 

Löwy tells a story about a married friend who lives in Postin, a small town near Warsaw, and who feels isolated in his progressive interests and therefore unhappy.

“Postin, is that a large city?”

“This large,” he holds out the palm of his hand to me.  It is covered by a rough yellow-brown glove and looks like a wasteland.
 
 

23 November.  On the 21st, the hundredth anniversary of Kleist's death, the Kleist family had a wreath placed on his grave with the epitaph: “To the best of their house.”
 

On what circumstances my way of life makes me dependent!  Tonight I slept somewhat better than in the past week, this afternoon even fairly well, I even feel that drowsiness which follows moderately good sleep, consequently I am afraid I shall not be able to write as well, feel individual abilities turning more deeply inward, and am prepared for any surprise, that is, I already see it.
 
 

24 November.  Shechite (one who is learning the slaughterer's art).  Play by Gordin.  In it quotations from the Talmud, for example:

If a great scholar commits a sin during the evening or the night, by morning you are no longer permitted to reproach him with it, for in his scholarship he has already repented of it himself.

If you steal an ox then you must return two, if you slaughter the stolen ox then you must return four, but if you slaughter a stolen calf then you must return only three because it is assumed that you had to carry the calf away, therefore had done hard work.  This assumption influences the punishment even if the calf was led away without any difficulty.
 

Honesty of evil thoughts.  Yesterday evening I felt especially miserable.  My stomach was upset again. I had written with difficulty.  I had listened with effort to Löwy's reading in the coffeehouse (which at first was quiet so that we had to restrain ourselves, but which then became full of bustle and gave us no peace), the dismal future immediately before me seemed not worth entering, abandoned, I walked through Ferdinandstrasse.  Then at the junction with the Bergstein I once more thought about the more distant future.  How would I live through it with this body picked up in a lumber room?  The Talmud too says: A man without a woman is no person.  I had no defense this evening against such thoughts except to say to myself: “It is now that you come, evil thoughts, now, because I am weak and have an upset stomach.  You pick this time for me to think you.  You have waited for your advantage.  Shame on you.  Come some other time, when I am stronger.  Don't exploit my condition in this way.”  And, in fact, without even waiting for other proofs, they yielded, scattered slowly and did not again disturb me during the rest of my walk, which was, naturally, not too happy.  They apparently forgot, however, that if they were to respect all my evil moments, they would seldom get their chance.
 

The odor of petrol from a motor-car driving towards me from the theater made me notice how visibly a beautiful home life (and were it lit by a single candle, that is all one needs before going to bed) is waiting for the theater-goers coming towards me who are giving their cloaks and dangling opera glasses a last tug into place, but also how it seems that they are being sent home from the theater like subordinates before whom the curtain has gone down for the last time and behind whom the doors have opened through which—full of pride because of some ridiculous worry or another—they had entered the theater before the beginning of or during the first act.
 
 

28 November.  Have written nothing for three days.
 

Spent all afternoon of the 25th in the Café City persuading M. to sign a declaration that he was just a clerk with us, therefore not covered by insurance, so that Father would not be obliged to make the large payment on his insurance.  He promises it, I speak fluent Czech, I apologize for my mistakes with particular elegance, he promises to send the declaration to the office Monday, I feel that if he does not like me then at least he respects me, but on Monday he sends nothing, nor is he any longer in Prague, he has left.
 

Dull evening at Baum's without Max.  Reading of Die Hässliche (The Ugly Woman), a story that is still too disorganized, the first chapter is rather the building-site of a story.
 

On Sunday, 26 November.  Richard and Samuel with Max morning and afternoon until five.  Then to N., a collector from Linz, recommended by Kubin, fifty, gigantic, towerlike movements; when he is silent for any length of time one bows one's head, for he is entirely silent, while when he speaks he does not speak entirely, his life consists of collecting and fornicating.
 

Collecting: He began with a collection of postage stamps, then turned to drawings, then collected everything, then saw the aimlessness of this collection which could never be completed and limited himself to amulets, later to pilgrimage medals and pilgrimage tracts from lower Austria and southern Bavaria.  These are medals and tracts which are issued anew for each pilgrimage, most of them worthless in their material and also artistically, but often have nice pictures.  He now also began industriously to write about them, and indeed was the first to write on this subject, for the systematization of which he first established the points of reference.  Naturally, those who had been collecting these objects and had put off publishing were furious, but had to put up with it nevertheless.  Now he is an acknowledged expert on these pilgrimage medals, requests come from all over for his opinion and decision on these medals, his voice is decisive.  Besides, he collects everything else as well, his pride is a chastity belt that, together with his amulets, was exhibited at the Dresden Hygienic Exhibition.  (He has just been there to have everything packed for shipment.)  Then a beautiful knight's sword of the Falkensteiners.  His relationship to art is unambiguous and clear in that bad way which collecting makes possible.
 

From the coffeehouse in the Hotel Graf he takes us up to his overheated room, sits down on the bed, we on two chairs around him, so that we form a quiet group.  His first question: “Are you collectors?”

“No, only poor amateurs.”

“That doesn't matter.”  He pulls out his wallet and practically showers us with book-plates, his own and others', jumbled with announcements of his next book, Magic and Superstition in the Mineral Kingdom.  He has already written much, especially on “Motherhood in Art,” he considers the pregnant body the most beautiful, for him it is also the most pleasant to fuck (vögeln).  He has also written about amulets.  He was also in the employ of the Vienna Court Museum, was in charge of excavations in Braila at the mouth of the Danube, invented a process, named after him, for restoring excavated vases, is a member of thirteen learned societies and museums, his collection is willed to the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg, he often sits at his desk until one or two o'clock at night and is back at eight o'clock in the morning.  We have to write something in a lady friend's album which he has brought along to fill up on his journey.  Those who themselves create come first.  Max writes a complicated verse which Mr. N. tries to render by the proverb, “Every cloud has a silver lining.”  Before this, he had read it aloud in a wooden voice.  I write down:

            Little soul,
            Boundest in dancing, etc.

He reads aloud again, I help, finally he says: “A Persian rhythm?  Now what is that called?  Ghazel?  Right.”  We are not in a position to agree with this nor even to guess at what he means.  Finally he quotes a “ritornello by Rückert.”  Yes, he meant ritornello.  However, it is not that either.  Very well, but it has a certain melody.
 

He is a friend of Halbe.  He likes to talk about him.  We would much rather talk about Blei.  There is not much to say about him, however, Munich literary society does not think much of him because of his intellectual double crossing, he is divorced from his wife who had had a large practice as a dentist and supported him, his daughter, sixteen, blonde, with blue eyes, is the wildest girl in Munich.  In Sternheim's Hose—N. was at the theater with Halbe—Blei played an aging man-about-town.  When N. met him the next day he said: “Herr Doktor, yesterday you played Dr. Blei.”
 

