9. To Oskar Pollak in Prague (?)
Prague, on or before 24 August 1902, Sunday
I was sitting at my fine desk. You don’t know it. How could you? It’s a properly bourgeois-minded desk, meant to educate. It has, right where the writer’s knees usually go, two frightful wooden spikes. And now pay attention. If one sits down calmly, carefully, and writes something properly bourgeois, then one is at ease. But heaven help anyone who gets agitated and whose body even slightly trembles, for he’ll inescapably feel the spikes in his knees, and how that hurts. I could show you the dark blue bruises. And what is that supposed to mean: “Write nothing agitated, and don’t let your body tremble while you write.”
So I was sitting at my fine desk and writing the second letter to you. You know, a letter is like a bellwether, it immediately draws twenty sheep letters after it.
Whoa, the door suddenly flew open. And who came in without knocking. An ill-mannered fellow. Ah, a most welcome guest. Your card. There’s something peculiar about this first card I received here. I read it countless times, until I knew your whole alphabet and only when I’d read more into it than it contained was it time to stop and tear up my letter. Rip-rip it went and was dead.
One thing I read, though, was unmistakably there, and it was not at all pleasant to read: with that wicked cursed critical spirit inside you, you travel across the land, and one should never do that.
But what you write about the Goethe National Museum seems to me utterly wrong and mistaken. You went in with fantasies and schoolbook notions, immediately starting to pick holes in the name. Certainly the name “Museum” is fine, but “National” seems to me even better, by no means tastelessness or desecration or the like, as you write, but the finest, most wonderfully fine irony. For what you write about the study, your holy of holies, is again nothing but a fantasy and a schoolbook notion and a touch of Germanist scholarship, let it roast in hell.
That, by the devil, was no great feat, keeping the study tidy and then arranging it into a “museum” for the “nation.” Any carpenter or decorator—, if he was the right kind, who knew enough to appreciate Goethe’s bootjack—, could have done that and it was worth all the praise.
But do you know what the holiest thing is that we could ever have from Goethe as a memento…the footprints of his solitary walks through the land…they would be it. And now comes a joke, a most excellent one, at which the dear Lord bitterly weeps and hell is seized by most hellish fits of laughter—the holiest thing belonging to a stranger we can never possess, only our own—that is a joke, a most excellent one. In tiny little bits I’ve already nibbled at it for you once—in the Chotek Gardens, you neither wept nor laughed, you are, after all, neither the dear Lord nor the wicked devil.
Only the wicked critical spirit (spoiling Thuringia) lives within you, and that is a subordinate devil, which, however, one should still rid oneself of. And so, for your benefit and edification, I want to tell you the peculiar story of how weyland…, God rest his soul, was vanquished by Franz Kafka.
He followed me wherever I lay or stood. If I was lying on the vineyard wall and looking out over the land and perhaps gazing at or listening to something lovely far beyond the mountains, you could be sure that suddenly, with considerable noise, someone would rise behind the wall, solemnly say baa baa and gravely express his apt view that the beautiful landscape was decidedly in need of a treatment. He explicated at length the plan of a thorough monograph or a charming idyll, arguing for it with truly compelling force. I had nothing to counter him with except myself, and that was little enough.
