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Journal intime
"Kafka ne nous a laissé que des fragments ; ses romans le sont au même titre que ses aphorismes et ses journaux intimes. Mais ce qui frappe de prime abord, c'est que l'inachèvement n'exclut pas une subtilité et une minutie du détail peu communes. Rien de plus poignant que cette intensité, sans cesse interrompue par l'insatisfaction, sans cesse reprise par l'espérance, voire la certitude d'une totalité à conquérir." (Pierre Klossowski)
288 pages, Pocket Book
First published January 1, 1949
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,577 books41.3k followersFranz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague whose work became one of the foundations of modern literature, even though he published only a small part of his writing during his lifetime. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up amid German, Czech, and Jewish cultural influences that shaped his sense of displacement and linguistic precision. His difficult relationship with his authoritarian father left a lasting mark, fostering feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy that became central themes in his fiction and personal writings.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.
Kafka studied law at the German University in Prague, earning a doctorate in 1906. He chose law for practical reasons rather than personal inclination, a compromise that troubled him throughout his life. After university, he worked for several insurance institutions, most notably the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. His duties included assessing industrial accidents and drafting legal reports, work he carried out competently and responsibly. Nevertheless, Kafka regarded his professional life as an obstacle to his true vocation, and most of his writing was done at night or during periods of illness and leave. Kafka began publishing short prose pieces in his early adulthood, later collected in volumes such as Contemplation and A Country Doctor. These works attracted little attention at the time but already displayed the hallmarks of his mature style, including precise language, emotional restraint, and the application of calm logic to deeply unsettling situations. His major novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika were left unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. They depict protagonists trapped within opaque systems of authority, facing accusations, rules, or hierarchies that remain unexplained and unreachable. Themes of alienation, guilt, bureaucracy, law, and punishment run throughout Kafka’s work. His characters often respond to absurd or terrifying circumstances with obedience or resignation, reflecting his own conflicted relationship with authority and obligation. Kafka’s prose avoids overt symbolism, yet his narratives function as powerful metaphors through structure, repetition, and tone. Ordinary environments gradually become nightmarish without losing their internal coherence. Kafka’s personal life was marked by emotional conflict, chronic self-doubt, and recurring illness. He formed intense but troubled romantic relationships, including engagements that he repeatedly broke off, fearing that marriage would interfere with his writing. His extensive correspondence and diaries reveal a relentless self-critic, deeply concerned with morality, spirituality, and the demands of artistic integrity. In his later years, Kafka’s health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, forcing him to withdraw from work and spend long periods in sanatoriums. Despite his illness, he continued writing when possible. He died young, leaving behind a large body of unpublished manuscripts. Before his death, he instructed his close friend Max Brod to destroy all of his remaining work. Brod ignored this request and instead edited and published Kafka’s novels, stories, and diaries, ensuring his posthumous reputation.
The publication of Kafka’s work after his death established him as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The term Kafkaesque entered common usage to describe situations marked by oppressive bureaucracy, absurd logic, and existential anxiety. His writing has been interpreted through existential, religious, psychological, and political perspectives, though Kafka himself resisted definitive meanings. His enduring power lies in his ability to articulate modern anxiety with clarity and restraint.
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August 18, 2016
“El secreto de Kafka reside en esta ambigüedad fundamental. Estas oscilaciones perpetuas entre lo natural y lo extraordinario, el individuo y lo universal, lo trágico y lo cotidiano, lo absurdo y lo lógico vuelven a encontrarse en toda su obra y le dan a su vez su resonancia y su significación.” Albert Camus, El mito de Sísifo.
Comienzo esta reseña de los Diarios de Kafka con una frase de Albert Camus que identifica plenamente a este maravilloso escritor checo al que considero uno de mis escritores preferidos de toda la vida y parte de mi top five de favoritos junto a Fiódor Dostoievski, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville y Julio Cortázar.
Leer los diarios de los escritores más importantes de la historia ha sido siempre la manera más efectiva de aproximarnos a los lugares que sus ficciones a veces no nos brindan.
Muchos de ellos se han transformado en verdaderas extensiones de sus obras y en muchos casos, como en el de Kafka, de necesidad para entender el significado de sus textos.
Es importante la cantidad de escritores que nos han legado sus diarios: Thomas Mann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (el preferido de Kafka), Witold Gombrowicz, Elías Canetti, John Cheever, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ana Frank… en fin, la lista es extensa.
Algunos son proféticos, otros un tanto patéticos; los encontramos profundos y en otros casos llenos de información innecesaria, pero lo cierto es que junto con el género epistolar se han transformado en algo indispensable para los lectores.
Las gran cantidad de páginas que posee cualquier edición completa que uno compre y lea de los Diarios de Kafka son un viaje al interior de su compleja mente y su complicado corazón (para cubrir ese otro aspecto de su vida también están los libros de cartas a Milena Jesenská y Felice Bauer) y un modo de intentar comprender los vaivenes de su atribulada vida porque el autor deja todo evidenciado allí.
Los Diarios nos dan las claves fundamentales de lectura para comprender gran parte de la obra kafkiana, ya que esta adquiere verdadero sentido al leerlos y son, al mismo tiempo, una conexión directa con la creación y el desarrollo de casi todos los textos que escribió, debido a que en muchos de ellos es imposible disociar lo empírico de lo ficcional cuando se intenta interpretarlos.
No se puede estar más de acuerdo con el experto español en Kafka Jordi Llovet, encargado de la compilación y publicación de la obra en conjunto con la editorial S. Fischer Verlag y posteriormente con Galaxia Gutenberg cuando afirma que sus Diarios «acabaron convirtiéndose para Kafka en un aliado privado y personalísimo de su actividad como escritor, ya que encontraba en los Diarios una especie de lugar de gestación y de tanteo complementario, si no previo, en muchos casos, a la composición literaria propiamente dicha».
Leyendo los Diarios profundizamos el entendimiento de los orígenes de sus historias y relatos. Conocemos por qué la relación con su padre fue tan traumática para él (es interesante leerlos conjuntamente con su Carta al Padre también) para terminar de comprender esa complicada relación además de su constante lucha por ganarle la batalla a su mente, a su desasosiego y su constante inconformismo. Kafka es por momentos un hombre atormentado que no se perdona sus debilidades, su precario estado de salud y su inalcanzable intento de ser feliz, de casarse y de escribir, pero es a la vez él mismo quien vez contradice estos anhelos de vida en pareja ponderando su soledad: «Mi deseo de soledad desprovista de reflexión. Enfrentarme únicamente a mí mismo. Necesito estar solo mucho tiempo. Todo lo que he conseguido hacer es producto únicamente de mi soledad.»
La centralidad que la literatura ocupa en su vida comienza a ser plasmada en las páginas de sus Diarios sea tanto para reflejar los avances de sus borradores o ideas conceptuales para futuras narraciones como lo opuesto, o para confesar su falta de inspiración, frustración, carencia de ideas argumentales o bloqueos temporales de escritura.
Su imposibilidad de escribir, lo asfixia, lo frustra y cae en una alienación que lo aleja de todo ser humano y naturalmente esto termina eclosionando en sus escritos.
Cada momento de imposibilidad de escritura es anotado e indica claramente que atenta contra sus aspiraciones de escritor. El 20 de diciembre de 1910 se pregunta «¿Cómo puedo disculparme por no haber escrito todavía nada el día de hoy?»
Sobre el año 1911 anota: «Cuando empiezo a escribir después de bastante tiempo sin hacerlo, saco palabras como del aire vacío. Si consigo una, ella es la única que está ahí y todo el trabajo vuelve a empezar desde el principio.» El círculo vicioso entre la literatura y su empleo son dos actividades que no congenian para nada. Es más, este último le afecta negativamente, coartando su libertad literaria.
Sobre el 6 de mayo de 1912 confiesa que se siente un hombre marcado por el fracaso a la hora de escribir. El 1 de junio de 1912 se detiene completamente: «No he escrito nada».
Anotaciones como esta se sucederán constantemente con el correr de los años, pero Kafka no se amilana sino que busca fuerzas de donde no las tiene y se desafía a sí mismo. En una carta a Felice del 21 de diciembre de 1912 le advierte: «Mañana comenzaré a escribir de nuevo. Quiero meterme con todas mis fuerzas noto cómo una mano invisible me va sacando de la vida cuando no escribo».
Ha llegado al punto culmine en el que la literatura lo define cabalmente: «Las diez, 15 de noviembre de 1910. No dejaré que me asalte el cansancio. Penetraré de un salto en mi narración, aunque me llene la cara de cortes».
Kafka intuye, sabe, confirma que la literatura es y será su tabla de salvación, pero para ello es fundamental aferrarse también a sus Diarios: «Ya no abandonaré mi diario. Aquí debo aferrarme, pues solo aquí puedo hacerlo. Me gustaría poder explicar esta sensación de felicidad que me invade de tiempo en tiempo, como ocurre en estos momentos», confiesa el 16 de diciembre de 1910 y sobre el 25 de febrero de 1912 grita a través de la tinta « ¡Agarrar desde hoy mismo mi diario! ¡Escribir con regularidad! ¡No abandonar!».
Kafka se ha entregado completamente al oficio de escritor y lo confiesa abiertamente en unas líneas que le envía a su amigo Max Brod el 8 de febrero de 1922: « En realidad, si el escritor quiere evitar la locura, no debería alejarse jamás de su escritorio, debería aferrarse a él con los dientes».
Con el correr de la lectura de sus Diarios vamos encontrando los lazos definitivos en este matrimonio que Kafka ha hecho con la literatura inmortalizando el 21 de agosto de 1913 una de sus más icónicas frases: «Mi empleo me resulta insoportable porque contradice mi único anhelo y mi única vocación, que es la literatura. Dado que no soy nada más que literatura y no puedo ni quiero ser otra cosa» y lo reafirma rotundamente: «Todo lo que no es literatura me aburre y lo odio, pues me molesta o me estorba, aunque solo sea en mi imaginación… Un matrimonio no podría cambiarme, de igual forma que mi empleo no puede cambiarme.»
Un detalle interesante es apreciar cómo van mutando las anotaciones que registra con el correr de los años. En 1910, año del inicio de los Diarios, se nota lo escrito como en una etapa experimental aunque comienzan a aparecer esbozos de escritos, reflejos de sensaciones y detalladas observaciones de todo tipo. Las anotaciones son en algunos casos realmente extensas. Desarrolla un profundo análisis de todo lo que ve o le sucede.
Unos de los aspectos más sorprendentes de Kafka es su increíble y detallado poder de observación hasta el más mínimo detalle. Desde una arruga en la cara, la sombra proyectada de una nariz, la manera en que se remanga una persona o hasta la posición de un dedo meñique. Kafka era un observador implacable. Esto se hace fuertemente evidente en sus "Diarios de viaje". Todas sus descripciones en esos diarios son prueba de ello.
En el año 1911 comienza a pasar en papel sueños que ha tenido. Los sueños de Kafka son completamente locos incluso más allá de ser sueños. Son extraños, retorcidos, surrealistas y el aspecto onírico es una característica que indudablemente ha impactado en su obra más temprana.
Gran parte de lo escrito en los años 1912, 1913 y 1914 abarcará específicamente detalles de lo que le sucede luego de conocer a Felice Bauer, intercalando con anotaciones de todo tipo de las obras que posteriormente serían publicadas por su amigo y editor Kurt Wolff (Contemplación, La condena, El fogonero, La metamorfosis), así también como y sus reflexiones e inquietudes sobre ellas.
Los distintos vaivenes de su condición física, su creciente hipocondría y sus constantes achaques, las enfermedades (especialmente después de que se le diagnostica la tuberculosis en 1917) también son volcados en los Diarios.
Luego de la ruptura final con Felice en ese año y el hecho de saber que ya tiene tuberculosis hacen que sus anotaciones disminuyan notablemente, siendo el año 1918 del que menos podemos leer. Mismo caso para el año 1919, año en el solo escribió una hoja. Kafka desiste de tomarse el tiempo de sentarse a escribir para ocuparse de su decreciente salud y sus curas en sanatorios naturistas o de descanso. Las pocas entradas de esta época tienen un marcado tono lúgubre y depresivo.
En 1920 retoma la escritura pero no llega a los niveles de los primeros años y se vuelve aún más auto reflexivo e intimista. Se cuestiona todo tipo de cosas y pone en tela de juicio sus actitudes En casi todas las entradas de su diario de 1920 Kafka escribe sobre sí mismo en tercera persona: “Él”.
1921 replica la misma ausencia de entradas y anotaciones que 1919., las cuales repuntan en 1922. En 1923, ya muy enfermo e internado más tiempo en los sanatorios detiene a cero las anotaciones con tan sólo tres párrafos en los que se queja de su “incapacidad de nada” y de “sentirse cada vez más angustiado” cuando escribe.
Kafka también llevó un diario en los que anota sus experiencias en los viajes que realizó junto a Max Brod por ciudades de Austria, Alemania, Francia, Italia y Suiza en el período comprendido entre los años 1911 y 1913.
La lectura de estos otros diarios es tal vez más placentera, puesto que la experiencia de viajar es una de las más gratificantes que un ser humano pueda tener en la vida y Kafka se encarga de contarlo con todo lujo de detalles.
Volviendo al aspecto literario es maravillosos encontrar gran cantidad de esbozos literarios que no llegaron ser ni relatos terminados o borradores de lo que serían sus novelas más famosas. Algunos de los relatos inéditos como "Recuerdos del ferrocarril de Kalda" que ahonda en la soledad que él mismo experimentaba como escritor, narrado a partir de un personaje que decide tomar un trabajo en una solitaria oficina de ferrocarril perdida en el medio de Rusia.
El texto "El Mundo Urbano" es considerado el escrito más antiguo de Kafka en donde se establece la conflictiva relación entre un padre y un hijo, lo que supone que junto a la experiencia de noviazgo con Felice y las rispideces con su padre Herman apuntaló la inspiración de su relato La condena. En el fragmento "Seducción en la Aldea" prefigura lo que será su novela El castillo, así también como el apunte narrativo “Josef K., hijo de un rico comerciante…” que indefectiblemente alude al inicio de su novela El proceso.
El variado material de los Diarios se compone de una serie de doce cuadernos que oscilan entre las veinte y las cincuenta y ocho páginas, todos ellos en cuarto, además de dos legajos de hojas con muchas anotaciones.
Kafka, que de joven había sido un gran deportista aficionado a la natación, padecía, entre tantas cosas y antes de que le diagnosticaran tuberculosis, de fuertes migrañas que aunque no ha sido confirmado, tal vez se haya tratado de la llamada “Cefalea de Horton” o “Cefalea de racimos”. El dolor, que se alojaba en uno de los costados de la cabeza, sobre el ojo derecho era tan intenso que lo llevaban a atravesar noches enteras de intenso dolor, insomnio y días completos, tirado en la cama recuperándose de tanto ajetreo físico y mental y apunta cada evento que le sucede como si ello le sirviera para aliviarlos.
Todo lo que pasa por su vida es reflejado en los Diarios. Cada aspecto es detallado con total honestidad y sin reparos y de esta manera, nos encontramos con algunas de las frases más maravillosas que nos dejó y que no están en ninguna de sus novelas o relatos. Su mente es un hervidero de ideas, padecimientos y anhelos. Su corazón es fiel cómplice de lo que su mente genera y se transforma en reflexiones tanto maravillosas como también desoladoras. Difícilmente puedan encontrarse en otros exponentes universales de la literatura Diarios tan lúcidos, profundos y desoladores como los que nos legó Franz Kafka.