“What?  What?” he said in embarrassment, “but I was playing so-and-so.”
 

When we leave he throws open the bed so that it may thoroughly take on the warmth of the room, he arranges for additional hearing besides.
 
 

29 November.  From the Talmud: When a scholar goes to meet his bride, he should take an am ha-aretz (a man of the street, an uneducated man) along, he is too deeply sunk in his scholarliness, he would not observe what should be observed.
 

As a result of bribery the telephone and telegraph wires around Warsaw were put up in a complete circle, which in the sense of the Talmud makes the city a bounded area, a courtyard, as it were, so that on Saturday it is possible even for the most pious person to move about, carry trifles (like handkerchiefs) on his person, within this circle.
 

The parties of the Hasidim where they merrily discourse on talmudic problems.  If the entertainment runs down or if someone does not take part, they make up for it by singing.  Melodies are invented, if one is a success, members of the family are called in and it is repeated and rehearsed with them.  At one such entertainment a wonder-rabbi who often had hallucinations suddenly laid his face on his arms, which were resting on the table, and remained in that position for three hours while everyone was silent.  When he awoke he wept and sang an entirely new, gay, military march.  This was the melody with which the angels of the dead had just escorted to heaven the soul of a wonder-rabbi who had died at this time in a far-off Russian city.
 

On Friday, according to the Kabbalah, the pious get a new, more delicate soul, entirely divine, which remains with them until Saturday evening.
 

On Friday evening two angels accompany each pious man from the synagogue to his home; the master of the house stands while he greets them in the dining room; they stay only a short time.
 

The education of girls, their growing up, getting used to the ways of the world, was always especially important to me.  Then they no longer run so hopelessly out of the way of a person who knows them only casually and would like to speak casually with them, they have begun to stop for a moment, even though it be not quite in that part of the room in which you would have them, you need no longer hold them with glances, threats, or the power of love; when they turn away they do so slowly and do not intend any harm by it, then their backs have become broader too.  What you say to them is not lost, they listen to the whole question without your having to hurry, and they answer, jokingly to be sure, but directly to the point.  Yes, with their faces lifted up they even ask questions themselves, and a short conversation is not more than they can stand.  They hardly ever let a spectator disturb them any more in the work they have just undertaken, and therefore pay less attention to him, yet he may look at them longer.  They withdraw only to dress for dinner.  This is the only time when you may be insecure.  Apart from this, however, you need no longer run through the streets, lie in wait at house doors, and wait over and over again for a lucky chance, even though you have really long since learned that such chances can't be forced.
 

But despite this great change that has taken place in them it is no rarity for them to come towards us with mournful faces when we meet them unexpectedly, to put their hands flatly in ours and with slow gestures invite us to enter their homes as though we were business acquaintances.  They walk heavily up and down in the next room; but when we penetrate there too, in desire and spite, they crouch in a window-seat and read the paper without a glance to spare for us.
 
 

3 December.  I have read a part of Schäfer's Karl Stauffers Lebensgang.  Eine Chronik der Leidenschaft (The Course of Karl Stauffer's Life.   A Chronicle of Passion), and am so caught up and held fast by this powerful impression forcing its ways into that inner part of me which I listen to and learn from only at rare intervals, but at the same time am driven to such a pass by the hunger imposed on me by my upset stomach and by the usual excitements of the free Sunday, that I must write, just as one can get relief from external excitement forced upon one from the outside only by flailing one's arms.
 

The unhappiness of the bachelor, whether seeming or actual, is so easily guessed at by the world around him that he will curse his decision, at least if he has remained a bachelor because of the delight he takes in secrecy.  He walks around with his coat buttoned, his hands in the upper pockets of his jacket, his arms akimbo, his hat pulled down over his eyes, a false smile that has become natural to him is supposed to shield his mouth as his glasses do his eyes, his trousers are tighter than seem proper for his thin legs.  But everyone knows his condition, can detail his sufferings.  A cold breeze breathes upon him from within and he gazes inward with the even sadder half of his double face.  He moves incessantly, but with predictable regularity, from one apartment to another.  The farther he moves away from the living, for whom he must still—and this is the worst mockery—work like a conscious slave who dare not express his consciousness, so much the smaller a space is considered sufficient for him.  While it is death that must still strike down the others, though they may have spent all their lives in a sickbed—for even though they would have gone down by themselves long ago from their own weakness, they nevertheless hold fast to their loving, very healthy relatives by blood and marriage—he, this bachelor, still in the midst of life, apparently of his own free will resigns himself to an ever smaller space, and when he dies the coffin is exactly right for him.
 

My recent reading of Mörike's autobiography to my sisters began well enough but improved as I went on, and finally, my fingertips together, it conquered inner obstacles with my voice's unceasing calm, provided a constantly expanding panorama for my voice, and finally the whole room round about me dared admit nothing but my voice.  Until my parents, returning from business, rang.
 

Before falling asleep felt on my body the weight of the fists on my light arms.
 
 

8 December.  Friday, have not written for a long time, but this time it was really in part because of satisfaction, as I have finished the first chapter of Richard and Samuel and consider it, particularly the original description of the sleep in the train compartment, a success.  Even more, I think that something is happening within me that is very close to Schiller's transformation of emotion into character.  Despite all the resistance of my inner being I must write this down.
 

Walk with Löwy to the Lieutenant-Governor's castle, which I called Fort Zion.  The entrance gates and the color of the sky matched very well.
 

Another walk to Hetz Island.  Story about Mrs. Tschissik, how they took her into the company in Berlin out of pity, at first an insignificant singer of duets in an antiquated dress and hat.  Reading of a letter from Warsaw in which a young Warsaw Jew complains about the decline of the Jewish theater and writes that he prefers to go to the “Nowosti,” the Polish operetta theater, rather than to the Jewish one, for the miserable equipment, the indecencies, the “moldy” couplets, etc., are unbearable.  Just imagine the big scene of a Jewish operetta in which the prima donna, with a train of small children behind her, marches through the audience on to the stage.  Each of them is carrying a small scroll of the Torah and is singing: Toire iz di beste s'khoire—the Torah is the best merchandise.
 

Beautiful lonely walk over the Hradschin and the Belvedere after those successful parts of Richard and Samuel.  In the Nerudagasse a sign: Anna Krizová, Dressmaker, Trained in France by the Aid of the Dowager Duchess Ahrenberg, née Princess Ahrenberg—in the middle of the first castle court I stood and watched the calling out of the castle guard.
 

