Diaries of Franz Kafka 1911 

(parts 1 & 2)

Part 1


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

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

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

"Then what have you been thinking about?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small cities also have small places to stroll about in. 
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before that, lecture by Loos and Kraus. 
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. F.: "I have a poor memory."  Dr St.: "Eat no eggs." 
  
  
                                             MY VISIT TO DR STEINER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," said Franz. 

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 October.  Sleepless night.  The third in a row.  I fall asleep soundly, but after an hour I wake up, as though I had laid my head in the wrong hole.  I am completely
awake, have the feeling that I have not slept at all or only under a thin skin, have before me anew the labor of falling asleep and feel myself rejected by sleep.  And for
the rest of the night, until about five, thus it remains, so that indeed I sleep but at the same time vivid dreams keep me awake.  I sleep alongside myself, so to speak,
while I myself must struggle with dreams.  About five the last trace of sleep is exhausted, I just dream, which is more exhausting than wakefulness.  In short, I spend the
whole night in that state in which a healthy person finds himself for a short time before really falling asleep.  Then I awaken, all the dreams are gathered about me, but I
am careful nor to reflect on them.  Towards morning I sigh into the pillow, because for this night all hope is gone.  I think of those nights at the end of which I was raised
out of deep sleep and awoke as though I had been folded in a nut. 

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

I believe this sleeplessness comes only because I write.  For no matter how little and how badly I write, I am still made sensitive by these minor shocks, feel, especially
towards evening and even more in the morning, the approaching, the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open, which could make me capable of
anything, and in the general uproar that is within me and which I have no time to command, find no rest.  In the end this uproar is only a suppressed, restrained harmony,
which, left free, would fill me completely, which could even widen me and yet still fill me.  But now such a moment arouses only feeble hopes and does me harm, for my
being does not have sufficient strength or the capacity to hold the present mixture, during the day the visible word helps me, during the night it cuts me to pieces
unhindered.  I always think in this connection of Paris, where at the time of the siege and later, until the Commune, the population of the northern and eastern suburbs, up
to that time strangers to the Parisians, for a period of months moved through the connecting streets into the center of Paris, dawdling like the hands of a clock. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walking with Löwy and my sister for three hours. 
  
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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









Diaries 1911, part 2
  



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To awaken on a cold autumn morning full of yellowish light.  To force your way through the half-shut window and while still in front of the panes, before you fall, to
hover, arms extended, belly arched, legs curved backwards, like the figures on the bows of ships in old times. 
  

Before falling asleep. 
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This evening I was again filled with anxiously restrained abilities. 
  
  

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

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

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

E: Anna! 

A [looking up]: Yes. 

E: Come here. 

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

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

A: Really! 

E: It is so. 

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

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

A: I know it. 

E: You do? 

A: You don't like the food. 

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

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

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

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

[ANNA sits at the table, reading the paper. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Postin, is that a large city?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

28 November.  Have written nothing for three days. 
  

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

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

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

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

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

"No, only poor amateurs." 

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

            Little soul, 
            Boundest in dancing, etc. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A character sketch of the literature of small peoples. 

Good results in both cases. 

Here the results in individual instances are even better. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

27 December.  An unfortunate man, one who is condemned to have no children, is terribly imprisoned in his misfortune.  Nowhere a hope for revival, for help from
luckier stars.  He must live his life, afflicted by his misfortune, and when its circle is ended must resign himself to it and not start out again to see whether, on a longer
path, under other circumstances of body and time, the misfortune which he has suffered could disappear or even produce something good. 
  

My feeling when I write something that is wrong might be depicted as follows: In front of two holes in the ground a man is waiting for something to appear that can rise
up only out of the hole on his right.  But while this hole remains covered over by a dimly visible lid, one thing after another rises up out of the hole on his left, keeps trying
to attract his attention, and in the end succeeds in doing this without any difficulty because of its swelling size, which, much as the man may try to prevent it, finally
covers up even the right hole.  But the man-he does not want to leave this place, and indeed refuses to at any price-has nothing but these appearances, and
although-fleeting as they are, their strength is used up by their merely appearing-they cannot satisfy him, he still strives, whenever out of weakness they are arrested
in their rising up, to drive them up and scatter them into the air if only he can thus bring up others; for the permanent sight of one is unbear-able, and moreover he
continues to hope that after the false appearances have been exhausted, the true will finally appear. 
  

