Noel’s Reviews > Diaries, 1910-1923 > Status Update
Noel
is on page 126 of 521
Honesty of evil thoughts. Yesterday evening I felt especially miserable. My stomach was upset again. I had written with difficulty. I had listened with effort to Löwy’s reading in the coffee-house (which at first was quiet so that we had to restrain ourselves, but which then became full of bustle and gave us no peace), the dismal future immediately before me seemed not worth entering, abandoned, I walked
[…]
— 8 hours, 3 min ago
[…]
5 likes · Like flag
Noel’s Previous Updates
Noel
is on page 125 of 521
It is certain that a major obstacle to my progress is my physical condition. Nothing can be accomplished with such a body. I shall have to get used to its perpetual balking. As a result of the last few nights spent in wild dreams but with scarcely a few snatches of sleep, I was so incoherent this morning, felt nothing but my forehead, saw a halfway bearable condition only far beyond my present one, and in
[…]
— 16 hours, 47 min ago
[…]
Noel
is on page 117 of 521
It seems so dreadful to be a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one’s dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in company, having to carry one’s meal home in one’s hand, unable to expect anyone with a lazy sense of calm confidence, able only with difficulty and vexation to give a gift to someone, having to say good night at the front door, never being
[…]
— Jun 13, 2026 09:34AM
[…]
Noel
is on page 110 of 521
When the lawyer, in reading the agreement [about the shares in the factory] to me, came to a passage concerning my possible future wife and possible children, I saw across from me a table with two large chairs and a smaller one around it. At the thought that I should never be in a position to seat in these or any other three chairs myself, my wife, and my child, there came over me a yearning for this happiness
[…]
— Jun 13, 2026 09:24AM
[…]
Noel
is on page 101 of 521
This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength which I gain through this writing thus spends itself, a strength which I certainly have not intended for this purpose.
— Jun 02, 2026 07:50AM
Noel
is on page 63 of 521
I feel restless and vicious. Yesterday, before falling asleep, I had a flickering, cool little flame up in the left side of my head. The tensions over my left eye has already settled down and made itself at home. When I think about it, it seems to me that I couldn’t hold out in the office even if they told me that in one month I’d be free. And most of the time in the office I do what I am supposed to, am
[…]
— May 30, 2026 09:53AM
[…]
Noel
is on page 49 of 521
Aside from my family relationships, I could not live by literature if only, to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character; besides, I am prevented also by my health and my character from devoting myself to what is, in the most favourable case, an uncertain life. I have therefore become an official in a social insurance agency. Now these two professions can never be reconciled
[…]
— May 30, 2026 08:31AM
[…]
Noel
is on page 39 of 521
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.
— May 28, 2026 05:50PM
Noel
is on page 35 of 521
I haven’t written down a great deal about myself during these days, partly because of laziness (I now sleep so much and so soundly during the day, I have greater weight while I sleep) but also partly because of the fear of betraying my self-perception. This fear is justified, for one should permit a self-perception to be established definitively in writing only when it can be done with the greatest
[…]
— May 28, 2026 05:10PM
[…]
Noel
is on page 29 of 521
Almost every word I write jars against the next, I hear the consonants rub leadenly against each other and the vowels sing an accompaniment like Negroes in a minstrel show. My doubts stand in a circle around every word, see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it. Of course, that wouldn’t be the greatest misfortune, only I ought to be able to invent words capable
[…]
— May 28, 2026 05:06PM
[…]
Noel
is on page 24 of 521
We … are held in our past and future. … 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.
[…]
— May 27, 2026 04:53PM
[…]
Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Noel
(new)
-
added it
8 hours, 2 min ago
through Ferdinandstrasse. Then at the junction with the Bergstein I once more thought about the more distant future. How would I live through it with this body picked up in a lumber room? The Talmud too says: A man without a woman is no person. I had no defence this evening against such thoughts except to say to myself: ‘It is now that you come, evil thoughts, now, because I am weak and have an upset stomach. You pick this time for me to think you. You have waited for your advantage. Shame on you. Come some other time, when I am stronger. Don’t exploit my condition in this way.’ And, in fact, without even waiting for other proofs, they yielded, scattered slowly and did not again disturb me during the rest of my walk, which was, naturally, not too happy. They apparently forgot, however, that if they were to respect all my evil moments, they would seldom get their chance.
reply
|
flag
(I posted the last quote before getting to work and I’m posting this one waiting for a coworker to finish so he can drive me home. Anyway, this is something I do all the time because of my OCD. I wouldn’t really describe any of my thoughts as “evil” (certainly not outside the moment), but most of the time when I think something especially “bad” I put it on some physical condition.)
(Not only do Kafka’s diaries require a certain frame of mind to settle into, with their relentless stream of misery, they also require you to sustain it for a reasonable length of time. Can you take the relentless stream of misery for one hour? Two hours? If you dip into the stream for only, say, ten or fifteen minutes a day, wouldn’t you just be protracting it? The stream of misery? 🤔 And it wouldn’t even be truly felt, since it would constantly be interrupted. Sustaining an openness to misery for multiple hours is HARD WORK.)