The last section I wrote hasn't pleased Max, probably because he regards it as unsuitable for the whole, but possibly also because he considers it bad in itself.  This is very probable because he warned me against writing such long passages and regards the effect of such writng as somewhat jellylike.
 

In order to be able to speak to young girls I need older persons near me.  The slight disturbance emanating from them enlivens my speech, I immediately feel that the demands made on me are diminished; what I speak out of myself  without previous consideration can always if it is not suitable for the girl, be directed to the older person, from whom I can also, if it becomes necessary, draw an abundance of help.
 

Miss H.  She reminds me of Mrs. Bl., only her long, slightly double-curved, and relatively narrow nose looks like the ruined nose of Mrs. Bl.  But apart from that there is also in her face a blackness, hardly caused externally, that can be driven into the skin only by a strong character.  Broad back, well on the way to being a woman's swelling back; heavy body that seems thin in the well-cut jacket and on which the narrow jacket is even loose.  She raises her head freely to show that she has found a way out of the embarrassing moments of the conversation.  Indeed, I was not put down in this conversation, had not surrendered even inwardly, but had I just looked at myself from the outside, I should not have been able to explain my behavior in any other way.  In the past I could not express myself freely in the company of new acquaintances because the presence of sexual wishes unconsciously hindered me, now their conscious absence hinders me.
 

Ran into the Tschissik couple at the Graben.  She was wearing the hussy's dress she wore in Der Wilde Mensch.  When I break down her appearance into its details as I saw it then at the Graben, she becomes improbable.  (I saw her only for a moment, for I became frightened at the sight of her, did not greet her, nor did she see me, and I did not immediately dare to turn around.)  She seemed much smaller than usual, her left hip was thrust forward, not just at the moment, but permanently, her right leg was bent in at the knee, the movements of her throat and head, which she brought close to her husband, were very quick, with her right arm crooked outwards she tried to take the arm of her husband.  He was wearing his little summer hat with the brim turned down in front.  When I turned they were gone.  I guessed that they had gone to the Café Central, waked awhile on the other side of the Graben, and was lucky enough after a long interval to see her come to the window.  When she sat down at the table only the rim of her cardboard hat, covered with blue velvet, was visible.
 

I then dreamed that I was in a very narrow but not very tall glass-domed house with two entrances like the impassable passageways in the paintings of Italian primitives, also resembling from the distance an arcade leading off from the rue des Petits Champs that we saw in Paris.  Except that the one in Paris was really wider and full of stores, but this one ran along between blank walls, appeared to have scarcely enough room for two people to walk side by side, but when one really entered it, as I did with Mrs. Tschissik, there was a surprising amount of room, which did not really surprise us.  While I left by one exit with Mrs. Tschissik in the direction of a possible observer of all this, and Mrs. Tschissik at the same time apologized for some offense or other (it seemed to be drunkenness) and begged me not to believe her detractors, Mr. Tschissik, at the second of the house's two exits, whipped a shaggy, blond St. Bernard which stood opposite him on its hind legs.  It was not quite clear whether he was just playing with the dog and neglected his wife because of it, or whether he had himself been attacked by the dog in earnest, or whether he wished to keep the dog away from us.
 

With L. on the quay.  I had a slight spell of faintness that stifled all my being, got over it and remembered it after a short time as something long forgotten.
 

Even if I overlook all other obstacles (physical condition, parents, character), the following serves as a very good excuse for my not limiting myself to literature in spite of everything: I can take nothing on myself as long as I have not achieved a sustained work that satisfies me completely.  That is of course irrefutable.
 

I have now, and have had since this afternoon, a great yearning to write all my anxiety entirely out of me, write it into the depths of the paper just as it comes out of the depths of me, or write it down in such a way that I could draw what I had written into me completely.  This is no artistic yearning.  Today, when Löwy spoke of his dissatisfaction with and of his indifference to everything that the troupe does, I explained his condition as due to homesickness, but in a sense did not give him this explanation even though I voiced it, instead kept it for myself and enjoyed it in passing as a sorrow of my own.
 
 

9 December.  Stauffer-Bern: “The sweetness of creation begets illusions about its real value.”
 

If one patiently submits to a book of letters or memoirs, no matter by whom, in this case it is Karl Stauffer-Bern, one doesn't make him one's own by main strength, for to do this one has to employ art, and art is its own reward; but rather one suffers oneself to be drawn away—this is easily done, if one doesn't resist—by the concentrated otherness of the person writing, and lets oneself be made into his counterpart.  Thus it is no longer remarkable, when one is brought back to one's sex by the closing of the book, that one feels the better for this excursion and this recreation, and, with a clearer head, remains behind in one's own being, which has been newly discovered, newly shaken up and seen for a moment from the distance.  Only later are we surprised that these experiences of another person's life, in spite of their vividness, are faithfully described in the book—our own experience inclines us to think that nothing in the world is further removed from an experience (sorrow over the death of a friend, for instance) than its description.  But what is right for us is not right for the other person.  If our letters cannot match our own feelings—naturally, there are varying degrees of this, passing imperceptibly into one another in both directions—if even at our best, expressions like “indescribable,” “inexpressible,” or “so sad,” or “so beautiful,” followed by a rapidly collapsing “that” clause, must perpetually come to our assistance, then as if in compensation we have been given the ability to comprehend what another person has written with at least the same degree of calm exactitude which we lack when we confront our own letter-writing.  Our ignorance of those feelings which alternately make us crumple up and pull open again the letter in front of us, this very ignorance becomes knowledge the moment we are compelled to limit ourselves to this letter, to believe only what it says, and thus to find it perfectly expressed and perfect in expression, as is only right, if we are to see a clear road into what is most human.  So Karl Stauffer's letters contain only an account of the short life of an artist—
 
 

10 December.  Sunday.  I must go to see my sister [Elli] and her little boy.  When my mother came home from my sister's at one o'clock at night the day before yesterday with the news of the boy's birth, my father marched through the house in his nightshirt, opened all the doors, woke me, the maid, and my sisters and proclaimed the birth as though the child had not only been born, but as though it had already lived an honorable life and been buried too.
 
 

13 December.  Because of fatigue did not write and lay now on the sofa in the warm room and now on the one in the cold room, with sick legs and disgusting dreams.  A dog lay on my body, one paw near my face.  I woke up because of it but was still afraid for a little while to open my eyes and look at it.
 