How weak this picture is.  An incoherent assumption is thrust like a board between the actual feeling and the metaphor of the description. 
  
  

28 December.  The torment that the factory causes me.  Why didn't I object when they made me promise to work there in the afternoons.  No one used force to make
me do it, but my father compels me by his reproaches, Karl [Hermann, Kafka's brother-in-law and owner of the factory] by his silence, and I by my consciousness of
guilt.  I know nothing about the factory, and this morning, when the committee made an inspection, I stood around uselessly with my tail between my legs.  I deny that it
is possible for me to fathom all the details of the operation of the factory.  And if I should succeed in doing it by endlessly questioning and pestering all those concerned,
what would I have achieved?  I would be able to do nothing practical with this knowledge, I am fit only for spectacular performances to which the sound common sense
of my boss adds the salt that makes it look like a really good job.  But through this empty effort spent on the factory I would, on the other hand, rob myself of the use of
the few afternoon hours that belong to me, which would of necessity lead to the complete destruction of my existence, which, even apart from this, becomes more and
more hedged in. 
  

This afternoon, while taking a walk, for the duration of a few steps I saw coming towards me or crossing my path entirely imaginary members of the committee that
caused me such anxiety this morning. 
  
  

29 December.  Those lively passages in Goethe.  Page 265, "I therefore led my friend into the woods." 

Goethe: 307. "Now I heard during these hours no other conversation save what concerned medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn in quite another
direction." 
  

The difficulties of bringing to an end even a short essay lie not in the fact that we feel the end of the piece demands a fire which the actual content up to that point has
not been able to produce out of itself, they arise rather from the fact that even the shortest essay demands of the author a degree of self-satisfaction and of being lost in
himself out of which it is difficult to step into the everyday air without great determination and an external incentive, so that, before the essay is rounded to a close and
one might quickly slip away, one bolts, driven by unrest, and then the end must be completed from the outside with hands which must not only do the work but hold on as
well. 
  
  

30 December.  My urge to imitate has nothing of the actor in it, its chief lack is unity.  The whole range of those characteristics which are rough and striking, I cannot
imitate at all, I have always failed when I attempted it, it is contrary to my nature.  On the other hand, I have a decided urge to imitate them in their details, the way
certain people manipulate walking-sticks, the way they hold their hands, the movements of their fingers, and I can do it without any effort.  But this very effortlessness,
this thirst for imitation, sets me apart from the actor, because this effortlessness reflects itself in the fact that no one is aware that I am imitating.  Only my own satisfied,
or more often reluctant, appreciation shows me that I have been successful.  Far beyond this external imitation, however, goes the inner, which is often so striking and
strong that there is no room at all within me to observe and verify it, and it first confronts me in my memory.  But here the imitation is so complete and replaces my own
self with so immediate a suddenness that, even assuming it could be made visible at all, it would be unbearable on the stage.  The spectator cannot be asked to endure
what passes beyond the bounds of playacting.  If an actor who is supposed to thrash another according to the plot really does thrash him, out of excitement, out of an
excess of emotion, and the other actor screams in pain, then the spectator must become a man and intervene.  But what seldom happens in this way happens countless
times in lesser ways.  The essence of the bad actor consists not in the fact that he imitates too little, but rather in the fact that as a result of gaps in his education,
experience, and talent he imitates the wrong models.  But his most essential fault is still that he does not observe the limits of the play and imitates too much.  His hazy
notion of the demands of the stage drives him to this, and even if the spectator thinks one actor or another is bad because he stands around stiffly, toys with his fingers at
the edge of his pocket, puts his hands on his hips improperly, listens for the prompter, in spite of the fact that things have changed completely maintains an anxious
solemnity regardless, still, even this actor who suddenly dropped from nowhere on the stage is bad only because he imitates too much, even if he does so only in his
mind.  (31 December.)  For the very reason that his abilities are so limited, he is afraid to give less than all he has.  Even though his ability may not be so small that it
cannot be divided up, he does not want to betray the fact that under certain circumstances, by the exercise of his own will, he can dispose of less than all his art. 
  