Es a causa de todos estos elementos y experiencias surgidas a partir de la lectura de sus diarios que lo sintetizo en una simple pero contundente conclusión:
Franz Kafka fue, es y será único e irrepetible.
Comienzo esta reseña de los Diarios de Kafka con una frase de Albert Camus que identifica plenamente a este maravilloso escritor checo al que considero uno de mis escritores preferidos de toda la vida y parte de mi top five de favoritos junto a Fiódor Dostoievski, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville y Julio Cortázar.
Leer los diarios de los escritores más importantes de la historia ha sido siempre la manera más efectiva de aproximarnos a los lugares que sus ficciones a veces no nos brindan.
Muchos de ellos se han transformado en verdaderas extensiones de sus obras y en muchos casos, como en el de Kafka, de necesidad para entender el significado de sus textos.
Es importante la cantidad de escritores que nos han legado sus diarios: Thomas Mann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (el preferido de Kafka), Witold Gombrowicz, Elías Canetti, John Cheever, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ana Frank… en fin, la lista es extensa.
Algunos son proféticos, otros un tanto patéticos; los encontramos profundos y en otros casos llenos de información innecesaria, pero lo cierto es que junto con el género epistolar se han transformado en algo indispensable para los lectores.
Las gran cantidad de páginas que posee cualquier edición completa que uno compre y lea de los Diarios de Kafka son un viaje al interior de su compleja mente y su complicado corazón (para cubrir ese otro aspecto de su vida también están los libros de cartas a Milena Jesenská y Felice Bauer) y un modo de intentar comprender los vaivenes de su atribulada vida porque el autor deja todo evidenciado allí.
Los Diarios nos dan las claves fundamentales de lectura para comprender gran parte de la obra kafkiana, ya que esta adquiere verdadero sentido al leerlos y son, al mismo tiempo, una conexión directa con la creación y el desarrollo de casi todos los textos que escribió, debido a que en muchos de ellos es imposible disociar lo empírico de lo ficcional cuando se intenta interpretarlos.
No se puede estar más de acuerdo con el experto español en Kafka Jordi Llovet, encargado de la compilación y publicación de la obra en conjunto con la editorial S. Fischer Verlag y posteriormente con Galaxia Gutenberg cuando afirma que sus Diarios «acabaron convirtiéndose para Kafka en un aliado privado y personalísimo de su actividad como escritor, ya que encontraba en los Diarios una especie de lugar de gestación y de tanteo complementario, si no previo, en muchos casos, a la composición literaria propiamente dicha».
Leyendo los Diarios profundizamos el entendimiento de los orígenes de sus historias y relatos. Conocemos por qué la relación con su padre fue tan traumática para él (es interesante leerlos conjuntamente con su Carta al Padre también) para terminar de comprender esa complicada relación además de su constante lucha por ganarle la batalla a su mente, a su desasosiego y su constante inconformismo. Kafka es por momentos un hombre atormentado que no se perdona sus debilidades, su precario estado de salud y su inalcanzable intento de ser feliz, de casarse y de escribir, pero es a la vez él mismo quien vez contradice estos anhelos de vida en pareja ponderando su soledad: «Mi deseo de soledad desprovista de reflexión. Enfrentarme únicamente a mí mismo. Necesito estar solo mucho tiempo. Todo lo que he conseguido hacer es producto únicamente de mi soledad.»
La centralidad que la literatura ocupa en su vida comienza a ser plasmada en las páginas de sus Diarios sea tanto para reflejar los avances de sus borradores o ideas conceptuales para futuras narraciones como lo opuesto, o para confesar su falta de inspiración, frustración, carencia de ideas argumentales o bloqueos temporales de escritura.
Su imposibilidad de escribir, lo asfixia, lo frustra y cae en una alienación que lo aleja de todo ser humano y naturalmente esto termina eclosionando en sus escritos.
Cada momento de imposibilidad de escritura es anotado e indica claramente que atenta contra sus aspiraciones de escritor. El 20 de diciembre de 1910 se pregunta «¿Cómo puedo disculparme por no haber escrito todavía nada el día de hoy?»
Sobre el año 1911 anota: «Cuando empiezo a escribir después de bastante tiempo sin hacerlo, saco palabras como del aire vacío. Si consigo una, ella es la única que está ahí y todo el trabajo vuelve a empezar desde el principio.» El círculo vicioso entre la literatura y su empleo son dos actividades que no congenian para nada. Es más, este último le afecta negativamente, coartando su libertad literaria.
Sobre el 6 de mayo de 1912 confiesa que se siente un hombre marcado por el fracaso a la hora de escribir. El 1 de junio de 1912 se detiene completamente: «No he escrito nada».
Anotaciones como esta se sucederán constantemente con el correr de los años, pero Kafka no se amilana sino que busca fuerzas de donde no las tiene y se desafía a sí mismo. En una carta a Felice del 21 de diciembre de 1912 le advierte: «Mañana comenzaré a escribir de nuevo. Quiero meterme con todas mis fuerzas noto cómo una mano invisible me va sacando de la vida cuando no escribo».
Ha llegado al punto culmine en el que la literatura lo define cabalmente: «Las diez, 15 de noviembre de 1910. No dejaré que me asalte el cansancio. Penetraré de un salto en mi narración, aunque me llene la cara de cortes».
Kafka intuye, sabe, confirma que la literatura es y será su tabla de salvación, pero para ello es fundamental aferrarse también a sus Diarios: «Ya no abandonaré mi diario. Aquí debo aferrarme, pues solo aquí puedo hacerlo. Me gustaría poder explicar esta sensación de felicidad que me invade de tiempo en tiempo, como ocurre en estos momentos», confiesa el 16 de diciembre de 1910 y sobre el 25 de febrero de 1912 grita a través de la tinta « ¡Agarrar desde hoy mismo mi diario! ¡Escribir con regularidad! ¡No abandonar!».
Kafka se ha entregado completamente al oficio de escritor y lo confiesa abiertamente en unas líneas que le envía a su amigo Max Brod el 8 de febrero de 1922: « En realidad, si el escritor quiere evitar la locura, no debería alejarse jamás de su escritorio, debería aferrarse a él con los dientes».
Con el correr de la lectura de sus Diarios vamos encontrando los lazos definitivos en este matrimonio que Kafka ha hecho con la literatura inmortalizando el 21 de agosto de 1913 una de sus más icónicas frases: «Mi empleo me resulta insoportable porque contradice mi único anhelo y mi única vocación, que es la literatura. Dado que no soy nada más que literatura y no puedo ni quiero ser otra cosa» y lo reafirma rotundamente: «Todo lo que no es literatura me aburre y lo odio, pues me molesta o me estorba, aunque solo sea en mi imaginación… Un matrimonio no podría cambiarme, de igual forma que mi empleo no puede cambiarme.»
Un detalle interesante es apreciar cómo van mutando las anotaciones que registra con el correr de los años. En 1910, año del inicio de los Diarios, se nota lo escrito como en una etapa experimental aunque comienzan a aparecer esbozos de escritos, reflejos de sensaciones y detalladas observaciones de todo tipo. Las anotaciones son en algunos casos realmente extensas. Desarrolla un profundo análisis de todo lo que ve o le sucede.
Unos de los aspectos más sorprendentes de Kafka es su increíble y detallado poder de observación hasta el más mínimo detalle. Desde una arruga en la cara, la sombra proyectada de una nariz, la manera en que se remanga una persona o hasta la posición de un dedo meñique. Kafka era un observador implacable. Esto se hace fuertemente evidente en sus "Diarios de viaje". Todas sus descripciones en esos diarios son prueba de ello.
En el año 1911 comienza a pasar en papel sueños que ha tenido. Los sueños de Kafka son completamente locos incluso más allá de ser sueños. Son extraños, retorcidos, surrealistas y el aspecto onírico es una característica que indudablemente ha impactado en su obra más temprana.
Gran parte de lo escrito en los años 1912, 1913 y 1914 abarcará específicamente detalles de lo que le sucede luego de conocer a Felice Bauer, intercalando con anotaciones de todo tipo de las obras que posteriormente serían publicadas por su amigo y editor Kurt Wolff (Contemplación, La condena, El fogonero, La metamorfosis), así también como y sus reflexiones e inquietudes sobre ellas.
Los distintos vaivenes de su condición física, su creciente hipocondría y sus constantes achaques, las enfermedades (especialmente después de que se le diagnostica la tuberculosis en 1917) también son volcados en los Diarios.
Luego de la ruptura final con Felice en ese año y el hecho de saber que ya tiene tuberculosis hacen que sus anotaciones disminuyan notablemente, siendo el año 1918 del que menos podemos leer. Mismo caso para el año 1919, año en el solo escribió una hoja. Kafka desiste de tomarse el tiempo de sentarse a escribir para ocuparse de su decreciente salud y sus curas en sanatorios naturistas o de descanso. Las pocas entradas de esta época tienen un marcado tono lúgubre y depresivo.
En 1920 retoma la escritura pero no llega a los niveles de los primeros años y se vuelve aún más auto reflexivo e intimista. Se cuestiona todo tipo de cosas y pone en tela de juicio sus actitudes En casi todas las entradas de su diario de 1920 Kafka escribe sobre sí mismo en tercera persona: “Él”.
1921 replica la misma ausencia de entradas y anotaciones que 1919., las cuales repuntan en 1922. En 1923, ya muy enfermo e internado más tiempo en los sanatorios detiene a cero las anotaciones con tan sólo tres párrafos en los que se queja de su “incapacidad de nada” y de “sentirse cada vez más angustiado” cuando escribe.
Kafka también llevó un diario en los que anota sus experiencias en los viajes que realizó junto a Max Brod por ciudades de Austria, Alemania, Francia, Italia y Suiza en el período comprendido entre los años 1911 y 1913.
La lectura de estos otros diarios es tal vez más placentera, puesto que la experiencia de viajar es una de las más gratificantes que un ser humano pueda tener en la vida y Kafka se encarga de contarlo con todo lujo de detalles.
Volviendo al aspecto literario es maravillosos encontrar gran cantidad de esbozos literarios que no llegaron ser ni relatos terminados o borradores de lo que serían sus novelas más famosas. Algunos de los relatos inéditos como "Recuerdos del ferrocarril de Kalda" que ahonda en la soledad que él mismo experimentaba como escritor, narrado a partir de un personaje que decide tomar un trabajo en una solitaria oficina de ferrocarril perdida en el medio de Rusia.
El texto "El Mundo Urbano" es considerado el escrito más antiguo de Kafka en donde se establece la conflictiva relación entre un padre y un hijo, lo que supone que junto a la experiencia de noviazgo con Felice y las rispideces con su padre Herman apuntaló la inspiración de su relato La condena. En el fragmento "Seducción en la Aldea" prefigura lo que será su novela El castillo, así también como el apunte narrativo “Josef K., hijo de un rico comerciante…” que indefectiblemente alude al inicio de su novela El proceso.
El variado material de los Diarios se compone de una serie de doce cuadernos que oscilan entre las veinte y las cincuenta y ocho páginas, todos ellos en cuarto, además de dos legajos de hojas con muchas anotaciones.
Kafka, que de joven había sido un gran deportista aficionado a la natación, padecía, entre tantas cosas y antes de que le diagnosticaran tuberculosis, de fuertes migrañas que aunque no ha sido confirmado, tal vez se haya tratado de la llamada “Cefalea de Horton” o “Cefalea de racimos”. El dolor, que se alojaba en uno de los costados de la cabeza, sobre el ojo derecho era tan intenso que lo llevaban a atravesar noches enteras de intenso dolor, insomnio y días completos, tirado en la cama recuperándose de tanto ajetreo físico y mental y apunta cada evento que le sucede como si ello le sirviera para aliviarlos.
Todo lo que pasa por su vida es reflejado en los Diarios. Cada aspecto es detallado con total honestidad y sin reparos y de esta manera, nos encontramos con algunas de las frases más maravillosas que nos dejó y que no están en ninguna de sus novelas o relatos. Su mente es un hervidero de ideas, padecimientos y anhelos. Su corazón es fiel cómplice de lo que su mente genera y se transforma en reflexiones tanto maravillosas como también desoladoras. Difícilmente puedan encontrarse en otros exponentes universales de la literatura Diarios tan lúcidos, profundos y desoladores como los que nos legó Franz Kafka.
Es a causa de todos estos elementos y experiencias surgidas a partir de la lectura de sus diarios que lo sintetizo en una simple pero contundente conclusión:
Franz Kafka fue, es y será único e irrepetible.
July 6, 2009
Some people have a talent for suffering, as others have a knack for Sudoku or needlepoint. Give them every advantage in life – brains, looks, money – and still they’ll manage to fall ass-backwards into hopeless misery. I’m not talking about clinical depression, which, debilitating as it is, doesn’t require any particular skill. I’m talking about a philosophical aptitude for despair. Maybe it’s only a snobbish distinction; maybe despair is just depression’s hip, uptown cousin, who went to better schools and read more Kierkegaard. But if there is a real difference between them, it probably comes down to this: that depression is sterile and unproductive, while despair can be, in certain rare cases, wonderfully creative.
As evidence, I offer the works of Franz Kafka. If suffering takes talent, Kafka was some kind of virtuoso – the Yo-Yo Ma of angst. Every page of his diary testifies to an abiding spiritual affliction, an incurable Weltschmerz. His modern biographers tend to resist this view of Kafka, reminding us that he was, after all, a successful lawyer, a charming habitué of literary salons, even something of a ladies’ man. And no doubt he was. But all that was on the outside. Inside, it was one vast sea of anguish. He could hold it in, he could stand and watch it from the shore, but it was always there, sloshing around.
I call it a sea, but Kafka himself found other, more ingenious metaphors to describe his condition:
Who will save me? And the turmoil in me, deep down, scarcely visible; I am like a living lattice-work, a lattice that is solidly planted and would like to tumble down.
If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.
I don’t believe people exist whose inner plight resembles mine; still, it is possible for me to imagine such people – but that the secret raven flaps about their heads as it does about mine, even to imagine that is impossible.
In that last passage, he almost sounds like a hypersensitive teenager complaining that nobody understands his unique pain. Almost – but then you come to the ‘secret raven’, a tiny stroke of genius that could only have occurred to Kafka.
I’m going to propose an eccentric theory. Everybody psychologizes about Kafka, so here’s my kick at the can. Is it possible that Kafka’s prodigious gift for metaphor actually contributed to his problem? What I mean is, perhaps he cultivated his despair precisely in order to have a subject worthy of his gift. A nice Jewish kid with girl trouble and a vague hate-on for his dad – not very promising material, he might have decided; time to kick it up a notch. I’m not questioning his sincerity. I don’t doubt that he suffered. But I am suggesting that his compulsive search for new means of describing his inner life became an end in itself. His metaphors explained his despair but, in some sense, his despair also explained and justified his metaphors.