Biberpelz (Beaver Fur).  Bad play, flowing along without climax.  Scenes with the police superintendent not true.  Delicate acting by the Lehmann woman of the Lessing Theater.  The way her skirt folds between her thighs when she bends.  The thoughtful look of the people when she raises her two hands, places them one under the other on the left in front of her face, as though she wanted to weaken the force of the denying or protesting voice.  Bewildered, coarse acting of the others.  The comedian's impudence towards the play (draws his saber, exchanges hats).  My cold aversion.  Went home, but while still there sat with a feeling of admiration that so many people take upon themselves so much excitement for an evening (they shout, steal, are robbed, harass, slander, neglect), and that in this play, if one only looks at it with blinking eyes, so many disordered human voices and exclamations are thrown together.  Pretty girls.  One with a flat face, unbroken surfaces of skin, rounded cheeks, hair beginning high up, eyes lost in this smoothness and protruding a little—Beautiful passages of the play in which the Wulffen woman shows herself at once a thief and an honest friend of the clever, progressive, democratic people.  A Wehrhahn in the audience might feel himself justified—Sad parallelism of the four acts.  In the first act there is stealing, in the second act is the judgment, the same in the third and fourth acts.
 

Der Schneider als Gemeinderat (The Tailor as Municipal Councilor) at the Jews.  Without the Tschissiks but with two new, terrible people, thc Liebgold couple.  Bad play by Richter.  Thc beginning like Molière, the purse-proud alderman hung with watches.  The Liebgold woman can't read, her husband has to rehearse with her.
 

It is almost a custom for a comedian to marry a serious actress and a serious actor a comedienne, and in general to take along with them only married women or relatives.  The way once, at midnight, the piano player, probably a bachelor, slipped out of the door with his music.
 

Brahms concert by the Singing Society.  The essence of my unmusicalness consists in my inability to enjoy music connectedly, it only now and then has an effect on me, and how seldom it is a musical one.  The natural effect of music on me is to circumscribe me with a wall, and its only constant influence on me is that, confined in this way, I am different from what I am when free.
 

There is, among the public, no such reverence for literature as there is for music.  The singing girls.  It was only the melody that held open the mouths of many of them.  The throat and head of one with a clumsy body quivered when she sang.
 

Three clerics in a box.  The middle one, wearing a red skullcap, listens with calm and dignity, unmoved and heavy, but not stiff; the one on the right is sunken into himself, with a pointed, rigid, wrinkled face; the one on the left, stout, holds his face propped at an angle on his half-opened fist.
 

Played: Tragic Overture. (I hear only slow, solemn beats, now here, now there.  It is instructive to watch the music pass from one group of players to another and to follow it with the ear.  The disheveled hair of the conductor.)  “Beherzigung” by Goethe, “Nänie” by Schiller, “Gesang der Parzen,” “Triumphlied.”
 

The singing women who stood up on the low balustrade as though on a piece of early Italian architecture.
 

Despite the fact that for a considerable time I have been standing deep in literature and it has often broken over me, it is certain that for the past three days, aside from a general desire to be happy, I have felt no genuine desire for literature.  In the same way I considered Löwy my indispensable friend last week, and now I have easily dispensed with him for three days.
 

When I begin to write after a rather long interval, I draw the words as if out of the empty air.  If I capture one, then I have just this one alone and all the toil must begin anew.
 
 

14 December.  My father reproached me at noon because I don't bother with the factory.  I explained that I had accepted a share because I expected profit but that I cannot take an active part so long as I am in the office.  Father quarreled on, I stood silently at the window.  This evening, however, I caught myself thinking, as a result of that noon-time discussion, that I could put up with my present situation very contentedly, and that I only had to be careful not to have all my time free for literature.  I had scarcely exposed this thought to a closer inspection when it became no longer astonishing and already appeared accustomed.  I disputed my ability to devote all my time to literature.  This conviction arose, of course, only from the momentary situation, but was stronger than it.  I also thought of Max as of a stranger despite the fact that today he has an exciting evening of reading and acting in Berlin, it occurs to me now that I thought of him only when I approached Miss Taussig's (his girlfriend's) house on my evening walk.
 

Walk with Löwy down by the river.  The one pillar of the vault rising out of the Elizabeth Bridge, lit on the inside by an electric light, looked—a dark mass between light streaming from the sides—like a factory chimney, and the dark wedge of shadow stretching over it to the sky was like ascending smoke.  The sharply outlined green areas of light at the side of the bridge.
 

The way, during the reading of Beethoven und das Liebespaar (Beethoven and the Lovers) by W. Schäfer, various thoughts (about dinner, about Löwy, who was waiting) unconnected with what I was reading passed through my mind with great distinctness without disturbing my reading, which just today was very pure.
 
 

16 December.  Sunday, 12 noon.  Idled away the morning with sleeping and reading newspapers.  Afraid to finish a review for the Prager Tagblatt.  Such fear of writing always expresses itself by my occasionally making up, away from my desk, initial sentences for what I am to write, which immediately prove unusable, dry, broken off long before their end, and pointing with their towering fragments to a sad future.
 

The old tricks at the Christmas Fair.  Two cockatoos on a crossbar pull fortunes.  Mistakes: a girl has a lady-love predicted.  A man offers artificial flowers for sale in rhyme: To jest ruze udelená z kuze  [This is a rose, made of leather].
 

Young Pipes when singing.  As sole gesture, he rolls his right forearm back and forth at the joint, he opens his hands a little and then draws them together again.  Sweat covers his face, especially his upper lip, as though with splinters of glass.  A buttonless dickey has been hurriedly tucked into the vest under his straight black coat.
 

The warm shadow in the soft red of Mrs. Klug's mouth when she sings.
 

Jewish streets in Paris, rue Rosier, side street of rue de Rivoli.
 

If a disorganized education having only that minimum coherence indispensable for the merest uncertain existence is suddenly challenged to a task limited in time, therefore necessarily arduous, to self-development, to articulate speech, then the response can only be a bitterness in which are mingled arrogance over achievements which could be attained only by calling upon all one's untrained powers, a last glance at the knowledge that escapes in surprise and that is so very fluctuating because it was suspected rather than certain, and, finally, hate and admiration for the environment.
 

Before falling asleep yesterday I had an image of a drawing in which a group of people were isolated like a mountain in the air.  The technique of the drawing seemed to me completely new and, once discovered, easily executed.
 

