Letters to Ottla and the Family by Franz Kafka

Author:Franz Kafka [Kafka, Franz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schocken Books
Published: 2013-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

I was interrupted, as happens frequently these days. The unfortunate medical student.33 I have not yet seen so diabolical a spectacle from close up. Hard to say whether good or evil powers are operating there; in any case, they are incredibly strong. In the Middle Ages, he would have been regarded as possessed. Yet he is a young man of twenty-one, tall, broad, hearty, red-cheeked—extremely intelligent, truly unselfish, considerate. More on this later, in the bathroom some day, in a quiet moment when the baby is sleeping.

The fairground island34 is, of course, more attractive than up above in those sad streets.35 But above all, it is the poverty that lures you, except that one is not poor when one has money, and one can attain poverty from outside only in extremely lucky and extremely exceptional cases. In general, what one then finds in place of poverty is only misery. That by the bye; but in my thoughts I will watch over the island with all my strength.

If a doctor is only a friend, it may work, but otherwise it is impossible to communicate with them. For instance, I have three doctors, the one here, Dr. Kral,36 and Uncle. It would be scarcely remarkable that they advise different courses; it might even be acceptable that they advise contradictory courses (Dr. Kral is for injections, Uncle against); but that they contradict themselves is incomprehensible. For example, Dr. Kral sent me here because of the ultraviolet radiation of the mountain sunlight; now that the sun is shining he advises me to go to lower-lying Pleš. He strongly agreed with me that Hungarian and Czech sanatoriums cannot possibly come up to the German ones, and still he advises Pleš. I am certainly not stubborn (though I would like to escape the ordeal of eating meat, to which I am now partly exposed); I will go to Pleš since he insists, but I would like to have a place there assured before I leave here, so that I don’t have to squander in Prague several weeks of the leave you so magnificently obtained for me. In a few days, I am going to Smokovec and Polianka and have myself examined there. Has Dr. Kral read the affidavit? I have another copy that I could send him.

Walking tour? I don’t know. And Bavaria?37 No doctor has yet advised that for me (although one who would could surely be found); besides, they receive foreigners very reluctantly there, and they receive Jews only to kill them.38 That won’t do.

So you have the medical opinion; the petition is enclosed. I am sending it to you because I don’t want to have the opinion copied still another time. Of the Czechs, only the eighteen-year-old is here, and I rather suspect how much she knows, since she admires my Czech. Perhaps I’ll write the letter in German.

But do you still have time and desire for anything but the main thing?39 And is that all right?

Yours

Regards to Elli, Valli. And the Fräulein.

I

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