Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

Writing letters is actually an intercourse with ghosts and by no means just with the ghost of the addressee but also with one’s own ghost, which secretly evolves inside the letter one is writing or even in a whole series of letters, where one letter corroborates another and can refer to it as witness.”

She is a living fire, such as I have never seen; incidentally, a fire that, despite everything, burns only for him. At the same time she is extremely tender, brave, intelligent, and sacrifices everything, or if you prefer, acquires everything by sacrifice.

but do you also enjoy foreignness for its own sake?

It occurs to me that I really can’t remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the café, your figure, your dress, that I still see.

but since it’s supposed to be the best one of the lot maybe it’s mine after all.

Most of the time it is amazing and on those occasions when it does falter, the German language becomes pliant just for you, of its own accord, and then it is particularly beautiful, something a German doesn’t even dare hope for;

But I wanted to read you in Czech because, after all, you do belong to that language, because only there can Milena be found in her entirety

While I was lying there a beetle had fallen on its back one step away and was desperately trying to right itself;

Just how well, Milena, do you know human nature? I sometimes have my doubts.

really am a paragon of stupidity.

I feel you bro

One ought, Milena, to take your face in both hands and look you square in the eye, so that you would see yourself in the eyes of the other person, then you could not even think the kinds of things you wrote there.

it’s the most perfect, most painful magic, you are here, just as I am and even more so; wherever I am, there you are too, and even more intensely.

When will this crazy world finally be straightened out a little?

I wander around with a burned-out head by day

but once in bed instead of sleep I have the best ideas.

but you*4

valendo muito a pena estar estudando alemão e aprender o uso dos pronomes apenas para surtar que ele usou o du pela primeira vez

Once again I’m taking the letter out of the envelope, there’s room right here: Please say Du to me—not all the time, I don’t want that at all—say Du once again.

I lament my waning strength, I lament being born, I lament the light of the sun.

But then two hours later came letters and flowers, kindness and consolation.