Let me try an analogy of my own. Say you inherit this beautiful Louis Quinze escritoire from your gay, furniture-dealer uncle. Great, but now you’ve got a problem, because that big hunk of marqueterie is going to look ridiculous amid your IKEA end tables and Pier 1 bric-a-brac. Since you can’t bear to part with such a lovely objet d’art, you realize you’ll have to design a setting rich and tasteful enough to accommodate it. You might even decide you need to move into a tonier building, class up your wardrobe and get some new friends while you’re at it. And all because of some French antique.
That, roughly, is the sort of effect Kafka’s equivocal gift might have had on his life, turning ordinary, middle-class Jewish angst into a lush and extravagant despair.
But, as I said, it’s just a theory. I’m not married to it or anything.
As evidence, I offer the works of Franz Kafka. If suffering takes talent, Kafka was some kind of virtuoso – the Yo-Yo Ma of angst. Every page of his diary testifies to an abiding spiritual affliction, an incurable Weltschmerz. His modern biographers tend to resist this view of Kafka, reminding us that he was, after all, a successful lawyer, a charming habitué of literary salons, even something of a ladies’ man. And no doubt he was. But all that was on the outside. Inside, it was one vast sea of anguish. He could hold it in, he could stand and watch it from the shore, but it was always there, sloshing around.
I call it a sea, but Kafka himself found other, more ingenious metaphors to describe his condition:
Who will save me? And the turmoil in me, deep down, scarcely visible; I am like a living lattice-work, a lattice that is solidly planted and would like to tumble down.
If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.
I don’t believe people exist whose inner plight resembles mine; still, it is possible for me to imagine such people – but that the secret raven flaps about their heads as it does about mine, even to imagine that is impossible.
In that last passage, he almost sounds like a hypersensitive teenager complaining that nobody understands his unique pain. Almost – but then you come to the ‘secret raven’, a tiny stroke of genius that could only have occurred to Kafka.
I’m going to propose an eccentric theory. Everybody psychologizes about Kafka, so here’s my kick at the can. Is it possible that Kafka’s prodigious gift for metaphor actually contributed to his problem? What I mean is, perhaps he cultivated his despair precisely in order to have a subject worthy of his gift. A nice Jewish kid with girl trouble and a vague hate-on for his dad – not very promising material, he might have decided; time to kick it up a notch. I’m not questioning his sincerity. I don’t doubt that he suffered. But I am suggesting that his compulsive search for new means of describing his inner life became an end in itself. His metaphors explained his despair but, in some sense, his despair also explained and justified his metaphors.
Let me try an analogy of my own. Say you inherit this beautiful Louis Quinze escritoire from your gay, furniture-dealer uncle. Great, but now you’ve got a problem, because that big hunk of marqueterie is going to look ridiculous amid your IKEA end tables and Pier 1 bric-a-brac. Since you can’t bear to part with such a lovely objet d’art, you realize you’ll have to design a setting rich and tasteful enough to accommodate it. You might even decide you need to move into a tonier building, class up your wardrobe and get some new friends while you’re at it. And all because of some French antique.
That, roughly, is the sort of effect Kafka’s equivocal gift might have had on his life, turning ordinary, middle-class Jewish angst into a lush and extravagant despair.
But, as I said, it’s just a theory. I’m not married to it or anything.
July 12, 2023
Probabil cel mai interesant jurnal din istoria literaturii...
Peste aceste pagini, tronează chipul obsesiv al Tatălui autoritar: Hermann Kafka. Prozatorul a perceput mereu relația cu Părintele său ca pe o luptă chinuitoare, cu învingători și învinși, cu triumfuri și regrupări: „Nu de mult, ideea că tata m-a învins încă de cînd eram copil, și-apoi, ani în șir, din ambiție, n-am mai putut să părăsesc cîmpul de luptă” (2 decembrie 1921, p.539).
Nu cunosc nici un scriitor cu o părere mai severă despre sine. E imposibil să reziști unei priviri atît de necruțătoare. Transcriu, în acest sens, cîteva pasaje, Kafka prin ochii lui Kafka:
Plasticitatea imaginilor e amăgitoare. Aproape că nu ghicim melancolia din spatele lor.
În 17 decembrie 1910, notează că „a înlăturat și a șters” tot ce a scris de-a lungul anului (p.86). După luni și luni de muncă, n-a rămas cu nimic. Foarte critic = ironic și cu ceilalți: scrie că un anume W. Fred (pseudonimul lui Alfred Wechsler) „își maltratează talentul” în lungi romane, în loc să scrie povestiri, pentru care este mai potrivit (10 decembrie 1910, p.85). Kafka citea cărțile contemporanilor. Și, dacă tot am ajuns la lecturi, Kafka studia și cărți de citică literară, despre Goethe sau Schiller. Cînd a călătorit la Weimar, primul lucru a fost să le viziteze odaia de scris. Goethe îl fascina (p.376). În 10 ianuarie 1910, îi răsfoia jurnalul (p.87)
Chiar dacă a lăsat notații acute despre sine, Kafka a detestat introspecția. Nu-i plăcea să investigheze motivația faptelor. Cel mai bine e „să te suporți liniștit, fără să te precipiți” (9 decembrie 1913, p.359).
Închei cu o însemnare de un umor uriaș. După ce intră într-un bordel din Paris, cea mai mare grijă a lui Kafka e să nu rămînă cumva cu pălăria pe cap (p.627). Chiar și într-un stabiliment mizer nu uita să fie domn...
Peste aceste pagini, tronează chipul obsesiv al Tatălui autoritar: Hermann Kafka. Prozatorul a perceput mereu relația cu Părintele său ca pe o luptă chinuitoare, cu învingători și învinși, cu triumfuri și regrupări: „Nu de mult, ideea că tata m-a învins încă de cînd eram copil, și-apoi, ani în șir, din ambiție, n-am mai putut să părăsesc cîmpul de luptă” (2 decembrie 1921, p.539).
Nu cunosc nici un scriitor cu o părere mai severă despre sine. E imposibil să reziști unei priviri atît de necruțătoare. Transcriu, în acest sens, cîteva pasaje, Kafka prin ochii lui Kafka:
„Neliniștea izvorîtă din constatarea că viața mea de pînă acum a fost ca o mărșăluire pe loc, avînd cel mult evoluția unei măsele cariate, care se strică treptat” (23 ianuarie 1922, pp.547-548). Sau: „Am scris din nou, dar cîte îndoieli am avut între timp în privința scrisului meu! În fond, sînt un incapabil, un ignorant, care dacă n-ar fi fost silit să meargă la școală..., ar fi fost în stare pur și simplu să se ghemuiască într-un coteț de cîine” (18 noiembrie 1013, p.350).
Plasticitatea imaginilor e amăgitoare. Aproape că nu ghicim melancolia din spatele lor.
În 17 decembrie 1910, notează că „a înlăturat și a șters” tot ce a scris de-a lungul anului (p.86). După luni și luni de muncă, n-a rămas cu nimic. Foarte critic = ironic și cu ceilalți: scrie că un anume W. Fred (pseudonimul lui Alfred Wechsler) „își maltratează talentul” în lungi romane, în loc să scrie povestiri, pentru care este mai potrivit (10 decembrie 1910, p.85). Kafka citea cărțile contemporanilor. Și, dacă tot am ajuns la lecturi, Kafka studia și cărți de citică literară, despre Goethe sau Schiller. Cînd a călătorit la Weimar, primul lucru a fost să le viziteze odaia de scris. Goethe îl fascina (p.376). În 10 ianuarie 1910, îi răsfoia jurnalul (p.87)
Chiar dacă a lăsat notații acute despre sine, Kafka a detestat introspecția. Nu-i plăcea să investigheze motivația faptelor. Cel mai bine e „să te suporți liniștit, fără să te precipiți” (9 decembrie 1913, p.359).
Închei cu o însemnare de un umor uriaș. După ce intră într-un bordel din Paris, cea mai mare grijă a lui Kafka e să nu rămînă cumva cu pălăria pe cap (p.627). Chiar și într-un stabiliment mizer nu uita să fie domn...
September 7, 2025
Kafka’s Diaries: Beauty in Fragments..
"I am free and that is why I am lost.”
Mess. Tenderness. Doubt. Desire. Kafka’s diaries are not a book to read but a storm to enter. One moment he’s sketching the loneliness of his room, the next he’s unraveling entire philosophies in half a line. He is anxious, dramatic, devastating — and yet, in his fragments, I found beauty that feels truer than most novels.
There are books we read, and then there are books that read us. Kafka’s diaries belong to the second kind. I opened them expecting a glimpse of his world, but instead found shadows of my own.Reading Kafka’s diaries feels like stepping into a dimly lit room where every shadow is alive. They’re not polished literature—they’re raw nerves on paper, the inner workings of a mind that couldn’t stop dissecting itself.
"Writing is a form of prayer," Kafka said. His diaries prove that — a prayer half-broken, half-beautiful, whispered into the void. I’ve been carrying the thought of reading Kafka’s diaries for so long, and now that I have… it feels like reading my own scribbles back at me. Messy, restless, anxious, but achingly real. I’ve always love to draw my emotions into my own journal — the half-formed thoughts, the restlessness, the feelings that never make it into the “polished” version of life— messy little scribbles of thought and feeling. That’s probably why Kafka’s diaries hit so hard. They’re not tidy, they’re not polished — they’re raw wounds, scattered sketches of despair, yearning, and sudden sparks of light.
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."Once, Kafka wrote this—and in his diaries, you see exactly what he meant. These pages are not calm reflections, but the raw wounds of a man who lived in perpetual tension with himself.
"A diary is a way of keeping myself alive," Kafka wrote — and I believe him. In these pages, I didn’t just meet the author of The Trial or Metamorphosis; I met a man who is heartbreakingly fragile, furiously restless, and always on the edge of vanishing. His chaos reads like my own scribbles, only sharper, sadder, and somehow more luminous.From the cramped corners of Prague to the whispered streets of Europe in his travel diaries, he writes like he is unraveling in real time. The cafes, the trains, the fog-shrouded towns — all of it reflects the landscape of his own mind.
Miserable creature that I am!— Kafka’s words ring like my own unspoken thoughts. From the very first page, Kafka’s diaries read less like a record of days and more like a constellation of confessions—scattered, luminous, sometimes shrouded in darkness. They are not a finished work, but a mirror reflecting the tremors of a restless soul. There’s something about the way he pours out his mind that feels less like literature and more like sitting with a friend at midnight who refuses to filter anything. He’s dramatic, volatile, constantly doubting himself — but it makes him so human, so fragile, so… sad pookie coded.
"I cannot make you understand. I can’t make anyone understand what is happening inside of me. I cannot even explain it to myself."- (The Metamorphosis)
Oh Kafka, forever struggling to explain himself—even to himself. Kafka’s characters said it, and his diaries lived it..
"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think... and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."
-Opening his diaries felt like stepping into that darkness with him. A place where thoughts unravel, emotions spill unpolished, and the man behind The Trial and Metamorphosis stops being a name on a spine and becomes unbearably human.
Kafka's entries reflect a lifelong search for meaning and purpose in a world that often seems absurd and meaningless. This search leads him to explore various philosophical and religious ideas, but ultimately he finds no easy answers.
“This inescapable duty to observe oneself…”
"In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world,"he wrote. And still, these diaries feel like a man betting on himself — even when the odds are cruel. They are full of despair, but also of a strange kind of faith: that writing, no matter how broken, might be enough to keep breathing.
From 1910 to 1923, Kafka uses his diary as both confession booth and operating table—laying bare his anxieties, failures, and bursts of creative fire. His self-awareness is so sharp it sometimes cuts through the page.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Kafka once said, "A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." His diaries feel like that courtship in slow motion — raw, fevered, filled with fragments of longing and collapse. Reading them is like holding shards of glass: sharp, messy, but reflecting light in a way that feels almost holy.
He writes of illness, insomnia, failed love, writing as compulsion, and the constant pull between solitude and connection. What emerges is not a diary in the ordinary sense but a map of a haunted consciousness.
"Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and sleepless man the most guilty."
The diaries show his constant wrestling match with artistic expression—flashes of inspiration, long stretches of paralysis. He dreams vividly, records scenes from city streets, and critiques the very society he lives in.
“When I think about it, I must say that my education has done me great harm in some respects.”
He calls his life a “horrible double life”—an insurance man in daylight, a writer haunted by words at night. His own body becomes his enemy:
“I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body.”
And yet, in the same breath, he finds salvation in words:
“The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps saving comfort that there is in writing…”
"Writing means revealing oneself to excess"
What I found most moving was how the diaries double as a writer’s battlefield. Kafka confesses: “Metaphors are one among many things which make me despair of writing.” He calls his mind a “heap of straw” that refuses to ignite. And yet, out of these nights of torment came some of the greatest literature of the 20th century.
This isn’t neat or polished—it’s Kafka undressed, tearing into his own mind with a surgeon’s knife. His despair is relentless:
“Nothing, nothing. Emptiness, boredom—no, not boredom—merely emptiness, meaninglessness, weakness.”
Yearning for intimacy. Kafka expresses a deep longing for intimacy and connection, but he also struggles with the fear of vulnerability and the difficulty of forming lasting relationships. This tension is reflected in his complex and often contradictory feelings towards women.
"I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved"
1 July. Too tired.
5 July. To have to bear and to be the cause of such suffering!
"I am more broken down than recovered. An empty vessel, still intact yet already in the dust among the broken fragments; or already in fragments yet still ranged among those that are intact"
Kafka’s reflections on marriage read like a soul in constant tug-of-war with itself. He wants connection, the strength to endure life’s assaults, someone to share the unbearable weight of existence — but the very thought terrifies him. He fears losing the solitude that fuels his writing, that makes him feel alive in his own skin. He notices the mundanity, the absurdities, the suffocating trivialities of everyday life, and wonders if love will drown him in it all. And yet… there’s a glimmer of hope: the chance to be fearless, surprising, fully himself in the presence of another.
"I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations
bore me, to visit people bores me,
the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul."- He is so me😭
"I’ll shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make
an enemy of everyone, speak to no one.The man with the dark, stern eyes who was carrying the pile of old
coats on his shoulder"
There’s rebellion in him too—against authority, bureaucracy, even love. He yearns for intimacy but retreats from it, circling relationships like a wary cat.
“…from time to time listened to myself outside of myself, it sounded like the whimpering of a young cat.”
“I am not punctual because I do not feel the pains of waiting. I wait like an ox…”
Kafka confessed that his metaphysical urge was nothing but the urge toward death. I read this, and it pierced me—not because it was foreign, but because it was familiar. The claustrophobic absurdity of The Trial? The alienation of The Metamorphosis? You can see their roots in these notebooks. Josef K’s helplessness, Gregor Samsa’s grotesque self-consciousness—they are Kafka himself, refracted.Kafka’s diaries reveal a man torn apart by the very thing he lives for. Writing is both his curse and his cure.
✦ What Stayed With Me-The brutal honesty of a man who felt unworthy of life, yet gifted us sentences that will outlive centuries. The realization that even geniuses are scattered, restless, flawed. That their brilliance doesn’t cancel out their fragility—it grows from it.
"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
Kafka’s “obsessions” were guilt, death, shame, desire, alienation—and they became literature. That is his tragedy, and his triumph.