A company was assembled around a table, the earth extended somewhat beyond the circle of people, but of all these people, at the moment, I saw with a powerful glance only one young man in ancient dress.  His left arm was propped on the table, the hand hung loosely over his face, which was playfully turned up towards someone who was solicitously or questioningly bent over him.  His body, especially the right leg, was stretched out in careless youthfulness, he lay rather than sat.  The two distinct pairs of lines that outlined his legs crossed and softly merged with the lines outlining his body.  His pale, colored clothes lay heaped up between these lines with feeble corporeality.  In astonishment at this beautiful drawing, which begot in my head an excitement that I was convinced was that same and indeed permanent excitement which would guide the pencil in my hand when I wished, I forced myself out of my twilight condition in order better to be able to think the drawing through.  Then it soon turned out, of course, that I had imagined nothing but a small, gray-white porcelain group.
 

In periods of transition such as the past week has been for me and as this moment at least still is, a sad but calm astonishment at my lack of feeling often grips me.  I am divided from all things by a hollow space and I don't even push myself to the limits of it.
 

Now, in the evening, when my thoughts begin to move more freely and I would perhaps be capable of something, I must go to the National Theater to the first night of Hippodamie by Vrchlicky.
 

It is certain that Sunday can never be of more use to me than a weekday because its special organization throws all my habits into confusion and I need the additional free time to adjust myself halfway to this special day.
 

The moment I were set free from the office I would yield at once to my desire to write an autobiography.  I would have to have some such decisive change before me as a preliminary goal when I began to write in order to be able to give direction to the mass of events.  But I cannot imagine any other inspiriting change than this, which is itself so terribly improbable.  Then, however, the writing of the autobiography would be a great joy because it would move along as easily as the writing down of dreams, yet it would have an entirely different effect, a great one, which would always influence me and would be accessible as well to the understanding and feeling of everyone else.
 
 

18 December.  Day before yesterday Hippodamie.  Bad play.  A rambling about in Greek mythology without rhyme or reason.  Kvapil’s essay in the program which expresses between the lines the view apparent throughout the whole performance, that a good production (which here, however, was nothing but an imitation of Reinhardt) can make a bad play into a great theatrical work.  All this must be sad for a Czech who knows even a little of the world.
 

The Lieutenant-Governor, who during the intermission snatched air from the corridor through the open door of his box.
 

The appearance of the dead Axiocha, called up in the shape of a phantom, who soon disappears because, having died only a short time ago, she relives her old human sorrows too keenly at the sight of the world.
 

I hate Werfel, not because I envy him, but I envy him too.  He is healthy, young and rich, everything that I am not.  Besides, gifted with a sense of music, he has done very good work early and easily, he has the happiest life behind him and before him, I work with weights I cannot get rid of, and I am entirely shut off from music.
 

I am not punctual because I do not feel the pains of waiting.  I wait like an ox.  For if I feel a purpose in my momentary existence, even a very uncertain one, I am so vain in my weakness that I would gladly bear anything for the sake of this purpose once it is before me.  If I were in love, what couldn't I do then.  How long I waited, years ago, under the arcades of the Ring until M. came by, even to see her walk with her lover.  I have been late for appointments partly out of carelessness, partly out of ignorance of the pains of waiting, but also partly in order to attain new, complicated purposes through a renewed, uncertain search for the people with whom I had made the appointments, and so to achieve the possibility of long, uncertain waiting.  From the fact that as a child I had a great nervous fear of waiting one could conclude that I was destined for something better and that I foresaw my future.
 

My good periods do not have time or opportunity to live themselves out naturally; my bad ones, on the other hand, have more than they need.  As I see from the diary, I have now been suffering from such a state since the 9th, for almost ten days.  Yesterday I once again went to bed with my head on fire, and was ready to rejoice that the bad time was over and ready to fear that I would sleep badly.  It passed, however, I slept fairly well and feel badly when I'm awake.
 
 

19 December.  Yesterday Davids Geige (David's Violin) by Lateiner.  The disinherited son, a good violinist, returns home a rich man, as I used to dream of doing in my early days at the Gymnasium.  But first, disguised as a beggar, his feet bound in rags like a snow shoveler, he tests his relatives who have never left home: his poor, honest daughter, his rich brother who will not give his son in marriage to his poor cousin and who despite his age himself wants to marry a young woman.  He reveals himself later on by tearing open a Prince Albert under which, on a diagonal sash, hang decorations from all the princes of Europe.  By violin playing and singing he turns all the relatives and their hangers-on into good people and straightens out their affairs.
 

Mrs. Tschissik acted again.  Yesterday her body was more beautiful than her face, which seemed narrower than usual so that the forehead, which is thrown into wrinkles at her first word, was too striking.  The beautifully founded, moderately strong, large body did not belong with her face yesterday, and she reminded me vaguely of hybrid beings like mermaids, sirens, centaurs.  When she stood before me then, with her face distorted, her complexion spoiled by make-up, a stain on her dark-blue short-sleeved blouse, I felt as though I were speaking to a statue in a circle of pitiless onlookers.
 

Mrs. Klug stood near her and watched me.  Miss Weltsch watched me from the left.  I said as many stupid things as possible.  I did not stop asking Mrs. Tschissik why she had gone to Dresden, although I knew that she had quarreled with the others and for that reason had gone away, and that this subject was embarrassing to her.  In the end it was even more embarrassing to me, but nothing else occurred to me.  When Mrs. Tschissik joined us while I was speaking to Mrs. Klug, I turned to Mrs. Tschissik, saying “Pardon!” to Mrs. Klug as though I intended to spend the rest of my life with Mrs. Tschissik.  Then while I was speaking with Mrs. Tschissik I observed that my love had not really grasped her, but only flitted about her, now nearer, now farther.  Indeed, it can find no peace.
 

Mrs. Liebgold acted a young man in a costume that tightly embraced her pregnant body.  As she does not obey her father (Löwy), he presses the upper part of her body down on a chair and beats her over her very tightly trousered behind.  Löwy said that he touched her with the same repugnance that he would a mouse.  Seen from the front, however, she is pretty, it is only in profile that her nose slants down too long, too pointed and too cruel.
 

I first arrived at ten, took a walk and tasted to the full the slight nervousness of having a seat in the theater and going for a walk during the performance, that is, while the soloists were trying to sing me into my seat.  I missed Mrs. Klug too.  Listening to her always lively singing does nothing less than prove the solidity of the world, which is what I need, after all.
 

Today at breakfast I spoke with my mother by chance about children and marriage, only a few words, but for the first time saw clearly how untrue and childish is the conception of me that my mother builds up for herself.  She considers me a healthy young man who suffers a little from the notion that he is ill.  This notion will disappear by itself with time; marriage, of course, and having children would put an end to it best of all.  Then my interest in literature would also be reduced to the degree that is perhaps necessary for an educated man.  A matter-of-fact, undisturbed interest in my profession or in the factory or in whatever may come to hand will appear.  Hence there is not the slightest, not the trace of a reason for permanent despair about my future.  There is occasion for temporary despair, which is not very deep, however, whenever I think my stomach is upset, or when I can't sleep because I write too much.  There are thousands of possible solutions.  The most probable is that I shall suddenly fall in love with a girl and will never again want to do without her.   Then I shall see how good their intentions towards me are and how little they will interfere with me.  But if I remain a bachelor like my uncle in Madrid, that too will be no misfortune because with my cleverness I shall know how to make adjustments.
 
