Silent Hours with Kafka
Nursing a bout of influenza is exhausting, but brings its own compensations: the rare privilege of sitting silently and reading for hours, with the occasional offer of tea arriving like a small ceremony.
In those quiet hours, I completed Kafka’s Diaries 1910–1923. That Kafka did not wish these diaries published gives their reading the quality of a guilty compulsion: a sense of trespassing into a mind that would have preferred its privacy. Yet they stand shoulder to shoulder with his novels and short stories, as works of unshielded genius. They feel quite essential, both in their fragmentariness and their relentless inward gaze.
>I must revisit Kafka, and visit his diaries for the first time. I read his novels & major short stories so long ago that I really didn't have the proper tools to appreciate them. So glad for your ringing endorsement here.
>Lodged in my mind was the thought that Kafka was a writer for our adolescent years. True as that might be, Emily, I am finding so much richness in the novels, stories and these brilliant diaries. I'm very much looking forward to the letters.