And I closed them feeling less alone. Because sometimes, the most comforting thing is realizing your favorite genius was just as much of a sad, sleepless, messy pookie as you. In the end, what lingers is not a clean arc or tidy moral, but a sense of having trespassed into the unedited mind of a genius. You see the fragments, the contradictions, the humanity. And in them, perhaps, you see yourself
Verdict — A masterpiece of unguarded humanity. Not a casual read.These diaries aren’t easy, but they’re intimate. Reading them feels like sitting inside his head, hearing the thoughts he never meant to share. And honestly, it made me feel less alone in my own mess. It’s dense, fragmented, and occasionally exhausting—but that’s the point. It’s the mind of a man both terrified and fascinated by existence itself. If you’ve ever scribbled something at midnight you hoped no one would read, you’ll feel at home here.
"I am free and that is why I am lost.”
Mess. Tenderness. Doubt. Desire. Kafka’s diaries are not a book to read but a storm to enter. One moment he’s sketching the loneliness of his room, the next he’s unraveling entire philosophies in half a line. He is anxious, dramatic, devastating — and yet, in his fragments, I found beauty that feels truer than most novels.
There are books we read, and then there are books that read us. Kafka’s diaries belong to the second kind. I opened them expecting a glimpse of his world, but instead found shadows of my own.Reading Kafka’s diaries feels like stepping into a dimly lit room where every shadow is alive. They’re not polished literature—they’re raw nerves on paper, the inner workings of a mind that couldn’t stop dissecting itself.
"Writing is a form of prayer," Kafka said. His diaries prove that — a prayer half-broken, half-beautiful, whispered into the void. I’ve been carrying the thought of reading Kafka’s diaries for so long, and now that I have… it feels like reading my own scribbles back at me. Messy, restless, anxious, but achingly real. I’ve always love to draw my emotions into my own journal — the half-formed thoughts, the restlessness, the feelings that never make it into the “polished” version of life— messy little scribbles of thought and feeling. That’s probably why Kafka’s diaries hit so hard. They’re not tidy, they’re not polished — they’re raw wounds, scattered sketches of despair, yearning, and sudden sparks of light.
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die."Once, Kafka wrote this—and in his diaries, you see exactly what he meant. These pages are not calm reflections, but the raw wounds of a man who lived in perpetual tension with himself.
"A diary is a way of keeping myself alive," Kafka wrote — and I believe him. In these pages, I didn’t just meet the author of The Trial or Metamorphosis; I met a man who is heartbreakingly fragile, furiously restless, and always on the edge of vanishing. His chaos reads like my own scribbles, only sharper, sadder, and somehow more luminous.From the cramped corners of Prague to the whispered streets of Europe in his travel diaries, he writes like he is unraveling in real time. The cafes, the trains, the fog-shrouded towns — all of it reflects the landscape of his own mind.
Miserable creature that I am!— Kafka’s words ring like my own unspoken thoughts. From the very first page, Kafka’s diaries read less like a record of days and more like a constellation of confessions—scattered, luminous, sometimes shrouded in darkness. They are not a finished work, but a mirror reflecting the tremors of a restless soul. There’s something about the way he pours out his mind that feels less like literature and more like sitting with a friend at midnight who refuses to filter anything. He’s dramatic, volatile, constantly doubting himself — but it makes him so human, so fragile, so… sad pookie coded.
"I cannot make you understand. I can’t make anyone understand what is happening inside of me. I cannot even explain it to myself."- (The Metamorphosis)
Oh Kafka, forever struggling to explain himself—even to himself. Kafka’s characters said it, and his diaries lived it..
"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think... and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."
-Opening his diaries felt like stepping into that darkness with him. A place where thoughts unravel, emotions spill unpolished, and the man behind The Trial and Metamorphosis stops being a name on a spine and becomes unbearably human.
Kafka's entries reflect a lifelong search for meaning and purpose in a world that often seems absurd and meaningless. This search leads him to explore various philosophical and religious ideas, but ultimately he finds no easy answers.
“This inescapable duty to observe oneself…”
"In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world,"he wrote. And still, these diaries feel like a man betting on himself — even when the odds are cruel. They are full of despair, but also of a strange kind of faith: that writing, no matter how broken, might be enough to keep breathing.
From 1910 to 1923, Kafka uses his diary as both confession booth and operating table—laying bare his anxieties, failures, and bursts of creative fire. His self-awareness is so sharp it sometimes cuts through the page.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Kafka once said, "A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." His diaries feel like that courtship in slow motion — raw, fevered, filled with fragments of longing and collapse. Reading them is like holding shards of glass: sharp, messy, but reflecting light in a way that feels almost holy.
He writes of illness, insomnia, failed love, writing as compulsion, and the constant pull between solitude and connection. What emerges is not a diary in the ordinary sense but a map of a haunted consciousness.
"Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and sleepless man the most guilty."
The diaries show his constant wrestling match with artistic expression—flashes of inspiration, long stretches of paralysis. He dreams vividly, records scenes from city streets, and critiques the very society he lives in.
“When I think about it, I must say that my education has done me great harm in some respects.”
He calls his life a “horrible double life”—an insurance man in daylight, a writer haunted by words at night. His own body becomes his enemy:
“I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body.”
And yet, in the same breath, he finds salvation in words:
“The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps saving comfort that there is in writing…”
"Writing means revealing oneself to excess"
What I found most moving was how the diaries double as a writer’s battlefield. Kafka confesses: “Metaphors are one among many things which make me despair of writing.” He calls his mind a “heap of straw” that refuses to ignite. And yet, out of these nights of torment came some of the greatest literature of the 20th century.
This isn’t neat or polished—it’s Kafka undressed, tearing into his own mind with a surgeon’s knife. His despair is relentless:
“Nothing, nothing. Emptiness, boredom—no, not boredom—merely emptiness, meaninglessness, weakness.”
Yearning for intimacy. Kafka expresses a deep longing for intimacy and connection, but he also struggles with the fear of vulnerability and the difficulty of forming lasting relationships. This tension is reflected in his complex and often contradictory feelings towards women.
"I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved"
1 July. Too tired.
5 July. To have to bear and to be the cause of such suffering!
"I am more broken down than recovered. An empty vessel, still intact yet already in the dust among the broken fragments; or already in fragments yet still ranged among those that are intact"
Kafka’s reflections on marriage read like a soul in constant tug-of-war with itself. He wants connection, the strength to endure life’s assaults, someone to share the unbearable weight of existence — but the very thought terrifies him. He fears losing the solitude that fuels his writing, that makes him feel alive in his own skin. He notices the mundanity, the absurdities, the suffocating trivialities of everyday life, and wonders if love will drown him in it all. And yet… there’s a glimmer of hope: the chance to be fearless, surprising, fully himself in the presence of another.
"I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations
bore me, to visit people bores me,
the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul."- He is so me😭
"I’ll shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make
an enemy of everyone, speak to no one.The man with the dark, stern eyes who was carrying the pile of old
coats on his shoulder"
There’s rebellion in him too—against authority, bureaucracy, even love. He yearns for intimacy but retreats from it, circling relationships like a wary cat.
“…from time to time listened to myself outside of myself, it sounded like the whimpering of a young cat.”
“I am not punctual because I do not feel the pains of waiting. I wait like an ox…”
Kafka confessed that his metaphysical urge was nothing but the urge toward death. I read this, and it pierced me—not because it was foreign, but because it was familiar. The claustrophobic absurdity of The Trial? The alienation of The Metamorphosis? You can see their roots in these notebooks. Josef K’s helplessness, Gregor Samsa’s grotesque self-consciousness—they are Kafka himself, refracted.Kafka’s diaries reveal a man torn apart by the very thing he lives for. Writing is both his curse and his cure.
✦ What Stayed With Me-The brutal honesty of a man who felt unworthy of life, yet gifted us sentences that will outlive centuries. The realization that even geniuses are scattered, restless, flawed. That their brilliance doesn’t cancel out their fragility—it grows from it.
"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
Kafka’s “obsessions” were guilt, death, shame, desire, alienation—and they became literature. That is his tragedy, and his triumph.
And I closed them feeling less alone. Because sometimes, the most comforting thing is realizing your favorite genius was just as much of a sad, sleepless, messy pookie as you. In the end, what lingers is not a clean arc or tidy moral, but a sense of having trespassed into the unedited mind of a genius. You see the fragments, the contradictions, the humanity. And in them, perhaps, you see yourself
Verdict — A masterpiece of unguarded humanity. Not a casual read.These diaries aren’t easy, but they’re intimate. Reading them feels like sitting inside his head, hearing the thoughts he never meant to share. And honestly, it made me feel less alone in my own mess. It’s dense, fragmented, and occasionally exhausting—but that’s the point. It’s the mind of a man both terrified and fascinated by existence itself. If you’ve ever scribbled something at midnight you hoped no one would read, you’ll feel at home here.
Read
May 21, 2011قراءة "يوميات كافكا" تشبه أن تضيع إلى الأبد في الاحساس العارم بالخزي. تشبه التيه.. تشبه التجول في جغرافيا جرح ملتهب بلا خارطة.
أتعبني. كافكا الأديب عبقرية محضة، كافكا الإنسان مجرد خيبة أمل.
July 12, 2024
The diaries of an 'alien' - an alien genius, imprisoned in himself.
It was a more compelling read than many novels by other authors.
The word 'pain' is mentioned many many times in Kafka's diaries. Indeed, his life was suffering and big struggle with himself, his extreme sensitivity, his mood swings, his despair and insecurity, his family, his job, the writing, the circumstances, the women he loved, the whole world. It was the struggle he could not have possibly won.
There are a lot of descriptions of dreams and stories or fragments of them - I'm so grateful for that.
'The hollow which the work of genius has burned into our surroundings is a good place into which to put one’s little light. Therefore the inspiration that emanates from genius, the universal inspiration that doesn’t only drive one to imitation.'
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'The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being tom to pieces. And a thousand times rather be tom to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.'
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'I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversations take the importance, the seriousness, the truth of everything I think.'
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'Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.'
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'It had been impossible for him to enter the house, for he had heard a voice saying to him: ‘Wait till I lead you in! ’ And so he continued to lie in the dust in front of the house, although by now,
probably, everything was hopeless (as Sarah would say).
All is imaginary — family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies closest, however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.'
It was a more compelling read than many novels by other authors.
The word 'pain' is mentioned many many times in Kafka's diaries. Indeed, his life was suffering and big struggle with himself, his extreme sensitivity, his mood swings, his despair and insecurity, his family, his job, the writing, the circumstances, the women he loved, the whole world. It was the struggle he could not have possibly won.
There are a lot of descriptions of dreams and stories or fragments of them - I'm so grateful for that.
'The hollow which the work of genius has burned into our surroundings is a good place into which to put one’s little light. Therefore the inspiration that emanates from genius, the universal inspiration that doesn’t only drive one to imitation.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being tom to pieces. And a thousand times rather be tom to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversations take the importance, the seriousness, the truth of everything I think.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'It had been impossible for him to enter the house, for he had heard a voice saying to him: ‘Wait till I lead you in! ’ And so he continued to lie in the dust in front of the house, although by now,
probably, everything was hopeless (as Sarah would say).
All is imaginary — family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies closest, however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.'
April 15, 2022
از اسم کتاب مشخصه. مجموعهای از خاطرات روزانه و خاطرات سفرهای کافکاست که به شدت تلخ و فضای سرد و ناراحتکنندهای داره ولی من کتاب رو دوست داشتم.
September 7, 2013
Manuscript of the first page of the 'Diaries'
--Diaries, 1910-1923
--Travel Diaries
Postscript
Notes
Chronology 1883-1924
List of Authors, Artists, Periodicals, and Works
--Diaries, 1910-1923
--Travel Diaries
Postscript
Notes
Chronology 1883-1924
List of Authors, Artists, Periodicals, and Works
April 13, 2011
لعلها المدة الأطول التي اقرأ فيها كتاباً على دفعات ليس لحجمه و إنما لأجوائه المرهقة ..كنت اتركه لأيام لأن شيئاً ما استفزني و حرّك ما أسن من هدوء زائف نلف به أرواحنا القلقة..وأحياناً كنت اقرأ واشتم هذا الشخص الذي يختصر حياته بينه وبين ذاته واستطاع أن يعريها تماماً كما هي بكل روعتها و حقارتها.. هذا الكتاب فيه كمية هائلة من "التشريح" الصادق و المؤلم للنفس البشرية بكل تجلياتها.
طبيعة كونه تدوين لـ"يوميات" صنعت الكثير من النقلات المفاجئة و التداخل والانقطاع أحياناً مما يربك القارئ ، كما أن الكتاب غارق في التفاصيل هنا تقرأ التفاصيل و الكثير من التفاصيل المدهشة إزاء كل شيء الذات - خصوصاُ- الزمن.. النساء... الأدب.. الدين و العائلة و الهوية .
هي المرة الأولى التي اقرأ لكافكا و بدأت بما قربني إلى شخصه أكثر من أدبه فتشكل لدي نوع من التصور عما يمكن أن يكون أدبه عليه ..أجمل مافي الكتاب هو تلك الأفكار الصغيرة و الملاحظات التي لا تكاد تلمحها حول كل شيء ..بإمكاني القول أن كافكا يملك دهشة طفل و حس فيلسوف فتخيل ما يمكن أن ينتج من تركيبة كهذه الأحاديث التي تدور في خلفية تفكير المرء هي مادة هذا الكتاب الأصوات المتضاربة التي تشغله و تنازعه لذلك هي مرهقة للحد الذي لا تستطيع أن تقرأ معه لمدة طويلة فتلك الأصوات تبدأ هي الأخرى بالإلحاح عليك و تتركك تواجه صداها الذي يتردد بداخلك مثيراً قلقاً كبيراً و أسئلة أكبر – أو لعل هذا ما حدث معي على الأقل-.
بناء على ذلك فإن مادة الكتاب لا تقدم الكثير فكرياً ، و إنما تمسك بك لتوجهك تماماً للزاوية التي يرى بها كافكا كل الأحداث و اللحظات التي مر بها و قد لا يكون بعضها مما يستحق التدوين و لكن شخصيته الحساسة تجاه كل ما حوله تجعل من كل ما يمسها مادة للتأمل و الكتابة ، ولكنها رغم ذلك حملت وشكلت بذوراً لروايات و قصص نشرها كافكا و نشرت له بعد وفاته كالمسخ و المحاكمة ..كما طرح رأيه و قدم قراءات لبعض الأعمال الأدبية المعاصرة و القديمة و لم تخلو اليوميات من حديث عن الدين و السياسة و إن لم تكن كثيفة كملاحظاته المتعلقة بحياته و هويته و مشاعره.
آلمتني الأجزاءالتي يتحدث فيها عن علاقته بأبيه( يصفها كافكا بأنها عدائية) شعرت بالكثير من المرارة و لعل طبيعة هذه العلاقة التي تحوي الكثير من اللوم و الصمت والآمال المتعارضة و الحواجز هي ما أسهم في خلق حساسيته المفرطة و شخصيته الفريدة .
أثارت دهشتي قدرته الفائقةعلى وصف التفاصيل لحد الافتتان بها ، كيف يلتفت إليها و يغدق عليها من التعابير ما يرفعها لمستوى الشخصيات فتجده مثلاً يستغرق في وصف مصباح ما في المسرح أو فستان ممثلة بسلاسة و خفة و يمنحها بذلك معنى و قيمة .