 

23 December.  Saturday.  When I look at my whole way of life going in a direction that is foreign and false to all my relatives and acquaintances, the apprehension arises, and my father expresses it, that I shall become a second Uncle Rudolf, the fool of the new generation of the family, the fool somewhat altered to meet the needs of a different period; but from now on I'll be able to feel how my mother (whose opposition to this opinion grows continually weaker in the course of the years) sums up and enforces everything that speaks for me and against Uncle Rudolf, and that enters like a wedge between the conceptions entertained about the two of us.
 

Day before yesterday in the factory.  In the evening at Max's where the artist, Novak, was just then displaying the lithographs of Max.  I could not express myself in their presence, could not say yes or no.  Max voiced several opinions which he had already formed, whereupon my thinking revolved about them without result.  Finally I became accustomed to the individual lithographs, overcame at least the surprise of my unaccustomed eye, found a chin round, a face compressed, a chest armorlike, or rather he looked as though he were wearing a giant dress shirt under his street clothes.  The artist replied to this with something which was not to be understood either at the first or second attempt, weakening its significance only by saying it to us of all people who thus, if his opinions were proved to be genuinely correct, were in the position of having spoken the cheapest nonsense.
 

He asserted that it is the felt and even conscious task of the artist to assimilate his subject to his own art form.  To achieve this he had first prepared a portrait sketch in color, which also lay before us and which in dark colors showed a really too sharp, dry likeness (this too-great-sharpness I can acknowledge only now), and was declared by Max to be the best portrait, as, aside from its likeness about the eyes and mouth, it showed nobly composed features brought out in the right degree by the dark colors.  If one were asked about it, one couldn't deny it.  From this sketch the artist now worked at home on his lithographs, endeavoring in lithograph after lithograph to get farther and farther away from the natural phenomenon but at the same time not only not to violate his own art form but rather to come closer to it stroke by stroke.  So, for instance, the ear lost its human convolutions, and its clearly defined edge and became a sudden semicircular whorl around a small, dark opening.  Max's bony chin, starting from the ear itself, lost its simple boundary, indispensable as it seems, and a new one was as little created for the observer as a new truth is created by the removal of the old.  The hair flowed in sure, understandable outlines and remained human hair no matter how the artist denied it.
 

After having demanded from us understanding of these transformations, the artist indicated only hastily, but with pride, that everything on these sheets had significance and that even the accidental was necessary because its effect influenced everything that followed.  Thus, alongside one head a narrow, pale coffee stain extended almost the entire length of the picture, it was part of the whole, so intended, and not to be removed without damage to all the proportions.  There was in the left corner of another sheet a thinly stippled, scarcely noticeable, large blue stain; this stain had even been placed there intentionally, for the sake of the slight illumination that passed from it across the picture, and which the artist had taken advantage of when he continued his work.  His next objective was now chiefly the mouth on which something, but not enough, had already been done, and then he intended to transform the nose too.  In response to Max's complaint that in this way the lithograph would move farther and farther away from the beautiful color sketch, he observed that it wasn't at all impossible that it should again approach it.
 

One certainly could not overlook the sureness with which the artist relied throughout the discussion on the unexpected in his inspiration, and that only this reliance gave his work its best title to being almost a scientific one.—Bought two lithographs, “Apple Seller,” and “Walk.”
 

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer and which in a general way are naturally believed, surmised, and admitted by you, but which you'll unconsciously deny when it comes to the point of gaining hope or peace from such an admission.  In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.
 

All yesterday morning my head was as if filled with mist from Werfel's poems.  For a moment I feared the enthusiasm would carry me along straight into nonsense.
 

Tormenting discussion with Weltsch evening before last.  My startled gaze ran up and down his face and throat for an hour.  Once, in the midst of a facial distortion caused by excitement, weakness, and bewilderment, I was not sure that I would get out of the room without permanent damage to our relationship.  Outside, in the rainy weather intended for silent walking, I drew a deep breath of relief and then for an hour waited contentedly for M. in front of the Orient.  I find this sort of waiting, glancing slowly at the clock and walking indifferently up and down, almost as pleasant as lying on the sofa with legs stretched out and hands in my trouser pockets. (Half asleep, one then thinks one's hands are no longer in the trouser pockets at all, but are lying clenched on top of one's thighs.)
 
 

24 December.  Sunday.  Yesterday it was gay at Baum's.  I was there with Weltsch.  Max is in Breslau.  I felt myself free, could carry every moment to its conclusion, I answered and listened properly, made the most noise, and if I occasionally said something stupid it did not loom large but blew over at once.  The walk home in the rain with Weltsch was the same; despite puddles, wind, and cold it passed as quickly for us as though we had ridden.  And we were both sorry to say goodbye.
 

As a child I was anxious, and if not anxious then uneasy, when my father spoke—as he often did, since he was a businessman—of  the last day of the month (called the “ultimo”).  Since I wasn't curious, and since I wasn't able—even if I sometimes did ask about it—to digest the answer quickly enough with my slow thinking, and since a weakly stirring curiosity once risen to the surface is often already satisfied by a question and an answer without requiring that it understand as well, the expression “the last day of the month” remained a disquieting mystery for me, to be joined later (the result of having listened more attentively) by the expression “ultimo,” even if the latter expression did not have the same great significance.  It was bad too that the last day, dreaded so long in advance, could never be completely done away with.  Sometimes, when it passed with no special sign, indeed with no special attention (I realized only much later that it always came after about thirty days), and when the first had happily arrived, one again began to speak of the last day, not with special dread, to be sure, but it was still something that I put without examination beside the rest of the incomprehensible.
 

When I arrived at W.'s yesterday noon I heard the voice of his sister greeting me, but I did not see her herself until her fragile figure detached itself from the rocking chair standing in front of me.
 