In the morning I felt so fresh for writing, but now the idea that I am to read to Max in the afternoon blocks me completely.  This shows too how unfit I am for friendship,
assuming that friendship in this sense is even possible.  For since a friendship without interruption of one's daily life is unthinkable, a great many of its manifestations are
blown away time and again, even if its core remains undamaged.  From the undamaged core they are formed anew, but as every such formation requires time, and not
everything that is expected succeeds, one cam never, even aside from the change in one's personal moods, pick up again where one left off last time.  Out of this, in
friendships that have a deep foundation, an uneasiness must arise before every fresh meeting which need not be so great that it is felt as such, but which can disturb
one's conversation and behavior to such a degree that one is consciously astonished, especially as one is not aware of, or cannot believe, the reason for it.  So how am I
to read to M. or even think, while writing down what follows, that I shall read it to him. 
  

Besides, I am disturbed by my having leafed through the diary this morning to see what I could read to M.  In this examination I have found neither that what I have
written so far is especially valuable nor that it must simply be thrown away.  My opinion lies between the two and closer to the first, yet it is not of such a nature that,
judging by the value of what I have written, I must, in spite of my weakness, regard myself as exhausted.  Despite that, the sight of the mass of what I had written
diverted me almost irrecoverably from the fountainhead of my writing for the next hour, because my attention was to a certain extent lost downstream, as it were, in the
same channel. 
  

While I sometimes think that all through the time I was at the Gymnasium and before that, as well, I was able to think unusually clearly, and only the later weakening of
my memory prevents me from judging it correctly today, I still recognize at other times that my poor memory is only trying to flatter me and that I was mentally inert, at
least in things themselves insignificant but having serious consequences.  So I remember that when I was at the Gymnasium I often-even if not very thoroughly, I
probably tired easily even then-argued the existence of God with Bergmann in a talmudic style either my own or imitated from him.  At the time I liked to begin with a
theme I had found in a Christian magazine (I believe it was Die Christliche Welt [The Christian World]) in which a watch and the world and the watchmaker and God
were compared to one another, and the existence of the watchmaker was supposed to prove that of God.  In my opinion I was able to refute this very well as far as
Bergmann was concerned, even though this refutation was not firmly grounded in me and I had to piece it together for myself like a jigsaw puzzle before using it.  Such
a refutation once took place while we were walking around the Rathaus tower.  I remember this clearly because once, years ago, we reminded each other of it. 
  

But while I thought I was distinguishing myself-I had no other motive than the desire to distinguish myself and my joy in making an impression and in the impression
itself-it was only as a result of giving it insufficient thought that I endured always having to go around dressed in the wretched clothes which my parents had made for
me by one customer after another, longest by a tailor in Nusle.  I naturally noticed-it was obvious-that I was unusually badly dressed, and even had an eye for others
who were well dressed, but for years on end my mind did not succeed in recognizing in my clothes the cause of my miserable appearance.  Since even at that time, more
in tendency than in fact, I was on the way to underestimating myself, I was convinced that it was only on me that clothes assumed this appearance, first looking as stiff
as a board, then hanging in wrinkles.  I did not want new clothes at all, for if I was going to look ugly in any case, I wanted at least to be comfortable and also to avoid
exhibiting the ugliness of the new clothes to the world that had grown accustomed to the old ones.  These always long-drawn-out refusals on the frequent occasions
when my mother (who with the eyes of an adult was still able to find differences between these new clothes and the old ones) wanted to have new clothes of this sort
made for me, had this effect upon me that, with my parents concurring, I had to conclude that I was not at all concerned about my appearance. 
  
  
                                            
                                             Translated by Joseph Kresh.