وما يلفت أيضاً هو إحساسه العالي بالزمن فشعوره به وبأنه محاصر ويكاد يكون في صراع معه يعد أمراً يشكل جزء كبيراً من ذاته القلقة و لعل ذلك كان نتيجة مرضه الدائم و هزاله الذي كان يهدد حياته و يؤثر على قراراته كالزواج و الكتابة والرغبة في الإنجاز الأدبي .
علاقته المعقدة مع الناس أيضاً تحتل جزءاً كبيراً من تدويناته فهو يرى نفسه بأنه إنسان ضيئل وعلى قدر من التفاهة و الارتباك في حضور الآخرين مما يمنعه من التواصل معهم بشكل طبيعي و اختلاطه بهم يشكل عبئأ ثقيلاً عليه لأنه رجل يأنس بالوحدة و الأدب وخارج هذين العالمين هو انسان مهزوز و ضعيف نوعاً ما . وهو ما يقودنا لعلاقته الشائكة و المضطربة بالنساء باستثناء والدته .
بالنسبة لأسلوب الكتاب فهو مرتب زمنياً من 1910 – 1923 و أكثر ما اليوميات جمالاً كانت من 1919 – حتى 1923 حيث غابت عنها التفاصيل المملة و أصبحت مختزلة أكثر و يعرض فيها للحديث عن معنى الحياة و قيمتها و ما يشكله معنى الذات و الهوية و قيمة المرء ..وأصبحت تدويناته فلسفية عميقة و أقرب للحكمة و العبر منها إلى التدوين .. وهو من أكثر الفصول قيمة أدبية و فكرية.
و لا أخفي أن قراءة هذا الكتاب مرهقة ..فبعد المقدمة التي تنير لك مسلكاً لقراءة النص، غاب ذكر وجود ملحق كامل للإحالات في نهايته فبالإضافة للهوامش أسفل الصفحات كان هناك ملحق آخراكتشفت وجوده في منتصف قرائتي للكتاب وأيضاً لم تكن تلك الإحالات مرقمة مما جعل الربط بينها وبين الصفحات ضرباً من الإرهاق للقارئ لو كانت أضيف للهوامش أسفل الصفحات كان ذلك سيوفر عناء الإرتباك و يجعل فهم اليوميات أسهل خصوصاُ مع كثرة تكرار أسماء الشخصيات و المدن و الكتب.
نصيحة أخيرة
لا تقرأ هذا الكتاب في فترة تكون فيها سعيداً و متصالحاً مع ذاتك
طبيعة كونه تدوين لـ"يوميات" صنعت الكثير من النقلات المفاجئة و التداخل والانقطاع أحياناً مما يربك القارئ ، كما أن الكتاب غارق في التفاصيل هنا تقرأ التفاصيل و الكثير من التفاصيل المدهشة إزاء كل شيء الذات - خصوصاُ- الزمن.. النساء... الأدب.. الدين و العائلة و الهوية .
هي المرة الأولى التي اقرأ لكافكا و بدأت بما قربني إلى شخصه أكثر من أدبه فتشكل لدي نوع من التصور عما يمكن أن يكون أدبه عليه ..أجمل مافي الكتاب هو تلك الأفكار الصغيرة و الملاحظات التي لا تكاد تلمحها حول كل شيء ..بإمكاني القول أن كافكا يملك دهشة طفل و حس فيلسوف فتخيل ما يمكن أن ينتج من تركيبة كهذه الأحاديث التي تدور في خلفية تفكير المرء هي مادة هذا الكتاب الأصوات المتضاربة التي تشغله و تنازعه لذلك هي مرهقة للحد الذي لا تستطيع أن تقرأ معه لمدة طويلة فتلك الأصوات تبدأ هي الأخرى بالإلحاح عليك و تتركك تواجه صداها الذي يتردد بداخلك مثيراً قلقاً كبيراً و أسئلة أكبر – أو لعل هذا ما حدث معي على الأقل-.
بناء على ذلك فإن مادة الكتاب لا تقدم الكثير فكرياً ، و إنما تمسك بك لتوجهك تماماً للزاوية التي يرى بها كافكا كل الأحداث و اللحظات التي مر بها و قد لا يكون بعضها مما يستحق التدوين و لكن شخصيته الحساسة تجاه كل ما حوله تجعل من كل ما يمسها مادة للتأمل و الكتابة ، ولكنها رغم ذلك حملت وشكلت بذوراً لروايات و قصص نشرها كافكا و نشرت له بعد وفاته كالمسخ و المحاكمة ..كما طرح رأيه و قدم قراءات لبعض الأعمال الأدبية المعاصرة و القديمة و لم تخلو اليوميات من حديث عن الدين و السياسة و إن لم تكن كثيفة كملاحظاته المتعلقة بحياته و هويته و مشاعره.
آلمتني الأجزاءالتي يتحدث فيها عن علاقته بأبيه( يصفها كافكا بأنها عدائية) شعرت بالكثير من المرارة و لعل طبيعة هذه العلاقة التي تحوي الكثير من اللوم و الصمت والآمال المتعارضة و الحواجز هي ما أسهم في خلق حساسيته المفرطة و شخصيته الفريدة .
أثارت دهشتي قدرته الفائقةعلى وصف التفاصيل لحد الافتتان بها ، كيف يلتفت إليها و يغدق عليها من التعابير ما يرفعها لمستوى الشخصيات فتجده مثلاً يستغرق في وصف مصباح ما في المسرح أو فستان ممثلة بسلاسة و خفة و يمنحها بذلك معنى و قيمة .
وما يلفت أيضاً هو إحساسه العالي بالزمن فشعوره به وبأنه محاصر ويكاد يكون في صراع معه يعد أمراً يشكل جزء كبيراً من ذاته القلقة و لعل ذلك كان نتيجة مرضه الدائم و هزاله الذي كان يهدد حياته و يؤثر على قراراته كالزواج و الكتابة والرغبة في الإنجاز الأدبي .
علاقته المعقدة مع الناس أيضاً تحتل جزءاً كبيراً من تدويناته فهو يرى نفسه بأنه إنسان ضيئل وعلى قدر من التفاهة و الارتباك في حضور الآخرين مما يمنعه من التواصل معهم بشكل طبيعي و اختلاطه بهم يشكل عبئأ ثقيلاً عليه لأنه رجل يأنس بالوحدة و الأدب وخارج هذين العالمين هو انسان مهزوز و ضعيف نوعاً ما . وهو ما يقودنا لعلاقته الشائكة و المضطربة بالنساء باستثناء والدته .
بالنسبة لأسلوب الكتاب فهو مرتب زمنياً من 1910 – 1923 و أكثر ما اليوميات جمالاً كانت من 1919 – حتى 1923 حيث غابت عنها التفاصيل المملة و أصبحت مختزلة أكثر و يعرض فيها للحديث عن معنى الحياة و قيمتها و ما يشكله معنى الذات و الهوية و قيمة المرء ..وأصبحت تدويناته فلسفية عميقة و أقرب للحكمة و العبر منها إلى التدوين .. وهو من أكثر الفصول قيمة أدبية و فكرية.
و لا أخفي أن قراءة هذا الكتاب مرهقة ..فبعد المقدمة التي تنير لك مسلكاً لقراءة النص، غاب ذكر وجود ملحق كامل للإحالات في نهايته فبالإضافة للهوامش أسفل الصفحات كان هناك ملحق آخراكتشفت وجوده في منتصف قرائتي للكتاب وأيضاً لم تكن تلك الإحالات مرقمة مما جعل الربط بينها وبين الصفحات ضرباً من الإرهاق للقارئ لو كانت أضيف للهوامش أسفل الصفحات كان ذلك سيوفر عناء الإرتباك و يجعل فهم اليوميات أسهل خصوصاُ مع كثرة تكرار أسماء الشخصيات و المدن و الكتب.
نصيحة أخيرة
لا تقرأ هذا الكتاب في فترة تكون فيها سعيداً و متصالحاً مع ذاتك
September 17, 2026
Back when I read Kafka’s Letters to Milena, I was in very bad place. Certain parts of my identity that I hadn’t given much thought to had become a tortured preoccupation for me. Also, a relationship I’d had a lot of hope for was coming to an end. (These sound kind of silly written down, but they weren’t to me at the time.) Worst of all, my OCD—the center of my fucking life—was at a high. Every day was a living hell, to the point where I’d seek physical relief. As anyone who’s read Letters to Milena might have guessed, for reading that book, it was the perfect storm of circumstances, equaled only by reading The Book of Disquiet when I was hospitalized for depression as a teenager. A couple years later and I’m unfortunately sailing on more or less calm waters, so Kafka’s Diaries couldn’t quite smash the frozen sea within me, like it could have. I’m only kidding. Mostly. Thankfully, right now, I don’t have to take pharmaceuticals for my OCD, but it’s a lifelong thing. It still affects me every day, usually all day—even this moment—and it’s very, very painful. I live in constant insecurity and fear. I am a citizen insane. None of this is to imply that Kafka had OCD of course. Nevertheless, I find reading Kafka immensely reassuring.
“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.”
Kafka feels himself trapped. It’s a barred cage. Indifferently, imperiously, the noise of the world streams out and in through the bars. “All is imaginary,” one entry reads, “family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.” In entries not included in this edition, Kafka writes of “My prison cell – my fortress”—and that “the prisoner was actually free, he could take part in everything, nothing escaped him from the outside, he could even have left the cage, the bars were meters apart, after all, he was not even imprisoned.” One evening in a late entry, as usual, Kafka’s parents are playing cards. “I sat apart, a perfect stranger; my father asked me to take a hand, or at least to look on; I made some sort of excuse. What is the meaning of these refusals, oft repeated since my childhood?” A few evenings later he does join in, to the extent of keeping score for his mother—“But it begot no intimacy”; “I have seldom, very seldom crossed this borderland between loneliness and fellowship. I have even been settled there longer than loneliness itself.” Kafka has no use for this condition halfway between freedom and prison. He would rather “shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make an enemy out of everyone, speak to no one.”
Far from a “pure” journal, Kafka’s diaries are a kind of laboratory for his literary production. Probably my favorite entry is an early sketch that obviously anticipates “A Hunger Artist” (and probably more—I have to admit I haven’t been the biggest fan of Kafka’s fiction; I struggle with his stylistic transparency). In the sketch, Kafka writes, in the third person, that “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.” He has less hold on life than the trapeze artist in a variety show, “who still has a safety net hung up for him below.” In addition to having no hold on life, Kafka has no time. “We others,” he writes in the same sketch,
But the man who “stands once and for all outside our people, outside our humanity,”
Kafka would write in a letter to Milena that as “the most Western-Jewish” of all Western Jews, he has to earn not only the present and the future, but the past as well—something which has perhaps been given every human being. His time is almost the complete opposite of Proust’s, at least in those rare, privileged moments: all time—past and present, and future (if Proust had any truck with the future)—condensed into a single moment, which is to say, Eternity. Kafka’s time is a single moment stretched to infinity. (By the way, these passages are borne out over the course of the diaries, which play like a single musical note, indefinitely sustained, and chart a similarly momentarily beautiful dissolution.) Without past or future, even the present for Kafka is a “phantom state.” “I don’t sit at the table but hover round it.” Again and again he writes of being “empty and insensible,” with less living feeling than a passing tram. He is turning to stone. He feels himself becoming a thing, an object, at one point picturing his existence as “a useless stake covered with snow and frost, fixed loosely and slantwise into the ground in a deeply plowed field on the edge of a great plain on a dark winter’s night.”
Kafka barely even feels himself to have a body, which he obsesses over:
Kafka isn’t even a self. “What do I have in common with Jews?” he asks in one entry. “I hardly have anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.” An echo of Rimbaud’s famous formula “Je est un autre” (I is another). Kafka is always outside of himself, watching himself, watching himself—accusing himself. “But every day at least one line should be trained on me, as they now train telescopes on comets.” And no matter what, he always feels guilty. Kafka’s diaries are laced with masochism:
The violence of these passages has an almost slapstick quality to it, disturbing and comic at the same time. Also, again and again in his diaries Kafka repeats this fantasy of jumping out the window, which he clearly prefers to the blunt brutality of a gun. “To run against the window and, weak after exerting all one’s strength, to step over the window sill through the splintered glass.”
Kafka sees only one chance of salvation—literature. He hopes to summon “life’s splendour,” which “forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.” (Proust, another unhappy writer, wrote, similarly: “What the intellect gives us back under the name of the past is not it. In reality, as happens with the souls of the departed in certain popular legends, each hour of our lives, as soon as it is dead, embodies and conceals itself in some material object. Unless we meet with that object it remains captive there, captive for ever. We recognise it through the object, we summon it, and it is released.”) Kafka also confesses “a great yearning to write all my anxiety 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.” But literature soon becomes another scene of entrapment. Kafka believes he can write all his anxiety out of him, but he just doesn’t have the time. His job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague keeps him so busy during the day that he can almost only ever write at night, and the night isn’t enough, because for him, writing is “a task that can never succeed except all at once.” Even worse is that literature demands from the author “a degree … of being lost in himself,” and the office draws Kafka out of this lostness and back into the air of the everyday. Again and again in his diaries there’s the complaint: “Wrote nothing.” “Wrote almost nothing.” “Wrote nothing today.” “Nothing written for so long.” “Wrote Nothing.” “Nothing, nothing.” Many of the fictive entries are could-be masterpieces that break off mid-sentence. “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…” Kafka fears that there’s no escape from this horrible double life but insanity.
In September 1912, Kafka writes his first long story, “The Judgment”:
But he’s never able to recapture that experience. Damn, this turned out darker than I expected. I’ve left out a lot, for the most part appropriating Kafka for my own needs. But then I don’t think Kafka would mind. He would never force a happy conclusion. He didn’t believe in happy conclusions. Literature wasn’t a way to salvation for Kafka, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be for us. At one point Kafka notes that “Only in such extremes does one become aware of how every person is lost in himself beyond hope of rescue.” We’re all trapped, even if most us don’t realize it. But literature gives us the sense that it’s still possible to reach out to each other. Kafka’s diaries do it in a cold way, but they’re still reassuring—even more reassuring, because they recognize that very entrapment. At least, they’re reassuring to me.
* * *
I wasn’t nearly able to incorporate all the quotes I’d like to share. There’s something about Kafka’s use of metaphor and the rhythm of his sentences that’s just extremely satisfying. Here’s Kafka writing about not being able to write:
Incredible. He was twenty-seven when he wrote this, but I guess that’s par for the course when you’re a literary genius, as I’m fully convinced Kafka was. As if that’s news to anyone. And here’s Kafka writing about writing in this diary:
Earlier I mentioned the stylistic transparency of Kafka’s fiction. The reason is exactly what I suspected several years ago:
To tell the truth, I often feel the same way as Kafka—that metaphors can be, perhaps usually are, debasing—but that doesn’t make me enjoy his writing any more (I mean his fiction, of course—even many of the sketches in these diaries I found tedious reading). I’m still committed to reading everything Kafka ever wrote, but mainly out of my sheer love for the man.
“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.”
