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.”

And although her letters were destroyed, we can still hear her voice, or at least its echoes,

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.

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 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 (the translation confirms this),

Past lives

“What a man! He must have moved mountains here.” But meanwhile he hasn’t done a thing, hasn’t lifted a finger

like: “These wonderful people! They’re so good and noble! And I am so mean! If they could only see inside me! And even if I simply tell them they won’t believe me.”

I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting; even so, when I then want to raise my eyes to your face, in the middle of the letter—what a story!—fire breaks out and I see nothing but fire.

For instance, you could have refrained from saying anything at all about yourself, but then you would have deprived me of the good fortune of knowing you and the even greater fortune of being able to put myself to the test. And

obvious. Had I been as completely and incessantly worried as I wrote, I would not have been able to bear lying on the deck chair and would have appeared in your room the next day despite all obstacles. The only proof of sincerity, everything else is mere talk, this included. Or an appeal to the underlying feeling, which, however, remains silent, just twiddling its thumbs.

weariness. I just read, the letter, your essays, again and again, convinced that such prose does not exist merely for its own sake, but serves as a signpost on the road to a human being, a road one keeps following, happier and happier, until arriving at the realization some bright moment that one is not progressing, simply running around inside one’s own labyrinth, only more nervously, more confused than before.

It should be possible. But this passion for letters is senseless. Isn’t one letter enough, isn’t one knowing enough? Of course it is, but nevertheless I am tilting my head way back, drinking the letters, aware only that I don’t want to stop drinking. Explain that, teacher Milena!

was unable to make me abidingly happy, calm, determined, capable of marriage, despite my repeated and entirely voluntary assurances that this was the case, despite the fact that I sometimes loved her desperately, despite the fact I knew of no worthier aspiration than marriage.

The sparrow is standing outside and sees the food of his life there in the semidarkness, enticing beyond measure, he shakes himself, he’s more inside than out, but here inside is darkness and next to the bread am I, the mysterious power.

I’m just walking around here between the lines, underneath the light of your eyes, in the breath of your mouth like in some beautiful happy day, which stays beautiful and happy even if my head is sick,

just afraid of taking one step on this Earth teeming with pitfalls,

her. Is this why you don’t want to go, tender soul, because that is exactly what you fear?

After all, I could have shown up without this announcement and disenchanted you without any further ado. But the fact I did not is only further proof of my candor, my weakness.

Milena: we are so shy and anxious that almost every letter is different, almost every one is frightened by the previous letter and even more so by the reply. It’s easy to see that you aren’t like this by nature, and I, perhaps even I am not like this by nature, but this has almost become my nature, passing only when I am desperate or, at most, angry, and needless to say: when I am afraid.

it was only a passing thought

and I only realize I am kneeling because I see your feet right before my eyes and I am caressing them. And do not demand sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it more than I do myself, and even so, I’m sure that many things escape me, maybe even everything.

everything suddenly becomes a lie and the pursued become the hunters. I am on such a dangerous road, Milena. You are standing fast by a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes are subduing the sorrows of the world with their brightness.

The only thing left for me to do is request that you answer me here immediately, one word is sufficient, but it must be a word capable of taking the bite out of all the reproaches contained in Monday’s letter and making them readable.

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.

God. And he cast devils only out of those who followed him. And even that didn’t last forever, for once they forsook him then even he became ineffectual and “useless.”

Enough questions; they were sleeping soundly in the underworld, why call them up into the daylight?

Don’t be so certain that two hours of life are more than two pages of writing, the writing is poorer but clearer)—

and my life consists of one night). Only I could prove it to myself, and I can imagine being able to do so

the way the sparrow is pecking up the crumbs in my room: in trepidation, attentively, on the lookout, feathers all puffed up.

Im reading your letter as the way

is it your deeds and experiences which are important to me or isn’t it really you yourself?

write: “most of all I’d like to escape along a third road going neither to you nor with him, but somewhere toward solitude.”