This morning my nephew's circumcision.  A short, bow-legged man, Austerlitz, who already has 2,800 circumcisions behind him, carried the thing out very skillfully.  It is an operation made more difficult by the fact that the boy, instead of lying on a table, lies on his grandfather's lap, and by the fact that the person performing the operation, instead of paying close attention, must whisper prayers.  First the boy is prevented from moving by wrappings which leave only his member free, then the surface to be operated on is defined precisely by putting on a perforated metal disc, then the operation is performed with what is almost an ordinary knife, a sort of fish knife.  One sees blood and raw flesh, the moule bustles about briefly with his long-nailed, trembling fingers and pulls skin from some place or other over the wound like the finger of a glove.  At once everything is all right, the child has scarcely cried.  Now there remains only a short prayer during which the moule drinks some wine and with his fingers, not yet entirely unbloody, carries some wine to the child's lips.  Those present pray: “As he has now achieved the covenant, so may he achieve knowledge of the Torah, a happy marriage, and the performance of good deeds.”
 

Today when I heard the moule's assistant say the grace after meals and those present, aside from the two grandfathers, spent the time in dreams or boredom with a complete lack of understanding of the prayer, I saw Western European Judaism before me in a transition whose end is clearly unpredictable and about which those most closely affected are not concerned, but, like all people truly in transition, bear what is imposed upon them.  It is so indisputable that these religious forms which have reached their final end have merely a historical character, even as they are practiced today, that only a short time was needed this very morning to interest the people present in the obsolete custom of circumcision and its half-sung prayers by describing it to them as something out of history.
 

Löwy, whom I keep waiting half an hour almost every evening, said to me yesterday: For several days I have been looking up at your window while waiting.  First I see a light there; if I have come early, as I usually do, I assume that you are still working.  Then the light is put out, in the next room the light stays on, you are therefore having dinner; then the light goes on again in your room, you are therefore brushing your teeth; then the light is put out, you are therefore already on the stairs, but then the light is put on again.
 
 

25 December.  What I understand of contemporary Jewish literature in Warsaw through Löwy, and of contemporary Czech literature partly through my own insight, points to the fact that many of the benefits of literature—the stirring of minds, the coherence of national consciousness, often unrealized in public life and always tending to disintegrate, the pride which a nation gains from a literature of its own and the support it is afforded in the face of a hostile surrounding world, this keeping of a diary by a nation which is something entirely different from historiography and results in a more rapid (and yet always closely scrutinized) development, the spiritualization of the broad area of public life, the assimilation of dissatisfied elements that are immediately put to use precisely in this sphere where only stagnation can do harm, the constant integration of a people with respect to its whole that the incessant bustle of the magazines creates, the narrowing down of the attention of a nation upon itself and the accepting of what is foreign only in reflection, the birth of a respect for those active in literature, the transitory awakening in the younger generation of higher aspirations, which nevertheless leaves its permanent mark, the acknowledgement of literary events as objects of political solicitude, the dignification of the antithesis between fathers and sons and the possibility of discussing this, the presentation of national faults in a manner that is very painful, to be sure, but also liberating and deserving of forgiveness, the beginning of a lively and therefore self-respecting book trade and the eagerness for books—all these effects can be produced even by a literature whose development is not in actual fact unusually broad in scope, but seems to be, because it lacks outstanding talents.  The liveliness of such a literature exceeds even that of one rich in talent, for, as it has no writer whose great gifts could silence at least the majority of nay-sayers, literary competition on the greatest scale has a real justification.
 

A literature not penetrated by a great talent has no gap through which the irrelevant might force its way.  Its claim to attention thereby becomes more compelling.  The independence of the individual writer, naturally only within the national boundaries, is better preserved.  The lack of irresistible national models keeps the completely untalented away from literature.  But even mediocre talent would not suffice for a writer to be influenced by the unstriking qualities of the fashionable writers of the moment, or to introduce the works of foreign literatures, or to imitate the foreign literature that has already been introduced; this is plain, for example, in a literature rich in great talents, such as the German is, where the worst writers limit their imitation to what they find at home.  The creative and beneficent force exerted in these directions by a literature poor in its component parts proves especially effective when it begins to create a literary history out of the records of its dead writers.  These writers' undeniable influence, past and present, becomes so matter-of-fact that it can take the place of their writings.  One speaks of the latter and means the former, indeed, one even reads the latter and sees only the former.  But since that effect cannot be forgotten, and since the writings themselves do not act independently upon the memory, there is no forgetting and no remembering again.  Literary history offers an unchangeable, dependable whole that is hardly affected by the taste of the day.
 

A small nation's memory is not smaller than the memory of a large one and so can digest the existing material more thoroughly.  There are, to be sure, fewer experts in literary history employed, but literature is less a concern of literary history than of the people, and thus, if not purely, it is at least reliably preserved.  For the claim that the national consciousness of a small people makes on the individual is such that everyone must always be prepared to know that part of the literature which has come down to him, to support it, to defend it—to defend it even if he does not know it and support it.
 

The old writings acquire a multiplicity of interpretations; despite the mediocre material, this goes on with an energy that is restrained only by the fear that one may too easily exhaust them, and by the reverence they are accorded by common consent.  Everything is done very honestly, only within a bias that is never resolved, that refuses to countenance any weariness, and is spread for miles around when a skilful hand is lifted up.  But in the end bias interferes not only with a broad view but with a close insight as well—so that all these observations are cancelled out.
 

Since people lack a sense of context, their literary activities are out of context too.  They depreciate something in order to be able to look down upon it from above, or they praise it to the skies in order to have a place up there beside it.  (Wrong.)  Even though something is often thought through calmly, one still does not reach the boundary where it connects up with similar things, one reaches this boundary soonest in politics, indeed, one even strives to see it before it is there, and often sees this limiting boundary everywhere.  The narrowness of the field, the concern too for simplicity and uniformity, and, finally, the consideration that the inner independence of the literature makes the external connection with politics harmless, result in the dissemination of literature without a country on the basis of political slogans.
 

There is universal delight in the literary treatment of petty themes whose scope is not permitted to exceed the capacity of small enthusiasms and which are sustained by their polemical possibilities.  Insults, intended as literature, roll back and forth.  What in great literature goes on down below, constituting a not indispensable cellar of the structure, here takes place in the full light of day, what is there a matter of passing interest for a few, here absorbs everyone no less than as a matter of life and death.
 

A character sketch of the literature of small peoples.

Good results in both cases.

Here the results in individual instances are even better.

1. Liveliness:
    a. Conflict.
    b. Schools.
    c. Magazines.

2. Less constraint:
    a. Absence of principles.
    b. Minor themes.
    c. Easy formation of symbols.
    d. Throwing off of the untalented.

3. Popularity:
    a. Connection with politics.
    b. Literary history.
    c. Faith in literature, can make up their own laws.
 

It is difficult to readjust when one has felt this useful, happy life in all one's being.
 