Kafka feels himself trapped. It’s a barred cage. Indifferently, imperiously, the noise of the world streams out and in through the bars. “All is imaginary,” one entry reads, “family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.” In entries not included in this edition, Kafka writes of “My prison cell – my fortress”—and that “the prisoner was actually free, he could take part in everything, nothing escaped him from the outside, he could even have left the cage, the bars were meters apart, after all, he was not even imprisoned.” One evening in a late entry, as usual, Kafka’s parents are playing cards. “I sat apart, a perfect stranger; my father asked me to take a hand, or at least to look on; I made some sort of excuse. What is the meaning of these refusals, oft repeated since my childhood?” A few evenings later he does join in, to the extent of keeping score for his mother—“But it begot no intimacy”; “I have seldom, very seldom crossed this borderland between loneliness and fellowship. I have even been settled there longer than loneliness itself.” Kafka has no use for this condition halfway between freedom and prison. He would rather “shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make an enemy out of everyone, speak to no one.”
Far from a “pure” journal, Kafka’s diaries are a kind of laboratory for his literary production. Probably my favorite entry is an early sketch that obviously anticipates “A Hunger Artist” (and probably more—I have to admit I haven’t been the biggest fan of Kafka’s fiction; I struggle with his stylistic transparency). In the sketch, Kafka writes, in the third person, that “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.” He has less hold on life than the trapeze artist in a variety show, “who still has a safety net hung up for him below.” In addition to having no hold on life, Kafka has no time. “We others,” he writes in the same sketch,
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.
But the man who “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…
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.
Kafka would write in a letter to Milena that as “the most Western-Jewish” of all Western Jews, he has to earn not only the present and the future, but the past as well—something which has perhaps been given every human being. His time is almost the complete opposite of Proust’s, at least in those rare, privileged moments: all time—past and present, and future (if Proust had any truck with the future)—condensed into a single moment, which is to say, Eternity. Kafka’s time is a single moment stretched to infinity. (By the way, these passages are borne out over the course of the diaries, which play like a single musical note, indefinitely sustained, and chart a similarly momentarily beautiful dissolution.) Without past or future, even the present for Kafka is a “phantom state.” “I don’t sit at the table but hover round it.” Again and again he writes of being “empty and insensible,” with less living feeling than a passing tram. He is turning to stone. He feels himself becoming a thing, an object, at one point picturing his existence as “a useless stake covered with snow and frost, fixed loosely and slantwise into the ground in a deeply plowed field on the edge of a great plain on a dark winter’s night.”
Kafka barely even feels himself to have a body, which he obsesses over:
It is certain that a major obstacle to my progress is my physical condition. Nothing can be accomplished with such a body … 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 lengths of these legs?
Kafka isn’t even a self. “What do I have in common with Jews?” he asks in one entry. “I hardly have anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.” An echo of Rimbaud’s famous formula “Je est un autre” (I is another). Kafka is always outside of himself, watching himself, watching himself—accusing himself. “But every day at least one line should be trained on me, as they now train telescopes on comets.” And no matter what, he always feels guilty. Kafka’s diaries are laced with masochism:
This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.
Always the image of a pork butcher’s broad knife that quickly and with mechanical regularity chops into me from the side and cuts off very thin slices which fly off almost like shavings because of the speed of the action.
To be pulled in through the ground-floor window of a house by a rope tied around one’s neck and to be yanked up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dripping the last fragments of me when it breaks through the roof tiles, is seen on the roof.
Between throat and chin would seem to be the most rewarding place to stab. Lift the chin and stick the knife into the twisted muscles. But this spot is rewarding only in one’s imagination. You expect to see a magnificent gush of a blood and a network of sinews and little bones like you find in the leg of a roast turkey.
The violence of these passages has an almost slapstick quality to it, disturbing and comic at the same time. Also, again and again in his diaries Kafka repeats this fantasy of jumping out the window, which he clearly prefers to the blunt brutality of a gun. “To run against the window and, weak after exerting all one’s strength, to step over the window sill through the splintered glass.”
Kafka sees only one chance of salvation—literature. He hopes to summon “life’s splendour,” which “forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.” (Proust, another unhappy writer, wrote, similarly: “What the intellect gives us back under the name of the past is not it. In reality, as happens with the souls of the departed in certain popular legends, each hour of our lives, as soon as it is dead, embodies and conceals itself in some material object. Unless we meet with that object it remains captive there, captive for ever. We recognise it through the object, we summon it, and it is released.”) Kafka also confesses “a great yearning to write all my anxiety 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.” But literature soon becomes another scene of entrapment. Kafka believes he can write all his anxiety out of him, but he just doesn’t have the time. His job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague keeps him so busy during the day that he can almost only ever write at night, and the night isn’t enough, because for him, writing is “a task that can never succeed except all at once.” Even worse is that literature demands from the author “a degree … of being lost in himself,” and the office draws Kafka out of this lostness and back into the air of the everyday. Again and again in his diaries there’s the complaint: “Wrote nothing.” “Wrote almost nothing.” “Wrote nothing today.” “Nothing written for so long.” “Wrote Nothing.” “Nothing, nothing.” Many of the fictive entries are could-be masterpieces that break off mid-sentence. “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…” Kafka fears that there’s no escape from this horrible double life but insanity.
In September 1912, Kafka writes his first long story, “The Judgment”:
This story, ‘The Judgement’, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd–23rd, from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs out from under the desk, they had got so stiff from sitting. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing over water. Several times during this night I heaved my own weight on my back. How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. How it turned blue outside the window. A wagon rolled by. Two men walked across the bridge. At two I looked at the clock for the last time. As the maid walked through the ante-room for the first time I wrote the last sentence. Turning out the light and the light of day. The slight pains around my heart. The weariness that disappeared in the middle of the night. The trembling entrance into my sisters’ room. Reading aloud. Before that, stretching in the presence of the maid and saying, ‘I’ve been writing until now.’ The appearance of the undisturbed bed, as though it had just been brought in. The conviction verified that with my novel-writing I am in the shameful lowlands of writing. Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul.
But he’s never able to recapture that experience. Damn, this turned out darker than I expected. I’ve left out a lot, for the most part appropriating Kafka for my own needs. But then I don’t think Kafka would mind. He would never force a happy conclusion. He didn’t believe in happy conclusions. Literature wasn’t a way to salvation for Kafka, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be for us. At one point Kafka notes that “Only in such extremes does one become aware of how every person is lost in himself beyond hope of rescue.” We’re all trapped, even if most us don’t realize it. But literature gives us the sense that it’s still possible to reach out to each other. Kafka’s diaries do it in a cold way, but they’re still reassuring—even more reassuring, because they recognize that very entrapment. At least, they’re reassuring to me.
* * *
I wasn’t nearly able to incorporate all the quotes I’d like to share. There’s something about Kafka’s use of metaphor and the rhythm of his sentences that’s just extremely satisfying. Here’s Kafka writing about not being able to write:
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 I’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.
Incredible. He was twenty-seven when he wrote this, but I guess that’s par for the course when you’re a literary genius, as I’m fully convinced Kafka was. As if that’s news to anyone. And here’s Kafka writing about writing in this diary:
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.
Earlier I mentioned the stylistic transparency of Kafka’s fiction. The reason is exactly what I suspected several years ago:
Metaphors are one among many things which make me despair of writing. Writing’s lack of independence of the world, its dependence on the maid who tends the fire, on the cat warming itself by the stove; it is even dependent on the poor old human being warming himself by the stove. All these are independent activities ruled by their own laws; only writing is helpless, cannot live in itself, is a joke and a despair.
To tell the truth, I often feel the same way as Kafka—that metaphors can be, perhaps usually are, debasing—but that doesn’t make me enjoy his writing any more (I mean his fiction, of course—even many of the sketches in these diaries I found tedious reading). I’m still committed to reading everything Kafka ever wrote, but mainly out of my sheer love for the man.
Read
October 16, 2013-----------------------------
يوميات فرانتس كافكا: 1910-1923
القراءة التي تنتظر كثير من التفرغ
:)
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September 28, 2011
Behold, the hardest-to-put-down diary that I’ve ever read!
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Jew born to German-speaking parents in Prague. His works are so brilliant that they seem to be eternal and the term kafkaesque has been coined to describe the something that is characteristic of him or his works. Who are these authors whose names had to be immortalized in the English dictionary?
The book is divided into two parts: his diaries from 1910-1923 and his travel diary. The first part is sad and gloomy. He died of starvation in 1924 because food could not be administered into his mouth due to tuberculosis (consumption). The administration of dextrose via intravenous was not yet discovered at that time. With this information given in the blurb, I could not help but pay more attention to the progress of the disease. He was a very sickly frail young man and he died single at the age of 40. It was like watching the movie Titanic when you know that the ship will eventually sink and all most of those characters on the screen would eventually die. However, as they say, diaries are written for personal consumption and the diarists have no intention of sharing them to public. This one seems not to be an exception since it mostly covers the negative, angry and personal, i.e., sex and love lives, (although the too-personal were removed by his friend Max) thoughts of Kafka. So, Kafka’s critics say that these diaries do not contain the “whole” Kafka as a person. His happy and jovial side, found in his novels like The Trial cannot be found here.
And for me, that fact makes this book more interesting. It is like knowing the negative side of a brilliant mind that defined not only his generation but all of the future generations. After few more generations, people will no longer be reading Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling will be left into oblivion but, primarily because of the word coined from his name, people will still be reading The Trial and still be interested to know Franz Kafka and there is no better way to learn the “complete” him but by reading his Diaries.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Jew born to German-speaking parents in Prague. His works are so brilliant that they seem to be eternal and the term kafkaesque has been coined to describe the something that is characteristic of him or his works. Who are these authors whose names had to be immortalized in the English dictionary?
ballardian – adj. resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.The authors similarity? Their works are all classics that definitely will outlive all of us. I oftentimes see pychonesque but my online search said that there is no such a word. There are also no terms from female authors like austenian, woolfesque, brontesque, bowenian, murdochian, etc. and definitely no rowlingesque or collinsesque. Maybe their works neither make distinctive and specific meaning that could not be found in any of the existing words nor merit inclusion in the same league as those of above authors.
borgesian – adj. reminiscent of elements of Borges’ stories and essays, esp. labyrinths, mirrors, reality, identity, nature of time and infinity.
dickesian – adj. resembling or suggestive of conditions described in Dicken’s novels, or his works especially squalid and poverty-stricken or characterized by jollity and conviviality
hemingwayesque – adj. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Ernest Hemingway or his works
jamesian – adj. of, pertaining to, or characteristics of novelist Henry James or his writings.
joycean – adj. of, pertaining to, or characteristics of novelist James Joyce or his writings.
Kafkaesque – adj. marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity.
orwellian - adj. pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of George Orwell or the totalitarian future described in his antiutopian novel 1984 (1949).
sadism – noun. The condition in which sexual gratification depends on causing pain or degradation to others.
The book is divided into two parts: his diaries from 1910-1923 and his travel diary. The first part is sad and gloomy. He died of starvation in 1924 because food could not be administered into his mouth due to tuberculosis (consumption). The administration of dextrose via intravenous was not yet discovered at that time. With this information given in the blurb, I could not help but pay more attention to the progress of the disease. He was a very sickly frail young man and he died single at the age of 40. It was like watching the movie Titanic when you know that the ship will eventually sink and all most of those characters on the screen would eventually die. However, as they say, diaries are written for personal consumption and the diarists have no intention of sharing them to public. This one seems not to be an exception since it mostly covers the negative, angry and personal, i.e., sex and love lives, (although the too-personal were removed by his friend Max) thoughts of Kafka. So, Kafka’s critics say that these diaries do not contain the “whole” Kafka as a person. His happy and jovial side, found in his novels like The Trial cannot be found here.
And for me, that fact makes this book more interesting. It is like knowing the negative side of a brilliant mind that defined not only his generation but all of the future generations. After few more generations, people will no longer be reading Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling will be left into oblivion but, primarily because of the word coined from his name, people will still be reading The Trial and still be interested to know Franz Kafka and there is no better way to learn the “complete” him but by reading his Diaries.
May 16, 2019
واحد من أكثر الكتب الذاتية روعةً وعمقًا وتأثيرًا في النفس، من بين كل كُتاب اللغة الألمانية يبقى كافكا بجانب توماس مان أقربهم لقلبي، وكافكا الأقرب لروحي كأنه بيخاطبني بما يكتب ويقول ما في نفسي.
يوميات كافكا تقع في القلب موقعا حسنا، يقدر على تحويل الموقف والحدث العادي لشيء يستحق التسجيل فتقع في حبه على الفور.
استمتعت وتألمت وأحببت مما كتب في يومياته، والترجمة كانت على قدر جمال الكتاب.
يوميات كافكا تقع في القلب موقعا حسنا، يقدر على تحويل الموقف والحدث العادي لشيء يستحق التسجيل فتقع في حبه على الفور.
استمتعت وتألمت وأحببت مما كتب في يومياته، والترجمة كانت على قدر جمال الكتاب.
May 8, 2024
,,Lumea colosala pe care o am in minte. Dar cum sa ma eliberez si sa o eliberez, fara sa destram totul? Prefer sa ma sfasii de o mie de ori decat s-o retin sau s-o ingrop in mine. Doar de asta sunt aici, mi-e cat se poate de limpede."
October 23, 2007
Anais Nin once wrote that a personal world lived deep enough transcends the truth in all universes. Those words have never been more applicable to any writer other than Franz Kafka. And in this book you can see why.
I remember reading it throughout a whole couple of nights, unable to force myself to stop, absolutely fascinated by a world constructed so delicately, yet unabatedly-sentence by sublime sentence into a marvellous prose edifice.
I can still recall one entire setting where he just describes a billowing shawl of a woman waiting in winter for a train. This is not art but is simply beyond art.
We can never be grateful enough to Max Brod for preserving the manuscript against Kafka’s wishes, which I regard as one of the two most significant events in twentieth century literature. The other of course being Sylvia Beach deciding to publish The Ulysses.
I remember reading it throughout a whole couple of nights, unable to force myself to stop, absolutely fascinated by a world constructed so delicately, yet unabatedly-sentence by sublime sentence into a marvellous prose edifice.
I can still recall one entire setting where he just describes a billowing shawl of a woman waiting in winter for a train. This is not art but is simply beyond art.
We can never be grateful enough to Max Brod for preserving the manuscript against Kafka’s wishes, which I regard as one of the two most significant events in twentieth century literature. The other of course being Sylvia Beach deciding to publish The Ulysses.
March 22, 2026
Cred că ne regăsim cu toții în Kafka! Parcă am citit ,,Jurnalul " unui prieten apropiat, iar, pe măsură ce înaintam mai mult cu cititul, am constatat că prietenul sunt chiar eu. Atât de mult m-am regăsit în trăirile, emoțiile și gândurile acestui om! Însemnările și constatările lui despre viață, înseamnă viața însăși; și, e greu să iubești ceva, orice, atunci când tu te desconsideri în proprii tăi ochi.
Câteva citate care mi-au făcut inima să tresare:
,,Dacă mă iubește, n-o merit." (însemnare către Felice).
,, (...) m-am temut că s-ar putea ca lumina ochilor să nu-mi ajungă toată viața."
,,(...) arta își găsește fericirea în ea însăși."
,, (...) din pricina tristeții, căci, fiindu-mi prezentul așa de trist, mă gândeam că nu se cuvine să-l părăsesc înainte ca el să-și găsească un deznodământ fericit."
,, Mă simt atât de părăsit de mine însumi și de toate!"
