Franz KafkaDiaries 1914 2 January. A lot of time well spent with Dr. Weiss.4 January. We had scooped out a hollow in the sand, where we felt quitecomfortable. At night we rolled up together inside the hollow, Father covered itover withtrunks of trees, scattering underbrush on top, and we were as well protected as wecould be from storms and wild beasts. Father, we would often call out in fright

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when it had already grown dark under the tree trunks and Father had still notappeared. But then we would see his feet through a crack, he would slide inbeside us,would give each of us a little pat, for it calmed us to feel his hand, and then wewould all fall asleep as it were together. In addition to our parents we werefive boys andthree girls; the hollow was too small for us, but we should have felt afraid if wehad not been so close to one another at night.5 January. Afternoon. Goethe's father was senile when he died. At the time ofhis father's last illness Goethe was working on Iphigenie.Take that woman home, she's drunk, some court official said to Goethe about

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Christiane (his lover).August (Goethe's son by Christiane), a drunkard like his mother, vulgarly ranaround with common women. Ottilie, whom he did not love but was made to marry byhis father for social reasons.Wolf, the diplomat and writer.Walter, the musician, couldn't pass his examinations. Withdrew into theGartenhaus for months; when the Tsarina wanted to see him: Tell the Tsarina that

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I am not awild animal. My conscience is more lead than iron.

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Wolf's petty, ineffectual literary efforts.The old people in the garret rooms. Eighty-year-old Ottilie, fifty-year-old Wolf,and their old acquaintances.Only in such extremes does one become aware of how every person is lost in himselfbeyond hope of rescue, and one's sole consolation in this is to observe otherpeopleand the law governing them and everything. How, outwardly, Wolf can be guided,

moved here or there, cheered up, encouraged, induced to work systematicallyand

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how, inwardly, he is held fast and immovable.Why don't the Tchuktchis (who live in arctic Siberia) simply leave their awfulcountry; considering their present life and wants they would be better offanywhereelse. But they cannot; all things possible do happen, only what happens ispossible.A wine cellar had been set up in the small town of F. by a wine dealer from thelarger city near by. He had rented a small vaulted cellar in a house on theRingplatz,painted oriental decorations on the wall, and had put in old plush furniturealmost past its usefulness.6 January. Dilthey: Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Experience and Poetry): Lovefor humanity, the highest respect for all the forms it has taken; stands backquietly in the best post from which he can observe. On Luther's early writings:the mighty shades, attracted by murder and blood, that step from an invisible

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world intothe visible one Pascal.

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Letter for A. to his mother-in-law. Liesl kissed the teacher.8 January. Fantl recited Tte d'or: He hurls the enemy about like a barrel.

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Uncertainty, aridity, peaceall things will resolve themselves into these and pass

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away.What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself andshould stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.Description of inexplicable emotions. A.: Since that happened, the sight of womenhas been painful to me, it is neither sexual excitement nor pure sorrow, it issimplypain. That's the way it was too before I felt sure of Liesl.12 January. Yesterday: Ottilie's love affairs, the young EnglishmanTolstoy's

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engagement; I have a clear impression of a young, sensitive, and violent person,restraining himself, full of forebodings. Well dressed, dark, and dark blue.The girl in the coffeehouse. Her tight skirt, her white, loose, fur-trimmed silkblouse, bare throat, close-fitting gray hat. Her full, laughing, eternallypulsating face;friendly eyes, though a little affected. My face flushes whenever I think of F.

Clear night on the way home; distinctly aware of what in me is mere dull apathy,so far removed from a great clarity expanding without hindrance.Nikolai Literaturbriefe (Letters on Literature).There are possibilities for me, certainly, but under what stone do they lie?Carried forward on the horse

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Youth's meaninglessness. Fear of youth, fear of meaninglessness, of themeaningless rise of an inhuman life.Tellheim: He haswhat only the creations of true poets possessthat spontaneous

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flexibility of the inner life which, as circumstances alter, continually surprisesus byrevealing entirely new facets of itself.

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19 January. Anxiety alternating with self-assurance at the office. Otherwisemore confident. Great antipathy to Metamorphosis. Unreadable ending.

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Imperfectalmost to its very marrow. It would have turned out much better if I had not beeninterrupted at the time by the business trip.23 January. B., the chief auditor, tells the story of a friend of his, a half-paycolonel who likes to sleep beside an open window: During the night it is very

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pleasant; butin the morning, when I have to shovel the snow off the ottoman near the window andthen start shaving, it is unpleasant.

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Memoirs of Countess Thrheim: Her gentle nature made her especially fond of

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Racine. I have often heard her praying God that He might grant him eternalpeace.

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There is no doubt that at the great dinners given in his honor at Vienna by theRussian ambassador Count Rasumovsky, he (Suvorov) ate like a glutton the foodservedupon the table without pausing for a soul. When he was full he would get up andleave the guests to themselves.To judge by an engraving, a frail, determined, pedantic old man.It wasn't your fate, my mother's lame consolation. The bad part of it is, that

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at the moment it is almost all the consolation that I need. There is my weak