Circumcision in Russia.  Throughout the house, wherever there is a door, tablets the size of a hand printed with Kabbalistic symbols are hung up to protect the mother from evil spirits during the time between the birth and the circumcision.  The evil spirits are especially dangerous to her and the child at this time, perhaps because her body is so very open and therefore offers an easy entrance to everything evil and because the child, too, so long as it has not been accepted into the covenant, can offer no resistance to evil.  That is also the reason why a female attendant is taken in, so that the mother may not remain alone for a moment.  For seven days after the birth, except on Friday, also in order to ward off evil spirits, ten to fifteen children, always different ones, led by the belfer (assistant teacher), are admitted to the bedside of the mother, there repeat the Shema Israel, and are then given candy.  These innocent, five- to eight year-old children are supposed to be especially effective in driving back the evil spirits, who press forward most strongly towards evening.  On Friday a special celebration is held, just as in general one banquet follows another during this week.  Before the day of the circumcision the evil ones are wildest, and so the last night is a night of wakefulness and until morning someone watches beside the mother.  The circumcision follows, often in the presence of more than a hundred relatives and friends.  The most distinguished person present is permitted to carry the child. The circumciser, who performs his office without payment, is usually a drinker—busy as he is, he has no time for the various holiday foods and so simply pours down some brandy.  Thus they all have red noses and reeking breaths.  It is therefore not very pleasant when, after the operation has been performed, they suck the bloody member with this mouth, in the prescribed manner.  The member is then sprinkled with sawdust and heals in about three days.
 

A close-knit family life does not seem to be so very common among and characteristic of the Jews, especially those in Russia.  Family life is also found among Christians, after all, and the fact that women are excluded from the study of the Talmud is really destructive of Jewish family life; when the man wants to discuss learned talmudic matters—the very core of his life—with guests, the women withdraw to the next room even if they need not do so—so it is even more characteristic of the Jews that they come together at every possible opportunity, whether to pray or to study or to discuss divine matters or to eat holiday meals whose basis is usually a religious one and at which alcohol is drunk only very moderately.  They flee to one another, so to speak.
 

Goethe probably retards the development of the German language by the force of his writing.  Even though prose style has often traveled away from him in the interim, still, in the end, as at present, it returns to him with strengthened yearning and even adopts obsolete idioms found in Goethe but otherwise without any particular connection with him, in order to rejoice in the completeness of its unlimited dependence.
 

In Hebrew my name is Amschel, like my mother's maternal grandfather, whom my mother, who was six years old when he died, can remember as a very pious and learned man with a long, white beard.  She remembers how she had to take hold of the toes of the corpse and ask forgiveness for any offense she may have committed against her grandfather.  She also remembers her grandfather's many books which lined the walls.  He bathed in the river every day, even in winter, when he chopped a hole in the ice for his bath.  My mother's mother died of typhus at an early age.  From the time of this death her grandmother became melancholy, refused to eat, spoke with no one, once, a year after the death of her daughter, she went for a walk and did not return, her body was found in the Elbe.  An even more learned man than her grandfather was my mother's great-grandfather, Christians and Jews held him in equal honor; during a fire a miracle took place as a result of his piety, the flames jumped over and spared his house while the houses around it burned down.  He had four sons, one was converted to Christianity and became a doctor.  All but my mother's grandfather died young.  He had one son, whom my mother knew as crazy Uncle Nathan, and one daughter, my mother's mother.
 

To run against the window and, weak after exerting all one's strength, to step over the window sill through the splintered wood and glass.
 
 

26 December.  Slept badly again, the third night now.  So the three holidays during which I had hoped to write things which were to have helped me through the whole year, I spent in a state requiring help.  On Christmas Eve, walk with Löwy in the direction of Stern.  Yesterday Blümale oder die Perle von Warschau (Blümale or The Pearl of Warsaw).  For her steadfast love and loyalty Blümale is distinguished by the author with the honorific title, “Pearl of Warsaw,” in the name of the play.  Only the exposed, long, delicate throat of Mrs. Tschissik explains the shape of her face.  The glint of tears in Mrs. Klug's eyes when singing a monotonously rhythmic melody into which the audience lets their heads hang, seemed to me by far to surpass in significance the song, the theater, the cares of all the audience, indeed my imagination.  View through the back curtain into the dressing room, directly to Mrs. Klug, who is standing there in a white petticoat and a short-sleeved shirt.  My uncertainty about the feelings of the audience and therefore my strenuous inner spurring on of its enthusiasm.  The skilful, amiable manner in which I spoke to Miss T. and her escort yesterday.  It was part of the freedom of the good spirits which I felt yesterday and even as early as Saturday, that, although it was definitely not necessary, because of a certain complaisance toward the world and a reckless modesty I made use of a few seemingly embarrassed words and gestures.  I was alone with my mother, and that too I took easily and well; looked at everyone with steadiness.
 

List of things which today are easy to imagine as ancient: the crippled beggars on the way to promenades and picnic places, the unilluminated atmosphere at night, the crossed girders of the bridge.
 

A list of those passages in Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth) that, by a peculiarity on which one cannot place one's finger, give an unusually strong impression of liveliness not essentially consistent with what is actually described; for instance, call up the image of the boy Goethe, how curious, richly dressed, loved and lively—he makes his way into the homes of all his acquaintances so that he may see and hear everything that is to be seen and heard.  Now, when I leaf through the book, I cannot find any such passages, they all seem clear to me and have a liveliness that cannot be heightened by any accident.  I must wait until some time when I am reading innocently along and then stop at the right passages.
 

It is unpleasant to listen to Father talk with incessant insinuations about the good fortune of people today and especially of his children, about the sufferings he had to endure in his youth.  No one denies that for years, as a result of insufficient winter clothing, he had open sores on his legs, that he often went hungry, that when he was only ten he had to push a cart through the villages, even in winter and very early in the morning—but, and this is something he will not understand, these facts, taken together with the further fact that I have not gone through all this, by no means lead to the conclusion that I have been happier than he, that he may pride himself on these sores on his legs, which is something he assumes and asserts from the very beginning, that I cannot appreciate his past sufferings, and that, finally, just because I have not gone through the same sufferings I must be endlessly grateful to him.  How gladly I would listen if he would talk on about his youth and parents, but to hear all this in a boastful and quarrelsome tone is torment.  Over and over again he claps his hands together: “Who can understand that today!  What do the children know!  No one has gone through that!  Does a child understand that today!”  He spoke again in the same way today to Aunt Julie, who was visiting us.  She too has the huge face of all Father's relatives.  There is something wrong and somewhat disturbing about the set or color of her eyes.  At the age of ten she was hired out as a c