,, Efectul produs de un chip blând, de niște vorbe calme, mai ales dacă acestea îi aparțin unui străin ale cărui gânduri nu le-am ghicit încă. Glasul lui Dumnezeu răsunând din gura unui om."
Sunt multe, multe de scris, dar prefer să vă recomand, cu toată admirația mea pentru autor, să-l citiți.
Câteva citate care mi-au făcut inima să tresare:
,,Dacă mă iubește, n-o merit." (însemnare către Felice).
,, (...) m-am temut că s-ar putea ca lumina ochilor să nu-mi ajungă toată viața."
,,(...) arta își găsește fericirea în ea însăși."
,, (...) din pricina tristeții, căci, fiindu-mi prezentul așa de trist, mă gândeam că nu se cuvine să-l părăsesc înainte ca el să-și găsească un deznodământ fericit."
,, Mă simt atât de părăsit de mine însumi și de toate!"
,, Efectul produs de un chip blând, de niște vorbe calme, mai ales dacă acestea îi aparțin unui străin ale cărui gânduri nu le-am ghicit încă. Glasul lui Dumnezeu răsunând din gura unui om."
Sunt multe, multe de scris, dar prefer să vă recomand, cu toată admirația mea pentru autor, să-l citiți.
September 23, 2021
reread: to know someone like kafka lived is so comforting to me. his courage is inspiring and i just want to hold his hand and take him to dinner (lmaoo)
some quotes i found for the first time:
“drop quietly into the river. dropping probably seems so desirable to me because it reminds me of “being pushed.”
“i feel only too strongly the limits of my abilities… nevertheless within these limited there is room to live”
“a little calmer now. how needed it was. no sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm. as though i have the true feeling of myself only when i’m unbearably unhappy. that is probably true too.”
February 10, 2014
يوميات كافكا
فهل تعاودنى الكتابة؟ هل أتخذ قرارا؟
هذا هو لقائى الأول بكافكا ، وأظنه لن يكون الأخير
نصحونى ألا أقرأ المذكرات قبل أن أدخل عالم كافكا الأدبى لعله لا يروق لى ، ولكن كافكا رائع ، كافكا فى مذكراته يتحدث بلا توقف مع ذاته ، حديث يثير شجونى ويحفز رغباتى فى العودة إلى الكتابة بشكل مكثف ولو على شكل مذكرات
مقدمة المترجم إطلالة هامة على المذكرات وعلى عالم كافكا .. وتحتاجون للعودة إليها بين الحين والآخر .. ومن الأفضل قراءتها مرة أخيرة بعد الانتهاء من المذكرات
أمر آخر مهم ، فى أثناء القراءة ستجدوا دوائر صغيرة فى بعض الأماكن ، ولكن لا تعليق بالأسفل ، للأسف التعليقات موجودة بآخر الكتاب (بدءاً من الصفحة 495 ) ، وهى تعليقات المحرر ماكس برود ، فى آخر الكتاب أيضاً يوجد شرح وتعليق لماكس حول مذكرات كافكا وطريقة إعداده لها ، أظن أنه من الأفضل البدء فى قراءتها قبل قراءة المذكرات لأنها توضح عدة أمور
لن أحلل كافكا ومذكراته فأنا أحتاج لقراءة إبداعاته المنشورة لأعطى حكما متكاملا بين ما يقوله لذاته فى مذكراته وبين ما يصدِّره لنا كقراء ، ولكن يلفت إنتباهى (بالإضافة لملاحظات المترجم) مايلى
1 – كافكا يعانى أبدا من صراع بين رغبته فى الكتابة الأدبية .. وبين الضرورة الملقاة على كاهله (مهما كانت أسبابها) للعمل المكتبى ، ثم يضاف لهذا الصراع صراعه بين ألا يحب وألا يتزوج ، ويزيد الصراع تأزماً .. أحساسه أن مالديه بالحقيقة يتشكل فقط فى كيان متزن حين يبدع بالكتابة وهذا الإبداع يستهلك الكثير والكثير من وقته وجهده ، فهل يبعثر هذان الكنزان فى عمل مكتبى لا يعطى لوجوده سوى وجودا لحظى؟ ، أو زوجة تلتهم ما تبقى له من طاقة عاطفية وفكرية؟
2 – أضف إلى هذا الصراع عنصر المرض .. فكافكا بطول المذكرات يعانى من صداع وإرهاق مستمران فى أغلب الأحيان ، ولعل وفاته قبل أن يصل إلى سن الأربعين بمرض السل الرئوى توضح حقيقة هذا الضعف فى بنيته الجسدية ووعيه الشديد به ، وعدم قدرته على هزيمة هذا العامل الخارج عن إرادته
3 – رغم أن كافكا يدرك أن كينونته تتشكل فى الإبداع إلا أنه يبدو لى كشخصية باحثة عن الكمال ، شخصية ناقدة ... ترى العيوب بكثرة وتتشاءم بسهولة ، وفى المذكرات تتركز تلك الصفة فى نقده لذاته ولإبداعاته ، طبعاً سنراها فى نقده المستمر للمسرحيات والمحاضرات التى يحضرها ، والكتب التى يقرأها ، والأشخاص الذين يلقاهم ، لكن بالأكثر نقده لذاته هو الأكثر عمقاً فى المذكرات ، لذا تراه دوما غير راضياً ، غير راضياً عن اختياره للكلمات ، غير راضياً عن كتاباته ، غير راضياً عن عمله ، عن حبه ، عن عائلته ، عن أصدقائه ، غير راضياً عن ذاته ، هذا الشعور بعدم الرضا يستهلكه ، ويجعله يشعر بأن ملكاته فى الإبداع تحتاج إلى الكثير من الوقت والمجهود لتتمكن من أن تُخرِج إلى الوجود مايدور بداخل عقله تماما كما يدور بداخل عقله ، مما يدفعه دوما لتكرار الرغبة فى أن يترك كل شئ ويكتفى فقط بالإبداع ، وهى رغبة ربما تمر على الكثير من المبدعين ولكنه يخنق نفسه بها أكثر وأكثر فتصير المعوقات التى تمنعه عنها أكثر ضخامة وأعمق تأثيراً فى داخله
4 – أعجبنى تسجيله للأحلام التى يحلم بها ، فلعلها كانت مطبخاً لأفكار وجدت طريقها إلى رواياته
بالحقيقة تبدو لى المذكرات كلها كمطبخ كبير للأفكار الذاتية التى تتولد فى عقل كافكا ، لعله يرجع إليها بين الحين والآخر لتلهمه حالة شعورية أو وصفاً لشخصية ينطلق منها إبداعه فى طريق جديد
ملحوظة: ألهمنى كافكا بفكرة إعادة كتابة ما أكتبه فى شكل جديد ، بداية جديدة وتفاصيل أكثر ثراءً ، رغم أنى أحب الكتابة الأشبه بالولادة ، لكن لعلها طريقة مفيدة لاستغلال الأفكار التى تتعثر ولادتها ، أو ربما تلهمنى القدرة على كتابة الأدب الروائى
فهل تعاودنى الكتابة؟ هل أتخذ قرارا؟
November 16, 2019
774 sayfa günlük, 13 yıl. dar bir yaşam alanı, o dar alanda sınırsız bir boşluk. sıkışmışlık. bitmek tükenmek bilmeyen yakınmalar, sorgulamalar. şüphe: sağlığından, hayatından, yeteneğinden. yalnızlığın baskısı ile başka birileriyle yaşamamın imkansızlığı. büyük çelişki. derin karanlık. ancak karanlığın derinlerinde bulunan bir umut. o umutla mükemmel başlayıp tamamlanmayan öyküler. sonra tekrar başa dönüş. bunların hepsi, sayfalarca, yani yıllarca...bu döngü franz kafka'nın hikayesi, franz kafka'nın hikayelerinin hikayesi.
bir yanda güçsüzlük, zaaflar, korkular. diğer yanda güçsüzlükte bulunan güç, direnç, özgürlük isteği. franz kafka'nın günlüğü hayatın yapısına, insanın özüne dair. franz kafka'nın günlüğünü okumak zorlayıcı, yorucu olsa da sahici bir tanıklık ve bir paylaşım. biz de hep birikte ama yalnız bir yerindeyiz çünkü bu günlüklerin, bu döngünün. hepimiz, "kapısız penceresiz duvarına başımızı yasladığımız hücrelerimizde" kafka'nın komşusuyuz ve kafka'nın dediği gibi: bizim de silahlarımız var.
bir yanda güçsüzlük, zaaflar, korkular. diğer yanda güçsüzlükte bulunan güç, direnç, özgürlük isteği. franz kafka'nın günlüğü hayatın yapısına, insanın özüne dair. franz kafka'nın günlüğünü okumak zorlayıcı, yorucu olsa da sahici bir tanıklık ve bir paylaşım. biz de hep birikte ama yalnız bir yerindeyiz çünkü bu günlüklerin, bu döngünün. hepimiz, "kapısız penceresiz duvarına başımızı yasladığımız hücrelerimizde" kafka'nın komşusuyuz ve kafka'nın dediği gibi: bizim de silahlarımız var.
May 15, 2017
I would suggest two aspirin before engaging in this diary. And possibly a small dose of morphine upon its' completion.
August 6, 2020
تازه فهمیدم که سرعت کتاب خوندنم با میزان اضطرابم رابطهی مستقیمی داره.
وگرنه اصلا منطقی نیست تا نصفه شب بیدار بمونم و کافکا بخونم.
این وسط هم یکی نمیاد بهم بگه: آخه بیشعور، تو دو هفته دیگه کنکور داری. برو به بدبختیات برس.
نوشتههای کافکا هم که مثل همیشه باعث میشن سگ سیاه افسردگی قدرتمندتر از قبل به سراغم بیاد.
وگرنه اصلا منطقی نیست تا نصفه شب بیدار بمونم و کافکا بخونم.
این وسط هم یکی نمیاد بهم بگه: آخه بیشعور، تو دو هفته دیگه کنکور داری. برو به بدبختیات برس.
نوشتههای کافکا هم که مثل همیشه باعث میشن سگ سیاه افسردگی قدرتمندتر از قبل به سراغم بیاد.
December 24, 2025
Εκδόσεις Εξάντας. Επιτομο.
Απαραίτητο συμπλήρωμα του καθ' εαυτού λογοτεχνικού corpus του συγγραφέα. Ίσως και να τα αδικώ, αφού στέκονται αυτόνομα, περιέχοντας μεγαλειώδεις στιγμές προσωπικής αποκάλυψης και καλλιτεχνικής ευδαιμονίας. Απόλαυση στο άπειρο.
Απαραίτητο συμπλήρωμα του καθ' εαυτού λογοτεχνικού corpus του συγγραφέα. Ίσως και να τα αδικώ, αφού στέκονται αυτόνομα, περιέχοντας μεγαλειώδεις στιγμές προσωπικής αποκάλυψης και καλλιτεχνικής ευδαιμονίας. Απόλαυση στο άπειρο.
July 7, 2019
"في المساء والصباح يسكنني وعي الإمكانات المبدعة الكامنة فيّ، على نحو لا أستطيع الإحاطة به. إنني أشعر بالارتعاش تجاه صميم وجودي، ولا أستطيع أن أستخرج من ذاتي ما أرغب في استخراجه."—كافكا.
…إن اسمي العبري هو أمشيل، وهو يشبه اسم جدي لأمي الذي توفي يوم كانت أمي في السادسة من عمرها.
كافكا… كون من الجحيم . جذوة من اللهب المستعر. انفجار الأصوات الداخلية. الصراخ على قدر ما تحمل النفس. كهف عدمي مظلم يندفع من هاوية إلى أخرى. احتمالات الألم في الشدة واليأس. الهلاك بوجهه الخادع. الكابوس !
بقدر ما تعكس اليوميات من ظلام كافكا الدامي، الا أنها تسلط الضوء على نشاطه الفكري المتقد ونتاجه الأدبي وقراءاته المختلفة للأدب.
يوميات تغص بالقص، الشعر، الفلسفة والتراجيديا.
اقتباسات:
الخامس عشر من تشرين الثاني:
الساعة العاشرة، لن أدع نفسي تصاب بالإرهاق. سأغمس نفسي في أقصوصتي. حتى لو مزقني ذلك الوجه.
—يوميات كافكا 1910 -1923 .
الساعة الحادية عشرة والنصف ليلاً، أما أنني لم أستطع التحرر من مكتبي، وإنني بكل بساطة، ضائع؛ فهي مسألة واضحة لي تماماً قبل كل شيء. إن المسألة تتمثل في الاحتفاظ برأسي عالياً ما أمكن حتى لا أغرق. ما أصعب ذلك!
إنها الآن منتصف الليل، أما نومي العميق، فيبدو وكأنه اعتذار، لم أتمكن طيلة النهار من كتابة شيء .
من دفتر ملاحظات قديم:
((الآن في المساء: بعد أن ابتدأتُ الدراسة منذ السادسة صباحاً، لاحظت كيف كانت يدي اليسرى تمسك بأصابع يدي اليمنى مدة من الزمن على نحو عاطفي. ))
الثاني والعشرون من كانون الأول:
إنني لا أستطيع أن أحتمل توجيه اللوم لنفسي؛ ففي هذه الأيام المملوءة بالفراغ؛ أتمنى أن ينبعث من داخلي ذلك الصدى القبيح.
السابع والعشرون من كانون الأول:
إن طاقتي لا تكفي لكي أتفوه بكلمة واحدة، أجل، فعندما يتعلق الأمر بالكلمات، وعندما يكفي أن تتحدث بكلمة واحدة، وتستطيع أن تغير اتجاهك وأنت مستريح الضمير؛ تكون الكلمة قد أدت وظيفتها.
الثامن والعشرون من كانون الأول:
عندما أحسن التصرف لبضع ساعات على نحو إنساني، كما وقع لي مع ماكس اليوم، ومع باوم لاحقاً؛ فإنني أكون قبل الذهاب إلى النوم في حالة من الشعور بالفخر.
الخامس من كانون الثاني:
لاحظت منذ يومين أن ثمة برودة ولا مبالاة في داخلي عندما أرغب في فعل شيء، أمس مساءً في أثناء المشي كان كل صوت صغير في الشارع، وكل نظرة تستدير صوبي، وكل صورة في خزائن العرض؛ أكثر أهمية عندي من ذاتي.
الثالث عشر من نوفمبر تشرين الثاني:
وهذا الرجل كما علمت اليوم، هو في الثانية و الستين من عمره.
الثلاثون من تشرين الثاني:
منذ ثلاثة أيام، لم أكتب شيئاً على الإطلاق.
السادس من أيار:
الساعة الحادية عشرة: إخفاق تام في الكتابة منذ مدة، شعور رجل عضّه الدهر بنابه.
الخامس والعشرون من أيار:
سرعة بطيئة، دم قليل .
الأول من حزيران:
لم أكتب شيئاً.
الثاني من حزيران :
لم أكد أكتب شيئاً.
السابع من حزيران:
رديء، لم أكتب شيئاً اليوم. وليس عندي وقت غداً.
السادس من تموز :
الأثنين: بدأت أشعر بقليل من النعاس. مهمل بين هؤلاء الناس الغرباء.
