Horizon

"I am now copying the first page of this letter"

I've been flipping through Kafka's letters to Felice Bauer, the woman he sort of wanted to marry but never did. This is from January 1913. There are a lot of interesting and seemingly unconscious echos of motifs that appear around this time in his writing, especially to some of the stuff published in Parables and Paradoxes such as "An Imperial Message". It was not long after this that Kafka wrote "The Judgement", which he considered to be the beginning of his literary career.

Let us assume that by some special stroke of luck it were possible for us to spend some days together in the same town—Frankfurt perhaps. On the second evening we have arranged to go to the theater, and I am supposed to fetch you from the exhibition. Hastily and with the greatest difficulty you have disposed of important matters to make quite sure of being on time, and now you are waiting for me. You wait in vain, I don't arrive; a purely accidental delay can no longer be assumed, the time limit conceded even by the most amiable person is long past. Nor do you receive a message that might explain; meanwhile you could have disposed of your business matters with the greatest care, would have had time to change; in any case it will now be too late for the theater.

You can't imagine that it was sheer neglect on my part; perhaps you are a little worried that something may have happened to me, and on the spur of the moment—I can hear you giving the driver his instructions—you go to my hotel and get them to show you to my room. And what do you find? I am still lying (I am now copying the first page of this letter) in bed at 8, not tired, not rested; I maintain that I had been incapable of leaving my bed, complain about everything and insinuate even worse complaints; I try to make amends for the terrible wrong by stroking your hand, by seeking your eyes, lost in the dark room, and yet my whole behavior shows that I am quite prepared to repeat the whole thing at any moment. Although I am at a loss to explain myself in words, I am aware of our situation in every detail, and if I were in your place, standing at my bedside, I wouldn't hesitate to raise my umbrella and in my anger and despair break it over my head.