Franz and Milena’s relationship reflected the contradictions of Kafka’s Prague—Jew/Gentile, German/Czech—although between them these differences accounted for more concord than conflict, perhaps because both enjoyed “foreignness for its own sake.” As the letters prove, however, their bond ran much deeper than mere affinity—so deep, in fact, that Kafka gave Milena all his diaries but the one he was still writing. And in that last notebook he wrote: “Always M. or not M.—but a principle, a light in the darkness!”