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…you can’t imagine how all this torments me now. Gallows merriness and country air is all I’ve written to you, and glaring daylight, stabbing the eyes, is what I’m now writing to you. My uncle from Madrid (railroad director) was here, it was also on his account that I was in Prague. Shortly before his arrival, I had the odd, unfortunately very odd, idea of asking him, no, not asking, but rather inquiring whether he might know how to help me out of these things, whether he might be able to lead me somewhere where I could finally put my hands freshly to work. Well then, I started cautiously. There’s no need to tell you about it in detail. He began speaking unctuously, although he’s otherwise a very kind man, comforted me, all right, all right. And that was the end of it. I fell silent immediately, without really meaning to, and in the two days I’ve been in Prague on his account, though I’ve spent all day with him, I haven’t brought it up again. He’s leaving this evening. I’m going to Liboch for another week, then to Triesch for a week, then back to Prague and then to Munich, to study, yes, to study. Why are you making faces? Yes, yes, I’m going to study. Why am I writing all this to you anyway. Perhaps I knew, after all, that it was hopeless, what do people have their own feet for. Why am I writing it to you? So that you know how I feel about the life that stumbles over the stones out there, like the poor mail coach hobbling from Liboch to Dauba. You simply must have compassion for and patience with
Your Franz
Since I’ve written to no one else, I’d find it unpleasant if you were to speak to anyone about my endless letters. You won’t do that.—If you want to reply to me, which would certainly be lovely, you can do so for another week at the old address, Liboch-Windischbauer, later Prague, Zeltnergasse No. 3.
“with that wicked cursed critical spirit inside you, you travel across the land”: Max Brod noted regarding the first publication of the letter: “I omitted a large portion of this lengthy letter (originally ten pages) because it contains a very impolite, even coarse polemic against a then-professor of literary history at the Prague university, the posthumous publication of which would certainly not have been in keeping with Kafka’s wishes. For the architecture of this letter—constructed like a work of art—it is significant that the remark at the beginning (targeting the excessively critical spirit with which his friend undertakes his vacation travels) corresponds, after the intermediate episode ‘dispatching’ the aforementioned professor, to the advice: ‘This is how you should deal with your critical spirit.’”
“Goethe National Museum”: Goethe’s house in Weimar, converted into a museum.
“a touch of Germanist scholarship, let it roast in hell”: At the beginning of his studies, Kafka enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Charles University. In the winter semester of 1901-02, he transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy, and during the summer semester of 1902, he took exclusively courses in German literature and art history, including “History of Early German Literature” with Professor Detter, and “History of German Literature of the Sturm and Drang,” “German Composition Exercises,” and “Gerstenberg’s Letters” with Professor Sauer (based on a record of the courses Kafka attended from the winter semester of 1901-02 to the end of the summer semester of 1905, preserved in the archives of Charles University in Prague). According to Brod’s annotation, “a vehement polemic” against August Sauer appears in the deleted portion of the letter. Beginning in the winter semester of 1902-03, Kafka returned to his studies at the Faculty of Law.
“in the Chotek Gardens”: The park adjoining the Belvedere summer palace was one of Kafka’s favorite walking destinations, which he considered the “most beautiful place in Prague” (see Kafka’s March 4, 1915 diary entry).
“If I was lying on the vineyard wall”: Refers to the first part of Kafka’s vacation in Liboch, which he interrupted due to the visit of his uncle from Madrid.
“My uncle from Madrid (railroad director)”: Alfred Löwy (1852-1923), a brother of Julie Kafka, was the director of the Spanish railroad company Madrid a Cáceres. He regularly traveled to Prague, most likely primarily for family visits. Kafka apparently hoped that his uncle might help him find alternatives to university studies.
Liboch: Czech: Liběchov. Located about 30 km north of Prague on the Elbe River, Liboch was a popular destination for excursions and summer vacations.
Triesch: During Kafka’s school and university years, he often spent his summer vacations with his favorite uncle, the country doctor Siegfried Löwy (1867-1942), in Triesch (Czech: Třešť), Moravia.
“to Munich, to study, yes, to study”: Following his negative experiences with German studies in Prague and lacking other alternatives, Kafka planned to continue studying the same subject in Munich during the winter semester of 1902-03, together with Paul Kisch. There, their former classmate Emil Utitz (1883-1956; see Kafka’s November 26, 1903 letter to Paul Kisch), “who had already been studying there since the summer semester,” was expecting them (as noted in a letter from Paul Kisch to Max Brod, dated August 26, 1937).
Dauba: Czech: Dubá. Located about 21 km north of Liboch, the capital of the district of the same name.
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.