Part Two
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
~ Abraham Lincoln
You know what we’re trying to do here. 10:30pm. Let’s discuss Franz Kafka’s journals; hard as they are to understand, and the many abnormalities which they bring to light about the character or nature of writing/writers.
January, 25, 2021
I’ve been reading the diaries of Franz Kafka. Though initially hard to follow, I’m now gaining great insight into the pyche of a depressed writer.
Especially, any unfortunate soul who has thought, “keeping a daily journal would be great writing practice”. It is! But that’s not the point.
Lastnight, I read aloud to ___ an entry in which Kafka describes in great detail, the manner in which his room was lit from outside as he lay on the sofa. How the beams of light lay and the colors change; in the manner (I suppose) of a mind for which life currently holds no greater curiosity.
Her response was to laugh and say that he had “too much time on his hands”. Privately, though it’s obviously not her intent, I felt that I myself was being laughed at. I’m not sure that anyone who has not kept a journal over a long period of time can fully understand the literary doodling found therein.
This sensation is actually what made reading Franz’s diaries so interesting. Across time and space, to find a half a madman telling me my own struggles, triumphs, and describing my feelings towards them. All through the unique physiological process of keeping a journal.
The need to place down a record of one’s existence in order to stave off loneliness. Knowing, of course, that it is at once insufficient and pointless.
So we describe, in detail, the physical appearance of a random scene (e.g. “glare thrown on the ceiling by the trawley passing down below moves whitely, wraithlike and with mechanical pauses along the one wall and ceiling”).
Remark upon books we read and the songs we sing. Just like Franz relates a play he watches performed by a Yiddish troupe. Remarking upon an actor who played three different characters and made it none too obvious which he was playing at any given time.
We fail to fully express our joy.
After Franz went on one of the beautiful late night writing tears and found the result to be ______. He couldn’t contain himself. In fear of this joy being replaced by the encompssing sorrow, he read his words over and over again. Shocked to find his own work to his liking.
It’s terrifying when that happens. Like falling while rock climbing. With a rope.
Our feelings find a linguistic release, analogous to the fury unwound in hitting the heavy bag. Thus Franz relates using a particularly clever wording in a workplace document. With loathing, he describes the sensation a having created, by the “sacrifice of my own flesh”, a tiny spark which might be part of the world’s poetry. But instead wasting it in a pursuit he hates and will soon forget.
And most of all, we unleash our opinions. Complaining creatures that we are, and in need of sympathy. All of this in addition to detailing actual happenings. For this I am never satisfied that I have accomplished. Forever considering the addition of this detail or that. Until my mind finds it to be both pointless and insufficient.
Remember the bit about contrasting Joy and Pain? I still don’t got it.
But I do wonder what he would think to find his bit of descriptive record, theatrical musings, and “hated pursuit” recalled in such and alien day and age? It makes me happy.
And thusly we end with me being happy.
Next post –>