24. To Oskar Pollak in Prague (?)
Prague, 6 September 1903, Sunday
6.9.
It might have been wise to wait with this letter until I saw you and knew what the two months had made of you, for—I believe—these summer months always move me along most noticeably. And then this summer I didn’t get even a little card from you, and then in the past half-year I also haven’t spoken a word with you that would have been worth the effort. So it’s quite possible that I’m sending this letter to a stranger who will be annoyed by intrusiveness, or to a dead man who won’t be able to read it, or to a clever man who will laugh at it. But I have to write the letter, and so I won’t first wait until I perhaps see that I’m not allowed to write the letter.
For I want something from you, and want it not out of friendship or trust, as one might suppose, no, only out of self-interest, only out of self-interest.
It’s possible that you noticed I entered this summer with high hopes, it’s possible that even from afar you noticed what I wanted from this summer, I’ll say it: to lift, in one stroke, what I believe I have in me (I don’t always believe it). You could have noticed it only from afar, and I ought to have kissed your hands for walking with me, for I would have been uneasy walking beside someone whose mouth was grimly pinched. But it wasn’t grim.
Now the summer has pried my lips apart a little—I’ve grown healthier—(today I’m not feeling quite well), I’ve grown stronger, I’ve spent a lot of time among people, I can talk with women—it’s necessary that I say all this here—but of the wonders the summer has brought me none.
But now something tears my lips wide apart, or is it gentle, no, it tears, and someone standing behind a tree says to me softly: “You will do nothing without others,” but now I write with meaning and delicate sentence structure: “Seclusion is repugnant, one should lay one’s eggs honestly before all the world, the sun will hatch them; better to bite into life than into one’s tongue; one should honor the mole and its kind, but not make it into one’s saint.” Then someone no longer behind the tree says to me: “Is that true in the end and a wonder of the summer?”
(Just listen, listen to a clever introduction to a cunning letter. Why is it clever? A poor man, who until now had not begged, writes a begging letter, with an expansive introduction in which he describes with sighing words what an arduous path led to the realization that not begging is a vice.)
You, do you understand the feeling one must have when, by oneself, one has to pull a yellow mail coach full of sleeping people through a vast night? One is sad, one has a few tears in the corner of one’s eye, trudges slowly from one white milestone to the next, has a hunched back, and must keep gazing down the country road, where there’s nothing but night. Damn it, how one would like to wake up the fellows in the coach, if one had a post horn.
You, now you can listen to me, if you’re not tired.
I’ll prepare a bundle for you, in it will be everything I’ve written up to now, out of myself or out of others. Nothing will be missing but the childhood things (you see, the unhappiness has been weighing on my back from early on), then what I no longer have, then what I consider worthless even for the context, then the plans, for they are countries to the one who has them, and sand to the others, and finally what I can’t show even you, for one shudders when standing there completely naked while another touches one, even if one has begged for it on one’s knees. Besides, I’ve written almost nothing at all in the past six months. So whatever remains, I don’t know how much it is, I’ll give to you, if you write or say yes to what I’m asking of you here.
Because this is something special, and even if I’m very clumsy at writing such things (very ignorant), perhaps you already know. I don’t want an answer from you about whether it would be a pleasure to wait here or whether one could kindle pyres with a light heart, indeed I don’t even want to know how you feel about me, for I would have to wring that from you too, so I want something lighter and heavier, I want you to read the pages, even if indifferently and unwillingly. For there’s also indifferent and unwilling material among them. For—this is why I want it—my dearest and hardest is only cool, despite the sun, and I know that another pair of eyes will make everything warmer and livelier when they look at it. I write only warmer and livelier, for that is divinely certain, since it is written: “Glorious is feeling on its own, but feeling in response strengthens the effect.”
Well why so much fuss, right—I take a piece (for I’m capable of more than I’m giving you, and I will do it—yes) a piece of my heart, wrap it neatly in a few sheets of written paper, and give it to you.
“the two months”: This evidently refers to the two months spent on summer vacation.
“Now the summer has pried my lips apart…I can talk with women”: Anna Pouzarová, who at the time worked as a domestic in the Kafka household, recalls the family’s 1903 summer vacation in Salesel an der Elbe (Czech: Dolní Zálezly): “We bathed a great deal and often in the Elbe and sunbathed on the shore, always separately and without bathing suits, to feel as closely connected to nature as possible and to fully enjoy the sun and summer. Franz went to Dresden but soon returned. The time away did him good. He rode his bicycle a great deal and played tennis with a pretty girl.” (See Anna Pouzarová, “Als Erzieherin in der Familie Kafka,” in “Als Kafka mir entgegenkam…”. Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, Berlin 1995, p. 63).
“I’ll prepare a bundle for you, in it will be everything I’ve written up to now”: These early writings by Kafka have not survived.
“Glorious is feeling on its own, but feeling in response strengthens the effect.”: This is a paraphrase from Goethe’s August 21, 1774 letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, where he writes: “I read your Epistle to the Academists once again, unfold my little letter once again to say to you: that, yes, glorious is feeling on its own, but that feeling in response strengthens the effect is eternally true, and so thanks to your good spirit and so indeed to our spirits that they are alike”(Weimar Edition, Section IV, Vol. 2, pp. 188–89).
Oskar Pollak: (b. Prague, 5 September 1883–d. Austrian-Italian front on the Isonzo, 11 June 1915) Oskar Pollak was a classmate of Kafka’s at the Altstädter Gymnasium. After completing his secondary education, he initially pursued studies in chemistry, later switching to philosophy and archeology, and ultimately to art history at Charles University. At the beginning of his studies, he joined the Lese- und Redehalle der deutschen Studenten (Reading and Lecture Hall of German Students), as did Kafka, whose closest friend he was during these early university years. In the summer semester of 1903 and in the winter semester of 1903–1904, Pollak served as art correspondent for the literary section of the organization. When he took a position as a private tutor at Oberstudenetz Castle at Zdiretz (Ždírec nad Doubravou) in the fall of 1903, Kafka succeeded him in this role. Pollak earned his doctorate in 1907 with a dissertation on the Baroque sculptors Johann and Ferdinand Maximilian Brokoff. That same year, he married Hedwig Eisner in Prague. Pollak authored numerous studies on art history, focusing primarily on the Renaissance and Baroque periods. From 1910 to 1913, he worked first as an assistant and, after completing his postdoctoral qualification, as a lecturer in art history at the University of Vienna. When he was offered the position of art history secretary at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome, Pollak left Vienna and moved to Italy with his wife. With the outbreak of the First World War, Pollak volunteered for military service. He died on June 11, 1915, on the Austrian-Italian front during the early Battles of the Isonzo in Friuli.
English Translation Copyright © 2025 Ross Benjamin
This translation is based on Franz Kafka: Briefe. Kommentierte Ausgabe. Herausgegeben von Hans-Gerd Koch © S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1999.