Just finished reading Kafka’s passionate letters to Milena. It was raw and intense. Their correspondence started as a business but it turned into something quite deep. It was weird reading something so personal given the fact that he explicitly asked the letters to be destroyed. But anyways, since it was published, I guess there’s no harm in reading it. When they started writing, Kafka was already engaged and Milena was married. Whether it can be counted as cheating is not for me to judge. I read the letters from a different perspective where two people found peace in each other’s words and as it grew, like any other relationship it ended in tragedy. Kafka’s existential dread is well known and I could feel it in every letter he wrote to her. In The Trial, it was just a story, but in his letters, it was real. I could feel his anxiety, his loneliness and his longing for connection. He felt he was incapable of love and relationships. Even though the letters were filled with affection, Kafka tried to remain distant. He pushed Milena away out of guilt, “fear” - which is mentions a lot in the letters and a belief that he was unworthy of love. Although Milena’s husband was also a cheat, she was unsure of leaving him because of his illness. Kafka’s engagement was already off but his condition was also not well.
In all these letters, he criticizes himself heavily comparing himself to an animal or sometimes even dirt. But his words of affection for Milena were always the same. Even in his last few days on Earth. In all this time, Kafka and Milena only met twice. Once for 4 days in Vienna and once for few hours in Gmund. Talk about parallels. I won’t summarize their whole story for it included many people and context which is not possible to cover in a blog post. However, while reading I did highlight some of excerpts that I will put down here. Some of them might not make sense due to the lack of context of previous letters, and some of them I highlighted because I could relate to them.
I highlighted many more lines but putting pictures will put load on the website. So, I’ll add the others in text below with a touch of creativity (I don’t have anything to do these days since it is December and there’s hardly any work at office due to holidays). When interacting with the quotes, Gregor Samsa (yes, from the Metamorphosis) will scurry and hide.
"You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love."
On her request, Milena’s letters to Kafka were burned upon his death. However, Max Brod (Kafka’s best friend) published some of the letters that Milena wrote to him. She mentions Frank in few lines some of which I will highlight below.
You wonder how it happens that Frank is afraid of love but not afraid of life? But I think it’s something else. Life for him is something entirely different than for all other human beings; in particular, things like money, the stock market, currency exchange, a typewriter are utterly mystical to him.
…this whole world is and remains a riddle to him.
But Frank is unable to live. Frank isn’t capable of living. Frank will never recover. Frank will soon die.
But he has never fled to any refuge, not one…He lacks even the smallest refuge; he has no shelter. That is why he is exposed to everything we are protected from.
The conflict within me became too clearly visible, and that scared him. After all, that is exactly what he was fighting against his whole life…With me he could have found peace.
I know he isn’t resisting life, just this type of life.
That’s all for this post. I have two more books of Kafka that I plan to finish but I will take a short break from him now. The yearly book fair is going on in the city and I am planning to go tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be boring since everyone is out of town and I am going alone. As long as I come back with a few books, it should be fine. Until next time!
