A man was standing there saying: That’s all! He said it at regular intervals, probably afraid to say anything else, and though full to bursting with phrases, he held back, simply repeating: That’s all! It is possible he was directing this exclamation at himself, but then he would have been less loud, and bystanders and pedestrians interpreted him differently: they thought he meant them. He stood there stiffly, but still very angrily, and kept repeating, without a letup, That’s all! Was everyone walking supposed to stop, and everyone just standing supposed to get moving? Were those speaking meant to go silent, the silent to start speaking? Or did his command have a more general meaning: was life itself now supposed to come to an end? He was committed to some change, everyone felt that, and though only a few people obeyed, his command stuck in the minds of everyone, whether nearby or some distance away; everyone heard it as bad news and felt depressed.
Maybe the man’s shouting was an attempt to unload his burden onto as many others as possible. A prophet so severe that the religion he was founding consisted of this one inescapable phrase.
A great many ideas want to remain comets.
He talked himself blind.
When she is scurrying about me, all my unlived days are illuminated.
Whoever is not corrupted by names is charmed: his word shall prevail.
All the thinkers there have their heads shaved, as a warning. No one goes anywhere near them. Any contact with a thinker is considered a great misfortune.
And the shaven-headed themselves avoid one another. They, too, believe the common superstition. They live alone in little plague huts. But their hair brings good luck, and people fight over it.
There was just a single story by him, which he republished every ten years. As his fame grew, this story seemed more and more interesting. It was never recognized by anyone who had read it before. A thousand essays and a hundred books appeared to interpret it. It was talked about everywhere, and he was accorded the honors befitting a demigod. He was the writer everyone knew.
When I think of Kafka, I feel like Grimmelshausen’s Springinsfeld or like a student, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, but never anything more, and I must admit to myself that I am too crude ever to be wise.
The tone that pervades Kafka: like weakness as a sound. But it isn’t weakness, it’s a renouncing of the beyond; what remains is the sound of that renunciation.
Your inflated praise has destroyed her tenderness. Now she needs your praise as she would a narcotic and grasps for it even in dreams.
Wise the man who never mastered gluttony.
When he got home, all the windows of his house had turned to doors, and in every one stood one of his enemies.
Everyone there is sentenced to temporary blindness. To three, five, ten years of blindness. But knowing they will then see again.
A good man asked me the way. “I dare not tell you,” was my answer. He looked at me, friendly, if astonished. But he said nothing and seemed satisfied with my reply. He continued uncertainly, and from the way he walked it was evident that he would not be asking anyone else. Sadly I looked after him. Should I have told him the truth? I knew that he had to die; death was waiting for him on any road I might have pointed to. If he had known, he might have stood still, and this was all that could save him: standing still.
“Stay right there,” I called after him. He heard me, but since I had dismissed him, he dared not stop but kept going. “Stop!” I called, louder—he walked faster. Then, tortured with guilt, I shouted it, and he started running.
A compliment that takes years to catch.
He has broken Kafka on his neat little wheel.
On this point the spirits disagreed: were they better off yesterday, or will they be tomorrow?
Everything is bearable. Unbearable only is an attack on the people whom we love more than all else. Extrapolate from this what the faithful must feel when we insult God.
My incessant self-abasement before Kafka:
Because I am a careless eater? (I have never given what I eat a second thought.)
Because he strives for a precision I cannot achieve? (I only know the precision of my exaggerations.)
Because I have shown I can experience happiness and not run from it?
Because I can communicate easily, unreservedly, and I feel how that would horrify him?
Because he did not leave a single hair of his head untouched by self-criticism? (I live under a dense pelt of healthy hair.)
Because, infected by him, I have merely traded in my own brand of self-hatred for his?
Words that are used only once in a lifetime. Which ones?
He’s afraid his works might eat one another up, so he keeps them on a short lead.
Too old, too old! Now even the streets stand up for him.
To find our way to ourselves by noting what we have an aversion to.
There are dogs so lazy that they refuse even to sniff one another.
Brecht’s lasting effect: proliferation of the word listig (subtle, sly, tricky).
Six days in Vienna make us false for six years.
He shows her images of eternity, confusing them with her eternal salvation. She doesn’t care a fig for them; she prefers to devour his strength now.
Kafka: I grovel in the dust before him; Proust: my fulfillment; Musil: my intellectual exercise.