السابع من آب:
عذاب طويل، تمكنت أخيراً من الكتابة إلى ماكس، لأعلمه بأنني عاجز عن إيضاح القطع الصغيرة المتبقية، وأنني غير راغب في إجبار ذاتي على ذلك. ولذا فإنني لن أنشر الكتاب .
الخامس والعشرون من أيلول:
أمنع نفسي بالقوة عن الكتابة، أتقلب في السرير، احتقان الدم في جمجمتي، والجريان العديم الفائدة للأشياء. يالها من أضرار!
إنني منقسم تجاه كل الأشياء إلى فضاء مجوف، ولا أدفع نفسي إلى الحدّ من ذلك.
الخامس عشر من آب:
آلام في السرير قبيل الصباح. كنت أرى الحل الوحيد في القفز من النافذة.
إنني سأعزل ذاتي عن الجميع إلى حدّ فقدان الوعي . وسأعادي الجميع، ولن أتكلم مع أحد.
أقرأ في دويستوفسكي الموضع الذي يذكرني ((بتعاستي. ))
السادس والعشرون من كانون الثاني :
لا أستطيع القراءة في [مذكرات] تورهايم، علماً بأنها كانت متعتي في الأيام القليلة الماضية .
الرابع عشر من حزيران :
أمشي بهدوء، ورأسي يرتعش، في حين يجعلني ذلك الفرع شبه الصقيل فوق رأسي أستشعر الضيق الكُلِّي. إن في داخلي الهدوء والأمان اللذين يستشعرهما الآخرون، لكن لهما، على نحو ما، نهاية مقلوبة.
الأول من تموز :
متعب جداً.
الخامس من تموز :
يتوجب تحمّل مثل هذه الآلام والأسباب التي قادت إليها.
إنني لا أنزوي عن الناس لأنني أريد أن أعيش بهدوء؛ بل لأنني أريد أن أهلك بهدوء.
السادس عشر من شباط :
لم أجد نفسي أبداً، كأن كل ماكنت أمتلكه قد هرب مني، وكأنه لن يكون كافياً لي، لو قدر له أن يعود ثانية.
الخامس والعشرون من تشرين الثاني:
اليأس المطلق واستحالة الخروج منه، وهو يأس لا يتوقف إلا عندما أصبح راضياً عن معاناتي .
السابع. والعشرون من أيار:
مقدار ضخم من التعاسة في التدوين االأخير. السير في طريق الهلاك . هكذا أذهب إلى الهلاك فاقداً المعنى وزائداً عن الحاجة.
الخامس من آب:
فترة ما بعد الظهر في رادسوفتس مع أوسكار. حزين وضعيف، أحاول جاهداً أن أمسك بجوهر السؤال.
الثامن عشر من أيلول :
يتمزق كل شيء .
الثاني والعشرون من أيلول:
لا شيء.
السادس من تشرين الثاني:
العجز المطلق.
الثالث والعشرون من تشرين الأول :
فيلم عن فلسطين بعد الظهر.
الثالث من تشرين الثاني:
النداء.
الثالث من شباط :
لا أكاد أستطيع النوم، مبتلى بالأحلام، و كأنها محفورة في أعماقي فوق مادة صلبة.
السابع من شباط:
مصان، ومستهلك من ك. و. ه
الثالث عشر من شباط :
إمكانية أن يخدم المرء بعاطفته كلها.
العشرون من شباط ؛
حياة غير جديرة بالاهتمام، وأخطاء جديرة بالملاحظة .
الخامس والعشرين من شباط :
رسالة.
السابع من آذار:
كانت ليلة أمس أسوأ ليلة عشتها، و كأن الأشياء كانت كلها في نهاياتها.
الثامن عشر من كانون الأول:
أمضي الوقت بأكمله في السرير، أمس كان الوضع : (( إما/ أو)).
December 12, 2020
Genius in embryo. Easily one of the most inspirational books I've ever read....Every last ounce of self-doubt and tribulation I've felt in my own life, Kafka gives voice to it here. For every disgruntled writer the world over...Kafka is our Christ and this is the holy book. Words from the prophet himself. Splendid, if a bit disorganized...
November 30, 2017
Kafka writing that he can't write is better writing than most writers out there.
February 2, 2023
kafka was the realest fucking guy of all time
May 22, 2015
او من الافضل عدم تقديرالتقييم لانها مذكرات خاصة تم نبشها بالرغم من رغبة كاتبها بان تحرق هي قراءة في خصوصيات واسرار ذاتية وجهة نظر للحياة بل تتخص بحياته فقط ، ورغم ذلك رغمه اجدني ممتنة للصديق الذي استحلها فهذا وان كان خطأ كبير وعمل غير صائب هو شكل من اشكال الوفاء والتقدير الذي حمله لصديقه . ... وطريقة من طرق محاولة فهم الشخصية الكاتبة للقراء الآخرين ..
والجدير بالذكر انا فضلت قراءاتها قبل الولوج الى عالم ادبه وكتاباته الاخرى ..
هذه المذكرات كتبها كافكا على مدار عمره الواقع مابين 1911 ويشكل متقطع ال1923 وكان عمر البداية في السابعة والعشرون ، القارئ لكافكا سيلاحظ كم هو شديد الوفاء لكتابته وتهيئ الجو لكي يركز عليها تخليه عن فيليس وعن خطبته جاءت في دائرة محاولته للتفرغ للهدوءوالكتابة والهم الاكبر رغبته بالعزلة يقول عن الكتابة( اليوميات ) ..
) من فوائد المواظبة على كتابة اليوميات يعي المرء بوضوح مريح التغيرات التي يعاني منها على نحو دائم والتي يؤمن الانسان بها عموما ويتوقعها ويعترف بها غير انه ينكرها على نحو لاداعي له عمدا يتعلق الامر بالحصول على امل وسلام جراء مثل هذا الاعتراف ) *
هذه اليوميات كانت ذات حكم قوي على حياته كما احسست هذا رجل لم يجد احد يفهمه ولم يرغب بايضاح اسبابه لاحد فلجأ للكتابة وكانه يغذيها به ، انسان القى بالائمة على ابويه وجيرانه ومعلمته واقرباؤه وكل ماله داع في حياته بسبب نشاته والتي يراه خاطئة جدا ..فاصبحت القراءة له اشبه بولوج اعماق اعماله الكتابية المشتقة عن اليوميات وخاصة المقتبسة من الاحلام ، رايت معه الجانب البائس والكئيب من روحه الشبيهة بغريق رافقت ارقه وصداعه ورغبته بالعزلة اكبر مطلب له في هذه الدنيا العزلة لدرجة اي صوت ياتيه من الشارع يوقف الهامه ويجعله يترك الكتابه متخبطا مابين القلق والارق ..
لاحظت في بداية اليوميات صور واضحة عن رغباته كرغبته في ان يقطع او يعيش مشردا في حياة خشنة بعد ذلك تعرفت على تخبطه بعلاقته مع فيليس والتي يشير اليها كثيرررا برغبته بالاقتران مع خوف وعدم رغبة في انتزاع امان العزلة بالزواج يليها امل وياس رغبة شديد مع نقد للذات ومن ثم هرب ااخر اليوميات وجدته متاصلا في عمق ياسه بدت تتضح ظلماته وتصبح اكثر عمقا وايلاما ليمانه بعبثية الايام مرضه الرئوي مع معاناته النفسية تتطلب منه ان يترك عمله ويغادر للعلاج في مصح هوفمان في كيريلنج...
في النهاية اقول ليس له وجهه الاسوا في حياة بل هو عدة وجود اراد يستعيد الانسان الضائع في قشرة الحياة ،....حياته
احملني بين ذراعيك انها الاعماق احملني في الاعماق ،فإذا رفضتني الآن ففي وقت لاحق .
خذني ،خذني نسبجاا من الحماقة والألم )*
تفتح اذن ،ودع الأنسان فيك يبرزتنفس هواء وكن هادئا )*》 مخاطبا ذاته بدعوة للحياة
اجمل ماقراته عن الكتابة كما قالها كافكا
انني أدفء نفسي لديها في أثناء هذا الشتاء الحزين
المجازات هي شيء من بين الاشياء كثيرة تجعلني يائسا من الكتابة . الكتابة غير قادرة على ان تستقل عن العالم فهي تعتمد على الخادمة التي تشعل النار ،وعلى القطة التي تدفئ نفسها فوق الفرن ، وحتى على الرجل العجوز البائس الذي يدفئ نفسه .
كل تلك الفعاليات مستقلة تحكمها قوانينها الذاتية وحدها الكتابة هي العاجزة ، فهي لاتسكن في ذاتها .
وهي مزيج من الفكاهة والياس ..)*
كافكا غريب وبعيد ومعتزل ساظل دائما أستحضره كغريب ...
.
.
..
والجدير بالذكر انا فضلت قراءاتها قبل الولوج الى عالم ادبه وكتاباته الاخرى ..
هذه المذكرات كتبها كافكا على مدار عمره الواقع مابين 1911 ويشكل متقطع ال1923 وكان عمر البداية في السابعة والعشرون ، القارئ لكافكا سيلاحظ كم هو شديد الوفاء لكتابته وتهيئ الجو لكي يركز عليها تخليه عن فيليس وعن خطبته جاءت في دائرة محاولته للتفرغ للهدوءوالكتابة والهم الاكبر رغبته بالعزلة يقول عن الكتابة( اليوميات ) ..
) من فوائد المواظبة على كتابة اليوميات يعي المرء بوضوح مريح التغيرات التي يعاني منها على نحو دائم والتي يؤمن الانسان بها عموما ويتوقعها ويعترف بها غير انه ينكرها على نحو لاداعي له عمدا يتعلق الامر بالحصول على امل وسلام جراء مثل هذا الاعتراف ) *
هذه اليوميات كانت ذات حكم قوي على حياته كما احسست هذا رجل لم يجد احد يفهمه ولم يرغب بايضاح اسبابه لاحد فلجأ للكتابة وكانه يغذيها به ، انسان القى بالائمة على ابويه وجيرانه ومعلمته واقرباؤه وكل ماله داع في حياته بسبب نشاته والتي يراه خاطئة جدا ..فاصبحت القراءة له اشبه بولوج اعماق اعماله الكتابية المشتقة عن اليوميات وخاصة المقتبسة من الاحلام ، رايت معه الجانب البائس والكئيب من روحه الشبيهة بغريق رافقت ارقه وصداعه ورغبته بالعزلة اكبر مطلب له في هذه الدنيا العزلة لدرجة اي صوت ياتيه من الشارع يوقف الهامه ويجعله يترك الكتابه متخبطا مابين القلق والارق ..
لاحظت في بداية اليوميات صور واضحة عن رغباته كرغبته في ان يقطع او يعيش مشردا في حياة خشنة بعد ذلك تعرفت على تخبطه بعلاقته مع فيليس والتي يشير اليها كثيرررا برغبته بالاقتران مع خوف وعدم رغبة في انتزاع امان العزلة بالزواج يليها امل وياس رغبة شديد مع نقد للذات ومن ثم هرب ااخر اليوميات وجدته متاصلا في عمق ياسه بدت تتضح ظلماته وتصبح اكثر عمقا وايلاما ليمانه بعبثية الايام مرضه الرئوي مع معاناته النفسية تتطلب منه ان يترك عمله ويغادر للعلاج في مصح هوفمان في كيريلنج...
في النهاية اقول ليس له وجهه الاسوا في حياة بل هو عدة وجود اراد يستعيد الانسان الضائع في قشرة الحياة ،....حياته
احملني بين ذراعيك انها الاعماق احملني في الاعماق ،فإذا رفضتني الآن ففي وقت لاحق .
خذني ،خذني نسبجاا من الحماقة والألم )*
تفتح اذن ،ودع الأنسان فيك يبرزتنفس هواء وكن هادئا )*》 مخاطبا ذاته بدعوة للحياة
اجمل ماقراته عن الكتابة كما قالها كافكا
انني أدفء نفسي لديها في أثناء هذا الشتاء الحزين
المجازات هي شيء من بين الاشياء كثيرة تجعلني يائسا من الكتابة . الكتابة غير قادرة على ان تستقل عن العالم فهي تعتمد على الخادمة التي تشعل النار ،وعلى القطة التي تدفئ نفسها فوق الفرن ، وحتى على الرجل العجوز البائس الذي يدفئ نفسه .
كل تلك الفعاليات مستقلة تحكمها قوانينها الذاتية وحدها الكتابة هي العاجزة ، فهي لاتسكن في ذاتها .
وهي مزيج من الفكاهة والياس ..)*
كافكا غريب وبعيد ومعتزل ساظل دائما أستحضره كغريب ...
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.
..
April 2, 2022
sexy and smart people get depressed too :(
Read
September 13, 2018As with so many other diary collections, I felt something of a sense of guilt about reading this. Given Kafka's outward behaviors -- the successful insurance lawyer and inveterate womanizer, one imagines him holding court over a packed bar with a glass of Scotch and a Czech honey on each side -- and given the brilliant eeriness of his stories, the diaries reveal that the two things that these facets of his life have in common is a fundamental anguish and insecurity.
We also see him early on, heavily involved in the specifically Jewish social, intellectual, and religious life of Prague, and we see him later on, more cosmopolitan in his outlook, and less likely to identify with the community of his birth. Which is interesting -- while countless more contemporary writers try so shoehorn this sort of standpoint-theory Judaism into his fiction, which has always irked me, you can see the ways in which he was shaped by the debates over Zionism (which he was rather suspicious of) and by mysticism as it was practiced in prewar Prague. It's a funny thing about Kafka. His writings are so universal and so abstract that you can project whatever you want onto them, and still come out with results.
We also see him early on, heavily involved in the specifically Jewish social, intellectual, and religious life of Prague, and we see him later on, more cosmopolitan in his outlook, and less likely to identify with the community of his birth. Which is interesting -- while countless more contemporary writers try so shoehorn this sort of standpoint-theory Judaism into his fiction, which has always irked me, you can see the ways in which he was shaped by the debates over Zionism (which he was rather suspicious of) and by mysticism as it was practiced in prewar Prague. It's a funny thing about Kafka. His writings are so universal and so abstract that you can project whatever you want onto them, and still come out with results.
November 8, 2023
Wenn man das Schloß, den Prozess oder der Verschollene liest, ist man einfach gefangen in der völlig absurden Handlung. Man möchte am liebsten in das Buch und den Protagonisten von seinem Leid erlösen.
Und dann liest man seine Tagebücher, bekommt die Möglichkeit in seine Seele zu schauen. Was beängstigt ihn? Wie ist sein Alltag? Dieser permanente Drang ausschließlich für die Literatur existieren zu wollen. Es lässt sich dadurch viel leichter nachvollziehen warum er schreibt wie er schreibt.
Auch ist wirklich sehr interessant welche Literaten Kafka begleiten. Große Empfehlung gerade im Bezug auf das kommende Kafkajahr 2024.
Und dann liest man seine Tagebücher, bekommt die Möglichkeit in seine Seele zu schauen. Was beängstigt ihn? Wie ist sein Alltag? Dieser permanente Drang ausschließlich für die Literatur existieren zu wollen. Es lässt sich dadurch viel leichter nachvollziehen warum er schreibt wie er schreibt.
Auch ist wirklich sehr interessant welche Literaten Kafka begleiten. Große Empfehlung gerade im Bezug auf das kommende Kafkajahr 2024.
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