Dearest Father by Franz Kafka

Author:Franz Kafka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2017-10-13T09:12:30+00:00

Extracts from Kafka’s Diaries

1911

26th August. Tomorrow I am supposed to travel to Italy. This evening Father could not sleep for excitement and sheer anxiety about his business, which has made him ill. A damp cloth on his chest, nausea, difficulty in breathing, pacing up and down, sighing. Mother is fearful, but finds new consolation in the fact that he has always been so energetic, he has always coped with everything, and now – I tell her the trouble with the business cannot last more than another three months, and that everything will then be fine. He paces up and down, sighing and shaking his head. He is aware that we cannot take on his burden or otherwise rid him of it, but even we are aware, despite our good intentions, of the sad necessity that he must provide for his family… Through his frequent yawning or his (incidentally not revolting) nose-picking, Father reassures us slightly, barely perceptibly, about his condition – even though he generally never does this when healthy.

31st October. …In case my father should ever again call me a bad son, I am writing down now, so as not to forget, that he, in front of several relatives and without particular reason – perhaps simply to make me feel small or perhaps because he means to save me – called Max a “meshuggener ritoch”,* and that yesterday, when Löwy was in my room, he spoke with ironic bodily convulsions and contortions of the mouth of all the strangers that are being allowed into the flat, asking what one could possibly find of interest in strangers, or why one should ever enter into such useless relationships, etc… But I should not have written this down, as I have positively written myself into a state of hatred for my father, a hatred for which he has given me no cause today, a hatred which, at least as far as his statements about Löwy are concerned, is disproportionately great, and a hatred which is increased by the fact that I cannot actually remember anything vicious in the way Father behaved yesterday.

16th October. Exhausting Sunday yesterday. The entire staff handed Father its resignation. Through kind words and congeniality, and exploiting his illness, his great presence and previous vigour, his experience and cleverness, he won them back, almost all of them, in general and private discussions.

3rd November. …Löwy – my father’s view: “He who sleeps with dogs wakes up with fleas.” I could not contain myself and said something out of order. Whereupon Father replied, particularly calmly (admittedly considerably later, after we had discussed other things): “You know that I am not to be worked up and must be treated carefully. So don’t come to me with these things now. I have had just about enough excitement, more than enough. So spare me such talk.” I say: “I am doing my utmost to hold back,” and sense in Father, as always in such intense moments, an underlying wisdom of which I can only catch the slightest pulse.

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