Letter to My Father

by Franz Kafka

Recently you asked me why I maintain that I’m afraid of you. And, as usual, I didn’t know how to answer, in part because of my fear of you; and in part because my fear rests on so many details that I couldn’t even have discussed half of it.

you have sacrificed everything; and I have lived the high life,

And up to a point I agree: I also believe that you are innocent of the growing distance between us. But I am innocent as well.

‘I’ve always liked you, and if I don’t show it in the way that other fathers do, it is just because I can’t put on a performance.’

And for years I was tormented by the thought that this giant man, my father, could almost without reason come to me in the night, and lift me out of bed, and leave me on the balcony: he was my final court of appeal, and for him I was such a nothing.

you instilled in me a deep shame, because you showed me over and over how to swim, and still I couldn’t;

on. I thought I had injured you (not me) through this, and I felt guilty – as I always did, for I was guilty through and through.